Cecilia Grant - [Blackshear Family 03] (18 page)

A lamp hanging a few feet to her right showed the progression of sentiment on his face as she spoke: surprise gave way to astonishment that quickly solidified into self-righteous anger. “Without doubt you made an impression, Miss Westbrook, but I can assure you it’s not the sort you meant to make.” He bit the words short, for discretion, and succeeded only in making them more vile. “Do you truly not understand what a man has in mind when he persuades a lady to seclude herself with him away from the company?”

“We didn’t seclude ourselves.” She gestured with an arm to show the wide-open terrace. “There were other people when we came out here, more than just that one couple. From where we stood, I didn’t notice they’d gone.” The jolly music of a reel filtered out from the ballroom, making a counterpoint to this awful discord that had slipped in between them. “It was warm and close on the dancing floor. Plenty of people have stepped out for air. Lord John happened to be my partner at the time and he was good enough to escort me outside.”

None of what she said swayed him in the least. “Was the air nearer to the doors insufficient somehow? Did he give you some accounting of why it was necessary that he escort you all the way to this far corner, and why he must presume to wrap you in his coat?”

“In fact he did.” She let her voice grow thinner, more brittle. “He wanted to show me some constellations.”

“Oh, good God.” He swung away from her for a second in an eloquent show of disgust. “If
that
isn’t the
oldest trick in the book; taking a lady out to gaze up at the stars.”

He’d never spoken to her in anything like this horrid manner, and she’d never imagined she could be so furious at him. “You’re speaking completely out of turn. Lord John has an interest in astronomy. If you’d bother to look up, instead of down your nose at me, perhaps you’d notice this is the spot on the terrace where your view is least encroached upon by surrounding houses.” She hugged herself more tightly with her folded arms. “And he gave me his coat because he was kind enough to notice I was cold. As indeed I am now. I’d think you of all men would know better than to put a sinister construction on that.”

She was sorry she’d ever worn his coat, with its plain soap smell. She was sorry she’d told him so much of her hopes. And at that moment she didn’t care to speak to him anymore.

She made to march past him and he stepped into her path.

His gall was absolutely beyond anything. “I’m cold,” she repeated, not sparing his face a glance. “I’d like to go inside. You’ve made your opinions of my actions clear. Anything further you say will be gratuitous insult.” She was shaking, as much from anger as from the chill air.

“Fine.” He caught her by the elbow and then she did look up, and his jaw was taut and his nostrils flared. “This way.” Behind him was a set of French doors, slightly open, and before she could say a word, he whisked her through them into what proved to be an unoccupied library.

He’d lost his mind. Did he truly not see that taking her into this empty room was ten times more disrespectable than what she and Lord John had done?

“Listen to me.” He rounded on her like a barrister pinning down a witness unsure of her story. “Left to my
own wishes, I would not be here. I don’t care for this sort of thing and there are a dozen interesting documents I could be reading at home.”

“Then why don’t you—”

“Let me speak, please. I need to say my piece and get us both out of here as quickly as I can.” He did see the danger of being in this room, then. And he’d brought her in here anyway. “You must know your mother and father would never have permitted you to go to this rout but that they knew I’d be here to look out for you.”

“I don’t know that. I’m sure they were more amenable than they would have been if you weren’t going to be here, but—”

“Miss Westbrook, I am
telling
you that.” Impatience flashed in his eyes. “I made a promise to your father that I would stay for as long as you did, and keep you out of danger. Only then did he and your mother grant their permission.”

That smarted. She’d known Papa must have asked him to watch out for her while he was here, but she hadn’t known there was a formal promise, requiring him to stay so long, and she hadn’t known her own attendance was contingent on his presence.

Cold air crept in through the cracked-open door. She turned and went to the hearth. She didn’t know who to be angry with.

“Do you see that yours is not the only reputation you trifle with when you do careless things like letting a man of whom you know nothing lead you outdoors?” Mr. Blackshear clearly knew who she ought to be angry with. He thought she was the one at fault. “Think what would become of my credit with your father, if you were compromised under my watch.” Behind her, she could hear him follow her to the fire. “His good opinion means a great deal to me. To lose that good opinion through someone else’s actions would be a sore trial.”

His words poked at her sympathy, shrouded up since the minute he’d come outside. Papa’s good opinion was very worth having. She’d seen for three years how Mr. Blackshear prized it.

Also, there could have been some reference in his last words to the business with his brother. He knew what it was to lose something through someone else’s actions. His brother’s marriage had cost him his standing in society and, according to Papa, a deal of barrister work as well.

She turned to face him. His features in the room’s lamplight showed more weariness than anger. In fact he looked thoroughly exhausted.

Sympathy stirred in her again. Perhaps they could both explain themselves and come to a civil understanding once more. “I wasn’t aware your credit with Papa was at stake.” She set her hand on the mantelpiece. “But I maintain there was nothing careless in what I did. No one can care more for my reputation than I do, and—”

He seized her wrist, putting a finger to his lips, and a second later she heard it, too: footsteps in the hallway. Panic plummeted through her, and then he moved with lightning speed, grabbing her around the waist, fairly dragging her with him to the space behind a sofa by the door. He pulled her down and they crouched side by side out of sight, her heart pounding as they waited for the footsteps to come in or pass by.

N
ICK HELD
his breath. The door latch hardware made its small mechanical sound and the door swung open, thankfully blocking this newcomer’s view of the space behind the sofa. Shoe soles rang brisk and purposeful across the few feet of bare floor before reaching the muted terrain of carpet. A tingling ran up his left arm,
where an instant ago he’d seized Miss Westbrook by the waist.

Please, please take a book and go
. If they were discovered it would mean ruin for her, or at the very least, marriage to a man she didn’t want—that marriage entered into amid the smirks and whispers of everyone who heard how the bride and groom had been found crouching behind a sofa in an empty room.

A few private words in a corner of the terrace with Lord Scarecrow was nothing, nothing to this. For all the sanctimonious lecturing he’d given her on proper behavior, his own actions had put her reputation at far greater risk than hers had.

A scrape sounded on the hearth; that would be the screen dragged aside. Then came a rattle of iron against iron. The intruder must be a maid, come to put out what remained of the fire. Hope sprang up in his heart. She’d have no reason to linger. She could scatter or smother the coals, douse the lamps, and then walk a straight path back to the door, which still stood at an angle that should block her view of the space behind the sofa.

He stole a glance at Miss Westbrook, who sat with her knees drawn up, her arms bound about them as if to make herself as small and invisible as she could.
Take heart
, he would have liked to tell her.
We’ve a very good chance of getting out of this unscathed
. No thanks to him. He’d felt such fury, meeting with her self-righteous anger after how he’d worried for her—not to mention seeing her with that scarecrow of a Lord John after he’d gone to the trouble of introducing her to the baron—and he’d somehow or other completely lost his head.

He sent a hand to touch one of hers in mute reassurance, or perhaps mute apology. Her hand turned over and her fingers gripped his. In the shadows behind the sofa he couldn’t read her expression, but the trembling in her fingers told him all he needed to know. She understood
exactly what would be the cost if she was found with him here. There was nothing he could say or do that would reassure her.

A clanking sounded as the fire tool was put back; then the scrape of the screen on the hearth. A footstep or three, and the room dimmed as one lamp and then another went out. A faint light remained; that would be the maid’s candle. Shadows slid across the wall suddenly as her shoes resumed their purposeful tread on the carpet.

Nick held his breath and wove his fingers with Miss Westbrook’s. Ruin or reprieve, they would meet it together. Within seconds. Within heartbeats. Within the few remaining steps that would carry the maid from carpet to door.

There was a split second of awful illumination as the candle came to a place where its light fell over the sofa’s back, and in that instant he could see that Miss Westbrook had her eyes shut tight. But the candle moved on without pause. Of a sudden it was on the other side of the still-open door, then the door was swinging closed, and an instant later the hardware clicked into place, a sound of such sweet finality as he’d never imagined.

He let out his breath, listening to the footsteps recede. “Good God.” His words hung in the room’s utter darkness. “Pardon my language. That can’t have been more than two minutes, but deuced if it didn’t feel like half a lifetime.” Already he was getting his feet under him, disentangling his fingers from hers that he could properly help her to stand. “Now let’s get you back to your aunt before anything else can happen to put your reputation at risk.” He found a hold on her elbow and started to rise.

She tried to rise with him. She set one hand on the sofa’s back and gripped his upper arm with the other,
but she’d barely come up from a crouch before her knees gave way.

He caught her with both arms, just in time to stop her tumbling to the floor. She was shaking all over, like a shorn lamb caught in an out-of-season hailstorm. “I’m sorry,” she said, and the two words bore an ocean’s worth of mortification. “I don’t know what’s the matter with me.”

“Nothing to be sorry for.” Carefully he knelt, lowering her likewise to the stability of her knees. “Take a moment to recover yourself. It’s no wonder your knees are weak, after such an alarm.” If she were another woman, one with whom he claimed privileges of intimacy, he might have clasped her to his chest until the trembling stopped.

Instead his hands found their way to her elbows again as he eased his body clear of hers. “And please, let me be the one to apologize. I was a terrible hypocrite, taking you into a room alone to lecture to you on prudence and propriety. I wouldn’t have soon forgiven myself, if …” But perhaps it was better not to voice their near-missed fate aloud. “At all events, we’re out of it safely. No harm was done. You’ll be well again in a minute, I’m sure.”

He bent and pressed his lips to the crest of her forehead, lightly, in reassurance. It wasn’t so forward as an embrace, and truly he wouldn’t have done even this much but for the darkness of the room, and the grueling few moments they’d just borne together, and the fact that she was shaking, still, and gripping his coat sleeves like a woman in deep water who didn’t know how to swim.

Her breath caught at the touch of his lips. Her grip on him changed, fingers spreading over his upper arms to hold on to him, instead of the fabric of his coat. He could feel, in the air between them, how her face tilted
to peer up at him, though of course she wouldn’t be able to see.

He’d stopped breathing, too. He hadn’t intended … suddenly it didn’t matter what he’d intended. Here she was, angling herself to him and waiting, unmistakably, for him to do whatever he was going to do next.

Don’t. She’s had a shock. She doesn’t know what she’s about
.

Neither did he, altogether. He bent in. Slowly, to give her every chance to stop him. To give himself every chance to recover his reason and halt this.

His lips met with her cheek, encountered the firm, elegant structure of the cheekbone underneath. Her hands tightened on his arms. He felt her breath start up again, a ragged warmth ghosting against the underside of his jaw.

He stayed where he was for a moment, lips hovering a fraction of an inch from her cheek; chin and neck reveling in the caress of her exhalations.

He would have sworn on his soul that he’d stopped wanting this. And in truth he’d never, even in his most besotted days, wanted
this
. He’d pictured embracing her in a sunlit parlor where he might drink in her beauty between kisses, with a perfect understanding of what their future would be. He’d imagined a wedding night with all the candles lit, her body a lambent wonder atop the covers, her unguarded face telling him all the things she might be too shy to voice aloud. Not once had his daydreams wandered to wordless, heedless scandal in a pitch-dark room.

His hand traveled up her arm, kid against skin, kid against muslin, and then he let his fingertips brush up the side of her neck. She shivered again, and he knew this time it had nothing to do with fear.

Fool. Don’t linger here. Get her on her feet and get her back to the ballroom
. Yes, the responsible part of his
brain was still in fine working order. No doubt it would whip up a fearsome and thorough reprimand in the time it took him to finish what he could not now refrain from starting. He set his palm to the corner of her jaw, and found her mouth with his.

I
F SOMEONE
walked in on them now, she’d deserve every last whisper of scandal and disgrace. Because Heaven help her, she’d wanted this. From the moment that door had clicked shut, leaving the room in darkness, she’d felt overpowered by sentiments she couldn’t name—and then he’d kissed her forehead, and all the wild sentiments had coalesced into one simple primal thing.