Beyond A Wicked Kiss

by Jo Goodman

  "You know I did not ask for this."

  "Of course I know. Do you imagine that matters a whit? What's done is done. I will tell you frankly that I have inquired as to the legalities, but it seems he was thorough in his documentation. Mr. Ridgeway reports that everything is in order and there is nothing to be done regarding the duke's wishes save carry them out."

  And that is what they were doing, West supposed: parsing out their words carefully, practicing something that passed for civility, gauging weakness and strength. There had been no love lost between them, but then how could it have been otherwise? They had never known each other except in a remote sort of way. "It has been distressing for your wife?"

  "Distressed is what she is when soup is brought cold to the table. There is no word that adequately describes her mood now that we have arrived at this pass."

  This comment might have been lifted to the level of a jest if West had not already learned his brother was humorless. He matched Tenley's gravity. "I am sorry to hear of it."

  Whatever Tenley had begun to form as a reply was cut short by Ria's return. He did not rise as she entered the room, but favored her with his glacial blue stare. "That was not well done of you, Maria, bringing the children here. You know I cannot abide that sort of interruption. I will not have it encouraged."

  "Forgive me, Tenley," she said with some effort at contriteness. "I cannot imagine what I was thinking."

  "You weren't. That is precisely the problem. You know I don't hold with your notion that children should be underfoot."

  "That is not my notion. I merely think that they should be out of the nursery on occasion and—"

  "They are. Nanny Chapel and Mrs. Burke often have them in the garden."

  "You did not allow me to finish. I also think they should be in the company of their parents."

  "Why? They are wholly uninteresting."

  She was tempted to inquire if he was referring to himself and Lady Tenley or his children. Thinking better of the jibe, she said, "That you could think so proves how little time you spend with them."

  "I don't deny it."

  West listened to this exchange with growing amazement, although he took pains not to reveal it. He had been around South and his sister Emma often enough to recognize the sparring that was part and parcel of being siblings. If it were not the subject of the children that brought them to loggerheads, they would have found something else. The teasing that was often present in the matches he observed between Southerton and Emma did not exist here, but West decided it was because Tenley was so lacking in the ability to laugh at himself.

  It was also not possible to miss that there was some strain between them. It was suggested in the slight rigidity of Ria's carriage and the tightness about Tenley's eyes and mouth. The cause of it was not so easy to discern, but West was developing a hypothesis he meant to test in the future. If he was right, it would go a long way to explaining things he did not currently understand.

  West offered Ria his chair, but she chose the sofa instead. "I did not mean to interrupt your coze."

  Tenley's upper lip curled. "Yet you have done so twice. Still, it is preferable to listening at the door."

  "I do not listen at doors."

  West coughed politely into his fist.

  "Are you certain you won't have that drink?" asked Tenley.

  "Thank you, but no. It is nothing."

  Tenley shrugged and stood. "If you will excuse me. I mean to inquire after my wife."

  West nodded and said nothing until Tenley was out of the room. "Do you suppose he will take his cue from you and press his ear to the door?"

  "Unfair," Ria said. "I did it once and am heartily sorry for it. I wish I had not told you."

  "You probably should not have. It is the sort of thing I am likely to hold over your head now and again." He held up his hand, staving off her reply. "Tell me why Lady Tenley has not greeted us yet."

  "I cannot say why she has not bid you welcome, though if I were to venture a guess, it would be that news of my arrival has put her directly in her bed with a megrim."

  "She is not an admirer, I collect."

  "No."

  "You did not mention this when I asked you to accompany me to Ambermede."

  "Your recollection is at odds with my own. I do not remember being asked."

  "Very well. When I insisted that you accompany me. Does that satisfy?"

  Having made her point, Ria nodded serenely. "The objections I did offer counted as nothing. How could I know this one would?"

  "You misunderstand. I did not say it would have altered the outcome, only that I would have liked to have known. Surprise is highly overrated."

  "I shall remember that."

  West inclined his head a fraction. "Just so. Now, tell me why Lady Tenley is not among your admirers. You must know each other passingly well. You were still at home when Tenley married."

  Ria took in a short breath and let it out slowly. "I think Your Grace knows the answer. It cannot be important that I say it aloud."

  "Then I shall, if for no other reason than to put the matter plainly before us." He paused the span of a heartbeat. "It is because Tenley has conceived a passion for you."

  Chapter 6

  "Conceived a passion for me?" For once, Ria did not try to hide her amusement. "It is as you said—you are a romantic."

  "And you are trying to put me off the scent. Tenley is in love with you."

  Ria sobered. "He imagines himself to be in love with me. It is an old habit, thoughtless and difficult to break, like always putting on one's left shoe first. Long ago he applied to his father for my hand. I was sixteen at the time."

  "The duke considered you too young?"

  "I don't know. He did not speak of it to me. Neither did Tenley. I only discovered his suit when he went to his father again the following year. This time, when the duke turned him down, he came to me."

  "And you thanked him for the honor of his proposal, et cetera."

  "Something like that, though I hope I was not so perfunctory. I would like to think I had compassion for his situation and some sensitivity to his feelings."

  "God's truth, I hope not. Men don't want women feeling pity for them—it is completely lowering. Stomp hard on the heart once and have done with it. We can recover from that. The other is torture."

  Ria stared at West, gauging how serious he was. "That is extraordinary. Do you mean it?"

  "I do."

  "You have experience to draw on?"

  "No, but it is what I would want. And I think I can safely speak for my friends. More to the point, did what you say to him change his intentions toward you or merely set him on a course to change your feelings for him?"

  "The latter."

  West raised one eyebrow to punctuate his point. "Well, there you have it."

  "Tenley is like a brother," she said.

  "Yes, that is my observation also. The pair of you are more in the way of siblings than lovers."

  Ria flushed to the roots of her hair but managed to give West a quelling look. "A very good thing, since he is married."

  "My thought, too. I believe you were in the right of it—Tenley only imagines himself in love with you. How did you describe it? An old habit, difficult to break? Something about a left shoe?"

  "Yes. That is what I said."

  "That must not set well with the countess. She cannot be oblivious to the undercurrent that exists between you and her husband."

  "There is no undercurrent."

  "I beg your pardon, but the damn thing is like a riptide. Thought I would lose my footing and be sucked under. Tenley treats you as a sister, but he has not been quite able to think of you as one." West saw that Ria was occupied by some thought that had her worrying the inside of her cheek. He ventured a guess that would explain the tenor of her thoughts. "Perhaps Tenley's behavior toward you is not always brotherly. Is that it?"

  Ria stopped worrying her cheek, but she said nothing.

  "S
o he has not tempered his pursuit. Has he tried to force himself upon you?"

  "No!"

  "Compromise you, then. Has he made his attentions uncomfortable for you?"

  Her eyes slid away from West to stare at a point past his shoulder. She considered what she might say but then decided against any response.

  "Do not press yourself," he said. "Your silence is eloquent."

  "My silence is no answer at all. Do not assume you know what it means."

  "Of course." Although he offered this agreeably enough, it did not mean he had changed his mind. "Your arrival in the library, accompanied by the children, begins to make a different sort of sense. I think you wanted to speak to Tenley but not entirely alone. The children were a shield—and unnecessary, as it turned out—because I was already with him. It spared you from being alone, but neither could you speak to him plainly."

  "You have a piquant sense of the absurd."

  West grinned. "I shall treasure that."

  "Fool."

  "Perhaps, but fools are not always wrong. In fact, as observers of the human comedy, we may be without peer."

  "Is there no insulting you?"

  "There is, but you do not seem to have the knack for it."

  "Something to strive for, then."

  West's deep grin softened. "You would not like the consequences if you hit the mark." He saw that his warning, casually offered but completely sincere, caused Ria's chin to come up a fraction. "I was not issuing a challenge," he said. "Pray, do not take it as one." He indicated the door behind her with a lift of his hand. "Tenley will return shortly, I suspect, and most likely with his wife. I suggest you use this time to tell me what I might expect."

  Ria collected her thoughts quickly. "Margaret will be everything gracious. Her absence thus far is highly unusual and must have been influenced by my presence. There is no slight intended toward you."

  "Really? Does she hold me in such esteem, then? I would not have credited it."

  "At the risk of jabbing at your Achilles' heel, it is most likely your title that she holds in esteem, not you. Margaret is nothing if not practical."

  "I am relieved to hear it."

  Ria sighed audibly, unaccountably eased that she hadn't insulted him. There was no predicting how his mind might work. Truth be told she was no longer certain of her own. "She will be civil toward me," Ria said. "But that is only in front of you. She will avoid me outside of company, and if she cannot, I will do well to avoid her."

  "She sees you as a threat to her marriage?"

  "Yes, though I have given her no reason to view me in that light."

  "But Tenley has."

  "I cannot say. I am not privy to what manner of conversation passes between them. All I know is that from the very beginning, she has been suspicious of me."

  "Is she jealous by nature or circumstance?"

  Ria did not understand and her puzzlement showed clearly in her expressive eyes. "You will have to explain that to me."

  "Some people are jealous at their very core. They want what they do not have simply because they do not have it, and rarely is need a consideration. There is also jealousy that is predicated by the fear of losing something that has been acquired. Circumstantial, if you will."

  "Then Margaret is the latter. Not petty by nature, but afraid Tenley will be unfaithful."

  With good reason, West thought, for it seemed his brother had something more of their father in him. "Tenley says that she is easily distressed."

  "He is right. Her nerves are pulled taut, and it requires very little to upset the balance, yet she was not always thus."

  "You left Ambermede soon after Tenley set up residence with his countess."

  "Yes, but it was entirely my idea."

  "But Westphal and Tenley did not support it. Did Lady Tenley?"

  "She was..." Ria paused, searching for the right word. "Encouraging."

  "And you have stayed away since then?"

  "No. Your father remained at Ambermede for at least four months out of the year, so I never stopped visiting. However, I preferred to go to London when he was there and Tenley was not. I have an affection for the children that Margaret does not begrudge me, though she is wary of it." Ria's shoulders rose and fell with her sigh. "I have often thought that if Tenley were to recognize the truth of what it is that he feels for me, Margaret and I could count ourselves as something close to friends."

  "Something close to friends?" he asked. "Why not friends?"

  "Such friendship as we might enjoy would always be tempered by what has come before it. I accept that. There is also the matter of our different interests. Margaret enjoys pursuits that are considered wholly feminine, while I am for embracing ventures that—"

  "That tweak the boundaries between men and women?" West asked with wry inflection. "Yes, I am beginning to appreciate it."

  "That is probably for the best," she said, ignoring his mild sarcasm. "It will help us deal well together."

  West very much doubted it, but he did not offer that opinion. "I am all for tweaking boundaries," he said, rising from his chair. He closed the distance to the sofa in two lithe strides and dropped to the cushion beside her. Surprise kept her immobile long enough to allow him to set his arm along the curved back and close to her shoulders. "Will you trust me?"

  "Of course, but—"

  West knew that was no answer that she had given him. No matter how she meant to finish the sentence, the addition of but negated what had come before it. He accepted it as affirmation anyway and turned slightly toward her, dropping the arm at her back so that it embraced her shoulders, and circling her waist with his other. He pulled her close, the action so swift and strong that she could not counter it. Her arms were trapped neatly at her sides, and when she stiffened in reaction, it merely brought her flush to his body.

  He hesitated a fraction of a second, his head cocked to one side, then lowered his mouth to hers. "Trust me," he said again, his voice something less than a whisper, husky and intense. Then his lips covered hers.

  West realized his memory had served him false. This kiss was more of everything he remembered—sweeter, hungrier, deeper, greedier—and his own reaction was as unexpected as it was unwelcome. He had not meant to break his promise that he would not throw down the gauntlet a second time.

  Of all the ill-conceived plans...

  That thought flickered through his mind as wildly as a candle flame caught in a draft. He could not steady it, yet it would not be extinguished. He closed his eyes to it instead and kissed her with more urgency, listening for that thing outside himself that would call a halt, knowing that he did not want to.

  "Oh my!" Margaret Warwick Fairchild, Lady Tenley, stepped into the library ahead of her husband. She knew his view of the pair on the sofa was unobstructed, because her height was not sufficient to block it. She wished that she might turn and gauge his reaction to what they were seeing. It was certain he would be struggling to put an indifferent face on it West did not permit Ria to break away in a guilty start. He lifted his head slowly, steadied her with a long, significant look and a roguish smile, then drew back his hand at her waist. He kept his arm about her shoulders, while his head swiveled in the direction of the door.

  "It seems we are caught out," he said with considerable sangfroid. "That was unanticipated."

  Ria knew it was a lie but not because she heard it in his voice. Those carefully modulated tones of his gave nothing away. She suspected now that he'd heard Tenley and Margaret approaching before they ever twisted the door handle. He had meant to be caught out.

  Lady Tenley raised one hand to her lips to help stifle her smile. "Apologies are in order, I think." She hurried to the sofa as West released himself from Ria's side and came to his feet. "You should be able to expect a measure of privacy in your own home. The manor is that, now, is it not?"

  "Let us not make too much of it," West said graciously. "I know I am the interloper, and you are kind to make us welcome."

&
nbsp; Ria watched Margaret flush becomingly and could hardly credit how the warmth transformed her sharply cut features from haughty to charitable. The difference was so striking that Ria actually blinked. This was something more than she could have anticipated, and she knew very well that Margaret was not merely responding to the title of the man before her, but the man himself. Risking a sideways glance at West, Ria could not discern that he found Margaret's reaction in any way out of the ordinary, yet she was quite certain this was a new experience for him.

  Ria accepted West's hand when he held it out to her and permitted him to help her rise. It was less easy for her to be drawn toward him, but she followed his lead and tried not to show her relief when he kept the distance between them perfectly respectful. He released her fingertips and favored her, then Margaret, with a smile that held a question in its curve. Ria was the first to answer that smile's prompt.

  "Margaret," she said softly. "I regret that I have imposed upon your hospitality. I hope you will accept my apology for being unable to give you notice of our arrival."

  Lady Tenley rose to the challenge and offered a public peace. "There is no apology necessary. I think we all comprehend that our altered circumstances require some flexibility of thought and action. Notice is not required. We are family, are we not? There is no imposition."

  Ria thought Margaret's tone could have been a shade less cool, but it was a good effort, and mayhap a good beginning. She promised herself that she would not take it to heart if she learned later that Margaret meant little or even none of it.

  Margaret laid her hand lightly on her husband's forearm and smoothed the sleeve of his black frock coat. "Have you nothing you wish to add, my lord?"

  "I have already welcomed them," Tenley said. His eyes darted between Ria and West before coming to rest on his wife. "Why has no one announced supper?"

  Ria resisted making a jibe. Tenley was in a snit, and she wished above all things that she might needle him for it. Commenting, though, would be unwise; it was certain to set an uncomfortable tone for the meal.