Again the Magic (13 page)

Adam grinned as he drew her to a nearby bench. “Only when one is viewing it from inside a nice, cozy house.” As they sat, he took Aline’s hand in his and pressed it lightly. “Tell me, sweet, what are we to do about this problem of yours?”

“I’m not yet certain.”

“Has McKenna said yet what he wants from you?” Adam answered his own question before she was able. “Never mind — I know exactly what he wants. The question is, is there a possibility that he might force or coerce you in some way?”

“No,” she said at once. “No matter how McKenna has changed, he would never resort to that.”

Adam seemed to relax slightly. “That’s good news.”

“I’m afraid, Adam,” Aline confessed in a whisper, laying her head on his shoulder. “Not of what will happen now, or during the next few weeks… I’m afraid of afterward, when McKenna leaves again. I survived it once, but I don’t know if I can again.”

He slid his arm around her and squeezed comfortingly. “Yes, you will — I’ll be here to help you.” A long pause ensued as he considered his next words. “Aline, what I’m about to say may seem rather
ill occasioned… but I’ve been considering an idea lately, and this may be as good a time as any to mention it.”

“Yes?”

Adam looked down at her, their noses nearly touching. He smiled, his gray eyes gleaming as they reflected the gathering moonlight. “We’re a good pair, sweet. In the five years that we’ve known each other, I’ve come to adore you as I have no other person on earth. I could spend the next hour enumerating your many virtues, but you’re well aware of them already. My proposition is this — I think we should continue on as we have, with one minor alteration. I want to marry you.”

“Have you been drinking?” Aline asked, and he laughed.

“Think about it — you would be mistress of Marshleigh. We would be that rarest of all combinations, a husband and wife who actually like each other.”

She stared at him in confusion. “But you would never want to—”

“No. We would each find one kind of satisfaction in marriage, and another kind outside it. Friendship is a hell of a lot more durable than love, Aline. And I’m very much a traditionalist in one sense — I see the wisdom in keeping passion entirely separate from marriage. I won’t blame you for seeking your pleasures where you can find them, and you won’t blame me for doing the same.”

“I won’t be seeking those kinds of pleasures,” she murmured. “Any man who saw my legs would find it impossible to make love to me.”

“Then don’t let him see them,” Adam said casually.

She gave him a skeptical glance. “But how would I—”

“Use your imagination, darling.”

The devilish glint in his eyes caused her to blush. “I’ve never considered the possibility before. It would be strange and awkward—”

“It amounts to a simple matter of logistics,” Adam informed her sardonically. “But back to my proposal — will you give it some thought?”

She shook her head with a reluctant smile. “I may be a bit too conventional for such an arrangement.”

“Conventions be damned.” Adam kissed her hair. “Let me help to mend your heart when it’s broken. Let me rub your legs at night, and hold you as a beloved friend would. Let me take you to beautiful places when you tire of English views.”

Aline smiled against the fine weave of his coat. “May I have some time to consider your very tempting offer?”

“All the time in the world.” Suddenly Adam shifted, though his arms remained around her, and he spoke quietly into her ear. “Mr. Sturm is coming this way, Miss Drang. What will you have me do — stay or leave?”

Aline eased away from him. “Leave,” she whispered. “I can manage him.”

“We’ll make that your epigraph,” Adam teased, and brushed his lips across her cheek. “Good luck, sweet. Give a shout if you need me.”

“You don’t want to meet him before you go?” she asked.

“God, no. Slay your own dragons, my lady,” he said, and left her with a grin.

Aline looked up from her seated position at the bench as McKenna approached her, his dark presence falling over her like a shadow. Adam’s reference to McKenna was not quite accurate — he looked far more like a devil than a dragon, needing only a pitchfork to complete the image. A tall, brooding, smoldering-eyed devil, in a formal scheme of black and white. He literally took her breath away. Aline was shocked by her own uncontrollable hunger to touch him. This was the feeling of her youth, the wild, dizzying excitement that she had never been able to forget. “McKenna,” she said breathlessly. “Good evening.”

He stopped before her and glanced intently at the doorway through which Adam had just departed. “Who was that?” he asked, although she suspected that he already knew.

“Lord Sandridge,” she murmured. “A very dear friend.”

“Only a friend?”

Ten minutes ago, Aline would have replied with an unhesitating yes. Now in light of Adam’s marriage proposal, she considered the question thoughtfully. “He wants to marry me,” she admitted.

McKenna’s expression was perfectly bland, though there was an odd flicker in his eyes. “And will you?”

Aline stared at him as he stood before her, half in shadow, half in light, and she felt a change coming over her body, skin tingling beneath the covering of blue silk, the tips of her breasts turning hard. Warmth moved over the surface of her chest and stomach as if someone were breathing against her. “Probably,” she heard herself whisper.

McKenna came to her, reaching a hand down in a silent gesture of command. She let him pull her up, and felt his long fingers encircle her gloved wrist just beneath the ring of entwined white rosebuds. Her wrist remained pliable and unresisting in his grasp. She felt her heart contract briefly as his thumb slipped into the cup of her palm. Their hands were sheathed in two thickness of gloves, and yet the mere pressure of his fingers against her was enough to send her pulse hurtling.

“McKenna,” she asked quietly, “why did you give me no warning before you came back to Stony Cross so suddenly?”

“I didn’t think it would matter to you if I came or not.”

The obvious lie was delivered smoothly. Anyone would have believed him, except her.
Not matter?
she thought, suspended between anguish and miserable laughter. How many rain-swept days and lonely nights she had spent longing for him. In the fever-induced delirium that had brought her to the threshold of death, she had spoken his name, begged for him, dreamed that he held her while she slept. “Of course it matters,” she said with forced lightness, pushing aside the memories. “We were friends once, after all.”

“Friends,” he repeated without inflection.

Cautiously Aline eased her wrist away from his hold. “Why, yes. Very good friends. And I so often wondered what became of you, after you left.”

“Now you know.” His face was hard and smooth. “I wondered as well… what happened to you after I was sent to Bristol? I’ve heard mention of an illness—”

“Let’s not talk about my past,” Aline interrupted with a quick, self-deprecating laugh. “It is quite dull, I assure you. I am far more interested in hearing about
you.
Tell me everything. Start with the moment you first set foot in New York.”

The artful flattery of her gaze seemed to amuse McKenna, as if he understood somehow that she had decided to keep him at a distance by flirting with him, thereby averting the possibility of discussing anything meaningful. “It’s not ballroom conversation.”

“Ah. Then is it parlor conversation? Cardroom conversation? No? Heavens, it must be lurid indeed. Let’s walk outside somewhere. To the stables. The horses will be quite entertained by your story, and they hardly ever gossip.”

“Can you leave your guests?”

“Oh, Westcliff is an adept host — he’ll make do.”

“What about a chaperone?” he asked, though he was already guiding her to the side entrance of the ballroom.

Her smile turned wry. “Women my age don’t require chaperones, McKenna.”

He slid an unnervingly thorough glance over her. “You may need one yet.”

They walked through the outside gardens to the back entrance of the stables. The estate manor had been laid out in the European fashion, with the stables forming one of the wings that enclosed the courtyard in front. It was jokingly remarked that Lord Westcliff’s horses lived in a grander fashion than most people, and there was more than a little truth in it. The stone-flagged central court of the stables contained a large marble drinking fountain for the horses. Archways led to the harness room, rows of five dozen stalls, and a carriage room that smelled strongly of brass polish, leather, and wax. The stables had changed little in the years since McKenna had left Stony Cross Park. Aline wondered if he took pleasure in the familiarity of the place.

They stopped in the harness room, the walls hung with saddles, bridles, halters, breastplates, and leathers. Wooden boxes filled with grooming implements were aligned neatly on shelves. The smell of horses and leather made the air sweetly pungent.

McKenna wandered to a saddle and smoothed his fingertips over the well-worn surface. His dark head bent, and he suddenly seemed lost in memory.

Aline waited until his gaze returned to her. “How did you get your start in New York?” she asked. “I would have thought you’d find something to do with horses. Why on earth did you become a boatman?”

“Moving cargo at the docks was the first job I could find. When I wasn’t loading boats, I learned how to hold my own in a fistfight. Most of the time the dockers had to brawl over who was going to get the work.” He paused, and added frankly, “I learned in no time to bully my way into getting what I wanted. Eventually I was able to buy a small sailboat with a shallow draft, and I became the fastest ferryman going to and from Staten Island.”

Aline listened carefully, trying to understand the gradual process by which the cavalier boy had become the hard-driven man standing before her. “Did someone act as a mentor to you?” she asked.

“No, I had no mentor.” He ran his fingers over the line of a tightly braided crop. “I thought of myself as a servant for a long time — I never thought I would be more than I was right then. But after a while I realized that the other ferrymen had ambitions far beyond mine. They told me stories about men like John Jacob Astor — have you heard of him?”

“I’m afraid not. Is he a contemporary of the Shaws?”

The question made McKenna laugh suddenly, his teeth flashing white in his dark face. “He’s richer than the Shaws, though even Gideon won’t admit it. Astor was a butcher’s son who started with nothing and made a fortune in the fur trade. Now he buys and sells New York real estate. He’s worth at least fifteen million dollars by now. I’ve met Astor — he’s a domineering little runt who can barely speak English — and he’s made himself into one of the richest men in the world.”

Aline’s eyes widened. She had heard about the explosive growth of industry in America, and the fast-rising value of New York property. But it seemed nearly impossible for one man — especially one of low station — to have acquired such a fortune.

McKenna seemed to follow the train of her thoughts. “Everything’s possible, over there. You can make a lot of money if you’re willing to do what it takes. And money is all that matters, since Americans aren’t distinguished by titles or noble blood.”

“What do you mean, ‘if you’re willing to do what it takes’?” Aline asked. “What have you had to do?”

“I’ve had to advantage of others. I’ve learned to ignore my conscience, and put my own interests above anyone else’s. Most of all, I’ve learned that I can’t afford to care about anyone but myself.”

“You’re not really like that,” she said.

His voice was very soft. “Don’t doubt it for a minute, my lady. I’m nothing like the boy you knew. He may as well have died when he left Stony Cross.”

Aline could not accept that. If there was nothing left of that boy, then a vital part of her heart would die too. Turning toward the tack on the wall nearest her, she concealed the unhappiness that had pulled her features taut. “Don’t say that.”

“It’s the truth.”

“You seem to be warning me away from yourself,” she said thickly.

Aline was not aware of McKenna’s approach, but suddenly he was right behind her. Their bodies were not touching, but she was acutely aware of the solidity and size of him. In the midst of her inner turmoil, pure physical hunger stirred. She went weak with the need to lean back against him and pull his hands to her body. It had been a bad idea for her to go somewhere with him alone, she thought, closing her eyes tightly.

“I
am
warning you,” McKenna said gently. “You should tell me to leave Stony Cross. Tell your brother to get rid of me, that my presence here offends you. I’ll go, Aline… but only if you make it happen.”

His mouth was very close to her ear, his breath fanning over the tender outer rim.

“And if I don’t?”

“Then I’m going to bed you.”

Aline turned to face him with a bemused gaze. “What?”

“You heard me.” McKenna leaned forward and braced his hands on either side of her, palms flattened on the ancient stable wood. “I’m going to take you,” he said, his voice laced with soft menace. “And it will be nothing like the gentlemanly lovemaking that you’re used to from Sandridge.”

That was a shot in the dark. McKenna watched her intently, to see if she would contradict his assumption.

Aline held her silence as she realized that giving him any thread of truth would cause all her secrets to unravel. Better for him to think that she and Adam were lovers, than to wonder why she had remained alone for so many years.

“You… you don’t waste time on subtlety, do you?” she managed, staring at him in wonder, while a warm, prickling sensation invaded the pit of her stomach.

“I thought it only fair to give you advance warning.”

She was jarred by the strange familiarity of the moment, as she was held in thrall by those extraordinary blue-green eyes. Surely this could not really be happening. “You would never force yourself on a woman,” she murmured. “No matter how much you may have changed.”

McKenna answered steadily, while his gaze encompassed every degree of temperature between fire and ice. “If you don’t send me away from Stony Cross by tomorrow morning, I’ll take it as a personal invitation to your bed.”