“You wish me to offer him your apologies?”
“Of course not,” she said sharply.
“Then…forgive me, Lady Barrington. I’m unsure why you wanted to speak to me.”
“I want to know what happened to him.”
“You shall have to address that inquiry to my brother. I have told you that I do not discuss him with…”
“Strangers?” she finished for him when he hesitated.
“With anyone.”
“I believe you must make an exception,” she said softly.
“I have no intention—”
“I’m in love with him, Mr. Leighton. I have been for years.”
She had caught him off guard. And, if the truth be told, herself as well. Now that she had made the confession aloud, it did not seem so peculiar to her as it would to someone who knew of their single, very brief encounter.
“In love with him,” Jamie repeated in disbelief.
As well he might. “For years,” she said. “And still.”
“Forgive me, Lady Barrington. I don’t mean to be unkind, but…had my brother cherished a tendre for you, I believe I should have been aware of it.”
“I did not say he was in love with me, Mr. Leighton.”
She wanted to believe he might be, of course, but Greystone had given her little cause. The only thing that suggested such a possibility was something she had not caught at the time. Only during last night’s attempts to reconstruct their conversations had she realized its significance and felt very foolish that she’d missed it.
Or perhaps I, too, had a brief encounter in a snowstorm, he had said, mocking the story she’d told him. She was certain she’d never mentioned the storm. That he had remembered it was snowing was a slender thread on which to hang such high-flung hopes, but it was all she had. And so she clung to it.
“He could be.” She amended her denial, faltering for the first time under the intensity of Jamie’s gaze. “That is something I must yet discover. But first…Won’t you tell me, please, what happened to him?”
Jamie’s reluctance to discuss his brother had been so strong only a moment ago, it had been almost palpable. She could tell from his eyes that he was now wavering, and once he began, the story came out in a rush.
“My brother was a soldier, as you know since you saw the portrait. He received that slash across his face saving the life of his commanding officer. He will never tell you that. He didn’t tell me, but the incident was mentioned in the dispatches.”
When it seemed Jamie had run down, Emma began to rise. “Thank you for your time, Mr. Leighton. And for the information.”
“Shortly after they removed the bandages,” Jamie continued as if she hadn’t spoken, “the child of the woman with whom the wounded had been housed saw his face. She ran away screaming. Unfortunately, Alex had enough Spanish by then to understand what she was saying.”
Again her throat closed, but Emma rigidly controlled any outward reaction. Tears were a mistake she would not make again. As horrifying as the tale was, it at least explained what she had seen in his eyes this morning. A watching despair, like a dog that knows it is about to be beaten.
“Thank you for that, too,” she said sincerely. “I trust you will not betray my confidence to your brother. You may be right in your suspicion that what I feel is not reciprocated. I should, however, like a chance to confirm that on my own.”
“Then… You’d better hurry, Lady Barrington. He’s leaving for Wyckstead.”
“Today?”
“I shouldn’t be surprised,” Jamie said, not unkindly. “The servants have been packing his things most of the morning.”
AS SHE ONCE MORE CLIMBED the tower stairs, she acknowledged the debt of gratitude she owed poor Jamie. If he had not taken pity on her, she would almost certainly have waited until after dark to confront Greystone.
And it would have been too late. This way she would have some answer, even if it was not the one she wanted.
“Beg pardon, my lady.”
Startled, she looked up to find a footman coming down the stairs, burdened with a portmanteau and a large box tied up with heavy string. Although he had flattened himself against the wall, the staircase was narrow enough that it would still be difficult for her to pass.
“Is the earl above?” she asked.
His eyes widened. Before he answered, they flicked to the top of the stairs. When they return to meet hers, he leaned forward, lowering his voice like a conspirator.
“In ’is rooms, ’e is,” he said. “The door be open.”
She slipped past the man, mouthing a heartfelt, “Thank you.” When she reached the top of the stairs, she discovered that the door of the earl’s rooms was indeed standing wide. Ridiculously, she almost tiptoed across the stone floor. Then she paused, taking a breath before she stepped into the doorway.
The sitting room seemed far less depressing with the full light of the afternoon sun pouring in through the oriel window. Someone had picked up the books that had been scattered in front of the desk. The broken inkwell was nowhere in sight, but the stain its contents had left was visible on the light gray stone.
The ledger she had laid on the corner of the desk was still there, although many of the volumes that had filled the shelves were missing. Packed in boxes tied with string, perhaps?
Unthinkingly, she walked over to the desk and touched the account book. Perhaps it was the sound of her footsteps or perhaps, long attuned to an atmosphere of solitude, he had simply sensed he was no longer alone here. As she did now.
She turned, the tips of her fingers still resting on the ledger, and found him standing in the doorway to the bedroom. Watching her.
The slant of afternoon sunlight was crueler to the scarred visage than pale dawn’s had been, but it also revealed that the undamaged blue eye, meeting hers unwaveringly, had not changed. Nor had the finely shaped nose, almost out of place now in that ravaged face. The cleft in the center of his chin had been bisected and almost obliterated by the ragged tear.
Neither of them said anything for a moment, their eyes holding. Because she was the one who had sought this meeting, she finally broke the silence.
“I searched for you.”
His head tilted slightly. Questioning.
“Everywhere I went. For a very long time. Even after I married, God forgive me, I looked for you.”
“Emma,” he said, and then nothing else.
“I kept thinking that one day I would glance across a ballroom or a dinner table, and you’d be there. Or I’d round the corner or idly stare into a passing carriage, and I’d see you. And then, after a long time, years and years, I stopped looking. Stopped expecting. Stopped hoping.”
He said nothing, his eyes falling to the box he held in both hands.
“This morning…” Her throat closed over the words.
“Don’t.” The word this time was not a command, but an imploration.
“I know I behaved badly, but it wasn’t—” She hesitated and then forced herself to begin again. “It was the shock of finding you after all this time. In the last place I might have expected.”
“My brother told me you’d seen the portrait.”
Damn you, Jamie.
“Because of that,” he went on, his voice perfectly steady, “I thought that you might have puzzled it out. This morning I knew you hadn’t.”
“My powers of deduction are not, apparently, so great as I had supposed,” she said, trying for something lighter than the near tragic tones they had been using.
Surprisingly, there was a small upward slant at the corners of his mouth. Encouraged, she smiled at him.
The effort was slightly tremulous, and seeing that, his lips pursed. Then he stepped forward, setting the box he held down on the table that flanked the door.
“Are you going somewhere?” she asked, allowing her eyes to touch on the empty shelves.
“Since it seems Jamie’s proposal is to be accepted, I decided it was time to tu
rn the estate over to him.”
“I didn’t know he had offered,” she said truthfully.
She had been aware of almost nothing except her own hopes and memories and fears for the last twenty-four hours. Poor Georgina, left without her support at such a propitious time in her life.
“He hasn’t. Not officially. I believe that’s planned for this afternoon. If she accepts, the announcement of their engagement is to be made at dinner tonight. It seems Miss Stanfield has succeeded in her quest. My congratulations.”
He was regaining his equilibrium, she realized. The last comment had been as sardonic as their previous exchanges.
“If we are acknowledging Georgina’s success in something, I believe it should be in falling in love with a man who returns her love,” Emma said. “We are not all so fortunate.”
There was a small silence.
“Was he very like his brother?”
He meant Robert. In her mind’s eye she pictured him and Charles together. As alike as peas in the same pod.
“Very,” she said. “Except he was ill for most of our marriage. A terrible wasting sickness.”
“Then why did he marry?”
“He wanted a son.”
He waited, and she added the rest. Still painful.
“In that I failed him.”
“Or he failed you.”
That would be comforting to believe. She had often wondered if she, a young and healthy woman, hadn’t conceived because she hadn’t loved him. A punishment for not completely wiping the memory of this man’s kiss from her heart?
Instead of grieving over what she couldn’t have, she had lavished all her love on Georgina. And now…
“Do you believe in fate?” she asked.
“Some force that predetermines what will happen to us?”
“Yes.”
“I knew men who did. They believed they would die, and so they did. Others believed they were charmed against death and acted as if they were.”
“Were they? Charmed, I mean?”
“They died with the same frequency as those who thought they were fated.”
A heartbeat of silence.
“Is that what you believe, Emma? That we were fated to meet here?”
“Here and now,” she said. “At this time and place.”
“For what end?” He sounded almost amused by the idea.
Poor, fanciful Emma.
“Because we are at another crossroads.”
“Another?”
“When we met before, our lives were about to change. I was off to London and the Season, and you—” She stopped abruptly.
“I was bound for Spain.”
Spain and war and all it had cost him. Far more than the slow death of her dreams that her marriage had cost her.
“Our lives changed forever that night,” she said. “What we had known before was no more. Now again we face the ending of the lives we have known for the last dozen years. And incredibly, at this particular crossroads, we meet once more.”
“A highly romantic notion, Emma.” The deep voice was still touched with amusement, but it was not mocking.
“Perhaps. You will concede, however, that we are both here, and that we are both about to embark on a different phase of our lives.”
“And you think fate has therefore thrown us together again?”
“Although you may prefer another term, I cannot but believe there is some purpose in this.”
“And you believe you know what that purpose is.”
It was not a question. The thread of gentle raillery she had heard before had disappeared. His face was as serious as it had been when she had turned and found him watching her.
This was the critical moment, and she knew it. Her mouth had gone dry, and her hands had begun to tremble, although she had unconsciously clasped them together at some time during the conversation.
She reminded herself that she had nothing to lose because she had nothing. Only a poor, faded dream. If she did not find the courage to tell him what she wanted, that is what it would always remain. A dream. When she wanted so much more.
“Take me with you,” she said. “Take me to Wyckstead instead of going there alone.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
SHE WASN’T SURE what reaction she had expected. Shock. Disbelief. Perhaps even ridicule.
After all, she had made no conditions and no demands. Only the one she might more properly have made twelve years ago when she had been a fanciful child. Take me with you.
“As what?” He had cut straight to the heart of what she had offered him.
“Whatever you will,” she said simply.
“My mistress?” he mocked. “Is that what you want?”
“I want what I’ve never had. To be with the man I love. Is that so wrong?”
“The man you love? We met once for a few minutes years ago and little more than that here.”
“I wasn’t aware that the length of one’s acquaintance had anything to do with falling in love.”
“You aren’t in love with me, Emma. You admitted as much. You’re in love with the memory of that night. And with the memory of the man you met then.”
“And now,” she insisted stubbornly.
“Except that man no longer exists,” he continued ruthlessly, ignoring her disclaimer. “We are no longer those same two people.”
“We could be.”
“Beyond my powers of self-deception, I’m afraid.”
“And what of me?”
She could see that he was thinking, as she was, about what she’d told him of her plans. Only a few days ago that seemed a future to be cherished. Comforting and serene. And now…
“I can’t be what you want,” he said.
“How do you know what I want?”
“You want the man who kissed you that night. I’ve told you. He doesn’t exist.”
“He does to me.”
“Emma—”
“I may be the only person in the world to whom he still does exist. Doesn’t that mean something to you?”
She wasn’t sure that argument would convince him or drive him away, but she could tell she was losing. And she could not bear it.
“I’m not asking you for anything,” she went on. “Nothing but a chance. Isn’t it worth a chance?”
He said nothing for a long time. She held her breath, hardly daring to hope. And then he crossed the room with the same decisive stride with which he’d left her that night.
He stopped before her, searching her face as intently as she had examined his this morning. She did not allow her own to waver, determined not to look at that brutal scar.
Eventually the line into which his lips had been set relaxed. He took the remaining step that would close the distance between them and put his arm around her waist, drawing her to him with a pressure she could easily have resisted.
She never even thought about it. As she looked up at him, her lips parted, just as they had the first time he’d kissed her. Waiting. Wanting.
He gave her time to protest. She didn’t, of course. There was not a single thought in her head that concerned objecting.
When his head began to lower, tilting to facilitate the kiss, her relief was so great that her knees went weak with it. Her hands found his shoulders, clinging to their solid strength as his mouth claimed hers. The first sweet touch of his lips, as warm and as experienced as she remembered them, made the support she had sought a necessity.
Her tongue answered his, a slow, primitive dance of advance and retreat. Nothing had changed about this. Nothing except the depth of her need.
His initial embrace had been tentative. With her response, he pulled her ruthlessly against the hard wall of his chest, and for the first time she became intimately aware of his needs.
Whatever doubts he had expressed about the wisdom of this, his body denied them. He wanted her. At least physically.
She was no innocent as she had been then. She knew how to assuage that need and to giv
e him pleasure. Those were lessons she had learned in a hard school, but worth it all if she succeeded in convincing him not to leave her behind.
Her hand found the back of his head, fingers tangling in the long, silken strands. He deepened the kiss, his palm cupping possessively beneath the fullness of her breast while his thumb teased back and forth over the tip. Despite the double layers of fabric, gown and chemise, that covered it, the nipple tautened with pleasure.
Within her body, anticipation stirred—hot and sweet and hungry. A hunger she knew was strong enough to match his growing arousal. And to answer it.
His lips left hers, trailing slow, wet heat down her throat. She moaned, only a breath of sound, when they reached the curve of her breast, exposed by the low neckline of her dress. His fingers pushed aside the thin fabric of its bodice to allow him greater access, as his tongue delved into the shadowed hollow.
“Emma?”
The sound of her name was faint. Distant. Troubling. She was so caught up in what was happening between them, however, that for a few seconds she didn’t want to think who could be calling her.
“Emma? Are you up here?”
Greystone was the first to react. His hands closed around her shoulders, holding her away from him. Mouth open, the moisture of his kisses still on her lips and throat and breasts, she stared up at him in shock, questioning his desertion.
“Emma?”
Georgie. And the sound of her voice seemed much nearer now. Almost as if she were in the same room.
“Go to her,” he ordered harshly.
She shook her head, her eyes on his.
“Do it now. Before she comes in here.”
Surely she had as much right to happiness as Georgina. And he as much as Jamie.
“It doesn’t matter—” she began.
“It matters to me, damn it. Now go.”
“I don’t care if she finds us together.”
“I care.”
“If it’s because of this—” She reached out to touch the marred profile.
He jerked his head back, avoiding her fingers. Then, using her shoulders, he turned her and shoved her toward the door that led out of his suite. Still drugged by the sensual spell of the kiss, she staggered under the force with which he had pushed her away from him.
The Wedding Chase: In His Lordship's BedPrisoner of the TowerWord of a Gentleman Page 16