Corey McFadden

by With Eyes of Love

  Inches from his own eyes, Elspeth’s beautiful eyes opened slowly. He watched as comprehension dawned in their swimming emerald depths. Confusion changed to horror and she opened her mouth. The scream that began as a squeak ended abruptly as he closed his hand over her mouth. Soft wonderful lips that he had longed for days to taste again.

  “Elspeth, please, I beg of you! Don’t scream. I mean you no harm.”

  She bit him. Hard. Gritting his teeth against the pain, he heaved himself away, kneeling against the tub, careful to keep his hand over her mouth so that she wouldn’t carry through on her obvious intention to scream. “Elspeth, I’m not trying to hurt you. You fainted and I had to pull you up or you’d drown.” She released his hand but glared her fury at him. This was not going well.

  “I’m leaving, I swear it, but please don’t scream when I move my hand,” he said, low in her ear. “It will cause more harm than good. You know that.” She smelled of fresh-washed wet hair, light and lilac. He was aware of the softness of her beneath his hands. He waited. At last she nodded, slowly, but the rage in her eyes had not diminished a whit. He moved his hand away from her mouth, slowly, ready to clamp down again if necessary. It was unforgivable, and he knew it, but he also knew he was right to keep her from screaming. He could leave the same way he’d come, with no one the wiser and, but for the fact that Elspeth would never speak to him again and he’d probably be married to Caroline for all his days, everything would be fine.

  She stayed silent, still staring mutinously into his face. Oh, God, how he wanted to lean forward and kiss her! He turned his head away. No good could come of that line of thinking.

  “I…I did not know you were in the bath, Elspeth. I only wanted to talk to you,” he began. It was lame, and he knew it. He could not, for the life of him, remember what it was he had planned to say to her. In the original scheme, he had come upon her sweetly sewing some bit of lacy stuff in a nice wing chair by a small fire. She had listened, raptly, avidly, to his eloquent explanation, and fallen, weeping tears of joy, into his waiting arms. So far, nothing had gone according to plan.

  I have…I have seen nothing improper, Elspeth, I promise you. The water kept you covered completely. I’ll leave immediately, and no one will ever know...” he faltered. The ice in her eyes was not melting a bit. “I came to tell you,” he made himself go on, “that I did not lay an improper hand on Caroline, that it’s you I love...” he trailed off. It was hopeless. Here he was, draped and dripping over a naked lady he’d accosted in her bath, trying to explain the unexplainable. Her look of furious incredulity told him to stop.

  He stood, slowly, and stared down at the face of his ladylove. She was ice. She was fire. She was not, and now never would be, his.

  He looked up at the window. It was closed, but it should open. With more luck than he deserved, he could scale down the wall the way he had come up. He stepped toward the window, then froze. Behind him he heard, unmistakably, the sound of the door to Elspeth’s bedroom opening, then shutting softly. No doubt Bessie had come to check on whether it was time to remove the bath. Their eyes met. He had thought Elspeth’s rage unbearable, but her horror was so much worse. So far, he was hidden behind the screen, but as soon as the maid stepped around it....

  “Elspeth, are you here? Bessie said you were having your bath,” came Harry’s loud and sibilant whisper. Children, Julian thought, could make more noise with a whisper than most adults could with a shout.

  “I…I’m still in the tub, Harry,” said Elspeth, haltingly. “Why don’t you come back in a…a half an hour?” She looked desperate.

  “Can’t. I’m punished for thrashing that pig Roderick. I had to sneak out of the scullery as it is. I need to talk to you now!”

  “Well,” she began, then looked shrewdly at Julian. “As long as you’re here, why don’t you hand me my dressing gown? It’s hanging on the fire screen. Just close your eyes and hand it in behind the screen.”

  Julian held his breath while he heard fumbling from the other side of the screen. Then a small hand appeared, holding her white lawn dressing gown. Not taking her glare off of Julian, Elspeth reached up and seized the robe.

  “Thank you, dear. I’ll be out in a minute,” she said, far more lightly than her look. She held up her other hand and gestured imperiously for Julian to turn around. He did so, as quietly as he could. Behind him, he heard splashing and rustling, a towel being rubbed over soft, beautiful skin. It was hard keeping his mind off of what was going on back there. Paintings by the very sensual Botticelli came to mind....

  He felt a light tap on his shoulder, and he turned around, half expecting a hard slap across the face. She stood before him, robed from neck to toe, a large fluffy towel wrapped around her hair, and a more beautiful, desirable sight he had never seen. The light from the window fell on her face. If only that were love instead of blazing fury he saw in her green eyes. She placed her finger over her lips in an exaggerated gesture for silence, a deadly warning in her gaze. He nodded his understanding. Throwing him a look of pure venom, she stepped from behind the screen and out of his sight. He could feel his shoulders sag, and he let out his breath.

  * * * *

  “Owl Eyes! You won’t believe what I just found out!” came the expostulation from Harry, who stood looking his usual disreputable self in the center of the room.

  “Hush, dear, not too loudly,” Elspeth answered quickly. It was bad enough that the cad had seen her in the bath, and was still hiding behind the screen, holding her reputation in the palm of his perfidious hand. He need not hear any of her private business, even if it were prattle from a nine-year-old boy.

  “Oh, you’ll want everyone to hear this, Owl Eyes,” boasted the boy, not lowering his voice a bit. “Servants and all!”

  “Let me be the judge of that, please, Harry,” she said, trying to sound stern and cool. Her heart pounded furiously in her chest as she made her way over to one of the two small chairs placed near the fireplace. “Come and tell me, dear,” she said, seating herself and gesturing him over. It occurred to her that she could ask Harry to tell Bessie to leave her be for a time—to leave the bathwater for later—that she had the headache and was lying down. She was desperate to buy time until she could solve this monumental problem. Absently, she removed the towel from around her head and began to squeeze the water from her long tresses.

  “Well, I was just in the drawing room, you see...” Harry began. Children had little enough ability to modulate their piercing tones, but Elspeth put her finger to her lips quickly nevertheless. “And, well, you see, I had to hide, because I was...well, I was running from Bessie because I, well, I sort of hit Roderick and he fussed the place down, and these people came in, and you’ll never guess what I heard...” he had lowered his voice to something that passed for a whisper.

  “Harry, you know I cannot be a party to your eavesdropping,” Elspeth interrupted, almost by rote. It was so hard, being surrogate mother to this wonderful, maddening boy. And it was, if she were blunt with herself, impossible to care a whit for these banal social niceties, such as a distaste for eavesdropping, particularly if one were undressed and had a man hidden in one’s boudoir.

  “Oh, bother that, Elspeth! Just listen! There was a man there and Caroline, and they had a fight about her marrying Mr. Thorpe. Then Caroline left and I tried to sneak out, but then a lady came, and I had to hide again, really fast…a real lady she was, Viscountess Something-or-Other, I forget—and the man said, well, he said Julian did not com...compromise Caroline. Caroline made it look that way, and they tricked Mr. Thorpe into coming into the maze, and this Mr. Randall was a part of it, and he brought you into the maze on purpose to see it! And he said Mr. Thorpe loves you, not Caroline!” He broke off his nonstop recital suddenly. “What does ‘compromise’ mean, anyway, Owl Eyes?” he asked, as if realizing that he had no idea what he was talking about.

  Harry held his silence expectantly, obviously proudly waiting for her to hug him and tell him what a wonde
rful boy he was, “What’s the matter, Owl Eyes?” he finally asked, sounding less certain of himself. “Does compromise mean something awful? I thought you’d be happy about what I told you.”

  Elspeth only heard him from a distance. It seemed impossible for her to open her mouth and speak. She was aware that the child stood looking at her, concerned now, and confused.

  “Elspeth, are you all right?” he said in a very small, frightened voice.

  “Yes. Yes, darling, I’m just fine,” she made herself say. Her head was buzzing and she felt as though she really might faint, twice in a quarter of an hour at that. As dreadful as this situation was, if she could just go away knowing that Julian had loved her after all—well, she could live with that secret joy for the rest of her lonely life. She took Harry’s hand gently. “I just need a little time to myself now.” She couldn’t help glancing at the screen, then looked hurriedly back at Harry’s anxious little face. “Darling, thank you for telling me this. It makes me feel much better, it really does. But I want you to go and tell Bessie that I’m lying down now with the headache and don’t wish to be disturbed about the bath just yet....”

  Too late.

  A light rap on the door and then the sound of the handle turning froze Elspeth’s heart. “Miss Elspeth?” said Bessie, stepping through the door with a bob. “Is Master ’Arry in ’ere?”

  Elspeth, still holding Harry’s hands, gave them a squeeze. She smiled at him. “Go with Bessie, just for now, Harry. I’ll come and rescue you shortly, I promise.” She turned to Bessie. “Here he is, but don’t be too hard on him, Bessie. I suspect strongly that there are two sides to the story.”

  “Oh, indeed, miss,” said Bessie, holding out her hand to the reluctant Harry. “Now, we’ll see to removing your bath, miss.”

  “Oh, no, not yet!” Elspeth said hurriedly, standing. “I have the headache...I want to lie down.”

  “We’ll just be a moment, Miss Elspeth,” said Bessie, who turned and gestured to someone outside the bedroom door. “Miss Caroline is back from shopping with her mother and she wants her bath now.”

  Elspeth just stood there, with her heart pounding out of her chest. Two of the other maids scurried from the hallway into the room, bobbing quickly and smiling timidly at Elspeth; then before she could so much as bolt toward the screen to head them off, they were there before it, efficiently picking it up, folding it and whisking it to the side to reveal.…

  Nothing.

  No one.

  Just an open window and a cooling bathtub.

  Elspeth sank back into the chair, her legs no longer able to support her. Almost in slow motion the maids mopped up the spills and moved in to lift the tub. It took the three of them to lift it, but they seemed to do so with no ill effect. Nodding briskly to Harry to follow, Bessie and the other two maids made their way out of the door, the boy following sluggishly behind. He cast a look of exasperation at Elspeth, but she shooed him away with a tight smile. One of them managed to shut the door behind her. Elspeth waited half a minute, then sprang forward, shooting the lock home. It wasn’t much of a lock, but then, no one was likely to attempt to force it, either.

  She turned. The room was empty, privacy screen folded and off to the side. The window curtain was pulled aside, but it had been so while she bathed. She frowned. Had he jumped? Most unlikely. She would have heard the splat and so would everyone else. Had she dreamed him? Was she destined to be one of those spinsters who so feared ravishment that she imagined men standing over her in the bath? No, he’d been real enough; she knew that much. She made her way over to the window. Hadn’t it been closed while she bathed? While the light from the window was soothing, surely she would have noticed a chilling breeze over her in the tub. Well, it was open now, wide enough for a man to have climbed through. Holding her breath, she approached the window and peered out carefully.

  “Have they gone, then?” Julian asked from just below, startling her. He sat crouched in the narrow ironwork that decorated the window. For a mad moment, Elspeth contemplated slamming the window down on him, and letting him find his way down the way he’d come. She moved forward, but heard, at the same instant he did, the unmistakable sounds of a carriage rattling down the narrow lane.

  “Oh, bother! Come in then, but if you take one step toward me, I shall personally throw you back out of the window.”

  He clamored quickly through. The carriage was still some distance away. With a deft twist, he pulled the window draperies closed, then turned and looked at her. It was all there—in his eyes. In a rush, it came over her—what Harry had said. Julian did love her! Harry had overheard it all. She took one step toward him, then stopped abruptly. It didn’t really matter, did it? Julian was still engaged to Caroline, and under the circumstances, there was no place for her in his life. Having him here in her bedroom, betrothed to another woman as he was, would do nothing but harm.

  “You had best have a plan to remove yourself, unseen from my bedroom immediately, Mr. Thorpe,” she said, trying to keep her voice level. “There is nothing left to be said.” Why, oh why did he have to be so handsome? Why did his eyes speak to her of regret, love, yearning? She knew now, as her own eyes drank their fill, that this would be their last moment alone together, their last chance for....

  Before she could finish the thought, he had crossed the short distance between them. He reached out and gathered her to his chest. She should pull away. She should slap him. She should scream. She should....

  His mouth closed on hers, warm and soft, hungry and delicious. She could hardly remember how to breathe. Somewhere in the back part of her mind, a small voice, very small, indeed, was trying to remind her that this wouldn’t do, that no lady would ever permit such indecencies. His tongue ran gently over her lips and she shushed the little voice to silence. His arms were around her, pulling her closer and closer. Now his hand ran up her back, then down, down, stopping again at her waist. Almost without thinking she raised her arms and embraced him. With a ragged moan, he pulled her yet closer. Now she was sure she could not breathe, and yet, that made no difference as she allowed her lips to part.

  And just as she thought she would drown in his kiss, his lips left hers abruptly, tracing softly, slowly down her cheeks, her throat. He pulled her closer still, his lips now in her hair.

  “I love you so much,” he whispered. “Only you, Elspeth. Always you.”

  “Julian,” she answered, her voice ragged. Her fingers unsure, she traced a line down his chest.

  He moaned and grabbed her hand, pressing it against his mouth. His lips traveled down her arm, to her shoulder, lingering there. She could smell the freshness of him, clean cotton, clean hair. He moved his lips slowly to the base of her throat. Her head fell back and a moan escaped her. His hands traveled down to her hips and he pressed her to him. She gasped as she felt his hardness. Her light lawn wrapper hid nothing from him, and nothing from her. Never had she dreamed lovemaking could feel like this. His whole body quivered as he pressed his hardness against her.

  His lips found hers again and she marveled that they could be so soft, and yet so hard at the same time. Gently, slowly, his tongue found hers and again she gasped as a shudder ran through her. His hand strayed from her back around, slowly, up...up, and came to rest lightly on her breast, fingers circling her nipple. The shock ran through her as she pushed against him, now unsure of what it was she so desperately sought.

  “Ah, Elspeth, you are so magnificent!” he whispered in her hair. “I could love you like this forever. I need no sustenance but you.” As if to demonstrate his words, his lips devoured hers again. But now his hands moved around her again, lightly touching, rubbing her back. And his lips were soft and gentle now, not demanding and insistent as but a moment before.

  Again he slid his mouth to her cheek and then to her hair. Then he pulled back, and regarded her. There was no doubt of the love that lit his eyes. His hands cupped her face with great tenderness. “Let’s sit down, my heart,” he whispered. “
If I keep on like this I cannot vouch for my control.” He slipped his hands down her shoulders, her arms, then clasped her hands, as chastely as he would a child’s. He drew her gently away from the window, toward the small divan placed to one side of the room. He sat her down, then stood over her, regarding her softly.

  “Will you marry me, my love?” he asked gently.

  Her heart gave an impossible twist. Love him as she did, there could be no honorable marriage between them. The die was cast. He was engaged to the perfidious Caroline. She could not find her voice.

  “Ah,” he said quickly, possibly mistaking her silence. “I haven’t done that right, have I? Forgive me, please. I’ve had no practice whatsoever.” Practice or no, he slid with a fluid grace to his knee and clasped her hand in his own. “Would you, Miss Quinn, do me the ultimate honor, and consent to be my wife?”

  “But, Julian, how can this be?” she finally stammered in answer. “I do believe you now, and I’m sorry I ever doubted you, but you are betrothed to my cousin, however that came to be and that, I think, is that. You cannot cry off now. You’d be shunned forever.”

  “Why would I care what any of these fools think, Elspeth?” he asked, simply.

  She withdrew her hand and looked away. It was hard to think with him right there before her, knee bent. She could still feel the heat of him, up and down the length of her. It made thinking so difficult. “You perhaps do not care now, Julian,” she began, trying to marshal her thoughts. “But, later, it will matter. When your children are shunned for it. When your wife is branded a loose and designing woman. You might even”—her voice caught in her throat—“you might even begin to believe those lies, to feel I had trapped you and doomed you to a life of ostracism. I should hate to have you despise me. That would he worse than anything else....”