Hero, Come Back (19 page)

A footman stood by the door to the dining room, ready to serve the guests as needed. The innkeeper brought forth the courses, one by one, filling the night with the scents of rare beef, succulent vegetables, and fabulous desserts. Now they lingered over a cheeseboard and two glasses of wine, listening to the roar of the waves and never wanting this day to end. Or at least… Jessie didn’t want it to end. She couldn’t speak for Harry. As bedtime approached, he grew more and more quiet, more watchful, as he wished for things he could not have.

But he could. She had made up her mind. “I’ve never had such a lovely day. You don’t really care that I laughed at you for falling down the slope, do you?”

“I wouldn’t mind… if I knew I could get my revenge later.”

In a voice as low and seductive as she could make it, she asked, “Is it revenge that you want? Really, Harry? Or is it something else entirely?”

She must not do
seductive
well, for he scowled. “Where’s your chaperone?”

“Miss Hendrika? She’s asleep.”

Harry started to stand. “I’ll see you to your room.”

“No!” Jessie caught his hand. She’d been as bold with him today as any wanton, and he’d kissed her as if he wanted nothing so much as to take her. And on the cliffs today, she’d caught him watching her, a predatory expression in his marvelous eyes. But tonight…he was resisting. If only she could make him stay for a little longer …She searched her mind for a topic of conversation. “You never told me why you’re here.”

He hesitated, then slowly seated himself again. “My mother sent me.”

“Your mother?” She knew how to do a conversational tone, and she put her heart into it now. She sounded interested, alert, fascinated.

“I went home to recuperate from an injury—”

“How were you injured?”

Again he hesitated. “It was nothing.”

She didn’t believe him, but she was not going to chase him off by calling him a liar. Nor would she betray her rather reckless need to comfort him. He didn’t seem the type of man who wanted to be cared for, but since the first moment she’d seen him, she’d felt a loneliness about him, a wildness that defied taming, like the wild bird they’d tried to rescue. She thought if she reached out her hands, he would fly away with the same strong, serene soaring that that hawk had shown them. And while she couldn’t deny—didn’t want to deny—the passion, with him she experienced an affinity of being. They laughed at the same things, they spoke of the same matters, they kissed…with an ardent obsession.

“Rather than letting me recover at home, my mother rather forcefully suggested I needed a holiday and arranged for me to come here.”

Feeling sorry for him, she said, “Your mother sounds just as eager to have you home as my stepmother is to have me.”

“Actually, Mother’s quite fond of me and complains I don’t visit often enough or for long enough.” He frowned as if his mother’s behavior puzzled him.

“Perhaps you arrived at a bad moment.”

“Perhaps…” His attention focused on Jessie once more, his blue eyes gray in the dusk of candlelight.

The illumination put part of his face in shadow, and that seemed right. He seemed a man of shadow to her, someone who, when she turned around, would disappear, never to be seen again. She had to snatch this time with him.

A smile played around his handsome lips. “So. Tomorrow we have our third and last suitor. Will you accept this one?”

“How can I? To marry a stranger, sans affection or desire.” She didn’t want to talk about the suitor. “If I were courageous, I’d run away.”

“Run away? No, not you. You’re young and soft.”

“I am not soft.”

“As butter left in the sun.”

She gurgled with laughter. “Nor am I runny.”

He smiled, a hard slash of amusement. “It’s a hard, cold world out there.”

“Hence the need for courage.” Picking up a narrow slice of a pale, mild Swiss, she nibbled the edge. “But I know my father. If I ran away, he would never forgive me.”

“How would you support yourself?

“Without my fortune, you mean? The usual way that impoverished gentlewomen support themselves. I would become a governess.” She smiled woefully. “I wish I could find a way out of my circumscribed life, one that didn’t involve a repulsive man, and one that wouldn’t completely cut me off from the past.”

Harry watched her lips, her teeth, her fingers, so closely, she could only imagine what he was thinking—and she knew what she was thinking. She was thinking that she would not waste herself and her body on a pathetic, unwanted bridegroom. Schooling herself to look and sound sensible, she said, “I do understand, you know. What’s involved in mating.”

She took his breath away with her combination of boldness and innocence. “It’s not every young lady who would confess to that.”

“That’s because most young ladies
don’t
know about mating. They live circumscribed lives, managed by a governess, two parents, and possibly older siblings. My governess left as soon as my father deemed my education finished, my mother is dead, I had no siblings until my stepmother delivered of a son two months ago, and I’ve done what I liked.”

Harry lifted his eyebrows high.

“No, not
that
. I know better than
that
. What I mean is—I run Papa’s farm when he’s not there. Actually, I run it all the time, but I don’t tell him. So I’ve observed the cows and the sheep.” She scowled. “Although I suspect humans go at it differently, for sheep don’t kiss.”

He was almost faint between the desire to laugh and the desire to…just the desire. “No, they don’t, and I can safely promise you they don’t baa, either.”

“Or butt each other.” She ran her finger around the rim of her glass. “And from the conversations I’ve overheard among the servants, I believe mating among humans to be congenial.”

He scarcely knew which part of that speech to address. Taking the coward’s way out—although he preferred to call it the wise man’s—he said, “Overheard?”

“I was hiding in the pantry, eating jellies.” She waited as if he would scold her.

He was breathless, trying to keep his unruly body under control.

She straightened her shoulders and used a lecturing tone. “I suppose you’ll say it’s not right for me to give my maidenhead to a chance-met stranger when I’ll be married before the summer’s out, but I ask you—why is it right that I should never know the pleasure a man can give me? Never, in the whole of my life?”

He thought he understood her, but he had to ask. “What are you proposing?”

“You kiss very well.” She looked him over with an air of mingled defiance and interest. “I presume you do other things well, too.”

Wanting her, watching her, imagining her in her bed—that had been gut-wrenching. He had known he could never have her, yet at the same time he’d felt alive as he had not for too many years. Now she offered herself, and the primitive in him surged to the forefront, struggling against the feeble bonds of culture. “I may, but I don’t debauch virgins.”

“Think of what my life will be, married to someone like Lord Jenour-Redmond or Mr. Murray.” She caught his hand.

The warmth of her palm, the clasp of her fingers weakened his resistance. “Perhaps the suitor tomorrow will turn out to be your true love.”

“No, he won’t. I haven’t seen him since I was twelve, but a more self-conscious, righteous prig I never met.”

Harry couldn’t imagine a man like that with this creature. “Is he wealthy?”

“Very rich. And titled. And old. He is probably ten years older than I am.”

Harry didn’t like that little whiplash of scorn in her voice. Harry was almost ten years older than she was.

“He disapproved of my every frolic. He was hard, cold, and indifferent, and he grew a stupid little beard, like a goat’s, only sparse and blond. I wager he dyed it, for his hair was quite black.”

Harry stirred uneasily in his seat. “Where does he live?

“His largest estate is in Somerset. He’s by far the worst of all my suitors, and he is …Edmund Kennard Henry Chamberlain, Earl of Granville.”

H
arry choked on his drink, coughed. He stared at Jessie, feeling as if she’d buried an ax right between his eyes. His head throbbed, his jaw stood askew.

Jessie anxiously examined him. “Are you all right?”

Taking his first clear breath, he managed, “Edmund Kennard Henry Chamberlain, Earl of Granville?”

“Yes.” She looked even more anxious. “Do you know him?”

“Know him? Know him?” He
was
him. But he didn’t remember this young lady. He swore he did not.

She took his incoherent amazement as confirmation of her own beliefs. “You
do
know him, and think him as obnoxious as I do.”

Obnoxious? Him? He was not… He had never been…well, perhaps there was that brief period when he was young, but he didn’t remember Jessie.

Yet it was no accident he was here. At the resort. Now. When she was also in residence. Slapping his palms on the table, he placed the blame squarely on the one woman who deserved it. “Damn you, Mother!”

Jessie inched her chair back just a little. “Excuse me?”

The other diners stared, examining him as if he’d quite lost his mind. The young groom looked nervous, as if he knew very well he was unable to fight Harry, yet equally unable, as a gentleman, to stand by when a lady was abused.

As if Harry would ever hurt a hair on Jessie’s head. Harry shot the groom a killing glance, and lowered his voice. “You’ve
met
Lord Granville?”

“I said I had.”

“Ten years ago. I doubt you’d recognize him after so long.”

Jessie straightened indignantly. “I would so! I’ll never forget that scowl. He always stroked his beard, like this”—she did a savage imitation of the younger, pompous Harry—“and he wore a stupid cap. He hadn’t a care for his dress, and even came to the dinner table with mud on his boots!”

Harry made a weak clucking sound. Yes, there had been a time…but he still didn’t remember this lush maiden with lambent passion in her eyes.

“Papa said the young lord had picked up stupid affectations while at school.”

He had. “It happens.”

Jessie didn’t care. “But just last week, when Papa said that Lord Granville was one of my suitors and I reminded him of his disparagement, he claimed Lord Granville was undoubtedly older and wiser now. I don’t want to destroy any illusions you may have about your gender, Mr.Windberry”—she called him “Mr. Windberry” again—“but in my experience men do not get wiser, they get more eccentric and spoiled as the years progress.” She leaned forward with fire in her eyes. “Until by the time they are forty, they have raging gout and big bellies and false teeth and baseborn mistresses spread halfway across England.”

“That’s quite an expectation from a simple hat,” Harry pointed out feebly. He wished he could somehow justify his early foibles, but they had been nothing but the posturings of a spoiled lad. Jessie had apparently received the brunt of them.

“Granville always hurried off as if he were too important to have anything to do with such a drab as me.”

He tried to reply to that, but she was in full sail.

Resting her elbow on the table, she gestured grandly. “All I wanted was a little attention, just someone to think I was pretty instead of a short, pudgy, yellow-haired schoolgirl with spots. How was I supposed to know that that branch would break right when Lord Granville was standing beneath it, and how was I to know he was attempting a seduction of Miss Jones? It was just a broken nose, but the way he carried on you’d think I had ruined a classic countenance, which I assure he did not have!”

Harry stiffened. Now he remembered! At the house party at his estate, to celebrate his successes at Oxford. The little girl, Jessica, had come with her father, and she had mooned after him until he was ready to roar. She followed him everywhere—in the library, on the horses—and he just back from university and believing himself a man of the world. Then, just as he had finally lured the delectable Miss Jones into the apple orchard and taken her into his arms to press an ardent kiss on her luscious lips…Jessica had fallen out of the tree above, right between them, and broken his nose.

He took a long breath. He definitely remembered the ramshackle girl Jessie had been.

Looking across the table, he scrutinized the woman she had become. Once again, a little more softly, he said, “Damn you, Mother.” For his mother knew him only too well. She had known he would be intrigued by the adult Jessie just as he had been annoyed by the adolescent Jessica. Mother had set the trap well.

Forcibly he brought his attention back to the young lady sitting across from him who confessed in quivering indignation, “He was bleeding into that stupid goatee, and I tried to help him, and he…he cursed me. He yelled at me! And told me I was a nasty girl who deserved a hiding. Then Miss Jones, who had been passing him handkerchiefs and cooing in a most nauseating way, got irked with him for talking to me so and escorted me to the house, and Papa took me away—”

“—And you have never seen Lord Granville again.”

“No.” Jessie shuddered. “Blessedly, I have not. He’s always gallivanting about in foreign countries, seeking God knows what kind of dissipations and leaving his poor mother bound to care for his estates and fortune.”

“Who told you that?” As if he didn’t know.

“His mother.”

“You’re close?”

“She was so kind as to seek me out.”

“Kind.” It sounded like agreement. It was not.

“So you can imagine my distress at the thought…at the idea…at the mere mention of union with the despicable Lord Granville.”

“Dreadful.” Yet Jessie had kissed him easily enough, and with such fulsome enthusiasm he could scarcely bear not to tell her the truth. “I’m surprised you’ve borne up so well.”

She smiled at him, but her lips were trembling. “I wouldn’t have but for you, dearest Harry.”

Staring at her grimly, he stroked the bump on his nose. The one he hadn’t had until she broke it.

Oblivious, she confessed, “In fact, do you know I have never told anyone the complete story of that humiliating time? Cruel people remind me of it, of course, and Miss Jones is still a most dear friend—”

“That figures,” he muttered. Only Jessie could make friends with the female he had so signally failed with.

“—but I’ve never been able to admit how much I loved Lord Granville and how dreadfully his indifference—indeed, his cruelty—hurt me.”

“You really loved him?” Stupid to feel flattered.

“Of course. Why else would I have followed him?”

“Yet you described him as being absurd.”

A smile softened her lips. “I like absurdity.”

Now there was a compliment to treasure! If ever he had cherished the idea he had not been ridiculous, she had demolished it. When she had fallen, he
had
been a nasty blackguard. Nasty and supercilious and, yes, cruel. He’d had his reasons. His friends had already teased him mercilessly about Jessie’s infatuation, and he knew they would give him no quarter about his broken nose. Because of Jessie, he had gone abroad, served his country, learned maturity and responsibility. He should thank her, not scowl at her.

But when he remembered that dreadful house party…

Yet when he looked at her now… oh, who gave a damn about old dignities trampled? She was beautiful, and engaging, and she offered herself to him. He could keep her safe from his past. He would keep her safe—and ignorant of all the things he had done in the name of patriotism. Taking her hand, he took a ridiculous pleasure in caressing the narrow fingers. “I’m glad you told me. I’m honored you told me.”

She looked down at her napkin, then up at him. Her eyes looked damp—and he felt responsible. If he’d been asked yesterday about his own good sense, he would have said he was blessed with more than his share, and Jessie had been blessed with less. But apparently she’d infected him with her madness, for she was crying over a tragedy ten years gone, and he was feeling guilty over the same tragedy. She was a dangerous woman. A most dangerous woman.

“Really?” She clutched her napkin until it resembled a starched, wrinkled ball. “Most men want to run away when a woman reminisces or gets…emotional.”

“That is the way I feel with most women, but not you. Not with you, my darling Jessie.”

She audibly caught her breath. “Does this mean that you would like to…I mean, are you saying you would consent to…?”

“There was never any doubt that I would like to…” he teased. “And I think your revelations have made it quite necessary that I consent to…”

“Good!” Her magnificent bosom swelled against the pink velvet gown. Then she shrank back against her chair. “That is …do you know, I have been wanting you to say just that, and now that you have, I’m nervous?”

She caught at his gut, at his heart. He had to have her, and tonight would be the night. Tonight, with no ghosts of the youthful, callous Harry or the childlike, impetuous Jessie. Tomorrow was soon enough for the truth. “Come with me.” He helped her to her feet. “And I’ll teach you never to be nervous of me.”

The stranger stood in the shadows of the inn and watched them pass. He was a nobleman of Russia, welcome in every exalted household, and he had come a long way to wreak vengeance on Lord Granville. At first he had thought he would kidnap Granville’s mother. But no. Granville’s mother, in all innocence, had given him direction. She confided that she had recently arranged a betrothal for her son to a Lady Jessica Macmillian, and she cheerfully predicted great happiness for the couple.

The stranger could not allow Granville to obtain happiness, large or small. So he had discovered Lady Jessica’s whereabouts and traveled to the Wildbriar Inn. There he had taken a single meal in the dining room, and at once heard the buzz of scandal about Lady Jessie—and the buzz of sympathy, too. She had met two of her suitors, dreadful men, and tomorrow the last of the suitors would arrive—the Earl of Granville.

But tonight Lady Jessie was with a man, a Mr. Windberry of Derbyshire. How amusing. Before the stranger killed Granville, he would happily report that Granville’s intended bride had cheated on him—and that the charming young lady had painfully died for the sin of being betrothed to the Earl of Granville.

He
would
make Granville suffer.