The Love List (30 page)

“You must have been heart-broken.”

“Guilt-ridden.”  The words sawed their way out of him.

“But you cannot blame yourself.  Not for your friend’s death.”

“Of course I can.  His parents certainly did.  Good God,” his voice cracked, “their bitterness and anger was damned hard to endure.  But no less than I deserved.”

She’d sat straight up.  “On the contrary.  It was entirely misplaced.”

“No, they were right.  If I hadn’t interfered, he’d be there still, safe at home.”

“And miserable?  Full of longing and regret?  Surely they could understand the joy and satisfaction in his letters the same as you did.”  She shook her head.  “And who is to say that he would have gone back to the Abbey?  He might have found work in the government, doing his part here at home.  He might have found his own way over there.  He might have grown so bitter that he left to work in the mills.  Good heavens, he might have been killed in a tavern brawl or run over in the streets!”

He looked away.  “I appreciate your kindness, but they were right.  And I finally understood that my advisors and trustees had been right too.  I’d been a burden to Bard and his family in the same way my uncle was a burden to my father.  I’m not a gambler, but I can damage people and ruin lives all the same.  I can be blinded by my passions as sure as my uncle was, and I carried the extra sin of
hubris
.”  He choked back an angry snort.  “So proud I was!  Full of visions and arrogance.  I was going to change the world—and instead I brought it down around the ears of people who had been nothing but kind to me.  Instead I killed my finest friend.”

“You did nothing of the sort!”

He didn’t argue further.  He just wanted this finished.  “The trustees were right.  The title lends weight to a man’s words, grants power and responsibility.  I wasn’t ready to wield it.  I knew I shouldn’t—
couldn’t
—interfere any further.  I withdrew.  I learned not to meddle individually, but to focus my influence on broader issues.  Everyone is safer that way.”

“Everyone except for you!”  She stood up, anger blazing in her clear, green eyes.  “You are shut up alone with your pain and with guilt that doesn’t belong to you!”  She took a step.  “There’s no need for this to go on.”

“There is every need.  Can you not see the pattern?  Pride goes before the fall, they say.  And my pride and arrogance flares past all boundaries.  The falls are doubly long and dangerous as well, but I am not the one who pays the price!  I get swept up in my high-handed notions, sure that I am right, but I am left safe, secure in my tower.  No, when the time for punishment comes, someone else is dashed to the dangerous rocks below.”

He clutched his hands to his sides.  “Is it not clear?  I was thrust into this position, given the parameters of my role.  And every time I think I know better, every time I let my passions free and convince myself that I am right to abandon those restrictions, someone gets hurt.  It happened with Tru—he’s still carrying a scar as testimony to my weakness.  It happened again when I ran off with my damned cousin—I nearly died and Tru would have been next.  And still I didn’t learn.  It took Bard’s death to convince me.”  He drew a breath and gave her a hard look.  “And now I’m convinced, Brynne.”

She raised a stubborn chin.  “Well, I am not.”

Weary, he dropped his gaze.  “You wished for an explanation and you’ve had it.  Now, I must prepare for tonight’s exchange.  I believe it’s time you went along home.”

She crossed her arms.  “Well, I don’t believe so.  And I won’t go.  Come, Aldmere.  I’ve screwed my courage to the sticking point, examined and exposed all the flaws in my thinking.  Now you must do the same.”

He gaped at her.  “Do you think I haven’t examined this a thousand times already?  I don’t care to do it again, thank you.”

“I didn’t ask if you cared to.  Surely you must see that you cannot live in thrall to what might have been, any more than I can make choices based on the fear of pain that might come.”

“The pain that might come is exactly what you should fear,” he scoffed.  “Just look at us.  You’ve impressed me in so many ways.  Beyond your beauty, you’ve shown loyalty and incredible strength of will, courage, wit and humor.” 

She flushed, caught in a rosy glow of pleasure that he had to harden his heart against.  “I’ve allowed myself to thaw toward you.  Let you just the smallest bit closer—and look at the havoc that has resulted.  Your life in ruins, men following you, possible danger from villains unethical enough to hatch a treasonous plot.”

“And it’s all due to you, is it?  Your theory doesn’t hold water, Aldmere.  You kept yourself apart from your brother and he’s even deeper in the same pile of trouble.”

Pain knifed through him.  “You don’t understand.”

“Then help me to understand.”

He stared at her as she blazed passion and defiance.  She was doing it again, pushing past his barriers, but now she was also fighting for
him
.  He felt a rush of yearning for her.  Yet he was so far from her, in so many ways.

Did she not understand that he was different?  Separate?  Alone?

Clearly she did not, for she never treated him differently, in the way that most people did.  She challenged, questioned, teased, even sat at ease with him—as if he were just a man, and not the Duke of Bloody Aldmere.

But wasn’t that what she’d been saying?  She did see.  Clearly.  She’d ripped away the blinders that society had placed on her and looked at everything differently, even the costs of the choices they both wanted to make, but shouldn’t.  She saw the consequences, she was just not afraid to face them, should they come.  She saw them as worth the risk.

Were they?  Was she?  Worth the risk?

She glittered at him from halfway across the room, small in stature but beyond measure in spirit and lovely in every way—and he knew he had to answer that question now.  Right at this moment.

He’d committed to his role once, when Bard died.  Accepted the necessity of isolation and distance.  Now he’d reached a similar point of decision.  He had to commit again—or he could reach for help.  For warmth.  For Brynne, who viewed love as a joy, not as a weakness to be punished.  Who lightened his burdens instead of adding to them.  Who filled the valleys inside of him and made him happy and whole. 

He made an inarticulate sound and reached for her.

Eighteen

I confess to having anointed my pillow with silent tears that night, as I lay curled away from my new husband.  They were the last tears I ever shed.  Or ever will.

—from the journal of the infamous Miss Hestia Wright

Aldmere made a ghastly sound, like a man ripped asunder between heaven and hell.  Even as he moved toward her, his hesitation rang clear.  She stepped forward, knowing that she couldn’t give him the help he asked for, that she wouldn’t stop him as he acted against his instincts.  She was too caught up in a crashing wave of triumph and hope and a surging longing that pulled her inexorably toward him.

They met in the middle of the study.  The place had gone dim.  All the firm, masculine edges of the room had faded a bit as afternoon shadows moved in.  She didn’t care.  There was enough light to see the determined hunger in his face.  Beyond simple, human emotion, it shone elemental, carved right into the hard, sharp-edged bones of his face—and it set her aflame.

Effortlessly he plucked her up, pulled her in, and she thrilled to the solid heat of him.  It all excited her unbearably, the look on his face, his sheer size and power.  Excitement fueled the sense of urgency burning as bright as the desire in her veins.

She burrowed close, every inch of her front pressed tight against him.  They held for a moment, quite still as their insides seethed, and then he ran gentle fingers along her arm, crossed the bare valley beneath her clavicle, then up to cup the curve of her cheek.  He tilted her face upward.  In his she read pain and pleasure, and an echo of the same anticipation swamping her.

The seconds spun away.  Another moment marked.  Savored.  Made sacred by the sound of ragged breath and the feel of the approaching storm. 

She had to end it.  She couldn’t give him time to start thinking, couldn’t give the shadows that lived in him the chance to pull him away from her.  She stretched high and pressed her mouth to his. 

It was the right thing to do.  Perfectly timed.  Because once she kissed him, it was inevitable.  He snatched her closer still and threw off his last restraints.  He kissed her hard, with that wonderful, single-minded focus that had so frustrated and captivated her.

She opened, reveling in the taste of him and in the tangled dance of their tongues.  She was drowning in want, desperate with need and with the urge to hurry him along, to make this happen before he could come to his senses and retreat from her again.

Her hand drifted downward, burrowed under his waistcoat to tug at his linen until she could touch bare skin.  His groan told her when she met with success as surely as the heat of his skin against hers.  She explored the vast terrain of his chest, fascinated with the unfamiliar feel of ridges and valleys. 

Her heart rate ratcheted.  She was slipping, everything falling away but the feel of him against her mouth and body and the fear that he might yet take it away.  She couldn’t let him.  The thought frightened her.  She squirmed against it, against him, urging him on.  Lifting a leg, she bent her knee and trailed her limb along the vast length of his.

“Hold a moment.”  He lifted his head and stared down at her. A frown marred his brow.

She moaned in sudden, nervous protest.  Her eyes closed.  The hand beneath his shirt curled around to his back, refusing to let go.

“Look at me.”  He stepped back, disentangling them.  His grip tightened on her arms.  “Brynne.  Open your eyes.”

Feeling defeated, she obeyed.

Something flashed in his eyes.  “By God, you do throw yourself over every fence, don’t you?”  Grudging admiration colored his tone rather than disappointment or rejection.  She began to hope again.

He shook his head and ran a caress along the line of her jaw.  “There’s no need to rush this, Brynne.”  He glanced at the clock on the mantle.  “We have time.” 

She shook her head, afraid to say that it wasn’t time that worried her. 

“Touching you, taking you as mine—this is no small thing for me, Brynne.  It’s been a hard, harrowing journey, and God knows there are hurdles aplenty waiting, but damn it—they can wait.  For now, in this moment, there’s only the two of us—nothing else matters.”

A glow of happiness blossomed, warming her from the inside out.  She couldn’t hold back a smile or stop herself from launching back into his embrace.  She burrowed her face against his chest and blinked back joyous tears.

Aldmere’s heart pounded as he held her close.  “Slowly,” he said.  “We’ve been running to or from something since our first meeting, but this . . .”  He took her chin in his hand and stared into her eyes.  “This we take our time with.”

He sighed.  “It won’t come free,” he warned.  “There will be hell to pay tomorrow.  I’ll pay the price and gladly, but by God, I’m going to make damned sure that every second of this is worth it—for both of us.”

He took her mouth again, then, hot and demanding, and felt a surge of triumph as she responded.  One hand braced against the slender column of her spine and the other slid down to sweep behind her legs and lift her high.

He hesitated, casting about, eyed the door to the passage, but then spun about.  In the back corner of the study the door to Flemming’s small office stood shut.  He strode over and used a foot to nudge it open.

Yes.  There in the corner, next to a set of shelves piled neatly with stacks of folders and correspondence, sat a short, plush sofa.  Flemming sometimes retired there when his duties kept him late.

“Whose space is this?” Brynne asked.  The breathless quality of her words sent the heat pumping through him more fiercely than before.

“My secretary’s.”

She flushed.  “I don’t . . . That is, will he . . . won’t he mind?”

“No.”  He shrugged.  Every moment he’d spent wanting her over the last few days was flashing in his mind, making him reckless.  He sucked in a breath as he dropped his arm and sent her on a slow, erotic slide down the front of him.  “I don’t care if he does.”

He took a step back.  First things first.  The crimson embroidery across her bodice curled temptingly as he glared at it.  He wanted rid of it.  He reached out, tracked a finger along her shoulder and up the elegant length of her neck.  Softly, so softly, he touched the corner of her mouth.  Leaning in, he placed a kiss on the exact spot.  First he would rid her of that offensive dress and then he would claim what was his.

He explored the unnecessarily extensive line of fastenings up her back.  “How many buttons are on this wretched thing?” he asked, his breath hot against her cheek.

“Hundreds.”  Her mouth quirked.  “Dare I hope you have quick and nimble fingers?”

“Very quick and extremely nimble,” he assured her.  “Turn around and I’ll show you.”

She spun slowly about.  “And that is only the first in my repertoire of many talents,” he whispered in her ear.

She let her head fall back against him.  He set about pressing soft kisses from her ear to her nape as he made quick work of the fastenings of her gown and then the stays beneath it.  He gave a push here and a shove there, while she gave a heart-rending little wiggle, and soon enough the hated gown was discarded and she stood clad in only her chemise and stockings.  She started to turn back to him but he stalled her by pressing up against her.  “Not yet,” he whispered.

She nodded, waiting, and he buried his face in her hair.  The clean, soapy smell of her had gone.  She smelled like sin now, thick and rich.