Season for Surrender (32 page)

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Authors: Theresa Romain

BOOK: Season for Surrender
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He shut his eyes. “Yet I let things get out of hand. My reputation was a midden, a heap of trash where everyone threw unwanted rumors and unattributed scandals. Was? It still is.”
He wished she would pull him to her, wrap her arms around him and tell him,
Don't be ridiculous. It's all in the past. It doesn't matter.
But that wasn't true. It
wasn't
in the past, because he still struggled with the consequences. And that meant she would, too. Even now she struggled, and she seemed un-touchably distant all the while his fingers played over the silken toes of her stockings.
So he met her eyes and continued. “Not long ago I realized I'd lost control of it. My behavior will never be interpreted as I mean it to. I can never achieve anything respectable, no matter how much I want it.”
“Well, it's certainly not going to be easy.” Her voice was brisk. “You made the polite world fall in love with a mask. So why
should
they love you for taking that away?”
He froze.
She finished her speech. “I've little use for Lord Xavier, but I'm rather fond of Alex. I believe he could achieve anything he sets his will to.”
He pushed her feet from his lap. “The irony is dreadful—that the man everyone else loved is the man that drives you away from me.”
“I'm not driven away,” she insisted. “I only want to know whether Alex will stay around.”
“Yes.” He drew in a breath with an effort so great that it seemed the air was solid. “But so will the rest, Louisa. I can't leave the past behind so easily. It's all part of me. This need to be needed. How can I begin anew?”
He'd thought it would seem shameful, to admit this fear. But it was like puncturing a hot-air balloon; the puffery was gone at once, as soon as he said the words. “I
want
to begin anew. In some ways, I already have.”
But it would take a long time to finish the job. For so long, he'd coasted through life. Now it was time for the uphill trudge.
“I can help with that,” she said. “I'll wager my reputation against yours.”
He groaned. “No more wagers, please.”
“But you've already made this one. Why, you were so confident in my reputation as a proper, quiet bluestocking that you and Lockwood wagered on it. Aren't you as confident now?”
He regarded her warily. “I know you better now. I know it's not true.”
“Not many others do. If the
ton
thinks of me at all, it thinks me everything dull and silent. So forgettable that I survived a family scandal with my reputation intact, because—well, who cared for it?”
“I care for it.”
She stretched out her hand, found his, and gripped it. “I know you do. I also know that if we wager your reputation against mine, I will win. There's nothing so dull in the eyes of the gossips as a happily married man. Your rakish reputation won't last a season, as long as you don't feed it.” She smiled. “And if I win, we both win. So it's not really a wager at all, is it?”
He was still stuck on something she'd said. “Not to be tedious about the matter, but you seemed to be saying that I'd be a happily married man. Are you going to—do you mean you will . . .”
It was dreadfully difficult to ask a question when the answer meant everything.
Her fingers trailed over the width of the velvet between them. “You are like your library, you know.”
“Enlighten me. Is it my gilt-tooled binding?”
“You're not far off.” She leaned closer, closer, mere inches away, and her features went hazy. But he knew them so well, he could have shut his eyes and still seen them clearly. “I see great potential. More than anyone has ever suspected.”
“Careful, now. I might think you find me tolerable.”
“You are intolerable,” she murmured, raking her nails from his shoulder to his neck, scraping them through his close-clipped hair. “But I find you essential, nonetheless.”
She had tugged his head close and whispered her lips over his before he understood her intention. And then—she plucked the ring from his folded hand and slid it onto her finger.
She drew back to the end of the chaise. Arm outstretched, she turned her hand to and fro, catching the light on the winking ruby heart of the stag.
“It
is
a hideous ring,” she decided. “Yet I love it. Can you guess why?”
He shook his head, wordless. Still disbelieving.
“Because it has lasted. It's been treasured through the ages. Not because of the way it looks, but because of what it represents. Devotion. Ingenuity. The pursuit of one's ambition.” She smiled, that sweet, bright crescent-moon that had captured his notice from the first. “Also, it refers to literature, which is always to be desired.”
There seemed to be a lump in his throat. “And what of he who gave it to you?”
She pursed her lips, all mischief. “Always to be desired.”
She wore his ring; she smiled at him. After everything he'd said, everything he'd done and failed to do.
At last, he felt the purity of forgiveness—from her, and from himself.
Then she drew close to him again, a breath apart, and her features went indistinct. “Always,” she murmured. “Alex, we are sitting on a perfectly good chaise. Might I touch you a bit?”
“That would be acceptable.” He tried to remember where he'd laid his dignity.
“And you would touch me, too?”
“Ah. Yes. I could oblige you in that matter.”
She laughed, a sweet vibration against the skin of his neck. “How biddable you are. I think I'll like marriage.”
He drew in a deep breath, cradling her against his body. How well they fit together. Her head was nestled in the hollow of his shoulder; her lips moved against his skin. She was easy to reach, to kiss, to settle closely against his form.
“I can't promise to be biddable.” A smile stretched his face. No, a
grin
. “But I will promise to do my utmost to make sure you like marriage.”
“Fair enough,” she said. “I'll do the same.”
Her hot tongue touched the hollow behind his jaw, and in a tangle of limbs and garments, they sank once again onto the fortunate gold-velvet chaise.
Chapter 29
Containing Lord Xavier's Final Absolution
She didn't mean to. She truly did not. But Louisa started
thinking
again as soon as her shoulders hit the reclined back of the chaise, as soon as Alex curved his body against hers.
“We only have an hour. How much time is left to it?”
His hand slid beneath her waist, drew her closer. “Enough. Wheeling hasn't rung the gong.”
The gong. As if Wheeling would truly sound it, and Alex and Louisa were meant to emerge, rumpled and giggling, to the applause of the other guests.
Ridiculous as it was, the idea made her smile. What a blessing it would be, to cast off all masks and show the world,
yes, we want each other. No, we are not who you thought
.
He rested his forehead against her hair. “I like these beads. Very fancy. Let me get a better look.” The hand not currently holding her waist began to work at the glass beads wound through her hair.
“I'll never get my hair pinned back up.” Not much of a protest. As he cradled her, only a breath away, it was difficult to think why his hands mustn't tug pins from her hair, trail over her scalp, let the long curls tumble around her shoulders, over her bodice.
“I've been wanting to take your hair down and run my fingers through it,” he murmured. “I wondered what it would feel like.”
“It feels like hair. Just like yours.”
“Ha. Not like mine, I assure you.” Those fingers. They combed through her long hair, brushing her neck, shoulders, the tops of her breasts.
He wound strands around his fingers and held them to the firelight. “Your hair is a promise.”
“What sort of promise?” Never could she let a question pass, even when she wanted to grab at his hands and start putting them all over her body.
There must have been a treacherous quaver in her voice, because he smiled. “Well, if I've removed your hairpins . . .” He released her hair from his upheld hand, letting the strands float free to tickle her skin. “Perhaps you'll let me remove something else.”
“Indeed, yes.” She thought for a moment. “You may start with your coat.”
He paused, fingers still extended. And then he laughed.
A real laugh, still so rare that she felt she'd won a prize every time she heard it. The sound was low and rusty, shaking his body, shaking her along with him. Both arms wrapped around her, crushing the air from her lungs; then he released her and sat up.
“I didn't promise to be biddable, if you'll recall. But in this case, I'll oblige.”
Rising to his feet, he began shrugging out of his coat. The garment was well-tailored, very snug, and his shoulders moved around quite a lot as he freed himself. Broad shoulders, flexing; the fabric sliding down his arms. Back-lit as he was by the fire, she could trace the shape of his arms through the thin linen of his shirtsleeves.
He tossed the coat onto a nearby chair, then tapped his chin with a forefinger. “What should come next?”
She swallowed heavily. “Your boots.”
“A valiant effort at distraction, my dear. But it's your turn.”
“Nonsense. You've already taken my shoes. And my beads, and my hairpins.”
“You're right. We appear to be at an impasse.”
“Then I suggest a compromise.” Her stockinged toes clenched. “I could remove a garment of yours. Then you needn't surrender your pride completely.”
He gave a soft sigh, the dark fringe of his lashes shadowing his cheeks. “I already have.”
He sank onto the chaise again and laid a hand on her waist. The sweet intimacy of the gesture stole Louisa's breath; he lifted his hand at once, then looked at it as though he wasn't sure where to put it.
“You can touch me,” she reassured him. His hand returned to her waist, but his brow was furrowed.
“Teasing is all well and good,” he said. “But. You know. There are beds for this sort of thing. And if we're to be married, we could wait until we can use a bed.”
He was offering to stop. To coil up her hair and shrug back into his coat. To walk her out of the room, rumpled but respectable, wearing his ring.
The decision was entrusted to her, and she considered it carefully. All along, she'd kept up barriers to protect her heart. She'd thrown away the mistletoe berry; she'd brought up other women, or his reputation, every time their intimacy grew too much to bear.
But he had trusted her, long before she gave him the same gift. Now that she knew the depth of fear Alex had lived with for years—that no one would want to know him, or care for him, just as he was—why, he was a part of her. She
knew
him, through and through. His masks overlaid his surface, but they could never touch his heart.
And she had already given him hers. So what need was there to protect it anymore?
“Everything you say is perfectly accurate,” Louisa said. “But that doesn't mean you're right.”
He darted her a sidelong glance. His hand on her waist twitched.
“I trust you,” she said. “All of you. Everything you are. And if you want to do something irrevocable this time, then . . . that would be all right.”
“It would be
all right
? Would it be
tolerable
?”
He wasn't going to make it easy. Or perhaps he just wanted to be sure of her.
“It's what I want,” she said. “If you're worrying about me, you needn't. If you think I need a bed, I don't. Besides, doesn't this seem more fitting? The library? This chaise?”
“You always did think this library had potential.” He shook his head. “I never expected it to be this type.”
Tighter, his hand gripped her. She covered it with her own. “Alex. I'm not sure whether I mentioned that I love you.”
“I figured it out,” he said. “I've gotten practice with decoding ciphers lately.”
He drew in a breath so deep, it seemed to buoy his whole body. She drank in every sharp line of his face, the cool gray of his eyes that looked at her so warmly.
Then, with a shift and a slide, he was lying next to her, propped on one elbow. “You're very persuasive.”
“You were willing to be persuaded, I think.” She laid her hand over Alex's heart, sliding her fingertips over the eggshell satin of his waistcoat.
And then she started flicking open the buttons.
He smiled down at her, his eyes squinting in a valiant effort to bring everything into focus. So proud, so vulnerable, so . . .
delicious
.
“Close your eyes,” she suggested. “And I'll close mine, too, and we'll do it all by touch.”
He smiled, then obeyed. “I'm not being biddable. It just strikes me as a good idea.”
“Very logical of you.”
She couldn't resist studying him for a long moment: the half-moon shadows of his dark lashes, the faint blue circles beneath his eyes. The stubble that darkened his lean cheeks, the angle of his chin. He looked as though he'd been tired for a few days; worried, too. Yet he shut his eyes, left himself defenseless. In his vulnerability, she loved him more.
“You're not playing a prank on me, I hope,” he said, eyes still shut. “You won't march out of here and leave me alone?”
“What a dreadful idea,” she said. “I should never get my fill of you that way.”
His eyes snapped open as he made a strange choking sound. “Oh, you'll get your fill of me.”
Her cheeks reddened. He could see the change in color, she guessed, for his mouth kicked up on one side. “Close your eyes, my dear bluestocking.”
This time, she obeyed.
Ah.
She was glad she had, for her skin awoke when her sight was gone. His arms slid around her, a comfort, an embrace; then he guided her fingertips to the knots of his neckcloth, the heavy satin of the waistcoat she'd already unbuttoned, the fine linen length of his shirt. Layer after layer gave way under her fumbling touches; layer after layer of her own clothing followed his to the floor, loosened by his careful hands. She heard his boots thump to the floor—one, then two.
And then he leaned over her, his mouth a heated promise. They were skin against skin, the hairs of his chest tickling against her bare breasts, the lean muscled length of his legs stretched along her softer flesh.
Sliding his hand over her breast like the most indecent garment imaginable, he played his fingers over her skin. His fingers rolled over her nipple, trailed over its tip, circled and plucked. The slight roughness of his fingertips—quill-callused, winter-worn—abraded her in the lightest, sweetest way. Pleasure shot through her, made her wet.
He smelled
good
, clean and warm and smoky-sweet from his vetiver oil. She could have kissed him for days, holding his face steady with her ring-weighted hand. Her other hand went exploring; her nails grazed the muscled lines of his arms, the lean planes of his sides, the coarse dusting of hair on his chest. Down, down, she trailed her hands, wondering at the warmth of his skin, the shiver of his muscles beneath her touch.
Aha. There were his trousers, low on his hips. Which meant . . .
there.
She pressed and stroked and tormented until he gasped.
“Conducting research?” His voice sounded tight.
“Exactly.” Even with her eyes closed, she made quick work of the buttons on the fall of his trousers. Before she could do more than brush against hot skin, he touched her wrist.
“Wait. I need a turn,” he said.
She had no urge to protest, for his strong fingers stroked her breasts, trailed down her sides, followed the curve of her hips.
Parted her legs.
She squeezed her eyes shut and tried to surrender to sensation.
Don't think don't worry it'll be fine the past is the past and we're alone and
—
“Oh.”
He touched her lightly, sliding over her slippery folds, and her mill wheel of thoughts simply vanished like a cloud.
“Are you all right?”
“Yes.” She shivered. “You could do that some more. If you want to.”
“No, no. I'll do it some more if
you
want me to.”
He trusted her to stop him; so he trusted her, too, to ask for what she wanted.
No more barriers. “Yes. I want more.”
“Thank God,” he said, and slid a finger inside of her.
She clenched her fists against the startling intimacy. Then he slid another finger within her and did something unspeakably clever, and it was her turn to gasp at the sweet shock.
With feather-light touches, he teased her, making her gasp again, bringing her to the brink of that unbearable pleasure. He held his own body carefully still; she could feel the tension in his abdomen, his corded legs. His hard shaft lay hot against her thigh, his pulse beating in a gentle throb against her sensitized skin.
“I'm ready,” she said. “Do hurry up. You're making me impatient.”
“I'm honored by your impatience,” he said, but his laugh died when she gripped his hips and tugged him closer. He made that choking sound again, and it was her turn to laugh.
As he nudged within her, slowly, stretching, tight, she held onto that laugh, and let it carry her above the discomfort.
Trust.
As soon as she'd made that vow to herself, the pain began to ebb, and he was fully seated within her body. With her eyes shut, she simply
felt
—felt the hard length of him within her, the long angles of his limbs entwined with hers, the sweet heat of his chest rubbing at her breasts. His cheekbone, pressing hers; his lips moving against her earlobe, murmuring words of comfort that she didn't need, but that she loved.
She wrapped her legs around his hips, drawing him deeper.
“I still don't have my fill of you,” she said, for the pleasure of hearing him chuckle. For the pleasure of feeling him move within her.
And then there was nothing but pleasure itself, great washes and waves of it.
 
 
Unbelievably, Wheeling did ring the gong.
When the low sound rang down the passage, they had almost tugged their clothing back into place, and Alex was meant to be helping Louisa pin her hair back up. Startled, he bobbled the hairpins, and they pattered all over the floor.
Louisa froze. “I cannot believe it.” She slid from the chaise and began gathering fallen hairpins. “Yes, actually, I can. This is surely my aunt's doing. Do you realize what sort of family you're marrying into?”
Alex crouched to help her. The little bits of curved metal had vanished against the patterned carpet, so he felt for them, laying them on the chaise. “It's my servant who rang the gong. Do you realize what sort of household you're marrying into?”

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