by Mary Balogh
Did they? Claire looked up at him, startled. But she did not want to go. She did not want to be alone with him. He could have only one reason for suggesting such a thing. And everyone else must have thought the same thing. There were knowing smiles from the ladies and winks from the gentlemen.
“You naughty man, Gerard,” Lady Pollard said. “Why did we not think of that, Rufus?”
“Well, there is still the conservatory, Mildred,” he said.
“Ah,” she said, “but we would have to miss the forfeits. Are you sure you wish to do so, Gerard?”
Claire looked at him hopefully. She should speak up, she knew. But such people always tongue-tied her.
She never knew the right thing to say or when it should be said.
“We have better things to do,” he said, and he lifted his hand away from her shoulder and brushed the backs of his fingers against her cheek before extending the hand to help her to her feet.
“Then go,” Lady Florence said with what sounded almost like impatience. “The rest of us are ready, to proceed with the fun.”
Carver House had been a Tudor manor before centuries of rebuilding had transformed it. But the long gallery was still on the top floor, running the whole width of the house. They were on their way up the stairs, the duke carrying a branch of candles in one hand, before Claire spoke. By that time she was angry—perhaps more with herself than with him. Was she going to allow herself to be awed into behaving against her nature?
“I don’t think this is a good idea, your grace,” she said. “I don’t think I wish to be so alone with you. It is not proper.”
“Far more proper than being in the drawing room for the next couple of hours is likely to be,” he said.
She looked at him. They had paused on the second landing. “Playing a game in the company of the others?” she said.
“Forfeits,” he said. “Do you have any idea what that means, Claire?”
“I have played it all my life,” she said.
“With articles of your own clothing as the forfeits?” he asked.
She stared back at him, the implications of what he had said dawning on her. She felt heat mount into her cheeks. “No,” she said almost in a whisper. “But surely…”
“So, my dear Claire,” he said, offering her his arm again, “you and I will go and admire art in the gallery. Shall we?”
She took his arm hesitantly. Had he spoken the truth? Surely even these guests would not behave with such utter—impropriety. Was it all an elaborate ruse to get her alone? Alone in an upper gallery for more than an hour? Surely she should resist. She should plead a headache and retire to her room. Or better still, she should just tell the truth and retire to her room.
But she remembered the titters and the comments at dinner when the game had first been mentioned. Besides, she thought, placing her arm on the duke’s and allowing him to lead her up the final flight of stairs, she wanted to go. And no, she would not feel guilty about it either. Good heavens, she was a woman, not a girl. And she was a woman with feelings and needs—and a longing to be part of the romance of St. Valentine’s Day for once in her life.
They wandered down one side of the gallery and back along the other, looking dutifully at the paintings while he held the candles aloft. They scarcely spoke a word. But Claire deliberately reveled in having her hand on a man’s firm arm, in being alone with him, part of a couple. Whatever might be happening downstairs, and whatever he might be thinking or feeling, she thought, she was going to enjoy this hour. She was going to pretend that they belonged together, that they were more than just valentines for three days.
“Unless we can convince ourselves that we are great devotees of art, Claire,” he said as they stood before the last picture—a painting of a single horse and rider and a crowd of hunting dogs, “we are going to have to find some other way to amuse ourselves for what remains of the evening.”
She stiffened.
“Shall we sit down on the bench beneath the window and exchange life stories?” he asked.
She seated herself obediently and he sat beside her, his knee brushing against hers.
“How old are you?” he asked.
“Eight-and-twenty,” she said, looking at him, startled.
“And why are you twenty-eight years old and unmarried, Claire?” he asked her.
Because no one had asked her, she thought. But she could not say that out loud.
“I have observed no defects of either person or character in you during the past day and a half,” he said. “Indeed, I would have to say that you possess some beauty.”
It was no lavish compliment, but it warmed her to her toes. “My father was an invalid,” she said. “He needed me. He died a year and a half ago.”
“Did he?” he said, and his dark eyes wandered over her face and hair. “So you are one of those too-numerous females whose personal happiness is sacrificed at the family altar, are you?”
She said nothing.
“And as a reward you have been taken into the home of relatives, where you will live out your life making yourself useful and always feeling that you do not belong.”
Her hands clenched in her lap. “My brother and my sister-in-law have always been good to me,” she said.
“Of course.” He took one of her hands, unclenched her fingers, and curled them over his. “And so, Claire, you have not been allowed to learn anything of life.”
“I believe my life has been useful,” she said. All the joy of fantasy had gone out of her day. She was back to reality again. There was no romance after all.
“I am sure it has,” he said. “Useful to others. But to yourself?”
“There is satisfaction to be gained from serving others, your grace,” she said, lifting her chin and looking him in the eye. “Probably a great deal more than would be gained from wasting one’s youth in the ballrooms and drawing rooms of polite society in London. “
He set his other hand over the back of hers. “Is that how you have consoled yourself, Claire?” he asked.
It was. But in one sentence, with one question, he had shattered even that illusion, exposing to her view all the yearnings of years that she had ruthlessly reasoned away.
“You should not be here, you know,” he said. “You are about as at home here as I would be at the bottom of the ocean.”
“I know,” she said, her voice unable to hide her bitterness. “Naive spinsters of eight-and-twenty do not belong at a house party with people who know a thing or two about life and the world. I should be at home with my brother and sister-in-law.”
“That was not my meaning,” he said. “You should be in your own home, Claire, with your husband, your children abovestairs in the nursery.”
She pulled her hand free and got to her feet. She took a few steps along the gallery. No. She had closed that yawning empty pit years before. It was not to be, and that was all there was to it.
She had not heard him coming up behind her. She tensed when she felt his hands on her shoulders.
“I am sure even you know what a rake is, Claire,” he said. “Florence has six of them as her guests. I include myself, you see. You have no business being here with me.”
“I can look after myself,” she said. “I am not a helpless innocent.”
“You must know what I have set myself to do since this morning,” he said. “Don’t you?”
She dropped her chin to her chest. Yes, she had known, she supposed. She was not quite as naive as she sometimes pretended even to herself to be.
“Yes.” Her voice was a whisper.
“I am not the sort of man to be satisfied with kisses for three days,” he said. “And three nights.”
She covered her face with her hands for a moment before turning to look up at him. He had set the candlestick down beside the bench when they sat down earlier. His face was in shadows.
“Perhaps I am not the sort of woman to be satisfied with a few kisses for a lifetime,” she said, hearing the words almo
st as if someone else were speaking them, but amazing herself with the truth of what she was saying.
She heard him draw breath and expel it slowly.
“I am not used to situations like this, Claire;” he said.
“Neither am I—Gerard.”
He touched the backs of his fingers to her cheek as he had done downstairs earlier. “You are offering yourself to me for two days and three nights,” he said. “You are worth more, Claire. Far more.”
“Life has always been bleakest on Valentine’s Day,” she said. And she wondered somewhere far back in her mind when she would feel horror and embarrassment at having so bared her lonely soul.
“Has it?” His hands framed her face gently, his fingers stroking back the hair from her face. “Has it, Claire?”
And then his arms were about her and drawing her against his body and her own were up about his shoulders and neck, and his mouth was on hers, warm, light, open. Without conscious thought she arched herself against him, feeling hard masculine muscles pressed to her thighs, her stomach, her breasts. She sighed with contentment and parted her lips beneath his so that she could taste him too.
———
He had been wrong. He had been quite certain that it could not be accomplished this first night. Perhaps tomorrow night, he had thought. More probably the last night. Possibly not at all. But he had been wrong.
She was his. His for the taking. He knew it the moment her arms came up about his neck and her body arched to his and her mouth opened beneath his. He knew it as he slid his tongue into her mouth and fondled one of her breasts and felt the taut nipple with his thumb. He knew it as both hands moved down her sides to her small waist and down to her shapely hips and behind to spread themselves over firm buttocks and she neither cringed nor pulled back. She was his.
He returned his hands to her waist and lifted his head. She opened her eyes and looked into his. She was utterly beautiful, he noticed for the first time. Oh, perhaps not in the most obvious of ways. In many ways she was not as lovely as any of the other five ladies belowstairs. But then their beauty was all of the surface. Hers shone from within. Her whole soul looked at him through her eyes.
And he saw Claire. Not just a woman from whom to take his pleasure, a woman on whom to use the sexual expertise of years. He saw a woman whose family and whose own sense of duty had taken her past the usual age of marriage and motherhood. A woman who had compensated outwardly with a quiet dignity. A woman who had allowed him to cut a chink in her armor so that he had glimpsed all the longing and all the loneliness within. A woman who, as he had told her, should have been in her own home at that moment with her own family. But who instead was with him.
She was his, he thought again, with a pang of regret for conscience and for years of life wasted on pleasure and the constant restless search for more pleasure.
“Then we will have to make sure that this is a Valentine’s to remember, will we not?” he said.
“Yes.” She searched his eyes with her soul.
“Romance,” he said. “That is the word, is it not?” It was a word he knew nothing about. “We will avoid the more sordid of Florence’s plans together, you and I, Claire, and seek out romance for two days instead. Shall we?”
She nodded, but she was still looking deeply into his eyes. “Will I be ruining your party?” she asked. “Do you wish to be with the others?” She hesitated. “Do you regret that you picked up my valentine?”
“No,” he said, bending his head to kiss her softly beneath one ear. “No to all of the above.”
“Thank you,” she said, and a smile hovered about her lips for a few moments, so that he found himself inexplicably holding his breath. But she did not allow it to develop.
“It is far too early to go back downstairs,” he said. “We did not get very far in the telling of our life stories, did we? Shall I tell you something of mine? I was my parents’ sole darling for six years before my brother arrived—he is just your age, Claire—and then four sisters in quick succession. I do not believe I have ever recovered my temper.”
He sat down with her again on the bench and took her hand in his, setting it palm down on his thigh and playing with her fingers while he talked. He did not spend much time with his family. He resented their disappointment with his way of life and their occasional reproaches. He hated his eldest sister’s matchmaking schemes, though she had given up her efforts of late. He felt uncomfortable with the fact that they were all married and all parents, even Sarah, the youngest.
However, it was not of his adult estrangement from his family that he talked, but of earlier years when he had been the adored and pestered eldest brother and when he had loved and hated and played and fought with his brother and sisters and felt all the unconscious security of belonging to a large and close family.
“My father died quite unexpectedly,” he said, “when I was only twenty-four. He was the sort of man one would expect to live to a hundred. It was a nasty age to be suddenly saddled with all the responsibilities of a dukedom, Claire, and all those of being head of a family. My mother collapsed emotionally and my brother and sisters resented my authority. And I rebelled.”
“And I suppose,” she said, “that there are those who believe you must be happy because you apparently have everything.”
“Oh, legions of such people,” he said. “You have only the one brother, Claire?”
“Oh, no,” she said. “I have two other brothers and two sisters. All married, like yours. And all parents. I have eleven nieces and nephews to romp with at Christmas and other family gatherings.”
“And you are the youngest,” he said. “The sacrificial lamb.”
“I loved my father,” she said.
“I am sure you did.” He squeezed her hand.
It seemed strange, he thought as she told him some memories of her childhood, to be having such a conversation with a woman. His conversations with women usually consisted of light repartee and sexual innuendo. His more usual dealings with them were entirely physical. He could not remember ever telling any woman—or man either—about his family and childhood. He could never remember any woman wasting time telling him about hers.
He felt strangely honored to have won the confidence of Claire Ward. She looked relaxed and unselfconscious beside him. And then she shivered. There was no fire in the gallery and it was only February.
“You are cold,” he asked.
“Not really,” she said.
But her arm was cool, he could feel when he set an arm about her and drew her against him. “It is time to go back downstairs,” he said regretfully.
“Yes,” she said.
“I imagine the game will be finished now,” he said as they got to their feet and he picked up the branch of candles and offered her his arm.
They descended the stairs in silence. But she paused at the top of the flight leading down to the drawing room. “I don’t want to go back there tonight,” she said. “Will it be ill-mannered if I do not?”
“Not at all,” he said. “And neither do I, Claire. Let us go straight to bed instead.”
She looked calmly into his eyes as he set down the candles on a small table. She did not quite know his meaning, he thought, any more than he did. But there was acceptance in her eyes. She had made à decision up in the gallery, and she was not going to go back on it. He took her arm through his and led her to the door of her bedchamber.
“Claire,” he said, smoothing back her hair from her face with one hand, cupping her cheek with the other, “it has been a lovely day. Romantic.”
“Yes,” she said.
He kissed her softly on the lips and felt her arms come about his waist.
“Let us keep it that way, at least for tonight and tomorrow. Shall we?” he said, looking down into her eyes.
There was a moment’s silence. He watched her swallow. “Yes,” she said.
“Good night, Claire.” He kissed her softly again. “Good night, my valentine.”
“Good night, your gr—” she said. “Good night, Gerard.”
And he opened her door for her and closed it behind her after she had stepped inside. He stood where he was for a while, staring down ruefully at his hand on the doorknob. He could be on the other side of the door with her, he thought. She had been his. That had been very obvious both upstairs and here a few moments ago. And he wanted her badly enough, God knew.
He must be getting soft in the head, he decided, turning away in the direction of his own room. Or perhaps it had just been a fear of the unknown. He had never had a virgin. And he was a total stranger to the sort of tenderness he would need to exercise when bedding Claire. Well, perhaps tomorrow night. Undoubtedly tomorrow night.
———
Claire came awake with a surge. The sun was shining through the window with all the promise of a beautiful day. But it was not newly risen, she thought, sitting up in some surprise and stretching her arms above her head. She must have slept deeply right through the night when she had expected to lie awake.
She got out of bed and crossed to the window on bare feet, heedless of the coolness of the room. She felt wonderful, and indeed it was going to be a glorious day. There was not a cloud in the sky.
She stretched again. There was not a trace left of the sadness she had felt at first the night before when the door of her bedchamber had closed behind her. She had felt bereft and instantly lonely as she had leaned back against the door with closed eyes. And rejected. He did not want her after all. She was perhaps acceptable to talk with and even to kiss. But not for anything else.
But the moment had passed almost instantly. Good night, my valentine, he had said. He had said no when she had asked if he regretted drawing her name. He had said it had been a lovely day. Romantic, he had said. And he had suggested that they keep it that way.
Oh, yes, she thought now, resting her hands on the windowsill and leaning forward to look through the window, yesterday had been wonderfully romantic. And there was the whole of today to look forward to and the whole of tomorrow. And perhaps tonight. She felt her cheeks flushing. But she wanted it, she realized, as much as the romance. Perhaps more so. She wanted it, brazen and immoral as the wanting was. She had been kissed for the first time the day before and it had been far more wonderful than she could possibly have imagined. She wanted the rest of it too. Oh, yes, she did. She wanted to be able to hug to herself for the rest of her life the secret knowledge that once—at Valentine’s—she had been wanted and had herself wanted and that that desire had been satisfied.