by Mary Balogh
Viola laughed and hugged her maid. “At least I have you, the very best friend anyone ever had,” she said. “Very well, then, I will go to bed and to sleep like a good girl, and tomorrow all my problems will have vanished. Perhaps he will be so drunk when he leaves the Boar's Head that he will ride for London and forget all about Pinewood. Perhaps he will fall off his horse and break his neck.”
“Lovey!” Hannah said reproachfully.
“But he did not ride to the village,” Viola said. “He took his curricle. All the better. He has farther to fall.”
She lay in bed a little while later, wide awake, staring up at the shadowed canopy over her head, wondering how life could have changed so completely within two days.
It was after midnight when Ferdinand returned home. The house was in darkness. Indignant darkness, he thought with a grin. She probably expected him to come staggering home, roaring out obscene ditties off-key and slurring his words. But the knowledge that it was not really a game they played soon wiped the grin from his face. He wished it were something that harmless. She was an interesting opponent.
Jarvey was still up. He came prowling into the hall as Ferdinand let himself in through the unlocked door, a branch of candles held aloft in one hand, its shadows across his face making him look somewhat sinister.
“Ah, Jarvey.” Ferdinand handed the man his hat and cloak and whip. “Waited up for me, did you? And Bentley did too, I daresay?”
“Yes, my lord,” the butler informed him. “I'll send him up to your room immediately.”
“You may send him to bed,” Ferdinand said, making for the library. “And go to your own too. I'll not need either of you again tonight.”
But he did not really know why he had come to the library, he thought after he had shut the door behind him. It was just that soon after midnight seemed a ridiculously early hour at which to retire. He shrugged out of his coat and tossed it over the back of a chair. His waistcoat joined it there. He loosened and then removed his neckcloth. Now he was comfortable enough to settle into a chair with a book—except that he did not feel in the mood for reading. It was too late. He wandered over to the glass-fronted cabinet in one corner of the library and poured himself a brandy, but he did not particularly feel like drinking it, he realized after the first sip. He had had three glasses of ale at the Boar's Head. He had never been much of a solitary drinker. Or much of a heavy drinker at all, in fact. He was not an advocate of thick morning heads, having experienced a few of them during his youth.
There must be a solution to her problems, he thought, throwing himself into one of the chairs grouped about the fireplace. He just wished she would help him find one instead of clinging to the notion that the will would exonerate her—or that the will had been tampered with.
Why was he worrying about her problems? They were not his. They had nothing to do with him. He was giving himself a headache, a grossly unfair consequence of drinking only three glasses of ale over two and a half hours.
She had friends here. She was well liked here. If he was not much mistaken—he would know for sure when he had studied the estate books more closely and spoken with Paxton again—she had been involved in running and improving the estate. She was involved in community activities. What she should be doing was staying here.
She could stay if she married that ass and prize bore, Claypole.
She could stay if…
Ferdinand stared at the dark painting hanging over the mantel. No! Definitely not that—definitely! Where the devil had that idea popped out from? But the devil that had nudged the strange idea into his mind spoke on.
She is young and beautiful and desirable.
So were dozens of other girls who had set their caps for him anytime during the past six or seven years. He had never for a moment considered matrimony with any of them.
She is fresh and innocent.
Any woman who married him would have a duke for a brother-in-law. She would be marrying into the ton. She would be marrying a very wealthy man. Freshness and innocence would disappear in a trice once the pleasures of society were tasted and once there were other men, more personable than Claypole, to admire her. She would be no different from any other woman in a similar marriage.
She believes in love. She trusts love, even when to all appearances it has betrayed her.
Both love and trust would disappear with innocence.
You want her.
Ferdinand closed his eyes and spread his hands on the armrests of the chair. He breathed deeply and evenly. She was an innocent. She was living unchaperoned in his house. That was scandal enough without his lusting after her.
She has a body to die for.
And he would die too before giving up his freedom merely in order to possess it.
Her problems would be solved and your conscience would be appeased if you married her.
Damn Bamber, Ferdinand thought vehemently. And damn Bamber's father. And damn Leavering for having impregnated his wife just when he had, so that he had not been the one to play for Pinewood instead of Ferdinand. Damn Brookes's.
He was not going to play the gallant by offering her marriage. The very idea had him reaching up to tug at his overtight neckcloth—only to discover that he had removed it before he sat down. He was in a bad way, indeed.
He was going to go to bed, Ferdinand decided, getting determinedly to his feet. Not that he was going to be able to sleep, even though he had ordered Bentley to find him different pillows or, failing that, to set a block of marble at the head of his bed, since marble could not be less comfortable than what he had slept on last night. But there was nothing else to do except go to bed.
He snuffed the candles, having decided that there was quite enough moonlight beaming through the windows to light his way upstairs. With one finger he hooked his coat and waistcoat over his shoulder and left the room.
He fervently hoped he would rise in the morning in a more sensible frame of mind.
8
The upper corridor was darker than the hall and I staircase. There was only one window at the far end. But, preoccupied with his thoughts as he was, it did not occur to Ferdinand to regret not bringing a candle with him until he went plowing into a table, the corner of which caught him painfully in the middle of the thigh.
“Ouch!” he exclaimed loudly before letting loose with a few other, more profane epithets and dropping his coat and waistcoat in order to rub his leg with both hands. But even in the near-darkness he could see that further disaster was looming in the form of a large urn, which was wobbling on the table in imminent danger of toppling to its doom. He roared and lunged for it—and then whooped with self-congratulatory relief when he righted it. He pressed a hand to his injured leg again, but his absorption with the pain was short-lived. Somehow a large painting in a heavy, ornate frame had been dislodged from the wall and crashed to the floor, its descent made more spectacular by the fact that it brought the urn down with it, smashing it to smithereens, and overturned the table into the bargain.
Ferdinand swore foully and eloquently at the mess around him, though he could scarcely see the full extent of it in the darkness. He stepped back from the debris and rubbed his leg. And then suddenly there was light, illuminating the scene and momentarily dazzling him.
“You are drunk!” the person holding the candle informed him coldly.
Ferdinand put up a hand to shade his eyes. How exactly like a woman to jump to that conclusion.
“Devilish foxed,” he agreed curtly. “Three sheets to the wind. And what's it to you?” He returned his attention to the disaster he could now see clearly, rubbing his thigh at the same time. The painting looked as if it weighed a ton, but he waded in among the debris and somehow hefted it back up to its position on the wall. He picked up the table and set it to rights. There was no apparent damage to it. But he could do nothing except grimace at the scattered remains of the urn, which lay in a few thousand separate pieces.
Her candle had been dazzling him
the whole while. And she had been coming closer. When he looked at her, feeling still annoyed but also decidedly sheepish, he could see her clearly for the first time.
Good God! She had not stopped either to dress or to throw on a dressing gown. Not that there was anything particularly indecent about her appearance. Her white cotton nightgown covered her from neck to wrists to ankles. She wore no nightcap, but her hair was scraped back from her face and lay in a thick braid down her back.
She did not look indecent at all, even if her feet were bare. She looked like chastity incarnate, in fact. But still and all, it was just a nightgown, and one could not prevent oneself from imagining what was—or, more to the purpose, what was not—beneath it. Nothing whatsoever, at a guess. Ferdinand's temperature soared and he rubbed harder at his bruised thigh.
“What is it to me?” she asked, repeating his question, her voice tight with self-righteous indignation. “It is the middle of the night. I am trying to sleep.”
“It is a downright stupid place to keep a table—in the middle of the corridor,” he said, careful not to look fully at her and then noticing his coat and waistcoat on the floor. He was clad only in shirt and breeches and stockings himself. Oh, Lord, Lord, Lord, he could have done without this. They were alone together after midnight in the darkened corridor outside both their bedchambers—and he had thoughts crowding his mind that had no business being there at all.
Lustful thoughts.
She herself was safely armed with indignation—at least for the moment. She had probably never even heard of lust. “The table was standing against the wall, my lord,” she pointed out with cold civility. “The painting was hanging on the wall. If there was any stupidity involved in what has happened here, it was yours in lurching along the corridor without a candle while you were drunk.”
“Deuce take it,” he said, “I suppose that urn was worth a king's ransom.”
“At least that much,” she agreed. “It was also unspeakably hideous.”
He grinned directly at her when she said that and then wished he had kept his eyes averted. She had the sort of face—a perfect oval with high cheekbones, a straight nose, large eyes, and soft, kissable lips—that actually looked more beautiful without the distraction of curls and ringlets to dress it up. Her usual coronet of plaits gave her a regal air. Tonight's loose braid gave her a youthful look, an aura of innocence and purity. His temperature edged up another notch as he determinedly returned his attention to the sad remains of the urn.
“Where will I find a broom?” he asked. Perhaps sweeping up the pieces would restore his equilibrium.
But she did exactly the wrong thing. She looked directly up at him and laughed, her eyes dancing with merriment.
“I am almost tempted to tell you,” she said. “It would be priceless to see you wielding a broom. But you had better forget that impulse. It is after midnight.”
Which fact he was trying diligently—and futilely—to ignore.
“What should I do, then?” he asked, frowning.
“I think you ought to go to bed, Lord Ferdinand,” she said.
If only the top could have blown off his head, some heat might have escaped harmlessly into the air above and saved him. But it did not, of course. And instead of taking her advice and scurrying off in the direction of his room and sanctuary, his eyes on the doorknob every step of the way, he made the mistake of looking down at her again and locking eyes with her and seeing that finally her mind had attached itself to the atmosphere that had been sizzling around them ever since she had ventured outside her room.
He did not notice himself taking the candlestick out of her hand, but it was definitely his own hand that was setting it down on the table. And then he was turning and cupping her chin with the same hand, which was sending impressions of warm softness sizzling up his arm.
“Ought I?” he asked her. “But who is going to put me there?”
Even at that late moment he might have answered his own question and scampered off with all haste to put himself to bed. Or she might have helped restore sanity to them both by making some caustic remark about his supposed inebriation before effecting a dignified retreat. Or she might have delivered this morning's speech about the sanctity of her person again. Or she could simply have turned and bolted on her bare feet, leaving the candle to him as a trophy.
Neither of them took any of the easy—and sensible-ways out.
Instead she did something totally unexpected. Her teeth sank into her soft lower lip, and in the flickering light of the candle it seemed to Ferdinand that the brightness of her eyes might have been attributable to unshed tears. The words she spoke confirmed that impression.
“I wish,” she said softly, “you had gone away after that day and that evening. I wish I had never known your name.”
“Do you?” He forgot danger. He forgot propriety. He even forgot that they were locked in an insoluble conflict. All he saw was his lovely, vibrant lass, who had once worn daisies in her hair but who now had tears in her eyes—because of him. “Why?”
She hesitated and then shrugged. “It would have been a pleasant memory,” she said.
Had he been thinking rationally, he would have left her answer uncommented upon. But he really was not thinking at all.
“This memory?” He lowered his head, touched his lips to hers, and was irrevocably lost in sensation. Sweet, wholesome innocence and beauty. The enticing smells of soap and cleanliness and woman. And the memories of firelight and fiddle music and bright, twining ribbons. And of the laughing, lovely face of the woman he had taken behind the oak tree to kiss.
This woman.
He kissed her for only a few moments before drawing back his head and gazing down into her eyes. The candlelight flickered across her face as the firelight had done on the village green. Her eyes gazed dreamily back into his. The tears were gone. She raised one hand and set her fingertips lightly against his cheek, sending shivers of raw desire coursing downward through his body to center in his groin. And yet the hunger he felt was not purely carnal in nature. She was not just any lovely woman with whom he had found himself alone under provocative circumstances.
She was Viola Thornhill, the laughing, lovely, vibrant woman who danced with joy, as if she had drawn all the music and all the rhythm of the universe into her body, the relative of Bamber's who had been promised Pinewood and then betrayed, the child who had run to meet her father and poured out all her childhood secrets to him.
“Yes,” she whispered at last in answer to the question he had almost forgotten asking. “I wanted that memory.”
“When the real man is right here to provide others?” He forgot for the moment that she would remember her every association with him after May Day with a bitterness that would last a lifetime.
He set his hands on either side of her waist and drew her closer. She did not push him away. On the contrary, she cupped his elbows in her palms and arched herself in toward him, pressing thighs, abdomen, and breasts against his body. She was all soft, alluring curves. His arms slid tightly about her waist, and hers twined about his neck. Any doubt of the nakedness that lay beneath the virginal white of her nightgown was put to flight. So was any doubt that she was a willing participant in what was happening.
This time when he kissed her, he opened his mouth over hers and licked her parted lips and the soft, moist flesh behind them. He was consumed by sweet, raw hunger. Sweet because he knew with a deep, innate integrity that he would not take the embrace far enough to destroy her innocence—he would not take her virginity. Raw because he wanted and wanted and wanted. He wanted her beneath him on a bed, yes. He was already hard with arousal. He wanted to press himself deep inside her and bring her pleasure and himself ease. But more than that simple animal urge, he wanted… Ah, he simply yearned.
“Sweet,” he murmured, moving his mouth from hers, feathering kisses over her closed eyes, her temples, her cheeks, drawing the lobe of one ear between his teeth and rubbing his tongue over the t
ip, burying his face in the warm, soft hollow between her neck and shoulder. He wrapped both arms even more tightly about her, lifting her until she stood on her toes.
“Yes,” she murmured, her voice low velvet, her cheek rubbing against his hair, the fingers of one hand entwined in it. “Ah, sweet.”
They clung for endless moments.
He was releasing his hold on her at the same moment as she set her hands against his shoulders and pushed him away, not violently, but firmly.
“Go to bed, Lord Ferdinand,” she said before he could speak. “Alone.” Yet she was not angry. There was something in her voice that spoke of a yearning to match his own. He knew that part of her—a weaker part—wanted him to argue.
“I was not headed down that road,” he said softly. “Seduction was not on my mind. Your maidenhood is perfectly safe with me. But it would be best for us not to meet like this again. I am only a man, when all is said and done.”
She picked up her candlestick. “I will have those pieces swept up in the morning,” she said. “Leave them for now.” She did not look at him again but made her way back to her room, her braid swinging back and forth across her back like a pendulum. She looked infinitely enticing.
He had lost all faith in innocence and purity and fidelity, and even love, long before he left his boyhood behind. He had never been in love or ever enjoyed anything more than a light, bantering sort of friendship with any woman. Women were for sex and children. He did not want children.
But perhaps, after all, Ferdinand thought as the door of her bedchamber closed behind her and the corridor was plunged into darkness again, there were such qualities as goodness and innocence and uncomplicated wholesomeness.
Perhaps there was even love.
And fidelity.
And perhaps he was simply tired, he thought as he located his abandoned clothes in the faint moonlight and picked them up before making his way toward his bedchamber. It had been a long day, after all, and an extraordinarily busy one.