Bared to the Viscount (The Rites of May Book 1) (12 page)

Her
friend
. And that had to matter more than anything.

She fought to gather enough breath, enough sense, to say the words she needed to say. “No. No, John.” It was painful to say it. She knew that
no
meant she was also saying no to everything else she so desperately wanted. But she had no other choice. “I can’t. I can’t marry you.”

The groan that ripped from his lips this time had no sign of pleasure in it. It was a groan of pure pain. “Damn you. Damn all this. How am I to stay away from you, then?”

With a mighty effort, he pushed himself back from her, stumbling unsteadily. He bent over, his hands bracing his weight on his knees. The breeze that ran between them felt suddenly, shockingly cold after the heat of his flesh.

She wanted him against her again, wanted his warmth, his strength. His desire. She felt frozen against the tree.

Long moments passed, the two of them breathing in harsh rasps, and he looked to be in as much pain as she felt.

“John, please…”

“You have to marry me,” he said. “We can’t go on like this.”

Oh, the reasons for her refusal poured back into her mind as she watched him. He was so beautiful. So perfect. And therefore not made for the likes of her.

He was made for a Lawton girl, the sort of lovely, elegant, blue-blooded girl who could make him happy, night and day, for a lifetime.

What was happening between him and her right now—this was just...
lust
. Just their animal natures. Like Mr. Bassett and Mrs. Trumbull. Not the basis for a life together. And not enough to save them from misery in the long run.

“I can’t,” she repeated wretchedly. “And you know I can’t.”

Pain was wrenching something loose inside her, something she thought might make her bleed. But she couldn’t let lust destroy him, this good man who was so precious to her. If she said yes to him now, he’d regret it soon afterwards, the moment their pleasure was done.

He told her exactly that himself that first day upon the hill, when those vines had caught her and he’d first put his mouth to her breast. She’d told him then that she didn’t care about virtue, that she wanted him to take her, and he’d said she was just…
distracted
by what they’d done, that it worked that way with bodies, that desire fogged the mind.

Indeed, lust was a form of madness….

John had straightened again, and he looked magnificent, torso bared, his flesh vivid with the heat of his blood, his cock still boldly erect and his trousers low around his hips. Like a satyr. Like a beautiful, golden-haired satyr.

At the sight, the rush of primitive energy roared through her again.

She was a nymph, a half-naked nymph, and nothing in the world could be more natural than to part her soft thighs for him and welcome that hard cock inside her.

For a moment, she teetered on the precipice. It would be so easy. To open her arms to him and let them both taste the magic of pure desire, pure elation.

But the best part of her heart would not let her. She had to protect him from himself, from herself.

Hastily, she worked her bodice back up to cover her breasts, and straightened out her skirts so they fell completely over her legs. “You were right that first morning,” she told him. “When we climbed that hill together. We can’t do this; we simply can’t. We should both go home now. To our own homes. And forget this ever happened.”

“Mary!”

“I’m the wrong woman for you, John. We aren’t pagan creatures, you and I, not really. We must live in the civilized world, and in that world, a viscount and a vicar’s daughter do not marry.”

“Listen to me—“

“I have listened. I listened to you when you were in your right mind. I’m only recalling your own wisdom to you now. Please don’t make this more difficult than it already is.”

He shook his head slowly back and forth, a wild, desperate look in his eyes. His chest still heaved with frustrated desire. But he must have known on some level that she was right, because he remained enough of a gentleman to stay where he was and not grab for her by force, as a true satyr would.

She retrieved her basket from the ground and turned back towards the vicarage. Over her shoulder she spoke the words she knew she must: “Go and marry Annabel Lawton, Lord Parkhurst. She’s the one you really need.”

Chapter Eight

He was in love with Mary Wilkins.

There was simply no other word for it.

When he had her up against that tree this morning, so heated, so pliant, with her hair flaming around her shoulders and her breasts bared to the morning sunlight, he felt he would die if he didn’t claim her.

And when she fell to her knees and took him in her mouth…. He’d fantasized about her doing that, but the fantasy came nowhere near the reality of having her look up to meet his eyes and smile at him while her lips circled his throbbing cock—such a purely lascivious smile, so full of pagan delight, showing her pleasure at pleasuring him.

When he’d lifted her again, ready to take her fully, to finally consummate this strange and wonderful bond that had been building and building between them, she’d been willing, more than willing.

He had come so close. So damn close.

And then he’d ruined everything.

He’d said the wrong words maybe, told her he needed to
fuck
her, though heaven knows that was only the truth. Those were the only words that would come to him with the blood pounding through his head and through his cock. But what he’d meant was so much more. He meant he needed
her
. Had to become part of her. Bring their bodies so close together they could never truly be parted again.

If only he’d been able to let the demands of honor slip a few seconds longer, and just done what they both wanted without speaking of marriage.

Good God, what did honor matter in this case? He needed her, with every ounce of his being. And if he’d fucked her…no,
made love
to her as fully as he longed to do, she’d have seen that, too. She couldn’t have walked away from him again after that.

They’d have been bound together, and even her stubborn pride couldn’t argue against it.

Damn it all, though.

She
had
walked away.

Sane and sensible and stiff-spined as ever.

Why was she so proof against him, when everything in him was falling apart?

He went through the rest of the day like an automaton, wound up and mindless. When the time came for the May Pole dance, he found himself on Birchford Green without intentionally choosing to go there. Surely Mary would come—a more civilized Mary, granted, with her stays and petticoats on and her hair tightly bound, but still Mary.

He took his place among the dancers, scanning the crowd for her, hoping she’d just kept herself out of view until then. But no matter how many times he went round the May Pole, she did not appear. Girl after girl passed, all in their brightest springtime clothes, with bouncing curls shining in the sun, but nowhere, nowhere amongst them was the plain little wren-like creature he truly longed to see.

His heart gave an aching pulse. Mary really was refusing him.

Other eyes met his: Rosamund Lawton, Lucinda Lawton, Vanessa Lawton…and of course, Annabel Lawton herself, flushed and giggling and full of flirtatious looks. Wearing her blue dress just as promised. She also wore a bonnet sporting one of those hideous stuffed finches, and as the dancers wound closer and closer, he became ever more horribly conscious of the blade-like little beak and disturbing tiny black glass bead eyes.

Miss Lawton, for her part, seemed to assume she was charming him. She angled her body toward his as she passed, dipping at the waist to display her full bosom, eventually daring to bump her hip against his, to brush his forearm with her breasts. After the May Pole dance was done, she hovered near him, asking him to bring her lemonade from the tables set up under a spreading oak tree.

It would be insufferably rude to refuse.

Miss Lawton fluttered her lashes at him as he handed her the glass. “It’s wonderful, Lord Parkhurst,” she told him silkily, “to have you back here where you belong. The strength of a rural society like ours depends on the full participation of its best men. We cannot thrive without your good example.”

He took a long draught from his own drink, trying to think of a polite way to respond. She’d lobbed him a puff-ball of silly flattery, and he could think of nothing duller than batting it back to her.

Not that she seemed particularly interested in his deeper thoughts. As she swirled to a seat on a bench by a stand of lilacs, with her graceful posture displaying her figure to advantage and her soft smile reassuring him of his own illustrious importance, the true point she wished to make was obvious enough: a viscount needed to take his place in the world, and for that he needed an elegant wife.

Clearly, Miss Lawton was more than ready to fill the position—to clasp the Parkhurst rubies about her throat, to choose tasteful menus for visiting dukes, to domineer over the housekeeper and debate with his mother over whether flocked wallpaper or watered silk would do best for the morning room. No doubt she believed human society would be better for her taking on that role.

And she wasn’t the only one who thought so. Townspeople and farmers alike were glancing over at the two of them knowingly, giving indulgent smiles.

Lord, this was a difficult tangle. No gentleman could be outright discourteous to Miss Lawton, but he couldn’t bear the thought of marrying her either, and he didn’t want to lead her on.

Unfortunately, she seemed to need no encouragement from him. “Life here in Birchford will improve greatly now,” she said, her bright eyes shining at him, “with you in residence.”

He raised an eyebrow in surprise. Perhaps, after all, he had underestimated her. Perhaps she did wish to do some good for the local people as their viscountess.

Did she have an interest in improving the school, or founding a decent hospital?

“In what way?” he asked.

“Now that Parkhurst Hall is actively your country seat again, we shall have proper visitors here,” she said. “Peers of the realm, I mean. My father often speaks of the house parties your father used to give, how dozens would come at a time when the Season ended, straight from London. He says Birchford seems a backwater now, compared to what it was then.”

Oh
. So, no, he had not underestimated her. She wasn’t concerned about the poor, she was concerned about the qualities of the local
entertainments
.

“Of course,” she added coyly, “no one could expect you to host in quite your father’s style while you are still a bachelor.” And she smiled at him meaningfully.

Well, that was bold as brass. He had to take another swallow of his drink, or choke.

“In the meantime, my lord,” she said, flicking a fallen lilac petal from her skirts with a look of slight irritation at its intrusion on the unsmirched perfection of her clothes, “you should avail yourself more fully of my father’s hospitality. You know he would welcome your for supper any night of the week.”

Bolder and bolder. Miss Lawton wanted her proposal of marriage, and she wanted it soon.

He felt rather sick. Was this really how people of the
haut ton
arranged their lives? With such bloodless interest in luxury? Aligning themselves with partners for whom they felt nothing so they might amplify their riches, and hold their chins up higher than other people’s?

It was madness, when the world held such magic as he’d felt with Mary in the woods that morning.

Something had changed in him, very definitely, since he and Mary had gotten tangled in those blackberries. He wanted more from life than he’d wanted before—he wanted passion, and he wanted...
connection
.

Yes. That was it. It was what he’d felt that morning, the moment he’d kissed Mary—kissed her mouth for the first time—that the
connection
between them was far more than just physical desire. From the time they were very young, there had always been something between them that made it easy to wander the woods together for hours, laughing and exploring and egging one another on with dares. It had been so effortless, he’d always taken it for granted.

But he could see more clearly now: the person he was with Mary, that was the person he wanted to
be
, all the time. He wanted to talk with her and laugh with her and find a meaningful place in the world with her, not with anyone else. He didn’t want to trade that for anything—not even for the rules of honor that said he must keep a promise made to his father.

Couldn’t Miss Lawton find something like that for herself
,
with a man who could truly love her? What good would it do her, to gain the title she wanted, but no true marriage?

He set down his glass on the bench beside her, and bent his head to look her forthrightly in the eye. “Will you be quite honest with me, Miss Lawton, if I ask you a difficult question?”