The Heart Denied

by Wulf, Linda Anne

  “This is more than generous,” he said, careful not to show his surprise. Apparently the viscount’s finances were in better condition than rumor had it.

  Radleigh’s gaze sidled to Gwynneth, then back to Thorne. “Has the dispensation come through?”

  Thorne kept his game-face; Radleigh knew very well that he’d obtained the mixtae religionis in his last days at Oxford. The charade was for Gwynneth’s sake, and he must play along. “It has. Banns are posted. The wedding mass will be a Missa Contata, as we haven’t enough clergy for a High Mass.”

  “Well, then!” Radleigh slapped the arms of his chair. “Shall we set the date?”

  “August,” Thorne said without hesitation, accepting a cup of tea from his unsuspecting fiancé. “Late August. I’ll post the banns upon my return.”

  Radleigh took the cup Gwynneth held out to him and raised it, his broad face beaming. “Then August it is.”

  *

  The Sutherlands’ London mansion blazed with lights. Plumed horses drew coach after coach into the semicircular brick drive, laughter floating across the greensward as footmen danced attendance on the confections of perfumed silk, satin, taffeta and lace that spilled from the shining black conveyances. Through the open windows drifted chamber music, a prelude to the minuets and quadrilles that would follow a lavish buffet supper.

  Caroline Sutherland held court in the in the wide foyer, her husband in the receiving line beside her. Next to Horace Sutherland stood Radleigh, then Gwynneth and Lord Neville, each nodding or bowing according to protocol as a stream of titled folk and wealthy merchants wished the couple well.

  “You’ve done well by the girl,” a friend told Caroline later as they watched the dancers from the gallery. “One would never guess she was a convent mouse.”

  Caroline eyed Gwynneth—radiant in a décolleté apple-green gown trimmed in emerald lace, hair shimmering in a gold filigree chignon studded with tiny emeralds and diamonds, teardrop emeralds adorning her ears and neck, and a large table-cut emerald—the Neville betrothal ring—on one stubby finger. “Still is, I fear. Despite appearances.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Her first allegiance was to religion, and from what I’ve seen, it will always be.” Caroline’s gaze slid to her friend. “A man such as Lord Neville quickly tires of porridge. He’ll soon seek heartier fare.”

  “Caroline!”

  “You needn’t act so shocked. Look at him. Can’t you see it in those extraordinary eyes?”

  “See what?”

  “Appetites. God’s teeth, you can be so obtuse. The man has appetites.”

  Her friend shivered, observing Thorne Neville over her fan. “You make him sound like a ravenous beast.”

  Caroline smiled. At that moment, the ravenous beast looked up and locked eyes with her. Her fingers tightened on the balustrade.

  “Oh, Caroline, he’s smiling at us! He cannot be the ogre you make him out to be. You’re too fanciful,” chided her friend, rapping Caroline’s arm with her open fan.

  “I, fanciful? Hardly. I never said the man was an ogre, I simply said he has appetites.” Caroline’s gaze lingered on Lord Neville as Gwynneth reclaimed his attention with a tentative touch on his sleeve.

  Her friend tugged at her arm. “Let’s go down and join the dancing. You’ve been out of Horace’s company for so long, he’s likely fit to be tied.”

  Caroline’s smile thinned. “No doubt his companions are binding him at this very moment.”

  Her friend giggled. “Sometimes you are as droll as he.”

  The eyes of her male guests followed her descent, but for once the attention left Caroline cold. Just months ago, Horace would have awaited her at the foot of the stairs, eager and impatient to have her on his arm again. Now he was nowhere in sight.

  Hence it happened that as Thorne lost Gwynneth to another eager dance partner, he found himself face to face with his hostess.

  *

  Thorne had formed no opinion of Caroline Sutherland. Radleigh had scarcely introduced them before she was called away to oversee some matter. But her presence had been impossible to ignore. Everyone else literally paled in comparison to the tawny-skinned beauty.

  And here she stood before him. She’d ordered a waltz, judging by the hesitant opening strains coming from the gallery. Few English women would have had the nerve to suggest it, much less the finesse to execute it, without fear of censure.

  But this woman knew no fear. Thorne could see that in her bearing, and in the depths of her disturbingly intuitive eyes.

  She spread the wide skirts of her coral-colored gown in a low curtsey, jet-black eyelashes briefly touching her high cheeks. When she rose, her dark eyes met Thorne’s in wordless invitation.

  He bowed and extended his arms, keeping his face blank for fear of betraying his fascination. It was a useless ruse, judging by the way his hostess caught her luscious lower lip between her small teeth, if to hide amusement.

  Heads turned as they whirled about the floor. Fingers pointed; fans spread below watchful eyes. Usually one to avoid public scenes, Thorne discovered to his amazement and dismay that he didn’t give a damn.

  Caroline Sutherland’s movements flowed, her body agile as a young stag but exuding a feminine sensuality and an exotic fragrance the likes of which Thorne had never encountered. He glanced at the slope of her golden shoulders, a wide expanse that gracefully bore the weight of a magnificent bosom. Observing her hair, he imagined freeing the ebony mass of waves from its pins and threading his fingers through it, wrapping the luxurious length around his growing hardness as she leaned over him…her lush lips rounding and readying, her smoky gaze promising him more than he could possibly endure…

  The dance had ended. When, Thorne wondered bewilderedly, had the music? He found his hostess studying his face before he could attempt to disguise his torturous musings…and smiling.

  She knew. God help him, she knew.

  *

  Near midnight, Tom Barker stumbled out of Duncan’s alehouse and headed for home. He fumbled in his pocket for the flask of whiskey, hoping to rinse the sour taste of ale from his furred tongue, but then squinted up at the full moon and stopped in his tracks, swaying.

  “‘Tis a night for beasties on the prowl,” he muttered. Leaning back, he let go a howl that ended in a hacking cough. He spat with remarkable accuracy at the horseshoe on the smithy’s door. Chuckling, he staggered past the tanner’s, the miller’s, the mercantile, and the baker’s shop. He was just beyond the cobbler’s shed when he heard footsteps.

  He whirled about, whiskey flask in hand.

  The Wycliffe road lay empty and pale under the moon, a ragged lace of tree shadows edging one side, the shops between Barker and the alehouse lining the other. He frowned at the occasional corridor between buildings, his myopic eyes searching each shadowy break but detecting nothing. All he heard, besides a chorus of tree frogs and insects, was the distant hoot of an owl.

  Moving on down the rutted road, he bolstered his courage by singing a tune his old mother often warbled about a lover’s moon. He stumbled now and then, twice falling down only to pick himself up and go on. The cottage he and his mother shared was a good sixteen furlongs from the village, but he’d made the trek many a night before, and every bit as drunk.

  He’d gone several paces before he heard the footsteps again. He lurched to a stop, his song trailing off into wary silence, and listened.

  Nothing.

  Gathering what bravado he possessed, he cupped his hands at his mouth and bellowed, “See here, now, don’t go a-messing with ol’ Tom Barker—leastways, not if ye know what’s good for ye! I be a good twenty-stone, and many’s the man what wished he’d never crossed me. Some even lived to tell it!”

  The words had scarcely left his mouth when he heard a noise directly behind him.

  Hands of steel gripped his throat.

  He dropped the flask and clawed at the vise-like constriction, but in his drunken state was h
elpless against such strength. He managed to pull his dirk from his breechwaist, only to have it struck from his hand by his attacker’s knee. With sinking heart and hopes, he gagged and gasped, as his captor, like a cat playing with a mouse, cut off all but a tiny influx of precious air. Through the dull roar in his ears, Barker heard a voice like a low growl.

  “You’ve loosed your tongue once too often, Tommy Barker, spending your ill-earned coin in the alehouse and bragging to anyone who’ll listen that there’s more whence it came. Well, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, old boy, but your spending days are over.”

  Barker’s only reply was a ghastly gurgle as the iron grip tightened, sealing off his windpipe.

  Moments later he was released with a shove, his limp body falling into the road atop his precious flask, his bulging eyes staring blankly at the lover’s moon.

  *

  Gwynneth smiled up at the moon. “What a beautiful evening it has been. The Sutherlands are such kind people.”

  Thorne said nothing as he helped her into the coach and climbed up to sit beside her.

  “Horace seems a bit distant, but Caroline helped me with all my fittings and the wedding preparations. She is like a sister.”

  Radleigh poked his head in the doorway. “‘Tis too fair a night to be riding in here.” He winked at Thorne. “The fresh air will do me good.”

  Thorne promptly rose to take the empty seat, but Gwynneth laid a gloved hand on his sleeve. “You needn’t move,” she said softly.

  Surprised, he reclaimed the space beside her with some misgiving. Radleigh couldn’t have chosen a worse night to leave them alone.

  “You were a smashing success,” Thorne told her, hoping to change the direction his thoughts kept taking. “You stole the hearts of every man there, young and old.”

  Gwynneth’s pale brow furrowed. “Perhaps I was too merry.”

  “You were charming.” He squeezed her hand.

  He should have drunk more of the costly spirits the Sutherlands had served. Perhaps sleep would come then, unlike last night. And perhaps in sleep he could forget the Sutherland vixen. Forget her dark eyes, her velvet voice, her voluptuous form and golden skin. Forget her supple movements, so matched to his own that the two of them might have been coupling instead of dancing. Forget…forget? Who was he trying to fool? She will haunt me in my dreams, God help me. It galled him to be so affected. Lust was a familiar antagonist, but he could not tolerate obsession. He despised such weakness in a man.

  And she had known. He had a foreboding feeling that, for a woman like Caroline Sutherland, knowledge was power.

  “The hour is late, I should be more tired,” Gwynneth was saying. “How did you sleep last night?”

  He tried to gather his thoughts. “I’m always restless the first night in a strange bed.” He smiled an apology—far less than he’d owe her if she knew how he’d tossed and turned all night, tormented by the knowledge that she was just two rooms away in her bed.

  “I nearly knocked upon your door last night.”

  And now you knock the breath out of me! Sweet Christ.

  “Sleep wouldn’t come,” she was explaining. “And knowing that Father had a bottle of brandy put in your room yesterday, I thought I might try some…I…I’ve heard it brings on slumber,” she finished, faltering under Thorne’s intent stare.

  Why did her parted lips seem fuller, redder, in the moonlight? Were her nether lips, the ones no man had ever seen between her lily-white thighs, swelling and parting as well, preparing to receive him? Liquid fire surged through Thorne’s loins, and under fortuitous cover of his waistcoat he hardened so fast it alarmed him. He should insist on trading places with Radleigh, indeed should signal the driver to stop this very instant.

  Gwynneth offered no resistance as Thorne gathered her to him and tipped her chin upward. Gazing at him with a charming mixture of reluctance and longing, she whispered, “Are you going to kiss me now?”

  He traced her bow-shaped mouth with his thumb, his nostrils flaring at the innocent fragrance of castile soap and lemon verbena. “Yes, sweeting,” he said huskily, then added as a caution to himself, “but no more than you like, I promise.”

  With a trusting nod, Gwynneth offered him her lips.

  *

  Morning found Thorne up well before the sun without having slept, and in no mood for polite society or wedding talk—or any further dalliance with his libido, which had been tested to the point of pain as he kissed Gwynneth at length in the coach. He’d been a fool to think he could give her a taste of intimacy without wanting more for himself.

  He scrawled a credible note of apology for his early departure, adding that he looked forward to Radleigh’s and Gwynneth’s arrival at Wycliffe Hall a few days before the wedding. He hired Radleigh’s driver to take him into the heart of town, but once the coach had disappeared down Oxford Street, Thorne walked briskly past the livery stable and headed toward the park district. It was nearly sunrise. He kept his head down and his tricorne pulled low, although few souls were about so early on a Sunday morning.

  Some thirty minutes later he dashed up the steps of a well-appointed mansion, set his valise down and dropped the brass knocker twice, silently thanking Providence for the tall hedgerows surrounding the place. He had never been desperate enough to come here without cover of darkness.

  Until today.

  A craggy-faced woman in a white cap cracked the door open and looked him up and down with a frown. “Well? State your business.”

  “I beg your pardon for the early hour, but I must speak with Madame Claire.”

  The frown turned to a glower. “She don’t conduct business at this hour, ‘specially on Sunday, which is why Bess ain’t around to answer the door. Bloomin’ gall you got! Come back after noon.” Closing the door, the woman spotted the folded pound note in Thorne’s extended fingers, glanced over her shoulder, and snatched it from him. “And who might you be?” she murmured.

  “Adams. Tell your mistress that Adams has come from Oxford.”

  “Wait here.” She shut the door.

  Thorne leaned against the portico and watched the eastern sky turn a brazen pink. There would be rain today. He hoped Wycliffe was in its path, the herdsmen needing a night off their watch and the fields needing water.

  The door flew open. The same servant gave him a simpering smile. “Do come in, Mister Adams. Madame will be with you straightaway.”

  “Madame” appeared without her usual mask of kohl, rouge, and powder, but was no less gracious for having to rise so early. “I’ve taken the liberté of waking our Katy, Monsieur Adams…I hope I was not présomptueux.” She arched over-plucked eyebrows.

  “You presume correctly, Madame. I shall be more than happy to see Katy.”

  She seemed amused. “Katy will be more than happy to see you, monsieur.” Her nod indicated the curved staircase. “I expect she is ready for you now. Come.”

  The provocative words seemed to hang in the air. By the time Thorne followed Madame Claire’s swaying skirts to the top of the stairs, the mere sight of Katy’s chamber door was enough to stir his blood.

  He entered the dim room and quietly closed the door, then stood still, his back to the bed, and drew a deep, silent breath.

  “Would you mind opening the draperies, Mister Adams?” Her voice sounded light and melodic on the surface, but Thorne detected an underlying tremor. “I know how you fancy the light,” she added, reminding him he was no stranger to her.

  The bed linens rustled. Thorne’s nostrils flared. He spoke without turning around. “You’ve changed your perfume.”

  “Do you not like it?”

  “‘Tis just that I’ve a particular fondness for the other.” He moved to a window and began fastening the velvet panels aside, taking his time, then turned, hands clasped behind him, to see the vision awaiting him in the bed.

  “Aye, well, we all have to accept change now and then, don’t we.” It was not a question, but a soft rebuke. Awash in dawn�
��s blushing light amid sumptuous bed-linens and ruffled pillows, Katy sat with her mouth curved in a smile of sweet irony, her eyes heavy-lidded from slumber, her hair cascading like dark fire over her porcelain skin and pooling on the sheets around her.

  And Thorne knew that if he had any reservations about being here, it was too late now.

  *

  Braced on all fours, Thorne surfaced from the tumultuous tide of his release and opened his eyes to the voluptuous satiety of Katy’s smile. He leaned down to touch his dripping forehead to hers, acknowledging the tempest they’d just weathered together.

  Lying in her embrace, he let his mind float away on the sweet Gaelic words she murmured as she smoothed sweat-plastered strands of hair from his brow.

  “You’ve not yet wed,” she said softly.

  The transition to English startled him into opening his eyes. “No,” he murmured.

  “But you will.”

  “Yes.” His mouth felt suddenly dry.

  “Soon?”

  He nodded.

  She closed her eyes, but opened them again as Thorne kissed her nose. She watched without comment as he wound an auburn lock around his finger and brought it to his lips in wordless salute.

  His eyes closed as she kissed first one lid and then the other.

  They did not open again for nearly nine hours.

  *

  Katy kept vigil over her Mister Adams throughout the day, only one intrusion arriving as a servant left a tray of victuals outside the room with a discreet knock.