by Mary Balogh
Margaret smiled. "Had you seen Mr. Turner before last evening?" she asked as they walked in the direction of Hyde Park. "Since your elopement with his wife, I mean?" "No," he said. "Nor his sister either, since the evening before my planned wedding with her. The morning papers made the most of the almost-encounter, did they not?" "They did," Margaret said. It had been somewhat disconcerting to see her name in print for the second morning in a row. "It was noted that Mr.
Turner and Mr. and Mrs. Pennethorne did not return to their box for the conclusion of the play, that a perfectly well justified outrage drove them away from having to share a roof with a notorious villain. Are you sorry that you spoiled their evening?" "Not at all," he said. "If it /was/ spoiled, that is. Which I very much doubt. They probably enjoyed an hour or two of righteous and thoroughly pleasurable indignation over their supper." He handed a coin to the crossing sweeper as they crossed the road and then entered the park. "Is your heart so very hard, then?" she asked him. "I daresay it is," he said. "Life's experiences do that to a person, Miss Huxtable." "Harden the heart?" she said. "I hope not. I would hate to become a cynic merely because I could not take responsibility for my wicked actions." "Am I wicked, then?" he asked, looking down at her. "/You/ tell /me/," she said. "You are the one doing the wooing." The paths and carriageway were busy enough even though it was not yet the fashionable hour. Their appearance attracted noticeable attention, as though the /ton/ could not get its fill of looking at them. What did they expect to see, exactly?
What they saw was the Earl of Sheringford leaning his head closer to hers and looking very directly into her eyes as his free hand came up to cover hers on his arm. A deliberately intimate gesture? Well, she had asked for it. "Things are not always what they seem, Miss Huxtable," the earl said.
No, indeed. She half smiled. "Meaning that you are not wicked after all?" she said. "You did not really abandon the bride you professed to love? You did not really run off with another man's wife and live in sin with her for five years? We all know that gossip can err, but can it err to quite such a degree?" "I did not love Caroline by the time I abandoned her," he said, "though that fact in itself did not excuse me for doing so. I daresay nothing did. And Laura Turner was very willing to run away with me, a fact that did not at all excuse me for taking her, I suppose. I daresay nothing did. Yes, Miss Huxtable, I must concede that by your definition of wickedness I am doubtless very evil indeed." He curled his fingers about hers as an open barouche of ladies bowled past, and moved his head a fraction closer. "By /anyone's/ definition," she said. "If you will." Constantine was cantering toward them with a few other gentlemen, all of whom Margaret knew. They reined in and stopped for a few moments to exchange greetings. All of them called the earl /Sherry/. Gentlemen, it occurred to Margaret, forgave far more easily than ladies did. Perhaps they envied a man who did as he pleased and thumbed his nose at society – and hurt other people in the process. "Margaret," Constantine said, fixing her with a very direct look. "Your fame grows with every morning paper. May I join you and Sherry on your walk?" "Thank you, Constantine," she said, "but we are on our way to take tea with Lady Carling." "And I promise most faithfully, Con," Lord Sheringford said, "to chase away any wolves who take it into their heads to try to devour Miss Huxtable on the way." Constantine gave him a hard look before riding off with the other gentlemen. "It must be gratifying," the earl said, "to have so many people willing to champion your person against any and all villains." "It is," she agreed. "But I warned you it would happen." "Is it," he asked her, "why you decided to receive me yesterday instead of having Merton send me packing? Is it why you did not dismiss my offer out of hand when you /did/ see me? And why you invited me to the theater last evening and agreed to take tea with my mother this afternoon? Is it simply /because/ all your champions are set against your allying yourself with me? Are you a secret rebel, Miss Huxtable?" She was beginning to believe that she really must be. The notoriety she had garnered during the past two days should have horrified her sufficiently to send her into full retreat. Instead … Well, here she was, /almost/ enjoying herself. "I find myself unwilling to reject you only because the world and all the evidence tell me that I ought," she said. "I must be grateful to the world and all the evidence, then," he said, "and a secret rebel who insists upon forming her own opinions. But what more evidence do you need to convince you that you would be better off being a spinster for the rest of your life than allied with me?" "I am not even sure," she said. "But you have faced the hostility of the /ton/ – you are facing it now – with a certain dignity. Does that mean anything in your favor? I do not know." "Perhaps it means that I am without conscience," he said, "or desperate enough to grovel at any cost." "Yes," she agreed. "Or perhaps it means that there is more to know of you than just a few bare facts from five years ago. I know two things that you once did. That is all. I really do not know /you/ at all, do I?
And that is the whole point of these two weeks of courtship – getting to know who you really are, that is." "I believe," he said, "you are attracted to me, Miss Huxtable, and are looking for a way to rationalize a desire to marry me." "You may believe what you choose, Lord Sheringford," she said sharply. "But neither a reluctance to take unsolicited advice from the rest of the world nor any personal attraction I may or may not feel toward your person would impel me into doing something against my character or principles. Marrying you would seem an extremely … /unprincipled/ thing to do. And you have said nothing so far that would make it seem less so.
You have made no attempt to excuse your past behavior, and you have made no effort to show me how… reformed you are now." He had turned them while she spoke onto a narrower path, one that led toward a grove of ancient oak trees. It was less crowded than the main path they had just left. "Enough public wooing for now," he said, dropping his free hand to his side again and lifting his head to the vertical. "The past cannot be changed, Miss Huxtable. Or excused. And if it can be excused, or at least partially explained, then I choose not to offer excuses or explanations to a virtual stranger, which is what you are to me. If you become my wife, then I will perhaps attempt to put before you facts that the world will never know and would neither believe nor care about if it did. But you are not my wife yet, or even my betrothed. If you choose to marry me, you must choose me as I am." "That is not fair at all," she said. "How can I make a judgment about you if I do not know all the facts?" He drew her off the path when they were among the trees, and they wound their way among tall, thick trunks until they could see down onto the wide lawns of the park stretched below them. He released her arm and propped one shoulder against a tree, crossing his arms over his chest as he did so. "Tell me," he said, "about your relationship with Major Dew. Everything.
Including the physical details. How many times? Where? When? How satisfactory?" She felt the color rise in her cheeks and her nostrils flare. She glared at him. "/That/, Lord Sheringford," she said, "is absolutely none of your business." "It is," he said, "if I am to marry you. Is a man not entitled to a virgin bride? Or to an explanation if she is not virgin?" "The details of my relationship with Crispin Dew," she said, still glaring, "which happened twelve years ago, are absolutely /none/ of your business." "Precisely," he said and looked steadily back at her with eyes that seemed to see to the core of her skull. "TouchГ©." "But your case is different," she said. "You are the one wooing /me/, not the other way around. You are the one who has to convince /me/ that you are worthy to be my husband. I do not have to prove anything." "But if you marry me, Miss Huxtable," he said, "you will be as much my wife as I will be your husband. What if you loved Dew so much that you can never forget him? What if you still love him, despite your denials two evenings ago? What if your sexual experiences with him were so earth-shatteringly wonderful that you can never find satisfaction with me? Or so shudderingly awful that they rendered you frigid for the rest of your life? What if your past really does make you an undesirable bride?" "I will /not/ discuss my relationship with Crispin," she sai
d. "And I will not discuss mine with either Caroline or Laura," he said, raising his eyebrows.
She felt a grudging respect for him even though their situations really were quite different. Most men under the circumstances would make as many excuses as might seem credible in order to get their way. "And as to being reformed," he said, "I am as I am, Miss Huxtable. I am as you see me. Many a marriage comes to grief, I believe, because the courting couple will show only their best side to each other – and often an artificial side – until after the marriage, only to discover when it is too late that they are strangers who can never even like each other particularly well. You wish me to charm you and fawn over you and whisper sweet words and sweeter lies in your ear at every turn? You will not find me like that after we marry." He had a point. But it still surprised her that he would not say anything to entice her – except last evening's promise to… "Come here," he said, holding out a hand for hers. "Why?" She looked at his hand, frowning, but did not take it. "You want me to woo you," he said. "I suppose you want more than just a public wooing. This is a very private place even though we can see a wide vista of the park. We are well off the path, which is not much used anyway, and we are in the shade here on a day that is brilliantly sunny out there. We are virtually invisible, then. Let me try a little private wooing." "What /sort/ of private wooing?" she asked, frowning. She felt somewhat breathless. "I am going to kiss you," he said. "You need not worry that I intend to ravish you, Miss Huxtable. This may be a private place, and we might be virtually invisible, but it is not nearly private enough for more than kisses." "I am not sure," she said, "I /want/ you to kiss me." Which was a horrible lie. To her shame she wanted it very much indeed. "You had better come and find out, then," he said. "If you are giving serious consideration to marrying me, you are also considering facing nuptials with me within the next two weeks. And nuptials are invariably a prelude to a wedding night. If you do not wish to kiss me now, you will probably not wish to bed with me then. And that would be a severe annoyance to me." "I suppose," she said, "you would force me." There was a rather lengthy silence during which they stared at each other and for some reason she felt frightened. His eyes looked very black. "If you wish to know something about me that you apparently do not already know, Miss Huxtable," he said, "then this is it. I would never force you into saying or believing or doing anything against your will.
And if I could obliterate that distastefully asinine moment in the marriage service at which brides vow before God and human witnesses to obey their husbands, I would gladly do so." He spoke with a soft menace that was quite at variance with his words. "We had better be on our way," he said before Margaret could think of a reply. He pushed his shoulder away from the tree trunk. "Or we will be late for tea." "I thought," she said, "you wanted to kiss me." "And /I/ thought," he said, "you did not want to be kissed." "You were wrong," she said.
The words hung in the air between them for a few moments. Then he leaned his back against the tree again and reached out both hands toward her.
And oh, she thought as she closed the distance between them and set her hands in his, oh, she longed to be kissed. There had been a vast, dark emptiness in her life … He clasped her hands firmly, twisted her arms behind her back, and brought her body against his from breasts to knees.
His eyes gazed into hers from a mere few inches away. "Don't cry," he murmured. "I am not – " But she was. "Yes I am." "You do not want to do this?" he asked her. "I do," she said.
And then his mouth was on hers, and her lips were trembling and her knees were buckling, and she was grasping his hands behind her back with enough force to leave bruises, and her breasts pressed to his chest felt swollen and sore, and she forgot to breathe.
Then she was gazing into his eyes again. "I am sorry," she said, humiliated. "It has been a long time." His body was as solidly muscled as she remembered it from the night before last.
Oh, goodness, was it really only the night before last?
He released her hands and raised his own to cup her face, pushing his fingers beneath the brim of her bonnet. He touched the pads of his thumbs to the center of her lips and moved them outward to the corners, leaving a trail of sensation behind them. He dipped his head and set his lips where his thumbs had been. She rested her hands on his shoulders.
His lips were closed. But then she could feel the tip of his tongue tracing a path across her lips and then prodding at the center and sliding through into her mouth until she was filled with the warm taste of him and reacted to the invasion with every part of her body.
His hands moved from her face, and one arm came about her shoulders and the other about her waist, and she slid one arm about his neck, the other behind his back while he drew her hard against him again.
It occurred to her later that it was probably not a terribly lascivious embrace. His hands did not wander at all, and his kisses were confined to her face and her throat. But she felt ravished nonetheless – or, if that was too violent a word, then she felt … Oh, she felt more alive, more feminine, more exhilarated, than she had felt in a long, long while.
Perhaps ever.
She felt very thoroughly kissed.
His hands were on either side of her waist, and hers were resting on his shoulders when she realized it was over. He was looking into her face again, his own as inscrutable as ever. "I am not very good at it, am I?" she said. "I am not complaining," he told her. "And indeed, I give you fair warning, Miss Huxtable – /Maggie/. If you marry me, you had better have a good night's sleep before the nuptials. I can promise you a very sleepless wedding night." She swallowed and noticed that he swallowed at almost the same moment.
But she would not marry him only because he had made a wedding night sound like the most desirable thing life had to offer, she thought, moving firmly away from him and turning slightly in order to shake the creases from the muslin dress she wore beneath her spencer. Or because she had enjoyed his kiss more than … Well, more than anything she could think of at the moment. Or because she wanted more and knew she would dream of more for a long time to come.
She was playing with fire, and she was getting burned.
What would it be like – a wedding night with the Earl of Sheringford?
And a lifetime as the wife of a confessed rogue? "We will almost certainly be late for tea," she said briskly, "if we do not leave immediately." "If your cheeks stay that rosy," he said, "my mother will be charmed even if we are very late." He offered his arm and she took it.
Miss Margaret Huxtable was prim and straitlaced and judgmental. Last evening she had even taken him to task for saying /good God/ as an exclamation. And she kissed like a novice. She had not held anything back, it was true, but then he had not demanded much. She had initiated nothing. Whatever her experience was, it was either so old that she had forgotten it or so minimal that there was nothing much to forget.
If he had to wager on it, he would bet that Miss Margaret Huxtable and Dew-of-the-weak-chin – with whom he had exchanged a few words in the park this morning – had rolled in the hay together once only, probably just before he marched off to war. She was very fortunate there had been no awkward consequences.
As they approached Curzon Street, not talking a great deal, Duncan asked himself if this really was the woman he wished to marry. It was a redundant question. /Of course/ she was not – but then neither was anyone else.
He had received a letter from Mrs. Harris this morning – she could read and write though Harris could not. Toby had fallen out of a tree last week and sprained an ankle and given himself a goose-egg of a lump on his forehead. Although he had made an almost miraculous recovery, Mrs.
Harris assured his lordship, they had nevertheless felt it wise to summon a physician, and the doctor had felt it wise to prescribe some medicine – all of which had cost money. And, of course, the fall had torn out the knees of his breeches so that they were quite beyond repair.
Old Tobe! He was as accident-prone as any other normal little bo
y. As accident-prone as he himself had been as a child.
There had been the time when Toby had insisted upon climbing over a stile unassisted though he had been warned that the wood was old and rough and the maneuver must be done very carefully. He had, of course, yelled out excitedly, "Watch me!" from his sitting position on the topmost bar and jumped. He had taken part of the bar with him in the form of a large splinter that had torn his breeches at the seat – not at the knee that time – and embedded itself in one tender buttock cheek. If Duncan had not caught him on the way down, he would also have smothered his entire person with the mud that lay in wait at the bottom. And there had been the time when he had sloshed into a late winter puddle of water after being told not to, only to discover that there was a layer of ice beneath the water. And the time when … Well, the reminiscences could go on forever. But there were other things to think about at the moment than a sore little bottom after the splinter had been pulled free and a wobbly lower lip and a valiant effort not to cry and a wheedling little voice saying they must not upset Mama by telling her. Or a wet, miserable little body huddled against him for warmth and comfort during the walk home from the ice puddle, his little arms about Duncan's neck, his child's voice suggesting that Duncan not tell Mama. Which, of course, was the last thing Duncan would have done anyway. "My mother," Duncan warned Miss Huxtable as they approached the house, "will wish to talk about our wedding." "I know," she said. "I will make it clear to her again that there may well /be/ no wedding." "Making things clear to my mother," he said, "is no easy task when she has once made up her mind on a point. She dreams of a happily-ever-after for me." "All mothers do it," she said. "So do all sisters who have acted as mothers to their siblings. I understand your mother's feelings perfectly. You must have caused her almost unbearable suffering during the past five years." He doubted it. His mother was vain and flighty and affectionate, but he did not believe her feelings ran deep. "You raise your eyebrows," she said, "as if to say that of course I am wrong. I do not suppose I am." "In which case," he said, "you had better not cause her more suffering, Miss Huxtable. You had better marry me." She opened her mouth to answer, but they had arrived. And someone must have been watching their approach. The front door swung open before Duncan had climbed the steps, to reveal first Sir Graham's butler and then Duncan's mother, who was smiling warmly at Miss Huxtable and holding out her arms to draw her into a hug.