Dilemma in Yellow Silk (Emperors of London)

by Lynne Connolly

  “You are only too tall for short men,” he said. “I’ll show you. Stand up.”

  His voice did not ring with command, as she knew it could. Nevertheless, she pushed against the floor and got to her feet, rounding the end of the stool to avoid stumbling. She wanted to put something between them, because her emotions rose until she was barely able to keep her features still.

  Their hands were still linked. “Satisfied?” She made to pull her hand away, but he only gripped it more firmly.

  “Not nearly.” He stood too, and then stepped over the bench so they were close.

  Far too close. In his simple traveling clothes he had the appearance of a gentleman rather than a great lord, but that did not fool her for a minute. She could not think that way. Must not, if she wanted to keep her peace of mind. This close, closer than he’d been for years, he devastated her senses.

  “See?” he said brightly. “You come up to my shoulder. Far too few ladies do that.”

  “It makes me stand out too much,” she grumbled. She was not freakishly tall, though. Lanky Annie, the woman in the village who took in sewing from the hall, she was oddly tall. Six feet, her father said.

  “Not at all. It makes you graceful.” He touched her chin, tilting her head up.

  This close, the little black pinpricks of beard under his skin were apparent. The way his eyes shaded darker at the edge, to the brilliant shade inside. She stared in wonder, reacquainting herself with him this close.

  Something else sparked in his eyes, passion and heat, passing from him to her and back again.

  “A kiss of friendship, Viola,” he murmured, and suited words to actions.

  Viola lifted her hands, grasping for purchase, and found his coat. She clutched it gratefully as her world spun, realigning into a new space.

  When he touched her lips with his tongue she opened for him, and he tasted her. Delicately at first, licking softly, like a cat at milk, but then stronger, he entered her mouth with a mastery that made her helpless under his onslaught.

  Nobody had ever kissed her like this.

  She had thought he meant a kiss of friendship, a sweet salute, but this was so different as to be from a different place. He hungrily pressed his mouth to hers, and she responded in a way that came instinctively to her.

  He held her in the circle of his arms, her breasts pressed against his chest. Although layers of cloth and whalebone lay between them, she felt the heat of his body. His closeness overwhelmed her, heated her from head to toe. He made those secret, private nooks and crannies of her body tingle with new awareness.

  Was this, then, what Mr. Ridley had meant at the New Year’s dance when he’d told Viola that she excited him? She’d barely escaped his clumsy caresses, whereas she had gone willingly to Marcus, eager to learn whatever he wanted to teach her.

  Danger!

  Her mind whispered the word, and then it grew louder. Recklessness took her soul, the same kind of heedless joy as when she kicked her horse into a gallop or danced in a field at midnight, barefoot and all on her own. When she dared fate to do what it would.

  She dared it now. Nobody could stop her.

  Marcus led her through the blending of not only their mouths, but a forbidden closeness. She yearned for more, even as he gave it to her, and deepened their kiss. He spread his hands wide over her back, encompassing her.

  A sound from the room next door pierced her senses, reminding her they were not alone. These rooms were the public rooms, for heaven’s sake!

  She jerked away, breaking the kiss with a clumsy unsealing of their mouths.

  Her breasts heaved as if she’d run around the house ten times, breath sawing in and out of her. Tentatively, Viola touched her lips. They felt tender, swollen, and hot.

  Marcus stood completely still and watched her, his eyes wide and dark, his hair disheveled. Dimly she recalled thrusting her fingers into the silky mass, holding him to her.

  He said the one word bound to push her away. “Wanton.”

  Indignation swamped her arousal. “Me? What are you talking about?” How dare he speak to her like this?

  “The way you attacked me.”

  Had she? Honestly she couldn’t be sure, but his response to her was anything but reluctant. “So you’re the poor, helpless victim. Is that what you’re telling me?” She curled her lip. “Truly?”

  “How else would you explain it? Who have you been practicing with?”

  * * * *

  Marcus heard his words as they left his mouth. Tendrils of jealousy curled their green fronds within him. She kissed as if she’d done it many times before, so if not with him, then who?

  She tasted sweet, and the moment he acquainted himself with her taste, he realized once was not enough. He could stand here, in this gleaming polished room and kiss her all day.

  A movement gave him pause, and he glimpsed his reflection in the large pier-glass hung between the two big windows. She had turned him into a lover, although he had never thought of Viola in that way before.

  Liar. Of course he had. He’d carefully kept his distance until the way they behaved with each other had changed. She’d left his life when he’d left the nursery. But he’d seen her at a distance, watched her grow into the lovely woman standing before him now, her breasts swollen under the clean but no longer neat fichu tucked into her bodice.

  In another moment that fichu would not have been tucked into anything. Need to the point of agony had come to life inside him, roaring for its release. He’d have had her across that bench on the silk-tufted carpet. Hell, on the gravel path outside if someone had not moved next door.

  He’d heard it too, the telltale shift of furniture, reminding them where they were and what they were doing.

  What had started as a kiss of friendship, of re-acquaintance, had served to push them apart again. Because as sure as Styx rowed the dead to Hades, he could not come anywhere near her again. She was temptation personified, a reminder of what he wished for when he awoke alone in the middle of the night in his luxurious bed in Mayfair. A symbol of everything he could not have and should not want.

  What was that woman’s name, the one he’d danced the quadrille with a week ago at Lady Costigan’s ball? Ah, yes, Lady Myra Smedley. His mother had introduced them. On paper Lady Myra was his perfect match, a woman of taste, refinement, and no passionate emotions. Just the kind of wife he needed. Not a wanton like this one. And unlike many of his compatriots, he did not intend to cuckold his wife before the sheets on the marriage bed had cooled.

  He could not afford to get close to Viola again. She was dangerous to him, and what he wanted to do with her was dangerous to her. He would take what steps he could to get her to stay away. Unfair accusations should do it. He curled his lip into a sneer. “Have you been practicing on the nearest ploughman, Viola?” No, of course she had not. Her kiss had been tentative, unpracticed, and utterly delicious.

  He would not debauch the daughter of the estate manager. Such behavior was below them both.

  “No!”

  “While I’m here,” he said, keeping his voice low for fear it would shake, “Do not approach me. Spend as little time in my company as possible. I don’t know where you learned those tricks, but you will not use them on me.” Clearly he could not trust himself around her. The discovery made his head spin.

  A woman of sense would have gathered her skirts, held her head high, and walked out of the room, keeping her dignity intact. Not Viola. He might have known she’d retaliate. She was always a spitfire.

  Instead of retreating, she advanced. “How could you say those things, Marcus? My first kiss—my first grown-up kiss—and you think I’ve been doing it with every footman and farmer who comes my way?” She waved her hand. “Do you really think I would do that with anyone? How do you imagine I could do that? Oh, wait, because you do it?” Her eyes sparked fire. “Do you kiss every half-decent woman you come across? Does it lead to more? I heard you had a g
ood reputation, but you just put the lie to that, did you not? Perhaps you keep your affairs to yourself, unlike your brother Val!”

  Marcus gritted his teeth. How dare she compare him to Valentinian, who chased anything in a skirt and then lost interest the next day? “How else do you explain…?” Lost for words, he gestured. “You, me, the way you know what to do?”

  Her first kiss? He’d given her her first kiss? Deep down, the knowledge staggered him. Surely she could not have reached the age she was—mid-twenties? Yes, she must be that—without kissing someone. Not fond kisses, friendly kisses, but passionate ones? How had the local gentry kept their hands off her?

  He spun around and headed for the door to the library. “Remember what I said. Do not come near me again!”

  A dry, “Yes, my lord,” followed in his wake.

  He didn’t regain his senses until he’d arrived at the relative privacy of his chambers. Dismissing his valet with a request for coffee, he strode to and fro, eating up the floor and carpet with his restless walking.

  He was a fool. The sight of her pinched white features as he left told him that. She’d retaliated, and so she should after he’d hurled so many insults at her. How could he have destroyed their tentative friendship that way? Kissing her, proving his lack of self-discipline. Of all things he was proud of, his self-control came first.

  He was afraid. No, not afraid. He had nothing to be afraid of. Her sweet, innocent kiss had taunted him with the things he could not have, the foolish boyhood dreams he’d put aside. Love, happiness, and friendship were all tainted by his position. His damned responsibility.

  He drove his fingers through his hair, dislodging the velvet ribbon tied neatly at his nape. “What is wrong with me?” he moaned aloud, but it didn’t sound any better in words than it had in his head.

  Marcus was born to a position most people would give their eye teeth for. It involved nothing he could not do and no life-threatening duties. As a soldier, his cousin Antoninus had stared death in the eye. Marcus would do no such thing. Instead he’d be master of great estates, have the attention of the greatest men in the land, and control the country. Why would that fill him with terror in the dead of night when he couldn’t sleep?

  When his valet returned, the well-trained man didn’t blink at his master’s restlessness. Instead he put down the tray with the coffee, picked up the ribbon, and stood by the dressing table, ready to apply a fresh one when Marcus was ready.

  Viola had given him a vision of freedom he had no right to expect or even consider. He owed her an apology, but he did not know how to deliver it without putting both of them in peril.

  He must regain control of the emotion that had broken free when his mouth had touched hers. Viola deserved better than what he could give her.

  * * * *

  How much better Marcus had not realized until his father called him into the meeting with Gates later that afternoon. Expecting to discuss estate business, he went down to the estate office to discover his father and the estate manager sitting at the large circular rent table. But none of the usual account books and bills littered the table. Only a few papers.

  “Close the door, Marcus. Come and sit.”

  Marcus did as his father bade him. Lord Strenshall pushed the papers across to him. Marcus perused them in silence and then closed his eyes.

  He’d seen similar documents before—copies of a marriage certificate, a birth certificate and a letter written in Italian. He did not need to know the language to know what it said. He’d seen one of those before, too.

  The birth certificate was for a baby girl, born in Rome in 1729 to a woman named Maria Rubio and a father named as James Francis Edward Stuart. The marriage certificate was dated 1719, wherein it stated James Francis Edward Stuart and Maria Rubio were man and wife. The letter was from Maria Rubio, certifying the accompanying documents were genuine and asking the bearer to care for the baby girl.

  Maria Rubio had married James Stuart, otherwise known as the Old Pretender, and borne him God knew how many children.

  “It’s Viola,” his father said. “We’ve kept the secret since she was born, but we have to do something about it now.”

  Marcus didn’t want to believe what he was seeing. “No. It’s not true.”

  “It is,” his father said quietly.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” He knew as much about the affair as his father. At least he’d thought so.

  “Because the fewer people who knew, the better,” the marquess replied. “Until recent developments, we thought the marriage certificate at least was false. But now we know it is not.” That discovery had brought the children into danger. It made the Young Pretender, Charles Stuart, and his brother, Henry, bastards, and it gave remaining Jacobites a new cause.

  Marcus and his relatives had discovered two children so far and a bastard girl, the product of another of the Old Pretender’s liaisons. Viola made three legitimate children.

  “Does she know?” he demanded.

  Gates grimaced. “She discovered the papers, but she believes it’s a fanciful legend. Indeed, until recently we considered the marriage part to be false. The rest?” He shrugged. “Kings and pretenders have bastards.”

  Marcus dropped the certificate as if it were steeped in poison and addressed his father. “So that’s why you wanted to rush here.”

  The marquess nodded. “I needed to tell Gates of recent developments and get his permission to tell you. His accident was a good excuse. We need to keep Viola safe. That is why I elected not to tell anyone of this. I still believe secrecy is our best defense.”

  “But what about Viola? Doesn’t she have a right to know?”

  “Why, when it would only upset her?”

  Marcus needed to talk to his cousin Julius, who knew much more about this affair than he did. But every sense went against him leaving Viola here in the country, unsuspecting. Enemies were gathering on the horizon, and with the current state of affairs in London, very little would urge the more hotheaded amongst them to action. “Viola is a grown woman,” he insisted. “She should know.”

  Her father shook his head. Or her foster-father, more like. But as her guardian, he had more rights than Julius to say how his daughter should be treated. Marcus hated that, but he could not go behind Gates’s back and tell her. He’d try to persuade the estate manager his daughter should know.

  “We will continue as normal,” Gates said now. “Behave as if nothing has changed. Because if people are watching and they see unusual activity, the game will be up.”

  At least Marcus could agree with that decision.

  Chapter 3

  “His lordship wants us to come to dinner,” Viola’s father said the next day.

  “Why?” Viola demanded.

  “The usual reasons.” Her father smiled at her mildly. “To catch up on local gossip, to ascertain that I’m recovering properly, to speak about the weather, I have no doubt. The day after, he will have me conveyed to the offices, and we will spend the day closeted with Lord Malton, going through the accounts. Quarter day is not far off.”

  “Quarter day is never far off.” With four a year, the seasons tended to be marked by the quarter days. Rent days, the days when magistrates were busy, and country life coalesced into a mild climax. Then on to the next one. The process was comfortable, never-ending and reassuring. Only the seasons were different. Now they headed into summer, and after that came the frantic activity of harvest. But first, mellow days when plants were tender.

  Mr. Gates shook out his paper, which the marquess had sent over once he’d done with it. She should see to ordering one for her father while the marquess was in residence, but cancelling it could be more trouble than it was worth. Making an order was always easier than cancelling.

  Fear rose in her throat. She had not seen Marcus since he’d told her to get out of his sight. In fact, whenever she’d heard his voice or sensed his presence, she turned around and went th
e other way. She would not face such humiliation again willingly. He was the lord. He could do as he pleased, but he could not have her.

  They had guests due today at the house, local visitors—another reason for her not to venture forth. Many of the local residents knew her well. The village held two houses of reasonable size, and a little farther off, Scarborough and York held people who knew them. Once the marquess and his son had let people know they were in residence, the local gentry had sent in their cards. The marquess had announced an open day.

  “While you were out this afternoon, the marquess sent a note. He wants you to act as hostess for a few days,” her father said. He gazed over his spectacles at her, his brows drawn together in a frown.

  Her immediate reaction was, “No,” but she should have known better.

  “I accepted on your behalf,” he continued, as if she hadn’t spoken. “What else could I do?”

  “I cannot.” Frantically she searched for an excuse and came up empty. As well born as many of the gentry hereabouts, she had acted as the marquess’s hostess before, when the marchioness had been absent. Ladies could not visit gentlemen on their own, even to accompany their husbands, so her presence was necessary. Her status as distant relative made Viola the most eligible.

  “Yes, you can. And you will.” Her father picked up his cane from its perch at the side of his chair. “Viola, what has happened? You came back from the house the day before yesterday in an agitated state. Has something occurred?”

  She had not realized he’d noticed. Nothing of note had happened, after all. Only her first kiss from a man she should never consider as anything but her father’s employer. “No. I was merely surprised to see Marcus again. Lord Malton,” she corrected herself. Too late. Her father would have noticed that slip. “We spoke, but Papa, he was insufferable!” She could tell him part of the truth, at least. “Arrogant and behaving as if my only reason for being present was because he was there.”