Twice Tempted (40 page)

Drake froze. “Guns?
What
guns?”

Mae blinked at him. “Well, I don’t know. They were stolen from the Royal Arsenal. Or they will be. I wasn’t quite sure.”

Drake all but went on point. “Show me.”

But Mae was nothing if not stubborn. “Not until he asks Fee to marry him,” she said, leveling a finger on Alex.

“He’ll be happy to,” Alex retorted, “if you would all just leave him alone with her for a moment.”

It was all Mae needed. With a big grin and a wave of her hand, she led everyone else out of the room like a children’s parade. Only Lady Bea stopped on the way by to bestow kisses on both Alex’s and Fiona’s cheeks.

“Love abides,” was all she said.

And then, suddenly, the door was closed, and the room hummed with silence. Fiona found herself standing flat-footed, not at all sure what she should be doing. Knowing that she felt sick with sudden apprehension. She swore her heart would take flight, and Alex hadn’t said a word.

He didn’t right away. Instead, he stepped up to her, just that. Just looked down on her, as if challenging her to look up. To meet his gaze and challenge him back.

She simply couldn’t. Suddenly her world was upside down, and she didn’t know what to expect. What to hope for. What to admit.

“Why
haven’t
you answered me?” he gently asked, stroking her cheek.

She felt an overwhelming urge to lay her cheek against his palm and just rest. She couldn’t. Not yet. Not until she understood.

“Because I don’t know why you asked,” she admitted and finally raised her head.

His eyes were liquid, deep as night, soft as earth. For the first time since she had first met him, he looked oddly vulnerable, as if something she said could hurt him. As if this moment were the most important in his life, and he didn’t know at all how it would turn out.

“Well,” he said, gently taking hold of her arms, “let’s see. Because you’re the smartest woman I’ve ever known. Because you know how to be thrifty, so you could support me if needed. Because I’ll never have to worry that you can’t balance the house accounts. I also doubt I would have to worry about my safety with you around. Oh, and because Chuffy will abuse me no end if I don’t bring you to live next door to your sister.”

She knew he meant to ease her tension. He accomplished the opposite. She didn’t need comfort. She needed truth.

“And if you don’t marry me I have nowhere else to go,” she said baldly.

He was silent a long time. She could feel the warmth of his eyes deep inside where the cold lived. She should step away from his touch, as it sent new heat curling along her limbs and into her heart. He was being unfair, she thought distractedly. She wanted him to hold her. To tell her wonderful things. To promise more. She was terrified he would, when he didn’t mean it.

“Fiona,” Alex said, frowning, “do you truly believe that any of the people you have met since coming to London would allow you to be alone? Do you think Mae would simply trot off to Berkshire without a wave? If you don’t know it, I certainly do.”

The warmth blossomed into something heady. He was right. He had brought all of these wonderful people into a life that had been meted out only to Mae, to Pippin and Lizzie and Sarah.

“Your father would adopt me if I asked, wouldn’t he?” she asked.

Alex dropped a kiss on her nose. “Of course he would. So would Lady Bea and Michael O’Roarke and Lady Kate. And you haven’t even met Lady Kate yet. I promised you, remember? No matter what it took, you would never be alone again.”

She held her breath. “Even if it took marriage?”

“Oh,” he breathed, his smile disappearing. “You think I’m being noble again. You think that the only reason I want to marry you is because you might need me to.”

Well, isn’t it?
she wanted to ask. She held her silence, her heart seized with fear.

He didn’t answer. Instead, he pulled her into his arms, and he kissed her. His hand caught in her hair to hold her head still, he coaxed her mouth open and plundered it, without permission, without apology, without hesitation, his tongue not searching but invading, his heart thundering against her breasts.

At first she froze, too surprised to react. Her body knew how, though. Suddenly she had her hands in his hair, sating herself on the thick silken curl of it. She lifted on her toes to get closer, to abrade herself on the faint whisper of beard along his jaw. She met his tongue with her own and dueled, the dance fueling fires beyond anything she’d ever known. Just that, a kiss, with bodies pressed tight and hands curved against scalps and chests straining for air.

And then his arms were around her, wrapping her tightly enough to show her exactly how she affected him, his straining cock hard against her belly, and she wanted to drag him down right there and demand he fill her, as if they could fuse, as if they could create fires that rivaled the sun itself.

Instead, he pulled away. He pulled her head down to his shoulder and held her as they regained control. He stroked her hair, as if it were still long and lush, and not a flat brown cap.

“No,” he mused, “I didn’t think so. I never kiss like that when I’m being noble.”

Surprised into a bark of laughter, she hit him in the chest. “I don’t think there has ever been a question as to our mutual attraction. But marriage is more than that, Alex.”

“As I know far better than you, my dear.” He lifted his head and waited for her to look up to see the arousal still flushing his face. “I’ve been a coward, Fee. I’ve been afraid. You see, I think I fell in love with you four years ago when I saw you lean your head out of a speeding carriage. But that wouldn’t have been right.”

She blinked, thinking maybe her lungs had collapsed. She could barely breathe. “You fell in love.”

He nodded, never taking his eyes from her. “I’ve decided that I was given a second chance, and I’m not going to pass it up. Marry me, Fee, because I cannot live without you. I can’t wait to see what you’re going to do next. I want to see how you put your stamp on our children, and how you teach them about the stars.”

For a long time they just stood in the shadowy room, gazing at each other, communicating with eyes and hands and smiles.

When Fiona looked up at him, it was to see something wonderful. It was as if, she thought later, she could see the whole sky in the depths of her lover’s eyes. She could see wonder and adventure and certainty and mystery. And she knew without a doubt that she would spend her entire life exploring it.

“Yes,” she said with a slow smile. “I think I will.”

He laughed. He actually laughed, as if he were relieved. “Oh, Fee, I promise you won’t regret it,” he crowed, swinging her around.

“But will
you
?” she asked, only half kidding. “I won’t stop my studies. I don’t think I can.”

He kissed her again, a long, slow kiss of exploration, of communion and commitment. And then, he laid his forehead against hers and smiled. “I’m already way ahead of you.” His grin grew impish. “Chuffy and I are building an observatory, did I tell you? Right on the border of our properties. That way if we don’t see you or Mae around, we’ll know where to find you.”

“You could always come with me,” she answered, her heart in her throat, her knees going all soft again. “I would love for you to meet my other gentleman.”

He grinned. “Orion? I don’t know. I get pretty jealous.…”

“What about you?” she asked. “What dreams can I help you realize?”

“A home,” he said. “Friends. Family. I think after all this time, I am tired of traveling. I’ll be happy to make limited visits, of course. Long enough that my wife might see some of her scientific friends. But I want to make Uncle Pharly’s estate ours.”

She was no longer certain she was breathing. These were opportunities one only dreamed of when looking up at the sky from a grimy dormer window. “Do you…do you think there might be dispatches to deliver south of the equator?” she asked. “Just think of the sky you could see there.”

His smile was so dear she wanted to cry. “To inspire that look in my wife’s eyes, I would take her around the world.” Another kiss. Another long, swollen silence. “Can I tell the others now?” he asked. “Your sister will not wait much longer.”

They told the others. Drake broke out champagne and toasted both couples. Fiona simply didn’t know how to believe that it was all happening. And when Mae sidled up to her, she wrapped her arm around her sister’s waist.

“Fee,” Mae whispered as the men discussed travel and diplomacy. “Can you believe it? We have a family. A real one, I think, even if it is just the four of us.”

“No chance of that,” Chuffy assured her, looking up. “Alex’s family’s massive. Cousins everywhere and a plague of sisters. And you haven’t even seen my family.”

Fiona smiled up at her fiancé. It was true. He had brought her friends, and now he had offered to share his family. She had no idea what to do with one, but she desperately wanted the chance to find out.

“You won’t mind the noise and crowds?” she asked her sister.

Mae wrinkled her brow and looked around. “It’s quite perfect, I think.”

Which seemed to be a challenge. For not ten minutes later, noise erupted once again, this time in the entryway. Drake turned that way with a long-suffering sigh. “And I’d planned on such a quiet morning.”

“The Colonel Ian Ferguson, Viscount of Hawes,” Wilkins announced. “Viscountess Hawes.”

And there stood Ian, tall and broad as a highland mountain, bold as March, poised in the doorway holding on to Sarah’s hand as if she were a miracle. And Fiona began to laugh. Suddenly she couldn’t seem to stop, as if far more than tears had been tamped down too tightly in her chest and needed release.

It truly was Ian, even if he wasn’t in his Black Watch kilt. She and Mae stood stiffly still, not at all certain what to do. Not knowing him enough anymore to know if he would accept their excitement. Then she saw a flash of hurt in his equally blue eyes, and she lost her reserve. She and Mae and Ian and Sarah were a mass of hugging and chatter and laughter, as if Ian and Sarah had merely been late to a party.

“Wait,” Chuffy said, pointing at Ian. “How can he be here? Ain’t you worried about the Ferrar woman?”

It was Drake who answered. “Interesting, that. I got a note yesterday from one of our…informants. Seems he was instructed to help a woman who smelled a lot like oranges onto a packet to France. She was accompanied by two very large gentlemen, who were decidedly not there to entertain her. It seems Madame has worn out her welcome, even among her friends.”

“Don’t count on it,” Chuffy warned.

Drake smiled. “One of those large gentlemen is ours.”

They were safe, Fee thought, one arm around Alex and the other around Ian. They were all safe and together and happy. She had lived in silence for so long, broken only by Mae’s insistent chatter, that the chaos of the crowd tumbled over her like a bright waterfall. And she knew that she had been given a gift few had. She had a love, a partner, a friend. And from the ashes of her childhood, she had been rewarded the family she had long since despaired of. She couldn’t imagine it getting any better.

Until Alex’s mother arrived.

The front door slammed open. More people poured through. Luggage dropped onto the marble floor with echoing thuds, and Wilkins once again appeared in the doorway, by now laughing outright. “Lady Knight and company,” to be followed in by a short, round mound of furs that were shed to reveal a short, round, graying middle-aged woman with an exceptionally plain face and Alex’s brown eyes. “I went home, but they said for some reason you were all here. Hello, Marcus. Hello, Bea. Is this the girl you’re to marry, Alex? I believe I approve.”

By the time Fiona was once again alone with Alex, she was exhausted, overwhelmed, and suffering a surfeit of Knight affection. And, as Chuffy had said, she hadn’t even met
his
family yet. “Mad as snakes,” he’d told her. “Every one of them.”

Tucked into Alex’s shoulder back in the Knight conservatory, where they could escape all the racket that Mae suddenly thrived on, Fiona found herself chuckling over it all. It was the only thing to do.

“Still want to marry me?” he asked. “You haven’t even met my other sisters.”

She cast him a suspicious glare. “Trying to back out?”

She could feed for the rest of her days on his smile. “You should know better. I’m just warning you. If you think this is chaotic, you haven’t seen the families in full cry.”

Her heart swelled and wept with the wonder of it. With the wonder of him. “Too late,” she said. “I fell in love with the son. I have to take the family.”

Her chest suddenly felt so tight. It took her a moment to realize that what she felt was joy. Unfettered, untamed, unfamiliar joy that fizzed like a rocket and sparked from her fingers.

“Besides,” she said, “I have dreamed of this family my whole life.”

He kissed her then. “Well, you asked for it.”

She kissed him back with all the love in her heart. And when the clatter rose from the entryway outside, she barely registered it, until she heard a well-loved voice yelling like a fishwife.

“Yes, Mama, I married him. Now I am here. Will you take me in or not?”

Fiona and Alex were on their feet. “Pip?” Fiona asked.

“
Married?
” Alex demanded.

But then they looked at each other and laughed.

“You were right,” Fiona admitted. “This will take a while to get used to.”

He smiled, and her toes curled again. “Oh, you never get used to it, sweetheart. The good news is I know all the places to hide.”

They hid so well that they weren’t found till morning. By then, Fiona had learned her first lesson not only in families, but in happiness. Miracles, she found, were not woven merely in the heavens. She could be loved, and she could love, and there was no greater magic in the universe. No more spectacular show than the love in Alex’s eyes. No greater joy than sharing the love in her own.

It was a lesson she repeated often and learned well.

Fleeing from the law, fugitive Colonel Ian Ferguson finds himself at the mercy of country widow Sarah Clarke. But one kiss with the achingly beautiful woman will ignite a passion that neither can escape . . .