Gareth: Lord of Rakes (21 page)

“I do—I did, anyway.” Felicity sank against him. “The right man will not marry her for her title, her fortune, or her spotless family history—each of the foregoing being nonexistent.”

“You’re suggesting,” Gareth said, tipping his hat to a passing carriage full of dowagers, “what more harm can come from a few nasty rumors? That reasoning holds some merit, but I am troubled, nonetheless. This gossip is an attempt to hurt you,
another
attempt to hurt you. And if the rumors are to be believed, then any man will consider you and Astrid fair game for dishonorable advances. This has to be intentional.”

At an angle to the path they rolled along, Edith Hamilton held court in a phaeton parked beneath a shady maple. Gareth turned his conveyance before either lady could notice the other, though Edith, to his relief, was in the company of other women and in modestly attired good looks.

“Maybe you see a pattern where there is none,” Felicity said. “The rumors could be nothing more than juicy, idle gossip. You do, however, look troubled. Tired, at least.”

It was on the tip of his tongue to ask her to let him drive her back to his town house for a substantial, leisurely tea, and yet, he knew better. He’d have her upstairs within minutes, and naked in his bed within more minutes—and she’d allow it.

He had done that to her, made her available to him on request in the broad light of day, and it had taken him only a handful of weeks to bring her to this state. Before he could open his fool mouth, he turned the horses off the Ring and dropped Felicity directly at her door. Perhaps he’d use the balance of the afternoon to learn the neglected art of the solitary nap.

***

Felicity saw Gareth not the day following their outing in the park but the day after, at his mother’s regular Wednesday gathering. He still looked tired to her, and still had a restless, discontented quality lingering beneath his company manners. She caught Lady Heathgate eyeing him with puzzled concern, but neither lady commented to the other.

With Andrew, Felicity felt less constrained.

“Your brother looks peaked to me,” she whispered as Andrew took a turn with her about the upstairs gallery.

“You mean he looks like hell?” Andrew rejoined as they stopped to admire a beruffed, goateed Alexander ancestor’s portrait. The man’s legs were muscular, putting Felicity in mind of—

“Gareth looks weary, and… distracted, beneath his elegant clothing and sophisticated manners,” Felicity said, not rising to Andrew’s teasing. “Who’s this?” she asked, nodding at another figure who wore an impressive wig and gorgeously embroidered coat.

“The first Earl of Heath. I believe the family was one of the few to financially support Charles II during the Protectorate, which shrewdness elevated the title to its present exalted status.”

“So it’s an old title.”

“Very old,” Andrew said. “Not quite back to The Conqueror, but almost. Longshanks bestowed the barony, and the succession had been unbroken through the primary line—until Gareth.”

“My heavens, who is this?” They had stopped beside a portrait of a young man and a young woman. The gentleman stood with his hand on the young lady’s shoulder, while she sat slightly angled before him, a picture of blond, blue-eyed beauty. While the young lady was smiling a cat-in-the-cream-pot smile, the young man’s expression was solemn.

His features bore the handsome stamp of the Alexander family—height, thick dark hair, and snapping, vivid blue eyes. The artist had captured a sense of energy about the young man, a sense that the sitting couldn’t be over soon enough because this fellow had business to be about. From the dress, Felicity gathered that the portrait had been done during her lifetime.

“They make a lovely couple, though the young fellow looks very serious,” she remarked. Beside her, Andrew was silent, and when she glanced over at him, he looked uncomfortable—and a great deal like his older brother.

“I didn’t know Mother had hung this. Otherwise, I’d have spared you.”

“Spared me?” Felicity examined the portrait again, a leaden feeling congealing in her insides. “That is Gareth and his…
wife
?”

“Miss Ponsonby was Gareth’s intended, not quite his fiancée,” Andrew said, tugging at Felicity’s arm. “And I am not going to reveal his confidences, nor discuss a matter relating to a lady’s honor, Felicity, other than to tell you the young lady perished in the same boating accident that nearly took my life and Mother’s.”

Felicity allowed Andrew to lead her on around the gallery, when she wanted to plant herself before that one portrait.

“Was this engagement a secret?” She kept her voice just above a whisper.

“It wasn’t even quite a fact. The negotiations were barely begun, and the notices not drafted. We don’t speak of it, and I doubt Miss Ponsonby’s family does either. The circumstances were… unusual.”

Judging from Andrew’s expression, the circumstances could not have been worse.

“To have lost his beloved so tragically…” Felicity murmured, her heart hurting for that young man and the brutal grief fate had handed him.

Andrew ran a hand through his hair in a gesture reminiscent of his brother, while across the gallery, two dowagers pretended to study a painting of some lady in a powdered wig with a pair of spaniels panting at her tiny feet.

“It wasn’t like that.” Andrew kept his voice down too. “The lady was in difficulties. Theirs was not an easy match, not even a formal engagement when they spent a couple of weeks sitting for that painting at a family gathering in Scotland. That’s all I am going to say on the matter.”

“He loved her.” And he’d lost her, and Polite Society had likely blamed him for her death too.

“He cared for her,” Andrew said uneasily.

“And I am not to ask him about this… lost love?”

Andrew’s expression became positively dyspeptic. “I wouldn’t advise it. My brother has much on his plate now.”

Andrew’s tone held reproach, and rightly so. Gareth was coping with enough problems from Felicity already; she didn’t need to resurrect his painful past into the bargain.

“You are particularly quiet,” Gareth remarked as he escorted Felicity to his town coach nearly an hour later. Astrid was making her farewells to Lady Heathgate, giving them a moment of privacy.

“Still not sleeping well.” And wasn’t it a relief that with Gareth, at least, Felicity could be honest? “And you?”

“I did have an amazingly good night Monday, but last night I counted nearly every sheep on our Scottish holdings to no avail.” He still held her hand, but Felicity was too preoccupied to object to the impropriety. He began to rub his thumb over her gloved knuckles.

“Are you looking forward to joining me at the theatre on Friday?” he asked, dropping his voice as he leaned closer to her.

Alerted by the seductive note in his voice, Felicity snatched her hand away. “Shame on you, your lordship.”

“I’m supposed to be considering making you an offer,” he said, all offended innocence. “A man should be able to hold his betrothed’s hand.” He grabbed her hand and kissed her bare wrist, and all she could do was glower at him.

“Don’t take me so seriously, Felicity,” he said, a touch impatiently.

“Not take you so seriously? Is that like you shouldn’t react so peevishly when I mention your other women?”

“Touché.”

“I will give it my best effort, Gareth, if you will do likewise,” she replied with some asperity. How she wished there weren’t a touch of real distress in her voice.

“Sweetheart, let’s not argue, please? This next week will be difficult, but we will manage. You are not… intimidated by what lies ahead?”

Sweetheart
—and he’d made it sound so genuine, as genuine as his concern for her. Worse yet, as he was wont to do, he’d focused on at least one source of Felicity’s anxiety. “Must we speak of that here?” she asked, looking over his shoulder for Astrid—for anybody.

“I don’t want you to worry,” he said quietly. “You know I will take the greatest care with you, and you mustn’t fret about this. I have it on good authority that alewives all over London copulate regularly with no ill effect. Surely we can manage it once.”

Felicity glared at him.

“What?” More innocent bewilderment, though this time, genuine.

“
Once?
You expect me to believe you’ll leave it at that? You expect me to content
myself
with that?”

He did laugh then, loud enough that his mother and brother, standing on the terrace, exchanged a wondering glance, and Astrid came sauntering down the stairs to investigate.

“Whatever is that sound, Lissy? I hear something strange, a rare, wonderful sound… Can it be?” She goggled, earning her a swat on the arm with her sister’s glove.

“You are a bad girl, Astrid Worthington, and you have no manners,” Felicity said. “Heathgate is overcome with mirth at the thought anybody might find your company acceptable.”

“Verily, and Andrew doesn’t count, because he’s a worse case than you, Miss Astrid,” Gareth said. In his serious expression and the mirth dancing in his eyes, Felicity found confirmation for her worst fears:

She loved Gareth Alexander. The Marquess of Heathgate she could often take or leave, but this other fellow… She would adore making love with Gareth Alexander, and it would shatter her heart for all time.

“Bother you both,” Astrid said airily as Gareth assisted her into the coach. “I heard Heathgate laughing. You will have to warn John Coachman to be on the lookout for flying pigs—they could spook the horses.”

***

“Felicity, how lovely you look,” Gareth rumbled from his post at the bottom of the stairs. The appreciation in his eyes reassured her he wasn’t offering idle flattery. “I would not have thought to dress you in brown,” he continued, taking her hand for the last few steps, “but it becomes you well.” He kissed her hand and eyed the chocolaty velvet swathing her from head to toe. “This is new,” he concluded approvingly.

“It is.” And it was more than decent, and she positively loved this outfit, though prior to meeting Heathgate, she never would have indulged in such a feminine design. “I had a few things made up when we went shopping for Astrid.”

“I will be the envy of every man in the theatre with functional eyes, and”—his smile shifted, becoming naughty—“because you smell so good, every man with a working nose. Shall we be off?”

Gareth was more than usually attentive, bundling her into her cloak and fastening the frogs with myriad casual touches to her neck and chin. He wrapped his hand over hers on his arm as they descended the steps, and took her hand in his immediately upon seating himself beside her in the coach. He was attractive enough when he was casually affectionate, but this display, coupled with his evening attire and concerted good manners, had Felicity’s heart speeding up.

I
will
remember
him
like
this.
Handsome, gallant, affectionate, and subtly possessive—no, protective.

Gareth helped her alight, and again drew her hand onto his arm and secured it with his other hand. As they approached the doors to the elegant establishment, Gareth leaned down, as if to hear something Felicity was saying.

“Stay close to me, Felicity,” he whispered. “We’re in public, but a crowd can hide a wealth of mischief.”

She nodded and tucked herself more snugly to his side, more than welcome for an excuse to feel his body heat and revel in his scent. In one week’s time…

Gareth seated her in the front of his box. He took her hand again as she used his opera glasses to scan the crowd.

“I spy some acquaintances of yours,” she said, handing him the glasses.

“Sweetheart, I am acquainted with most of the gathering tonight, excluding the pit. To whom do you refer?” Out of sight of the crowd around them, his thumb circled on her palm in small, lazy strokes.

And there was that endearment, landing right in the middle of Felicity’s heart, where it sank beneath her composure like a stone disappearing in a still pond.

“I see Riverton, and seated, if I’m not mistaken, next to Edith Hamilton.” Some of her pleasure evaporated at the simple sight of the woman, for Gareth had no doubt called Lady Hamilton sweetheart too.

“You appear to be correct.” His thumb did not cease its caresses, though his grip became more snug. “I am forced to admit I am sorry for Edith that she is keeping his company, though it appears she’s trying to ignore him.”

“And I am forced to agree with you.” Felicity could not imagine having been close to Gareth and then succeeding his attentions with those of a dissolute scoundrel. Maybe Edith had learned to keep her heart out of the bedroom, and one lover was much the same as the next to her.

How sad—but practical, wise even.

The farce began, and Felicity wondered at what point—if any—Gareth would suggest they find refreshment, stroll the corridor, or otherwise support the pretext that they were a potential couple. To her surprise, he sat beside her, giving every appearance of enjoying the play. At the interval, they strolled the passage, and again, they left before the final curtain. In the coach on the way home, Gareth wrapped an arm around her shoulders and held her hand.

“You aren’t going to invite me to come back to the house with you?” Felicity asked.

“I am not.”

“Whyever not?” Because she wanted to go. Even if all they did was share a bed for the entire night, she wanted to spend the time with him.

“Felicity, I am trying to behave.” His tone suggested this was an onerous undertaking, for which he blamed her. With his free hand, he extracted a small silver flask engraved with a sprig of heather and offered it to her.

She shook her head at the proffered libation. “Why are you trying to behave now, when you made no effort in that direction when last we visited the theatre?”

To uncap his flask, he had to retrieve his arm from around her shoulders and use both hands. “I am trying to behave to make amends for being so inconsiderate previously. I have comported myself like a damned ass with you on more than one occasion.” He sounded impatient, but amused too.

The way he tossed back a swallow of aromatic brandy suggested displeasure, despite his amusement.

“Did it ever occur to you, Gareth Alexander, maybe what you think is inconsideration does not strike me as the same?” Felicity asked in a low voice. “Does it occur to you to ask how I want to be treated, to even
listen
when I tell you how I want to be treated?”

They passed the occasional street lamp, so his face flickered in and out of shadow, making his expression impossible to read. He did not put the flask away, but rather, cradled it in his ungloved hands.

“You are saying you’d like me to take you home with me so I can treat you to another humping, perhaps thrust my cock down your throat, or maybe have you bring me off, and that will restore your good spirits?”

His words, delivered with lazy condescension, were intended to hurt, and hurt they did. She wanted to rail at him for his trivializing of what did not feel trivial to her at all, but then she recalled him looking worried and tired in the broad light of day.

“So,” she said, forcing some amusement into her voice. “You are in one of those moods.” She took his hand in hers and sat back, willing herself to become the picture of calm.

“What moods?” The words were dragged from him, laced with a prudent quantity of male foreboding.

“Sometimes you dodge our physical intimacy, other times you dodge the emotional intimacy, and sometimes you use the one to dodge the other. I have only to figure out what we’re dodging on a given occasion, and then I can comport myself accordingly.”

“That,” he said slowly, looking at their joined hands, “was a perfectly bitchy thing to say.”

Felicity smiled at him, willing to have an intimate argument if she couldn’t talk him into any other variety of closeness.

“I do not dodge intimacies.” His tone suggested he was trying to convince himself rather than her.

“I only wish you could inform me of your preferences. You could have told me at Willowdale that we were going to bounce around in bed of a night so you didn’t need to cope with the burdens of conversation. Tonight, you might have said I wasn’t to be granted any privileges because you are in fact weary of this whole exercise. When we go driving on Monday, you might consider simply being honest, you know.”

“Honesty is highly overrated. I was trying to be considerate of your ladylike sensibilities.”

And abruptly, Felicity was tired—exhausted—by his savoir faire, his moods, his incessant flow of sophistication.

And heartbroken by his dissembling, because the man who’d held her through the night was not present with her in the coach, and he’d been a more honest, likable fellow than the handsome lord beside her.

“Cling to the fiction that you’re being considerate of me if you must, Heathgate. I would really rather we were clinging to each other.”

Her voice did not break on that admission, a small sop to her dignity.

The horses clip-clopped along through the darkness, while Felicity realized having the last word was a cold comfort compared to having Gareth’s body wrapped around hers in a warm bed.

“Fine, I’ll be honest with you, Felicity,” he muttered right before tossing his flask onto the opposite seat and fusing his mouth to hers in a ravenous, openmouthed kiss. Her arms went around him as her tongue met his, and her body arched up against him. She pulled back a moment later, the scant half inch necessary to permit speech.

“Better, Gareth, much better,” she said before resuming the kiss.

And while the horses plodded patiently around London’s wealthiest neighborhoods, from Felicity’s perspective, it got better still—much, much better.

***

From a seat at the back of a borrowed theatre box, David Holbrook had watched the Marquess of Heathgate pay court to Felicity Worthington. They were a handsome couple, both tall, attractive, and elegantly turned out.

And yet, something was off. A man acted one way with his mistress, and another with his proper companions. Miss Worthington and Heathgate had acted somewhere in between, or rather, Heathgate acted, and Miss Worthington allowed it. Holbrook pondered the possibilities for the duration of the drive home, mostly fretting that Heathgate was privy to Miss Worthington’s secrets and taking advantage accordingly. On the one hand, Heathgate had no need to coerce a decent woman into his bed; on the other, rumor was, he lacked sufficient conscience not to.