A Scoundrel by Moonlight (29 page)

“Did I?”

Hillbrook smiled grimly and pointed to Harmsworth. “Look.”

Careful how he turned his head, Leath saw the volume in Sir Richard’s hand. Despite pain and anger, a tendril of satisfaction unfurled. “I did, didn’t I?”

Hillbrook’s smile broadened. “Good work.”

“Sod got away,” Sedgemoor announced from Leath’s right. “There’s a cellar with a passage through to the river.”

“Must be why he chose this place,” Harmsworth said. “I’ve made the mistake before of underestimating the brute.”

“It doesn’t matter.” Leath’s voice sounded thick in his ears. “Without the diary, he’s got no leverage.”

Hillbrook helped him up. “Come on; let’s get you back to Miss Trim.”

Leath staggered and cursed his clumsiness. Gratefully he
accepted Hillbrook’s shoulder under his arm. “She won’t be impressed that I let the blackguard scarper.”

Sedgemoor took the other arm. “She won’t care when her wounded hero returns.”

For some reason, Leath found that description enormously funny and he laughed. At least until his stomach lurched in protest. Wounded hero indeed.

“I still think you should see a doctor.” Eleanor rose from her chair across the dinner table.

They were in Leath’s private parlor at the Royal Swan, Maidenhead’s best inn. Earlier, all five had enjoyed a meal to celebrate the diary’s retrieval. Leath’s head pounded, but he’d done his best with a single glass of champagne. The other men had made up for his abstention, raising glasses in increasingly lunatic toasts.

Eleanor had been reserved, but it was impossible to remain shy in Richard Harmsworth’s presence, and she’d soon joined the festivities. Leath had smiled to see her so easy in the high-bred company. More ammunition for his campaign to marry her. He merely bided his time before asking again. He suspected she guessed that. After she’d recovered from the shock of seeing his injuries, her manner had turned wary.

He appreciated the welcome the three men gave her. Even more, he appreciated that each had since found an excuse to leave the parlor.

Now Eleanor approached him, beautiful eyes dark with concern. It was a cold night and she looked so warm and inviting. In her neat gray dress, she seemed more his Miss Trim than the gorgeous creature in silk at Fentonwyck. He’d wanted that woman to the point of madness, but there was something familiar and delightful about this Eleanor.

Gently she ran her hand over the back of his head. Even such a delicate touch had him hiding a wince. She brushed her lips across his thick dark hair, so lightly that he barely felt it. Except that his lonely heart yearned for her care like a man dying of thirst yearned for a river.

Still gently, she caught his jaw in one slender hand and tilted his face. She rested her other hand on his shoulder as she scrutinized him with a detailed attention that made his bones melt with longing. She pressed another butterfly kiss to the bruise on his cheekbone. “You quite terrify me, James; you’re so scarred and bruised.”

He smiled. This was the first time she’d called him James all night. He raised his hand and pressed her palm against his jaw. “Who needs a doctor when I have Miss Trim? Will you stay tonight?”

For the sake of her reputation, he’d engaged a separate room for her, although he’d ensured it was across the corridor from his. A man lived in hope, after all.

She stared into his eyes and briefly he thought she might agree, before she shook her head. “No.”

He tried to find comfort in her audible regret. “Are you sure?”

Amusement lit her eyes to gold. “Stop tempting me.”

She kissed his mouth. Her scent surrounded him. Fresh. Lemony. Eleanor. He parted his lips to set the kiss on fire, but she withdrew. “Your head must hurt like the devil.”

“Another part hurts worse,” he complained.

She snickered. “You’ll live.”

“Cruel beauty.”

She turned and laid her hand on the diary. “So this is the book that caused all the trouble.”

His smile faded. “No, my toad of an uncle caused the trouble.”

“Have you read it?”

“No.” He struggled to hide his disgust at what little he’d seen. Pages of his uncle’s banal and profane prose, all expressing relentless contempt for his lovers. Leath had been sickened and depressed. “Do you want to check what he said about your sister?”

Sadness dulled her eyes. “No. She paid the price for her recklessness. She was an innocent led astray. I don’t need to know more. What are you going to do with the diary?”

“I’d like to burn it so that it does no more harm.” He stared at the book. “But it’s the only record we have of my uncle’s sins. I’ll have to track down these women and make sure they’re all right. Only the bravest and most desperate have written to me, I suspect.”

Eleanor studied him, eyes glowing in the flickering light. “You’re a good man, James.”

The compliment warmed him, especially given her past suspicions. “I’m glad you think so.”

“I worry that Greengrass is still out there,” she said with a shiver. “By now he’ll know that the satchel was packed with newspaper.”

“He’ll go to ground somewhere close. We’ll find him.” Leath sat back and opened his arms. “Come here.”

She didn’t shift. “I told you I can’t stay tonight.”

“I know,” he said drily. “But that doesn’t mean you have to stand so far away.”

Her lips flattened with a fond exasperation that made his poor heart stutter. So desperate he was for any sign that she felt more than mere desire. “It’s all of two feet.”

“Too far.”

“And you’ve been in a fight. You’re covered in bruises.”

“You can take off my clothes and check if you like.”

“James.”

“Please?”

She sighed. He waited for her to stick to her guns and walk away, but she crossed the minimal distance between them and curled up on his lap.

She was right. He was covered in bruises. With Eleanor in his arms, he didn’t give a damn. His hold tightened as she rested her head on his shoulder with a trust that he couldn’t take for granted. Not when only days ago, she’d hated him.

“I was terrified when you went to meet that man.” Her soft confession vibrated with emotion.

He kissed her forehead. She’d tied her hair in a loose knot. His fingers itched to unpin it, but he restrained himself. He didn’t need more torture. “You hid it well.”

“Did I?”

He laughed shortly. “No.”

She nestled closer. “I held my breath until you came back.”

“Kiss me,” he whispered.

She framed his head between her hands. The light in her eyes made him imagine that she loved him. She drew him down until their lips met. The contact lasted long enough to turn his blood to honey.

She nipped his lower lip and placed glancing kisses along his jaw. This time when she stopped, he growled deep in his throat. Her teasing provoked him. He hadn’t been alone with Eleanor since that explosive evening in Sedgemoor’s library. On their journey south, they’d stayed in Northampton, then spent another night at Rothermere House, Sedgemoor’s luxurious pile in Grosvenor Square.

Leath settled her to allow better access to her mouth. Her hand traced a searing path up his chest, although the atmosphere remained sweet rather than sultry.

“Kiss me properly,” he murmured.

A frown creased her brow. “Are you up to it?”

He laughed and bumped her with his hips. He expected her to wriggle away, but she shifted closer. “You’re tormenting me.”

“A little. To pay you back for frightening me.” She paused. “To pay you back for getting hurt.”

Sweetness flared to heat and he groaned. “Eleanor…”

He didn’t hold back when he kissed her. By the time he raised his head, she strained against him. Her dress was unbuttoned and his hand curled around her breast.

“You’re dangerous,” she muttered, shoving aside his shirt and kissing his chest where his longing heart beat to the sound of her name.

He kissed the satiny white flesh above the pert pink nipple. “Stay with me tonight. Nobody need know.”

“Yes, they will,” she retorted, even as she arched nearer.

Unable to ignore the encouragement, his lips closed on the peak of her breast. She cried out and her fingers tightened on his shoulders.

“We could make love now,” he said unsteadily. “Then you could return to your room and nobody will be the wiser.”

“I hate the idea of people sniggering about… us.” She stared at him, troubled. “I’m not a very convenient mistress, am I?”

He spoke the words that he’d promised himself he wouldn’t say until this mess with Greengrass was resolved. The words that would blast all this lovely, warm intimacy to hell.

“You’d make a highly convenient wife.”

N
ot this again.” Nell scrambled away. She put her hands on her hips and stared James down.

Unfortunately, his lordship was as dogged as she was. His chin jutted belligerently. “Eleanor, will you marry me?”

“No.” She whirled away, missing the luxuriant rustle of Lady Hillbrook’s gown. The narrow skirts of her gray dress didn’t lend her temper the same grandeur. A sign of how dangerously easy it would be to tumble into the fantasy that she belonged in James’s world. That his clever, rich, aristocratic friends would accept her. That she made a fit consort for this outstanding man.

“Is that all you have to say?”

When she turned, she saw he’d risen. He rested one hand on the back of the chair where for a few blissful moments she’d leaned into him as if he was her rock in a turbulent world.

He remained her rock in a turbulent world. But she could never claim him publicly. Not without damaging him. She stiffened her spine and prepared to crush her dearest dreams to dust. “If you marry me, you’ll never be prime minister.”

“I don’t give a rat’s arse about being prime minister. I’d rather have you.”

His language shocked her and she faltered back before remembering that she must appear strong. “You
can
have me—as a mistress.”

“I want more.”

“There is no more. Desire must be enough.” She turned toward a mirror to fix her hair. The face in the glass was rosy with kisses, but the eyes were frightened.

She saw him reflected behind her. In his bruised face, his smile expressed endless affection. “We have more than desire and you know it.”

Her wayward heart lurched with love. When he smiled like that, he was nigh irresistible. “Stop it,” she snapped, turning on him.

He was still smiling. How she wished he wouldn’t. “Stop desiring you? Never.”

His gaze conducted a leisurely exploration of her body. Without touching her, he set every inch tingling. Slow heat shimmered inside her, turned her blood thick and sluggish. Her stomach quivered with longing. She shifted to relieve the heaviness between her legs.

He read her reaction. His smile broadened, became wolfish. She blushed to think what ran through his mind.

“Desire is no basis for marriage.” Her sharpness targeted her own susceptibility rather than James.

“It’s a start,” he said patiently.

“You’re just worried that as your mistress, I’ll be all reluctance and propriety.”

Amusement lit his eyes. “Tonight doesn’t bode well.”

She dared to step toward him. “I need a little time to accept my place in your bed.”

They stood face to face like adversaries. She was torn
between running away and clinging to him like the ivy clung to the ancient walls of Alloway Chase. When he took her hand, she jumped as if burned.

“I don’t argue with your place in my bed.” His thumb stroked her palm, stirring her restlessness.

“You can’t forsake the plans of a lifetime.”

James drew her to an oak settle, black with age, near the fire. He sat beside her, keeping her hand. “I’ve changed since I met you.”

Despite being so overwrought, a wry smile curved her lips. “These days you’re not always convinced that you’re right.”

“Ouch,” he said amiably, laying his arm along the back of the long seat. They must look like two sweethearts, instead of a nobleman and the lowborn woman he’d lured into an illicit affair. “I’m right about making you my wife.”

“No, you’re not.”

“And of course, you never think you’re right,” he said drily, toying with tendrils of hair escaping her knot. “Don’t you want to know how I’ve changed?”

“I don’t think so.” She stared fixedly into the fire.

“Coward.”

“Definitely.”

He tugged gently at her hair until she faced him. “When my political allies told me to avoid London until the family name smelled a little sweeter, I thought I’d been banished to the lowest circle of hell. I’ve always enjoyed the hurly-burly of power. Now I had nothing to look forward to except cattle and crops and early nights.”

She didn’t interrupt. She was no fool. There was a “but” in this tale.

His voice lowered until the baritone stroked her skin like warm silk. “Instead I discovered a woman who lodged
herself in my soul and wouldn’t shift, no matter how often I reminded myself that I never bother the servants.”

She couldn’t help smiling. “You bothered this particular servant quite a lot.”

He didn’t smile back. “And while I’d been a diligent landlord, my estates always came second to my political hopes.” He paused. “Then I found that living at Alloway Chase, managing my lands, arguing with that intriguing woman, proved a thousand times more fulfilling than anything I’d known before.”

“You’ve only been home a few months,” she said acidly. It was so difficult to shore up her defenses when he said everything she hungered to hear.

He frowned. “I’m not a changeable man.”

“Which is why I know that your political ambitions aren’t dead. Chin up, James. You won’t be in the cold forever. You’re too exceptional.”

He stretched out his legs and contemplated the toes of his boots. “That’s kind of you to say so.”

She made a dismissive gesture. “It’s the truth.”

“These weeks at Alloway Chase have given me so much.” He shifted from fiddling with her hair to massaging her nape. Pleasure rippled through her.

“I’m glad,” she said jerkily. When he touched her, thinking became an effort.

“And one of the greatest gifts, apart from you, is coming to understand that I’ve devoted my life to fulfilling my father’s dreams, not my own.”

Dismayed, she tugged free of his drugging caresses. “That’s not true.”

He sighed. “I’m thirty-two years old and asking you to marry me is the first decision I’ve ever made without outside influence.”

She wanted to tell him that if this was an example of his independent thinking, he needed to go back to taking advice. But she wasn’t so mean, not when she read the harrowing sincerity in his silvery eyes.

“I know you believe what you say,” she said slowly.

He frowned. “I want you to believe it too.”

“Well, I don’t. If I marry you, I’ll make you a laughingstock.” She slid away from him. “And desire doesn’t last.”

“How do you know?”

Nell laughed without humor. “Ask those girls in your uncle’s diary.”

“You can’t compare what I feel for you to my uncle’s selfish lust.”

She knew she did James an injustice. And that she hurt him. Then she reminded herself that their marriage would hurt him much worse than a refusal now. Still, her voice softened. “I’m sorry, James. Whatever you say, I can’t believe that there’s anything more behind this proposal than desire, guilt over ruining me, and a passing fancy for the rural idyll.”

Temper darkened his face and he surged to his feet, glaring at her. Once she’d have cringed. He was large and powerful, and his rage charged the air.

Perhaps she’d changed too. Calmly she stood and met his brilliant gray eyes.

“What about love, Eleanor? Where does that count in your dismissive list?”

That one little word “love” made her stagger back. “Love?”

He loomed over her like a mighty cliff. “I love you.”

The declaration sounded like a curse. If he’d made a heartfelt vow, perhaps she’d doubt him, but his militant tone convinced her. Still she tried to deny it. “No.”

He grabbed her arms. “Yes, Eleanor. A resounding yes.”

“But I’m your housemaid,” she protested weakly.

“Shut up.” He kissed her with boundless tenderness.

She wrenched away. “Stop.”

He caught her shoulders and stared down at her with an urgency that made her want to scream. “Eleanor, I love you and I want to marry you. Will you be my wife?”

Her mind flooded with what would happen if she confessed her love and consented. Happiness now. An acknowledged place in his bed. Legitimate offspring. James at her side for the rest of her life.

Then other, bleaker thoughts. Men and women who once respected him sneering at the mention of his name. James seeing unworthy candidates rising to the office that should have been his. James bored and unhappy with his choice, but, because he was a good man, struggling to hide it day after day.

Nell couldn’t do that to him. She couldn’t do that to herself.

His declaration of love fed her starving heart, but she couldn’t harm him. If she married him, she’d undoubtedly harm him. She squared her shoulders and forced out the most difficult words she’d ever spoken. “No, my lord, I won’t.”

The agony of denying him multiplied a hundredfold as she read his reaction. Surprise—he’d thought to persuade her this time. Acrid disappointment. Anguish.

His hands clenched on her shoulders. “I love you, Eleanor.”

“Stop saying that,” she said harshly, breaking free and trying not to cry. His declaration should be a crowning moment. Instead, it threatened to crush her.

“I believe I can make you love me.”

She loathed the bewildered pain in his voice. “You can’t make someone love you.”

“I won’t stop asking.”

Dear God, could this get worse? “You must.”

“No.”

He pushed her too far. “Then I can’t be your mistress.”

He staggered as if she’d hit him. “What?”

“I don’t want to leave you.” She was surprised to sound so sure. “But your demands are impossible.”

His ironic gesture sliced at her heart. “My apologies.”

She watched him withdraw, attempt to protect himself, struggle to salvage some pride. She understood pride. She might be a poor soldier’s daughter, but her spirit was unbending. It was yet another thing she and James had in common.

He couldn’t hide the blow she’d struck to his soul, no matter how he tried. Witnessing his wretchedness came close to smashing her determination. The words “I love you, James,” rose to her lips, but she savagely bit them back and tasted blood as she sank her teeth into her lower lip. If she admitted her love, he’d win. She knew enough of his tenacity to understand that.

And in that victory, he’d lose everything he’d lived for.

“I’m sorry I’ve hurt you.” She knew how inadequate that sounded.

“I’ll survive,” he said grimly.

She bit her lip again, but that pain couldn’t compare to the pain in her heart. “I hope you’ll forgive me.”

From under lowered dark brows, James regarded her like an enemy. “You’ve escaped pretty scot-free so far for your sins. After all, you lied from the beginning, you thought absolutely the worst of me despite all the evidence, and you offered me up to a man you thought plotted my destruction.”

She raised her chin, wishing she was angry. Anger would be easier than this sorrow. “You’re not upset about any of that.”

“I’ll make you marry me.” He caught her and swooped to press his lips to hers in a passionate kiss that continued the argument without words. To her distress, her body, already primed, melted into liquid arousal.

“Stop,” she choked out. “For pity’s sake, stop.”

For a long moment, she wondered if he heard. And if he heard, whether he’d heed her.

James released a despairing groan and slumped against her so heavily that she swayed. “I can’t do this.”

The black misery in his voice knotted her stomach. With a muffled sob, she curled her arms around him and let this strong, marvelous man rest in her embrace.

His ragged breathing slowly calmed and the desperate clutch of his hands on her hips gradually eased. Finally he shifted away and regarded her with lifeless gray eyes. “I’m sorry, Eleanor.”

“No, I’m sorry,” she whispered, glancing toward the blazing hearth because she couldn’t bear his scrutiny. She loathed herself for what she did to him. If she stayed here, she’d end up in his bed. Feeling as she did now, weak, needy, eager to soothe his pain, she’d surrender. And that small surrender would lead inexorably to the larger surrender of consenting to marry him.

With one shaking hand, she made a curtailed gesture. She retreated toward the door. “I must go.”

“Eleanor…”

She turned away. If she cried, he’d use it against her. “Please, leave me be for tonight.” She gulped for air, as if she hadn’t taken a breath in hours. “Please.”

Without waiting for his answer, she turned the handle
and stumbled into the empty corridor. She leaned against the wall, struggling to dam her tears.

James returned her love, and she could hardly endure it.

The clock downstairs struck one. The inn was quiet. Maidenhead’s best hostelry didn’t encourage carousing.

On wobbly legs, she straightened. She couldn’t return to her room. If James pursued her, that’s where he’d look. Right now, one more touch could prove her downfall.

The inn had a small garden that she’d discovered this afternoon while awaiting news of the ambush. Perhaps fresh air and solitude would offer a new perspective, and she’d stop wanting to crumple into a sobbing heap because she’d hurt a good man.

Greengrass huddled into the shadows in the Royal Swan’s garden. It was a perishing cold night and he clutched his thick coat around him, although a man of his bulk was insulated against the chill.