He remembered how she had reacted to him. “I understand,” he said, meaning every word.
She closed her gloved hand over his, her eyes wide and deep with gratitude. “Thank you for being so kind. Let me talk to her. I promise I will present you no later than tomorrow.”
He had not expected such an emphatic pledge. Perhaps at the back of his mind there had been a small fear that she might want to keep him hidden and never publicly acknowledged, for at her reassurance he suddenly felt as light as one of the clouds floating overhead. “I will wait for your word, then.”
She took a deep breath and, with her sister as witness, set her hands on his shoulders and kissed him on his cheek.
LOUISE WAS ALREADY PACING in the sitting room of Isabelle’s suite, her skirts rustling with the agitation of her gait. “Is that Mr. Fitzwilliam? Is he here to visit the lakes or to visit you?” she demanded almost before Isabelle had closed the door behind herself.
Trust Louise to waste no time on the preliminaries.
“He is here to visit me,” said Isabelle. That still gave her little starbursts inside.
“Then why didn’t you invite him for tea? I should meet him, if he has traveled hundreds of miles to woo you.”
Isabelle crossed the room. Her window overlooked the front of the hotel; the hills stretched green and glossy into the distance. “There is something about Mr. Fitzwilliam you don’t know.”
“What is it?”
She had meant to idly toy with an edge of the curtain, only to find that she had to unclench her fingers from around a handful of fabric. If her brother thought her mad, perhaps she wouldn’t mind so much. But Louise had always been her champion, her shoulder to cry on. “He bears a great resemblance to Fitz.”
Dead silence. Then, “No, Isabelle. No. Please tell me it isn’t true.”
Her heart sank. She swiveled her head a few degrees from side to side, trying to loosen the tension in her neck, before she closed the window and turned around—there was certainly no turning back from this point. “You have twins, Louise. You know that a superficial resemblance is just that, a superficial resemblance.”
“No.” The jut to Louise’s jaw only made Isabelle’s heart plummet further. She recognized that expression—Louise was digging in and not even a steam locomotive would make her budge. “Victoria and Cordelia are both my children. Your situation is not remotely analogous. Imagine if your son was taken away from you. Then you accidentally came upon another child who looks exactly like him and brought him home to raise as your own. How would that look?”
Desperate, that was how it would look.
“And this isn’t fair to Mr. Fitzwilliam either,” Louise went on inexorably. “You wouldn’t have been interested in him at all if he didn’t look like Fitz.”
“I will admit that on the day we met, I would not have given Mr. Fitzwilliam a second glance had he not looked like Fitz. But—”
“See, you admit it yourself.”
Elder siblings—sometimes they were wonderful; sometimes they conveniently forgot that she was no longer twelve. “Let me finish, Louise. It took me no time to begin to see Mr. Fitzwilliam for himself. He has led an entirely different life from Fitz and is an entirely different person. I like him for who he is, not whom he resembles.”
Louise looked at her as if she were a child trying to deny having stolen a sweet, with that very same piece of confection still in her mouth. “No, Isabelle, that is wishful thinking on your part. Maybe you don’t mind him for who he is, but make no mistake, you want him because of whom he resembles.”
This was exactly what she’d been afraid of, being buried beneath Louise’s anxious concerns with no way of changing the latter’s mind. “That is not true. That is simply not true,” she could only repeat.
Louise clasped a hand on Isabelle’s arm. “I’m sorry, Isabelle. I should have realized something was amiss when you didn’t return home bawling. I know what I say hurts you now and will hurt you for some time to come, but you can’t simply substitute a lookalike for Fitz.”
“I am not!” But how could she make Louise understand? How could she make anyone understand?
And the worst part, she now realized, was that she and Fitz had never known the kind of intimacy she shared with Mr. Fitzwilliam. They had been children, deeply in love but also deeply limited in what they knew of life. Theirs had been a connection of unbridled youth and untested hope, like aluminum, shiny, but easily dented. The bond between her and Mr. Fitzwilliam had been forged from far stronger materials, a steel that had been tried by fire.
“Isabelle—”
“Please, Louise, don’t say anything else.” Her head was beginning to pound. “I will ask Mr. Fitzwilliam to call on us tomorrow. You will be able to see for yourself what he is and who he isn’t.”
“That is not a good idea. The meeting will make him believe he is more accepted by the family than he is.”
“Then you will pass judgment on a man without ever meeting him?”
“I am not passing judgment on him, Isabelle. I am questioning your motives.”
She’d always enjoyed Louise’s bluntness, but now she felt bludgeoned. “I have no motives here beyond those of friendship and fondness.”
Louise pinched the bridge of her nose, as if she too, had been ground down by their quarrel. “This will not end well, Isabelle. Even if I were to believe every word you say, can you imagine what Mr. Fitzwilliam will do when he meets the man to whom he bears a great resemblance? Remember, the one you cannot have?”
Isabelle had thought her insides already wound tight enough, but Louise’s question gave them another wrenching twist. “That Mr. Fitzwilliam must decide when the time comes. For now, all I can tell you is that he has earned my affection and my esteem.”
Louise gazed at her a long time, shaking her head all the while. “I hope you are right, Isabelle. For your sake, I really hope so.”
Chapter Seven
MRS. ENGLEWOOD DID SLIP into Ralston’s hotel room that night, but she was fully clothed and wearing the furthest thing from a smile.
He closed the door, followed her to the middle of the room, and set his hand on the small of her back. The silk of her gown was smooth and warm under his palm; the scent of rose petals wafted subtly from her skin. “No luck, I take it?”
She scowled. “None whatsoever. She was even opposed to meeting you, because she did not approve of our friendship.”
This surprised him, though it did not manage to completely distract him from his desire to pluck the small, black evening toque from her head and bury his face in her lustrous hair. “That bad?”
She clamped her fingers over her temples. “I overrode her on that particular point and you are expected tomorrow morning at half past ten. There is nothing I can tell her to change her mind, so I hope that you in person would make a difference.”
Now he felt slightly ashamed to be so entranced by her charms, when lovemaking was nowhere on her distressed mind. “I don’t know whether I will make any difference, but I will attempt to be both sincere and charming.”
She made a noise at the back of her throat, a low growl of frustration.
He turned her around and wrapped his arms about her. “Allow me to apologize for my troublesome face.”
She sagged against him. Her reply, however, was emphatic. “Never apologize for your face. If you had a different face, we wouldn’t be the friends we are today—and I would not change that for anything.”
Her words flowed deep into his heart, a cascade of lyrical warmth. “It will all be fine,” he murmured, his voice thick with gratitude. “Perhaps not tomorrow, perhaps not next week. But everything will be all rght.”
She sighed. Her hand settled on his sleeve and he forgot what else he was about to say. The cambric of his shirt was lightweight, hardly a barrier to the warmth and pressure of her fingers.
Her fingers spread. Then, without warning, they tightened on his forearm. She clasped him as if she could not bea
r to let go, her breaths shallow and ragged.
He, on the other hand, could not breathe at all, caught in the urgency of her gesture. He stared at her still gloved hand, imagining the strain in her knuckles, her fingertips white from the force she exerted. Gradually her grip eased, but the tension inside him only escalated. He wanted that jolt of pressure from her again, that involuntary expression of need.
He set his hand on her wrist. She stiffened, but as he did nothing, only held her wrist loosely, she slowly relaxed again.
He opened the hook-and-eye closure on her cuff and slid his fingers beneath the black silk of her mourning gown. Her skin was wondrously soft. His breaths came back in gulps.
All of a sudden her fingers were in his hair, her mouth fastened to his, parting his lips and seeking his tongue. He heard a small moan from himself. Yes, this was what he had hoped would happen, when he came to the Lake District: a sweet friendship made even sweeter by the pleasures of the flesh.
He tilted his head to kiss her more closely, more completely. Little whimpers escaped her throat. She spread her hands against his back, running her fingers over his shoulder blades and the channel of his spine. His body pulsed with arousal.
She already had his jacket off his shoulders before he began to reciprocate the disrobing. He did not hurry, but relished the feel of each fastener popping apart, the sensation of his knuckles sliding against the soft, almost airy nainsook of her corset cover while he divided the stiff silk of her dress. She did not stand idle, but continued to strip him of his clothes, and applied her lips to every new square inch of skin she exposed.
Those dropped kisses were slightly moist, and scorched him wherever they landed. He kissed her on the mouth as he roughly pushed her dress to the floor. Now there was no more patience. He yanked her corset cover over her head and all but tore her corset in half.
“I knew I employed a sponge tonight for a reason,” she panted.
“My God. Do you mean to tell me this is all premeditated?” The thought of her inserting the sponge while anticipating his lovemaking made him almost painfully hard.
“Precisely. So you had better make my efforts worthwhile.”
He pushed her to the edge of his bed; she pulled him into it. He kissed her—her throat, her collarbone, her shoulders—while she pushed his trousers, first with her fingers, then with her foot, off his person. Her hand dug into his bottom. He took her nipple into his mouth. The feel of her, all glorious skin and impatient desire; the taste of her, milky and wholesome; the sound of her, a sonata of unabashed moans.
“Yes, more,” she cried, as he licked her nipple with the underside of his tongue. “Yes, more,” she cried, as his hand arrived at the seam between her thighs. “Yes, more,” she cried again, as his fingers parted her damp folds and penetrated deep inside.
He thought he would never heard sounds lovelier than an infinite loop of those two syllables. But then he licked her where his fingers had been, long, slow strokes, and this time, she made only beautifully incoherent noises, too far gone for words.
Her first climax came quickly, an undulating shudder that started at the center of her body and propagated everywhere else. Her second climax came even quicker, with barely a pause for her to catch her breath. After that her climaxes blurred into a continuum, her nipples hard, her body writhing, the entire room ricocheting with the throaty moans of her pleasure.
When he entered her at last, she quivered, peaking anew. Then she pushed him onto his back and climbed atop him, her long legs spread wide, her hair tumbling free, her flesh gripping his in a way that made him throw his head back in amazement. And when she tossed her hair over her shoulders, and teased him by playing with her breasts, the sight of her slender fingers upon those rosy nipples drove him completely over the edge, his release fevered and endless.
OH, HOW SHE’D MISSED IT, the euphoria of lovemaking, the bone-melting relaxation following the quakes and tremors.
“My God, Isabelle,” he murmured against her cheek. “Now I can see why you wrote that limerick. But I don’t believe Captain Englewood ever groaned when you wanted to be pleasured again. In his place I’d have been ecstatic.”
She giggled. “No, he never quite groaned. Though he was rather shocked in the beginning—he’d been led to believe that genteelly raised young ladies only participated passively in such animal acts.”
“I love being ravished by you.”
“Then you’ve made the right friend, Ralston.”
“I have made an amazing friend, Isabelle.”
Such a sense of ease permeated her, not just from his compliment, but from his presence and the combined optimism their togetherness generated. She kissed him on his jaw. He turned his head, kissed her on the corner of her mouth, and brought a strand of her disheveled hair to his lips.
“You have some white hair.”
“Had my first one when I was sixteen. I’m going to turn grey early in life, like my mother did.”
“You will be the most gorgeous silver-haired lady in all of Britain.”
That she would be silver-haired by the time she was forty had never bothered her. But now, for the very first time, the thought excited her. She slid her fingers along his arm, meaning to interlace her fingers with his.
“I want to brush your white hair someday,” he continued.
She stilled. Her hair wouldn’t be completely white for almost another decade and a half. Either he was suggesting a very long affair or…
“Don’t let your sister stop you—if that’s what you are worried about.”
He’d misinterpreted her silence. As much as she wanted him to be accepted—indeed, embraced—by Louise and the rest of her family, it was no longer her family’s opposition that had her fretting. She knew now what she was up against; she was prepared to dig in and hold her own ground. Not to mention she was both of age and financially independent: She wanted their approval but she did not need it.
“My family can huff and puff, but they will come around eventually.”
“Then what are you worried about?”
She exhaled, not quite ready to face that eventuality. “You.”
“Me?” He sounded surprised, even amused.
It hadn’t mattered at all when she’d propositioned him at Doyle’s Grange. Even when they became long-distance friends it hadn’t been a pressing concern. But now that he’d come for her, now that they were lovers—lovers who hoped to remain lovers for a long time—the problem could no longer be skirted.
She pushed herself up on her hands and gazed into eyes that were the color of a mossy pond. “Everyone would think, as my sister does, that I am using you as a substitute for Fitz, a replica I happened to find when I couldn’t have the original. You would hate it.”
He shook his head firmly. “Not as much as I would hate it if you were to let such a trivial reason stand in the way of much happiness.”
She did not plan to let her fear stand in the way of anything—she had no wish to ever again allow fear to be the guiding force in her life. But it did not mean she could not have legitimate concerns. “What would happen when you and Fitz run into each other?”
He smoothed her hair. “I dare say I would find it a laugh. Then I would thank him for choosing otherwise, so that you and I could meet as we did.”
He sounded so confident, so certain, it seemed almost churlish not to believe him. “Are you really sure about that?”
He pulled her toward him, his gaze upon her, and whispered against her lips. “More sure than I am of anything else in my life.”
WHEN RALSTON ARRIVED AT THE Lakehead the next morning, he was shown into the sitting room of Isabelle’s suite. The room was furnished in the lightest of colors: An ivory chaise, chairs upholstered in buttery hues, and creamy wallpaper—the use of such pristine shades made possible by the hotel’s distance from the sooty air of the cities. Isabelle, seated in a straight-back chair, was the somber focus in the midst of so much delicate brightness.
T
he wait for his arrival had not been easy: Her hands were clutched together, her jaw tight. But before he could direct a reassuring smile at her, a sharp gasp erupted from a different part of the room. He turned to see a dark-haired woman of about thirty coming out of her chair, agape.
“Louise, may I present Mr. Fitzwilliam? Mr. Fitzwilliam, my sister, Mrs. Montrose.”
They shook hands, Mrs. Montrose’s hand limp and unresponsive in his. To his inquiry concerning the agreeableness of her stay in the Lake District, her answer was a few mumbled, indistinct syllables.
“I understand you reside in Aberdeen,” he said, making small talk. “I passed through years ago, when I was still at university.”
“Yes, I suppose,” she murmured, her shock-widened eyes never leaving his.
A sense of unease crept over him. He had expected a strong reaction, but not an extreme one. “And Mrs. Englewood tells me Mr. Montrose is a barrister.”
Isabelle had also informed him that her sister had to wait a number of years to marry, as Mr. Montrose had come from a family in trade, rather than country gentry, like theirs.
“Yes, I suppose,” was again Mrs. Montrose’s response.
Nonplussed, he turned to Isabelle. He might be the one needing her reassurance now. “And how do you do, Mrs. Englewood?”
“Very well, thank you.” Despite her obvious nerves, she smiled a little. “One might even say I am in an enviable state of being.”
He couldn’t help smiling back. “And Miss Englewood and young Master Alexander?”
“They are on the water, rowing with Miss Burlingame. Alexander will be in heaven; Hyacinth will wish herself in a submarine boat instead, crawling along the bottom of the lake.”
A hotel attendant brought in a tray of tea. Isabelle offered him a seat and busied herself pouring tea for everyone. The moment he had a cup in hand, Mrs. Montrose said, “I trust we’ve beat about the bushes quite enough?”
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