The Romantic

by Madeline Hunter

  “If you promise to be a very good student in those lessons as well.”

  “I intend to be the very best student, Julian.” Her teeth gently closed on the outer edge of his ear. “Worldly and wicked and shameless.”

  The cottage came in sight in the distance. Giggling, Pen nestled against him and continued a naughty torture of his burning ear.

  “Keep that up and I will stop and ravish you right here on the road.”

  “I would call your dare, except that it appears a storm is blowing in. You enjoy storms, don’t you, Julian?”

  “I would not say I enjoy them. They awe me, however.”

  “You mean you are impressed by all that energy. By the terrible forces unleashed. You are moved by how quiescent nature is so suddenly thrust into turmoil, and by how the cool rationality of man is swept aside by primeval powers that will outlast our lives on this earth. Is that what you mean when you say they awe you?”

  He looked over at her. She caught his eye and smiled softly. “That is how you explained it to me years ago, when we were very young. It came back to me one night while you were in prison, and the wind and rain were beating on my window. I could hear you saying every word. I confess that I never really understood it until we made love. Great passion has the same power, doesn’t it?”

  “With the right person it does.”

  He got them to the cottage before the storm arrived. In the gusting wind, he unpacked the carriage and took care of the horses.

  The sky had grown heavy with dark, low clouds when he returned to the house. He looked for Pen and found her out on the terrace, wrapped in her blue cloak, the wind making a riot of her hair.

  He embraced her from behind. Together, they watched the sea rise in choppy waves that churned black and green and white.

  She was right. He enjoyed a good storm. The dynamics stirred the most human part of him. The emotions that gave a person a heart and soul were more alive in the face of such unrestrained nature.

  Pen rested back against him. “My face is getting ruddy. Yours never does, no matter how fierce the cold or wind. That is not fair.”

  “I have always thought that you look lovely with a rosy face.”

  She looked down at where his arms crossed her over the cloak. “Is it terrible that I will not wear mourning for him unless I am in public? It seems so pointless, but perhaps it does not speak well of me.”

  “You said you would never mourn a man again, Pen, and he would have deserved it least of all. You do not have to pretend.”

  “I would have mourned you, Julian. I would have grieved the rest of my life.”

  That touched him profoundly. He closed his eyes and rubbed his face against her crown.

  “I wanted to come here so we could make love by the sea,” she said. “Also so we could be totally alone. But I also hoped that being here would help me make an important choice again, as it did the last time. I need to decide what to do with my freedom, don’t I?”

  “There is only one choice that I truly want, Pen, but I will live with any you make.”

  She turned in his arms and looked up at him. “What choice is it that you want?”

  “The one that gives me the right to take care of you. I have accepted that you do not want that, however. Having waited so long for your independence—”

  “Are you proposing, Julian?”

  “Although my position has been affected by the scandal, I still serve as solicitor to many important families. You will never want, Pen. I also have some investments that have done very well, and others that promise to do even better, in particular in Dante and Fleur’s Durham project. We will not live in the style of Laclere or the earl, but you will not have to count pennies.”

  “I do not need to live in the style of my brother. This is a proposal then?”

  “I will, of course, accept whatever you prefer. I can see how marriage has little to recommend it, darling. I understand if the entire notion leaves you cold.”

  She giggled. “Goodness, you do talk a lot, Mr. Hampton. I agree that marriage has little to recommend it, however. There could be no excuse good enough for me to marry again.”

  “Yes. Of course. I see.”

  The wind caught her cloak and it flew up and out. It became a billowing cape that made her appear weightless, like an angel touching foot to earth after flight.

  “There are no good excuses, but there may be some good reasons,” she said.

  “I can give you many.” He kissed her. “That is one, and there are thousands more like it. Passion is another, and friendship. And being in love, Pen. That is one of the best reasons of all for marriage, and I am hopelessly in love with you.”

  “Another reason is loving a man who is worthy of love. That changes everything, I have discovered. Are you proposing, Julian? Because if you are, I am almost convinced.”

  “I am, and will press my case the only way left to me.” He kissed her long and hard, and let his heart and soul release their winds of desire and passion and reveal his eternal storm of longing and love.

  She emerged breathless and flushed. Her lids rose. “I think I would be a great fool to refuse you, my love. I would be an idiot to risk your changing your mind.”

  “I will never change my mind. I am yours however you will have me. I will have you any way I can.”

  “As a husband, Julian. I would be proud to be your wife.”

  He kissed her again, with profound gratitude. Joy drenched every inch of him, an emotion perfect and pure, and touched by disbelief.

  She stepped back, out of his embrace. “I will go inside now. You are to stay here for a while. I want you to know that you do not have to be with me every minute in this love we share. You are not required to give up your silences or solitude completely. I am not jealous of those private moments, and have no desire to steal them from you.”

  She returned to the house. He faced the sea.

  The storm was coming fast. It would not be a long one. Already, far in the distance he could see a glow of divine luminescence streaming down through the clouds.

  The water below had become a chaos. Waves heaved and crashed. High ones broke against the sea wall of the terrace, right beneath him. The rain began, first with large droplets, then in driving sheets of spray.

  It was a glorious storm with a dramatic wind. It blew right into him, stirring his heart and soul and blood. It awed him as few storms had, and merged with his own emotions the way great tempests did in his youth.

  He remained silent, but another’s voice spoke in his head. Pen whispered her love. He remained alone on the terrace, but she was in his heart more surely than she was in the house, her essence rising with him into the glory. A rare moment came to him, an instant of transcendence in which his consciousness seemed to join with the natural power of the world.

  He had known that only a few times before, and always at the depths of melancholy. This time it was pure joy and beauty that saturated him. This time love unified his soul with the elements.

  “Julian.”

  He turned and looked up. A window to his chamber was open. Pen stood near it, looking down at him. She had removed all her garments and let down her hair. The dark locks flowed over her ivory breasts. She looked so beautiful and perfect that his breath caught.

  “I am up here, Sir Julian. Come and sing me a chanson or read me a poem, brave knight. Protect me during this fierce storm.”

  He walked toward the castle tower, shedding his armor. “I am coming, my lady.”

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Madeline Hunter’s first novel was published in June 2000. Since then she has seen ten historical romances and one novella published, and her books have been translated into five languages. She is a four-time RITA finalist and won the long historical RITA in 2003. Nine of her books have been on the USA Today bestseller list, and she has also had titles on the New York Times extended list. Madeline has a Ph.D. in art history, which she teaches at an eastern university. She currently li
ves in Pennsylvania with her husband and two sons.

  Be sure to join

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  in her next tale of seduction

  and scandal

  Coming summer 2005 from Bantam

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  On sale summer 2005

  The Earl of Lyndale was dying.

  Again.

  He lay shriveled and frail in his bed, cheeks sunken and skin wan. His right hand rested over his heart as if he were waiting to feel its last pulse. He presented a pitiable image of an old man facing the end.

  Ewan McLean was not impressed. His Uncle Duncan pretended to lie at death’s door at least once a year. Each imminent departure from the earthly realm summoned his sons and nephew so they could ease his passing. While on his deathbed he issued demands and extracted promises of outrageous presumption. Then he would “recover” and use those promises like a whip to get all the cattle lined up in the direction he had decided they should go.

  “I fear the end will come tonight.” The earl spoke it like a line in a stage drama. Which, for all intents and purposes, it was. “I need to set matters in order before I go.”

  He held out a trembling hand.

  Ewan took it and smiled indulgently. Here it comes, he thought. He had been here for four days, waiting for the earl to decide when to finish the game.

  “Since Hamish is not here, I must confide in you,” the earl said, referring to his heir.

  Ewan was all too aware that Hamish was not here. Right now Hamish and his younger brother were enjoying fresh air and sunshine on the continent and not sitting in this drafty old castle in a room hung with heavy green drapes. The same faded fabric framed the earl’s body on the big bed, falling in dolorous swags like stage curtains.

  The interruption of Ewan’s visit to London by the summons had been irritating enough, but the discovery that his cousins, the earl’s own sons, had escaped the call by taking off for Switzerland really grated.

  “I will confess that I am glad it is you, my boy. Hamish would not have understood the matter that weighs on me. You know how he is.”

  “I certainly do.” All too well. Hamish had grown into one of those purse-lipped, morality-spewing, judgmental Scots. When the earl eventually died, which Ewan expected would not happen for another decade or so, Ewan fully anticipated that Hamish would try to reform his cousin by threatening the handsome allowance that augmented Ewan’s income from his modest property.

  His uncle had never been so intrusive in his private life, but then his uncle had a history that did not permit umbrage over bad behavior without considerable hypocrisy. The current Earl of Lyndale had been a rake in his youth and a roué in his maturity. Ewan suspected that the fair-haired woman floating about the castle today was the current mistress. In short, the earl had more in common with his nephew than with his sons. If he had chosen to play at dying when only Ewan was available, that meant that his demands for promises this time probably had to do with matters that only another rake would take in stride.

  “There is a letter that explains it all.” The earl pointed his trembling hand toward a small writing table. Ewan watched the arm and finger stretch out while the earl rose on one shaky arm. His pose imitated that of a dying father in a painting by Greuze. An engraving that reproduced the painting was in Uncle Duncan’s extensive fine print collection, its theatrical sentimentality obviously appreciated often by its current owner.

  “You must give the letter to Hamish. You must swear that you will see that he carries out my wishes, which are contained in it.”

  “I will be in no position to do so. He will be the earl. I will remain a dependent relative and can demand nothing of him.”

  “Tell him you are bound by your promise to me.”

  “That will be of no account to him. You are asking that I harass a man for the rest of my life. That I pound my head against a stone wall. It isn’t fair to make demands that I cannot fulfill.”

  “You can make him see that it must be done if you put your mind to it. You are far more clever than he is.”

  Ewan was losing his patience. Being blackmailed into his own promises was one thing. Being forced to ensure that others acted in compliance with Uncle Duncan’s whims was another.

  “What is this vitally important matter, Uncle?” Attending the next sheep shearing? Escorting some cast-off mistress to a ball? The earl’s demands were never dreadful, just damned inconvenient and often boring.

  “I did a grievous offense to a man in my youth. The next earl must right this wrong.”

  “What kind of wrong?” Most likely his uncle had bedded a friend’s wife. For all of his envy of the last century’s ribald behavior, seducing a friend’s wife was something Ewan himself would never do. Once, when he and Uncle Duncan had gotten foxed together, he had tried to explain to the old goat how that was dishonorable. Uncle had simply been unable to grasp the nuances.

  “I was vengeful and went too far. It has preyed on my conscience ever since. I had intended to right matters, but now …” His hand went to his heart again.

  “Well, if it is something that the Earl of Lyndale should do, then you can still make it right yourself. When you are better.”

  “I will never be better. I tell you I am dying.” Uncle Duncan spoke emphatically, with powerful strength of voice. His dark eyes glared out from under his bed cap’s edge and his color rose to a nice healthy pink.

  Ewan experienced profound annoyance. This entire drama had been so unnecessary. There had been no reason for Uncle Duncan to pretend he was dying. There had been no justification in dragging Ewan from London and from the delicious pursuit of pretty Lady Norton.

  “Swear it,” the earl demanded. He sat upright, looking fit and hale and ready to ride for twenty miles. “Would you allow me to go to my grave with this unfinished, with no assurance that this sin will be mitigated? Ungrateful wretch! I will make a codicile to my will at once and cut you out without a penny. I will—”

  Here it came, the blackmail. The threats. Really,

  Uncle Duncan should hire a writer to devise a new set of lines.

  “—leave a letter for Hamish telling him to cut off your allowance. I will—”

  “Fine, I swear,” Ewan snapped. “I swear that I will do all within my power to see that the next earl fixes the problem that you created but never bothered to fix yourself.”

  It was a toothless promise to make. There would not be a “next earl” for quite some time. Swearing to do all within his own power meant little, since he would have no power at all.

  Uncle Duncan did not see the huge holes. His ire receded. He sank back into his pillow. He arranged for his body to go limp and for his cheeks to appear gray.

  The earl vaguely waved Ewan away. Still annoyed but also amused by the theatrics, Ewan played his role to the end. He got up, leaned over, and kissed Uncle Duncan’s head affectionately before leaving.

  That night the earl surprised everyone by actually dying. He passed quietly in his sleep.

  Ewan was stunned by the unexpected turn of events, but he suspected his amazement was more than matched by that of the earl himself.

  Two weeks later Ewan lay on a sofa in his chambers in London.

  If life were fair he would not be reclining alone. Lady Norton would be here with him, receiving the lesson in love that he had long anticipated giving her. Right now he would be plucking at the laces of a corset, preparing to unveil her abundantly luscious beauty.

  But life was not fair. He’d had to beg off on their assignation. He could not move, let alone seduce a woman tonight. He could barely think.

  He lifted a limp arm and raised the letter. He read the first line again and groaned. It was unbelievable. Incomprehensible. Just a month ago he was happy and innocent and going about his business, which was easy to do because he made sure his business only dealt with pleasure, and now—

  His manservant entered carrying a fresh bottle of wine to replace the one that Ewan ha
d just finished. Swigged, to tell the truth. Gulped down as if it were rum and he were a sailor.

  Another man came in too. Ewan glanced up from beneath the arm draped over his forehead to see Dante Duclairc gazing down at him. Dante’s limpid brown eyes showed more amusement than concern and a smile wanted to break out on his angelically handsome face.

  “Duclairc. Good of you to come.”

  His friend’s presence touched him, and a pang of nostalgia sounded in his heart. Dante Duclairc had not been in these chambers since he married Fleur Monley last spring. The parties that occurred in this apartment were a lot less fun now that Dante had been domesticated. Only a calamity such as had visited Ewan today would get Duclairc here now.

  “Your message seemed desperate. Are you unwell? You look like someone in a bad Greuze painting.”

  “Disaster has struck. Complete and total catastrophe. Once you learn of it you will understand why it has laid me low.” He lifted the letter.

  Duclairc took it and sat down on another sofa to read. He did not even notice the little bronze statue on the table beside his seat. The latest addition to Ewan’s renowned collection of fine art erotica, it was a Renaissance work displaying a nymph servicing Pan. Ewan had been proud of the acquisition yesterday, but his friend’s indifference seemed appropriate to today’s solemnity.

  “Jesus,” Dante said after peering at the letter for a few minutes.

  “I knew you would appreciate how outrageous this is.”

  “It is certainly unexpected. And amazing. I do not know whether to congratulate you or help you mourn.”

  “I’ll be damned if I’m going to mourn. It was very inconsiderate of them. Hugely so. There should have been a law against both of them putting themselves in danger at the same time. Where was Hamish’s sense? If he wants to climb a damned mountain and die in a damned avalanche, let him go, I say, but to drag his younger brother on the adventure and risk their both dying in the same damned avalanche—” He closed his eyes. It was all too much.