Love on a Midsummer Night (Shakespeare in Love #2) (10 page)

After ten years of being entombed alive in marriage to an elderly man who could not love her, a vibrant new life beckoned to her. She did not know what that life would look like, but she knew that she wanted it.

Pembroke had not spoken again. He stood staring down at her where she sat, helpless in his Queen Anne chair. She saw him differently, too. He was a casualty of her father’s cruelty, just as she was. She had always blamed him for not coming to her rescue so many years ago, for believing the worst of her, for not answering her letters, for turning away. But now, as she sat drunk in his country house, that old anger began to slip away.

“I am sorry,” she said. “I am sorry that I hurt you.”

He stiffened, his back straightening against the onslaught of her simple words. It was as if she had stabbed him, as if she had taken a knife out of her reticule and driven it into his heart. He still felt something for her then, if only anger, if only pain. She was responsible for that pain as much as her dead father was. She stood, unsteady on her feet, and went to him.

There were few candles lit, so the room was bathed in shadow, with pockets of warm light given off by a candelabrum by the door and another by the window.

The silk of her gown brushed against her skin like the touch of a butterfly’s wing as she began to walk to him. Her stays hugged her ribs beneath her bodice, but instead of a confinement, they felt like a lover’s embrace. She had never been embraced by a lover, save in her dreams of Pembroke.

Pembroke stood in silence, watching her.

Arabella felt the lawn of her shift brush against her thighs. The silk of her gown whispered as she moved, and she wondered why she had never noticed that sound before. The room was strangely silent, a quiet so deep that she did not know if they would ever find the end of it.

The ruby Pembroke had given her so many years ago seemed to burn like a brand against her skin beneath the bodice of her gown. She did not feel as if the ring would stop her, but that it urged her on.

Arabella raised herself on her toes, laying her hands on the solid firmness of his upper arms for balance as she took in his scent of cinnamon. Pembroke did not pull back or push her away but stood frozen in place as if he had been encased in a sheath of ice. He did not even seem to breathe as Arabella pressed her lips against his.

She did not know what else to do, so she kissed him, putting all her love, all her loss and sorrow, into the pressure of her lips on his. She knew that she was clumsy. She also knew that no one would ever love him as much as she did, that day or ever.

Pembroke gripped her arms, his strong hands making her feel even smaller than she was. She had begun to totter on her toes, for she had to stretch far to reach his lips. But instead of pushing her away as she had been so certain he would, Pembroke drew her close, bringing her into the circle of his arms, lowering his head, bending down to take her lips with his.

His kiss was gentle, as soft as hers had been, but the heated touch took her breath, and she gasped, opening her mouth beneath his. Pembroke pressed inside, stroking her tongue as if to soothe her, as if to savor her, as if she were the one taste he had hungered for all his life.

His hands pressed against the small of her back, drawing her flush against him as his lips devoured hers. As she followed his lead, she remembered the dream of Pembroke in her bed, and she kissed him as she had learned to kiss him in that dream. At first, he jolted a little with shock, but in the next moment he drew her even closer, his hands moving up her back into her hair, trapping her head so that she could not pull away from his questing lips even if she wanted to.

He tasted of the strawberry ices they had eaten. He tasted of mystery and danger, as if he held a whole world within the circle of his arms, a world she had never seen, not in her dream and not in the years she had spent in her husband’s bed.

She soon forgot both her husband and the dream she had of Pembroke. There was only the man she loved, his arms around her, his chest pressed hard against her breasts, and his thighs bracketing her own so that she could feel the heat of him through the soft silk of her gown.

For one heady moment she thought he might draw her down into the shadows of the settee before the unlit fire, that he might cover her body as he had in her dreams. Instead, Pembroke moved back, but he did not let her go. He stared down at her, drinking in the sight of her face just as she drank in the sight of his. Arabella smiled at him, unable to hide her delight, not knowing why she should feel as she did. Nothing was solved between them, and nothing ever would be. But he had given her one of the greatest gifts of her life. She would remember their kiss until the day she died.

Her body was uncomfortable. Her gown and stays, which before had felt so sensuous against her skin, now felt too tight and hot, as if she had worked in the garden during the heat of the day. Her mouth hungered for another taste of his. She could still feel the contours of his tongue as she ran her own over the smoothness of her teeth.

As she was thinking these things, Pembroke took a step back from her. He kept his hands on her arms in case she faltered. She saw the unhappiness in his eyes, and she pressed her fingertips to his lips. She spoke quickly, before he could give voice to his thoughts and ruin the moment for her.

“It’s all right,” she said. “I won’t throw myself at you again.”

In the end, it was she who stepped away from him. She took up one of the candles by the door to light her way to her room. Arabella moved into the corridor beyond the drawing room and began the long, slow climb up the wide formal staircase. She did not look back because she did not want to see Pembroke’s eyes. It pained her that the kiss that had brought her so much joy had brought him only regret.

Arabella pushed the thought out of her mind. She had had enough of pain. She renounced it. From now on, she would embrace joy. There was so much joy in the world, and she wanted more of it.

Pembroke watched Arabella walk up the staircase of his father’s house, the short train of her evening gown trailing behind her on the mahogany stairs. He stayed in the doorway of the drawing room for a long time, listening to the tick of the grandfather clock on the landing above. When it finally hit the stroke of midnight, he forced himself to walk up the stairs to his bedroom, alone.

Arabella slept in the room he had set aside for her, the room he had decorated to match the color of her eyes. Her room was down the hall from his own bedroom suite, something he had not considered until the moment she kissed him.

He could still taste her lips if he closed his eyes. He could smell her light perfume. Or perhaps she wore no perfume at all. Perhaps if he divested her of her silk and lawn, her skin would give off that perfume simply of itself. The thought made Pembroke catch his breath, and he cursed himself.

Reynolds seemed to catch something of his mood, for his valet helped him undress in silence. Wearing only his trousers and lawn shirt, he dismissed his man, who bowed once before leaving for the night. Pembroke prowled the edges of his bedroom, crossing into the sitting room where he kept a bottle of brandy.

He poured himself a liberal amount, half a glass, before setting the decanter down. Pembroke warmed the brandy between his hands, lifted it to his lips, but he did not drink. The scent of the heavy liquor turned his stomach. All he could think of was the way that same brandy had smelled on Arabella’s sweet breath when she had leaned up on tiptoe to kiss him.

She could still turn him inside out. Years later, after she betrayed him and left him for another, she need do nothing but crook her little finger and he came running, a dog come to heel.

He set the glass down and forced himself to lie on his bed. He stared up at the gold-and-white canopy above his head, alone in the vast expanse where he slept and where he indulged in love play. Never before had he faced a sleepless night in that bed, for always when he came to the country, he brought a great deal of distraction with him to drown the silence.

He thought of throwing on a coat and going to Titania in the village. He might sate his longing for one woman in the body of another. He might even stay out long enough in the morning for Arabella to know that he had been gone.

He wanted to hurt her. He wanted to smash her calm, to decimate the serenity of her smiles. He could not bear to see that calm, that serenity, when he was left with nothing but pain.

Why had she kissed him? Why, after days of protest and slurs against his whores, had she pressed her lips to his? Did she hope to muddle his mind? To wreak havoc on what was left of his life? If so, she had done it, in spades.

Pembroke lay against the bolster holding his breath, listening to the silence of the house as if he might hear Arabella’s soft tread on the carpet outside his door. He had left his door unlocked, as if in a mad, vain hope that she might come to him. Had she been any other woman who had offered herself to him, he would have gone to her.

But she was no ordinary woman. She was Arabella, the only woman on earth who mattered.

Pembroke turned over on his side and covered his head with a pillow. Perhaps if he lay perfectly still, his body would grow bored of its hunger for her and go to sleep. He lay beneath the covers for an hour before sleep slowly stole over him, bringing him almost at once into a dream.

He knew it was a dream because, in it, he was not angry. Though there was no moon, the windows of his bedroom gave a milky light. It was the dark of the moon, so the moonlight that covered his bed like an enchantment was simply a figment of his mind, a part of his dream.

Pembroke knew he was dreaming because in the shadows Arabella stood before him in a nightgown only the most daring courtesan would ever have worn. At first glance, the lawn night rail seemed demure, save for a neckline that dove between her breasts, tied with a light blue ribbon beneath them. But when she moved, the gown caught the light, and he saw that it was almost completely translucent.

Pembroke stared at Arabella’s body beneath the soft lawn as she stepped toward his bed. Her small breasts rose high above that blue ribbon, and Pembroke wanted to reach for her and unwrap her. He hungered to draw the gown open and to feast his eyes and his lips on the curve of her breasts.

As if Arabella could hear his thoughts, she raised her hand to that ribbon, slowly untying the bow. The gown opened beneath her hands as she drew it back and down her shoulders. The lawn pooled at her feet, and she stepped toward him, raising herself onto his bed without hesitation.

“Arabella.”

She drew close to him on the bed, as naked as he was.

There was no hesitation in her eyes, no pretense of modesty, no embarrassment. He feared for a moment that his dream would change, that Arabella would suddenly transform into someone else, one of the knowledgeable courtesans who so often frequented his bed. But Arabella did not leave him. She kept her shape and her soft blue eyes.

For years he had remembered those eyes as being as blue as ice, like the winter that had descended over his heart. Since she had come back into his life, Pembroke had begun to think of those eyes as the color of light blue flame, a fire that might consume him.

Arabella kissed him then, and it was not a courtesan’s kiss but the clumsy kiss of an innocent. Pembroke drew her against him, reveling in the feel of her curves. She was slight; her breasts rose in peaks to press against his chest. Her belly was soft, and her thighs beckoned him. He pressed himself against her but did not draw her beneath him as he wished. He did not want to frighten her.

He bent his head to teach her how to kiss, and she followed his lead, catching on quickly, just as she had in the drawing room. The cavern of her mouth was sweet against his tongue, and she pressed her lips to his eagerly, opening her mouth under his to give him access to all her secrets.

Arabella moved close to him, wrapping her arms around his neck and drawing him down on top of her. Pembroke tried to pull back, tried to keep his weight off her slender frame, but Arabella only smiled, coaxing him with her hands and lips to lie on top of her again.

“I love to feel your body on mine,” she said. “I feel safe from all the world when you lie with me.”

Pembroke shuddered, his control beginning to slip. He ached to possess her completely. A part of his mind urged him onward, telling him that one more conquest would count for little in the long, endless trek of his life. But Arabella was no conquest. Pembroke knew, even in the dream, that it was she who conquered him.

He groaned and pressed his face into the soft satin of her hair. Her long hair lay against his pillow, spread out like a fall of honey against the white of his linen sheets. She shifted beneath him so that his erection fit between the contours of her thighs.

“I do not mind if you hurt me,” she said. “I know that the marriage bed is pain. But you are worth it.”

Pembroke kissed her then, his lips pressed hard against hers as if to eat up her words, as if to take away her years in her husband’s bed, all the years they had been apart.

He woke abruptly to the light of dawn covering his bed. He turned from the rays of the sun toward his dream, but it was gone. He could not get it back. His body was still hard, aching with need for her soft sweetness. His heart ached more.

He lay on his back as the hunger of his body slowly subsided. He thought of the empty years of Arabella’s marriage, and what those years must have cost her. Perhaps she was well paid for the pain she had caused him. Perhaps a duchess’s coronet was not the prize she had thought it would be.

Pembroke told himself not to be a fool. Arabella had made her bargain years ago, and now they both had to keep it.

But he found that he could not be angry with her anymore. Though his heart still bled, and no doubt always would, he did not have to cherish his anger.

After all the years he had tried and failed to die on the Continent, every mad raid he had led, every cavalry charge that had left his men dead on the field while he still lived, now, finally, he could let his bitterness go.

Perhaps the core of his fury had slowly burned away in the heat of countless battlefields, in the heat of brandy and women and gaming. Perhaps he had sinned enough to drive it out of his system, the way brandy dried out after a few days of sobriety.

Pembroke had defined his life by his bitterness, by the woman he had lost. But now that Arabella had returned to his life, he wondered if he had more to live for than anger and regret.

***

He found Arabella already seated at the breakfast table dressed once more in her demure gown of dark blue muslin. Her soft, honey-colored curls were caught in combs at the nape of her neck, and a ribbon of dark satin was woven through her hair. Her light blue eyes met his, and he felt the power of her gaze run through his body like lightning.

“Good morning,” she said, smiling as if she had just awakened from a night of blissful sleep. For the first time since they had begun their trek into the country, she looked rested and almost happy. He could think only of how her hair had looked in his dream, spread out like a fall of honey against his pillows. His body hardened in response, and he cursed himself once more for a fool.

“Tea?” she asked, completely unaware of the battle he waged silently as he stood in the doorway, unable to move either forward or back.

“No,” he said, his voice sounding strangled to his own ears. “Coffee.”

She did not wait for the footman to bring it but rose herself and poured his coffee from the silver urn that stood on the sideboard. She brought brioche and butter and placed both alongside the china already set down for him.

She seemed calm, unconcerned, as if nothing at all had passed between them. And yet he stood in the same room, his lust riding him. He could not draw her into the vortex of dark desire and hedonistic pleasure that he lived in. Left unchecked, the darkness in his soul would eat her alive, just as it was devouring him.

“Arabella,” he said. “I must apologize for last night.”

She lowered her toast and jam, looking at him inquisitively, for all the world as if she did not remember to what he referred. She did not speak but set her toast down on the plate in front of her.

“I took a liberty,” he continued. “I know you have no wish to be my mistress. In the future, I will respect that. I give you my word of honor that I will not touch you again.”

A shadow crossed the light blue of her eyes, but it was gone before he could be certain of it. She smiled, calm serenity radiating from her.

“I accept your apology,” she said. “But it is unnecessary. If you recall, it was I who kissed you.”

Arabella sipped her tea, and the warmth in her eyes drew him in. “Sit and eat, Pembroke. I am heading out to my father’s house within the hour. Once I have his money in hand, I will be out of your hair and out of your life.”

“I’m going with you.”

She met his eyes, and it was as if their cornflower blue pierced his skin. Then she smiled, and he felt as warm as if he stood in the summer sun. No doubt he was losing what was left of his drink-addled mind.

“All right,” she said.

As he watched her delicately nibble on a slice of toast, he realized that he had no idea how he would keep his promise not to touch her.