Miss Deverill shook her head. “It’s clear to me—it has been all along—that advising your mother not to marry him is a waste of time.”
“Because people don’t want advice,” he said, remembering her words at breakfast, words even now he did not want to accept. “They want reassurance of what they’ve already decided.”
“Just so. Which is why I strongly advised her to tie up her money. The fact that she didn’t follow that advice, withhold a dowry, and restrict him to an allowance surprises me, I confess. Your mother seems a keenly intelligent woman. I don’t understand why she agreed to give him so much money as a marriage portion.”
“I do.” He sighed. “She did it to spike my guns.”
“What do you mean?”
“She knew I would try to buy the man off, and she circumvented my ability to do so.”
“I don’t understand. You’re rich as Croesus, aren’t you? Surely you’re richer than your mother. If Foscarelli is truly the blackguard you think he is, why don’t you just keep raising the amount of your offer until you reach a figure he finds acceptable?”
“It’s not that simple. Most of my mother’s wealth—which is considerable, by the way—is in funds and shares which can be easily converted to cash.”
“Surely you have funds and cash, too?”
“Yes, but most of mine is tied to the estates and the title in some way, either through the lands themselves, most of which are entailed, or in funds and shares that support the estates with their earnings.”
“And converting those funds to cash would be a problem for you?”
“Not for myself. One man can live very well on a very small income. But if I liquidate assets, many others would suffer. There are hundreds of people who depend upon me and the income generated by my estates. I won’t hollow out the title and risk the livelihoods of all those who depend upon me in order to buy off a fortune-hunter, not even for Mama, and she knows it. She knows her offer is a better one than I can ever make him. She is buying him, and as a result, she will be chained for life to a man wholly unworthy of her.”
“A conclusion you cannot possibly make until you have met him. For myself, I refuse to believe things are as black as you paint them. It’s clear that she loves him.”
“But love is not always tied to happiness. He is a fortune-hunter. Do you really think my mother could be happy with such a man?”
“Maybe.” She gave a shrug. “My mother was.”
“Your father was a fortune-hunter?” He stared at her, astonished. “But your family had money when your father was young, didn’t they?”
“Did your private detectives tell you that?”
He saw no point in prevaricating. “They did, yes. My understanding is that Deverill Publishing was once a thriving, prosperous concern. Your father surely had no need to marry for material considerations.”
“Oh, but he did. You see, as a young man, my father was a wastrel—wild and irresponsible. He was also terrible with money—still is, I’m afraid. He had the unfortunate habit of spending every penny of the very generous salary my grandfather paid him in the company. He had no interest in the newspaper business, and no desire to arrive for work every morning on schedule after drinking himself under the table the night before. My grandfather—who was quite a tartar, by the way—became thoroughly exasperated with him. He gave my father the sack, disinherited him, and tossed him out of the house. He told Papa not to come back until he had accomplished something in the world besides gambling, drinking, and chasing women.”
“So your father went to find an heiress, and the result was that he married Ellesmere’s daughter? But it didn’t work,” he pointed out when she nodded. “After your parents eloped, the viscount disinherited his daughter and refused to provide a dowry.”
“True, but that wasn’t the point. Grandfather was proud that we had a real lady in the family, a viscount’s daughter, and that installed my father back in his father’s good graces. And he actually managed to stay there. My mother, you see, was able to do the one thing my grandfather never could: keep my father up to the mark. He gave up drink and worked hard to live up to what she expected of him.”
A man who consumed enough brandy to remain drunk every waking moment could hardly be described as up to the mark, but he did not point that out.
“It was only after my mother died,” she said as if reading his thoughts, “that Papa took to drink again. For the fifteen years they were married, he didn’t touch a drop of liquor or sit at a single gaming table. But when she died—”
Miss Deverill paused, a hint of pain crossing her face, and she looked away.
“Go on,” he said. “When she died . . .”
“You’ve undoubtedly seen the result for yourself.” She faced him again, shrugging as if it didn’t matter, but he knew it did. “Papa fell completely apart. Grandfather tried to help him—he didn’t want to see his son backslide, I’m sure. But then Grandfather died, too, and my father had no one who could help him after that. My brother tried, but after a series of violent quarrels, my father disowned him, and he went to America.”
“And your brother left you here on your own?”
“Papa wasn’t so bad then as he is now. And since Papa tossed him out, what else could he do but go off to make his own way? I tried to help my father as well, but that was no good either. I think Papa just didn’t see the point of being responsible anymore, not without my mother.” Irene looked at Henry again, and there was unmistakable affection in her face that he felt her father did not deserve. “He loved her, you see. He may have been fortune-hunting when he met her, but he also fell in love with her. And she loved him.”
“But after your mother’s death, things went downhill, I take it?”
“Yes.” She gave a laugh, forced and devoid of humor. “Despite all my grandfather’s efforts to teach him, my father never could develop a head for business, poor lamb. He began drinking again, and making reckless, unwise investments. The more he lost, the more he drank, and the more reckless he became.”
“Yes, chasing losses is very common for men who are fond of gambling, I’m afraid. And drinking heavily impairs the judgment. Hard on you and your sister, though.”
“That doesn’t matter. I can take care of myself and my sister. But don’t you see why I’m telling you all this? While my father may have been a fortune-hunter and a rake, he nonetheless made my mother happy.”
“Against tremendous odds.”
“Perhaps, but that’s not the point. My father is weak, no doubt about that. And some women would not be happy with a man like that, or a man like Antonio Foscarelli, for that matter. But not every woman is the same.”
He rubbed a hand over his forehead, striving to decide what to say. He recalled his own less-than-favorable impression of Irene’s father, and he felt it was open to question just how happy with the fellow her mother could have been. To him, the picture she had just painted of her family was a sentimental one that ignored the hard reality: a rake could not ever really reform. He might have the intention to do so, he might even hold his life together for a time for love’s sake, but he was first and last and always, a rake. Pointing that out would have bolstered his argument against his mother’s marriage, but when he looked into Irene’s face, soft with compassion for her parent, he couldn’t do it. “I begin to understand,” he said instead, “why you felt comfortable giving my mother the advice you did. You thought she was like your mother.”
“Not precisely. What I thought was that your mother, like mine, ought to be given credit for knowing her own heart and mind, and for being the only one who could or should decide where her true happiness lies.”
“With that man.”
“He might genuinely love her, you know.”
Henry couldn’t help a laugh. “You believe that?”
“It’s possible. As I said, my father fell in love with my mother. It was after he began courting her, but nonetheless, he did fall in love with her. As to F
oscarelli, I can’t say what he might feel, for unlike you, I believe one should actually meet someone before passing judgment on their character, and I have not met the man. I’d like to, for I am curious about him, I admit.”
Henry could not believe what he was hearing. “You can’t meet him.”
“Why not?”
The idea of Miss Deverill, who was not only an unmarried woman, but also a stunningly beautiful one, in the sights of that blackguard was enough to make Henry feel absolutely savage. “No,” he said, shaking his head. “He is just as unthinkable an acquaintance for you as he would be for me. More so, in fact, for you are a young lady.”
She laughed, making short shrift of the rules that governed his world. “A fact which makes me want to meet him all the more. He’s said to be a fascinating man.”
“Cobras are fascinating, too, but they are still poisonous. Meeting him would put your reputation in serious jeopardy. He’s a libertine, a sybarite, utterly immoral.”
“Hmm . . .” Her lips tipped in a sideways little smile that told Henry he was making no impression whatsoever. “With every word, you give me a greater understanding of the man’s appeal.”
“Do be serious,” he admonished. “You publish a scandal sheet, so you surely know Antonio Foscarelli is a notorious man, though whether that reputation is due in greater part to his affairs with women or to his nude portraits of them, I cannot say.”
“Affairs? Nude portraits?” She lifted her hands, fanning herself in a pretense of being thoroughly shocked. “Oh, my heavenly days.”
He watched her, unamused. “You have taken my mother’s words about teasing me to heart, I see.”
Her hands stilled, resting against her bosom, drawing his gaze at once to the creamy white skin beneath her fingertips. All the arousal he’d been fighting since she walked in the door flared up again, hotter than ever, and it occurred to him that no woman he’d ever known had the singular talent of provoking both his desire and his temper simultaneously. “Miss Deverill,” he began.
“Any artist of good character is celibate, of course,” she went on with deep solemnity. “And paints breathtaking, brilliant bowls of fruit.”
His aggravation faded into bemused chagrin, and as he slid his gaze up from her collarbone, along her delicate throat, over her stunning face, and into her eyes, his body didn’t care a jot that all her merriment was at his expense.
His head, however, worked to remind them both of what was important. “Your idea isn’t worth discussing, since what we are attempting to do is prevent her from marrying him at all.”
“Which, as I am trying to tell you, isn’t going to work. I could list his flaws to her from now until the end of time, and so could you, and everyone else in your family, and I doubt it would impair her feelings for the man in the slightest degree.”
“Then you had best come up with another way to change her mind.”
“Or you could just resign yourself to her decision, attempt to persuade him to sign a settlement, and make the best of things.”
He didn’t credit that suggestion with a reply, but his expression must have conveyed his opinion clearly enough. “Really, Torquil,” she cried, “you are the most impossible man. You can’t control everything and everyone, you know.”
“Apparently not,” he muttered, glaring at the woman who seemed able to rob him of all his control in the wink of an eye. “And yet, I am undeterred.”
“If your mother wants to marry him, who are you to say she can’t? If she’s in love with him, who are you to judge her for it?”
“Love?” He made a sound of disdain, shaking his head violently. “It’s not love.”
“Of course it is. She’s about to sacrifice everything, risk everything, to be with this man. What else could it be but love?”
He made a sound of impatience. “It’s passion. Raw, unbridled passion.”
“Passion. Love.” She shrugged, laughing as she looked up at him, shaking back the loose gold waves of her hair, harkening to the darkest lusts inside him. “Is there really so much difference?”
“All the difference in the world. One is stable, lasting, sane. The other is wild, ungovernable, mad—”
He stopped, struck by the innocence that shone in her laughing, upturned face. She did not know what he was talking about. He wanted her with a fierceness that took his breath away, a woman he’d known five days. Hell, he’d wanted her when he’d known her five seconds. But she knew nothing of that sort of feeling. The hunger, the desperation, the aching need—these were sensations she had not yet experienced.
“You want to know the difference between passion and love?” He wrapped an arm around her waist, pulled her hard against him, and bent his head. “This is passion,” he said, and kissed her.
Chapter 13
Having been kissed once, at the tender age of thirteen, Irene would have thought she’d be somewhat prepared for her second such experience. That tentative press of lips with the boy next door, interrupted almost at once by the approaching footsteps of her governess, had been tender, sweet, and, truth be told, vaguely disappointing.
Torquil’s kiss was nothing like that.
It was neither sweet nor tender. Instead, it was hard and hot, not tentative at all, and it brought a thrill she’d never felt in her life before.
She closed her eyes, and the moment she did, he overwhelmed her senses. There was nothing else in the world but him. His scent—castile soap, bay rum, and something deeper. His taste—port and fruit. His arm like a steel band around her waist. His clothes, soft velvet and crisp linen against her palm, and beneath them, his heart, thudding hard in his chest.
His lips parted, urging hers to part as well, but when she complied, his tongue entered her mouth, and she jerked in shock, breaking the kiss. At once, he went still, his mouth a fraction from hers, his quick breaths mingling with hers. He was waiting, she realized. Waiting for what?
She didn’t know, but she did know she didn’t want this to stop, so she slid her arm up around his neck, and rose on her toes to touch her lips to his.
He groaned against her mouth, and as if that was what he’d been waiting for, his arm tightened around her waist again, and he pushed her backward, following her into the corner of the room.
Her shoulders hit the shelves behind her, and books toppled out of the bookcase as his other arm came around her back to hold her tight. He deepened the kiss again, his hand tangling in her hair and his tongue in her mouth.
Pleasure began spreading throughout Irene’s body as he tasted deeply of her, a dark, heavy wave of it. She wrapped her other arm around his neck, wanting him closer. She stirred, pressing against him, relishing the feel of his hard, masculine form. The feelings within her grew hotter, stronger, and yet, she still yearned for more. She wrapped her leg around his, wanting him even closer, and as she rubbed her foot along the back of his calf, the feel of his trousers against her bare skin somehow heightened her pleasure and made it even more acute. She moaned against his mouth, wanting this to go on forever.
Without warning, he tore his lips from hers, an abrupt, almost violent withdrawal that forced her to open her eyes.
“Good God,” he rasped, his breathing harsh and quick. “This needs to stop.”
He grasped her arms, pulling them down from around his neck, but despite his words, he did not let her go. “For both our sakes, this needs to stop. Surely, Miss Deverill, you think so, too.”
Irene couldn’t think at all. Her head was reeling, her heart was pounding, and her body was on fire, and yet, despite all that, she felt absolutely glorious. The last thing on her mind was calling a halt to this wondrous experience and returning to sanity, so she shook her head, closed the scrap of distance he had put between them, and slid her arms back up around his neck again.
“Given what just happened,” she said, breathless and laughing, “I think you should probably call me Irene.”
A shadow crossed his face—guilt, perhaps, or regret—and Ire
ne’s blissful euphoria began to evaporate. He stepped back, out of her embrace, shaking his head. “I cannot do that,” he said. “It would be . . .”
His voice trailed into silence, and he came to a stop several feet away. He rubbed his hands over his face as if trying to think. “It would be an unpardonable liberty. And far too intimate.”
His sense of right and wrong and what was proper was something Irene had never found more baffling than she did at this moment. “Too intimate?” she echoed, not quite believing she’d heard him right. “You were kissing me, Henry.”
He grimaced, clasping his hands behind his back, tilting his head to look at the ceiling. “Yes.”
“You were holding me in your arms,” she went on, blushing as she said it, her words fanning the erotic flame he’d started. “Your tongue was in my—”
“Yes,” he cut her off, and though he seemed to lose his fascination with the ceiling, when he tilted his chin down, he did not quite look at her. His face, usually so implacable, was twisted a bit, as if he was in pain. “I must beg you to forgive me, for I have subjected you to masculine attentions which any young lady would find unwelcome.”
Her blush deepened and spread as she recalled those thrilling masculine attentions, and her opinion was reinforced that the life of a young lady must be terribly dull. “I wouldn’t necessarily say that—”
“By doing so,” he went on as if she hadn’t spoken, “I have also exposed to you an unsavory facet of my character, one I would have preferred to keep hidden.” Taking a deep breath, he raked his hands through his hair and met her bewildered gaze head-on. His light eyes seemed to darken, becoming a deeper, more turbulent gray. “The truth, Miss Deverill, is that, though I am a gentleman, I am also a man possessed of deep carnal appetites.”
Irene’s toes curled into the carpet beneath her feet. “Yes,” she said faintly. “So it would seem.”
“I have had, from the moment we met, an ardent desire for you, one which I am finding nearly impossible to contain.”
The Truth About Love and Dukes Page 18