by Lucy Monroe
She wanted to protest, to say she didn’t care about reputations or being caught in a flagrant embrace, not if it meant she could experience his kiss for a little longer. She said nothing, however. It would not be fair to Jared.
He was an honorable man and she sensed that if he were caught in a compromising situation, he would insist on doing the right thing. The very thought of marrying again was enough to cool her raging emotions. That was a risk she could never repeat.
She nodded, but realized that in the shadowed light, he might not have seen it and whispered, "All right."
"Come to the musicale tomorrow night."
At the intense demand radiating from him, she was tempted to agree and then send her excuses the following evening, but she had promised not to lie to him. "No."
He swore. "Then, I’ll call on you tomorrow."
"No, Jared. Please." She had to say goodbye, no matter how much she wanted to agree to see him again.
It was the only path to safety...to a life without risk, a life without pain.
And a life without joy, her mind insisted on reminding her.
He squeezed her shoulders. "I’ll see you tomorrow."
Then he was gone, melting away into the shadows as silently as if he’d never been there. But her lips still felt his touch. She pulled off one of her gloves and touched her lips with her fingertip in awe. They felt warm, soft and fuller than usual and her body still vibrated with sensations brought by his kiss. He had given her an incredible gift tonight.
She had believed Clairborne when he called her frigid and useless as a woman. Jared had shown her that somewhere deep inside her, fire burned. Perhaps it was not warm enough to melt the ice in her soul, but it had warmed her for a little while.
Taking a shuddering breath, she realized she was crying. She found her handkerchief and wiped the wetness from her cheeks. She mourned the loss of warmth that Jared had brought, but she was not fool enough to believe he would desire to continue their association...not once he got to know her.
Once he realized how weak she truly was, he would reject her in disgust.
Much safer to maintain her distance now, than to have her heart broken by his rejection later.
***
The next morning, Jared went in search of Irisa. As Calantha’s neighbor, she should have some idea of the type of person the duchess was. He found her keeping his other sister, Thea, company in the nursery with the children.
Hannah came rushing forward when she saw him. "Jared, we’re playin’ queens and kings. Want to play wif us?"
He smiled down at the sweet little face, incredibly relieved the other children had been able to coax her into playing. She had taken Mary's death hard, her normally pragmatic but sunny nature clouded by sadness and silent grief.
"Who’s the king?" he asked.
Hannah pointed to his nephew, Thea’s son. "David. I’m a queen and so is Deanna. Her mama and the other lady are princesses."
Jared smiled at his sisters. "I guess that makes me a prince, then."
Hannah frowned, letting a glimmer of her old assertiveness show. "No. You’re the big king."
David, a sturdy five year old with blonde hair and gray eyes, shrugged. "You can be king with me if you want, Uncle Jared."
Thea’s eyes filled with mischief and she shook her head, one chestnut curl slipping loose. "I think he’d make a much better page."
Irisa laughed. "Yes. Let’s have Jared be our page."
Jared glared at his sisters, but Hannah was the one who spoke. "Is a page bigger ‘an a king?"
"Not exactly, little one," Thea replied, her lips curved in a playful smile.
It amazed him how alike his sisters were when they had been raised separately and had different mothers, but they both had the same mischievous sense of humor. They were also equally kind to Hannah. He hadn’t told them anything about her father being the late Duke of Clairborne.
It struck him for the first time that they might think she was his. He mentally shrugged away the thought. It didn’t matter. In all the ways that mattered, the little girl did belong to him.
A bird chirped outside the window and Hannah’s head came up at the sound. Prior to Mary's death, that telling little reaction would have been followed by an immediate demand to go outside, however Hannah said nothing now.
He swung her up into his arms. "Would you like to go outside, sweet?"
She regarded him solemnly. "Will you come?"
"Yes."
"What an excellent idea. Women who are carrying need exercise," Thea said, with a significant look at Irisa.
Irisa and Ashton had returned from visiting relatives in France with the news that she was pregnant. His new niece or nephew was due in only a few months, but Jared could barely tell that his sister carried a child. The fact that she chose to throw a house party during her pregnancy mystified him. Why she wanted to go to all that effort in her current condition, he couldn’t fathom. But then he didn’t understand her desire to invite a bunch of people to her house at all.
Once they got outside, Jared lagged back with his sisters while the little ones raced ahead. David and Deanna each had one of Hannah's hands and carried her along despite an uncertain glance she sent back at him.
"She's worried you'll leave her," Irisa said with a sigh.
Thea nodded. "I remember feeling so very afraid I would lose everyone I loved after Mama's death and I was much older. Jared is the only constant left in Hannah's life now that her mother is gone."
"I'm not going anywhere," Jared vowed.
"She'll come to accept it and come out of the shell grief has built around her," Thea predicted.
Jared hoped she was right. He missed Mary and her friendship, but he missed Hannah's sunny smiles even more. "Tell me what you know about the Angel."
"Oh ho, so you are interested," Irisa said gloatingly. "I tried to tell Thea, but she didn’t see you two dancing and would not believe me."
Jared felt unaccustomed heat rise in his neck and tried to glare his sister into submission, but it failed. Miserably. She smiled back with unrepentant glee.
Thea’s face had lost its playful look, however and she considered him with a concerned air. "You’re interested in courting the Angel?"
"No." Damn it, didn’t they think he knew how hopeless that would be? "I’m just curious. She asked me to dance last night." Which was as good of an excuse as any to interrogate his sisters about the duchess.
"She asked you to dance?" Irisa, who had spent the first twenty years of her life living up to the strictest standards of the ton, was clearly shocked.
"Yes."
Thea’s gaze took on a speculative quality. "I wouldn’t have expected that of her. She seems so proper, almost inhuman if you want the truth."
He did. All of it. He wanted to know everything they thought or had heard about Calantha.
"Why did she do it?" Thea asked.
"Because she wanted to get to know Jared, of course, and he’s so withdrawn around the ladies. It’s no wonder she felt it necessary to take bold action," Irisa replied for him.
Jared grimaced. "She stepped in to save my masculine ego." He could not remember the last time anyone had thought he needed protecting.
"What do you mean?" Thea asked.
"Beatrice was otherwise engaged when I came to claim her for our dance."
"The little twit," Irisa said.
Jared shrugged. "I’m used to that sort of thing," he said, dismissing the young woman’s actions as unimportant because they were. "Now, tell me about the Angel."
"You called her Calantha a moment ago," Thea said, apropos of nothing.
"She asked me to."
Both of his sisters stopped walking to stare at him. They acted as if using Calantha’s name were as intimate as taking her to bed. He frowned. He wanted to do that too, but he wasn’t about to give into the urge and they could stop looking like he already had.
"She asked you to use her first name? I don’t unde
rstand. The duchess’s conduct is always above reproach," Irisa had resumed walking, but she sounded astonished. "I can’t believe this. My brother’s going to marry the Angel."
"I’m not going to marry anyone at the moment." When his sisters gave him identical skeptical looks, he added, "I mean it."
"But you have to marry sometime, Jared," Thea said.
"When I do, it won’t be to Calantha. Bloody hell, angels do not marry beasts."
Irisa’s eyes filled with tears and Jared groaned. Even knowing they were more a result of her pregnancy than his comment, he felt terrible.
"You aren’t a beast. You’re a hero. You saved my life."
Thea patted Irisa’s shoulder and glared at her brother. Although he’d only met this sister five years ago, she behaved if she had known him all her life. "A few scars don’t make a man into a monster and there is no reason why the Angel shouldn’t want to marry you. You are the best of men, Jared."
Hell. How had the conversation gotten so off track? All he wanted was a little information. Exasperated, he said, "Maybe I don’t want to marry a marble statue. Now will you just answer my question?"
The women seemed to realize that he meant it and fell silent in contemplation.
Thea spoke first. "She does rather remind me of a statue. I don’t think I’ve ever seen so much as a flicker of genuine emotion on her face. She always looks so serene."
She hadn’t looked serene last night, not after he’d kissed her. She’d looked dazed and wanton. His body reacted to the memory and he forced his attention back to the conversation at hand before things got embarrassing.
"I met her the first year of my marriage," Thea went on, stopping to scoop up her tiny daughter, who had fallen behind the more boisterous David who was still dragging Hannah in his wake. "The duke was still alive at that time. He played the perfect gentleman, but I never liked him. He acted above associating with Pierson."
Jared knew his sister had absolutely no tolerance for anyone who judged Drake by the circumstances of his birth. She was fiercely protective of those she loved.
"What about Calantha? Did she behave that way about Drake?" If she were offended by his brother-in-law’s illegitimacy, she would not accept Hannah.
Thea shook her head as her daughter patted her cheek. "No. She treated him with the same distant politeness she extended to all gentlemen. She was careful not to give one man more attention than another, but she never cut Pierson in any way. I wondered once or twice if the duke were a violently jealous man."
Irisa nodded. "That would explain a lot. I don’t get the impression that she wants to remarry. She doesn’t encourage the attention of gentlemen at all."
She had certainly encouraged him last night and she hadn’t been at all distant, but he wasn’t about to admit as much to his already overly interested sisters. "Would you say she was a kind person?"
Thea stared at him blankly. "I don’t know. She isn’t cruel. I’ve never seen her so much as frown at a servant, but she doesn’t extend herself toward others either. It’s almost as if she’s there, but not. I’ve always thought her nickname suited her well. She is rather otherworldly."
Irisa’s eyes narrowed in thought. "Actually, she is kind, but in a very subtle way. She provides all sorts of tinctures and medicines from her garden for anyone who wants them, but she does it through her housekeeper. She doesn’t gush, but I think she cares. I’m not sure she even realizes it, but her actions speak for themselves. She even sent me a remedy for seasickness when she learned I planned to cross the channel to France. She mentioned it was safe for pregnancy. I always wondered if she knew about my condition somehow."
Jared nodded. Irisa had waited until she was onboard the ship to tell Ashton. His brother-in-law had been furious, but she had justified her actions by saying she knew he wouldn’t have allowed her to make the trip otherwise. Jared dismissed the idea that Calantha had somehow guessed about the pregnancy as a foolish thought, but considered Irisa’s other revelations. A woman who did that could not have turned a blind eye to her husband's depravity. Could she?
"When you say she helps anyone, do you mean anyone in the nobility or anyone at all?" he asked.
"Anyone at all. She even provided fever reducing tea for a camp of gypsies that came down ill while in the district."
"That’s very interesting. I cannot imagine the former duke allowing her to associate with others of lesser birth than herself," Thea mused.
Irisa shrugged. "I don’t know what she was like in her marriage. I only know what she’s like now and I do think she’s kind. I also think she is lonely. She doesn’t allow anyone to get very close. We’ve met for tea several times, but she withholds herself. I like her for all that."
Jared contemplated the possibility Calantha had been a different person married to the duke. As much as he might be tempted to, particularly after the passion of last night and the vulnerability he had sensed in her, he could not ignore the fact that she had been mistress of the house when Mary was raped. Nor could he dismiss the fact that she had pulled away from her friendship with Mary prior to that. Mary had mentioned it, explaining that was why she had not gone to Calantha for help when the duke had first begun giving her lascivious looks.
She'd planned to leave the household, but the duke had made sure she did not have the resources to do so, holding onto her wages ostensibly for safe keeping. Desperate, Mary had written to him asking for help. His help had come too late to prevent the horror of the rape, but it had made it possible for her to come to him afterward.
When she had first arrived at his home, she'd insisted on working for her keep and taken the position of house maid. He'd hated that, but in some ways Mary had been every bit as stubborn as he was. She'd been so ashamed, so devastated by what happened with Clairborne, that it had taken a long time for her to tell Jared what sent her running in the first place. By then, she'd known she was pregnant.
Once her condition became apparent, his housekeeper had rebelled at the idea of employing a "dirty whore" as she called the already terrorized Mary. Jared had fired his housekeeper with a few choice words and hired Mary to take her place. It had been a situation that ultimately suited them both.
However, he could not forget the bright future she had had before she took the position of companion to Clairborne's mother. The Angel was as responsible as Clairborne for the Mary's desperate predicament. Jared could not forget that, no matter how bloody innocent she seemed.
No matter how much he wanted her.
CHAPTER THREE
"I must not allow Jared to kiss me again," Calantha muttered under her breath to her Parson’s Pink rose bush.
Feeling no more certain of her self-control, she cut several rosehips and dropped them in the basket hanging on her left arm. Saying the words again for good measure, she moved on to the next potted rosebush and looked for the seeds necessary for the medicinal recipes she concocted.
The early afternoon sun beat in through the conservatory’s glass roof and walls, making her glad that she had donned only a light muslin gown and India cotton apron that morning. Open doors at either side of the indoor garden and several windows propped outward allowed a slight breeze, but did not completely ease the impact of the summer’s heat.
No more than her self-remonstrating could eradicate her memories from last night. Unfortunately, even spoken aloud, the words had no more impact than they did as a silent litany in her head.
She had been repeating them in her mind throughout a sleepless night and restless morning, but every time she thought of the rather uncivilized viscount, her lips tingled and her body throbbed.
She could not help wondering what would have happened next if their rendezvous in the garden had not been interrupted. Would Jared have continued to kiss her? Would he have allowed her to continue kissing him? Would he have touched her in some intimate fashion?
After her experiences in that regard with Clairborne, the very idea should be sufficient to halt her curious mus
ings. It did not. Jared’s kisses had been unlike anything she had ever known and she couldn’t help believing his touch would have an even stronger impact on her senses.
Which was the last thing she could allow, she reminded herself.
She had given up on tender emotion in order to survive her marriage. She did not think she was even capable of love, but if she was...if she committed the ultimate folly of falling in love with the powerful viscount, she had no doubt it would only lead to more emotional pain for herself.
She would disappoint him, just as she had disappointed Clairborne. Only the hurt from doing so would be so much greater.
Clairborne had been a true beast, a monster in gentleman’s garb. His opinion of her person had ceased to matter to her after the first two months of their marriage, but she instinctively knew that with Jared – it would be different. Losing his regard would lead to an agony of spirit that she could not withstand.
And he would come to despise her. It was inevitable once he learned the truth of her culpability in her former maid’s death.
She peeled off one of her gloves and pressed her forefinger into the soil of one of her pots. It felt a little dry and she watered the rosebush. Unable to concentrate on her studies that morning, she had come into the conservatory in an effort to push thoughts of Jared from her mind, but it had been a dismal failure. Each lovely bloom reminded her of him, perhaps because of his admission the evening before that he maintained an outdoor rose garden.
She would like to see such a thing very much, certain that his garden would be as fascinating as the man himself. Roses were not nearly as popular in England for ornamentation as they were in France. By all accounts, the Empress Josephine had had a truly spectacular collection, one unparalleled in all of Europe. It was gone now, along with any record of the grounds or the specific bushes planted. The amazing garden remained only in the memory of those who had been privileged to see it.
Calantha’s mother had grown roses, but only to harvest them for her medicines. Unable to maintain a purely practical approach to the beautiful flowers, Calantha grew them for both harvest and pleasure. She wished she knew why her interest in Jared’s Apothecary’s bush had sparked that brief flash of anger. It had frightened her, which was further proof that she must overcome this foolish absorption with the viscount.