“If this involves pirates or highwaymen or kidnappers, I’m killing both of you,” Creighton said as he put out his cigar and left his other male guests to fend for themselves. “If they hang me for it, at least I won’t have to marry.”
Fitzhugh snorted. “With your mother? Don’t count on it.”
* * *
He’d actually heeded her note, the dratted man.
Minerva stood at the crest of the front lawn and took in the various groupings of guests dotted about the neatly cropped, verdant expanse. Nearly a week and Sebastian had made no real effort to… catch her alone and kiss her senseless. Which was exactly what she’d ordered him to do. Men so seldom did as they were told. Perhaps that was the source of her irritation.
Men who never did what one expected.
Men who thought they knew best.
Men who demanded nothing from her.
Men who offered her an obsessive adoration she could never return.
Men who showed up after nine years and expected a woman to fall into his arms as if nothing had happened.
“Minerva, what on earth has you in such a scowl? You’ll frighten the poor servants to death.” Aphrodite fell into step beside her as they crossed the lawn.
“If Lady Creighton doesn’t frighten them, nothing will,” Minerva muttered.
Ditey’s laughter carried to the nearest group of ladies, which as luck would have it, included Lady Creighton. The countess raised her lorgnette, frowned and turned back to her conversation.
“I should not have said that.” Minerva looped her arm through Ditey’s and steered them towards the long tables of refreshments she’d had set up near the garden benches at the end of the rose beds.
“Why not? It’s true.” Ditey lifted a glass of lemonade from a table and handed it to Minerva. “Colonel Brightworth’s kiss. That’s what has you in such a fit of pique.”
Minerva choked on her lemonade. She sent a flurry of furtive glances around them. “Keep your voice down. I am not in a fit of anything.”
“Then why are you dragging me through Mama’s rose bushes towards the lake as if your skirts are on fire?”
Minerva stopped so quickly her poor friend nearly tripped over her. She took a few quick breaths and smoothed the skirts of her favorite jade green walking dress. Across the lake, the pretty Grecian temple beckoned in the sunlight. It sat peacefully reflected in the mirrored surface of the lake, the trees of the home wood draped behind it like a shawl. The perfect place to hide until she knew her own mind and heart again. She’d known perfectly until she walked into Creighton’s library and dumped a tea tray on Sebastian Brightworth.
“You told me it was a mistake, a momentary madness.” Ditey touched her arm. “Are you certain, Minerva? It didn’t look like madness to me. It looked like passion, the deep abiding sort.”
“Passion without love is madness.” Minerva forced a smile. “And what might you know about it, Lady Aphrodite?”
“More than you or Mama think.” Aphrodite shrugged and started to walk back towards the house.
“Ditey?” Minerva caught her arm.
“Water under the bridge, my friend.” Her wistful expression nearly broke Minerva’s heart. “Mine never came back. But yours appears to be coming to meet us.” She nodded towards the terrace. “If that kiss I witnessed is any example of the Colonel’s ardor…”
“It was an example of his arrogance and lust. Love is an expense. Sebastian abhors expense.” It was a truth with the sting of an entire forest of nettles. He’d obeyed her wishes. He’d not attempted another kiss. And somewhere deep inside a seventeen-year-old girl kicked, and screamed, and wept for all she was worth. Too bad of her, but the feather-brained henwit would have to soldier on towards oblivion. The twenty-six-year-old widow had a son to raise and a perfectly rational earl to marry.
“Do you love my brother, Minerva?” Not a terribly appropriate question less than a week before her wedding. Save for Aphrodite was her betrothed’s only sister and had witnessed Minerva in the arms of a perfectly inappropriate scoundrel.
“Ditey, I am to marry him in less than a week. What a question.” Minerva watched as two young ladies intercepted Creighton, Fitzhugh, and Sebastian on the lawn. Lady Creighton had invited a lovely crop of alternatives to a mature widow with a crippled son. Dressed in pale muslins they fanned, and flirted, and flittered around Creighton and Fitzhugh like insipid butterflies. Sebastian, with no title to inherit and his reputation as a rake who valued nothing so much as the clink of coins and the arms of rich widows, held no attraction for them. She wished fervently he held no attraction for her.
“Minerva!” Ditey shook her so hard her bonnet went askew.
“Yes?” She untied the silly pink confection and removed it. Why did they insist women cover their heads no matter how warm the day?
“I want you to marry Creighton.” Her expression was more serious than Minerva had ever seen it. “He needs someone to love him and care for him. And I know you would be a good wife to him.”
“I fully intend to, Ditey, and—”
Sebastian bowed to the young ladies and began to cover the stretch of green with long, uncompromising strides. He’d been whipcord lean in his youth. The man who even now appeared intent upon interrupting her conversation with Aphrodite was broad-shouldered, lean hipped and had thighs muscled enough to fill Weston’s very best buckskins.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake!” Ditey plucked the bonnet from Minerva’s fingers and started to walk away.
“Ditey, what is the matter?” She hurried to follow her friend. Sebastian drew closer with every step.
“Not a thing in the world.” She grabbed Minerva by the shoulders and turned her back towards the approaching colonel. “Except you may be settling for safe and comfortable when you should be reaching for dangerous and scandalous. A chance at something very few of us find even once, let alone twice.”
“Oh, Ditey, for goodness sake,” Minerva declared as she tried to walk the other way.
“If the kiss I saw was any indication goodness will have nothing to do with it,” Ditey said with a wink. “Colonel Brightworth,” she called with a wave. “Have you seen the willow grove Mama had planted at the far end of the lake?” Ditey’s hand gripped her arm like a crone after her last bottle of blue ruin.
“I have not had the pleasure, Lady Creighton.” Sebastian bowed, his eyes never leaving Minerva’s face. “Will you show me Mrs. Faircloth?”
Stealing Minerva: Chapter Eight
As it would cast a pall on the wedding to kill Ditey beforehand, Minerva vowed to dispatch her conniving friend immediately following the ceremony. The fate of the man on whose arm she now strolled was still in question. A slight breeze teased his hair away from his forehead. The clean, damp scent of the water mixed with his cologne and stirred Minerva’s memory to another day by another lake. As then, Sebastian abbreviated his strides to accommodate hers and walked in contented silence. He exuded every sort of temptation and she exhausted every trick she knew to render those temptations mute. Why could one not pluck out useless memories and spread them on the water like so much bread for ducks to carry away?
“Aren’t we a bit past the sulking silence treatment with each other, Min?” he finally asked, once the front lawn full of guests faded behind them.
“That depends.”
“On?”
“Is it working?”
He smiled, but did not laugh. “I did as you asked. I left you alone.” He covered her gloved hand that rested on his arm with his ungloved fingers.
“Until today.” The side of his body pressed to hers radiated warmth. Not heat, although to some there might be no difference. With him, there was. His was the warmth of a comforting fire after a long winter’s day. As much as she feared the fire of his passion, Minerva feared the comfort simply walking at his side afforded even more.
“Today I decided there was something I needed to tell you. Something I cannot in good conscience allow to go unsa
id.” His sincere tone tickled at another memory. Not a good one. The thick grass pulled at the soles of her slippers. What was he about?
“Hence your ruse about seeing the willow grove.” She indicated the carefully structured bower a few steps ahead of them.
“A ruse? I am mortally wounded. Surely you have not forgotten my fondness for garden design.” He stopped and turned just enough to peer into her uplifted face.
“To have spent so much of your youth here, you have plotted most of this visit to having me show you things I suspect you’ve already seen. How many more times shall I be subjected to this childish trick?”
“It isn’t a childish trick if it works.” He grinned. The boyish grin she remembered from all those years ago.
“I believe it has run its course, Colonel. There is very little here you have not seen.”
“I wouldn’t go that far.” His grin broadened. There were times being a lady greatly limited one’s ability to truly express oneself. Especially when one wanted to punch a randy colonel in the… nose.
“You’re right. There is one more thing I’d love to show you.” She steered him closer to the bank where a half dozen handsome ducks paddled in the shallows.
He dug in his heels and pulled her too him. Her traitorous heart thudded a few times and then turned into a runaway horse, headed for home.
“And what might that be, Min?” His dark baritone glided over the lapping of the water.
“The lake.” Ooh, how could her voice choose now to go all soft and breathless?
“I’ve seen the lake.” His assured tone and cocky grin belied the passion and, yes, confusion in his eyes.
“Not the bottom of it.” Minerva gave him a shove, ducked under his flailing arm and made for the willow grove. He caught her just as she entered the sheltering coolness of the trees, their feathery boughs draped to the ground like the curtains of a four-poster bed. Not a good reference at all. He must have worn old boots or she didn’t shove him hard enough.
He turned her to face him. “I said I want to talk to you, Minerva. Are you afraid to talk to me?” His expression was so curious – half hurt, half fear.
“Very well, what is it? What is so important you have secreted me away, courting scandal, to tell me? Is that it? You hope to cause Lord Creighton to throw me over? He won’t you know. He is too honorable a man to do so.” Well that barb hit home. Sebastian flinched and looked away. Minerva sighed. “I must return to—”
“He’ll never love you, Min,” Sebastian blurted, his fingers digging into her shoulders.
“Oh because you didn’t, he won’t either?” The sudden sting of tears surprised her.
“I never said I didn’t… that is.” He let go of her and ran his hands through his hair. “I’m making a shambles of this.”
“That much is certain.” She folded her arms across her chest.
“Why do you think his mother invited all of these eligible females to your wedding?”
“She is a snobby, hateful, scheming witch?”
“Yes, there is that.” He took Minerva’s hands in his. Strong hands, shaking a mere tremor, but shaking. Why? “She did it because she knows it doesn’t matter. He can marry you.”
“He will marry me.”
“Or one of them. It won’t matter to him. He can never love you or any of them because he loves another and he always will. You are setting yourself on the road to heartache.” He squeezed her hands. He meant those words. She knew him well enough to tell. Which is why she laughed. Long and loud, she laughed, and not with a lady’s laughter.
“Oh, Sebastian,” she said when she’d recovered enough to speak. “It is very sweet of you to try and save me.” Every bit of charity went out of her. The road to heartache? He would know. He’d set her and everyone who loved her on that road nine years ago when he walked away. He’d dragged her out here for this? She did not dare give a moment’s thought to what she’d hoped. That way lay only more pain. He stood staring at her in disbelief.
“I don’t understand.” He clearly didn’t.
“Her name is Ophelia. I know all about her. And I know he will never love me. That is what makes him so perfect.” She stepped past Sebastian and tried to fight her way through the maze of willow branches. Suddenly she was spun around and crushed against a broad, ragged-breathing chest. She pressed her fists against it to no avail. Finally, she looked up at his face.
“You know? Perfect? How can that be perfect?” He shook her. He actually shook her and it was the tiniest bit thrilling. “I told you because I wanted to save you from a loveless marriage and years of passionless nights in bed. I would never forgive myself if—”
Minerva had reached the outside of enough and more. One more man saving her when she did not want to be saved, and this man… this man of all men. She’d hoped he meant to do one thing and now he’d done the last thing he had any right to do. She flattened her hands against his chest and pushed until he released her.
“Forgive? Sebastian, when have you ever forgiven anyone anything?”
“What?” He looked as if she’d clouted him on the head. Good.
“There is no forgiveness in you, Sebastian, not even for yourself. Especially for yourself. Have you forgiven your brother or your grandmother? Have you forgiven your father for leaving you with nothing? Have you forgiven—”
“Forgiveness is a weakness, Min. It gives people and memories leverage over you.”
“An expense.”
“If you wish. That has nothing to do with this.”
“It has everything to do with it.” She stepped close enough to touch his hand. “It isn’t your fault your mother died, but you will never believe it. You don’t believe in anything except money. That’s why you didn’t marry me nine years ago. You will never trust yourself or the safety of those you love to anything save money. And money is cold comfort when someone has nothing else to give.” She parted the willows enough to see the magnificent house in the distance. “Ask Creighton.”
He turned away. “It is the only thing that might have saved her.”
“She isn’t here to save. She trusted you to carry on and to find happiness. To trust someone else enough to let them be your happiness without worrying that tomorrow it might be gone.”
“She trusted my father and that worked out very well, didn’t it?” His hunched shoulders flexed against the blue superfine of his coat. He clasped his hands behind his back in a grip so tight his knuckles blanched white. Once she’d wanted to ride into battle to fight the demons pressed on those shoulders. Now there was Edward and she had other demons to fight.
“I want that trust and it isn’t in your power to give it. You’ve given it to something else. And I wish you very happy with it.” She gave a shaky laugh. “And I won’t be spending passionless nights in Creighton’s bed. I don’t fancy sharing my bed with a ghost, and he doesn’t fancy sharing his bed with me.” She smiled brightly. “I told you. Perfect.” In an entire conversation of too much Minerva saw the moment it became too much for Sebastian. And damn her for a wanton fool. She did nothing to stop it.
He spun on his heel, reached for her and crushed his lips to hers before she had a chance to even breathe. He nipped her bottom lip. Teased her with his tongue – flicking, touching, retreating, and then thrusting when she opened to him. A low growl vibrated his chest. Their tongues glided together, fought for control, surrendered only to join in ever quickening strokes. He ran his hands down her back and cupped her bottom, pulling her into the thickening bulge at the front of his buckskins. When he finally paused for breath it was only to burn kisses behind her ear, down her throat to the hollow at the base of her neck. He licked her there, nipped, and kissed. He moved one hand to brush across a breast grown more heavy and sensitive with his every kiss. Minerva thought she might die from the delirious passion, the uncontrollable desire he stoked in her and she in him. She knew it. Tasted it on the heat of his lips. Sensed it in the rough scrape of his hands. Heard it in his rum
bled moans. The wind pushed the gossamer strands of willow branches against her face.
In an instant, it was gone. All of it. He pushed her away, holding her from him by her arms just above her elbows. She shook her head to clear it of the sudden fog of cold and wind and something fierce and frightening inside the willow bower with them.
“You are a passionate woman, Minerva,” he growled. “You’ll marry Creighton and sleep alone for the rest of your life? Will that make you happy?” Dear God, he was in a rage. What difference did it make to him? Why was he doing this?
Because he could, damn him. Because she let him. Men and their passions and rages and all the while she’d been made to bear the guilt of men’s starts and fits, none of which she’d asked for or wanted. Nearly none. Nearly.
She shook her arms free and touched her hair back into place. “Yes, I’ll marry Creighton. He trusts me to never ask for something he cannot give. And I trust him never to give me the one thing I never want again.”
“What is that?”
“A love I can never, ever return.” She stumbled out of the bower, blinded by tears she willed herself not to shed. His footsteps followed her, caught up to her, and passed her as he stalked across the lawn and did not look back. He soon joined Lord Creighton and Lord Fitzhugh on a rise overlooking the area of the lawn where the ladies’ archery contest had been set up. Lady Creighton’s chosen young ladies arrayed themselves across from the targets and chattered like a flock of magpies in an effort to draw the gentlemen’s attentions to their efforts.
“Mrs. Faircloth,” a pretty, petite blond called to her. “Please come and join us. I am certain your years of practice will put the rest of us to shame.” A smile that put her in mind of a rabid dog, creased the girl’s perfect, cream-colored cheeks.
“You shoot her in one leg and I’ll shoot her in the other,” Ditey appeared out of nowhere to whisper in Minerva’s ear.
“I am not in a humor to play games with spoiled chits just out of the schoolroom and on the hunt for my fiancé.” She glanced at Creighton who waved at her in spite of being in the middle of some sort of heated conversation with Sebastian.
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