He sucked in his breath, jerked beneath her fingers. ‘I need you, Alice,’ he whispered hot and harsh against her ear, biting gently at its lobe so that the fire in her thighs flared hotter and higher.
‘I need you, too,’ she admitted, and her voice was breathless as his.
All of time seemed to stop. Their eyes held for the expanse of the moment. They both knew it was inevitable. They both knew they were powerless against the force of what raged between them. In the silence all around the raggedness of their breath was deafening. Their gazes clung as the moment stretched beyond endurance. Trying to fight it and failing.
‘Oh, Razeby,’ she whispered. And then the last of their resistance, if there had ever really been any, crumbled. Razeby backed her against the wall and pulled her skirts up, sliding his fingers against her slick wetness.
Her fingers fumbled with the buttons on his breeches. His own closed over their tremble for a moment, looking deep into her eyes as he made short work of the buttons and freed himself from his drawers.
She moved her hand to stroke the silken length of him.
He wrenched her skirts higher.
She wound her arms around his neck as he lifted her up and plunged his heated length into her.
She gasped her relief, welcoming him back to the place where only he belonged.
‘Do you want this?’ he whispered. ‘Do you want me?’
‘You and no other, Razeby,’ she replied with ragged breath.
‘You and no other, Alice,’ he said and thrust within her.
It was everything that was right, this mating, this coupling with the man that she loved. She needed him. She needed this physical joining with him, this reunification of two halves to make a whole. She met his every urgent thrust with the power of her own, groaning aloud at the ferocious intensity of it. So much need, so much love that she did not know if she could bear it. Their bodies strove together, rode together in unfettered abandon until they gasped aloud, rocking and exploding simultaneously in a union of utter love. And the glory of it was blinding. Alice ceased to exist. Razeby, likewise. There was starlight and sunlight and time itself seemed to shatter into a silver white myriad so that there was nothing, absolutely nothing save the merging of their two souls.
She cleaved to him and he cleaved to her.
‘Alice,’ he whispered and it seemed that every stroke of love that beat in her heart for him echoed in that one word.
‘My love,’ she whispered, unable to help herself.
He kissed her, and she could taste the salt of tears on her lips, but whether it was from his eyes or her own she did not know.
In the distance a bell rang, sounding the start of the interval.
Their bodies did not want to part.
There was the opening and shutting of doors, the hum of voices not so far away in the foyer.
And still he stood there inside her, their hearts beating in unison.
His eyes held hers.
She took his dear, dear face in both her hands, stroking his skin, staring into his eyes with all the love that she felt for him, her heart tender and aching. ‘This is impossible, Razeby. You know that, don’t you?’
‘I know.’ He closed his eyes and touched his lips to her forehead. ‘God help us both, Alice,’ he whispered.
Footsteps sounded, coming down the corridor. Yet still she could not move. It was Razeby who made them both decent, Razeby who shielded her from the view of whoever passed. The footsteps did not stop, just continued until they receded into the distance.
* * *
‘There you are, Alice,’ Tilly exclaimed and linked her arm through Alice’s as she stepped alone into the now-crowded foyer. ‘We wondered where you’d got to.’
Ellen was there, her perceptive eyes scanning Alice’s face. ‘Are you all right?’
Alice felt her cheeks warm beneath the scrutiny. ‘Of course I am,’ she said and turned her gaze back to the brash safety of Tilly.
* * *
After the interval was over they returned to the auditorium. And when the players were once more playing upon the stage and the lights had dimmed and the audience settled again within their seats, Alice’s eyes found Razeby’s box. He sat there, cool and dark and handsome. And across the distance and all of those people his gaze was not upon the stage or on the rich young woman who sat by his side, but on Alice.
God help them both, indeed.
* * *
After the theatre was over and the Darringtons and his mother delivered safely home, Razeby sat alone in the study of his town house in Leicester Square. An oil-painted portrait of his father, the seventh Marquis of Razeby, painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds, looked out at him from above the fireplace. A man so much like himself that it was like looking at his own reflection. The same dark hair, the same brown eyes, the same cleft in his chin. His father had been twenty-nine years old when the portrait had been painted. The same age as Razeby was now. A year later his father was cold in the ground. Dead at only thirty from a consumption of the lungs.
But he had done his duty and left behind a son to carry on the name and line. And Razeby had known his whole life that he must do the same.
‘Was it ever the same for you?’ he whispered and wondered for the first time at his parents’ marriage. He did not think so. They had married young. His mother was the daughter of a minor baron. But he had never before thought to question whether his parents had been happy together. Whether they had been in love. Or if there had been another woman before her, a woman his father could not marry...a woman whom he loved.
He poured himself another brandy and drank it too quickly.
‘Hell,’ he cursed beneath his breath. Hell—for, in truth, that is what he felt he was in. Every time he closed his eyes it was Alice’s face he saw, that shy and joyous smile that made his heart fill with a warmth, those beautiful blue eyes either teasing and playful, or dark blue as a summer midnight, half-closed in passion. There had been a bond between them right from that first night in the Green Room. She could tease him and beguile him. She could make him feel comfortable, at ease and excited all at once. He felt as though she understood him completely and that he understood her. And he missed that easiness, that natural affinity, that connection. In the meeting of eyes, in words, in a smile and in laughter. He missed just being with her. For him there had never been another woman like her. And there never would be. She was the one, in truth, just as he had told her that day in the Royal Academy.
He took a swig of the brandy. He had been under the same sentence his whole life, knowing what was coming. Knowing he would not live beyond thirty. And because of that he had made damn sure that he had lived his life. Squeezing every last drop from it, living every minute, taking it right up to the brink. But that had been before Alice.
Before Alice he had thought that living life to the full was about indulging himself, thrill seeking, hedonistic pleasures. That was what Alice was supposed to have been. An affair. One last blast in the dying light of the day. Something meant to last a few weeks until he got the lust and passion for her out of his system. But being with her had changed everything. Now he understood the difference between pleasure and happiness. Now he understood what it was to love.
He topped up the brandy glass and, sipping the rich heat of its contents, stood by the window watching the quiet darkness of the night. In his nose was the scent of Alice and on his body was the feel of hers. And he knew after what had happened between them in the theatre tonight that he could not marry another woman.
Love or duty?
Such a big question. A conflict that had battled within him since meeting Alice Sweetly. But after tonight there was no other choice he could make. He stood there and watched the dawn break through the darkness of the sky.
* * *
It had rained in the night, but this morning the sky was blue and the sun filtered in through the windows of the rented rooms in Mercer Street. Alice pulled the blanket tighter around her and thought of last night at the theatre. Her body felt alive, blooming from his touch. And yet her heart ached all the more. She was angry at her own weakness, but she knew now that the strength of what was between them was greater than all else.
She desired him. She longed for him. She loved him. And what had happened between them had been as natural as breathing. She could still smell his scent upon her, still feel the caress of his fingers upon her skin, still hear the whisper of his words against her ear. And if he came to her right now, even knowing that to love him was wrong and that it would only make things worse, she knew that she would do the same again.
She thought of rich Miss Darrington sitting beside Razeby in his theatre box. It did not matter that it was Alice who Razeby had made love to in the quiet corner of the theatre, it was Miss Darrington, or a woman like her, who he would marry. And that woman who would bear his children. And that thought served only to break her heart a little more.
In future she must avoid him completely, must walk out of the room when she saw him, no matter how blatant it was before all London. And never, ever be alone with him. It was the only way. Now that she knew she could not trust herself when it came to him.
* * *
It was late afternoon the next day that the maid came to Alice’s bedchamber to tell her that Lord Razeby was waiting for her in the parlour.
She felt her heart skip a beat and her stomach give a somersault as she seemingly calmly set down the duster and jar of polish upon the dressing-room table. ‘I told you that I was not at home to any visitors.’
The maid’s cheeks coloured. ‘He was most insistent, ma’am. I couldn’t stop him.’
Alice gave a nod, knowing that she was being unfair; the girl would not have stood a chance against Razeby at his most determined. ‘Tell him I’ll be down shortly.’
But as she spoke the words there was a knock at the bedchamber door and she knew it was him standing there on the other side of it even though he made no move to open it.
A whisper of panic fluttered through her. She closed her eyes trying to control it. And knew she was going to have to fight not him, but herself, to send him away.
‘It’s all right, Meg, you may let him in and then leave us.’
The girl gave a nod and a curtsy, then did as Alice bade.
Razeby just stood there, leaning against the door frame.
‘You shouldn’t be here, Razeby.’
‘I came to speak to you.’
‘We did quite enough speaking last night at the theatre.’
‘Not nearly enough.’ His words made her heart flip-flop and her blood rush all the faster.
‘What happened last night shouldn’t have. We both know that. This is only making it worse. You have to leave. Now.’ Before she yielded and made love to him again. ‘I’ve got nothing more to say to you, Razeby.’
‘But I have certainly got something more to say to you, Alice.’
Chapter Sixteen
R
azeby paused. ‘There is something I wish to ask you, Alice.’
‘Then go downstairs and wait for me in the drawing room. We can talk there.’ She was too conscious of the bed behind her and the way her body was already reacting to his presence, and the throb of her heart.
But Razeby’s shoulder did not shift from where it leaned against the door jamb. His eyes dropped from her face, moved slowly over her body, before moving on to the gleaming polished surface of the dressing table, complete with its cloth and pot of beeswax and lavender polish, before returning again to her face.
‘Are you feeling a little anxious, Alice?’ he asked in a low velvet voice that stroked all the way through her. She shivered and he smiled.
Considerably so since his arrival. She glanced down at the plain worn apron still tied tight over her dress and blushed. Her fingers were trembling as she made to unfasten the tapes, pulling them into a knot in her fluster.
‘Allow me.’ He walked slowly to close the space between them. She closed her eyes as his fingers brushed lightly against the small of her back.
‘You really shouldn’t be here, Razeby.’
‘So you have already told me.’ He smiled again and the apron gaped free.
She swallowed and, after easing it over her head, paid unnecessary close attention to folding it into a small neat square.
Razeby took it from her fingers and slipped it into the pocket of his tailcoat.
‘You aren’t playing fair,’ she whispered and turned to look up into his eyes.
‘Fairer than you realise,’ he said.
They looked at one another and she felt that same anguish and love vie in her heart.
‘What do you want?’
‘You,’ he answered.
She sighed and closed her eyes. ‘It’s impossible,’ she whispered beneath her breath. To resist him. For things to continue in this way. ‘We can’t do this.
I
can’t do it. Don’t you understand?’
‘I understand too well.’
‘Then why are you here?’
‘For you.’
‘I don’t understand.’ She shook her head, confused, hurt, both wanting him to leave and needing him to stay.
‘I love you, Alice.’
‘Oh, God!’ she gasped and clutched a trembling hand to her mouth. ‘What are you doing to me, Razeby?’
‘Telling you the truth. Asking you to marry me.’
She gaped at him. Her knees felt weak. The blood roared in her head.
He caught her to him, holding her upright.
‘This jest is too cruel,’ she whispered and she was shaking like a leaf.
‘It is no jest.’
She stared at him, wondering if he was drunk. ‘Have you been at the brandy?’
‘Not a drop has passed my lips today.’ He smiled at her and inside her chest her heart felt like it blossomed.
‘You can’t marry me.’ she said fiercely.
‘Why? Won’t you have me?’
‘I’m an actress, Razeby.’
‘I know what you are.’
‘We’re not like Venetia and Linwood. She might have been an actress, but her father was a duke. And Linwood’s neck was in a noose. All of London understood why they married. And can forgive them because of it.’ She swallowed. ‘But it isn’t the same for us. Look at me. I was born and brought up in a one-bedroom cottage outside Dublin, barefoot and lucky to have a single dress to my name. I was a whore in a bawdy house!’
He just held her gaze with steady brown eyes.
‘I’d ruin you. And Razeby. All that your family worked so hard for. London would crucify us both were we to marry.’
‘They would,’ he agreed. ‘And I would never leave you to face their wrath.’
‘You’re a marquis, Razeby. There’s no getting away from that.’
‘Is there not?’
She wrinkled her brow in confusion and shook her head. ‘You’ve lost me.’
‘I do not have to be a marquis.’
‘If you haven’t been on the brandy you’ve run mad.’
‘I am thinking more sanely than I have done in weeks.’
‘Then please tell me what you’re talking of because I don’t understand what you’re saying.’
‘It comes down to duty or you, Alice. And I choose you.’ She stared at him, unable to believe the words he was saying. Like those of a dream, more than she could ever have hoped for or imagined.
‘I do not have to be the Marquis of Razeby. I will give it all up for you; let Atholl run the place. He has a good head on his shoulders. And he will need something to focus upon when he returns home to England. He’s not going to be going anywhere else for a very long time.’
‘You can’t just give up an inherited title, can you? I didn’t think it worked like that.’
‘It does not. But if I were to disappear, taking nothing more that the clothes I stood up in...’ He raised his brows. ‘We could run away together, Alice. Go abroad. After a certain amount of time had elapsed I would be declared dead and the title and estate and all that goes with it would pass to the next male in line—which is Atholl. And the seat of Razeby would continue in a fashion.’
‘You’re serious!’
‘Never more so.’
She was reeling, shocked, hardly able to believe that he was willing to give up all that he had been born to, all that he cared for and loved, for her.
‘I want you as my wife, Alice. And if this is the only way that I might have you, then it is what I shall do. So, Alice—’ their gaze had not separated for a moment ‘—will you marry plain James Brundell?’
It seemed that her heart had swelled to fill all of her chest, and it glowed with a rainbow of glorious colour. He loved her. He wanted her for his wife. It was her heart’s desire. He was her everything.
Yes!
she wanted to say.
Yes!
To yell it from the tree tops and press her mouth to his and kiss him with all that was in her heart. And if she did not love him so very much she would have done just that. She would have wrapped her arms around him and told him that she would marry him whatever name he called himself, if had not one farthing to it, and they had to live together in a one-room shack for the rest of their lives. But she did love him, and because she loved him she knew she could do none of that.
‘What you’re proposing is of such magnitude for your life, for your people, for all that you have been raised to be.’
‘That is my decision to make.’
‘You’re talking about walking away from everything you are. From everything you love.’
‘Not everything.’ The look in his eyes was fiercely possessive.
‘To be declared dead and have another man step into your shoes... I can’t let you do that, Razeby.’
‘We all die sooner or later,’ he said softly, and there was a calm acceptance upon his face as he said those words.
‘But to walk away from your duty would grieve you for every hour of every day,’ she whispered.
He did not deny it. ‘Not having you would be a worse death. I choose the lesser of the two evils. You shall not dissuade me from it, Alice. My mind is made up.’ It was the truth. She recognised the stubborn determination in his eyes.
He was selling his soul to have her. And it really would destroy him. Maybe not today or even tomorrow. But the day would come eventually. And by then it would be too late to rectify. There would be no going back. And she could not let that happen.
‘I’ll come back to you. Move back into Hart Street as your mistress. Marry your Miss Darrington, or whomever you will. We can be discreet. I can bear it, Razeby.’
He smiled at her, and touched his thumb ever so gently to the centre of her lips. ‘But I could not.’ He looked into her eyes. ‘It is you that I want, Alice, you that I love. I cannot marry another.’
She could have wept from joy and from sadness. Razeby, a man to whom honour and duty was everything. His love for her would tear him apart. Already she knew what she was going to have to do. There never really had been any decision to make, other than the way she must be sure to do it.
‘I...I need some time to think, Razeby.’
‘Not Razeby any longer. Just plain James.’
‘James, then.’ She smiled to soften her reply.
But he did not return the smile. ‘What is there to think about?’
‘Everything,’ she said. And nothing. ‘It’s not every day a girl gets asked to wed.’
‘I suppose not.’ He smiled that glorious smile of his and gave a nod. ‘Twenty-four hours, Alice. Not a minute longer. And I will be back for your answer.’
He kissed her fiercely with all the same passion and love that she could feel racing and throbbing through her own body. She clung to him and when he would have left she did not let him go, but held him to her and stroked his face, and kissed him more tenderly and with all the love that was in her heart.
‘Let me love you, Razeby...’ she said and did not speak the rest of the words.
One last time.
He could not deny her, not when his body longed for hers and he wanted to climb in that bed with her and love her with everything that he was. A thousand times over and it would never be enough. He wanted her. All of her. For ever.
She unfastened the buttons of his breeches, pushed aside his drawers and freed his manhood into her hands. He was hard for her. Aching for her. She closed her hand around him and moved him within. Softly at first and then more firmly. He clenched his jaw to keep from losing control and caught hold of her wrist to stop her.
‘On the bed. Now,’ she whispered.
He peeled off his tailcoat, threw his waistcoat to follow and, pulling her into his arms, backed them both to the bed.
‘I am yours to command,’ he said as he gathered her skirts high and laid her gently down upon the covers. His gaze swept over her fair hair tumbling from its pins, at her kiss-swollen lips and the dark desire in her eyes, and the place between her legs that was so ready for him. He covered her body with his, their mouths clinging together, sharing lips and breath and tongues. But when he would have slid into her she inched her body just out of reach.
He groaned and made to capture her, but she stayed him.
‘Not yet,’ she whispered into his ear. ‘I want to see you. I want to touch you. And taste you.’ She stared down into his eyes.
Together they rolled on the bed so that she was on top and he beneath.
She unfastened his cravat and it was gone. She pulled the shirt up high to expose his chest. He peeled it over his head and threw it away.
‘I want you naked,’ she said.
‘And I, you. I will take off the rest of my clothes only if you take off yours.’
‘It’s a deal.’ She smiled, teasing him in that familiar way she had always done.
They stripped, and when he lay down on the bed again she came to him naked as the day she had been born, her straight pale-blonde hair freed from its pins to brush against her breasts, the pale rose tips nosing through its lengths. She straddled one of his thighs, kneeling there so that he could feel her warmth and moisture against him.
His manhood stood high to attention. She leaned over him, her long hair and her nipples brushing against his chest as she reached her lips to touch his. She placed one gentle kiss against his mouth. One on his breast against his heart. Then slid lower, to place another on his navel, dipping her tongue within to taste him there. Her mouth slid lower, following the line of dark hair, to the turgid thick length of his manhood. She kissed the tip of him and he almost came. She licked the length of him and he gasped aloud. She took him in her mouth and worked him gently.
‘Have mercy, Alice, or I will not last any longer.’ His whisper trembled.
She let him slide free. ‘With you there can be nothing of mercy.’ Words they had so often used in their play. ‘I must be cruel to be kind, Razeby,’ she said with the strangest expression on her face, but she did not take him in her mouth again. Instead, she kissed the other parts of him that made him a man. Stroked her hands slowly up the dark smattering of hair that dusted his belly, over his stomach, over his ribs and the length of his arms, from the tips of his fingers all the way up to his shoulders, as if she were trying to memorise every part of his body.
She kissed the hollow of his throat. Each shoulder. His Adam’s apple. And then she looked into his eyes and watched him as she moved her legs to straddle him and lowered herself to take him into her body.
They sighed together in the relief and ecstasy of their reunion, their breaths mingling to become as one. Their gazes stayed locked as they moved together, as they found the place that only they could reach. And afterwards he gathered her in his arms and he held her and felt their hearts race together. She stroked his face, traced the line of his eyebrow, kissed his eyelids, the tip of his nose, the cleft of his chin.
There was such tenderness and love in her touch, in the way she looked at him, in her whisper of his name.
‘You are mine, Alice. And I am yours.’
She smiled, but there was a sadness in her eyes.
He kissed the sadness away and held her as if he would never let her go. Come tomorrow he would save her heart, and his own, and lose his honour in doing so.
* * *
Alice lay in the bed long after Razeby had gone. Her body was contented from his loving, and when she slid her hand against the sheet that lined his side of the bed it was still warm from where he had lain. She loved him with every beat of her heart, with every breath in her lungs, with all that she was. But love wasn’t all sweetness and softness and pretty things. Sometimes for love you had to make the hardest decision and do the most difficult thing in the world.
Alice had never loved before. She did not think she would ever love again. For her there was only, and would only ever be, Razeby. But he was the most determined man she knew. He had made up his mind and no amount of persuasion would turn him from it. To marry him was all she could ever have dreamed of. To be with him as his wife. To love him. And be loved by him. What more could there be in life? It was joy. It was happiness. If there could be heaven on earth, then to live like that with Razeby would be it.
But it would destroy him—and what happiness could there be in that?
So she would do the hardest thing in the world. To save the man that she loved she would sacrifice her own heart. And make him hate her for ever. It was as she had said, sometimes you really did have to be cruel to be kind.