Or was it possible there was another reason for his reluctance to have her touch him? A reason which she would find far more palatable, of course. Was it possible, as his brother had just suggested, that her guardian believed he was unworthy of her love? Unworthy. The idea was so ludicrous that she would have rejected it out of hand, except...
She searched the Earl of Dare's eyes, which were no longer cold, she realized. And no longer mocking. They seemed slightly amused and schooled to patience as he watched her adjust her thinking to the idea he had just planted in her head.
Planted. He had deliberately told her this because he had known Ian never would. After all, there was no one who knew her guardian better than did his notorious brother. And if Dare believed this were true...
"Thank you," she said softly.
The finely shaped lips relaxed, that motion very reminiscent of another beautiful mouth moving from the sternness of battle fury into this same enigmatic half smile.
"I am overdressed to play Cupid. And I shall never do so again, believe me. What use you make of this information is up to you. I seldom interfere in my brother's life. However, I have never seen him in love before, at least nothing beyond the calf-love variety of our boyhoods."
"Are you sure, my lord, that... I cannot afford to be mistaken in this."
"Ian is an admirer of courage. Despite the indisputable fineness of your eyes, I suspect my brother's attraction to you had far more to do with that quality than with anything else."
"Are you saying he's attracted to my courage?" she said, her own lips tilting.
Amusement, whether at her or at his brother, had replaced the coldness in Dare's blue eyes. They were almost conspiring.
"Forgive me if I am unable to fully explain my brother's attraction. People fall in love, I have found, for the most astounding reasons."
"And after all, I have nothing else to recommend me," Anne said, smiling at him.
It seemed she was finally beginning to understand Ian's sardonic brother, and perhaps even to understand Elizabeth's love for him. People fall in love for the most astounding reasons.
"An open and gallant heart," the earl said, "is the one quality that will always guarantee a Sinclair's acceptance. I pray you will have both in dealing with my recalcitrant brother. And now, if I have your permission, Miss Darlington, I should very much like to partake of my dinner. I have an unfortunate habit of fainting on stairs. You may ask Elizabeth for verification if you wish."
"Anne," she said, holding out her hand. "My name is Anne."
There was a long hesitation as his eyes studied hers. This time she met them fearlessly, however, fighting to control the smile that tugged at the corners of her mouth. Finally Dare took her hand and brought it to his lips, just as he had once before.
And yet nothing was the same about the gesture. He held her eyes as his mouth brushed over the back of her hand. And then he held her fingers in his long dark ones as he considered her face.
"I should want to kill a man who hurt my brother. I feel I must tell you that with all honesty, if you and I are to have any sort of relationship. As for the woman who would hurt him..."
"I suspect you would want to kill her, too. I am undaunted by the threat, my lord. If there is one thing of which I can assure you, it is that I would never willingly hurt your brother. You have my word on that."
He held her eyes another moment, and then he nodded, freeing her fingers. And when the Earl of Dare brushed by her this time, Anne didn't attempt to stop him. She stood instead where he had left her, her gaze on the closed bedroom door across the hall.
***
When Ian opened his eyes, it was obvious he had slept the day away. The room was dim, its windows darkened and opaque. He turned his head toward the chair where Dare had been sitting. He didn't really expect his brother to still be there after so many hours, but knowing Val, he would not have been surprised.
He was surprised, however, when he identified its current occupant. The low light from the lamp across the room drew copper highlights from the dark auburn hair of his ward. Her lashes shadowed her eyes. It appeared her gaze was on her hands, which were in her lap, the right lying unmoving within the left.
Ian couldn't remember when he had ever seen Anne so still. There was always animation about her features, her eyes alight with humor and mischief. Or with anger, as they had been yesterday.
He wondered if she were asleep, as unlikely as that seemed, given the uncomfortable straightness of the chair. Just when he was about to decide that must be the case, however, she lifted her head, as if she had sensed he was watching her.
He expected her quick smile as soon as she saw he was awake, but her lips remained unmoving. And he realized the familiar planes and angles of her face were somehow different. It was hard to decide exactly what the subtle variance was, but there was a serenity about her features he had never seen there before. A quiet maturity, which had apparently developed overnight.
"You're awake," she said.
It wasn't a question, of course, because she could see that he was. And like whatever he had noticed in her face, her voice, too, seemed changed. It was as soft as the shadows that gathered in the room beyond the reach of the light from that single lamp.
Ian wasn't able to read her tone, and yet he had believed he was becoming quite adept at that. After all, he had tried for weeks to memorize all the subtle nuances of phrase and expression that made Anne Darlington who and what she was.
The process had been slow, and it had also been deliberate. He knew very well that when he had found the perfect husband for the woman with whom he had fallen in love, those memories would be all he would have left. And they would have to sustain him through the empty years that stretched ahead, however few or many that might be.
"How long have you been here?" he asked.
That she should have been the one left to watch over him as he slept was as unbelievable as it was undesirable. He wondered that his brother hadn't understood his feelings. After all, he had already been forced to demonstrate his physical inadequacies before Anne far too frequently during their short acquaintance.
"Since your brother left."
"Val's gone?"
That thought was frightening for some reason, although it was again difficult for his fogged brain to grasp why it should be. He remembered that he had sent for Dare. He wasn't perfectly sure, however, whether or not he had managed to convey to his brother his reasons. If Val were no longer in London—
"Only to eat and to sleep. He traveled most of last night, I believe. He indicated that your note seemed quite urgent."
Ian tried to remember what logic had created that urgency. All he knew was that he had believed Anne to be in danger, and until he was again able to protect her...
Able to protect her. The words jeered at him through the cloud of opium that obscured his thinking. He could no more protect Anne than he could convince himself he wasn't in love with her. The fact that he was flat on his back again made a mockery of both.
"But he didn't explain why you had sent for him," she added.
Because... The reasons, even those he managed to dredge from his disordered brain, seemed as insubstantial as smoke. Was it because, as McKinley had noted, Anne Darlington seemed a lightning rod for trouble? Or because his own inadequacies had made him exaggerate out of proportion to their significance the two incidents in which she had been endangered? The questions seemed beyond his mental powers tonight. As fighting off those dangers had proven to be humiliatingly beyond his physical ones.
"He is my brother," he said truthfully, "and I am accustomed to depending on him." He lifted his hand and touched the plaster the doctor had put over the gash on his forehead.
"Does your head ache?" Anne asked.
"Not appreciably worse than the rest of me."
He smiled at her and became aware only then of the painful dryness of his lips. Of course, laudanum always affected him that way. That was only one of the less
er of its many side effects, which for him usually included nightmares and tremors.
They had dosed him too heavily when he had first been wounded, certain he would die before he could be transported home. He had resisted taking the drug since he had returned to England, and he wished McKinley had not insisted this morning.
Keeping his wits about him and his emotions in check when he was with Anne had become harder and harder as the days of his guardianship had passed. And after yesterday...
The memory of his body pressed into hers was suddenly too vivid in his brain. It seemed he could still feel the delicate curve of her breasts lifting against his chest as she breathed. And incredibly, given the debilitated state of his body, he was reacting in the same way to that remembrance as he had to the sweet reality. At least this time—
"Why did you ask about the boy?" Anne questioned, bringing his wandering attention back to the present.
He took a breath, trying to gather what little control he had left. It was almost ironic to remember how much he had once valued his self-discipline. His growing feelings for his ward had made a mockery of that, as well as of his determination never to allow himself to fall in love with a woman, considering that he no longer had anything to offer. Not even his life.
"He seemed...too knowing to react as he did."
"Too knowing?"
Ian tried to remember what had bothered him about the child. Thankfully, the longer he was awake, the clearer his mind became.
"He had to know what would happen if he ran away. And he surely knew that by appealing to you, he would not lessen his ultimate punishment. The sweep had every legal right to do what he was doing. And any child who has worked in that capacity very long has experienced the strop often enough to be relatively callous to it."
"And to having his feet burned?" Anne asked. "Callous to that as well?"
"But they weren't," Ian said, remembering only now that this was part of what had bothered him about yesterday's incident. "Because of his claim, I looked at them very carefully."
"You couldn't see the soles."
"The practice causes scarring along the outside of the foot as well as on the bottom. It would probably be an impossibility to control the torch so that they would not be burned there as well. The boy's feet didn't bear any evidence of that particular mistreatment. Not even old or faded scars."
Anne shook her head, her eyes no longer focused on his face. She was obviously trying to reconcile what he had just said with the events of yesterday.
"Then why would he make that claim?" she asked.
"To evoke your sympathy perhaps."
She shook her head again, the movement almost unconscious, as if she were weighing that idea.
"Then it worked, I suppose," she said finally.
"It would have worked on anyone with such a tender heart."
She laughed, and the sound moved within him. She had been made for joy. He had known that from the moment her eyes, alight with humor and such an obvious zest for living, had challenged his in the hallway of Fenton School.
"My greatest failing. At least according to Mrs. Kemp."
"I thought she believed that to be a tendency to romance," Ian said, remembering Anne's confession. Of course, it was not surprising that he remembered, since he had treasured every word she had ever said to him.
The laughter faded, first from the mobile lips and then more slowly from her eyes. And still they rested on his face.
"That's what you're afraid of," she said softly.
His heart stopped and then began to beat far too rapidly, a phenomenon he had experienced previously only on the eve of battle. And this fear was not so far from that. It, too, was the result of the recognition that he was in grave danger.
Because he was not prepared for this. That she knew what he feared was as unexpected as the sudden confrontation in the street had been.
He tried to think how to meet this attack, wishing that the control that had always governed his behavior had not been weakened by the effects of the drug. And, he admitted, by yesterday's unexpected contact between his hungry, aching body and the young, strong one of Anne Darlington.
Young, strong, and beautiful. And deserving of far more than the shattered remnants of the man he had once been.
Had there been any guarantee of how long the flawed vessel that held his heart would last, he might have been weak enough to offer her that tawdry gift. And given her nature, she might well have accepted it, never even stopping to compare it to her worth.
"I don't understand," he said.
Even in his own ears, his voice was strained. Revealing?
"You're afraid that what I feel for you is the result of my tender heart," she said. "Or of my romanticism."
"What you feel for me?" he repeated, injecting a note of disbelief into the repetition.
"At least do me the courtesy of dealing with me honestly," she demanded, her own voice unchanged. "Your brother said that to me—that an open and gallant heart would always win favor with the Sinclairs. I am trying to have both. I hope you will as well."
She paused, holding his eyes as if she expected an answer to that assertion. He found he was incapable of giving one.
He could hear the blood beating in his ears, almost loud enough to drown out the sound of her voice and the truth it spoke. Almost enough.
"Then I shall be open with you first," she went on when he said nothing in response. "I am in love with you. I am not sure when it began. Or even when I was first aware that it had. I had always thought I should immediately know the man I would love. I believed that the identification would come to me like some startling revelation as soon as I had laid eyes on him. And instead—" Her voice broke, and her eyes glazed with tears. She fought them, blinking the moisture away.
"Instead," she went on, speaking so softly he had to strain to catch the words, "it grew so slowly that I was not aware of what was happening until it was far too late. And so I could not guard my heart against the cruel possibility that you would not love me in return."
Again she paused, swallowing to overcome the force of emotion. His eyes traced the movement along the slender column of her throat before they came back to hers.
"So I have no shield at all against what I feel," she said, "but I can tell you with all the honesty and courage I possess that what is in my heart for you has nothing to do with pity."
The silence lengthened as her words echoed again and again inside his head. And had his reason been the one she named, they might have been enough to defeat his determination. But it was not, of course.
He was the guardian of her heart, which had been made for joy and not for sorrow. The decision he had made about her future had nothing to do with her father's will, and everything to do with the deadly legacy Darlington's cowardice had left inside his chest. It seemed as if he could feel it there. The weight of the metal as cold and heavy as the death he knew it would inevitably bring.
"Believe me..." he began, hating himself for what he was about to do. And yet this self-hatred would be nothing to that he would feel if he were selfish enough to take what she had offered him. "It is not that I do not value your affection."
He stopped because he saw the impact of that rejection in her face. He had thought its lines were more mature, but now he saw it age before his eyes. The soft curve of girlish cheek tightened and thinned. Her lips reshaped themselves, no longer full and expectant.
"Valued perhaps, but undesired," she said, her voice flat.
He wondered if he were capable of that lie, remembering the long sleepless nights during which he had desired her. Dreamed of her. Wanted her with a need so great that his body ached and trembled in the darkness.
"The fault is not in what you offer," he said softly.
"Your brother said you believe yourself unworthy of a woman's love."
"My brother says a great many things," he said, smiling at her again. "Sometimes he thinks he knows more about my affairs than I do. He had no ri
ght to speak to you about my feelings. I can only tell you how sorry I am that he has misled you about the reality of them."
"Elizabeth told me you are in love with someone else. If you will tell me that is true, then..." She paused, her eyes on his as she drew a breath. "Then I will never speak to you again about what I have told you tonight."
An open and gallant heart. All it would take would be another lie, and eventually, she would forget what she believed she felt for him. She is so young, Ian thought, trying to justify what he knew he must do. Too young, surely, to have formed any lasting attachment.
You're afraid that what I feel for you is the result of my tender heart. Or of my romanticism. She was wrong, of course, for what he really feared, more than he had ever feared anything else in his life, was that it was not.
One more lie, he thought again, his gaze on her face. At least do me the courtesy of dealing with me honestly.
"Elizabeth was wrong," he said, and could not bear the sudden flare of hope in her eyes. So he added the words that were designed to destroy it, as surely as he was destroying himself, "But so was my brother."
She said nothing for a long time, her eyes locked on his. And then, when he thought he could not endure their scrutiny any longer, she nodded, the movement small and carefully contained.
She rose and, without looking at him again, left him alone with only the cold, black memory of what had been in her face in response to the lie he had chosen. He had understood before he had uttered it that it was by far the crueler of the two weapons she had placed within his hands. And he had chosen it because it would be, or so he prayed, the more effective.
***
"You sent for me?" the Earl of Dare asked. He had opened the door wider this time, surer, perhaps, of his reception.
"Come in," Ian instructed, and waited until Dare had closed the door behind him and advanced across the room.
He would not have wished to hold this particular interview in the horizontal, as Val called it, but the things he needed to say to his brother could not wait. There had already been too much damage done by his reticence to speak honestly. An open and gallant heart echoed somewhere within his.
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