“Lackaday, you are right!” Mariah shielded another giggle behind her fan.
“I am indeed,” Lydia whispered back to her cousin. She directed Marcus her most winsome smile. “Now let us see how Mr. Dashing Diplomat worms his way out of this!”
Chapter Four
Marcus was stunned by the notion that the goddess might actually be Lydia, but reaching the bottom of the stairs, neither woman moved to receive him. Instead, they exchanged a conspiratorial smile. What the devil game are they playing?
Saved by his instincts, Marcus grasped Needham by the elbow. “Nicholas, I should like very much for you to meet my betrothed and her lovely cousin. Ladies,” he turned to the pair, “may I present my good friend and personal secretary, Mr. Nicholas Needham.”
Marcus awaited the next move with narrowed eyes and found himself trumped again when both women dropped into a silent curtsey. Marcus countered the play by sweeping an ambiguous gesture that might have indicated either woman. “Nick, I present my betrothed, Miss Lydia Trent.”
Nick regarded both ladies with expectation, whereby Lydia stepped forward with a triumphant look and brilliant smile. “Mr. Needham, my cousin, Lady Mariah Morehaven,” she completed the introduction the gaping Marcus had aborted.
Nicholas cast his friend a quizzical look that went unanswered. With a half shrug, he extended his arm to Mariah. “I would be most honored to be your supper escort, Lady Morehaven.”
Mariah smiled shyly and placed her hand on his sleeve. “It is my pleasure to accept, Mr. Needham.”
“Miss Trent?” Marcus at last recovered his senses to offer his arm, but when Lydia extended her hand, he brought it first to his mouth. “I am truly bedazzled. It appears my awkward little duckling has become the most exquisite swan.”
Her eyes widened. She snatched her hand away. “You take liberties, Lord Marcus —with both my name and my person.”
Marcus’ lips curved into a sardonic, half smile. “Do I indeed? But we are nearly wed.”
“We are nearly strangers, sir,” she corrected.
“Hardly strangers,” he replied, undaunted by her chilly demeanor. “I have known you all your life.”
“You have known of me, perhaps,” she contested. “You don’t know me at all.”
He broadened his smile to its full knee-weakening effulgence. “Then, my dearest heart, what I don’t know, I shall induce you to tell me. And anything you might withhold, down to your deepest darkest secrets, I shall thoroughly delight in discovering for myself.”
“You do presume much, Lord Marcus.”
He placed her hand on his velvet-clad arm. “Oh, I think not.”
Her contemptuous snort only inspired his chuckle.
Lady Russell presided over her table as a queen over her court. Supper comprised seven courses of soups, meat, fish, fowl, compotes, crèmes and jellies, salads, various puddings, fruits and cheeses, served by a liveried retinue with the full-table coverings removed and replaced six times before the lengthy affair concluded.
With nerves strung too taut to appreciate the gastronomic efforts of her hostess’s kitchen, Lydia picked and sipped, smiled and cheerfully chattered her way through the seemingly endless meal. Keenly and uncomfortably aware of Marcus’ presence at her side, she carefully avoided direct eye contact, yet his heated gaze sent her pulse skittering out of control.
Desiring nothing more than escape, Lydia was the first to rise when the customary time came for the women to abandon the gentlemen to their drink. But Marcus—blast him—stayed her gently by the arm. “Miss Trent,” he began with an ironic lift of his brow. “Would you care to take a turn about the garden? I believe we’ve several matters of import to discuss…privily.”
“Indeed we do, my lord, but perhaps now is not the appropriate time.” She cast a helpless look to her hostess who appeared disinclined to rescue her.
“My dear, there is hardly any impropriety in taking the air with your betrothed,” said Lady Russell. “But for form’s sake I shall leave the terrace door ajar.”
Still, Lydia noticed, the draperies pulled in their wake which seemed to counter any other decorous measure.
The early autumn, evening air was more invigorating than chill as they perambulated the garden walk leading to an ornamental fountain. Lydia’s manner was cool and distant which only challenged Marcus all the more to fracture her reserve. He led her to the stone bench beside the trickling fount.
“What is that lovely scent here?” she asked, following a deep inhalation. “I thought nothing could overpower the coal smoke that pervades the London air.”
“Antares,” Marcus said. “It’s a night-blooming water lily named after one of the brightest stars in the Milky Way. Mother keeps the fountain pool filled with them.” He plucked the stem of a large, bright-red flower, one of myriad floating gently in the pool. “Close your eyes,” he said.
She wrinkled her brow at him.
“Please,” he amended.
With a softened expression, she complied. Marcus raised the bloom to her nose and watched her lush mouth curve as she took in the heady scent. Marcus found his groin reacting with an involuntary twitch at the slow, sensuous arc of her lips. Transfixed by her artless show of sensuality, he grazed the bloom across that luscious mouth and against her cheek. He used it to trace the pulse of her neck, imagining the vibrant petals were his fingers stroking skin that shone with alabaster luminescence in the moonlight.
For a long moment, Lydia appeared lost in the sensation but then her eyes jerked open to fix him with an accusing stare. “I thought we came here to discuss the state of our betrothal.”
His lips curved. “Did you indeed?” he taunted. “And I thought we were simply enjoying the air.”
Her gaze narrowed and then flicked away. “I’ll allow this to be an awkward situation, my lord, but the entire matter may be resolved quickly and quietly between us. I see no need for any public announcements.”
“Then you desire a private wedding?”
Lydia flushed. “You intentionally mistake my meaning. I have already asked to be released.”
Marcus affected a pained look. “But my dearest Lydia, you have hardly given us a chance.”
“Us?” She stared at him incredulous. “I can’t believe you just said that! There is no ‘us’. I’ve waited six years for you to come around!”
“The majority of which I spent abroad addressing—”
“Urgent matters of State?” she interjected cynically. “I find it hard to believe you could not have found the time to write or occasionally to visit, had you been inclined to expend even a modicum of effort.”
“Lydia, pray be reasonable. I was but one-and-twenty when we were betrothed, hardly an age for a man to consider marriage.”
“Yet you agreed to the contract,” she challenged.
“You know I did so, at the time, to gratify my mother, as no doubt you did to oblige yours. But time changes many things, my pet.”
“Time has only allowed me to come to my senses.”
“Indeed?” Marcus chuckled. “Pray forgive my disbelief. Your senses clearly still respond to me, though you try so hard to conceal it.”
Lydia turned away. “It befuddles me why you would suddenly take an interest in me after six years of silence. Why don’t you spare us both the trouble, for I have freed you from your obligation. You should be exceedingly pleased to be released.”
“Is that so, Lydia?” He moved in, grasping her shoulders, leaning into her ear. “And just how would you know what pleases me exceedingly?”
This was not going at all according to her plan. His actions, all contrary to what she had preconceived, angered and bewildered her. His words, brimming with innuendo and illicit promise, seemed designed to set her off balance, and her body’s reaction to him further jumbled her confused emotions.
The warmth of him standing at her back and his big, strong hands on her bare skin heated her blood. His hot breath, the deep rumble in her ear, racked her
with tiny tremors. Lydia caught his sweet and tangy scent, the mysterious, erotic and nearly forgotten essence of male, and her insides clenched with desire. Uncontrollably breathless, her mind raced to catch up with her pulse.
“But it only stands to reason that you would be happy to be released.”
“That may have been true…once. But perhaps reason now eludes me.” Marcus leisurely feathered the backs of his fingers to the sensitive inside of her arm.
Though he didn’t quite make contact with her breast, her nipples contracted in eager anticipation, causing Lydia’s breath to hitch in her throat. “Don’t!” She spun away from his grasp. After maintaining a full continent of distance for over half a decade, why did he suddenly have the compelling need to touch her?
“Come now, Lydia,” he cajoled. “There are some things you cannot hide. I know you still want me.”
Even in the dim moonlight, she could detect the telltale smile that accompanied his arrogant words. Damn the man. And damn my cravings for him. “You no longer have any right to such intimacy,” she said. “We are no better than strangers.”
“No. There you are wrong. We are not strangers by half. But then again we’ve already covered this ground and I’ve already pledged to make amends for my neglect. I want you, Lydia.”
His face was drawn taut and his eyes shone with his desire, yet she could only think how beautifully and convincingly he lied. Part of her—a small but defiant part, the part that still remembered her girlhood fantasies—desperately wanted to trust him, but the stronger part remembered how he had thoughtlessly cast her aside. “We can’t always have what we want, Marcus. You must accustom yourself to disappointment.”
As I have. The unspoken words hung between them.
Marcus’ mouth twitched. “But there you are wrong, my love. I always get what I want.”
“Your arrogance is unparalleled!” Lydia itched to wipe the smug expression from his unjustly handsome face but forced a calming breath instead. “Very well then, if you will not release me from our contract willingly and discreetly, you leave me no choice but to break with you publically.”
His uncompromising stare held, challenged. “I don’t fear your blackmail. You wouldn’t want the scandal any more than I would.”
“I have few qualms now that Mother is gone. It was, after all, her wish that we wed and she died in the belief we would.”
“You mean to imply that you never desired the match? I recall quite differently. Perhaps you don’t remember the night of our betrothal?”
Damn his eyes for bringing that up! No. She had not forgotten. Like champagne, once tasted, she had only craved more. While it had been little more than a drink-induced dalliance to him, to Lydia their hasty pseudo-coupling had opened the mythical Pandora’s box. She had relived it many nights over the past six years until her frustration drove her to seek satisfaction by her own hand. Yet all the while she endeavored to purge her desire for him, she could only imagine his hands stroking her breasts, his mouth suckling her, and his fingers caressing. It was always these lurid imaginings that brought her to completion, yet still left her bereft. Unfulfilled. Empty. Just like his promises.
“I was a most dutiful daughter, my lord. I loved my parents and wanted nothing more than to please them.” That much was true, if not the entire truth. If the reality of her heart were revealed, she had once wanted him more than air—but he had destroyed her girlhood dreams with disappointed hopes.
“I could file suit for breach of promise, you know. We have a signed and witnessed contract.”
“True, but I was a minor at the time and have not ratified the promise since my coming-of-age. Thus, by law, I am no longer truly bound to you.”
His eyes narrowed dangerously. “You have consulted a lawyer?”
“I have consulted books, my lord. Great, dusty legal tomes. Law is one of many fascinating subjects I’ve studied over the past few years.” Points of common law had only become a recent curiosity. Six years had indeed given her ample time to improve her mind. Lydia had devoted herself wholeheartedly to becoming the perfect diplomatic wife, a matchless mate for Marcus, who never cared enough to know.
“Since when has common law become a fashionable subject for young ladies?” he asked.
“I said fascinating, not fashionable,” she corrected in a tone more peevish than she would have liked and chastised herself for letting him get under her skin. What a fool she was to let him know, to allow him that power over her.
“So you think I could not press you for a breach of promise suit?”
“According to current law, any pledge to marry in which no time has been formally stipulated must be fulfilled within a reasonable period. You, my lord, have not upheld your end of the bargain.”
Bugger it all! This was not going at all according to his plan. The blasted woman was bound to defy and repulse him at every turn! He raked a long, lust-filled gaze over her and felt his frustration growing in more ways than one until a disconcerting thought jolted through him. “There is someone else!”
“There is no one,” Lydia answered. “Though I may be a fool for having waited for you, I am not a faithless fool.”
“Why else would you break with me?” Marcus persisted, more convinced the longer he considered her. What man would not give his eyeteeth to have such a woman? “I demand to know who it is.” So I can hunt him down and throttle him.
Her chuckle began as a low sound in her throat and grew to a hearty eruption of wry mirth. “Is it truly beyond your comprehension that I might wish to salvage such a pitiful thing as my self-respect? Your vanity is a truly wondrous thing, Lord Russell.”
“You make unfair accusations, Lydia.”
“On the contrary,” she replied. “I think I have your full measure simply by observation. Actions, or perhaps I should say inactions, speak much louder than words.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“Just that you are not to be trusted.”
Marcus gave an inward groan. Why was she making this so bloody difficult? She was right of course, but it would be a cold day in hell before he’d grovel. He opted for a new tack. “Lydia, will you at least agree to a détente?”
“What do you mean?”
“A truce of sorts.”
“I know what détente means! I just fail to see how it applies.”
“I’m asking for a relaxation of hostilities.”
“You believe I bear you hostility?”
Marcus’ answering rumble only emphasized his point. “You positively bristle with it, my dear.”
She gave an indignant sniff. When she tried to avert her face, he captured it in his hands, forcing her to meet his gaze. “Lydia, there are many things you don’t understand.” Like his guilt—something he could hardly reconcile even with himself. “Can we not let bygones be bygones?” he asked. “Simply let go of the past and deal with the here and now?”
“There is no point. I already know we will never suit.”
Marcus scowled. Regardless of what she might think, he had never really been averse to her. Indeed, he recalled with fond amusement the memory of her tippling champagne from the tree swing, if perhaps a bit less fondly the clumsy events that followed.
He was suddenly struck with another disconcerting notion—could it be that Lydia held that night in quite a different light? Did she anticipate dissatisfaction in their marriage bed? If that was her concern, he was determined to lay that vagary to rest.
“On the contrary, my pet. There is one area at least where I’m certain we would suit very well.”
Her eyes flashed. “You actually think I’m still attracted to you?”
“You dare deny it?” He flashed a smile meant to disarm if not to altogether devastate.
“It matters little whether I am or not. Animal lust is a most feeble foundation for marriage.”
“Animal lust?” He laughed outright. “Mayhap my appeal is stronger than I thought?”
Lydia’s eyes fla
shed. “You twist my meaning!”
Marcus stroked a finger down the column of her neck and noted her heaving breasts with satisfaction. “I think not. Nevertheless, attraction, magnetism, lust, whatever you choose to call it, is a stronger basis than most marriages seem to be founded upon. Why do you suppose so many men take mistresses? And why so few offspring are produced in aristocratic marriages? Never underestimate sexual desire, Lydia. It is a powerful and often overwhelming force.”
“You will never persuade me that it’s a sound basis for marriage.” Lydia’s pink tongue flicked over her lips, clearly betraying her confident words.
“Is that a challenge, Lydia? Shall I prove it to you?”
“There is absolutely nothing to be gained by the effort.” Her convulsive swallow once more gave her away. She added with greater force, “Like a mountain, Marcus, I shall not be moved.”
Marcus relished the sudden apprehension in her wide eyes when his gaze slid down to her mouth and held there. “Fair enough, my pet. If the mountain will not come to Mohammed, let Mohammed go to the mountain.”
Lydia was transfixed, powerless under his intense stare, as if he’d put her under some wicked spell. Though she tried, she couldn’t bring herself to pull away. His eyes—dilated pools of blackness—held her, spreading heat from her core to every tingling inch of her. Her pulse thrummed with the sheer awareness of his physicality.
She closed her eyes against the sensations but they only intensified, his sweet tangy scent thickening the air and causing her breath to come in short, quick rasps, his warm breath fanning her skin. His gaze fixed upon her mouth and his hand brushed over her cheek to cup her jaw. Ignoring her inner protest, her body acted on its own volition, upturning her face and softly parting her lips. Her whole body quivered in anticipation of this kiss.
Her breathing hitched when his lips met hers, at first brushing over them in a warm caress, then sliding, nipping, melding until he took utter possession. Her feeble attempt at protest gave him added purchase to take her lower lip between his teeth and gently tug on the soft flesh. His tongue followed, deliciously teasing, tasting her lips before sliding into her mouth.
A Breach of Promise Page 4