Guilty Series

by Laura Lee Guhrke

  “You bastard.” Montrose moved to take a swing at Haye. Without thinking, Ian tried to stop him. He realized his mistake when Montrose’s fist slammed into his cheek.

  Lucia could not sleep. Instead, she lay in the dark, feeling bemused, baffled, and quite unappreciated.

  Ian Moore was a statue after all, she decided, sat up, and punched her pillow with her fist. He was inhuman, just as she’d thought. She punched her pillow again. She’d practically thrown herself at him, and one short kiss was all she’d gotten for her trouble. Proper, stuffy, thick-witted Englishman.

  Her frustration only somewhat relieved by her abuse of her pillow, Lucia lay back down. The man is impossible, she thought, aggrieved. Does he have to be so damned honorable all the time?

  Ian’s kiss had easily vanquished all memory of Lord Haye’s insipid mouth. Those few brief moments of Ian’s mouth on hers had made her ache with a strange, tingly warmth, a wonderful feeling that had enveloped her whole body from her head to her toes. Unlike Haye, Ian knew how to kiss.

  Lucia closed her eyes and pressed her fingers to her lips, that warmth flooding through her again as she remembered that kiss and how it had made her feel. As if she were floating and melting and—

  “Maria Santissima!” she moaned and sat up, realizing the awful truth.

  She liked him.

  Why she liked him was an inexplicable mystery. He was stuffy. No doubt about that. He was also haughty, autocratic, and far too concerned with the proprieties. Sometimes, like tonight, she found him so infuriating, she didn’t know whether to hurl heavy objects at his head or wrap her arms around his neck and keep him there until he kissed her properly. But earlier in the evening when she’d made him laugh, her heart had felt a sweet, queer piercing sort of joy like nothing she’d ever experienced before. He had great cares, she knew, great responsibilities, but when he laughed, those tiny worry lines between his brows disappeared.

  And what had she gotten for easing his cares? One little kiss, just enough to leave her wanting more. Then, if that wasn’t bad enough, the ungrateful man had snubbed her. Called her a flirt and a tease.

  Which she was, sort of. But really, she thought with justified outrage, it was hardly her fault he was the only man on earth who didn’t appreciate flirtation and teasing.

  Lucia sighed, admitting another truth as awful as the first.

  He didn’t like her.

  A little knot formed in the pit of her stomach at that admission. Men usually liked her. Men liked being flirted with and teased and made to laugh, but not Ian. She might have made him laugh tonight, but that didn’t mean anything. He didn’t like her.

  A wave of loneliness swept over her. She wished there was someone here she could talk to, but there was no one. Grace was a lovely, warm person, but Lucia did not know her well enough to confide in her, and anyway, she could hardly talk to Ian’s sister-in-law about her confused feelings. Oh, how she wished Elena were here. Or, better yet, her mother.

  Mamma.

  That was who she needed. Lucia had always been able to talk to her mother about anything, and somehow, no matter what the situation, Mamma always managed to help her settle things right in her mind. And besides, Mamma knew everything there was to know about men, especially Englishmen, since she had lived here so long. Mamma would be able to advise her.

  Lucia shoved back the counterpane and got out of bed. There were several hours until dawn, plenty of time to pay her mother a visit, and Mamma wouldn’t care if she arrived in the middle of the night.

  She dressed in dark clothes, then slung a midnight blue cloak around her shoulders and pulled its hood up to cover her hair and shadow her face. She left her room and started down the stairs. Someone had left a lamp burning beside the front door for Ian when he came home, and that light enabled her to see her way as she turned on the landing, came down the last flight of stairs, and crossed the foyer toward the front door.

  At that moment, the door opened.

  Lucia froze and glanced around, but she was standing in the midst of the foyer, and there was no time to hide.

  “Going somewhere?” Ian asked as he came into the house and closed the door behind him.

  Of all the bad timing. Lucia pushed back the hood of her cloak and looked at him, readying herself for a battle royal over the obvious fact that she was sneaking out to visit her mother, but when she caught sight of his face, her own predicament was forgotten.

  She stepped closer to him and gasped. “Ma insomma!” Without thinking, she reached up and touched her fingertips gingerly to the dark purple blotch beneath his eye. “Oh, Ian, someone has hit you.”

  “Thank you for pointing that out, but my memory of the past hour is perfectly clear.” He caught her wrist and yanked her hand away from his face, but he did not let her go.

  “What happened?” she asked.

  “I made the mistake of stepping between Lord Haye’s face and Lord Montrose’s fist.”

  “What?”

  “Yes. And it is all thanks to you.”

  “Me? What do you mean?”

  His hand tightened its grip on her wrist. “You seem dressed to go out. Where were you headed? To tell your mother the good news?”

  His question puzzled her, but the tone of his voice did not. She could hear the tightly leashed anger within it, anger she knew was directed at her. “What good news?”

  “Your engagement to Lord Haye, of course.”

  “What?” Lucia was astounded. “What are you talking about?”

  “Poor Haye.” He released her. “I hope he’s a damn fine shot because duels will clearly be a necessary part of his married life.”

  “Did Montrose knock something loose inside your brain when he hit you?” she asked, staring at him dubiously. “I am not marrying Lord Haye.”

  “No? Haye thinks you are.”

  She opened her mouth to dispute such an absurdity, but Ian gave her no chance. “Lord Montrose,” he continued, “who was eavesdropping while Haye gave me the happy news of your engagement, took exception to the idea. He felt that because you danced with him three times at the last assembly, your attachment and regard were for him, not for Haye. An argument ensued, at which point, Haye trumped us all by pronouncing that because you gave him a very bold kiss at Tremore’s yachting party, you must love him very much indeed.”

  Lucia groaned and put her face in her hands. “What a mess.”

  “Needless to say,” he went on, his voice rising, “this was rather a surprise to me, since only about two hours earlier you were making every possible attempt to kiss me!”

  “What?” Lucia lifted her head, determined to set things straight on that score at least. “I did not kiss you! You kissed me. As for Montrose, yes, I danced with him several times. He makes me laugh. I like men who make me laugh.”

  “If you had bothered to read any etiquette books during those years in finishing school, you would have known that dancing with the same man more than twice in one evening is cause for speculation that an engagement is in the offing.”

  “I have three weeks left in which to find a husband, and I do not have time for the niceties of etiquette!” she answered with asperity. “I should be able to dance with those men I enjoy dancing with so that I may get to know them better. What people gossip about is not my concern.”

  “Nor do Montrose’s feelings seem of much concern to you. Those dances gave him ample reason to hope for your affections.”

  She pressed her lips together, feeling a hint of regret. “If that is true,” she said after a moment, “then I am sorry for it. I simply wanted to get to know him better because I liked him.”

  “You seem to like whichever man you happen to be with.”

  That stung, especially since she had started to have a very strong liking for him. At least until now. “Well, I am a woman,” she reminded him. “Liking men is quite normal for those of my sex.”

  “It’s clear the men like you as well. In fact, three of them are deeply infat
uated with you at the moment. And those are the ones I know of. I shudder to think how many more tormented men there might be out there.”

  “Infatuation is not love!” she said, becoming exasperated. “I told you, I will only marry a man who loves me. Lord Montrose and Lord Haye are infatuated with me, perhaps, but they certainly do not love me.”

  “They damn well care enough about you to engage in brawling at a gentleman’s club!” Ian roared. “And I’m the one who ended up with a black eye!”

  “Santo cielo!” she cried, her own frustration rising in the face of his. As always, when her temper was roused, Lucia found English inadequate to express her feelings and lapsed into her own language. “Men fight over women all the time,” she said in Italian. “The same way boys fight over toys.”

  “I think it is Lord Haye and Lord Montrose who are the toys here,” he answered, also in Italian. “Your toys.”

  “That is not fair!”

  “No? Haye thinks you are going to marry him.”

  “I never agreed to his proposal!”

  He glared at her, hands on hips. “Then, for the love of God, what were you doing kissing him?”

  “He asked me to marry him, and I know I have to marry somebody, so I thought I should at least consider his offer of marriage. But of course I couldn’t agree to marry a man without knowing how he kisses.”

  “Of course not!”

  “So I had to kiss him and find out if I could ever grow to love him. But no, after that kiss, I knew I could not marry him.”

  Ian was staring at her in disbelief. “You mean, you only kissed him as some sort of henwitted experiment?”

  “Would you marry a woman without kissing her first?” She shook her head, looking at him with sadness. “If so, I fear there is no hope for you, Englishman.”

  Ian raked a hand through his hair. “I don’t suppose you could just go ahead and marry him anyway?” he asked, a hint of desperation entering his voice. “Then I could go handle some easy diplomatic problem. Like the Turks and the Greeks. I mean, you could teach the poor sod how to kiss, couldn’t you?”

  She was appalled. Just the thought of enduring Haye’s wet, fishlike mouth until the end of her days made her a bit queasy. Her feelings must have shown on her face, for Ian gave a deep sigh. “Never mind,” he muttered. “I knew it was too much to hope for.”

  “I deserve a man who knows how to kiss,” she said stubbornly.

  “So this is what I am to expect for the next three weeks? Do you intend to investigate the kissing skills of every bachelor in London?”

  Those words made Lucia’s frustration flare into outright anger. “I did not ask for any of this!” she cried. “I did not decree that I had to get married and that six weeks was plenty of time in which to find a husband! My father did.”

  “That is a fact that cannot be helped. And it is also a fact that you brought a great deal of that situation about by your own past conduct.”

  She was not appeased by his facts or the disapproval with which he uttered them. “We are talking about my life, my future, and I seem to be the only one who thinks it is important enough to warrant serious consideration!” With each word she spoke, Lucia became more frustrated and more angry at the entire impossible situation in which she had been placed. Her temper unraveled.

  Lucia glanced around and caught sight of the flowers reposing in a vase on the foyer table beside the calling-card tray, a dozen red carnations that had come the day before from Lord Walford. She yanked the bouquet out of the vase and brandished it at Ian. “You present men to me as if they are hats in a milliner’s shop,” she said as she struck him in the shoulder with the dripping-wet bouquet, “so you cannot blame me for treating them as such and trying them on. Shall I take this one? No, he does not fit me. Perhaps that one? No, I do not like him. What about that one? No, his kiss I do not like.”

  As she spoke, she punctuated her words with more whacks to his head and shoulders. “My father gives the money,” she went on furiously, “and you bring the men for me to buy. I do not want to buy a man as if he is a hat!”

  Ian swatted at the bouquet with which she was attacking him as if it were a troublesome fly. “Damnation, woman, cease batting me with that idiotic thing. I have already been struck enough this evening, thanks to you.”

  She landed her best blow yet, bashing the flowers right over his head, wishing it capable of smashing his thick masculine skull. She drew back for another strike, “Right now, I wish I could really hurt you, Englishman.”

  “Hurt me?” He eyed the pathetic, broken stems in her hand with scorn. “If that is your intent, Miss Valenti, then have the good sense to use something more effective than a bunch of carnations.”

  She ignored that. “My father does not care what I want. You do not care what I want. I am the only one who can look out for my own interests, and that is just what I intend to do!”

  “Interests? You seemed very interested in Montrose a few days ago. Then you thought you might have wanted Haye. I think you may even have wanted me for a moment there, but obviously, I was just another kissing experiment!”

  “What kiss?” she shot back, and hit him again. “Was that a kiss? It was so quick, I wasn’t sure.”

  He yanked the bouquet out of her hands. “Unlike your lovesick suitors, I don’t like being played like a Spanish guitar,” he said, crushing carnations in his fingers, “and I don’t like listening to these men moon over you like pathetic schoolboys. And I really don’t like having fists put through my face!”

  “That is not my fault!”

  “Like hell it’s not!” His eyes flashed fire and he threw the carnations aside. He stepped closer, closing the short distance between them, his Italian words flying fast and furious. “You play with men, and you have no idea what you play with. These are intelligent, ordinarily rational British gentlemen, and you’ve got them so worked up, they are making utter fools of themselves over you, while you don’t care one whit for any of them.”

  Faced with a blaze of such hot, splendid fury, even Lucia was forced to retreat. She took a few steps back, then stopped and lifted her chin a notch. She swallowed hard and faced him down. “I deserve to find a man who truly loves me,” she said, mustering her dignity and controlling her own anger in the face of his. “I see no reason to settle for less, and if you and my father expect me to do so, you can both go to hell. As I said, Haye does not love me. He wants me, perhaps, but he does not love me. Lord Montrose does not love me either.”

  “They gave everyone at Brooks’s a fine imitation of it when they proceeded to beat each other to a bloody pulp! They were both thrown out into the street. They may even lose their memberships over this.”

  “When the man comes along who truly loves me,” she continued as if he hadn’t spoken, “I will know it in my heart.”

  “Well, tell your heart to damn well get on with it, so I can get on with my life!”

  “What on earth is going on here?” Grace’s shocked voice entered the conversation. Both Lucia and Ian turned toward the stairs at the opposite end of the foyer to find they had gathered a crowd of amazed spectators. Not only had their quarrel awakened Grace, but also Dylan, Isabel, and a handful of servants.

  “Good heavens!” Grace gasped as she looked at Ian’s face. “What happened to your eye?”

  Before he could answer, Dylan spoke up, sounding both astonished and thoroughly amused. “You got in a fight? You, my disciplined, dignified big brother? Ye gods, I can scarce believe it. The last time I saw you like this, I was thirteen and put poison oak in your drawers. You gave me a damn fine whacking for it, too, if I recall.”

  “I did not get in a fight,” Ian said through clenched teeth, speaking in English this time. He glared at Lucia. “I tried to prevent one, and this is what I got for my trouble.”

  His brother started to ask more questions, but Ian held up his hand to stop him. Still looking at Lucia, he resumed speaking in Italian. “Tomorrow,” he said, “you will f
ace Lord Haye. You will tell him that this was all a mistake, and you will apologize profusely for any misunderstanding you caused by your behavior. You will make it clear to him that, as wonderful as he is, you cannot in good conscience marry him. Since you have so much charm, I leave it to you to come up with a reason that will not hurt the fellow too badly.”

  Ian turned and strode toward the front door. Opening it, he went on, still in Italian, “Everyone at Brooks’s knows about the fight, the kiss, and Haye’s proposal, by the way. So in addition to already being London’s most determined flirt, you will soon be its most famous jilt. Congratulations.”

  With that, he walked out and slammed the door behind him.

  Chapter 11

  Ian slept at a hotel. Not that sleeping had a whole lot to do with it. He spent most of the early-morning hours staring at the ceiling of his suite, trying to cool his temper, an ice-cold, unopened bottle of the Clarendon’s best champagne pressed to his bruised eye. By midmorning, he was doing exactly what the cause of his fury had told him he needed to do more often. He let off steam in the only manner acceptable for gentlemen. He went to Gentleman Jackson’s.

  Stripped to the waist, he stood in one of the gymnasium’s pugilist-training rooms with a hard, grain-filled sack hanging in front of him. He thought of Montrose, his own throbbing head, and slammed his bare fist into the center of the sack, imagining it was Montrose’s handsome face. There was such satisfaction in that move that he did it again. And again. And again.

  He thought of Haye. How could any man think a kiss was acceptance of a marriage proposal? Slam. Addlepated ass. And what was the man doing alone with Lucia in the first place, getting kissed by her? Slam. Slam. Slam.

  And what about himself? Wanting what he couldn’t have. Wanting that luscious mouth on his mouth, wanting that amazing, voluptuous body under his, craving it so badly he ached and couldn’t sleep and couldn’t work. Couldn’t even think straight, God, he was threatening to become as much a blithering idiot as Walford. What a nauseating thought. Slam.