Alec went to her, but she turned her head aside, unwilling to let him see the hurt in her eyes. Gently he took her chin in his hand and tilted her face upward so that she had to meet his gaze.
“He loved you,” he said firmly. “No matter what he did or how many other children he had, he loved you. I am sure of it.”
“So he told me. But such assurances meant little to an eight-year-old girl who was used to her father tucking her in every night. He vanished, turning up every now and then with a present and a kiss. It was hard for me to understand that he had another family now, that they were somehow better than we were.”
“Oh, Damaris.” His arms went around her, and he pulled her to him.
For a moment, she remained stiff in his arms, resisting; but then, with a sigh, she gave in and rested her head against his chest. The ache in her chest somehow did not hurt so much when she was standing in the warmth and strength of his embrace and his heart was beating reassuringly against her ear.
“He provided for me always,” she said, pushing back the tears that swelled in her throat, choking her. “He paid for me to go to a proper school for ladies, far from England, where they would not despise me for who my mother was. When he died, he left me well provided for. But it wasn’t the same as having a father.”
Alec curled down over her, resting his head on hers. “Sometimes, it is better not to have a father,” he said, his voice grim.
His tender gesture pierced Damaris to the heart, and, surprising herself, she burst into tears, clinging to him and crying out her pain against his broad chest. Alec scooped her up and sat down in the old wooden rocker, cradling her to him. He rocked her gently, murmuring low words of comfort as his hand moved soothingly up and down her back.
When, at last, her sobs quieted and she rested, drained and still, against him, he said, “Your father was weak, I know, but do not doubt that he loved you. I know the demands that were put on him. No matter how well he loved you and your mother, no matter how much he preferred to live happily with you, there is a burden that weighs on one along with the title. Your life is not always your own. It is something you learn from the cradle; duty to your family is drummed into you at every turn.”
He pressed his lips against her hair, silent for a moment, then went on in a voice tinged with remembered pain, “Everything you do has consequences for your family. When I—when Jocelyn ran away, the scandal did not scorch me only. It caused untold embarrassment and pain for my sister and
grandmother. They had to endure the whispers about my fault in the matter, the speculation that I was a cruel monster who had sent a sweet young girl running in panic.”
“No, Alec, that is so unfair!” Damaris stirred in his arms, lifting her head to look at him. Her lovely face was streaked with tears, eyelashes clumped together in starlike bursts around her eyes, so that she looked, if possible, even more beautiful. “You are not cruel at all.”
He smiled and cupped her face, wiping the tears from her cheeks with his thumbs. “Don’t cry for me. I am long past all that. Sweet as it is, I am not asking for your sympathy. What I want to say is that, hard as it was for me, it was worse, I think, for my family. There were even one or two old cats who snubbed Genevieve and my grandmother, and everywhere they went, they had to endure the rumors, the looks, the disdain of people not worth a tenth of them.” His voice hardened, his gaze turning inward. “Grandmother feared it had even harmed Genevieve’s chances of making a spectacular marriage—though Genevieve swore to me that she never cared about that. The truth is, my actions caused them harm. I knew Jocelyn did not feel for me as I felt for her; I was stubbornly, selfishly certain I could make her happy, could make her love me. But by chasing my foolish dreams of love, I hurt everyone around me.”
“But you should not have to give up what you want,” Damaris protested.
Alec shrugged. “’Tis harsh, perhaps. But the truth is, when you are given so much, you have to accept the responsibilities,
too. And that is what your father did. He took on that burden for his family. He sacrificed his happiness—and it is dreadful that his act caused you such pain. But it did not mean he did not love you. All those times he came back to see you, it was because he loved you; that was where he was happy. His home and heart were with you.”
“Thank you for telling me.” Damaris’s heart swelled with warmth and tenderness. She knew Alec was not a man who shared his secrets easily, and it touched her that he had revealed himself to such an extent in order to make her feel better.
He looked down at her in that way of his, in which only his eyes smiled, and laid a caressing hand against her cheek. “Why didn’t you tell me about yourself?”
“It is not the sort of thing one tells a stranger.”
“And I am a stranger?” There was a hint of hurt in his eyes.
“No. Of course you are not. But I—I wanted to hide it from you. I didn’t want you to look at me differently. As if I was… less than you had thought.”
“And you thought I would? That I would hold your birth against you?”
“I think that you are an earl. And a man.” She pulled away from him and stood up. She could not lie in his arms and say the rest. “And I am the illegitimate daughter of an actress. I did not believe you would despise me. But I would no longer be a lady to you. I didn’t want you to—to try to seduce me because I am not a lady. I did not want to be someone you could bed because my virtue need not concern you.” Her voice shook, and she turned aside, annoyed with her own weakness.
“Damaris.” He rose to his feet and faced her. “I feel nothing different for you than I did before I knew who your mother was or what your father did.” He raised his hand and stroked his knuckles gently down her cheek. “And I can promise you, without any doubt or prevarication, that my desire to have you in my bed has nothing to do with your father or the circumstances of your birth. You are the reason I want you. Only you.”
His eyes were bright, with that cold clarity that seared as much as any heat, and Damaris’s heart warmed within her. Impulsively she went up on tiptoe and pressed her lips to his briefly. “Thank you.”
She had pressed her hands against his chest as she went up to kiss him, and she felt the heat rush in him, even through his shirt. His hands went to her waist, his fingers sinking into her flesh. She knew he was about to kiss her. She could see the hunger in his face—in the softening of his mouth, the intensity of his gaze. He wanted her, and Rawdon was a man accustomed to having what he wanted. He moved closer to her, his face looming above her, and Damaris’s head fell back.
She waited for his kiss; she wanted it. Her nerves were alive, sizzling with the memory of his hands on her this morning, the pleasure of his long, skillful fingers. She leaned into him, her body drawn toward its desire as surely as the tides to the moon. Her breasts were tender and aching for his touch. His hands slid restlessly down her side and curved over her hips, then back up. They stood, balanced on the razor’s edge of passion, for a long, yearning moment.
Alec pulled himself back, his hands releasing her, and with a final heated flash of his eyes, he turned away.
“You should get some rest. I—I’ll take a walk.”
Damaris watched him walk out the door.
It was good that he had left, she knew. She would have been filled with bitter disappointment if he had taken advantage of the moment and tried to seduce her into his bed. Not only had he refrained, but he had given her privacy to undress and get into bed. The revelation of her parentage had not caused him to react as she had dreaded that he might.
But still… desire hummed in her veins, so that she was aware of even the sensation of her clothes against her skin. And she could not help but wish that he had not played the gentleman. That he had lowered his head that last little bit. And kissed her.
A
lec stared out the narrow
window at the street below, which slowly brightened with the sun edging over the horizon. He ran his hand back through his hair and released a breath. It had been a very long night with far too little sleep. The narrow chair had not been conducive to rest. He had managed to drift off a few times with his head tilted back against the wall, but had soon jerked awake. And knowing that Damaris lay only a few feet from him, curled up snug and warm beneath the covers, wearing only a shift… when he did manage to drift off, he was plagued by fevered dreams of her naked and pliant beneath his hands.
He turned and looked over at Damaris. The dawn light revealed her lying on her side, her thick black hair spread out across the pillow and drifting over her creamy shoulder. The cover had worked its way down through the night, so that it now lay tangled around her legs. Her upper body was covered only in the simple white cotton shift. It was scooped low across her breasts, exposing most of her upper chest and shoulders. A ribbon pulled taut beneath her bosom made the material
cup her breasts. The soft white tops of her breasts pressed against the upper edge of the undergarment, and he could see the dark circle of her nipples beneath the thin cotton.
It would be so easy to slide into bed beside her, to stroke and tease her lush body into wakefulness. He could almost feel the velvet softness of her lips under his, the smooth texture of her skin upon his fingertips. Lust gnawed at him. It had become a familiar sensation. He had spent most of the last two days in that state. He remembered coming awake yesterday morning to the feel of her in his hands, warm and soft, her breast heavy in one palm, and his other…
He swung away, swallowing hard, and considered how foolish it was to torture himself again with that memory. But it was damnably difficult to turn away from that sweet pain, to forget how Damaris had felt beneath his fingers, hot and wet and eager in her sleep, her legs opening unconsciously to his touch.
And there—his treacherous thoughts had done it again. He was hard as a rock, his skin burning like a fever, and with no relief in sight. He leaned his head against the windowpane, grateful for its coolness. He had done the right thing last night, he was sure of that. It had required every ounce of self-control he possessed not to take her soft, lithe body into his arms and make love to her. But after what she had told him, he would have been a cad to do so. It would have confirmed her worst fears. She would have thought he believed her less than a lady, someone whom he could bed with no compunction, no thought or regret. She would have assumed
that she meant nothing to him except a momentary means of easing his hunger.
And what
did
she mean to him? His mind skittered away from that thought.
He had managed to do what he ought: accept her little kiss of gratitude for what it was, not an invitation to something more. He had shown her that he respected her, valued her, that he was not about to seduce her because he had found out that she was some gentleman’s by-blow.
Of course, that did not change the fact that he wanted very much to seduce her. Indeed, it had been the thought foremost in his mind for the past few days, ever since he had looked across the theater and seen her sitting there. No, if he was honest, it had been lodged in his brain from the moment he met her. Even then, angry and distraught as he was over Jocelyn, he had looked across the room into those amazing eyes and found it hard to look away.
Damaris was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. The kind of woman an artist’s hands would itch to draw. To whom poets wrote sonnets. And over whom less sensitive men, men like himself, might start a war, or at least a blood feud. It was rumored that some long-ago ancestor of the Staffords had been a Viking raiding the British shore. He had no idea if it was really true, or simply part of the lore of blood and violence in which his family took pride. But when he looked at Damaris, he felt that Viking blood singing in his veins, the wolf not far beneath the surface.
He could understand sweeping up such a woman and carrying
her off. Or grabbing your sword to hack to death whoever might try to take her from you. His fists doubled at his sides as he thought of the ruffian who had grabbed her beside the carriage the other day. A red rage had filled Rawdon then, and only a rock to the head had stopped him.
Gazing down at her now, he was determined to protect her. It galled him that his money and influence were useless here, where he was unknown. He had headed to Gravesend thinking to catch a boat back up the Thames. It had seemed the easiest way to get to London without running across her abductors again. But last night, during his long, restless watch, he had realized where he must go. Not to London, where she would be surrounded by strangers, still vulnerable to attack. No, like any marauding raider of the past, he knew where he must carry her to keep her safe. He would take her home.
Damaris made a soft noise and stirred in the bed, and Alec swung back to the window. He stared at the street below, not really seeing it, his whole being attuned to the faint noises behind him.
“Alec?” Damaris said, her voice thick with sleep. “What time is it?”
“Just after dawn.” He turned toward her, keeping his face impassive.
She was sitting up, the blanket pulled up to her shoulders. Her hair tumbled down around her face in a tangle, and she looked deliciously warm and soft and still hazy with sleep, presenting, in short, a picture that was guaranteed to make a man want to crawl into the bed with her.