He could only pray that Vane would hold to his word, come to London, and divulge some of the mystery. Perhaps he could help. Perhaps he couldn’t. But at least then Vane would not face whatever was distressing him alone.
Contemplating the trace of amber liquid in his snifter, he let out a sigh. It was a wasted trip.
Ophelia’s fiery hair came to mind.
No. Not wasted. Nothing that involved Lady Ophelia and her mother could ever be a waste. Of that, he was certain.
Despite the aggravating meeting with Vane, a smile pulled at his lips. Soon, Ophelia would be in London. In his home. After he’d spent so much time uninspired by the events of life, it was a wonderfully intriguing thing to anticipate.
One Week Later
London
Would she come? When his coach returned, would Ophelia and her mother be on it?
Andrew closed his eyes and cursed. He shouldn’t wish her to come.
What he should wish was that she found contentment in her small thatched hovel and that he should then be able to find an arrangement with his solicitor where he sent a few hundred pounds or so a year to keep Ophelia and her mother in comfort.
Under such an arrangement, he’d never have to give Ophelia a thought. He’d never need to contemplate her fiery hair sliding through his fingers or her pale flesh and slim back as he slipped off her garments and corset.
The steely gray sky hung over the house, pressing on his mood. It wasn’t right, because Ophelia wasn’t some bloody cloud ready to turn the world inky with its deluge. She was the fiery sun, and to his consternation, he longed for her warmth.
He shook his head, ready to turn away, ready to find some vice that would turn his thoughts from the whole thing. But then, somewhere in the distance, in the din of the London rabble, he heard it. The clatter of first-grade, steel-plated, lacquered wheels making their way over slick cobbles.
To his horror, he found himself holding his breath. His fingers clenched into fists, and he stood stock still, as still as a man blindfolded, waiting for the firing squad.
The green coach with its gold coat of arms dashed around the corner of Latimer Street into the main square. The rampant bear of his crest flashed gold, even in the grim light. He stood his post, finally breathing shallow breaths until the murmurs of his staff drifted up from the foyer.
The soft glow of a female voice drifted toward him. Not hers, but that of her mother’s. He waited and waited for her to speak, half-afraid she wasn’t there. Then—
“This house would do for the entirety of Sussex. Should we invite them?”
The droll, gun-metal chill of those words sent his lips to curl into a delighted grin. She’d come. She’d taken his insane, outlandish offer. To his absolute chagrin, to his utter perversity, he was overwhelmed with a dancing, boyish glee.
She’d come.
He whipped around and strode down the stair but stopped on the landing.
Ophelia stood, her fingertips on the worn velvet ribbon at her chin. Her gaze peered around her with a sort of disapproving skepticism, not the awe so many displayed when visiting the massive home his grandfather had built in London during the reign of Charles the Second.
It would seem the soaring ceiling and painted frescoes didn’t impress her. That porcelain visage of hers didn’t alter as she turned about. Her mother was sitting in a padded chair before the landing, her small body already as fine as a bird’s that had seen too harsh a winter.
Lady Darlington needed a bed, a fire, and hot brandy. Was he truly up to the task of helping her? Doubt and a sharp pang of an unwelcome emotion—fear—caught him off guard. Perhaps he should leave them be. Allow them to take refuge in his home, but stay far, far away. He didn’t know how to behave with such ladies as the Darlingtons.
And just as he was about to turn on his booted heel, disappear up the wide stair, stride down to the back entrance and make his escape to the gambling hells of London, where he could lose the impending painful memories that were threatening to crash to the surface, Lady Ophelia lifted her cool, still countenance and pinned her piercing eyes to his.
Dear lord, had she truly agreed to this madness? Ophelia couldn’t make sense of her surroundings. She hadn’t been in such a grand place in half a decade, and her heart had leaped into her throat, beating in such a way that she could only manage the barest murmurs of thanks to the footmen and butler.
She even managed to ignore the disdain drifting off the butler toward her and her mother and their small chests of things. The man would be even more horrified to learn that one box was almost entirely full of books.
She couldn’t part with her books, no more than her mother could. They’d married literature in a way one couldn’t marry a man. For literature. . .books. . .never abandoned one in a sea of troubles, but rather kept the nearly drowned buoyed by hope and worlds in which to disappear.
But the moment the maids unpacked, the entire household would know their reduced circumstances. Her ratty underthings, mended again and again, and her two frocks made with a shoddy thread, would be the talk of the servants’ hall.
Still. They were here. In London. In one of the grandest town homes she could recall in all her existence. Oh, she’d been to London before. Her father, the Earl of Darlington, had had his own glorious town home, where her parents had entertained the glittering haute ton. That house now belonged to her half-brother, and she’d not seen it, nor him, since their father’s death. She hoped she never did.
This house?
She tilted her head back to study the painted ceiling, marveling at the beauty of the Greek gods painted in Restoration fashion upon the ceiling. Athena bared her breast and notched her bow as she took sight of a deer. At her lithe heel, a gray, virile wolfhound waited to be given word to chase down the goddess’ prey.
Other gods watched, their colored robes a rainbow against the forest backdrop of Athena’s hunt. Was it a warning? A symbol that all who entered into this foyer of Stark’s home might be hunted, stalked, taken in?
So far, everything led her to believe so. Even his crest was that of a bear.
Lord Stark had lured her in with the promise of comfort for her dear mother and the delusion that he would leave her unsullied. Her dear mama truly believed in the young man. Truly believed the strange lord would not betray them. She didn’t wish to call her mama a fool, or even herself for giving in, but she couldn’t allow her heart to trust.
Her patched slippers slid easily over the Turkish blue and white carpets as she went to her mother to see if she had completely collapsed from the journey. The last hour had been hell. “Mama?”
Lady Darlington sat on the delicate chair, somehow managing to make the spindly construction look like a bastion of oak in her weakened conditioned. She lifted her chin under her feathered bonnet, an effort purely astonishing. “My dear?”
Ophelia sucked in a shuddering breath and forced the remnants of a gracious smile to her lips, one she had learned from her mother. The dowager had known how to manage servants beautifully once upon a time. She turned toward the butler. “Lady Darlington needs immediate rest.”
The man nodded. “Your rooms are ready, of course. They are at the rear of the house and will offer you protection from the noise of the square.”
And the eyes of visitors and the spectators off the street.
Ophelia nodded, then lifted her gaze to the stair, trying not to let regret stain her heart. A noise drew her attention, and she spotted Lord Stark. Their gazes locked.
All stopped.
The noise of the street. The butler’s disdain. The shame of her luggage and frock. Even her mother’s illness disappeared. In his eyes for one brief, holy moment, the world spun in a different direction, touched by beauty, touched by hope, touched by a strange sort of wonder.
He stood on the stair, stubble blackening his square jaw. His jet hair was wild about his face, and again, his linen shirt hung shockingly loose about his neck, exposing even more muscles than he had be
fore. She’d only ever examined such in an anatomy book, and she could not stop herself from staring.
“You came,” he said.
Those honeyed, dark words drifted down, stealing over her skin, and she shivered. “I cannot surmise if I would have been a fool to stay in Derbyshire or am a fool to have dragged my mother halfway across England.”
“Your mama is sitting right here,” Lady Darlington said, her breath catching raggedly.
Ophelia winced. It grew harder and harder to hear her mother’s voice, once so melodious, change into something as frail as a translucent shell.
“My lady,” Stark said as he descended the stair.
At first she could not tell if he addressed her or her mother, but as he approached, it became clear his focus was entirely upon her mama.
He knelt before Lady Darlington, took one of her small hands in his, his palm virtually swallowing up the small bones of the older woman’s appendage. “You grace my home, and I am an ass to keep you in the foyer but a moment.”
“Such language,” Lady Darlington tutted, managing a smile despite her exhaustion. She even batted at his shoulder in a play of scandal.
“Thank goodness you have come to reform me,” he said as he slipped one arm beneath Lady Darlington’s knees and swept her gently up against his chest. In contrast to his towering strength, her mother was but a doll, one which could neither protest such handling nor likely ascend his many-layered stair without it. “Will you follow me, Lady Ophelia?”
There was naught she could say. All she could manage was a small nod as her heart slammed brutally against her ribs. A smile, a genuine smile, tilted her mother’s lips. And for one inescapable moment, Ophelia almost believed that Viscount Andrew Stark truly honored her mother and that he had no designs upon them whatsoever.
As he began the climb without a single struggle, Ophelia hesitated. Did he live alone in this great monstrosity? There had been no mention of others with whom they might contend. Had he no brothers? No sisters? His father was clearly dead, as he’d inherited his title. And his mother?
Where was Viscount Stark’s mother? Asleep in a cold crypt in some great abbey, never to be awakened from her cold, stone bed?
Ophelia shook the gruesome thought aside. She couldn’t bear it. The thought of a mother gone. Such thoughts led her down a dangerous path. It was one she carefully avoided, the contemplation of her own beloved mother’s vanishment from this mortal plane. So she fixed her thoughts on Lord Stark as she followed him up the stair and wondered if he could truly be as generous as he seemed.
CHAPTER SIX
Even the devil longed for love,
did he not?
-Ophelia’s Notebook
Andrew poured two snifters of brandy. He didn’t stint. In fact, one might argue he intended to get her drunk, given the volume of liquor he distributed. But she had that look upon her face that he’d seen on men who’d faced a battle charge and survived, whilst the soldier next to him had been cut down. He crossed his study, lit only by the leaping, ruby flames of the large fire.
Her eyes glowed in the shadows, twin coals burning with emotion. She stood resolute before the chaise lounge. Resolute yet vulnerable and no doubt exhausted. “It was a difficult journey?” he asked softly.
Her pale fingers shook slightly as she took the offered glass. Ophelia stood awkwardly, just barely in the room.
Did she fear it would all disappear? That he would twirl a melodramatic hand and demand her maidenhead now that he had her here?
He would never demand it. Why would any man demand when he could seduce instead? He could have her on the floor or the settee before the fire. Have her dark skirts up about her white thighs in a few moments to expose the part of her body that was so anatomically familiar yet completely secret to him.
As he would bend her back to steal a kiss, her long red hair, spilling from the crown of her head, would fan out around them. Her pink mouth would part in shock when he teased the insides of her thighs.
And she’d be uncertain. At first.
He knew she desired him. From their first meeting, she’d been full of curiosity, and he knew he could seduce her in an unyielding, demanding sort of way.
The devil in him was tempted.
But that was not how it would be between them.
She stood so still that not even the liquid in her glass moved. “You have a most peculiar countenance at this moment,” she whispered. “What are you thinking?”
“You know what I am thinking,” he said, mincing no words, then lifted the brandy to his lips and took a long swallow.
Her emerald eyes flared with comprehension. Most women would run for the door. She arched a fiery brow. “Is that why I am here? To play out what began by the river that day? I hear some men are determined to win wars, not battles.”
“The kiss was lovely. Your body is lovely,” he whispered, meaning every word, determined that she should recognize his sincerity. “The feel of your skin beneath my fingers is lovely.”
Even so, she gave a small snort, but her cheeks blossomed with heat. “I am entirely lovely, then, am I?”
He laughed. The tones boomed off the oak walls, coming back to him, making him curl his fingers tightly about the snifter lest he play a darker tune to make her dance. “You’ve a whip-lash of a tongue. Not lovely at all.”
“I am relieved to hear I am not a saint.”
“Do not be so sure. Before Millais and Rossetti are through with you, you shall have graced the canon.” The painters adored religious themes. Quite ironic, given that they had largely eschewed the dictates of a very strict society. “Agnes, Mary, Joan, all the martyrs.”
“I am not a martyr,” she bit out.
He frowned. He’d hit some sort of raw feeling. Such a thing had not been his intent. “Perhaps not, but how glorious you’d look, hair down as I first saw you, eyes upcast to your God, penitent for your tiny sins.”
“You are strange.”
“You aren’t drinking.” He knew all too well the shock she suffered. Traveling with a dying woman who needed laudanum to cope with pain must have been exhausting. Perhaps frightening, too. The heat of the brandy would ease her nerves, even only a few sips.
She narrowed her gaze then took a surprisingly deep drink. Her lids fluttered shut, and some of the haunted look disappeared from her.
Good. That was what he wanted. Ophelia deserved to be on fire. To be totally alive, not drowned in her sorrow. And deep down in his soul, he knew that he was using her. Using her to get to the sort of feelings he had long ago denied, condemned, and forsaken so that he would never have to think of all those who had left him completely adrift in this world.
He would not see his fate befall such a creature. And that, that was why she was here. Certainly not for love, nor lust, though he certainly felt the latter. He would not let her turn into an empty shell of a human.
“You’re doing it again.”
He blinked, focusing on her pale face. “Pardon?”
That pale face was now flushed, her cinnamon brows drawn together in consternation. “You are looking most peculiarly.”
He couldn’t let her venture into his soul. He was all too afraid that if he gave her purchase there, she would find a crack, pry it open and let out all the pain that he had managed to shore up. Best to keep her far away and focused on the externals of his being. “Perhaps I am thinking how best to consume you.”
Her lips parted for a stunned second, before she snipped, “That is an alarming word choice.”
He cocked his head, letting his hunger for her heat his gaze. “Is it?”
“To be consumed, my lord? By you?” She lifted her chin, contemplating him. Her breasts lifted up and down with a sharp breath. “Yes. Alarming is the word. For once consumed, would I not be lost?”
“Could you ever be lost, my lady?” he countered, the devil in him unable to resist playing with her. Just a little. “Are you so weak?”
She flinched. “My mettl
e has yet to be tested in the forge of trial.”
Astonished, he pulled back. Did she doubt herself so entirely? The Ophelia he’d come upon at the river had been so sure, so determined, even in her sorrow. “That is not true.”
Her rigidness softened for a moment. “I wish I could be so sure.”
God, she had walked a troubled road. Could she not see that she was the strongest woman he’d ever known? Certainly, she was stronger than he. For she had withstood grief while he had laid down before it. “You have already withstood your father’s passing and all that accompanied it.”
She focused on her glass, her spirit dimming, and she took another drink. Apparently, to fortify herself. For she met his gaze and said flatly, “You know the sordid tale, I’m sure.”
He did know. He’d had reports delivered to him the moment he’d returned to London. It had been all he could do not to call out the Earl of Darlington for the craven blackguard that he was. For no reason but his own jealousy over the love his father had felt for his step-mother, the earl had cast his half-family out.
It sickened Andrew.
But that bastard didn’t deserve another moment of his interest. No, his interest was for Ophelia.
She shivered under his attention.
He reached out and touched her cheek, skimming his fingers so lightly he might not have touched her all. “You must be freezing.”
She tensed. “I am not.”
Though he would have liked to slide his hand into her hair, cup her nape and draw her lips to his, he pulled his hand back. “You look as white as the proverbial snow.”
“We were talking of my family scandal. What does my complexion have to do with that?”
“Nothing,” he admitted. She wouldn’t bend easily to his care, yet he would try. “Only that I wish you to draw closer to the fire so that you might ease your aching limbs and chase the chill from your skin.”
Skin. Limbs. He shouldn’t say such things to her. He knew that. She was innocent. Oh, not to the ways of the hardness of the world. But innocent to men like him who could twist a maiden’s words and untouched desire like a potter spun his wheel to sculpt his clay.
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