“That must be Greys Abbey,” Laurel noted.
They drove past it and continued to Chedford. Again they questioned local residents and shopkeepers. Surely the elderly seamstress would remember Laurel’s mother, who could not have ordered
all
her dresses from London. Hard of hearing, the woman cupped a hand behind her ear and urged Laurel to speak up. In the end, she tucked a gray wisp under her cap and shook her head.
Everyone they approached shook their heads. No Sutherlands, no Peyton Manor.
Disheartened, Laurel climbed once more into the carriage and sank back against the plush squabs. “Where do I come from?” she mused aloud.
“There is a simple explanation,” Aidan assured her. “But it’s growing late and will be dark soon. We should start back to Bath. If you remember anything important, we’ll return.”
Reluctant to give up, yet knowing he was right, she nodded. Wandering the countryside, especially in the dark, would not magically reveal the details of her past.
When the ruined abbey came into view again, a sense of urgency prompted her to grasp Aidan’s wrist. “Stop the carriage, please. I . . . I wish to see Greys Abbey close-up.”
“Does it seem familiar?”
She peered at the abbey’s remains. “Not exactly familiar, but you see, I’ve always loved history, and I can only assume I inherited my interest from one of my parents. If we lived nearby, then we would have explored this abbey, perhaps picnicked here on Sundays.” Her fingers increased their pressure on his wrist. She could not prevent it; she felt as though she were hanging on for dear life.
In effect, she was.
The breeze felt cool against her burning cheeks, and she realized that hot tears of frustration were trickling down her face.
With the pads of his thumbs, Aidan wiped the trails of moisture away. “Come, then. If we must, we’ll spend the night at the Crimson Fox.”
“Thank you.” She summoned a shaky smile. “Most men are put off by a woman’s tears. Your courage is most commendable, sir.”
“Perhaps, but be warned.” He yanked her closer and set his mouth against her neck. “My services come with a fee.”
The kiss he pressed to her throat smoldered with suggestions and produced in her a tremor of anticipation. She hoped he would not wait long to collect his due.
“There is nothing in this wretched place that I remember. Nothing.”
Her lovely features turning stony with pain, Laurel about-faced, swept the length of the sanctuary, and stepped out into the gathering twilight. Aidan followed, wishing he didn’t feel so powerless to help her.
They had explored the abbey thoroughly, wandering through the dark and chilly chambers, the echoing passageways and secluded cloisters, the lonely graveyard. They had bent to read the epitaphs scratched into the markers. None bore the name of Sutherland. Little by little, Laurel’s eager, hopeful expression fell away until the threat of tears gathered like storm clouds in her eyes.
Her frustration was palpable, but more than that, they shared a rising apprehension to which neither gave voice. Their failure to uncover any link to her past suggested more than a miscommunication between her uncle and herself.
If her guardian had passed on erroneous information concerning Laurel’s origins, Aidan suspected he had done so intentionally to prevent her from ever finding Peyton Manor—if such a place existed. And he would wager the man’s reasons had something to do with a mysterious, murderous Frenchman.
Laurel stood at the abbey’s encircling wall, her hand resting on the curve of the iron gate. Walking up behind her, Aidan slid his arms around her waist. For an instant she resisted as if to pull away. Then the breath whooshed out of her and she relaxed against him.
“I was so certain this abbey would trigger a recollection. If we lived close by, surely I would have played here with my sisters. My mother would have brought us here to gather wildflowers. Or I might have ridden past it with my father. He used to take me riding, you know; Uncle Edward told me so. . . .”
A sob echoed inside her but she fought back the tears. Then she pulled up taller and raised her chin as if scenting the air. “I feel no affinity whatsoever for this place. I wish I’d never come to the Cotswolds.”
“Laurel.” He closed a hand over her shoulder.
She spun about to face him. “Do not tell me I’ll find my answers. Make no more false promises.”
He waited for the echo of her resentment to fade into the trees. “I was merely going to suggest that we leave.”
Her shoulders falling, she bowed her head and spoke to the gorse sprouting around the gatepost. “Forgive me. This should not be your concern.”
“After last night, your problems are mine.” His heart pounded against his chest wall. What was he saying? It was one thing to lend his assistance for a day, even two, as he might have done for anyone in need. It was quite another to offer the sort of commitment his words implied.
Too late to take them back. Laurel launched herself into his arms and kissed him full on the lips. His response was immediate and unconditional, drowning out logic and resolve and the best of intentions. With the same need with which the budding leaves overhead would open to life-giving rain, his lips parted to the prodding of her tongue.
“I felt so lost, orphaned all over again,” she whispered between kisses. “The desolation that has haunted me for most of my life crept over me again today until I thought I would drown in it.” Her lips moved urgently against his. “When your arms are around me, the desolation lifts and I feel as though I am home at last.”
Their kisses became frantic, imperative. Together they stumbled through the gate and sank to the springy moss beneath the wide, bare branches of an ancient yew.
Aidan’s blood rushed, echoing the current of a nearby stream. Like water over rocks, he felt himself plunging into a maelstrom of sensation. How could this be? After last night, how could lust rise up so abruptly and powerfully, as if he hadn’t lain with a woman in weeks?
Laurel wasn’t just any woman—not like the others, mere placeholders for what his heart craved. No, she filled the hollows inside him as no other woman ever did or could.
And that could lead them both straight into danger. Him, because she would become his Achilles’ heel, his one vulnerability in a life that permitted none; and her, because she would learn too much about him and his business and thus would become a potential target should his double life ever be discovered.
Love was a luxury he’d agreed to give up when he joined the Home Office. At the time, it hadn’t been a hard choice to make.
“Confound it, Laurel. Why can’t I resist you?”
“I don’t wish you to.”
“No? You would if you knew what was good for you.” He pressed her to the earth, dipping his face hungrily to her throat. Straddling her waist and sitting up, he gripped the edges of her carriage jacket and opened it with a single rending motion.
She had the audacity to smile up at him and slowly,
very
slowly, trace her bottom lip with her tongue.
“Is that so?” He yanked her bodice and camisole down, exposing her breasts to the evening air. Reaching behind him, he dragged her skirts up and burrowed a hand beneath them.
She made pleasure sounds that silenced his twinges of conscience. Leaning over, he untied her bonnet, tossed it away, and pinned the golden hair that came loose to the ground. “Look at me.”
Her eyes were storm-ridden with joy and entirely permissive.
“Another man, a better man, would have walked away long ago.”
“I wouldn’t be here with any other man.”
Her assertion maddened him, filling his heart and lancing his lower regions. The latter spawned an instinct to be a scoundrel and simply impale her.
His heart won out, and he eased off her. When her brow creased, he grinned and lifted a slender booted ankle. Little by little he worked his way up her silk-clad leg, lips first. He spread her thighs as he went, and then he leaned close, tugging her drawers aside and using his lips and tongue to open her.
She raised her hips to meet him, her body undulating with each suckle and prod. The last of the sunlight turned her hair to liquid gold, the glistening down between her legs to threads of amber.
His breath caught. He had never seen her like this, laid out before him in the vivid outdoors, with nothing hidden, nothing shadowed. She was his, all of her, and at that moment there were no secrets or deceptions between them. That he could banish her fears and immerse her in passion heightened his own arousal. He throbbed to be inside her.
His sense of power became explosive as he opened his trousers, covered her with his body, and slid the tip of his sex inside her.
Laurel gasped her pleasure, shattering his control. With a single thrust he sheathed himself. Her inner muscles embraced him, squeezing with a fit so snug he might have been created for the purpose of entering her, and she of receiving him.
With each beating pulse of her response, a conviction grew. Whoever she might be, whatever her history, she was his.
But could he find a way to make the future theirs?
The sun dipped behind the hills with startling suddenness, plunging the countryside into blue-black shadow. Greys Abbey stood ghostlike against the sky, the broken limestone walls reaching as if to embrace the rising moon.
The air turned sharply frigid. Still, Laurel did not wish to move or break the fragile spell that prevented the surrounding world from encroaching on her happiness. In Aidan’s arms she felt freed from the burdens of threats and mysteries and even from the promises she had made to the queen.
Her respite proved all too short. He stirred beneath her, tightening his arms around her and sitting up. In the gleam of the half-moon, she saw his rueful smile. “We’ll catch our deaths if we lie on this ground any longer.”
She clung to him for another moment. “I am almost willing to chance it.”
He nonetheless helped her to her feet and helped her straighten her clothing and don her carriage jacket, adding his own coat around her shoulders to ward off the chill.
“No, you’ll need it,” she protested.
He pressed his forehead to hers and kissed the end of her nose. “Keep it. No arguments.”
They circled to the side of the abbey where they had left the carriage. At the sight of the dozing horse silhouetted against the twilight, Laurel came to an abrupt halt. The cold, stark beauty of the hills and the abbey and the emerging stars renewed her earlier impression of having stumbled into a fairy tale. It was an illusion that broke her heart.
“Leaving here will mean an end, you know.”
Would he understand? However much she might wish it, she could not continue as they had been. Her life was no fairy tale, nor was she a widow in control of her own fate. She was a single woman who had forgotten the vital importance of discretion . . . and of chastity. She had her sisters to think of, and Victoria . . . Victoria, whose trust she had betrayed simply by taking Aidan into her confidence, much less surrendering her body to him.
Could she convince the queen of his worthiness? Even if she could, Victoria would never condone Laurel’s actions these past two days, would never give her permission to take this relationship further.
Beneath her fingers, Aidan’s forearm tensed. He looked down at the ground and nodded. “We have been reckless, and I have been irresponsible.”
“No—”
“It’s true. I knew from the first that I should stay away from you, yet I used every excuse I could think of to be near you.” He rested his hands on her shoulders and drew her closer. “Laurel, my life is such that I cannot offer you more. Not now. And it would be selfish of me to ask you to wait, or ask you to accept what I could give you, which would fall miserably short of what a woman like you deserves.”
A contradiction sizzled on the end of her tongue but went no further. She had worried that Victoria would not approve of such a relationship, but she hadn’t stopped to consider that Aidan himself would deem it necessary—or perhaps desirable—to walk away.
However prettily he worded it, he obviously regarded her as an inconvenience . . . and as a temporary diversion in his life.
Why should that raise her resentment? She had as many reasons as he to end their affair, perhaps more. Better to do it now, before she lost her courage.
She stepped out his warm embrace, refusing to flinch at the cool slap of the breeze against her cheeks. “Let us be off, then.”
“Wait.” He came up behind her as she reached the carriage. “There is bitterness in your voice, Laurel. Must it be like that? Must we have ill feelings between us?”
“How else shall we part? As
friends
?” She spat the word with all the vehemence she could muster. She didn’t want his friendship or his protection, not unless his heart came in the bargain as well.
“I am not suggesting we never see each other again. There are still too many matters to be settled. Do you think I’d abandon you, knowing a fiend lay in wait to harm you?”
“I’ll take care of myself, thank you.”
His soft laughter infuriated her. How dare he find humor when all she wanted to do was bury her face in the nearest pillow and sob until her chest and throat and eyes ached more than her breaking heart?
It wasn’t his fault. He was correct in ending what should never have begun . . . but he seemed intent on making it as difficult and as painful as possible.
Especially now, as he took her in his arms and pressed her cheek to his chest, and the tears she hadn’t known were falling began to soak his shirtfront.
“I’m sorry,” she said between sobs. “I am not usually like this.”
“It’s been a long day. But before it ends, I have a request.”
She lifted her face and swiped her hands across her cheeks. “Yes?”