Forever Betrothed, Never the Bride (17 page)

Drake didn’t even break his ministrations, his hands releasing her breasts from the bodice of her gown. The peak of her nipples hardened under his stare. “Is there something that amuses you, my lady?” he asked huskily, not waiting for a reply as his mouth lowered to her breast. With deliberate slowness he drew the ripened bud into his mouth. He gently suckled, laving the peak, and then flicked it teasingly with his tongue.

Emmaline’s head fell
back.

Drake
switched his attention to the tip of her other, neglected pale white mound.

Emmaline gasped aloud
. She twisted her fingers into the silk strands of his golden hair. “Drake, show me more.”

The cool of the morning air slammed into her bare legs, as he slid
her skirts up, higher, and higher, to her knees. His fingers skimmed over her belly, and then before she could comprehend what he was doing, his hand delved between her legs.

It was as though everything were sapped from within her. Emmaline
collapsed in his arms. He sat down, atop a bed of white cerastium, and moved her onto his lap while his expert fingers continued to work her.

Drake
slipped another finger into her and began to move them; in, then out, in then out, until she bucked under his hand. “Yes,” she cried softly.

He continued to stroke her, play
ing with the pliable nub of her center. Emmaline supposed she should feel a sense of shame but couldn’t drum up one single rational thought about the indecency of what they were doing and where they were doing it.

All she knew was him.

She closed her eyes and undulated beneath him, searching for more.

His lips reclaimed hers. “Come for me, love,” he urged, his voice a husky command.

Come? What on earth did he mean?
Pressure built inside her, unfurling like a rapidly growing weed, taking over everything. Her cry was lost in his mouth. She frantically arched her hips as he rung every last bit of pleasure from her.

And then she collapsed, replete with the gift he’d given her.

So that was what he’d meant. She laid her cheek alongside his and felt her breath fanning his.

Drake’s fingers played with the tresses that had tumbled from
her knot and covered them like a blanket. “So beautiful,” he whispered.

Emmaline’s throat worked. She knew she was no great beauty but when he said it like that, in those emotion-laden words, she believed him.

He kissed the slight birthmark just below her temple.

“What an interesting spot for a birthmark. Rather unique…just like you.”

He brought her skirts down and she finally, reluctantly, pulled back.

She
looked at him through heavy eyes. “I won the challenge, my lord,” she reminded him huskily.

He laughed and kissed her once again for good measure. “Yes, my lady. You certainly did win.”

Chapter 22

My Dearest Drake,

Does a man who is betrothed still propose to the lady he is betrothed to? I would imagine it would be more romantic if he did.

Ever Yours,

Emmaline

He was going to marry her.

Drake expected to be consumed by anxiety at the thought of relinquishing bachelorhood. He’d always believed marriage symbolized the death of a gentleman’s freedom.

Yet oddly today,
he had no reservations. It wasn’t obligation that drove his decision. Nor his responsibilities to the ducal line. Somewhere along the way, it had become about him and Emmaline—as it should have been.

Sir Faithful barked.

He glanced down apologetically at the pup. “No, you cannot come, my friend.” Sir Faithful dropped his head back between his paws and gave him a long, sad look.

“I’ll tell you what, Sir. Soon I’ll bring her back here as your mistress, then you can see the both of us.”

That was apparently too much for the pup to understand. He just cocked his head sideways, tongue lolling out, and continued to study Drake.

Drake returned his attention to his plans for the morning, feeling once again like a soldier about to embark upon a decisive battle.
Why had he fought this? He thought of all the time he’d wasted, thought of his leaving to fight on the Peninsula, when what he’d been fleeing had turned out to be a person who made him smile more than he had in years.

He glanced down at the ring resting on the bureau top
. The eight carat emerald nestled amidst a cluster of diamonds, glittered in the morning light. It had belonged to his mother, and the duchess before her, and the duchess before her. And it would be Emmaline’s. He picked it up, studied it, and then placed it in the inner fold of his midnight jacket.

His valet appeared in the doorway. “My lord, as requested, your mount has been readied.”

Drake nodded and made his way below stairs, to the foyer.

He was met by the usually staid, butler, Winchester.

This time Winchester’s weathered face was wreathed in a smile that went from one ear to the next. As if he knew Drake’s special business. Which shouldn’t really surprise him. Winchester had always managed to glean Drake’s intentions before he himself even really knew.

“My lord!”

Drake grinned back. “Winchester.”

Since he’d lain Emmaline down on the garden floor and pleasured her, he’d worn a perpetual smile. To be more precise, he’d seemed to be in a state of happiness since she’d come into his life. Emmaline’s joy had been infectious and he’d been her willing victim.

A startled shriek rent the air, punctuated by a resounding metallic crash. Servants seemed to materialize out of nowhere and hurried to the mishap. A two foot silver vase lay on its side amidst a cluster of white flowers. The young maid who’d dropped the floral arrangement wept into her hands.

Her blubbering
blended with the cacophony of sound as servants rushed to clean the mess.

Drake’s eyes remained riveted on the glint of the metal urn. The maid’s cries wavered in and out of focus, until they were replaced with the agonizing shouts
of his fallen men.

As if slammed by a cannon ball to the stomach, Drake’s body jerked. With a bellowing roar wrenched from deep inside his soul, he dropped to his knees and covered his ears,
in an attempt to blot out the deafening sound of grapeshot ricocheting off each corner of his mind.

Drake’s eyes flitted around like that of a cornered animal. His horrified gaze landed on the earth strewn with destroyed flowers, and waited. When no bodies fell, in an attempt to flee, he darted past the horrified men around him. He willed his legs to pump faster, lest he be caught in the thick of the battle.

A powerful hand snaked around Drake’s arm. He cried out. Thrashing violently, he leveled his opponent with an elbow that caught the man in the ribs. The hiss of exhaled breath fired like kindling just about to catch. The man held onto Drake with fierce determination, but Drake refused to surrender because if he did, he’d be at the mercy of the French bastards.

“No, no, no!”
Drake roared.

“Drake, I won’t hurt you. Nobody is going to hurt you.”

Drake stilled. When the man’s grip lightened, Drake wrested his arm free, and beat a hasty retreat up the stairwell.

The Frenchie was on him again.
He knocked Drake’s knees out from under him, tackling him to the ground. The action knocked the breath from Drake with a powerful whoosh, and something flew out from his jacket front. He heard the soft ping, ping, ping, as it skidded across the white Italian marble floor.

White Italian marble floor?

“Drake? Drake?”

“My lord?”

Drake struggled beneath the weight of the bodies that pressed him down.

Bodies. There were more than two.

Drake? My lord?

His breath was coming hard and fast on deep gulping gasps for air.

Think, Drake. Why would the French be calling me by my name? Think. Where were the echoing shots?
He waited for the sounds that never came.

All energy drained from him and he rested his forehead upon the hard cool surface of the marble, which penetrated
his haze of horror.

It had
struck again.

He blinked down at the floor but his vision blurred, blending the surface. He wanted to cry. A trickle of wetness trailed a path from his cheek
and fell upon his lips.

Nay, he was crying.

He became aware of his father helping him up, gathering him in his arms as if he were no more than a boy.

Except he wasn’t a boy. He was a battle-scarred man
who would never be normal again.

His whole frame shuddered with the jarring return to reality.

“It’s fine, Drake,” his father whispered. He stroked his back. “You can leave, Winchester.”

It wasn’t fine. In fact, Drake wanted to
toss his head back and rail at a non-existent God.

He stiffened and took a staggering step away from his father and remembered. Remembered this humiliation had been witnessed by a host of servants, servants who would surely talk. Then the entire
ton
would know. She would know. His gut churned. He was going to be ill.

“Not one member of this household will speak on what happened here,” his father said, correctly interpreting the direction of Drake’s thoughts. There was an air of ducal confidence to the promise.

Drake took another step backward, placing much needed distance between them.

His father’s throat bobbed up and down, displaying
his unease. He held an outstretched hand toward Drake. “Don’t, Drake. Don’t turn from me.” It was an order. It was not a ducal order, but rather the words of a father demanding his child not shut him out.

Drake ignored him and
, without another word, turned on his heel and climbed the last stairwell. He walked at a brisk pace down the long hall and finally reached his chambers. He shoved the door back with an aggravated force and entered, shutting the door behind him with a decisive click.

Drake leaned against the closed hard panels of the oak door, borrowing the strength to stand. The hum of the room’s quiet fell in cadence with the heavy sound of his breathing.

When he thought he could move again without collapsing into a heap of shame, he dropped to the floor and sat with his body flush against the door.

Sir Faithful bounded across the room, and ran excitedly about Drake’s feet.
The dog climbed up in his lap, and favored Drake’s face with a coarse, pink-tipped lick.

A bitter laugh escaped Drake
, which he buried in Sir Faithful’s neck. “I should have known better.”

Instead, he had deluded himself into believing this defect in him, this tendency to lose control, would not prevent him from finding happiness with Emmaline. The memory of her, the taste of her lips, the sweet sounds he had swallowed within his own mouth, had all allowed him to pretend he could be more than he was. A monster bound for Bedlam.

It hadn’t been enough that he’d lost control in front of her. Hell, that time should have been the first and last he’d allowed himself to be in her presence. But he’d persisted—because he was a selfish, filthy bastard who’d cared more about how she made him feel, how she made him forget.

Drake should be grateful this had happened
. Now he could at least spare her hurt.  He could take it on as his own. In fact, Drake should be glad for it.

So why wasn’t he? Why did he wish the day had continued along as he’d imagined
.

He would have marched
up Mallen’s steps with an armful of the white flowers he and Emmaline had lain amidst and then asked for her hand.

Her endless brown eyes would have sparkled with merriment and shock when he told her
he wanted to make her his wife.

Mallen would bang his fist on his desk and
glower at Drake with displeasure.

Drake
dropped his head into his hands and pressed his fingers against throbbing temples, and continued to cradle Sir Faithful close. Excruciating headaches usually followed the episodes. He welcomed the pain this time for it helped dull the agonizing feeling of his heart being ripped piece by piece from his body.

The pain prevented him from thinking about how close he’d come to having it all.

Chapter 23

My Dearest Drake,

Is it silly that, when you return, I want you to court me?

Ever Yours,

Emmaline

Emmaline
fairly raced through Hyde Park in a manner that would have earned gasps of disapproval from Society members—if they’d been present, of course. She had sent Drake a note, claiming her picnic as the prize for their
Glenarvon
challenge.

That had been a week ago. Well, six days to be precise, which to Emmaline may as well have constituted a week.

In that time, there had been no acknowledgement, no return note, no teasing banter, no sudden appearance at a ball or musicale. Nothing. It had been as though everything she’d shared with Drake had been nothing more than a fleeting fantasy.

Emmaline had begun to think he’d never again contact her.

Until yesterday.

At last, Drake had replied to her request

“My lady, can you please slow down?” her maid called out in a panting gasp. The sound of gravel kicking up furiously punctuated her breathless request.

Emmaline glanced over her shoulder
. A twinge of guilt hit her. She sighed and slowed her steps. The ivory drawstring bag dotted with blue beads she held in her right hand swung against her side.

“My lady, would you like to rest soon,” Grace suggested.

Emmaline drew to a full stop on the Serpentine Bridge, which marked the boundary between Hyde Gardens and Kensington Gardens. Her abrupt movements sent Grace stumbling against her.

“Beg pardon, my lady.”

Emmaline glanced down at the parchment in her hands. “Fine, fine,” Emmaline said. She studied the note.

My Dearest Emmaline,

Would you do me the honor of meeting me
in Hyde Park at Kensington Gardens? I shall be there at five o’clock in the morning. That is if it isn’t too early.

Yours,

Drake

Emmaline squinted off into the distance. A lone figure stood with his back to her and Grace. Attired entirely in black, there was something ominously dark about him.

Emmaline turned to Grace. “Please, wait here.”

Emmaline didn’t wait to see if Grace did as she was ordered. Instead, she hurried toward her betrothed.

Drake stood with his back to her. His gaze trained on the
indigo and pale lavender hues traipsing across the early morning sky.

It was Sir Faithful who gave her a barking greeting. Drake’s broad frame stiffened as she approached
but he didn’t so much as turn to look at her.

She fell to her knee. “Hello, Sir Faithful. How have you been, my boy?” She rubbed the spot between his eyes and he leaned into her touch.

“Emmaline,” Drake greeted, his tone deadened.

Emmaline stood, her pale blue muslin day gown rustl
ing on a wisp of wind. “Why have you not returned my notes?” She heard the edge of hurt betrayal underlining her words. “I don’t understand. One moment, you seem to enjoy my company and then you disappear. It is as though you are two people.”

He stiffened.

“I believed you had come to care for me,” she whispered. “Can’t you even look at me?”

Drake
spun around; his flat emerald eyes leveled her. She took a faltering step backwards, unprepared for the cold gaze he passed over her. He arched an icy, indifferent brow.

“I really don’t have anything to say to you.” His voice was as
frigid as a January freeze.

One hand attempted to smother a gasp wrenched from inside her heart while the other dropped the bag she’d carried with her.

It hit the gravel path with a soft thud.

She angled her chin up and refused to be cowed. She didn’t know where she found the courage for the next words. “I’ve waited fifteen long years for you.
I’m no longer a girl. I can’t continue as we are.” She held an outstretched hand towards him. “It’s breaking my heart.” The words stripped her of her remaining pride.

He dragged a hand through h
is hair and cursed. It was a foul curse she’d only heard uttered by her brother once, and that had been the day their father died.

“Emmaline, I believe you have made too much of—of,” his hand slashed the air, “this.” He motioned between them.

“I believed you had come to care for me, Drake. Would you have me believe that you do not?” She reached for him and he flinched. A laugh that sounded half-mad to her own ears escaped her. “Have I been so wrong about us?”

He didn’t respond.

“You can’t even have the decency to answer me that?” The words were desperate. “What game do you play? Why would you send round a note and ask me to meet you here if—?”

There was a flash of surprise in Drake’s expression. “What note?”

And then she knew. Her breath whistled between her teeth. “Oh God, you didn’t send it.”

A dull, throbbing pain came from somewhere in the vicinity of her heart, a heart she was certain had already withered inside her. Her hand went to her chest. The organ continued to beat. Odd, the rhythm seemed
too steady and strong for someone dying.

She dropped to a knee and with fingers that quivered, fished an envelope from the drawstring bag. Her hands shook so badly she clumsily dropped the note. The scrap fluttered forlornly to the ground.

Drake bent down and swiftly rescued it. He perused the note he’d been purported to have written.

His brow furrow
ed while he scanned the parchment and then his eyes glazed over with a haze of fury. And she had her confirmation.

She wanted to flee, turn on her heel and be spared this humiliation.

Wordlessly, he stuffed the note back into its envelope and handed it back to her. On legs that trembled, she rose without assistance. Dazed eyes remained focused on her name scrawled across the thick ivory vellum, because then she didn’t have to look at the black rage in his expression.

Emmaline was possessed of a violent urge to tear
up the piece. She wanted to rail at herself for not recognizing the scrawl as similar to other notes she’d received these past weeks from Lord Sinclair. Hated herself for seeing only that which she’d wanted to see.

“I—I allowed myself to hope.” And hope had clouded her reason.

“Sinclair?” he asked tersely.

Emmaline
looked away.

***

Drake cursed.

He would bloody murder Sinclair.

“Why ever would he send that note?” Then it hit him with all the force of a bayonet to the gut. All along it had been Sinclair. “It all makes sense.”

She blinked at him with soulful brown eyes. “What makes sense?”

A cynical laugh burst from his chest. “Don’t play coy with me. You schemed with Sinclair. It was he who informed you of my whereabouts this Season.” He’d been betrayed by his closest friend and his betrothed.

“I assure you I couldn’t manage coy if I tried,” she snapped.

“But you could manage deceitful.”

Her delicate palms curled into little fists at her side and he
thought she might hit him which really would be no less than he deserved.

She
sucked in a deep breath. “Really, Drake? Is that how you see me? As some kind of maniacal scheming debutante?”

An image of Sinclair and Emmaline closeted away trickled into his consciousness. He imagined them laughing while they planned to
trap him. The idea of them, plotting behind his back, sent rage spiraling. He was besieged by a tumult of emotions and couldn’t sort whether it was jealousy of her closeness with Sin or anger at the good laugh they’d had behind his back.

“What fun you must have had at my expense.” Filled with a restive energy he
presented her with his back and stepped away.

“Has it really been so awful being in my company?”

He ran a hand across his face and swung back around. “So you enlisted Sin’s aid to ascertain my plans each evening. I understand your means of conspiring against me. Your intention was to force my hand, but Sinclair?”

“
Bah. Why can’t you believe Sin was just trying to help you because he believes we belong together?”

He
arched a brow. “I am rather surprised he accepted your appeal for support. Subterfuge is not really one of Sin’s traits.”

Emmaline folded her arms indignantly across her chest. “But it is one of mine? My, what a low opinion you have of me. If I were a violent woman, I would slap you. I suggest you speak to Lord Sinclair for the answers to your questions.” She tilted her chin at a mutinous little angle. “You are a beast,” she spat.

He tipped his head in assent. “Truer words were never spoken.”

A near hysterical hiccough of laughter burst from her lips. “Did you ever really care for me?”

Drake studied Emmaline. The tightness around her mouth, her lips dipped down at the corners indicated that she was wavering between fury and despair. How dare she take on the role of the offended party? She had after all been duplicitous. He owed her no apologies.

Yet still…when her lush red lips trembled in that forlorn way, he wanted to knock himself out for being the cause of her pain. He hated himself for hurting her
, even if ultimately it would be best for Emmaline. Then all false illusions she carried of him being an honorable gentleman deserving of her love could be at last squashed.

He closed the short distance between them with long, determined strides. Emmaline backed away. “Come Emmaline, am I to believe this plan you crafted was designed out of love for me? That it had nothing to do with your ultimate goal of marriage?”

“How little you think of me,” she snapped and then took a bold step toward him, so only a hand of distance remained between them.

They were toe-to-toe, breath coming fast from the force of their emotions.

“What do you want from me?” The words wrenched from deep within him.

“I want to be your wife,” she whispered.

Drake looked away, unable to see the love pouring from her. God, when she said it like that, he was wont to deny her anything. She at least deserved some element of truth from him. “I am not ready to marry you.”

Her response came out wobbly. “Why?”

He knew how much that question cost her and just added one more thing to the list of all the reasons he hated himself.

“I
’m not ready to be a husband.”

There it was. To him, the truth—a silent acknowledgement that he was defective and not good enough for her. She, however, would see it as nothing more than a rejection.

“You’re not ready to be a husband? Or you’re not ready to be my husband?” He said nothing and she squared her shoulders. “I see.”

No, Emmaline. No
, you cannot possibly see. Because if you did, then you would know right now I feel as though I’m being run through, over and over with a rusty bayonet.

Drake stared out into the horizon at the fading purple hues rolling back
, as they ceded the spot to the full morning sky. “I should never have touched you.” Even if it had felt like the only thing perfect in his life.

Emmaline laughed bitterly. “I don’t imagine many of the ladies you’ve been intimate with have heard those words from the great Lord Drake.
” She reached down and rescued the forgotten bag at their feet. She thrust it into his hands. “These were yours. I wrote them, to you…for you…when you were…gone…” She fumbled about, seeming to search for the right words. “I am freeing you,” she breathed the words into existence. She jerked as if startled by her own declaration, but then resolutely met his gaze.  “I am no longer your responsibility.”

Drake’s heart thumped, once, twice, then froze. He gave his head a firm shake,
in attempt to make sense of what Emmaline had said but the loud buzzing in his ears overpowered his ability to reason.

Perhaps he had misheard her.

“I am freeing you,” she repeated. “I cannot do this any longer. You don’t love me. Even as I…love you. I cannot bear to be a responsibility you do not want, nor for that matter have ever wanted in your life. I want to be courted. I want someone to bring me flowers and write me poems.  More than anything, I want to be loved. And do you know, Drake? I deserve to be loved.”

Yes, she did.
Except, Emmaline could walk from one corner of the earth to the next, and never find a man who cared for her as he did. It was that regard for her which allowed him to set her free, in spite of his selfish yearnings. A ball of pain lodge in Drake’s chest.

Odd, he’d been stabbed
, had, taken more bullets than a living body was ever meant to take and yet the ache of losing Emmaline, was somehow greater than all those hellish wartime moments combined.

God help him. He was a selfish fiend after all. He wasn’t ready to lose her.

“What if I don’t want to be free?” The words ripped from a place deep within his soul, a place where the last vestige of humanity he’d returned from the war with, still resided. If Emmaline walked out of his life; she’d snuff out the sole flicker of light that existed within him.