The Rake Revealed (15 page)

‘How very clever of Lady Durham to have guessed as much as she has, though. Realizing that we are, in effect, working for the same side.’ Lord Tapscott observed, looking at Camille who met his eyes gravely. She could not tell if he were angry with her, but then, she could not tell anything at all about his lordship. He had been an enigma from their very first encounter.

I am not ready for such a one as this
, she thought sadly.
I am not ready for the passion he stirs in me or the need.
For she did not want to be involved with another man who was involved with the madness that had torn apart her country. It had been dreadful to lose Ned, but she sensed it would be a thousand times worse if she were to give herself over to this man for he had the power to make her care beyond reason and it was for reason itself that she had come to England, looking for sanity and stability and a reason to live again.

They made conversation after that while Camille poured more tea and, after what to her felt like an interminable time, her guests rose to leave.

‘You have done us a great service, Lady Durham,’ Mr. Morosett said with a shake of the head. ‘I have spent far too long looking in the wrong places. It seems that now I can get on with the real business of why I am in Kingsdown.’

‘I hope it all goes well for you,’ she returned quietly, ‘and I am sure that we will see each other again. You have Barstock Keep, after all.’

‘Yes, indeed. I will look forward to it.’ The lingering look he gave her made her sigh inwardly. Somehow, she had made an admirer of Mr. Morosett. Just what she did
not
need.

Having seen her guests out, Camille returned to the drawing room, walking across to the window. She was waiting and knew that she would not have to wait long. Sure enough, after no more than five minutes had passed she heard the door close softly behind her.

‘I thought I asked you not to use the passageways,’ she said, not turning around.

‘I did not promise. Besides, this time I came in through the front door.’

Camille turned around, slowly. A tremor ran through her at the sight of him, just as it always must. She could not be indifferent to him, she knew that, but she wished that she did not burn so. Where was the peace in that. He walked forward slowly until he was standing in front of her.

‘I am sorry for last night,’ he said softly. ‘I acted like a knave in every way.’

‘I hardly acted with propriety myself.’ Standing so close to him, every instinct urged her closer. To reach out her arms and draw herself to him. To rest her head against him and hear the solid thud of his heart. She could not imagine what it would be like to lie in his arms, but she wanted to. With every part of her she wanted to. ‘You are leaving now, yes?’

‘I need to return to London and make my report to Lord Asbury. And after that, I believe I will be going to France.’

Something tightened within her, a small, hard knot of pain, but she nodded. That was who he was, after all. Lord Lucius Tapscott was hardly ready for slippers in front of the fire and a quiet life. ‘You will take care of yourself. No more bullets in the shoulder.’

‘I will certainly do my best to avoid them.’

He stood hesitating before her, wanting to say more. She could see it in his eyes, that he wanted to say something, but there was nothing to say, not now. Not after the other night and the passion that had ignited between them like a flame. Something so intense, it could not be dismissed with a flippant word or a shrug.

‘Goodbye, Lord Tapscott.’ She wanted him gone. She
needed
him gone because if he stayed much longer, she would forget all of her sensible decisions, her fine resolutions. She would reach out and she would pull him against her and they would go upstairs to her bedroom.

Epilogue

A little over two months later...

Snow was falling, flurries of it mixed in with the sleet that had been making its unwelcome presence felt all day, blowing in off the ocean.

Camille had a book and a warm bed and did not care. She was reading a new periodical that she had obtained from the lending library in Kingsdown yesterday. Such things had been a solace to her of late, when sleep had proved to be so elusive. She knew that she was still mourning the death of Ned, but she had not thought that the loss of Lord Tapscott would cut quite so deeply.

There was not a day that passed, not an hour, that she did not think of him and wonder if he were all right, if he was in England or France, if he was dodging stray gunfire or wooing some foolish female with that glib tongue of his. On nights when his image taunted her mercilessly, she envied those women and regretted, all over again, the fact that she had not taken him to her bed. She might regret it now, but she was hoping that at some stage her decision would make her feel as if she had not wasted a precious part of her life.

The house settled around her in the wind, coals in the grate collapsing against each other softly. Comforting sounds. Familiar sounds. Kirkham Hall really was proving to be a haven for her, even if she had developed a bad case of heartache since her arrival.
Telle était la vie…
Life was not perfect but it
was
bearable and that must be enough.

It was growing very late. She had brought one of the carriage clocks in and had placed it on the mantle over the fire for its soft ticking was soothing. It told her that it was nearly two in the morning. Surely she could sleep now? Putting her book to one side, she was about to blow out the lamp when there came a soft knock at the door.

Camille stared at it, heart suddenly pounding. The last time somebody had knocked at her door in the middle of the night… But no, that was ridiculous.
Quite
ridiculous.

Just the same, ‘
Entrez
!’

He slipped in, a tall figure, instantly familiar. So dearly familiar. He closed the door softly behind him and stood for a long moment, regarding her, before crossing to stand beside the bed.

‘Hello, my love.’

There were so many things to say. So many
questions
to ask. But he was standing there, as he had almost three months before, and he looked…
Mon dieu
, he looked like Tapscott, the man she had been unable to forget since the day he had disappeared out of her life. Without thinking, she opened her arms to him and he was on the bed beside her in a moment, pulling her to him, kissing her with the same savage desperation that he had shown the last time he had been in her bedchamber, except this time there was an extra edge, as if he had been deprived too long. She reveled in his mouth, exulted in the bruising intensity of his lips because it brought her to life again.

Once again, it was his lordship who raised his head and moved backwards. He stared at her for a long moment in silence before giving a sigh. ‘Dear God, Camille, this is not what I envisioned. I had a pretty speech prepared for you.’

‘If you leave, it will be me that puts a bullet in you this time,’ she muttered, her hands moving to slip beneath his coat, which she could feel was damp through.

He chuckled. Rising to his feet, he shrugged the greatcoat off, then the jacket underneath while she watched him with a barely-restrained impatience. They should talk, she knew that. They should discuss how it was he came to be there and, more importantly, why it was he was here at all, but she had undergone ten weeks of wondering where he was, if he were alive or dead, and she wanted to touch him, to feel him against her and confirm that they were both very much alive.

Sitting on the side of the bed again, he pulled off his boots while she waited, suddenly more content than she had been in a very long time. It was good to look to the future, that much was certain, but sometimes it was necessary to live in the moment. She had been waiting for this moment since the first time she had set eyes on Lord Lucius Tapscott. He shed his clothing and she bit her lip at the sight of that glorious, golden skin, muscles moving beneath with lissome grace. He had received no more scars while he was gone, his chest marred by just the small pucker on his shoulder, which she had tended. When he had shed his clothing – all of it, revealing just how magnificent he truly was – he slipped into bed beside her and pulled the covers over them both. His hands and face were cold, but his body was deliciously warm as he wrapped his arms around her. She turned to press herself against him, offering more than her own body heat.

‘We need to talk,’ he murmured, although his fingers were busy, pulling at the ties on her nightgown and pushing it open so he could discover the seductive swell of her breasts. Her breath stuttered when his hand swept lightly across them both, stomach clenching in response. ‘But you make it very hard for a man.’

‘So concentrate on one thing at a time,’ she breathed as his fingers closed over one small, tight nipple. At that moment, talking seemed absurd. There was nothing he could not say that his body could not express more clearly. She must have made her point because he stopped talking and focused on his exploration of her body. The nightgown disappeared and then she was a naked as he was and the only words he expressed were ones of whispered wonder and, before too much time had passed, passion as he surrendered to the inevitable and took the woman who had drawn him back to her, consummating their mutual desire in a rush of ecstasy that transformed them, briefly, into one creature. Camille felt tears on her face as the world that had shattered slowly reformed around her once again.

She had died a little death, but never before had she been so completely alive…

Tapscott’s arms cradled her, holding her against him. She could feel the thunder of his heart against her cheek, an echo of her own. Weak limbed with the aftermath, she lay beside him and understood the true nature of completion.

‘Not the order of things that I had intended,’ he murmured, mouth close to her ear, ‘but oh, my sweet Camille, that was extraordinary.’

Camille searched his face. Their acquaintance had spanned no more than three weeks and much of that had been spent in uncertainty. She had doubted his motivation, his intentions, his honesty. She had believed the worst of him at that meeting, that he was a man who had no shame when it came to women, and while she had grown to know a little bit more about him each time they had been together, she had been so certain that he was not the kind of man she needed in her life.

It had not been until he had gone away that she had realized that she had fallen in love with him. Even so. ‘I do not want to spend each and every day wondering if you will return to me,’ she told him softly, reaching up to trace a finger down his face. ‘Much as I care, I do not think I ever want to do that again.’

Turning his head, he kissed the palm of her hand. ‘Until I met you, I believed myself to be the kind of man who was not ready to stay in one place. Women, adventure…,’ his mouth curved in a wicked smile. ‘Well, they have their charms, but then I met you and everything seemed to change. You know that, don’t you? That my life changed the night I met you.’

‘The women, I can make you forget them. But the adventure? That, I have learned, is not so easy to replace.’

‘There are all kinds of adventure, my love.’ He ran the tip of a finger between her breasts and she shivered. ‘Some never grow old. I will still do my best for this country, but I will do it here, with the woman I love.’

She cupped his face in her hands and looked into his eyes. ‘I cannot lose another. I cannot lose you, too. Especially not you.’

‘Oh, Camille,’ he sighed, as his lips drifted down to cover her own once again. ‘Once found, never lost again. And now, let me begin to woo you from the very beginning. It is, after all, the rest of our lives.’