Once out of earshot, Lord Wesley glanced down his aristocratic nose at her and cocked one eyebrow. “Whatever do you mean, Miss Holden?”
“I mean, my lord, for the last three hours I have observed while every female, one or two of them married, took turns on your arm, all of whom you transformed into gushing messes by what you leaned down to whisper in their ears. I assumed they’d exaggerated your words and their meaning. Now, I’m not so sure.”
He appeared not in the least surprised or offended. In fact, if she wasn’t mistaken, she thought she heard a rumbling laughter somewhere deep inside his chest.
“And what is so humorous?”
“You, my dearest Miss Holden.” He paused to spread his free hand across his expansive chest. Her gaze drawn there, she was unable to wipe the image of him standing before her half naked this morning. “I try to pay you a compliment, and you give me a ridiculous excuse for why it is not genuine.”
He led her out onto a curving balcony, the cool breeze doing much to sober her senses. Still in view of Sir Glenbrook and his wife, Kate settled before the wrought iron railing, grasping the cold metal with both her palms.
“How can I take you seriously when you’re everything my cousin warned me about?”
Silence. Even a noisy swallow stopped to hear Lord Wesley’s response. Neither she nor the bird had to wait long.
“I believe your cousin has realized something that should not have taken so long to conclude.”
She sent him a crooked smile. “And what is that, my lord? That you are a wretched man with ulterior motives for everything?”
“No, that maybe he has found himself in love with you.”
Oh, such scandalous words. She opened her mouth to refute his claim, only to have him lean so close she could smell the wine on his breath and the soap on his skin.
“You do realize you have a way about you that clouds a man’s mind to sensible thought.”
She harrumphed, the air drawing out an icy breath. “I do no such thing. A man does not become insensible. They are, rather, insensible to begin with.”
Lord Wesley inhaled and nodded. “You appear to be a connoisseur when it comes to the minds of men. It makes me wonder if you are as innocent as you would have one believe.”
His words were teasing, his tone gruff, and Kate wished she knew why he engaged her in such inappropriate conversation. “Again, I must disagree with your assessment of me. I am no connoisseur, for if I were, I would have seen the shameful motivations of a certain gentleman long before they took place. So, I am, instead, a mere novice, innocent in every way possible.”
Her last words drew him closer, his gaze lowering to her lips. “God, how I can’t wait to discover just how innocent you are.”
His words didn’t seem to shock her. She just stood there, blinking up at him with that sensual curiosity. Now plagued by his debauched thoughts, he presented her with an abrupt bow before stalking away.
Chapter Eleven
Wesley returned to his rightful place among his guests, scolding himself for not staying more focused, more disciplined. It didn’t help how he’d thought of Miss Holden every second or every minute since their kiss in the garden, trying to find ways to pull her aside or catch her alone, if only to share a piece of forbidden conversation.
He knew, in order to go through with his plans, he needed to stay resolute and detached. The only problem was, instead of trying to ruin her, he found himself faithfully rescuing her person in one way or the other.
“Oh, my lord, I have missed you so,” Miss Vivian purred into his right ear. “It was so cruel of you to go off and leave me like you did. With that Miss Holden, of all people. From what I hear, her parents are trying desperately to marry her off to a tradesman’s son, a partner’s heir, if you will, in order to save the business and their less than measly fortune. Unfortunately, rumor has it she has already—”
“Enough!” Wesley inhaled and lifted his gaze to the ceiling. How in the world did he ever think to enter into a lifetime commitment with someone so obnoxious and disapproving? Yes, she may be beautiful and come with a hefty dowry, but for some reason, it seemed meager compared to other possibilities.
He closed his mind to what he was hearing of Miss Holden and glanced down at Miss Vivian’s catlike eyes, their short lashes fluttering in clueless rhythm.
“If I’d wanted your opinion or your gossip, madam, I would have asked for it. Now, if you would excuse me.”
He left, trudging past Miss Claire Garrett and Lady Sophia, both of whom followed his departure with excitable and promising stares. He slowed past Lady Pearson, presenting her with a respectable bow before turning onto the balcony, finding it deserted. The air still swirled with Miss Holden’s exotically sweet scent, driving him to a state of increased awareness teetering on the edge of drugged introspection.
Tempted to disregard social etiquette and leave his guests without a host, he began to turn, finding Claire in his unavoidable path. She smiled, slow like a sated cat among a field of unmindful canaries.
“Leaving so soon, my lord?” She raised her finely arched eyebrows and twisted her lips into a cunning smile. He never thought her less than beautiful, but her temperament and discrimination toward anyone she deemed unworthy of her company distracted from her external qualities.
He shifted his gaze behind her, locating Lady Sophia not ten paces away, feigning ignorance to their conversation while wrapping herself in an exaggerated tête-à-tête with Rourke.
At least relieved to see Miss Holden not anywhere near his cousin, Wesley returned his attention to Claire, her annoyance at being thus far ignored showing in a deep line above her pert, powdered nose.
“If you are searching for Kate, I’m afraid she stumbled to her room not more than five minutes ago. I don’t know if her flushed face was the result of overindulgence or something else entirely.” She sliced a glare toward Miss Vivian, Claire’s own features scrunching into a jealous position.
Already bored with their senseless chat, Wesley bowed and walked away, finding himself hastening up the staircase and toward Miss Holden’s bedchamber. He let himself in, unashamed.
She stood, her back to him, facing the open window, an overzealous breeze lifting wisps of her mahogany-tinted curls.
The room frigid and shadowed, held no welcome for him, nonetheless, he refused to leave. For a moment, he thought she’d not heard him enter, then she sighed and turned slightly, the moonlight casting a ghostly glow upon her round cheek.
“Have you come to drag me back downstairs?”
“No.”
She returned her attention to the window, silent as a flower’s bloom. He sauntered forward, grasping a wool shawl off her bed on the way. He knew the alcohol numbed her senses to the temperature, but if she remained standing in the autumn air, she’d be sure to catch more than a mere cold.
“Come,” he said, wrapping the heavy fabric around her shoulders and leading her toward a chaise close by. She sat down as he turned to close the shutters and then stoke the glowing embers into a pre-blazing fire.
He lit a candle as well, illuminating the room in a warming glimmer. Without invitation, he sat down beside her, prepared to explain his abrupt departure from her earlier, when she sighed and leaned her head against his left arm.
“I feel like I’m floating.”
His reason forgotten, he chuckled to himself before saying, “Like an angel.”
He bent his head to see her reaction, a reserved smile lifting in the corners of her wine-tinted lips. How he longed to kiss them again. But not like this. He wanted her mindful and completely aware of his intentions.
“Oh, you do know the right words.”
He shrugged. “So it seems, but only to willing participants half listening to what I’m saying while imagining themselves as my bride.”
She shot into a sitting position and shifted her body so their knees touched. “That’s right, you were looking for a wife, were you not?” She closed her
eyes and bent her head back. “Besides Claire, which other eager subjects did you find?”
He shook his head. “Would you believe me if I told you not one?”
She opened her eyes before making a clicking sound with her tongue. “Not in the least.”
Despite the implications, he adored being with her like this, her guard down, her loathing for him set adrift in the chilled English wind. He knew, without a doubt, he no longer held the same contempt for her as she did for him. Somehow, she’d wiggled herself into his thoughts, both her naive beauty and brutal openness, staying to chip away at his ruthless ambitions.
The foundation of his principles was weakening, and he didn’t know how to keep it all from crumbling around him. At such a young age, he saw his father ruin everything he touched, including love. Because of this, Wesley remained steadfast on building a legacy with brick and mortar. Without Penndrake, he was nothing. And yet, as he sat struggling with his conviction, she swayed once toward him and then stood, gliding slowly to the bedpost, where she wrapped her arms around the spiraled wood and appeared to cling to it like a sailor in a gale storm.
“I don’t think I would like to marry you.”
His mouth fell open in surprise. Of course, he’d never considered such an idea, even when presented with it by her scheming cousin. Still, he found himself too interested in what brought about her confession.
He pushed himself up and walked toward her. He didn’t believe her overly foxed but inebriated enough to say things she would not normally say. He wondered if she’d indulged herself on purpose, to lure him here, just as he’d lured her to Penndrake. He kept his guard up and closed the distance between them.
Before her, Wesley stopped and asked in a quiet and gentle manner, “Would I not make a good husband, Kate?”
She didn’t notice the intimate way he said her Christian name. Instead, she tilted her head upward and answered him. “No.”
Her answer irked him exceedingly. His temper, sometimes docile but never tame, prompted him to grasp her by the shoulders and pull her closer.
Her rounded breasts grazed his open jacket, sending a twisting surge of liquid heat through his aching body. God, he wanted her, and he didn’t think he could want a woman more. She teased and tantalized him without the slightest bit of intent.
His voice husky, he replied, “That is not the answer I expected to receive.”
Her head fell back, and he wanted to kiss a more favorable reply from her. He abstained from giving into his emotions, waiting restlessly for her clever riposte.
“Oh, I’m afraid you misunderstood me. I don’t think you would make me a good husband, not that I’ve thought about marrying for an awfully long time,” she said.
He closed his eyes, reminded, once again, of her and Arthur’s intimate relationship. Why it gripped him between his heart and stomach, he didn’t know. Only that it did, and he didn’t like it one bit.
He opened his eyes and loosened his jaw, so as not to frighten her with what he needed to say. “But if my cousin would have offered his hand, your answer would have been yes.”
She brought her lower lip in, nibbling it until the shade turned a crimson red. “Your cousin had no intention of marrying me, my lord. I am not so ridiculous to believe I held more than an inspired interest in his affections.”
“You say that now, but I am assured you had plans to spend the rest of your life with him.”
“I was fifteen. I had plans to spend the rest of my life with Lord Byron if he had asked me.”
He chuckled at her light banter and honesty. He supposed drunkenness did not make her slur as much as it loosened her tongue.
“And still, you fell in love with Rourke’s pretty reading and foppish ways.”
She nodded and it felt like a spike through his heart. “Mr. Rourke is all sweet prose and handsomeness. I would have been a fool not to fall madly in love with him.”
Hearing this made Wesley want to start the conversation over again. He, unfortunately, stayed on course. “And how many times did he kiss you before you knew this?”
She giggled before smiling up at him, her gaze lazy upon his face. She wet her lips with the end of her tongue and stared at his mouth. Wesley didn’t want to take advantage of her in this state. He wanted her sober for everything…every touch, every caress he longed to give her. After a few moments, she lifted her fingers to his lips.
“It’s odd, but I can’t remember if there were one or twenty.” He watched her shrug and then smile—an odd gesture if she’d been left heartbroken. “I was not the only lady he read to under a tree, their souls laid bare for him. I just wished I’d realize his deceit sooner.”
Wesley took her hand and brought it to rest inside his. He lowered his voice, soft and close to her temple. “Yet, you don’t seem to hate him for what he did.” His mind replaced Arthur’s face with his own, causing his heart to skip a beat.
She maneuvered around until her gaze locked fully onto his. “No, I do not hate Arthur.” She paused. “The truth is, I feel nothing toward him, now. Not sadness or sympathy. Not heartbreak or pain. It is the way of a betrayed heart, to learn to beat regardless of its infliction.”
He exhaled and pulled her against him, her hands wrapping around his back in an accepting embrace. The words I will never let anything happen to you sat on the tip of his tongue.
His mind echoed it, over and over. His breath, hurried and shallow, revealed his taxing struggle to not say the words until he let her go and pressed her back to the bedpost.
He snapped his mind back to why he’d lured her to Penndrake. “As I recall, you still owe me a dance, Kate.”
She glanced lazily around the room. “I may be a little tipsy, my lord, but I am not fooled that we are anywhere near the ballroom.”
She smiled triumphantly until the faint lift of violins seeped in through the floorboard.
He said nothing but closed the small distance between them. With her eyes wide and blinking, he swept her away into the middle of the room. Despite what he proposed, the alcohol appeared to keep her body limp and relaxed, even if her mind seemed to sober immediately.
“I must inform you, I am not as…graceful as your other partners.”
He smiled down at her. “That only means you must cling to me more tightly.”
Her green eyes widened, with surprise or eagerness, he didn’t know. What he did know was that he didn’t want to leave her or have this moment go to waste.
In the quietness, the music seemed to resonate louder, a waltz quadrille, reaching up to push them together. Determined to test his own strength, Wesley gripped her hands, her small, yet willful fingers wrapping around his palm in a firm and solid grip.
He led her, his attention fixated on her beguiling and champagne-flushed face. They shifted together, gliding across the room, her body so close he could feel her soft warmth and smell the erotic and sweet smell of her skin.
This dance was different than any he’d experienced in the past with another woman. He imitated the act of making love to her, drawing away and then pulling her back. Scandalous and bold, he brought her flush against him, lifting her so his midsection pressed firmly against hers. He exhaled a harsh breath at the exquisite agony, drawing her deeper into his embrace. Her arms wrapped around him, trembling but unintimidated. He lost himself in the moment, to the pleasurable sensations. Then she uttered a phrase that tore both of them from each other.
“I love you.”
On cue, the music stopped, and her hand flew to her mouth as if to try to shove the words back inside. She blinked, her lashes fluttering and her head shaking at the incredible confession. She withdrew her hand, still stunned. “Oh, please, do not think…that I meant…that I feel…that my words were, in any way, directed toward you.”
Wesley let go an anguished breath. He admitted to himself some disappointment in her sputtering acknowledgment of not thinking, meaning, or feeling those words toward him. If his heart hadn’t lurched from her befud
dled confession, he might have convinced himself he didn’t care what she felt about him.
“I don’t,” he assured her.
She turned away, the moment between them broken. He didn’t know what he wished to gain from their dance. From the time he demanded it from her until her ethereal whispered words of endearment, he believed himself to possess some upper hand.
However, the truth of the situation remained as hazy as her mind at the moment. Worse, the certainty of her dismal fate and the loathing she would feel for him when everything was said and done, pressed down upon him, aggravating his bad shoulder. It did not lighten after he closed the door or when he lay in his own bed, his body suffering from unfulfilled wants and needs, cravings and desires.
Later, in restless dreams, the phrase she sighed, changed. The middle and most endearing word was replaced with four, unforgiving and loathsome letters.
Hate.
Chapter Twelve
Kate drifted down to the drawing room the next morning, her head splitting from the champagne and her gaze searching for Lord Wesley.
After he’d left her last night, some of it fuzzy, some of it very clear, she dreamed of nothing, of no one but him. Unfortunately, upon waking, a feeling of guilt or embarrassment began to tug at her insides. She searched her memory for what she might have said or done, but either she’d blocked it out or it was of no real consequence.
Satisfied to forget the evening altogether, she reminded herself that, no matter her feelings, Lord Wesley cared naught for her company, instead only wanting to obtain the information he sought regarding Edward. How dangerous, she thought, to turn into one of his lordship’s many followers before I’ve even developed a strategy to leave.
“Ah, Kate, there you are. I’ve been waiting for you to retrieve my snuffbox. I believe I left it upstairs.”
Kate turned to do as her aunt instructed when Lord Wesley’s authoritative voice boomed inside the crowded room. “I have servants, Lady Sophia. There is no need for your niece to be at your disposal as long as she remains here.”
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