My Only Love (2 page)

The child's cries pouring into the gallery from
a nearby room stopped him short. Then Emily Devonshire appeared in the doorway,
her beautiful young face pouting in displeasure as she demanded sharply,
"For heaven's sake, Gertrude, do something about that appalling noise.
It's giving me a dreadful headache!"

"I'm doing my best, Miss Emily. I fear
young Bryan is in need of a nap."

"Then see that he gets one." Huffing
in exasperation, Emily turned back to the gallery. Her blue eyes widened upon
seeing Miles.

"Well, well," he said. "At last
we meet again."

"What are you doing here?" she
demanded.

"To see you, I thought. I fear your father
had other ideas."

Emily glanced cautiously at the servant who had
swept up the squirming lad in her arms and begun to pace around the room,
reproaching the child's pugnaciousness firmly, but kindly, in the ensuing
quiet. Emily closed the door and fixed Miles with a stare. "You have no
right to be here," she told him. 'The last time we spoke I said that I
wished to never see you again."

He shrugged and allowed his mouth to form a lazy
half-smile. "So I recalled. However, women have been known to change their
minds."

Emily raised her chin and the long blond coils
of hair against her shoulders reflected the light from the lamp on the wall.
Her eyes were as cold as blue china. "I don't happen to be one of those
wishy-washy females—"

"No?" He laughed without humor,
bringing hot color to Emily's cheeks.

"Get out of here," she demanded, her
voice quivering in anger; her small hands clenched and buried in the folds of
her gown.

"What's wrong, sweetheart? Now that you've
caught the eye of a marquess you've decided you're too good for us commoners?
That's certainly not how you always felt. I don't think I'll ever again look
out at a thunderstorm without recalling how your little face appeared with
rain running down your cheeks."

"Ooh, you are vile, Miles Kemball!"

"Warwick," he replied in a soft,
threatening tone. "In case you weren't aware, I had my name legally
changed to my father's nearly a year ago."

She arched one thin eyebrow. "That doesn't
change who you are, or, for that matter, what you are. I'm quite certain your
half-brother is veritably trembling in vexation over the prospect of sharing
the Warwick name with such a black-hearted reprobate."

"You're a viper," Miles replied in as
flat a tone as his mounting fury would allow. "And furthermore, slandering
my character is a little like the pot calling a kettle black, isn't it?"

Without speaking again, Miles turned his back on
Emily and moved down the gallery hallway toward the massive double doors,
barely hearing the sound of his footfalls echoing off the walls and the marble
floor. A servant dashed from the shadows intending to open the door for him,
but reaching the entryway before the round-eyed maid, Miles threw open the door
with so much force that it crashed back against the wall.

The outside air felt frigid. Vaguely, he
recalled that he hadn't bothered to retrieve his cloak—but it would be an even
colder day in hell before he went back to fetch it. He couldn't believe he'd
been so addled as to think the pretty little twit had actually wanted to see
him, especially after their stormy relationship had ended with only a short
note:
I must have been insane to become involved with a man like you!
He
must have been out of his mind to come here; then again, the isolation of the
Yorkshire moors could drive any normal red-blooded male to the point of
desperation.

He trudged, head down, along the brick pathway,
his eyes misting with cold and fog, his mind seething.

Damn his brother Damien. No doubt the good Earl
Warwick had played a crucial part in this infuriating fiasco. Imagine Dame's
believing he would stoop low enough to even consider marriage to some
less-than-respectable spinster who'd had a child out of wedlock, and who'd
danced with Gypsies—she had tattoos all over her body, for God's sake!

The cloaked and hooded figure materialized so
suddenly that Miles could only pivot slightly on his boot heel, hoping to
avoid colliding with the much smaller body. They hit anyway. The woman bounced
off him, stumbled back, and as her heels hit an icy patch on the brick walk,
her feet slid out from under her and she landed with a squeal on her backside.

"You idiotic buffoon!" she cried.

"You might try looking where you're
going," he replied as harshly.

"Indeed!" Her pale face—or what he
could see of it hidden within the bulky cowl—glared up at him. "I'm not
accustomed to dodging strangers in my own home, sir." She extended her
hand up to him. He ignored it. With a gasp of outrage and exasperation, she
scrambled to her feet, sliding, slipping, and making a desperate grab for his
arm.

Righting herself at last, she brought her gaze
back to his; her eyes narrowed then widened as she appeared to recognize him at
last. "You." It wasn't a question. Nor was it a comment. It sounded
more like a vile insinuation.

"And you—" he said with equal
condemnation, flipping back the cowl from her forehead with one finger,
"must be Olivia. It seems the Devonshires all have the manners of Attila
the Hun."

She backed away. Once again she pulled the hood
into place, adequately hiding the upper portion of her face, but before she did
Miles glimpsed the wave of rich, mahogany-brown hair that had apparently slid
from her chignon. It had a disheveled look about it, as if, during her solitary
walk, she might have removed the cowl and turned her face into the wind. The
effect was somewhat startling. A few whisps of hair tousled about her forehead
and temples made her big eyes appear all the wider—their blue-green hue
intensified by the bright -mudges of indignation on her cheeks—or perhaps it
was only the cold that made her high cheekbones blaze so with color. A sudden
realization hit him like a Scottish norther: if this truly was Olivia
Devonshire, she was not ugly at all. Far from it.

"What are you doing here?" she demanded.

"Freezing," he replied, shoving his
hands into his pockets.

"What are you doing here?" she
repeated, her voice sounding strained.

"I was under the assumption that I came to
see your sister. However—"

"And did you see her? Well? Did you? Answer
me, damn you!" She stomped her foot.

Miles frowned, certain now that the smudges of
hot color on her cheeks were not due to the cold. Her eyes snapped with fire,
their irritation enhanced by brows that were black and swept up in arcs. He
revised his earlier favorable opinion. Good God, it appeared as if the woman
were as erratic and excitable as the rest of the family. "Yes," he
snapped. "I saw her."

Her gloveless hands, pink with cold, clutched at
her wrap; the color drained from her face. "The boy . .." The words
died on her lips but her gaze remained locked on him. Only the tiniest stream
of vapor occasionally escaping her mouth lent life to her features.

Miles raised one eyebrow. "Ah, yes ... the
lad." He allowed her his most famous, or infamous, Warwick smile—cold,
calculated, and condescending. "I saw him as well. Lungs as strong as a
blacksmith's bellows. By judging I'd say he has the temperament of his mother.
Or is it his father's ... or do you know who the lad's father is, Miss
Devonshire?"

The woman said nothing.

"Actually, now that I think about it, he
does look somewhat like a Gypsy, all that dark hair and unrestrained
personality—"

Not even a flinch. Yet as he stood there, toe to
toe with the silent young woman, he sensed the fierce war raging within her.
He'd seen that rigid set of her mouth, that same glazed, unblinking stare of
disbelief and shock a thousand times before in his own mother's face. He knew
that inside she was trembling.

At last, and with no parting words, she turned
away. With spine straight, Miss Olivia Devonshire moved up the icy path with
all the grace of a tightrope walker. Haughty little wench. Putting on airs as
if she were better than him.

"Miss Devonshire!" he called, and she
paused just long enough to look back with ill-concealed aggravation. "Just
how many tattoos do you have?"

Her chin went up, her shoulders back. Red
chilled fingers gripping her skirts, she skidded and lurched her way toward
the house without so much as a muttered expletive in response. At the portico
a shivering butler stood peering out at them, Miles's forgotten cloak extended
in one hand. Olivia snatched it from him, regarded the garment a long moment,
then slowly turned to face Miles again. She proffered him an indolent smile and
declared, "A true gentleman would never concede to wearing a garment in
such a deplorable state of disrepair. Your collar, sir, is frayed." Then
she tossed the satin-lined mantle that had cost him ten pounds (a phenomenal
amount six years ago) into a puddle of slush.

Olivia waited impatiently as the gray-haired
major-domo removed her cloak and faintly heard him mutter under his breath
that she would catch her death of cold if she continued carousing in the
ghastly weather. She muttered back that he should mind his own business and
that it was her prerogative if she wished to die in such a way. They exchanged
brief smiles, then Jonah, with her cloak folded and smoothed neatly over his
arm, shuffled off into the shadows of the immense house.

She dashed into the nearest drawing room, threw
back the velvet drape, and rubbed away a circle of condensation that had
coated the windowpane. Miles Kemball Warwick was just mounting his horse. He
looked cold and angry. The sodden cloak was thrown around his shoulders.

He flashed a look toward the house.

Olivia thought him spectacular! His dark hair,
having been whipped by the sharp wind, framed his features that were both
uncompromising and ruthless in their strength. His aristocracy was apparent in
the high cut of his cheek and noble brow. His mouth curled naturally in a
manner of cool disdain and challenge—as if he damned and defied the world to
condemn him.

Just then he wheeled his horse around and rode
off through the mist. Olivia stared after him long after he had disappeared
into the fog, a swift-rising sense of excitement burning away the cold that had
earlier made her shiver. Imagine! She'd stood toe to toe with Miles Warwick,
and—

"Olivia!"

She spun around to find Emily in the doorway.
The younger girl pressed a delicate lace hankie to her temple as she glared at
Olivia. "That child hasn't stopped whimpering since you left. You simply
must do something about him before I'm forced to my bed again with a
headache."

Moving away from the window, Olivia regarded her
sister suspiciously. "What was he doing here, Emily?"

Emily hesitated. Her cheeks held high color, and
her eyes resembled a frightened deer's. "Who?" she responded with
bland reflection.

"Who? Oh, you know very well who I mean. I
just ploughed into him on the path."

"How should I know why Miles Kemball was
here? / certainly didn't receive him."

Olivia narrowed her eyes.

Emily pouted. "Perhaps you should speak
with Papa."

"What has Papa got to do with this?"

"He's the one who closeted himself up with
that incorrigible oaf for over an hour." Fanning her face with her
hankie, Emily allowed the barest hint of a smile to turn up the corners of her
mouth. "I do believe the conversation had something to do with you."

Olivia didn't much care for the sound of that.
By the look of smug satisfaction gleaming in her younger sister's eyes, she got
the unnerving feeling that trouble was afoot.

She moved past her sister, who continued to
regard her with the sliest of expressions. Without a final word, Olivia quit
the room and hurried up the stairs to the nursery. Gertrude had gotten the lad
to bed and was in the process of softly singing Olivia's son to sleep. Bryan
Hamilton Chiswell (named after her mother's father and Olivia's favorite
grandfather) Devonshire had the look of an angel and the temperament of a
rapscallion. Emily attributed his mischievous nature to Olivia's spoiling him,
but Olivia didn't think so. Bryan Hamilton Chiswell Devonshire had inherited
his father's tremendous good looks, individualism, and whiplash disposition. Although
his features were serene as an angel's in sleep, his face was a portrait of
impishness.

Thank God for small favors.

The good-natured maid hushed Olivia with a
finger pressed to her lips, then, certain the boy was fast asleep, tiptoed over
to join her.

"He's been a bit restless," Gertrude
whispered. "I suspect he'll be fine once he's rested."

Olivia nodded, never taking her gaze from the
boy. She felt winded and upended. The shock of seeing Miles Warwick sauntering
down Devonswick's path, after all these years, had numbed her. "Miles
Warwick was here," she said, glancing at last at the other woman.

Gertrude's eyebrows rose in surprise. "Was
that who that was? Oh, my. So that's what a rounder looks like."