A Taste of Desire

by Beverley Kendall

  An hour later, however, as he lay in his bed nursing an unflagging erection, his bed linens in disarray, he was having second, third, and fourth thoughts about the hindrance that was his moral code, which was keeping him from her bed. After all, he was going to marry her. Theirs wasn’t some torrid, illicit love affair. And, of course, they would be discreet. His mother and sisters would never know, for they occupied bedchambers in a different wing.

  Decision reached and conscience sufficiently appeased, Thomas bolted from his bed. He snatched up his dressing robe from the footboard and exited the room.

  Ten minutes later, Thomas paused at the library window to adjust his bearings. The anticipation that had coiled his insides to knots, now unfurled like tentacles of concern. Where was she? He’d gone to her room and found it empty. He’d then searched the study and library, morning and dining rooms, his worry increasing by the half minute. Even the billiards room—a space she’d rarely ever ventured into—received a thorough inspection. But again, that effort too proved fruitless.

  He’d returned to the library on the off chance he’d crossed paths with her somewhere. She loved reading in the window seat overlooking the back. As he stared out that same window, his mind racing, his thoughts occupied, a movement outside caught his peripheral vision. A moment later, a figure emerged from a copse of dogwood to the left of the groundskeeper’s lodgings.

  From the light of the full moon Thomas could make out the form. Amelia. Air rushed from his lungs in relief. He’d recognize her dressed in burlap from a mile away. Since the groundskeeper’s house was set back not far from the main house, his current position gave him an eagle’s view of the area in play.

  As quickly as relief had soothed his mounting concern, another figure—this one definitely male—joined her. The man’s head was bent down close to hers, their conversation intimate. These certainly weren’t two people exchanging polite pleasantries.

  Thomas saw the kiss occur as if wrapped in a dream. None of it seemed real. The man moved in closer until his lips touched hers. One, two seconds passed before she jerked her head back, glanced hurriedly around, and then grabbed him by the sleeve and pulled him back behind the shelter of the dogwood.

  “Sir.”

  Thomas turned with a start at his butler’s voice, observing him through a mist of red-hot anger and the green tint of jealousy. Alfred stood tall and straight at the library threshold, his expression graver than usual.

  “A problem, Alfred?” Thomas was frankly surprised by his calm tone when a voice inside him was raging out of control.

  “Sir, one of the servants has discovered an empty carriage on the property. It is behind the trees near the pond. How would you like me to proceed? Should I alert the constable?”

  Thomas processed the butler’s words like a drowning man taking in mouthfuls of water, flailing about only now realizing he didn’t know how to swim. But while his eyes might deny the scene he’d just witnessed, his mind couldn’t deny the facts pointing to Amelia’s obvious betrayal. The only question now was, who was he this time? Treacherous, lying, witch.

  “The horses?”

  “Yes, still there, sir, both tied to a tree.”

  Thomas nodded slowly. “I will deal with it.”

  His normally stoic butler appraised him with raised brows and wide eyes. His look of bafflement was gone a moment later. “As you wish, sir.” Alfred pivoted on his heel to go, then paused and turned back to him. “Sir, would you like the lamps lit?”

  Both figuratively and literally, Thomas stood shrouded in darkness. He’d been too impatient to light the lamps when he’d thrown open the doors to find the room empty and silent.

  “No, I’m on my way out,” he said but didn’t move except to stare out the window again.

  Alfred exited as quietly as he’d appeared. She was planning to leave him. Tonight. There could be no other explanation for the scene he’d just witnessed, no other explanation for the presence of the coach on his property.

  While the future he’d envisaged with Amelia crashed down around him in fitting apocalyptic fashion given their introduction the prior year, she emerged from behind the bush and began hurrying up the path leading to the servants’ door at the back.

  Thomas turned and strode from the room, intent on being there to greet her.

  Chapter 30

  The doorknob gave way beneath Amelia’s grasp as the door opened with an abruptness that left her struggling to retain her balance. Her gloved hands found the frame of the door.

  Her gaze flew to the opening. Thomas stood framed in the doorway, his eyes a Siberian winter and granite hard.

  Amelia gasped. “Thomas.” His name was all she could manage with her throat constricted and her mouth suddenly dry.

  “Rather late to be out in the cold.” His tone held no particular inflection, but his eyes could cut glass.

  Amelia shivered, from both an icy gust of wind and his steady, deliberate regard. He, on the other hand, appeared impervious to the outside elements, his stance wide-legged and his hands at his side.

  “Who is it this time? Someone new or are you reverting back to your old favorites, Cromwell or Clayborough?” He spoke as if they were exchanging pedestrian pleasantries.

  Amelia opened her mouth, but nothing resembling speech emerged. The air prickled the flesh beneath her coat. Nervously, she stepped forward, half expecting him to bar her, but he moved aside to permit her entrance. Once in the drafty, dimly lit alcove, she pulled the door closed behind her.

  “Who was it?” he asked again softer.

  “I—it’s not what you—”

  “I saw you, so please don’t insult my intelligence.” A faint growl now threaded the accusation in his tone. “Or if you’d prefer, I can have one of my men stop him before he makes it off the premises. I believe trespassing is a crime.”

  Tell him the truth, a strident voice inside her commanded. Please understand. Please understand. “It was Lord Clayborough.” She gulped. “But I sent him away,” she hastened to add. “He still believed that we—well, that we would be married.”

  At the baron’s name, Thomas remained motionless, his expression impenetrable. “And why would he believe such a thing?”

  Because I was too stupid and too giddy in love with you to give him a second thought, much less write and inform him of my change of feelings. “We haven’t corresponded since Lady Forsham’s ball. He assumed nothing had changed.”

  “So you’re telling me he snuck onto my grounds against your wishes and without an invitation?”

  Tell him the truth, the voice continued to chant. Like an idiot, she blindly, desperately followed its directive. “Not precisely. What I—”

  “Did you or did you not give him leave to trespass on these premises?”

  One tiny little lie would settle the issue. But the last thing she wanted was to lie to him. “I may have done so, but not in the manner as it appears. I—”

  Again, he didn’t give her an opportunity to finish, a chance to mount her defense. “I’ll expect you to be packed and gone by tomorrow.”

  It took a moment for Amelia to comprehend what he had said, what she had heard, before a crippling pain seared her heart, nearly sending her to her knees. “Thomas, please allow me to explain,” she implored. Reaching out, she touched the sleeve of his dressing robe.

  He jerked his arm from her as if he could scarcely bear her touch. “Tomorrow.”

  The single word sentenced her to a bleak and empty future. A life without him.

  Her gaze slid helplessly over him, taking in his strong, tall frame, tousled golden hair, and shadowed jaw. Silently, she cursed Lord Clayborough for his less-than-impeccable timing, Thomas for his hard-nosed stubbornness, but mostly herself for thinking she could deal with the issue without involving Thomas.

  “I don’t love him. I never did. Since the ball, I knew I could not marry him. I want to be with you. Please don’t make me leave,” she said, sounding pitiable and dejected. What she
yearned to say was, I love you, but the words were still too foreign to her tongue.

  He didn’t respond immediately. Instead, he perused her from her boot-shod feet up to her wind-rumpled coiffure. “You let him kiss you.” His words were a searing accusation, brimming with checked vehemence.

  “He did so against my wishes.” And no one had been more surprised at his impassioned gesture than her. She’d put a halt to the kiss as soon as she’d gathered her scattered wits.

  “Tomorrow I want you gone.” His tone was unyielding.

  “Thomas, you can’t mean to—”

  “Very well, then stay.” Without further ado, he turned and walked away.

  It was only as he rounded the corner to the main corridor that Amelia was wrenched from her state of dazed confusion. Had he in fact acquiesced?

  Instinctively, she made a move to follow him but halted after the first step. She watched him disappear from sight. Tonight nothing she said could penetrate his anger. Even a verbal declaration of her love would be ill received.

  Clutching her coat around her shivering form, she made her way up the servants’ staircase directly ahead and finished the circuitous route to her bedchamber without hearing or seeing a soul.

  Thomas would be of a calmer mindset tomorrow. And if not by tomorrow, the day after. Certainly by then he’d be willing to listen to her. It was that fervent prayer that finally lulled her into a fitful sleep.

  Amelia found only the viscountess in the breakfast room the following morning. She sat at the head of the table, sipping from a porcelain cup. At her entrance, Lady Armstrong lowered the cup and set it on the table.

  “Good morning, Lady Armstrong.” Amelia greeted her politely. Too politely given their past closeness.

  The viscountess watched her intently, a faint line marring her forehead. “Thomas has returned to London.”

  Amelia shuddered to a stop while everything shattered about her like glass hitting a marble floor. Her eyes began to burn and breathing became a chore.

  “He’s gone?” she choked, sounding like a half-wit lost in the maze of the Royal Gardens.

  Lady Armstrong rose quickly from her chair and came to her side, her expression a mixture of pity and concern. “Did something occur between the two of you last evening?”

  Amelia was too stupefied to respond. She had anticipated many things from him—silence, coldness, anger, and perhaps even scorn—but not this. Never this.

  Because she had refused to leave, he had. Just like that. Without a hint of forewarning. She had convinced herself that his, Very well, then stay, had meant he would eventually give her a chance to explain. But now he was gone. He had finished with her not long after she’d discovered she couldn’t imagine her life without him. The irony made her stomach roil.

  “I no longer have an appetite. If you’ll excuse me, Lady Armstrong, I think I’ll return to my chamber,” Amelia whispered hoarsely.

  The viscountess placed a restraining hand on her arm. “My dear, are you sure you don’t want to tell me—”

  Amelia pulled her arm away and shook her head vigorously and then violently. “No, no, I just need to lie down. If you’ll excuse me.” She then hurried from the room and back up to her bedchamber where she could mourn her loss, dry-eyed and in private.

  Three days after Thomas left, and on the third day of Amelia’s self-imposed imprisonment in her bedchamber, the viscountess personally informed her she had a caller awaiting her in the drawing room. She revealed nothing of the man’s identity, telling Amelia the gentleman in question wanted it so.

  Upon hearing the news, Amelia’s heart nearly burst from her chest until reality doused her faint flicker of hope. The viscountess would not be coy with her if Thomas had returned home.

  Her thoughts then flew to Lord Clayborough, but he too she dismissed swiftly. Their last encounter hadn’t left any room for doubt as to her feelings, or in regard to him, the lack thereof. And after he’d bitterly bemoaned the amount of time he’d spent courting her with money he could ill afford, she very much doubted he’d make the trek to Devon again.

  Amelia entered the drawing room not knowing who or what to expect. Perhaps Thomas had sent Lord Alex or James to speak with her. The sight of her father sitting in the leather armchair dashed all her hopes.

  He came to his feet. “Amelia.” He spoke her name softly, almost reverently, which was most unlike her father. He was normally all briskness and business.

  “Hello, Father.” She addressed him without feeling her usual rancor or indifference. Somewhere, somehow, much of that was gone.

  The marquess came forward, his arms reaching out to her before falling limply to his sides as if the incongruity of the gesture had just occurred to him.

  In appearance, he was impeccable, his garments the finest money could buy, but his face looked drawn and older than his years.

  “You look well.”

  He was lying. She knew she didn’t look the closest thing to well. Lack of sleep had produced unbecoming circles under her eyes and she was pale. But she wouldn’t argue the point.

  “Have you come to take me home?” she asked casually, as she walked over to the fireplace.

  “Do you want to come home?”

  Amelia shot him a look over her shoulder. When had her father ever asked her … well anything really?

  “Do I have a choice in the matter?”

  “Lady Armstrong would very much like you to remain until after her winter ball.”

  Grateful, she nodded and said nothing. She wanted to remain until Thomas returned home.

  “I saw Thomas yesterday,” he said in an abrupt change of topics. The gravity of his tone indicated it hadn’t been a happy encounter.

  Amelia’s pulse leapt at the mention of Thomas’s name. She quickly schooled her expression and said, “Yes, I imagined you would.”

  “He seems to believe I have neglected you over the years.”

  This time Amelia whipped around to face him. “He told you that?”

  Her father, the Marquess of Bradford, an aristocrat among aristocrats, briefly shifted his gaze as if he found it hard to look her directly in the eye.

  “He insinuated something of the sort and then gave me a dressing-down for neglecting to inform him you had scarlet fever as a child.” He raised his gaze to hers, and she could see from the stern set of his jaw, he’d been offended by the charge. “That is why I am here. Why I had to come.”

  Amelia stood silently reeling over the notion that Thomas had dressed down the marquess because of her. But in the same time it took hope to flicker in her heart again, it was snuffed out just as quickly.

  Over the course of the last few months, she had learned many things about Thomas Armstrong: he could be a formidable foe, was fiercely loyal to those lucky enough to have gained his affection, and possessed a streak of integrity the breadth, depth, and length of the Atlantic Ocean itself. Undoubtedly, the latter trait had prompted his outburst. He’d been advocating for the thirteen-year-old girl she’d been then, not the woman she had become. The woman he now despised.

  “… and it was only when I wrote to Reese did I learn the truth. He admitted he and Mrs. Smith kept your illness from me. Although I understand why they doubted that I could deal with it so soon after the loss of your mother, I should have been consulted.”

  He emitted a dark, harsh laugh and shook his head in bewilderment. “I would have only learned about it if they thought you were going to die. How could they imagine I wouldn’t have suffered a thousand deaths to know you died alone … without me?” His voice was rife with emotion as the final two words caught in his throat.

  With her ears now attuned to his every utterance, Amelia had long gone motionless. The seeds of everything she’d believed about her father had grown and flourished from that one incident. And over the years, she’d watered and tended them, creating roots so strong and entrenched, nothing short of a tornado would dislodge her mind from the fallacy.

  “But—bu
t …” Words as well as coherent thought failed her.

  “I may be many things, that I will admit, but I pray you don’t believe me capable of leaving you to fight scarlet fever without me. I implore you to write to Reese if you’re not convinced. He can substantiate everything I’ve said.”

  Amelia shook her head slowly. She didn’t need to write to Reese. Her father had that desperate look in his eyes, as if her belief in him was the culmination of a year’s dream. He wasn’t lying.

  “I believe you,” she said softly.

  His shoulders rose and fell as he heaved a long, ragged sigh of relief. For several seconds, he gazed upon her with a tenderness in his eyes she’d never seen. Reaching out, he placed his hand on her arm. She didn’t pull away but received his touch like poultice on a long-festering sore.

  “A girl needs her mother and you were no exception. When she died, I-I was a wholly inadequate substitute. Looking back now, I can see I acted selfishly, too locked in my own prison of misery. There was hardly enough room in there for me, much less you. You needed—deserved much better than me.”

  “I needed my one remaining parent, and that was you.” For years she’d suppressed the truth, but now she wanted to stop hiding and pretending. She was tired of the fortress of stone she’d erected around herself.

  A forlorn smile curved his mouth. “My greatest cross to bear was that you reminded me of her. Your mother. And those months after her death, I couldn’t bear any reminders of her. I wanted to lose myself in a world that held no connection with our life together. Heavens, I remember you used to look up at me as if expecting me to make everything all right when I was barely holding onto my sanity.”

  For the first time in her life, Amelia felt the depth of her father’s grief at the loss of his wife. All her young life she’d seen him as a father, infallible and indestructible. But he had also been a husband who had probably lost a piece of himself when the woman he loved had passed away. And his grief was compounded, not relieved, with a living, breathing reminder of that inconsolable loss. Her throat locked up, making speech impossible.