by Lily Maxton
He laughed roughly. “So, here I am. Damaged, humbled, but alive and filled with contrition. But do you know the worst part? I’m still selfish. Because as much as my actions gnaw at me, Cassandra, the thing that wakes me up at night is the possibility that you will never forgive me.”
A strange ringing sounded in her ears. He rounded the desk to stand before her, but he left a few feet of space between them. And waited.
At length, she said, “Of course you have my forgiveness.”
He stilled, soaking the words in like an absolution. What did he want from her? Didn’t he know, whatever it was, she couldn’t give it?
She added, “Though I can’t see that it matters.”
“It matters.”
And suddenly, they were back to them. To the horrible, awkward farce played out earlier in front of everyone. To the impossible notion that there could ever be anything more between them than lord and servant.
She shook her head emphatically. Whatever he, or his scheming, misguided sister, might be thinking, she couldn’t let it continue. “My lord, I care about you, but as my employer. You must see, the value you place on the opinion of a housekeeper is vastly misplaced.”
Utter silence followed her remark. “Oh, indeed?” he said softly, in a tone that scared her with its evenness. “What you feel for me is mere…servitude?”
No! Good Lord, there was nothing subservient in the way she’d pressed into his body in the snow, or when she’d cradled his face in her palms, or slept spooned up against him on the library floor.
But admitting that would only make a complicated situation even more tangled. “Yes, I suppose, if that is what you wish to call it.”
He took a step toward her. “And when I recognized you even blindfolded, and your body trembled as I whispered in your ear, that was merely lord and housekeeper?”
She swallowed, her face heating. “I…” She cleared her throat. “That was a misunderstanding.”
He took her hand in his and tugged. She stumbled forward, nearly colliding with him. She would have, if she hadn’t braced her hand on his chest. She had to tilt her head back to look him in the eyes and she was very aware that he hadn’t removed his fingers from her wrist. Each one was distinct, burning her like brands.
“In that case, touch me,” he growled.
“What? No, I—”
“If you’re not affected by my presence, man to woman, I want you to prove it.” His eyes blazed with challenge.
“You are being ridiculous,” she said, her voice quaking as much as her heart.
He untied his cravat with one hand and let it drop to the floor, revealing his throat and his collarbone—smooth, pale skin, unmarred by the fire. She saw the pulse in his throat, saw that it was beating faster than normal.
“Touch me,” he ordered. Like Satan whispering temptation in her ear… Do you want the apple? Take it. Taste it.
Her hand was still on his chest.
Take it.
She wanted to so much, with a yearning that left her weak. She slid her hand up, her fingertips brushing his shoulder. He was tense. When she touched skin, he sucked in a quick breath.
A heady feeling, to know a simple touch could affect him so strongly. Heady and hot, and not at all servile.
It occurred to her, she was playing right into the scoundrel’s hands.
She didn’t care. The contact, the warmth of him, the way his pulse trembled under her fingers, had a similar affect to the whisky. It was like flame dancing along her limbs. Her nerves tingled, surging and alive.
She let her thumb brush his collarbone, memorizing the contour of the graceful, jutting sweep, and paused at the hollow of his throat where she could feel the pounding of his heart.
Taste it.
No, she couldn’t…
But she was already letting her head fall forward, her willpower succumbing to the hard, harsh rhythm of her body. Her lips grazed the hollow and his fingers tightened around her wrist, almost hurting her but not quite. She breathed him in, salt and spice and skin.
And licked him.
A guttural noise erupted from his throat, making her tongue vibrate, and a smile curved her lips, secret and seductive. She licked him again, sweeping from the hollow across the bone. He tasted just like he smelled.
His hand fell away from her wrist, and then he was grasping her waist, her dress bunching in his fists. He pulled her against him, and against her abdomen she could feel he was already hard for her. Already ready.
Her head tilted back and she met his eyes, which were nearly black and a little wild.
Just once, she told herself. Just once.
She grasped his face in her hands, one palm against rough scars and one against warm, pliant flesh. She pulled his head down to hers, drew him down so she could kiss him.
The moment their lips touched was a sweet shock. She shivered, and let her mouth brush gently over his upper lip and then his lower lip, simply taking in the feel of him, exploring. His breath tasted like strong, bitter tea that she wanted to drink.
Henry, it seemed, was not content with a gentle exploration. He bit her lip, a sharp command, and she opened for him. His tongue swept into her mouth, and as he kissed her deeply, he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her hard against his chest, as if he were trying to take her into his body, enfold her until they were one.
He surrounded her. He possessed her. He made her want to throw her inhibitions to the wind and do anything and everything two lovers could do together.
His lips found her jaw and then her throat. He kissed her skin—slow, open-mouthed kisses that sent shockwaves of heat down her spine.
He allowed enough space between them to settle his hand just over her heart. She expected him to move downward, to cup the weight of her breast—she was already arching her back in anticipation of that intensely wanted caress.
But he didn’t. His hand remained where it was. He was feeling the beats of her heart. He held perfectly still, his eyes closed like a man in silent prayer.
A spark of fear unfurled in her chest, and she brought her arms between them. They couldn’t do this. She couldn’t do this. He was going to marry someone else, and soon. They were in her office, where anyone could walk in. She wasn’t usually so reckless. She wasn’t usually reckless at all.
She pushed him back. Pushed him away. She pushed so hard that he staggered. With distance between them, she saw that his hair was mussed—had she been running her hands through it?—and his lips were dark and his eyelids heavy. He looked as if he’d just woken up from a particularly lecherous evening.
He didn’t speak.
The silence drew taut between them.
“I… I can’t,” she whispered.
He made a move toward her, his arm lifting to reach for her, but she moved around the desk to put a barrier between them.
“I’m sorry,” she said, and she was sorry. Her body was singing, striving toward that primitive need to be completed, to be filled. But that powerful urge couldn’t be satisfied. And the knowledge made her heart feel just as hollow as her body.
He stood motionless on the other side of the room. Hurt flickered over his features. But then, she hurt, too. He didn’t need her sympathy.
“I can’t,” she repeated softly, trying to compose herself with a few deep breaths. She turned to run for the door…then remembered they were in her own office. She indicated the desk with a flick of her hand. “If you’ll excuse me, I need to complete the budgeting,” she said, striving to sound perfectly calm, perfectly firm.
He stared down at the open ledgers, then back at her. “Just like that?” he asked, a wry twist to his mouth.
She didn’t answer. She didn’t know what he meant.
“I’m sorry I can’t be as level-headed as you,” he said obstinately. “Have you ever wondered what exactly it is that makes you so practical?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Well, I know what it is. It’s b
ecause the best years of your life are behind you.”
She gaped at him, pain wrenching deep in her chest. “What?”
“You might as well have thrown yourself on your husband’s funeral pyre. He was your entire world—that’s what you said to me. What happened when your world vanished?”
“Henry—”
He lifted his hand in a sharp motion. “Why are you here? You were married, you must have wanted children. You must have envisioned a life of your own. Did you give up on that?”
“Husbands aren’t exactly waltzing around every corner,” she muttered.
“Don’t be obtuse, Cassandra. You’re an attractive woman. You’re an intelligent woman. You came to work here years ago, and you’ve never attempted to find a different situation. You could have, but you didn’t even try. Why?”
“Henry—” she warned, not wishing to discuss it.
“Why?” he demanded.
It wasn’t enough that he challenged her to kiss him, he forced her to lay her soul bare as well? All of her anger boiled over, prompting her to speak the truth.
“Because I’ll never love anyone as much as I loved him!” she cried, her hands clenching into tight fists. “And I don’t want to!”
“You don’t want to?” he said softly.
“You don’t know what it’s like to be loved like that. You think I’m practical? You…you close yourself off. You don’t let yourself be touched by other people. For God’s sake, you’re going about selecting a wife as analytically as you would pick out a piece of fruit! You don’t know what it’s like to think you’re going to live with the same person for the rest of your life, to think you’ll have children with him, to think that when you’re old and gray he’ll still be there beside you. You don’t know what it’s like to find the other half of your soul and then have him wrenched away.”
But Henry wouldn’t relent. “How do you know he was the other half of your soul? You married relatively young, didn’t you? How do you know someone else won’t come along whom you can love just as much?”
“I know,” she said vehemently.
“You want to convince yourself of it. That seems clear enough.” He folded his arms over his chest. The distance between them had never felt wider. An insolent smile played across his lips. “Have you ever thought perhaps you just need a good swivving?”
She stiffened, digging her fingernails into her palms to keep from smacking him.
“How long since your husband died? A decade? A widow needs to be intimate with other men, not sacrifice her sexual desire on the altar of her dead husband.”
She stepped closer to him. She itched to strike him, but she wasn’t the sort of woman who resorted to physical violence. And there was a far more effective way.
She forced her voice to turn smooth and careless, to sound as lazy as his. “An interesting philosophy, my lord. As it happens, it’s advice I’ve already taken.”
His hands clenched around his upper arms until they turned white. “Pardon?”
“I took a lover after my husband died. So your advice about sacrificing my sexual desire, while so very kind of you, is unnecessary.”
His face blanched. “Who?”
“That,” she said, before slipping from the room and shutting the door firmly behind her, “is none of your concern.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Cassandra paced back and forth in the supply closet, breathing in the scent of cinnamon and other spices, starch, and beeswax and tallow candles, until she figured Henry had left. Then she sneaked back to her thankfully empty office and sat down in her worn, comfortable chair.
She tried not to think about their conversation.
It was useless. The more she tried not to think of it, the more she thought of it. And the angrier she became. Fury lodged in her chest like a clenched fist. The nerve. The sheer and utter nerve of the man!
How dare he speak of her husband? How dare he insinuate that she’d stopped living when Robert had died?
And the anger was made all the more potent because it was mixed with the bitter taste of fear.
Was Henry right?
Yes, she’d taken a lover in the lonely years after her husband’s death, and yes, she’d cared for him, but…hadn’t she been relieved when she suspected the man who’d visited her bed on a handful of occasions was in love with someone else? Hadn’t she been relieved when they spoke nothing of the future? When they uttered no promises?
Hadn’t she been relieved that her heart was left untouched?
A surge of pure rage went through her. Why did Henry needle her? Why did he push? He wanted something from her, but she didn’t know what, and didn’t know how she could possibly give it. She suspected even he didn’t know what he wanted.
Well, he wanted to bed her, she was certain of that, but he hadn’t really thought it through, had he? How could he want to take her as his mistress while the woman he was going to marry was also under his roof?
She truly didn’t think he was that ungentlemanly, so he must have simply gotten carried away. Just as she had.
It couldn’t happen again.
And yet… It would be so easy for it to happen again.
Even now, the taste of him lingered on her lips; even now, each throb of her pulse wanted to quicken as she remembered the encounter; even now, her thighs pressed together under the desk to stave off the ache. She hadn’t felt such searing desire since Robert was alive.
And that was when she knew what must be done.
There was no doubt in her mind— if they continued like this, they would transgress. If they continued like this, someone would get hurt—though at the moment she didn’t know who would be hurt the worst. Her? Him? His future wife? Regardless, she could end it.
She had to end it.
She pulled out a clean sheet of parchment, dipped her quill in fresh ink, and with her heart as heavy and dull as lead in her chest, she began a letter to Julia.
Chapter Thirty
Henry was thinking of his unborn child as Miss Haversham rattled on, wondering if the babe would look more like him or Julia. It was a futile gesture, wondering about a child he would never see and who would be raised by another man. But he still thought about it, all the same.
“Lord Riverton?”
He was snapped out of his musings by Miss Haversham’s voice. “Yes?”
“I asked if you would walk with us outside.”
“In the snow?”
“No,” she said, with a lilt in her voice that suggested he was being delightfully silly. A lilt that irritated the hell out of him.
Cassandra’s voice was smooth and calm and certainly never had that cloying note—but he pushed her out of his mind. Cassandra didn’t want him. The days since the kiss were dragging on and he barely saw her anymore. She was doing a good job of never being in the same part of the house as he, and he would never lower himself by groveling after her like some pathetic, lovesick puppy.
Even if her kiss had flowed through his veins like warmed honey and threatened to seep into a fissure in his heart and break it wide open.
Do you ever feel like there’s a crack in your heart?
He was starting to, and he hated it.
“The servants have cleared off a pathway for walking,” Miss Haversham said with a twitter, unaware that he was only half listening.
Who was the man Cassandra had taken as a lover? Was he still her lover? Henry would have liked to meet him so he could shoot the bastard. Not that Henry had any right to be furious—he wasn’t a cuckolded husband.
Husband. That word in relation to Cassandra made his pulse quicken.
Miss Haversham said eagerly, “I think a little fresh air will do us all good. Yes?”
For perhaps the first time, Henry agreed with Miss Haversham. The alternative was to stay in the drawing room, which, though it was one of the most spacious rooms in Blakewood Hall and often served as a ballroom, began to feel a little cramped when they had to bide there day after
day.
Half an hour later, with the women bundled in pelisses or cloaks and ankle boots, and the men donning wool greatcoats, the entire house party marched outside. The snow must have melted some the previous day when it had been warmer, and then refrozen as the temperatures dropped again. It wasn’t nearly as deep, and the ground was hard beneath their boots, easily traversable.
Lady Jane fell into step beside him. She wore a pretty fur-lined cloak and expensive kid gloves that matched the bluish gray.
“Do you enjoy being out of doors?” he asked, forcing himself to make conversation. He’d never particularly liked small talk.
It suddenly occurred to him that he’d never engaged in it with the Cassandra. Somehow, their conversations always cut to the heart of the matter. And always held him riveted.
He shook off the thought. He had a beautiful woman strolling next to him. More important, a woman who wanted his company.
Dwelling on Cassandra was a fool’s errand.
“I enjoy the outdoors very much,” Lady Jane answered with a smile. “I ride every day at my father’s estate.”
“Ah. Your father’s stables produce some of the finest thoroughbreds in the country, do they not?”
She nodded, placing her dainty hand on his elbow though he hadn’t offered it. “Perhaps you can show me your stables.”
“We can walk that way now,” he suggested.
“I meant just the two us,” she said with a teasing smile. “It’s so very difficult to find time alone at a house party.”
He didn’t point out that he hadn’t indicated he wanted time alone with her. “Your aunt will miss you.” He glanced back, where the chaperone in question currently stood at the back of the group, trying to appear as small as possible.
“I doubt that.” Lady Jane’s hand tightened on his arm.
He held back a sigh and decided being straightforward was the best option. “As tempting as it sounds, I don’t think we should.”
She glanced up at him through long lashes. “Come now, my lord. I know you are searching for a wife. There is nothing wrong with…sampling…before you make your decision.”