“So I have deduced correctly.”
To his credit, Nilworth made no attempt to massage his fist, although Lunden might have cracked a finger or two.
The crowd along the Grand Walk had thinned, most guests having reached their viewing destination, and Lunden darted his eyes left and right, concerned who might witness the conversation, or worse, spread ugly rumors about the altercation come morning. He didn’t wish Amelia’s reputation left in tatters due to his poor judgment. His welfare mattered little in comparison. No one might recognize his face, but his name remained another matter altogether.
“Don’t touch the lady.” There was no mistaking his deadly tone. “Ever.”
“How very gallant, Scarsdale. Perhaps time has been kind to you after all and taught you to respect one’s privacy.”
The barb struck its mark and answered a pointed question riddling Lunden’s mind. Nilworth knew of his son’s preferences and vehemently protected his interest. Perhaps so much as to purchase a piece of property his son desired. The anonymous man in the coach—Lunden grasped the thought before it evaporated.
“You should sell it, settle your affairs, and be gone. Why risk exposure when the whole matter can be resolved without messy gossip and harmful rumors?”
Was the damned man clairvoyant? Could Nilworth read his contemplations so easily?
“I’ll proceed as I see fit without your midnight subterfuge or cryptic advice.” Little had changed in a decade. London remained as unforgiving as always. He needed to rid himself of all reminders of the past. Every last one of them. Beckford Hall never seemed more appealing. At last to be gone from this infernal city with its societal pressure and predisposed conclusions. He paused to consider the consequences. He’d lose Amelia in the process, but that proved a suitable penance. He didn’t deserve her.
Yet no matter his rationalizations, that one realization created a wound he knew would never heal.
“Very well, then. We’ll conclude our business at a later date.” Nilworth nodded. “As long as you stir up no further trouble, the past will remain where it belongs.”
Lunden took in Amelia’s unforgiving glare. She too despised the man. As Nilworth departed, he soothed her temper the best he was able. “It is of no consequence, Troublemaker.” He hoped the term of endearment would soften the anger alive in her emerald eyes. “We’ll both rid this city before week’s end.”
She lowered her eyes and he was unsure of her reaction although distress radiated from her, a result of their near altercation with Nilworth or his concluding words, he could not know. A moment later, brilliant yellow sparks lit the sky, a rainstorm of fireworks overhead.
He shifted their position so he embraced her from the back, his chest supporting her shoulders, his arms in a loose circle around her waist while she looked to the sky. He lost himself in the jasmine beauty of her scent, silky comfort of her midnight curls, desperate to press his lips to the delicate pulse at her temple, but he would not allow himself.
Tonight was their good-bye. It was better this way. Any further affection would make the hurt that much sharper. It already cleaved his heart in two with a desperate ache only equaled in depth by the pain experienced as he stood beside his brother’s coffin.
Chapter Twenty-Three
It was well past midnight when they parted, and as Lunden paced his bedchamber, brandy in hand, he considered the twisted path of his stay at the Whittingham town house and how he’d managed to make his life more complicated while endeavoring to make it less so.
Amelia enjoyed Vauxhall as he knew she would. The minx. He’d miss her, terribly, but she deserved so much more than a regretful husband with a tormented history. She wished for freedom in marriage, strove for independence, and he represented the opposite in every manner imaginable. A caged bird could never fly. He wouldn’t clip her wings.
Lost in despair, he startled when a light knock sounded at his door. He’d relieved the valet. His eyes flicked to the clock, the intrusion unexpected.
He opened the panel and breathed a sigh of relief? Frustration? His thoughts were too muddled to determine which. His eyes soaked in Amelia on the threshold of his bedchamber.
“May I come in? My brother will be displeased if he sees me at your rooms or worse, gains the information from one of the servants.”
He ran his fingers through his hair as he sought to assuage an inner battle.
“Besides, I’ll get a pinch in my neck looking up at this angle. It would be most considerate.”
Against his better judgment, he stepped to the left and allowed her entry. She scuttled inside without delay, and he imagined her concerned he would change his mind and bar the proposal she’d likely mentally rehearsed. He closed the door and leaned one shoulder against the farthest bedpost, his arms crossed over his chest in what he hoped was a negligent pose. She needed to find her tongue before his brain melted and he no longer harbored the ability to reason.
“Thank you.” She sighed with the words.
“What can I do for you?” Damn it all to hell. From where had that question sprung? Not his brain, nor his gut. Apparently, his cock had taken control. One glimpse of Amelia’s plump, kissable lips and he turned inside out. What caused this lack of judgment?
Amelia.
She appeared at his door, full of wild hope and untamed goodness, with an earnest appeal for a dishonest man incapable of solving his own problems. The irony was not lost on him. He dared another glance in her direction, the battle to repress anticipation lost by the eager twinkle in her emerald eyes. Why did she torture him so? She wore a silky white wrapper, decorated with lacy pink roses, and the image struck him as ethereal, an angel come to Earth, although he knew her temperament to be anything but heavenly. He needed to dispel these thoughts and quell his desire.
She took a step in his direction and every muscle tensed.
“I need your help. I know you wish to complete your business as soon as possible and this will delay your departure. . . unless something else keeps you here?”
Her quiet question eroded his stoic resolve. Muted candlelight caught the green-gold flecks in her eyes and lent sheen to her magnificent mane of curls. Trapped by her gaze, he forced himself not to react, to deny her pull. He’d decided a decade ago to claim a solitary existence and live outside society. Loneliness inured him to silence and so it should. Due to life’s unexplained ironies, he now battled against the unexpected result and the discovery a strong part of him wished to remain in London.
All due to Amelia and her seductive kiss.
An ache of disquiet settled in his chest.
She searched his face, her eyes huge in the reflected light, full of blind belief and some other emotion he couldn’t name. Her voice was barely a whisper. “I want you to stay.”
Her words of irresistible enticement shone like a crevice of light in his dark soul, as if she’d heard his heart’s contemplations and voiced the yearning he struggled to suffocate. He banished the surge of longing, his only defense against the startling power she yielded. Deep down, he would move heaven and earth to have her, if only he wasn’t bound for hell, love no longer welcome in his heart.
“You need to go. This can’t happen. It won’t happen.” He shook his head for emphasis, all the while striving in desperation to convince himself the words were for the best, that he didn’t need her as a fish needed water, that one glance in her direction did not cause his pulse to lurch. “I owe loyalty to your brother and you deserve better.” Far better than me.
She pressed her lips together, as if she thought to reply in one manner and then reconsidered. “I deserve better than Collins, but my brother, the man to whom you pledge your loyalty, feels no such allegiance to his sister. I pleaded with him today at luncheon, but the decision has been made. As a boon, I’m granted a one-week courtship to become acquainted with my new husband. Then I am to acquiesce, say my vows, and leave London for a country estate, all without objection.” Her voice held a reluctant quiver. “
My brother asks too much.”
Good God, Matthew hadn’t told her about the children. Was her brother mad? How could he condemn her to a drastic change in lifestyle and not confess the outrageous terms? He knew she yearned for a love match, not an uncommon idealistic female vision, but to uproot her from everything familiar and thrust her into marriage and motherhood in one sweep of the pen seemed callous at the least. She fought hard to present a visage of bravery, but the way her voice shook revealed unadulterated fear.
If only he could offer her fortitude. He entertained no illusions of love. Pretending emotions did not exist remained his favored preoccupation, but memories often served as more formidable enemies. Memories brought with them emotion and somehow he knew he would always remember Amelia and the time they’d shared, never mind their kisses and shared intimacies.
He drew a long breath. “You were aware marriage loomed in the near future. There’s your father’s health to consider and your brother’s determination.”
“My brother’s selfishness,” she countered with a bitter note. “He wishes to shirk his responsibility or finagle an enticing gain from this union. How else could he suggest Collins as the most sensible choice? Matthew is so consumed by his involvement with that intellectual society he rarely socializes enough to understand relationships from a woman’s point of view.” Her voice softened and some of her anger dissipated as she leaned against the opposite bedpost in a reflection of his pose.
“What is it you want?” Foolish question with no good answer, but he asked it anyway.
Their eyes met and held for several breathless minutes. Unable to maintain her crystal gaze, he dropped his eyes to the bed’s coverlet, stretched between them as blank as a piece of paper in wait of words left unsaid.
* * *
Amelia’s heart skipped a beat at his question. What did she want? How could he not know? Had their time together meant so little?
I want a man who makes me feel like you do. Alive. Free. Cherished. I want you. She substituted the words. “I want what every woman desires. A love match, or at the least, a relationship built on friendship and mutual respect.”
“Your brother knows this.”
“My brother deceives me for his own purpose.”
“And you don’t believe a congenial relationship with Collins is possible?” The tight set of his mouth revealed how preposterous he considered the proposition.
“No.” A wild note curled into her voice and the answer erupted with quick finality. “I want more. I feel nothing when I look at him.” She raised her chin and stared into the warm brown depth of his gaze. “Not at all how I feel when I view you.” The words fell from her lips as easily as her heart had taken the plunge. She scrutinized his reaction, wandering first from his eyes to the hard set of his jaw, then lower where his shirt parted to a careless vee and exposed the tanned skin of his neck. His pulse lived there and she yearned to place a kiss against his heartbeat.
“Amelia.” There was a dark quality in his voice, a husky low timbre, and his stare focused on her mouth as if he wished her words returned. “I should never have taken liberties during your swimming lesson or in the study. I forgot myself. You should be angry with me, at least half as much as I regret the action.”
“I have no regrets, nor should you. The loyalty you pledge to Matthew is a virtue he doesn’t uphold, epitomized by his selfish decision.” She pushed forward from the post and took a single step.
She loved him.
She loved Lunden.
A blissful shiver chased the realization down to the middle of her bones. Faced with the awareness she remained helpless to her brother’s machinations, the newly born fact empowered her. “I’ve no control over my future, but I control now.” The soft tread of her feet punctuated each word. “I may have few choices left to me, but I know my mind and own my heart, free to give it to whoever I choose.” She stopped before him, her heart drumming against her ribs in a wild tattoo. “And my body . . .” She untied the belt of her wrapper and let it slither to the floorboards. “I offer my body to the man I choose.”
“Amelia.”
“Yes?” With fingers that trembled only a little, she reached behind her neck and unbuttoned her night rail. Then before she could think otherwise, she angled her shoulders and sent the gown sliding downward in a soft whisper of silk against skin. She stood before him vulnerable and never in more control.
His throat worked as he swallowed whatever objection he meant to voice, his attention a palpable heat.
A cloud passed over the moon, sinking the room in shadow and obstructing the generous glow that flooded the uncurtained windows. The steady rhythm of rain began against the glass panes. If she were of a superstitious nature, she would label the change in weather foreboding, but instead she relaxed, finding comfort in the blue-gray reflection, and exhilaration in her bold decision.
“Amelia.”
It was the third time he’d voiced her name, but this time it was no admonishment, the single word a velvet caress. The look in his eyes affected her like warm cognac and she moved forward, no more than the width of one step left between them. Her hands twitched with restless desire. She wanted to run her fingertips across his unshaven jaw, explore the rough sensation before skimming his soft, sensuous mouth, absorbing his strength, his warmth, but she could not. She offered; he must accept. It could be no other way.
The low rumble of thunder underscored the tremulous beat of her heart. The air became too taut to breathe. Why wouldn’t he say something? Do something? Time stalled as if she lived the experience in a faraway dream. A sharp strike of lightning rent the sky and exposed the room within a flash of brilliance. She saw his face revealed, amber eyes smoldered with passion, a muscle at work on the side of his jaw.
At last he wet his lips and forced words.
“Put your robe on.” His words cut a husky pitch in the stillness.
“ No.”
* * *
Damn her boldness.
He wanted her. He ached for her. But she was not his to take. He’d ended Douglas’s life, compromised Matthew’s in turn. Ruining Amelia would be unforgivable and deadlier than any of his former sins.
“This isn’t a game, Amelia.” Heat surged through every nerve as he struggled to recover some sense of equilibrium, his body hard and impatient.
“I’m aware of every choice I make.” She sounded unworried, as reckless as her decision. “If you want me clothed, you’ll have to do it.” Her words were a velvet command, her voice enticement.
A long, drawn silence took hold until he could bear it no longer. Before him, bare as a pagan goddess and perfectly formed, stood his dream come to life. How many evenings had he lain awake envisioning her in the same pose, an elusive deity of lust and pleasure at the edge of his mattress, at the ready to offer him everything he desired but did not deserve?
He knelt near her feet. She made a soft sound in her throat and he felt it on his skin. He kept his eyes forced to the floor and gathered her wrapper, cool against the heat of his palms. He dared not drag his gaze upward. It would take little for his rampant desire to obliterate all control, but while the singular decree burned his brain and his fingers collected the silky cloth puddled near her ankles, his eyes disobeyed, skimming the fluid curve of her calves, the soft skin at the back of her knees, the divine sweetness between her legs. He burned to taste her there, to feel the thrum of her pulse, to press hard kisses to the sensuous velvet of her thighs.
Damn it to hell, he wanted her too much. And wanting was dangerous. Wanting demanded a price, at times so high, he’d become indebted for the rest of his life. Experience taught him this lesson well, but none of it mattered. He ignored logic as his resolve evaporated, and irrepressible emotion took hold.
He rose from where he knelt, smoothing the silk wrapper over each lush curve until in a strong thrust forward he captured her body against his.
Her gasp of pleasure caused an incoherent hurtle of his heart and a wicked
grin begged for release. Her lips parted as he leaned in close, his pant of breath warm against her skin. In response he wrapped her tighter, sculpting her luscious feminine form in expensive silk and trapping her arms at her sides.
He lingered on the edge of a treacherous precipice, unable to remember the last time he felt so powerless and so strong, and the more he considered the treasured paradox wrapped within his grasp, the less logic mattered. His world tilted at an incoherent angle, unable to level.
As if on cue, a crack of thunder emphasized the realization, the subsequent flash of lightning illuminating his storm of emotion. Rain beat heavily, thrumming against the windows in an echo of his racing heart. She gave a profound shudder and he allowed his smile freedom.
“My beautiful tempest, is this your wish?” He yearned to capture her delicious mouth in a soul-searing kiss. “Know that life is intractable. There is no second sunrise once the day begins.” He’d learned that lesson well.
Her nod of agreement sent a rustle of dark ringlets over his fists where they clenched her robe, their satiny softness in competition with the fabric.
“I want this. I want you.”
Her oft-maddened reasoning couldn’t be trusted, and so he delayed, no matter the blood pounding through his veins and demanded he act.
“You can change your mind. Leave my rooms. Return to your chamber and we’ll never speak of this moment.” It killed him to voice the words, but he managed, some ill-begotten shred of decency able to pierce his haze of desire. Or perhaps it was his conscience that forced the statements, unwilling to shoulder the blame for further tragedy and careless decision making.
She drew a sharp breath and the tight tip of each breast traced a line on the skin of his forearms, the sensation so intimate, it was as though the silk didn’t exist. He fought against the maelstrom of emotions bombarding his better sense.
“Don’t you want me?”
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