Then his lips were on hers once more, tenderly this time seeking pleasure, not punishment. Exploration, not ravishment. Helpless against the tender onslaught, Fiona clung dizzily to his broad shoulders as the passion of her temper gave way to heated desire.
His mouth left hers, leaving her gasping for air as his lips moved across her cheek, to the sensitive flesh behind her ear. “Yes, my love.”
Then his lips captured hers once more.
It took a moment for his words to reach her through the haze of passion fogging her, a moment longer for her to truly hear them. But when she finally did, they pounded in her mind much as he had her blood pounding in her veins.
My love. My love. My love.
Except that she wasn’t. Despite his nonsense about courting her now, there was a past between them that Fiona found impossible to forget. Refused to forget lest Harry break her heart all over again.
She tried to turn away, but Harry only wrapped his arms more tightly around her when Fiona feebly wedged her arms between them in an effort to push him away.
“No.” The weakly voiced protest emerged as more of a breathless sigh as Fiona tore her lips from his, her head falling back but Harry took advantage, raking his teeth lightly down her neck.
“Yes.” His breath warmed her, sending a shiver of delight down her spine when he cupped her bottom with one hand and pressed the hard length of his desire against her.
Her head swam once more, but Fiona refused to surrender to the pure carnal hunger that thrilled her body. “Stop it!” she cried breathlessly as she struggled against him. “What are you doing? I told you before that you had your chance years ago. Your time is past.”
His hold on her slackened but he did not release her completely. “My love, our time is just beginning. Why can’t you see that?”
“I am not your love. Stop calling me that,” she demanded, turning out of the circle of his arms and holding a hand up between them to halt his pursuit. “I told you, didn’t I? Didn’t I tell you that you’d had your chance? That you would not get another?”
“Words said in anger,” Aylesbury reminded. “At a time when we both said things we regret. Things have changed.”
“No, they haven’t,” she insisted. “Nothing’s changed.”
“Everything has changed. Fiona, I want to marry you.”
Her mouth gaped in surprise. Harry had said that he was courting her, but somehow, she had never connected the dots from courting to marriage. Her contrary heart soared with pleasure but rage irrationally followed. How dare he? Now?
“Marry me? How can you possibly say that? Ten minutes ago, you were merely courting me.”
“Didn’t want to frighten you off.”
“Well, you have.”
With only the muted laughter and music from the ball to keep him company, Aylesbury watched Fiona as she ran back towards Harrowby’s townhouse and most likely, into the earl’s waiting arms. She was running away from more than his embrace, Aylesbury realized. She was running from herself. But why? Why fight it when she wanted him as much as he wanted her?
The antagonism she displayed toward him was becoming nearly inexplicable when the attraction between them was so obviously shared, but as he had deduced already, she raised it like a shield between them, wielded it like a sword to drive him away.
Why? Because of Ramsay? Aylesbury laughed at the thought. Surely not.
Because of the past between them?
That was far more likely.
Chapter 18
I just recalled another passage from Oscar Wilde’s A Picture of Dorian Grey: ‘The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it.’
I find it rather convenient that that would be the passage that leapt to mind after what happened this morning. It was all I could do not to put action to words.
~From the journal of the Marquis of Aylesbury—Mar 1893
A strangled cry rang out over the music and Aylesbury turned toward the townhouse at a jog. Carriages were lined up before Harrowby’s townhouse but there was no sign of anything amiss.
“Stop it!” a female voice demanded angrily, followed by another more panicked scream that came from the east corner of the square. Skirts flashed behind the first carriage in line before disappearing. A few of the waiting coachmen who hadn’t before shown any concern, all turned at that scream. One standing high in his box tossed aside his cigar with a curse just as another cry sounded.
“Oi there! Leave that lady be!”
Then…“Harry!”
It was Fiona! Startled into action, Aylesbury bolted in that direction and merged with a trio of liveried drivers on the brick sidewalk. At the corner of the square, he could see her fighting against her attacker as he tried to bodily lift her into the carriage.
Fiona was struggling and kicking with all she was worth and beneath his fear, Aylesbury felt a burst of pride for her bravery and not a lick of pity for the man who was evoking her fury. “Let me go!” she screamed as her assailant lifted her around the waist, throwing her elbow back into his face. The man howled in pain and released her, clutching his nose. Fiona dropped to the ground and sat there breathing heavily as Aylesbury and the coachman arrived.
Lifting her into his arms, Aylesbury ran his hands over her, checking for injuries while the coachmen ran off in pursuit of her attacker as he fled, leaving his carriage and horse behind…if they were his at all. She was trembling beneath his touch, clearly shaken by the attack. “Are you all right, Fiona? Did he hurt you?”
Fiona shook her head, then melted into his embrace. Her arms wound around his waist as she buried her face in his chest. Aylesbury stroked her hair comfortingly though he was inwardly seething with rage, wishing he might go after the ruthless lout himself.
He wasn’t alone in that. Fiona was cursing a blue streak against his shirtfront, casting aspersions against the ruffian’s lineage and threatening harm to his more valued body parts. Amusement warred with anger, both of which only served to blanket the fear that chilled him.
“What happened? I thought you were going back inside?”
“I was,” she sighed. Regretfully, her tight grip on him slackened and Fiona stepped back with a sigh. “I got back up to the door and just decided that I—I could not. I sent one of the footmen inside to let Francis know I was leaving.”
“And you just decided to walk back home?”
“Yes.” Fiona shrugged. “It’s just a few streets away after all. That man offered me a ride at first and then grabbed me when I refused, trying to force me into the carriage. I don’t think it was even his.”
“I hardly think that matters,” Aylesbury frowned. “Let’s get you back inside. Your brother needs to hear of this.”
“No,” Fiona protested. “I cannot do that. Not right now. I can’t walk back in there looking like this.” Aylesbury looked down at her torn and dirtied gown, feeling the anger stir within him again. “And if you were to accompany me, everyone might think that you…that we…”
Fiona shrugged again but Aylesbury understood her point. He had already gained something of a reputation as a hothead since Piper’s disappearance. He didn’t need to be thought a rapist as well. “Come with me.”
Knowing he would owe Lady Onslow more than flowers after abandoning her daughter yet again, Aylesbury took Fiona by the hand. Pulling her along behind him, he rounded the corner to the eastern side of Belgrave Square. Eight columns supporting an iron-railed balcony at the center of the street marked his townhouse.
The house was quiet as it usually was when Aylesbury went out, his servants likely entertaining themselves in their parlor below but for the lone footman left above to see to the door. Leaving him with orders to send up a maid with tea and towels, Aylesbury led Fiona to a small parlor on the first floor.
“We’ll have some tea to help calm you. Then I will let you freshen up before I escort you home,” he said as he turned up a single gas sconce to light the room.
“Thank you, Harry.”
<
br /> Aylesbury turned to find her standing in the middle of the room watching him, her arms crossed tightly over her chest. She looked more fragile than he had ever seen her. Even in the dim light, he could see the shimmer of tears in her eyes.
As vulnerable as she was, he doubted she would be able to gather enough of her interminable ire to stop him if were to gather her in his arms. He might comfort her, then seduce her with the passion that threatened to reduce them to cinders.
With what had happened between them earlier and her pride, he also knew that she would probably resent him for having been witness to her moment of weakness.
The only solution then was to supplant that helplessness with a touch of anger and thankfully there was a topic readily at hand that would not bring that anger down on him.
“You know, I think someone might be trying to kidnap you.” Despite the seriousness of his supposition, Aylesbury was happy to see the fire light her eyes, driving out the fear as he had hoped it would.
“My, my. How clever you are; are you just figuring that out now?”
God, but she was so impertinent! Spirited. Challenging. Alive.
Striving for more, he responded with a mocking inflection. “It occurred to you before this? You must be think yourself so much smarter than I.”
“Oh, not so much smarter,” Fiona shot back with a toss of her head. Aylesbury was hard put not to grin with pure delight.
“But I am Aylesbury, my dear,” he drawled, as if that said it all.
It did say enough to inspire a cheeky spark in her eyes as she finally, finally looked at him fully for the first time in all the days since they had met again. If he had known irritating her was all it would take to gain such a response from her, he wouldn’t have been so bloody polite to her all week.
She snapped her fingers. “Ah, yes, nobility! An excellent substitution for intelligence.”
He ignored her neat parry, expounding with mock hauteur, “And as an Aylesbury heir, I went to Cambridge. A-levels in Mathematics, Chemistry and Latin. Do you speak Latin?”
She lifted an equally arrogant brow. “Francis agreed with me that it’s hard to imagine what part of my life would require me to speak Latin.”
“Admit it,” he teased. “I am better educated…”
“Education does not trump intelligence, only ignorance,” she pointed out. “You might be better educated but that doesn’t make you smarter.”
“I certainly didn’t teach me how to be as stubborn and unforgiving as you, I will allow that much.” He let the banter lie, as entertaining as it was, to readdress his original subject. “But I digress. You knew then?”
“That someone was trying to kidnap me?” she asked, then sighed heavily as if she were sorry to see their exchange end as well. The short train of her gown swished behind her as she paced the room, lifting or touching a knickknack here and there. “Yes. Unfortunately, it wouldn’t be the first time something like this has happened, but I had never been the target, if you will, before.”
She sounded remarkably blasé about the whole idea. “You will have to explain that.”
“Last year, one of the nursery staff was caught trying to sneak Preston out of the house,” she told him indifferently as she studiously examined a small Rodin bronze near the window. “She confessed that she and her brother were planning on holding Preston for a king’s ransom.”
Whatever Aylesbury had been expecting, that wasn’t it. “My God! How did I not hear of this?”
“And you really think you’re so much smarter than I?” Fiona asked with a spark of that feistiness she had brandished so well moments before. “If they had reported it and the news made the papers…”
“It would have only served to spread the idea amongst others.”
“Ah, a learned man indeed.”
“I fear I haven’t a classical education in villainy and sadism,” he countered, following in her path as she continued to move about the room. And out of his arm’s length? He shook his head. “Still, I cannot understand their motive. Why target Glenrothes? There are other nobles with higher rank, connections to the Crown who would have made more prime targets than Glenrothes heir.”
“No A-levels in Economics then?” Fiona tsked. She picked up a crystal orb from the mantel, absently turning it in her hands. “You are forgetting that Francis has something that none of those high-ranking nobles have. Eve.”
“Lady Glenrothes?”
“And her money, yes. Don’t you recall? Eve and Kitty’s father was one of those shipping barons you hear about. They have millions. Each.”
“American dollars,” Aylesbury dismissed.
Fiona laughed aloud at that and set the crystal back in place. “How very British of you, Harry. But the translation of those pitiful ‘American dollars’ into pounds is still more than enough to prompt avarice, envy and treachery in even the most saintly Briton’s heart.”
Taking a moment to absorb what she was telling him, Aylesbury leaned a shoulder against the mantelpiece nearby with a sigh. Eve and her sister had made their debut in the year or so before his father’s death. He’d been at university at the time and not current on the gossip of the ton but there had been enough casual references made among the MacKintosh clan during the time he had lived among them to have Fiona’s reasoning make sense. “That much then? I had no idea.”
“Most don’t. Even the nursery maid who attempted Preston’s kidnapping was motivated by nothing more than gossip among the household staff.” Fiona’s spirits dimmed once again. “If the truth were to get out…If it already has…”
As much as he hated the very thought of her facing any amount of danger, Aylesbury had to admit that her deductions made sense. “You believe someone is kidnapping you for monetary gain?”
“I’m an easier target than any of the children now. They are well-guarded,” she told him, with a shrug as she continued her perambulation around the room. “What else could it be?”
What else indeed? “Why don’t we get you home and let your brother know what has happened. Perhaps he will have some theories of his own.”
“No! That is the last thing I want to do,” she argued. “Francis and Eve live in fear of this after what happened with Preston, you know. I’ll not worry them anew over nothing.”
“Nothing?” he retorted incredulously, pushing off from the limestone fireplace to trail her once more. “You think this is nothing? If I hadn’t been there this time…”
“I will take precautions not to be alone,” she assured him. “I will stay in public, surrounded by people.”
“You were in public, surrounded by people just then,” he pointed out. “It didn’t seem to stop him.”
Fiona winced but didn’t give in. Instead, she set her jaw stubbornly. It seemed she didn’t like to be challenged even on matters that had nothing to do with him. If it weren’t so tragic, it might have been reassuring for his cause. “The driver timed that very well.”
“It could happen again.”
“That is not your problem.”
She turned to face him with a stern look that he suspected was meant to brook no rebuttal, but what Fiona didn’t know about him was that under the affable exterior she had known from him in the past, he was possessed of an intractability to match her own.
His jaw tightened as he caught her shoulders, frowning down at her. “The hell it isn’t. I can’t let you endanger yourself.”
“And I can’t have you about, Harry,” she admitted, then bit her lip. “What I mean is, I have my brothers’ company to keep me safe and I will use it. You needn’t worry over me, though I do appreciate the concern.”
“It isn’t something so impersonal as concern. Though you refuse to accept it, you must at least see that I care for you.”
She laughed lightly. “And that isn’t impersonal?”
“There’s nothing impersonal about this.”
Aylesbury arms slid around her back, drawing her resistant body closer until her soft curves pr
essed against him. His hands roamed upward once more to stroke her back, skim her bare shoulders. The slender line of her neck. She stilled beneath his caress, her breath growing shallow.
“Impersonal, Fiona? Does this feel impersonal to you?”
“Don’t, Harry.” She turned out of his arms without even bothering to look at him. “I can’t…”
“Are you just going to pretend that there is nothing between us?” he persisted. “Well, I can’t. Damn it, woman, you’ve given me something to care for when I thought I had nothing left. You make me feel alive again.”
Her heart leapt at his words. Oddly enough, it was the frustration lacing them that nearly convinced her that he spoke true more than any romantic prose might have.
“I’m so glad you feel alive, Harry,” the words laced with more than a little fallaciousness, “but I don’t feel anything more than anger.”
“Nothing?” he asked gruffly.
Shaking her head emphatically, Fiona watched Harry warily as he sauntered closer like a tiger on the prowl and she, nothing but his weak prey. “No.”
She shivered as he neared, shivered from the touch that never quite caressed her skin as he lifted a hand to hover over her cheek. From the heat of his body still inches away. From the warmth of his words as they brushed over her cheek as he leaned closer to whisper in her ear.
“Liar.”
“No,” she choked out, but repeated more firmly as she pushed him away. Good God, even for the momentary pleasure it might bring her, she couldn’t bear to face losing him again.
Such a weak command wasn’t going to stop him. Aylesbury closed the distance between them until her every breath and heartbeat fluttered against him. Caressing her cheek lightly but insistently, he forced her to meet his gaze.
“Look at me, Fiona.”
Fiona turned her head, tearing her gaze away from the dark emotion in his eyes.
“Fiona,” he commanded insistently, turning her face back to his. “How can you ignore this? Deny this?”
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