Truly, they should have been able to meet here as impartial adults, perhaps even as two strangers. But it remained obvious neither of them could manage it. For her part, upon seeing Thornton, the old hurt lingered, a wound which had never healed.
Her hand crept to her midriff, empty beneath her rigid stays. Cleo scarcely allowed herself to think of the babe she’d lost so soon after her hasty marriage to John. Those had been dark days as her world came undone. Thornton, she recalled sternly, had been long gone, enjoying a holiday in America when it happened. He had never known, had never suffered over the loss.
John had been at his club as she miscarried. When he returned at half past nine in the morning from an entire night of gambling and drinking, he tapped her on the shoulder as she wept and informed her it was best she not have someone else’s get anyway. Then he passed out on the bedroom floor. Losing the babe had been the worst and lowest moment of her life.
She extracted a handkerchief from her reticule and blew her nose. Being disrupted like this wouldn’t do. She’d thought she had moved beyond painful memories. The fates had played a cruel game with her, bringing Thornton here and opening old doors long kept locked. Cleo was now in a different position, no longer blinded by her husband’s facile tongue.
John, who had accused Thornton of the very same sin, had married her for her money. His grandfather withheld funds from John, knowing him for the wastrel he was. John enjoyed cards, loose women and drink, all of which required a fat purse. Cleo’s large inheritance had been necessary, she’d learned, for him to uphold the lifestyle of a sporting gentleman about town.
Seven years ago John had been very adept at persuading her to believe in him. He no longer bothered to make the effort. He corresponded with her through the odd missive she thought likely scrawled by his tarts now that his secretary had quit. They always smelled of appalling perfume and contained excessive misspellings. She had not even seen him for at least a year. John kept a separate residence in London in addition to the house or two he kept for his paramours.
Given all, how was it, she demanded of herself with a burning inner rage, that her attraction to Thornton could be as potent as ever? Perhaps it was that she had become a rusty matron and so longed for the touch of a man it did not matter that Thornton did the touching.
No. It would not be prudent to prevaricate. There had been men in her past, Carey-Addlepate, for instance—drat her sisters for the name—but certainly none had stuffed her inside a dark closet and nearly made love to her. None had dared. She wouldn’t have stood for it. Yet Thornton set her aflame and she didn’t care if he acted a dog in the manger. She should be horrified by her conduct.
In a sense she was, of course. But in another sense she was…intrigued. He was infuriating and arrogant and altogether wrong for her. He had broken her heart seven years ago and skimmed a hand over her knickers as if no time had passed between them. She had allowed his conduct, enjoyed it even.
It was utter folly to let him back into her life again. This she knew. But she was altogether afraid she would not be able to keep him out. And that was the crux of the thing.
Chapter Three
Casting men—particularly Thornton—from her mind would not prove easy when their hostess once more threw them together the very next day. Because they had both missed Lady Cosgrove’s dubious treasure hunt, Thornton and Cleo had been partnered yet again in a Shakespeare recitation. The bad news officially arrived the next morning at breakfast.
“The scene shall be wonderful, I know,” Lady C. confided to Cleo. Excitement flushed her cheeks. “You are to be Rosaline and Thornton is Biron.”
She choked on the sip of chocolate she’d just taken. Love’s Labours Lost? How could Lady Cosgrove not know of their past? There had been so much talk at the time, almost a scandal after the haste with which she’d married Scarbrough. Surely Lady C. must have heard the whispering. To ask Thornton to play the part of lovesick swain was exceedingly bold.
Cleo replaced her cup in its saucer with care and chose her words with equal intention. Her sisters, she knew, had been partnered with Ravenscroft and Claridge respectively, which left only two other late arrivals, Thornton’s mother and sister. “I thought Lady Bella and I would make a splendid team.”
“Just so, my dear, but…” Lady C. paused with dramatic verve and lowered her voice. “I’m afraid the dowager has requested she and Lady Bella be excused from the festivities. Apparently, the girl has stage fright.”
“How horrible for her,” Cleo murmured, glancing down at her plate. How horrible for Cleo, too, to have to endure Thornton’s company for the next two days.
“I dare say it must be debilitating and the poor girl is too timid to admit it.”
“Oh?” Cleo looked back up at her hostess, who eyed her back with an unsettling expression.
Lady C.’s face cleared. “The dowager asked me not to mention it to Lady Bella on account of it distressing her.”
“It is kind of the dowager to be so concerned for her daughter’s welfare,” she offered. It was bad of her, but she wished the dowager had not been as solicitous. How was she to bear being partnered with the marquis?
“Isn’t it?” Her ladyship beamed. “I expect you and Lord Thornton will want to familiarize yourselves with the dialogue when he returns from his morning ride.”
He was out riding, was he? Perversely, she thought he must still sit a horse like a true sportsman. He had the lean grace and muscular build that gave a man an excellent seat. She pictured him dressed in riding clothes, leaning over a black stallion, wind in his hair. In their furtive courtship, they had ridden together but a few times and yet she recalled so well how handsome he’d looked on his hunter.
She shook herself from the vision. “I’m sure there’s no hurry.”
“Don’t be silly. You must have enough time to rehearse or I’ll consider myself a failure as a hostess.” Lady C. caught the attention of one of the servants stationed by the buffet. “Jones, run and fetch the copies of the script I set aside for Lady Scarbrough and Lord Thornton if you please.”
With a bow, the young man left, taking with him any chance Cleo might have had to regain her sanity in the next two days. Lady Bella and the dowager entered the morning room then, with Tia and Helen close on their heels. Cleo had ever been the early riser in the family, with all the rest of the Harrington girls quite the slugabeds.
“Here are your sisters and Lady Bella herself,” Lady C. announced, ignoring the dowager for a moment. “Oh yes and the marchioness, we mustn’t forget. Good morning to you lot. I trust you found your chambers to your liking?”
“Indeed.” The dowager sent Lady C. a frigid smile as she was seated at the table. “Although I dare say I missed my own dear bed at Marleigh Manor. Nothing quite like the comforts of one’s home, as they say.”
Lady C.’s gaze narrowed on the dowager. “Yes, I suppose they do say a great deal these days.”
Cleo shifted uncomfortably in her chair. “The weather is lovely this morning, is it not?”
“I wouldn’t know,” the dowager clipped. “I haven’t been outside as of yet.”
“The sun does appear to be shining in the loveliest manner,” Lady Bella chimed in with false brightness.
“It will be a good day for all manner of sport,” Tia declared with a wicked glance at Cleo. “Wouldn’t you say, dear sister?”
With great difficulty, Cleo swallowed her chocolate and schooled her features into a polite façade. “What sport did you have in mind, Tia dearest?”
“Why, hunting I should think.” Tia turned to Helen and gave her an arch look. “What do you say, Helen?”
With a perfectly serious expression, Helen murmured, “Ideal weather for hunting, it seems.”
Cleo knew her sisters. And she knew the hunting they suggested was for men and not the fox or the hare. If she could have reached them beneath the table, she would have delivered a sound kick to each of their saucy shins.
“I do so
love the hunt,” Lady C. declared, spearing a bit of kipper on her fork. “Don’t you, Lady Thornton?”
“I’ve never had the constitution for it myself,” the dowager replied in icy tones. “I find women engaging in male pastimes to be altogether vulgar and, one might even venture to say, American.” She announced the last with great disgust.
“Why am I not surprised?” Lady C. quipped in low tones meant for Cleo’s ears alone.
Cleo suppressed a smile and kept her eyes trained on her plate.
“I have heard, however,” the dowager continued, “that you are quite the huntress, Lady Scarbrough.”
Startled that Lady Thornton had even deigned to address her directly, Cleo glanced up. The elder woman watched her as if she were a smelly, dirty street urchin come to fleece her purse. “I am only passably fair, I should think,” she answered with care, “having had little practice.”
The dowager sniffed, her expression hardening. “Tut. That is not what I heard at all.”
Cleo did not misunderstand the dowager’s implication. “I believe you must have heard wrong, my lady.” Her voice had acquired a touch of steel. She was not about to allow this woman to trample roughshod all over her. “You do know what they say about the dangers of believing common fame. I find in this polite society of ours, one rarely hears truth unless one hears it from the source herself.”
“Indeed.” Lady Thornton inclined her head, her countenance glacial.
Lady Bella cleared her throat. “I’ve been admiring your dress, Lady Scarbrough.”
“Thank you, my dear.” Cleo eyed her with sympathy. It was clear the dear girl felt the need to make amends for her mother’s ill manners. She may as well give up on that lost cause, however. As far as she could discern, nothing would improve Lady Thornton’s temperament save a needle and thread to sew her mouth closed. At least that way, one wouldn’t be forced to listen to her dreadful remarks.
“I am of the opinion of Mrs. Haweis,” the dowager interjected, dropping the name of the well-known arbiter of taste and ladies’ fashion, “that pale green has a propensity to make fair ladies look like corpses. However, I’m sure you do it suitable justice, Lady Scarbrough.”
Cleo fought the urge to sigh. Between company like the dowager, the matchmaking of her sisters and the too-clever hands of a certain marquis she could not quite bring herself to hate as she ought, it was going to be a long fortnight. A terribly long fortnight.
Cleo stood before Thornton in a sitting room off the library, a quiet, less opulent chamber meant for family rather than guests. He hadn’t changed from his riding clothes and he smelled of the outdoors, the fresh scent of moss, woods and clean air. Mud specked his boots, his black hair carelessly wind tossed. He was, in two words, sinfully tempting.
At the moment, however, he appeared immune to her presence. A peeved expression marred his face. Lady Cosgrove had arranged their rehearsal, offering up the private room and making certain a footman directed Thornton to Cleo immediately upon his return. It had perhaps been an unwise decision, but she had not wanted to affront the gracious lady.
She decided to strive to be pleasant. “Good morning, my lord.”
“Good morning, my lady.” He gave her an abbreviated bow and then spoiled the effect by opening his mouth again. “Is there a reason I’m brought to your heels like a mongrel?”
Cleo sucked in a breath. “I’m sure you smell of one, having been roaming about the countryside for the better part of the morning. As for why you should feel like a mongrel, I can’t say, unless you’ve been dallying with other female guests in darkened rooms recently.”
Thornton gritted his teeth. “I think we both agree our mutual enmity makes the task Lady C. has set upon us impossible.”
“Enmity? I adore you, my lord,” she drawled, determined to meet him, verbal stride for verbal stride. He would not win a match of rapier wits with her.
“What, do tell, has her esteemed ladyship selected for our farce?” he demanded, crossing his arms over his chest.
It was a delightfully broad chest, she noted against her will, and strong too. After all, she had been intimately pressed against it just yesterday. Probably, she should be sent to the asylum at Broadmoor. Her body was betraying her mind.
“I do not like this any more than you.” She felt compelled to remind him. He was not the only suffering party in their hostess’s madcap plans.
He eyed her with an unconvinced glare. “For a woman professing to be in vehement disagreement, you certainly capitulated with alarming rapidity.”
Cleo narrowed her gaze. “That is merely because I do not wish to be rude to our hostess.”
“We waste time,” he decreed, imperious as ever. His lips thinned with impatience. Gone was the passionate lover of yesterday.
Indeed, she began to wonder if her heated imagination had not dreamt the entire episode. It infuriated and yet somehow intrigued her that he could be so warm and then so cold, so remote.
“Act two, scene one,” she said. “Happily, it is a scene in which Rosaline delivers a most deserving setdown to Biron.” In that moment, she praised Lady C. for her choice. Really, it could not be more suited to reality.
She handed him his lines. “If you don’t wish to make a fool of yourself, you ought to practice.”
“I dare say I’ve already done that,” he muttered, taking the papers from her.
Cleo pretended she hadn’t heard him. “Would you prefer to study on your own first?”
“No, damn it, I wouldn’t.” Thornton ran a hand through his already mussed hair.
Cleo moved to the window, a safe and respectable distance from him. She trained her gaze on the scene Lady C. had provided them. Not looking at him, she knew, would make the effort more pleasant. “Very well. Your lines are first, Thornton.”
He muttered something that sounded like ‘damned meddlesome biddy’, then cleared his throat before beginning. “‘Hear me, dear lady. I have sworn an oath.’”
She sighed and was forced by habit to glance up at him. “No, you’ve the wrong lines. You are not the king, even if your ego suggests otherwise.”
“Tut.” He gave her a sullen expression. “You needn’t be a shrew over it.”
“Your mother says ‘tut’, you know,” she pointed out in her most amenable tone. “It quite makes you sound like a doughty old matron, which is, one may suppose, a status very near to that of political saint. You are without the dress and heaving bosom, of course.”
Thornton’s nostrils actually flared. “As I said before, your tongue is far more appreciated when it is engaged in an activity other than speech, Countess.”
A gentleman, a true gentleman, would never dare utter such vulgarity to a lady. Oh, he was a most vexing man, rigid and haughty at one turn and bawdy at another. And thoroughly appealing. She wanted to cross the room and kiss him or slap him. She wasn’t certain which. This wouldn’t do.
“Look to the star Lady C. marked for you,” she directed him. “It will tell you where to begin.”
“Can I not be the king?” He grinned. “I rather fancy the line ‘your ladyship is ignorant.’”
“Tut,” Cleo repeated in her most mocking tone.
“Touché.” His gray eyes warmed as they raked over her.
“Let us begin again.” She smoothed a palm over her tiered skirt to calm herself.
“At this house party, or at the dialogue?”
Well, both really. How much simpler her life would currently be had she not feigned a megrim? Likely, she would have been partnered with the always elegant, always agreeable, always above reproach Duke of Claridge. Certainly, she would not be all odds and ends, her stomach tossed as a ship, her heart too fast, her flesh too warm, her dratted dress improver once again too cinched.
“The dialogue,” she clarified, at last recalling his question. The man had the most unsettling, undesirable effect on her. “Let us begin the scene anew.”
“Yes. Very well.” He glanced down at the play.
“‘Did not I dance with you in Brabant once?’ Brabant? You know, I’ve never been there. Where the devil is it?”
“Thornton!” She threw up a hand in frustration. “You’ve muddled the lines.”
“Who gives a damn? We haven’t an audience.”
True, she mused. All the more reason for her to cleave to the window. “Yes, but one doesn’t make interjections while one rehearses for a play.”
“Perhaps one doesn’t,” he growled, “but I do. And you haven’t answered my question. Where the devil is Brabant?”
“It was a duchy in Belgium,” she answered, exasperated. “But now we must begin again.”
“Are we to recite our lines from opposite ends of the room?”
“Perhaps I wish to retain a safe distance from your odious presence.”
He stalked toward her, a knowing smile dawning on his mouth. “Or perhaps you don’t trust yourself to be close to me.”
“You are presumptuous.” And too perceptive. She held the scene out before her like a shield. “You needn’t stand so near. I hardly think Biron and Rosaline were atop one another.”
“No, I should think that came a bit later.”
Cleo bit her lip, meeting his gaze. “You are beyond the pale.”
“Go on,” he said lazily. “I enjoy hearing my many faults cataloged. It brings my ego to earth. I’m sure it distracts you from your inconvenient attraction to me.”
“There is no attraction, inconvenient or otherwise.” Though she tried to keep her voice cool and unaffected, she feared she sounded anything but. Her hands trembled as they clutched the play. She lowered them so he wouldn’t see. “Are you ready to continue?”
“Of course.” Thornton stepped closer. Her hem dragged across the tip of his boot.
Her dress improver tightened yet again.
He didn’t bother to examine the script, just kept his stare trained on her with an intensity she found most disconcerting. “‘Did not I dance with you in Brabant once?’”
Heart's Temptation Series Box Set: Books 1-3: A Steamy Historical Romance Collection (Heart's Temptation Box Set) Page 3