by Cara Elliott
“Dare we light a fire?” she asked, once they had stopped and he had unhitched the horses. “I could toast some bread and cheese, as well as heat water for tea.”
He looked to the thick copse of trees between them and the inn. “Yes, I see no harm in it. I noted a few farmhouses nearby, so a wisp of smoke won’t attract any undo attention.”
A pot and several primitive utensils had been added to their meager store of possessions. John set to gathering wood and kindling a flame while she unpacked the hamper. Sheltered within a niche of the wind-carved stone, the sticks were soon blazing with a welcome warmth.
They ate in companionable silence, the earl seemingly lost in his own thoughts.
Brooding no doubt about the coming day, thought Olivia, and all that could go wrong.
All will go right.
Looking up, she offered a silent prayer to the heavens.
Perhaps it was just her imagination, but the tendrils of mist seemed to skirl away, leaving the stars to shine with a sudden brighter brilliance—a sign that she chose to take as a good omen. Her father had held a great respect for primitive traditions and talismans…
Impelled by some powerful inner force, Olivia rose without a word and began to sway slowly back and forth in front of the undulating flames. After a few moments, she raised her arms, adding the rhythmic gestures she recalled from the tribal dances in Crete.
John looked up. He said nothing but beneath the curl of his dark lashes she saw the glimmer of a question.
He thinks me mad—and perhaps I am.
“My father wrote extensively about native rituals,” she explained. Sway, sway. “Every culture has rituals for good luck—they are designed to align the local gods in their favor.” Sway, sway. “Like my father, I am very open-minded about these things. I see no harm in appealing to all the deities in the universe.” Sway, sway. She began to move her feet in soft, shuffling steps, tracing a wide circle around the fire.
The pale moonlight spun like silvery vapor around the brighter flickers of gold.
Caught up in her movements and the mesmerizing play of light against dark, Olivia didn’t realize that she was not alone until a shadow fell across her face.
“I am willing to try anything,” murmured John as he fell in step beside her and began mimicking her movements.
The flames seemed to lick up higher and she was suddenly hot all over. Unwinding her shawl from her shoulders, she let it trail away behind her.
Sway, sway.
And then an unexpected spin as John took hold of her and pulled her into his arms. Sparks flew up from the crackling logs, and somewhere in the nearby trees a pair of nightingales broke into a twittering song. Taking her hand, John slid into the figures of a waltz. He was humming, the soft notes in perfect harmony with the music of the night.
“That’s lovely,” she murmured after several bars. “What is it?”
“Beethoven’s Sonata ‘Quasi una fantasia.’” A silver shimmer winked over his smile. “Which is more popularly known as the Moonlight Sonata.”
Moonlight. Firelight.
The tangled glow traced over the planes of his face, the flame-tipped lashes, the stubbled whiskers, the lean jaw. Silhouetted against the iron gray stone he looked like a wild Druid warrior. Dark. Dangerous.
Olivia felt the breath shiver in her throat. This was not the civilized, straitlaced earl of a London ballroom, but a far more primitive male.
A little frightening, but undeniably alluring.
He released her and suddenly shucked off his coat. Beneath the white linen of his shirt, the shadowy contours of his muscles rippled as he raised his arms in martial salute to the moon.
The Perfect Hero, limned in the magic of midnight.
Spellbound by the sight, Olivia blurted out, “Oh, Anna and Caro would find this all terribly romantic. They enjoy…”
“They enjoy what?” he asked after a slow, spinning turn around the red-gold flames.
“Oh, er, you know—those wildly emotional scenes one reads about in novels and poetry.”
John remained strangely silent. Rather than resume his humming, he recaptured her hands, and for an interlude, the only sounds in the night were the crackling coals and their steps scuffing over the hardscrabble ground.
And the nightingales. The notes of a new song floated out from the dark, breeze-ruffled foliage of the trees.
“And you do not consider yourself romantic?” he finally asked.
Olivia shook her head. “Ye gods, no. I haven’t a romantic bone in my body. My passions are purely pragmatic.”
“I think you are very wrong. The essays you write are, at heart, powerfully romantic.”
“Th-that’s absurd. They—”
The touch of his fingertip stilled her lips. “They are romantic because they inspire us to think we can be better than we are. They give us hope that the future can be brighter.”
The sudden warmth suffusing her cheeks was not from the burning branches, but rather from some inner glow.
They danced on. Olivia lost count of the steps and the minutes. Lost count of all the rational reasons to put an end to the whirling dervish dance of emotions inside her.
Stop. The inner word was lost in the echo of a myriad other longings. Throwing thought to the wind, she pulled away from John and peeled off her spencer jacket. It fell to the ground with a whispery sigh.
To her surprise, he laughed and suddenly stripped away his shirt and tossed it atop her crumpled spencer.
“You once said that waltzing was far too stilted and that we all ought to dance naked in the moonlight.”
“I say a great many foolish things, Wrexham,” said Olivia, watching the light lap over his sun-bronzed skin. I feel a great many foolish things.
“But you say far more wise things,” he murmured. He came close—too close. “And by the by, you called me John the last time we were alone in London. I should like for you to do so now.”
“I—it doesn’t seem right. That was when we were…friends.”
“We aren’t friends now?” he questioned.
I don’t know what we are, she thought. Perhaps there wasn’t a word to describe it.
When she didn’t answer, he took another step, and once again, she was in his arms. “I should hope we are, Olivia. I feel a special bond with you that I don’t have with anyone else.”
She lay her cheek on his shoulder. “How strange, I feel quite the same way. I mean, I am very close to my sisters, but this feels…different.”
A low chuckle. “I should hope so. I would be a little worried if you wished to kiss your sisters.”
“I shouldn’t wish to kiss you, either, Wrexham.
“John,” he corrected. “Why not?”
“Because…” A wave of longing crested inside her. Tipping her head up, Olivia stared at the stars, hoping to hide the pearls of moisture clinging to her lashes. “Because of a great many reasons.”
“Such as?” he pressed.
“Corsets, to begin with,” quipped Olivia, though her throat was painfully tight.
“Ah. Corsets.” John twirled them in a tight circle. “I imagine they are deucedly uncomfortable things to wear.”
If anything, his mood was even stranger than hers.
“Anything else?” he asked.
As if that wasn’t enough? However, if he wished for more then she would humor him.
“Then let us move on to the rules of Polite Society. Do you wish a list of each and every one? As it is, we’ve already broken too many to enumerate.”
“True.” His voice was low and little rough around the edges. “But there are times when rules must yield to a more elemental force.” And with that, he framed her face between his palms and possessed her mouth in a bruising kiss.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Madness.
The night before a battle, soldiers often felt a strange sort of spell bubble through their blood, thought John dimly as his lips moved hungrily over hers. A
lust for life, perhaps. An affirmation that there was hope and joy in the world, not merely darkness and pain.
Olivia flinched and then softened. So sweetly, so sweetly.
And then suddenly he wasn’t thinking anymore about abstractions.
Her warmth, her taste, her skin next to his—pure, primal need overwhelmed all else.
Their tongues twined, sparking a groan deep his throat. Entangling his hands in her hair, John deepened the kiss, drinking in the intoxicating spice of her essence.
Silk on silk—his impatient fingers slid from her curls to the ties of her gown.
“Olivia,” he growled, saying it over and over and over again.
In response, she found the fastenings of his trousers. One by one the buttons slipped free.
Their clothing came off, the thump-thump of shoe leather punctuating the soft sighs of cotton and wool.
The sounds gave way to his need-roughened rasps. Her breathing was coming in ragged little gasps.
“J-J-John.”
“Say it,” he demanded, sliding his palms over the swell of her hips. “Shout it.”
Her cry reverberated against the surrounding stone, and he dared to believe that she wanted this just as much as he did. Swinging her up off the ground, he whirled round and round, his wild steps carrying them out to the very edge of the firelight. Spinning, spinning, their naked bodies gilded in gold and shadows.
Like two demented spirits sparked to life by some ancient alchemy.
Breathless, John slowed to a staggering stop. Olivia was laughing, and yet there were tears glistening on her lashes.
“Oh, I fear I’ve freed some impish inner demon in you,” she whispered, her voice betraying a note of uncertainty. “And that come morning, you will regret it.”
“Regret?”
“With all my unorthodox ideas and headstrong words, I’ve managed to turn your careful life topsy-turvy.”
John held her very still. “For which I am profoundly grateful. Cecilia was right—I was in danger of becoming a stick-in-the-mud, stuck in conventional thinking. You have challenged me to see things from a different perspective.”
“Yes, by knocking you flat on your arse in Mr. Hurley’s garden,” she quipped.
“But as I landed atop your luscious body, it was well worth the come-down.”
“Ha! I’m not particularly well-padded,” exclaimed out Olivia. “I’ve none of the voluptuous curves that draw a man’s attention.”
“On many things, I am quite willing to defer to your intellect,” he said softly, letting his hands add the emphasis. “This is not one of them.”
“John!” Her eyes widened. “That is very naughty.”
“So is this.” He lowered his head and flicked a tongue over her bare nipple.
“However, there’s naught but the forest foxes to witness my impish inner demon having his evil way with you.”
Her laugh was back, a low throaty sound that had his body clenching with desire.
“You are going to let me have my evil way with you, aren’t you?” asked John.
Yes.
“Yes,” repeated Olivia, this time aloud. She touched his cheek. “Yes.”
The blankets were already tucked in a shallow crevasse behind the fire. John eased her down on the flame-warmed wool.
They were both a little desperate—he to forget his fears, she supposed. And she to remember this last wild night of passion. It would, she knew, be her last lovemaking with him. This couldn’t go on. She wasn’t so foolish as to think a liaison was possible once they returned to London. Scandal would ruin both of them, along with her family.
But she wouldn’t think of that now. Not the loneliness, not the yearning, not the ache that would lodge in her heart.
Caro, ever the romantic, would wax poetic on doomed love.
But I can only be pragmatic and seize the moment, come what may in the future.
“Make love to me, John,” she whispered. “I want you inside me.” Connected in body and soul if only for a fleeting interlude. “I…” The word “love” almost slipped free.
I love you.
That, too, she wished to shout loud enough to be heard in the heavens. But it would be unfair to him. His fine-honed sense of honor was already cutting like a blade against his conscience. No matter her own pain, Olivia could not bear to sharpen its edge.
She had refused his offer—best to leave it at that.
“You what?” he prompted, pressing his lips to the pulsepoint at her throat.
“I…need you. Now.” And forever. But that, she knew, was nothing more than a moonspun dream.
“And I need you,” rasped John. “More than you can imagine.”
“Then let us celebrate our bond, and offer up our spirit of friendship as an homage to the local deities,” said Olivia. “So that they will favor us with good fortune on the morrow.”
“I…” A hesitation hung for an instant on his lips. “I agree.”
Perhaps it was the shadowy starlight or some unseen midnight magic casting a spell over their bodies, but their lovemaking was far softer and slower than their previous coupling.
The nighttime darkness wrapped them in velvet, smoothing their touch to a gossamer lightness. Olivia brushed her fingertips through the coarse curls of hair on his chest, vowing to memorize every nuanced shape of his skin, every chiseled contour of his ribs and muscle.
John inhaled sharply as she trailed her hand down over his flat belly and found his manhood. Satin and steel. Hard and soft. The pulsing of heat against the curl of her palm made her want to weep with joy for the present moment, and longing for…
No, I will not think of that.
Closing her eyes to the sting of salt, Olivia drew her caresses up and down his length, reveling in his masculine beauty. The perfect hero.
His breathing quickened, his body tightened in response to her touch. With a wordless groan, he seized her wrist, and then she was beneath him. Arching up, she opened herself to his gentle thrust.
Their rhythm had a desperate tenderness. No words, no sounds, save for the beating of their hearts.
She crested and came with a silent shout, and an instant later his essence spilled in a silvery pool on the folds of the blanket, its pale glimmer like liquid moonbeams.
The gentle crackling of the coals drew John out of a deep reverie. The flames had died down to naught but a mellow glow of red-gold gleaming through the dark ashes. And yet, a warmth still filled their small shelter within the stones.
Olivia stirred as well, and gave a feline stretch. “The Road to Perdition is a good deal more enjoyable to travel than the road to Exeter,” she murmured. “Especially as I was damaged goods to begin with.”
John rolled on his side and drew her close. “Enjoyable indeed. But you must not think of yourself as chipped or cracked by the ride. You are whole in every way that matters.”
“That is very sweet of you. But the truth is, most people will think me a broken vessel.” She made a wry face. “Ruined beyond repair.”
John made a show of carefully examining her face from all angles. “Hmmm, everything seems perfectly formed to me.”
The firelight accentuated the flush of pink now coloring her face. She ducked her head. “It is not a jesting matter, John.”
His smile disappeared. “No,” he said softly. “It is not.”
“I don’t care for myself,” Olivia said softly. “But I must not do anything to hurt Anna or Caro’s chances of making a good match.” She blew out a breath, the pale plume of vapor curling up into the darkness. “I should be able to dodge a scandal over this because of your sister and the fact that she is willing to help cover up our travels with the excuse that I was her guest at Wrexham Manor while you were away. But once we return to London, I think it best that we don’t see each other. It might stir unwanted gossip.”
“On the contrary,” he replied. “To be crass, Olivia, my dancing attendance on you would only raise interest in your sisters. The ton
is easily influenced by the glitter of a title and money.”
“You could make it fashionable for rich aristocrats to court penniless nobodies?”
“You are not a nobody, Olivia,” he said a little angrily.
“It was a figure of speech,” she replied. “Thank you, but I should not like to ask such a sacrifice of you.”
She turned her head, and a tumble of auburn curls fell down to curtain her face.
Hide and seek. Questions and conundrums.
Sensing that Olivia was loath to say anything more for the moment, John lay back and looked up at the stars. Their light shimmered and winked like countless points of fire, and he found himself drifting into a reflective mood.
Were there answers to life’s complex conundrums hidden within the random patterns?
As he regarded the glitter, he could trace out the word “No” in his mind’s eye.
And “Yes.”
Somehow, he would hone his skill with language to coax that syllable from her lips.
Practice. She had, early on in their work, advised him that practice made perfect. He shifted and after listening to her slumbering breath, he ever so gently ran the back of his knuckles along the line of her jaw.
There were a great many things he wished to practice with her.
Ideas, arguments, challenges, laughter.
Which brought him to the heart of his dilemma. Honor had always been a guiding force in his life. So, what was the most honorable thing to do? Olivia…Lady Serena—to whom did he owe honor?
There was no question of who possessed his heart.
As to the moral question, there were a myriad of philosophical essays on the subject, a myriad of ideas on how to parse right and wrong. But perhaps this was a case where reason ought not overpower a more elemental emotion.
Love.
Yes, he was in love with Olivia. She was…perfect for him in every way.
Passionate, intelligent, kind, funny—her company would be endlessly exciting, endlessly inspiring.
She makes me laugh, she makes me think, she makes me feel alive.
John felt his chest constrict.
She will challenge me to be more than I think I can be.