He stepped away and quickly shot his gaze up and down the blessedly still-empty halls. The heightened storm outside matched the one raging between them even now. While he did a cursory search for interlopers, Cara pressed her hands to her chest in a bid to still her erratic heartbeat. Will returned his attention to her and the organ kicked up a frantic pounding, proving all her efforts futile.
If she were discovered in this in flagrante delicato manner with this man, not even of the same station, she’d be ruined. It would be the level of ruin no lady could ever recover from; the kind that would shame her family and leave her an outcast. And yet, she could no sooner step away from him than she could sever off her left littlest finger.
Powerful heat radiated from under his thick, hooded, chestnut lashes, momentarily stealing all logical thought. He broke the silence. “You should not be out here alone, Cara.” Had his words been reproachful or mocking, she would have donned the cloak of rigidity she’d worn all these years. Instead, they were gruff, gravelly, and faintly pleading. Did she stir an inexplicable hunger in him, as well?
The possessive, and more…concerned glint in Will’s blue eyes filled her with—a potent warmth—a desire to be closer to someone. Nay, not someone, him. To go through life with a person who cared for her and about her. A man who saw past her brittle smile and jeering comments to know that, inside, she was a woman who’d sell her soul to the Devil during Sunday sermons just to be cared for and loved. Then the reality of her existence intruded.
There would be no warmth and love. Not with the future someday awaiting her. The future being the eventual Duke of Billingsley her father would one day bind her to. That equally cold and indolent lord, who even now traipsed about the Continent, hadn’t bothered with Cara since she’d been a girl of ten. Emotion lumped in her throat and a chill stole through her that had nothing to do with the ice-cold hallway and everything to do with the grim existence staring her down.
“Cara?” His gruff words rang with concern.
She drew in an unsteady breath. “You are correct. I will return to my rooms.” Cara paused, lingering a moment. Her chest froze mid-movement with a hopeful anticipation he’d protest her leaving.
Instead, he remained stoic and all things coolly unaffected; a shadow of the man who’d taken her in his arms and given her, her first kiss. With head held high, she turned on her heel and marched the handful of steps back to her chambers, entered her cold, lonely rooms, and closed the door behind her. Cara turned the lock.
That thin, wood panel between them, she allowed her shoulders to sag and borrowed support against the door. She laid her head upon the aged, marred wood and silently shook her head back and forth. She’d always dreamed of that first kiss, but that explosive meeting had been the heady magic no wishing or fantasizing one could prepare for.
The soft click of Will’s door closing filled her room and Cara caught her lower lip hard between her teeth. What she’d never anticipated was that one of Will’s kisses would never be enough.
Chapter 6
From her position perched at the edge of her lumpy mattress, Cara sat with hands clasped upon her lap staring at the wood panel door—just as she’d been doing for most of the morning.
A gust of wind beat against her windowpane and she shivered as the breeze cut through the thin walls of the establishment. She cast a glance over to that frosted pane. The winter storm gave no sign of letting up and raged with the same kind of ferocity that had barred the earl’s servant from recovering her belongings last evening. The precious pendant, that last link to her mother which mattered so very much, should occupy her thoughts and worries.
She’d never been without that piece once worn by her mother. So why was she thinking of something else? Nay, someone else. A very specific someone who, with his bear-like frame and long, strong hands, evinced the power of a man who worked with those hands. Will. The stranger who’d kissed her. She brushed her fingertips over her lips. A stranger who with his unerringly accurate words and charges had been more on the mark than any others in his assessment of her.
A knock sounded at the door. “My lady, can I assist you with anything?” The innkeeper’s wife’s concerned voice came muffled through the door and slashed through her troubled thoughts.
“I do not require any assistance,” she called back, now for the fifth time since the woman had been arriving that morning. And still for the fifth time, a lie. She’d accepted new garments, also coarser, older, and smaller than a frame such as hers required. Beyond that, she wanted no one’s company this day but her own. For with the solitariness of her thoughts, she could then put her world back to rights—a world where she was the frigid, proper daughter of a duke and everyone accepted that fact as truth.
Only she’d spent hours trying to reassemble herself and had—failed. For all the years of priding herself on her strength and unflinching aloofness, one forgotten carriage, and an evening at an inn had transformed her into this hesitant, uncertain figure she didn’t recognize. And if she was at least being truthful with herself, she could readily admit she still preferred this pathetic creature to the reviled one all the girls at Mrs. Belden’s gossiped about. And gossiped about with good reason.
Her half-sister, Mrs. Jane Munroe, slipped into her mind once more. Cara fisted the fabric of her borrowed blue skirts. She’d gotten the young woman sacked. She’d convinced herself that with the young woman, an instructor at her finishing school, gone then she could be free of the constant reminders of the manner of monster her father was. Instead, with those cruel, carefully delivered words to Mrs. Belden, she’d only proven that she herself was just as much a monster as the man who sired her.
Another knock sounded on her door and this time she was grateful for the intrusion into the guilt pressing on her chest. “Yes?” For the sliver of a moment, her breath caught in anticipation of Will on the other side.
“Would you care to come down for the afternoon meal, my lady? Or should I bring another tray?”
Of course it wouldn’t be Will. What business had he at her door? Regret sank her breathless hope.
“My lady?” The innkeeper’s wife prodded, insistence to her voice.
“Y-yes.” At that tremulous quake to her words, she flinched. This is what she’d become. Cara lowered her hand back to her lap. “I’ll take my meal in my room.”
The faint shuffle of footsteps indicated the woman had moved. Except, with the snow pelting her small, lonely window, Cara furrowed her brow. Well, why in bloody blazes should she take her meal in her rooms? Again? Because some stranger she’d known just a day had cast this mad haze over her logical senses? She squared her shoulders. She’d not hide in her chambers. Not any longer. “Just a moment.” With an alacrity that would have made Mrs. Belden glower, Cara came to her feet and all but sprinted across the room. She jerked the door open and rushed into the hall. “Wait!”
The old woman stopped and turned to face her with a kind smile on her lips. She started. People did not smile at her. Largely because she gave them little reason to. Even though you’ve secretly hungered for even a scrap of kindness. When she spoke, her voice faintly trembled. “I w-will take my meal below.” Then striving for her smooth affectedness that protected her from the knowing in the old innkeeper’s eyes, Cara tossed her head. “I’ve matters to attend belowstairs.” Which wasn’t altogether untrue. There was the matter of finding her borrowed driver and obtaining her trunks.
“Splendid!” The innkeeper’s wife widened her smile and then without waiting for Cara to follow, made her way slowly down the remainder of the hall and to the stairs.
With the woman safely ahead of her, Cara paused and cast a furtive glance over her shoulder at the door next to hers. Was Will still in his chambers? She thrust away the thought as soon as it slipped in. Cara scoffed. A bold, commanding figure such as Will who’d quelled the words on her lips and ordered her servants about, was not one to hide in his chambers. Most especially from a lady such as herself. She wrinkl
ed her nose and started after the innkeeper’s wife. Nor for that matter was he the reason she was making her way downstairs. Only, she knew she lied. Even as that precious gift given her by her mother should be the focus of her thoughts, and not one of those pompous, powerful men who ruled the world, instead her mind and heart raced with an equally alarming speed with the memory of Will. And there it was again. That sentiment she’d been immune to all these years, visiting her not once, but now twice, since she’d arrived at this ramshackle inn—remorse.
As she descended the stairs and into the taproom, she resolved to be that woman she’d been all these years—one who didn’t feel guilt or cry in her room or long for someone to care, if even in some small way. Cara knew how to be that woman; she’d been that empty soul since her mother died. She did not, however, know what to do with the maelstrom of emotions swirling in her breast since she’d left Mrs. Belden’s. Her feet touched the hardwood floor and her gaze slid involuntarily about the darkened space. A fire raged in the hearth. Even for the earliness of the day, the storm battering the countryside cloaked the outside in thick, gray skies that barely penetrated the frosted panes.
She moved her gaze over the taproom. Her heart dipped. But for the earl’s driver alone at a corner table, the room was empty. Will was gone. How else was there to account for his absence? What reason had he to stay? Surely not for me. Cara curled her toes into the soles of her boots and then looked about once more. He’d gone and would be nothing more than a memory…just like that last, tangible connection to her mother lying in the Godforsaken countryside collecting snow. Cara steeled her jaw. She thought not. Her gaze landed on the earl’s driver.
The servant of middling years leapt to his feet. “My l—”
“Have you collected my belongings?” she cut in.
The man skittered his gaze about and then touched one hand to his chest.
Cara gave a brusque nod. Who did he think she spoke to? Or perhaps it was more he wished she spoke to someone other than him.
“Er…” He pointed a quaking finger at the front of the establishment. “It is still snowing, my lady.”
Setting aside her earlier resolve to be the duke’s cold daughter, Cara gave a wry grin. “Is it?” She infused a droll edge into her tone. Wind beat against the window. “Who knew it still stormed out?”
The driver blanched.
Alas, she’d never been lauded for her humor or her ability to elicit smiles.
A pang struck. Was that the effect she had on all people? Even those who’d known her but a handful of hours, and hardly at that if one considered their time together had been with him perched atop his box and her in the confines of the earl’s carriage. Giving a snap of her skirts, she started for the groom, when Will’s judgmental words pricked her conscience. “You’d send a person out into this Godforsaken weather for your fripperies, brat…”
Was it a wonder he’d have nothing more than a kiss and then be gone from her life as though she were…nothing?
She froze mid-step. The fire cracked and hissed noisily, punctuated by the ping of ice hitting the window. Cara squared her jaw. Will had taken her as one of those pompous, self-important ladies, but then isn’t that how she’d gone through life these eleven years now? She remained unmoving, aware of the innkeeper and driver eying her with trepidation teeming from their gazes. Yet, she could no sooner speak or walk than she could displace her father from power and name herself duke. Since the loss of her mother, in a bid for her father’s affection, she’d striven to be what he expected of her as a duke’s daughter. She’d buried her spirit and all hint of emotion to become a perfectly flawless, rule-abiding lady. From the color and fabric of her gown, to the practiced smile on her lips, she’d given the world what they expected to see.
“My lady?” the innkeeper whispered, taking a cautious step forward.
Cara fairly twitched with the urge to break free of the ton’s suddenly suffocating mold. Well, bloody hell, she’d not prove that kiss-stealing stranger correct. Not in this regard.
“I-I will see to your things, my lady.” The servant grabbed the hat on the empty chair and stuffed it on his head. He started for the door.
She slowly straightened her shoulders. “No.”
It took a moment for her words to register, but then the driver came to a slow halt. He stared perplexedly back at her. The driver tugged at his collar and shifted back and forth on his feet.
“That will not be necessary,” she spoke in even, well-modulated tones.
A flash of surprise lit his eyes, followed quickly by relief. She peered at the window where the storm continued to rage outside. Cara scoffed. She’d not be daunted by a blasted snowstorm.
“You are c-certain, my lady?” he asked hesitantly, fiddling with the brim of his cap. The wary gleam in his eyes matched the look of one who feared he had his foot in a snare.
“I am certain,” she said stiffly. She didn’t require anyone’s help to collect her belongings. Turning on her heel once more, she spun in a flutter of noisy taffeta and marched abovestairs to her rooms and over to the crude armoire. “Only think of myself,” she muttered and jerked her wrinkled cloak free. She pulled the garment about her person and fastened the grommets.
With furious steps, she stomped out of the room, down the hall, and returned belowstairs, finding the driver gone. The man had likely taken his leave in fear that she’d return and put another request to him that would send him out into the storm. She did a cursory search for one particular man. Her heart dipped at finding him absent, still.
It matters not that I won’t see him again. It matters not that he’ll only live in my memory as my first kiss—and one man who’d not given a jot about my status as lady and challenged me in every way…
Ignoring the shocked stares of the old innkeepers, she made her way to the door and yanked it open. The sharp sting of cold sucked the breath from her lungs, momentarily stunning her. A howling gust of wind slapped her face with snow. Cara sputtered and dashed the flakes from her cheeks. Finding her breath, she stepped outside, and shoved the door closed hard behind her.
She burrowed in her cloak. “I found my blasted way here not a day ago, I c-can c-certainly find my way once m-more.” Those whispered words echoed like thunder in the raging blizzard.
And then she started forward.
Will stood at the window with his hands clasped behind his back. He stared out into the swirling storm, still raging. The violence of that powerful wind battering the leaden panes and the thick, gray-white, winter skies suited his mood. And where he’d previously mourned the warm kiss of the Caribbean sun on his skin, now he embraced the cold.
He was due home. It was, and always had been, an inevitability. He’d have to return to the world of sedentary lord who oversaw his future responsibilities as duke. And more…the time would come that he’d wed. Yet, the woman who occupied his thoughts was not the future bride his parents would bind him to, but rather, another—a lady who wept in private and cursed with an inventiveness that would have earned the praise of any wordsmith.
A woman he’d taken for an ice princess. Cara.
He let his arms fall to his sides and then scrubbed a hand over his face. That charge he’d leveled at the rigid lady one day earlier now mocked him. For in the quiet of the halls last night, while the world slumbered on, and the storm buffeted snow on the countryside, with her lips and whispered entreaties, Cara’s molten heat could have eternally thawed the harshest winter.
He let fly a curse to match the ones the lady herself had uttered in the privacy of her chambers. In his years of traveling, and all the women he’d kissed, never before had one slipped into his thoughts and dug in with this tentacle-like grip. In large part due to the life he’d lived, traveling. There was no place for emotional entanglements. Even less place when there was a lady his parents would see him wed.
And after but a handful of meetings with the lady he’d first taken for the manner of cruel, unkind miss his future betroth
ed was purported to be, he’d been silenced by the very real truth—there was, just as the innkeeper had said, more to the lady than a mean-spirited mistress who ordered her servants about. I have no right peeling back the layers to discover who the lady truly is… For nothing could ever come of knowing anything more of Cara, the young lady who’d refused to give him so much as her surname. Another life awaited him. Just as another life awaited her.
Will curled his hands tightly at his back. His father had been far more lenient than any other duke ought with his son and heir gallivanting about the globe. How much of that leniency had been born of parental guilt at that unofficial, but not unspoken, contract they’d have him enter into with the Duke of Ravenscourt’s daughter? He’d long resented the expectation for him to join himself with that woman. Though not one given to gossips, it would be hard to ignore the whisperings as they pertained to the woman his parents would see him wed. Words lent credence by his own father’s confirmation about the lady’s character. Still for that, his mother’s bond to Lady Clarisse Falcot’s late mother was such that she’d ask him to overlook a wife who was cold, cruel, and calculated because there was more there than any of Society saw of the lady.
He snorted. His mother had long been hopeful, seeing the best in all. He gave his head a shake. Those charges about a young woman, coming from her own godmother before she’d even made her Come Out were hardly endorsements where his future bride was concerned. And for two days he’d not given a thought to the grim future awaiting him, but rather the tart-mouthed lady who challenged him one moment, and the other moments eyed him with a soft, doe-eyed expression that could drive a man to madness.
For only madness could account for this hungering after Cara. From the windowpane, his packed saddlebags reflected mockingly back at him. That same insanity required he leave, winter storm and all. But twenty miles from his family’s estate, the ride would be slow and arduous but hardly impossible. He sighed. A man who’d endured a trek in Nova Scotia during the heart of winter could certainly manage twenty miles or so by horseback. The longer he remained here with her, the more his world was thrown into question.
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