The Lady Most Willing . . . (31 page)

“No! I’ll not be quiet!”

Cecily lifted her head from her arms. The voice from directly below her had been Taran’s.

“Then at least do me the courtesy of coming in here and not shouting so that all the world might hear you!”

Cecily froze.
Robin
.

“Why should you care?” Taran demanded, his voice growing louder as he entered the chapel. “The world already knows you’re a heartless bastard. Nothing I can say will surprise a one of them.”

Robin’s reply was terse and unintelligible.

“I know you and Byron think I’m nothing but a half savage,” Taran went on, “but at least I don’t reduce lassies to tears.”

“Do you think I enjoyed that?” Robin ground out.

“How could a man tell with you? Always ready with a quip and a laugh, and all the while the lassie looking as pale as the survivor of a massacre.”

“You overstate the case.” His tone was thick with emotion.

“The hell I do!” Taran shouted. “That she has feelings for you is as clear as fresh blood on new snow . . .” He trailed off and when he spoke again, his tone had changed from bombast to true shock. “Dear God, laddie, ye dinna
actually
seduce the poor wee creature? I know I encouraged you to do so, but only if you had honorable intentions. If you dinna plan to marry the girl, then you are a bloodier blackguard than I—”

“Stop! I did not seduce her!” Robin thundered. “For the love of all that’s holy, what do you take me for?’

“Who you are,” Taran snapped in reply. “
What
you are.”

For a moment Robin was absolutely silent. Carefully, Cecily shifted in the chair, craning toward the rail to hear better.

“My past has nothing to do with Cecily and myself,” Robin said. “I would never do anything to harm her.
Never
.”

Cecily’s heart began to beat faster. She slipped from the chair to her hands and knees and crept to the rail to look down. Below, she could see Taran standing halfway down the short aisle leading to the altar. Before him, black curls gleaming in the afternoon light streaming through the chapel’s rose window, Robin paced like a caged beast.

“Cecily, is it?’ Taran asked musingly. “Well, it looks like for all your proposed good intentions, you’ve mucked up a grand bit, laddie, for the lady is heartsore and that’s a surety.”

“No,” Robin said emphatically. “She’s not.”

What did he mean? How could he make such an assumption?

“You’re wrong,” Taran said flatly. “I saw her watching you this afternoon. She could fain take her eyes from you.”

“No.” Robin stopped pacing, raking his hair back with his hand. The very set of his shoulders suggested resignation and weariness. “This afternoon I asked her to pretend that she loved a man like me and tell me how her father would react if that man asked for her hand.”

“And?” Taran prompted.

“She said the point was moot, because she would never ask her father to approve someone like me.”

What
? No.
No
. She hadn’t! Cecily’s brows furrowed, thinking back fiercely, trying to recall her exact words before Marilla, with her impeccable sense of timing, had interrupted them. Robin had just said, “Let us say you are in love with someone of my ilk,” and she had agreed, and then he had asked how her father would react and . . .

Her eyes flew wide. She had said the point was moot, and been about to say she would not ask her father’s permission because the only thing that mattered was if he loved her. But those words were not what Robin’s imagination had supplied. He had heard what he thought he deserved to hear.

“I don’t know why she would say such a thing when it’s so clearly a lie. Maybe she’s afraid of her parents. But if you were man enough, you’d find the way to persuade her to ignore her parents’ wishes and elope with you.”

“Dear God, Taran, have you not heard a thing I’ve said? Do you not understand?
I love the girl
, damn you and your plans and your machinations! I love her. I would never come between her and her family. I would never ask her to elope. Indeed, I would never . . . I should never have . . .”

Cecily’s heart began beating madly, a heady warmth rushing through her, filling her. The very blood in her veins seemed to carry joy with it, suffusing her every fiber with happiness.

Below her, Robin’s hand clenched into a fist at his side. “If she were my daughter and a man like me pursued her, I would horsewhip him within an inch of his life. I would sell him to a press gang and hope he died on foreign soil in some futile war.” He laughed bitterly. “But, as has been said, the point is moot.”

“It’s only moot if ye don’t do something aboot it, lad.”

“Enough,” Robin said, his voice weary. “Your man returned a few hours ago. The pass will be open by daybreak. I’ll stay to see that no one suggests there be any reason I should have left, and after that, I’m gone.”

Without another word, Robin brushed past Taran and disappeared, his uncle following.

On the balcony above, Cecily dropped back on her bum with a thump. Her hands slipped from the rail to her lap, her unseeing gaze fixed on the small marble altar below.

Robin loved her. Her heart swelled anew at the thought, became complete and whole and filled with unlimited potential, the future suddenly an invitation to a glorious adventure, the rest of her life a love story waiting to be told. Whatever her father’s objections, however reasonable and heartfelt, they would somehow find a way past them.

The only question now was how she would find her way past Robin’s own objections.

Her gaze drifted to a chapel window, the bare vines outside covering it like latticework, and suddenly, she knew: she was going to climb the ivy.

Chapter 28

Late that evening

C
ecily bullied Hamish into bringing her hot water, then washed off all the chapel dust, then offered Mrs. McVittie her pearl ear bobs to tell her where Robin had his chambers. The scrawny, stooped old Scotswoman cackled like a witch and asked what she would do with pearl ear bobs and then, with a toothless grin, told her the location anyway.

But now, creeping up the cold stone staircase, shielding the flicking candle with her hand, it occurred to Cecily that the old lady might have been teasing her, because why would Robin stay in the abandoned part of the castle?

The corner room above the bailey tower, the old lady had said. Well, here she was and there was the door leading into that room, a thin line of light delineating the bottom. She pulled the blanket she’d draped over her shoulders closer and, taking a deep breath, pushed the door open.

Beyond was a small chamber, lit by the glow from embers in a tiny hearth in the opposite wall. It was a monkish room with only a few pieces of furniture. A large wingback chair stood facing the hearth, turned away from her and a narrow bed had been pushed hard against the wall.

She did not see Robin at once, and for one terrible moment thought he’d left after all. But then she saw a man’s hand appear over the arm of the chair, the long fingers curling over the carved end.

“If that draught is you, Taran, come to lecture me some more, go away,” Robin said tiredly. “If it is Hamish, leave the bottle on the table, and my thanks. And if it is Marilla, I am sorry, my dear, but I am not receiving tonight. Or any night. Or day, for that matter.”

She took a breath. “What if it is Cecily? How is she to act?”

The fingers tightened reflexively over the chair’s arm. For a moment he did not reply, and then in a very careful voice he said, “Sensibly. By leaving. At once.”

She smiled at that. “But it turns out I am not sensible. Or dutiful. Or circumspect. Or any of those things for which I have been admired. So I believe I will stay.” She let the blanket slip from her shoulders to the floor.

He stood up, slowly and without turning at once, as though carrying with him a great burden, and once erect pulled back his shoulders. He was wearing only a white lawn shirt, the sleeves rolled up over muscular forearms, and a pair of skintight buckskin trousers that showed his athletic figure to great, distressingly great, advantage. A little thrill raced through her at the sight of his tall, broad-shouldered form silhouetted against the fire.

Then he turned and saw her. The mask he’d composed failed him at the sight of her, for she wore only an antique chemise of the softest, sheerest linen, the deep, rounded neckline edged in lace, the sleeves falling free to her wrists. His eyes burned in his pale face and a muscle jumped at the corner of his hard jaw.

“Cecily. You must leave,” he said. “Please.” But in his expression she read everything she needed to give her the courage to stay.

“No,” she said. She moved to his side, tipping her head to look up at him. He stared silently back.

“I am cold, Robin,” she said.

Still mute, he pulled his discarded jacket from the back of the chair and draped it over her shoulders. She shook her head, her eyes never leaving his. “Still cold,” she said.

She stepped right up next to him and wrapped her arms around his chest and pressed herself tightly against him. The muscles in his chest jumped into tense rigidity. She laid her head against his shoulder. The rightness of it was startling. Every bit of tension, every last bit of doubt dissolved into his body’s warmth and heat and strength. She sighed, a soul finding its moorings, a homecoming and an awakening all at once.

“For God’s sake, Cecily,” he finally rasped, “please. What is this?”

His heart thundered beneath her ear.

“I love you,” she said. “I love you, and I want you to marry me. Marry me.” She would never have imagined herself saying something so bold, so extraordinarily forward. A woman should make her plans and then wait for a gentleman to fall in with them. She did not . . . climb the ivy. Yet it felt right, perfect. In fact, the only possible thing she could say.

A shudder ran through his big body. She rubbed her cheek against him, her eyes closing as she luxuriated in the sensation of being this close, this connected.

“How can you ask this? What has happened to make you forget your situation, your family, your name?”

“You,” she replied simply.

He put his hands very lightly on her shoulders. “You are the most extraordinarily forthright young lady I have ever known.”

“Not to everyone. But always to you. Loving you has made me so.”

“So many sins on my head,” he murmured, his breath stirring the hair at the top of her head.

“I would never recognize myself in the woman wrapping her arms around you, unconcerned with anything other than the fact that your arms are not around me. Why aren’t you holding me, Robin?”

“Because if I embrace you, I am afraid I will not be able to find the will to let you go.”

“Then embrace me. “

His hands slipped from her shoulder, crushing her to him.

She laughed shakily. “See? I warned you. I am without shame, capable of anything where you are concerned. And you, what are you capable of?”

“Too much, I fear.”

“I don’t know that is true,” she said, tipping her head back to study his face, her unbound hair cascading down over his arms. “Are you capable of living on my wealth? Of enduring my father’s suspicion and my mother’s mistrust and society’s worst speculations? Are you strong enough to endure the whispers that may follow us for years before they fade, if ever they do? Because that is what marrying me will mean.”

He released her but did not step away, reaching up instead to cradle the back of her head with one hand and tip her chin up with his other. “It was never myself I wished to spare.”

“I know,” she said softly. “I will not lie to you, Robin. I would just as soon none of those things happen, and everyone we loved would bless our union and be confident of our future happiness. But the alternative is to live without you, and that I cannot do.”

In reply, he dipped at the knees and scooped her into his arms, his mouth descending hungrily on hers. She wrapped her arms around his neck, trying to get closer. His mouth still closed on hers, he moved to the chair and sank down in it, holding her on his lap.

“I have spent a lifetime training myself not to want what I could never have,” he said, and dipped his head to feather kisses along her lower lip. She arched in his arms and he splayed his hand between her shoulder blades to support her.

“But then you arrived,” he said, “and played havoc with my will. Every barrier, every defense, every bit of common sense, and every hard-learned lesson has been shattered by your smile, razed by your glance.”

She smiled, joy slowly blooming in her heart. “Then you’ll marry me?”

In answer, he covered her mouth with his own, kissing her with a thoroughness that left her shivering in his arms. “Oh yes. There’s nothing for it now, my lass. I’ll ask your father and then we can only hope he’s fool enough to agree, because it won’t matter if he does not.

“He could spirit you away, wed you to another man, secret you in a French nunnery. No matter how long it might take, no matter what I must do, I would find you.

“Because, you see, the only thing stopping me before was the idea that you would be happier without me. But now I know you love me and so nothing will stop me until you are mine, by fair means or foul.”

“I do not think we need to elope just yet,” she teased in a shaky voice, because if she did not tease him she might cry, and there were far better things to do this night then cry.

“Unless there is no other way, we are not going to elope at all,” he said severely. “I intend to stand before your family looking for all intents and purposes like the most brazen and bald-faced fortune hunter London has ever seen and pledge before God and gawkers my undying love and devotion and care of you, and it will not matter to me a whit who believes me. Except for you, Cecily. That, I own, I must have.”

“I do,” she said.

“Good,” he said, looking amazed and bemused, a man who has just heard a death sentence commuted into an extravagant reward. Then shaking his head slightly, he gently clasped her shoulders and lifted her upright on his lap. “And now, my beloved, you must leave.”