Too Wicked to Marry (4 page)

"But… I've changed," he said. "Things are different now!"

"In what way?" she inquired in that crisp, precise way she had.

Such skepticism was to be expected, he told himself. He'd misjudged how she'd react to such a sudden appearance, but he hadn't been able to stop the spontaneous declaration at the sight of her, sitting there as fresh and beautiful as the roses
that surrounded her. There was so much that had gone unsaid between them for years that the floodgates were threatening to open—no, they already had, and he was babbling like a fool as he tried to express the deluge of feelings he'd pushed deep below the surface for so long. He had to remain calm, reasonable, to find a way to negotiate through the obstacles he knew she'd throw up. To get them where he was certain—hoped—they both wanted to be.

"You have become my dearest friend," he told her.

She was not prepared for the pain that shot through her when Martin spoke those words. Didn't the man understand what he was doing to her? How much this hurt? No, of course not.
You're my dearest enemy, more like
, she thought.
Though I truly have tried to be a friend
. "Friend, yes," she answered, having great trouble keeping her voice steady and her true emotions hidden.

"More than friend," he went on, his rich, sincere voice wounding her further. "We need not keep the memory of a no longer necessary pledge between us. I'm not asking you to do anything shameful. You should be flattered, you know, having a peer of the realm asking for your hand."

"You are not a peer, your father isn't dead yet."

"You know what I mean."

She knew he was joking about his deigning to offer a commoner his hand, but it gave her a means to defend herself against the impossible situation. She lifted her head proudly and said, "Noblesse oblige, my lord? You're good at grand gestures, Martin, but I'd rather have a raise in wages than an offer of marriage if you're looking for some way of rewarding my services."

He chose to smile confidently rather than recognize the ridiculousness of it all. She'd always found his confidence both endearing and infuriating. The combination tended to charm her, but she could not afford to let him charm her now. This was no ordinary conversation, nor was it an ordinary dispute. She had to control her emotions and the situation. But that smile sent unreasonable hope through her, as well as a surge of heat—

"Blast you," she complained. "Stop looking at me like that."

"Like what? A man openly in love with the most wonderful woman in the world?"

"Like a man who has lost his mind."

"Like a man who has come to his senses."

"Shall I send for a physician, my lord?"

"Don't patronize me, Abigail Perry. And why is it, I wonder," he inquired of the world in general, "that I am standing here offering my heart and hand to a woman with a tongue like an adder?"

"I don't know," she answered. She turned her back on him as she asked, "Because you're bored, perhaps?"

"Other women bore me. Never you."

Life with Lord Martin Kestrel was certainly never boring, but she refused to confess to any shared sentiment. She knew too well to never give the man an opening; he was too good a negotiator for mat. "If you weren't bored you would not be behaving like this. You were bored when you left," she reminded him.

"I was restless."

"Perhaps it's being back in England that's the problem."

"Perhaps I was struggling to come to my senses and didn't know it."

"Perhaps you miss Patricia."

"Of course I miss her. We shall go and tell her the good news together. She'll be delighted to have you as her stepmother, you know."

"Perhaps you need a new mistress." She swung around to face him once more. "That's your problem; you feel challenged. You need a new conquest."

"I want a wife."

"You once told me that was the last thing you wanted."

"If you recall, I made that statement only a few weeks after I discovered that I was a widower and on the day I received my father's letter saying he wanted me to marry the daughter of a neighbor for the sake of increasing the size of his estates."

She folded her hands to hide the fact that she was trembling with her effort to appear calm. She hated herself for having to argue with him. "You showed me the letter," she recalled. "In it your father said that you had followed your heart once and married a woman beneath your station. He also stated that it was time for you to do your duty with a biddable girl from a good family. I am not biddable, nor is Abigail Perry of a good family."

"Your father's a vicar."

"Well, he was when I met him," she whispered, and was so shocked at this lapse of discretion that she coughed.

"What? Are you all right?"

"Nothing." He came closer; she backed up. "I just recalled an old family joke. The point is"—she forced herself back on track—"while I
may come from a decent, respectable family, you can't marry me."

"I can so. Just watch me."

"Your aged father would disown you."

"I don't need my family's wealth; I have quite enough of my own."

"Society would be scandalized. You would be ostracized."

"Not by anyone who matters to me."

"Her Majesty's government would also consider it a scandal. It would jeopardize your position."

"I do not officially work for Her Majesty's government, if you recall. I could retire. We could take Patricia along on a long honeymoon trip. We could spend several years exploring America. You'd like that, wouldn't you?"

"What I would like is not the point, Martin." Duty was the point, it always was. Duty and honor and loyalty and other abstract notions that didn't take personal feelings into account. "Take a mistress," she pleaded with him. "Run off and have a wild fling and forget about me."

He cocked a dark, arched eyebrow at her. "Is my daughter's prim governess urging me to set a bad example for my child? Shouldn't you counsel me to lead a quiet, moral life?"

"I suppose I should, but how can I ask you to give up something you're so good at? Seducing women is as much a hobby with you as fencing and boxing, marksmanship and riding to hounds."

"You make it sound as if I hang trophy heads on the wall!"

At another time his outrage would have amused her. "Well—"

"I have standards. There are rules to the game of love."

"Ah, but you do consider it a game."

"You twist my meaning. Love is not a game. Romantic liaisons with ladies of worldly sophistication are not the same as love, and you know it. It's not as if I've gone around seducing maidens and nuns."

"No. I concede you're no despoiler of virgins. The women you've been involved with have hardly been victims of your rapacious lust."

"I could teach you a great deal about rapacious lust if you like."

"I'm sure you could, but no thank you."

"Aren't you a little bit curious about the ways of the flesh?"

"Of course I—"

"Well, then." Suddenly she was in his arms again.

"This will not do," she declared, and found herself beating on his chest with her fists like a heroine in some melodramatic stage play.

When he laughed in the same dastardly way as the villain in one of those plays, she couldn't help but laugh with him. They knew each other too well on some levels. They thought so much alike that sometimes they seemed to share one mind. One soul?

Now who was being the melodramatic one? What they shared was on the surface; they could never share the basic, important things. The basic truths about who they were and where they came from could never be reconciled. Lord Martin Kestrel might think he loved Abigail Perry, but Abigail Perry could never love him. She would not even allow herself the pleasant fiction of thinking she could.

"You are a womanizer," she told him, hoping that shining a harsh light on his past would put a stop this. "How can I believe you love me? How could I believe you would be faithful?"

"Because I—"

"I will not be another fling, Martin." She was far too aware of his arms around her, of the strong body so close to hers.

"Of course not!"

"Nor will I go to the bed of a man who has a rakehell's reputation. As you pointed out, I am a minister's daughter."

"Most men are less than pure, my dear. At least you know the worst of me."

But he did not know the worst of her. She sighed, and was unable to ignore the pain in his eyes. "You were hurt once, Martin, and—"

"I reacted badly to it, I know," he cut her off. "I really did want to try my hand at being a wicked seducer after Sabine betrayed me, but you know I got over that fool mood."

"Turned out you had too much conscience," she agreed. "But you have had a great many mistresses in the last several years."

"Not
that
many," he corrected. "A man has to work, eat, and sleep sometimes."

"Enough."

Martin hid a smile. Was that a hint of bitterness in her voice? Perhaps the faintest tinge of jealousy? He
had
been wild for a time; now it was catching up with him. He only prayed that the price was not losing the woman in his arms, for he knew with his heart and soul that she was the only woman he could ever truly love. "I have been circumspect," he offered, as though discretion were some form of virtue.

"Which does not change your behavior."

"I am not coming to you pure of body and soul," he admitted. "There is a disadvantage in your knowing me so well, but the heart I offer to you is clean. I've never loved another woman, Abigail, not even Sabine. She gave me a child I love, and I'm grateful, but what we had was not love. You, I love. I think I've loved you since the moment I opened the door and dragged you into my life. I've gotten over being angry at women, you may have noticed. I'm through with chasing them. I'm sick of them throwing themselves at me. I want only you. Marry me, Miss Perry, become Lady Martin."

She did not melt into his embrace and offer her lovely mouth for a kiss. "Is your proposal to me a way of laughing in the face of all those ladies who want you for your name and fortune? Are you using me to get revenge?"

This stung, and his answer was an angry shout, filling the gentle space of the walled garden. "I no longer blame every creature in skirts—"

"Including Angus MacTavish the ghillie," she interrupted.

"—for wounding my heart. Not breaking," he hastened on, before she made some other remark intended to throw him off course. Oh, he knew his Abigail, all right. He had her cornered and she was fighting dirty. He considered this progress, though her distrust stung. He supposed he couldn't blame her for being skeptical, nor could he blame an upright, moral woman for doubting that a man of his former habits could change. For the love of a good woman he could do it, wanted to do it, would do it. "Marry me," he said again. "That's all I'm asking."

"All?"

"We can spend the rest of our lives working out the rest."

She looked up at the sky, blue dotted with puffy white clouds. The air was fresh and sweet, freed for a time from London's usual sooty grit by a hard, windy rain the day before. The garden was a tame, pretty place, and she found herself longing for heather and gorse and the wild landscapes of home. She should have left a week ago, gone home to the people with whom she could truly be free. She had probably not gone because she knew that her family would have told her the same thing she now so disastrously faced: it was time to move on—her usefulness in the Kestrel household was at an end. It was over.

Control the situation
, she told herself.
Deal with it later
.

Martin did not know exactly how she managed it, but one moment he held Abigail close; the next he was standing with empty arms, while she was several feet away from him. He sensed instantly that the distance was more than physical. She stood still as a statue, and the green eyes that surveyed him were hard chips of ice.

"Abigail."

She held up a hand when he would have come closer. "Enough."

This time she definitely meant it. He did not push his luck for the moment. Martin carefully clasped his hands behind his back. "Why don't we have a seat on the terrace. I'll ring for some tea and we—"

"The butler's on holiday," she reminded him. "So is Cook, and most of the maids. And I believe the ones that are left have started their weekly half day off by now. They have lives you know nothing about, Martin," she pointed out. "Especially since you are not supposed to be here."

"Are you telling me I can't get a cup of tea in my own house?"

"Not unless you plan to make it yourself."

He tilted his head to one side and looked her over from head to foot, wearing plain black and white, her rich brown hair twisted up in a simple knot. "This is where you remind me of our relative positions in this household, bob me a curtsy, and offer to fetch the tea for m'lord, isn't it?"

"That was next on the agenda, yes," she agreed.

He shook his head. "Too easy, Abigail."

Martin noticed Abigail's gaze shift over his shoulder just as he heard a footstep behind him. Martin turned to see his valet approaching. He was more than irritated at this interruption, but he also knew that circumspect Cadwell would not have disobeyed an order not to be disturbed unless it was absolutely necessary. "What?" Martin demanded.

Cadwell gingerly held out an envelope and backed away when Martin snatched it from him. "How the devil did the Turkish ambassador know where to find me?" he asked once he'd ripped open the envelope and read the message inside. Neither Abigail nor the valet ventured an answer. He folded the paper, waved Cadwell off, and turned back to Abigail. "Rather urgent business," he apologized. "You'll have to excuse me while I send off an answer."

She relaxed ever so slightly as she said, "I understand."

Oh, no
, he thought.
This is no time to be smug, Miss Perry, I'm only giving you a momentary respite
. "This isn't over," he warned. "You and I are going to settle this today. Stay here. I'll be right back."

"Of course, Martin," she answered as he started back toward the house. "Where else would I go?"