My Pleasure (32 page)

She collapsed, spent and exhausted as he eased off of her. Her thoughts formed, dissolved, and swirled. Her body felt alien, lax, indolent. Hedonistic, she supposed. Saturated with so much pleasure she could hold no more. She could like being a hedonist. She reached for Ram, wanting to explore again all the planes and contours that made him. But he’d sat up.

“I’ll get some warm water and a towel.” His voice was tender, concerned.

That would be delight—No! “No!” she scrambled upright, gathering the sheets around her body as if he could see her. “No.” If he brought water, he would bring light. He would see her. She was not ready. Not yet. She wanted to stay a hedonist, exist outside the world for just a little longer. With him.

The room was silent. Outside, beneath the window, a dray cart lumbered by, the harness bells tinkling in the still of early dawn.

The mattress creaked as Ram stood up.

“Why ‘no,’ Helena?” he asked coolly, “Are you still resolved not to marry me?”

RETREAT:

step back; opposite of advance

AT THE SOUND of her name, Helena bolted upright. “How long have you known?”

The drapes suddenly swished open, light spilling into the room. She snatched the sheets to her breasts, blinking. He turned around, his hand still on the pull, magnificently, entirely, naked. He didn’t even notice. He stood as haughtily and indifferently as he had in Lady Tilpot’s ballroom. His arms were long and smoothly muscled, his powerful legs covered with the same dark hair that grew in a thick tee across his chest and down his belly. Her gaze traveled lower. His erection lay quiescent now among a thick brush of black hair. Heat exploded in her cheeks, and she looked away. “Answer me.”

“I’ve always known. I knew the minute I saw you in Lovers Walk who you were.”

He’d known? He’d kissed her like that in Vauxhall, nearly taken her against an alley wall, then met her as Helena Nash, pretending to seduce her, pretending not to know already exactly how ardent a response he could draw from her. He’d let her come to him, forfeiting her dignity, all the while knowing she…

“You bastard.”

Backlit by the tall window, it was impossible to read his expression. “Well, yes.” So silky, that voice. So dry. “But I thought we’d already covered that point.”

“You’ve been toying with me! Just like you toy with those men to whom you teach swordplay.”

“No. I haven’t.”

“Yes,” she insisted, mortified and furious. She climbed off the bed, snatching up her pantaloons and yanking them on. He didn’t move.

“Am I supposed to say I’m sorry?” he asked. “Because, if you desire I should do so, I will, but pray recall, Miss Nash, that you are the one who began this masquerade. I simply went along with it.”

She grabbed the white shirt from where it had been thrown across a nearby chair and flung it over her head. “You should have told me. You could have stopped the masquerade at any time!”

“And what?” The silkiness had gone, anger hummed in his voice, “ruined your adventure? I wouldn’t think of disappointing a lady.”

“Bastard!”

“Again? Really, if you are to haunt low places, I will have to teach you some new words. ‘Bastard’ is so pitifully pedestrian.”

She choked back an angry response, feeling the burn of tears rise in her eyes. No. She would not cry.

She spied her cravat on the floor and snapped it up, looping it around her neck before shoving her bare feet into her slippers.

“Helena—” She rounded to find him coming toward her. The light fell full on his face now. No more shadows. He looked hard, angry, his eyes brilliant. “Helena, wait.”

“Why? So you can laugh some more?”

“I’m not laughing.”

She flung back her head and her hair lashed back. “Oh, how wonderfully amusing it must have been for you. The dignified, unassailable Miss Nash twining herself about you like a cat in heat. Oh!” She covered her face.

He grabbed her hand, spinning her around to face him. “What? Are you so much above my touch that the thought of wanting me brings blazes of humiliation to your cheeks?” he demanded between clenched teeth.

She had never seen such emotion on his countenance. His eyes burned, the muscles in his jaw leapt, his lips curled in a snarl. “And if we are to discuss the wheres and whens of disclosure, Miss Nash, when were you going to tell me who you were? Or did you intend simply to keep coming to my bed in the darkness until you tired of your bastard lover?”

“No!”

“When, then?” he demanded, his hand tightening painfully about her wrist. “When were you going to reveal your name to me, ‘Corie’?”

She stared up at him, furious, unable to answer. She didn’t know. She hadn’t thought that far ahead. That had been the problem with this, with her reaction to him from the beginning. She hadn’t thought. She had simply…wanted. Because she loved him.

She was such a bloody, bloody fool. He mustn’t know. All she could salvage of this night were a few shreds of pride. She lifted her chin, heedless of the tears spilling down her face.

His brows snapped together in sudden anguish. “Don’t.”

“Let me go.”

“No. This is wrong.” He shook his head. “We are talking at cross purposes. Marry me.”

“That won’t be necessary. I assure you, I am not breeding.” Her courses were imminent, a day away at most.

“This has nothing to do with necessity,” he said, anger flashing anew in his eyes. “You must know that I—”

“Mr. Munro!” A series of violent knocks sounded on the bedroom door. “Mr. Munro! Please!” Gaspard called frantically.

“Not now, Gaspard!” Ramsey thundered, his eyes locked with Helena’s.

“But, sir! You said if ever the lady came I was to tell you no matter what,” Gaspard called through the door. “She is here! And she is most upset. She insists on seeing you!”

Pain, terrible and swift as thought, shattered through Helena. Her eyes widened in shocked betrayal.

“No.” He stared at her. “No.” He shook his head violently, reaching out for her, but she scrambled back out of his reach, groping for the door.

“Helena, you misunderstand.” His voice was tense but his gaze hopeless. It was condemnation enough.

“Oh, no,” she said, her lips wet with her own tears. “I understand. Pray beg my pardon of the lady, and tell her I didn’t realize I was impinging on her time.”

She jerked the door open and ran.

Ramsey cursed savagely, pulling on the robe Gaspard tossed to him and striding into the hall after Helena. She’d disappeared. Bloody hell and damnation! He raked his hair back. He’d had her, his Helena, in his arms, in his bed, and he’d driven her out. Because of his pride, his fucking pride!

She was right. He should have told her right from the beginning he knew her identity, but he hadn’t. At first, because he had given unwilling countenance to her spurious claim of wanting an adventure and later, later because he had wanted her to come to him. He’d wanted her to prove her, hell, what? That she loved him by an act of faith?

And why should she when she’d never received the same from him? God, how wrong headed could he be, and now…now he’d lost her.

A vacuum opened in his heart, leaving only a gaping open wound that threatened to swallow him whole and pitch him into a blacker place than any LeMons dungeon had held. He squeezed his eyes shut, gritting his teeth. Merciful God, what had he done?

“Ramsey!” With a savage growl, he swung around at the sound of the female voice.

Page Winebarger’s hand flew to her chest and she backed away from the ferocity on his face.

“She’s gone, Ram. Helena! I spent all night looking for her, driving around the town before coming because I knew you would…”

He shut his eyes tight for a brief second, and she saw his nostrils flare as he took a deep breath. He was striving for control, she realized. Ram Munro, the most perfectly composed man she knew.

She held out her hands in pity and entreaty. “I am so sorry. I lost her, and DeMarc is nowhere to be found, and oh, Ram! I fear the worst! Forgive me! I swear I have done my best in the favor you asked of me! Please, dress at once. We must find her.”

“She’s safe, Page.”

“No,” Page shook her head. “She’s missing—”

“She just left me.”

Numbed, Helena climbed the servants’ stairs to her third-floor room. Of course, there would be another woman. Just as, of course, he’d known Helena’s own identity. A man like that? He probably knew a woman by her individual scent. Probably memorized individual curves, the sound of a specific woman’s cries, the way she kissed…

The tears began again, and she pressed her fist against her lips. She must not cry. Not anymore. She must strive for composure. Wasn’t that who she was, composed, dignified, unassailable Miss Nash? If she could just return to who she’d been, she would be safe again. Tranquil. Numb.

There’d been clues all along. He’d not wanted to teach her swordplay, but of all the objections he’d made, he’d never mentioned the most obvious: that a woman does not carry a sword. Unless she’s not dressed as a woman. And when she’d appeared at his salle and he’d said “Helena,” he’d been calling her name, not recalling her face from a long past meeting.

Oh, God. Why hadn’t she told him? Why hadn’t she revealed who she was to him from the first? But she knew the answer. Because it had been too exciting, too fascinating, his world of no rules and no consequences. Except there were consequences. She’d fallen in love.

Stand in queue, Helena, she told herself. Wait your turn.

Damn these tears, anyway.

She’d always thought of herself as better than everyone else, she realized now. A little superior in her mind if not in her status. A bit finer in her self-containment. A little above it all.

She bit her lips. She just wanted to be back in his arms again, and that scared her. She needed her pride. It was the one thing no one had ever been able to take: her pride. But what good was it now?

Should she return to him and say, “Yes, I will marry you,” and for the next decades try not to hear the whispers about his latest conquest while her heart broke over and over again?

Yes. No!

Should she be his mistress instead? A piece of property to be replaced when a brighter, fresher face caught his eye? Oh, he would do it well. Ram Munro would do everything well. He’d see her set up in a house with a tidy little sum in the bank but…she would see him with his latest love. In the park. At the opera. Driving in St. James.

Was future heartache worth a year with him? Four years? Ten?

No. Yes!

With burned and vacant eyes, she stopped before her door. A clock chimed the fifth hour from somewhere deep in the house. She untwined the cravat from her throat, and something pricked her thumb. Listlessly she looked down at her hands. Ram’s gold rose pin sparkled on its bed of white silk. In her haste to leave she must have picked up his cravat rather than the one she’d worn.

She touched the little carved rose with trembling fingers, trying in her mind to invest the smooth metal with his body’s warmth. Tortured, branded, set to rot in a dungeon, and he’d emerged able to smile at years of horror she could not even imagine.

“Stay out of dungeons,” he said he’d learned from the experience. How many men would have come through with their spirit intact? And yet…and yet he wore a rose outside as well as beneath his clothing. How complicated he was. How complicated things were. She didn’t know herself. She pushed open the door—

“Helena!”

She jumped back at the unexpected sound of Flora’s voice coming from inside her room, and then tentatively moved forward. A large mound of blankets and coverlets shifted on her bed. “Flora?”

Flora’s big brown eyes peeped over the edge of a heavy wool blanket. “What are you doing here?” the girl asked anxiously. No, not anxiously, angrily.

“I sleep here.” She was not about to start explaining to Flora her whereabouts. “What are you doing here?”

“I left you a note. I slipped it under your door just after ten o’clock last night.”

“What note?” Helena asked, bewildered. She was in no state of mind to deal with Flora’s pregnancy-related idiosyncrasies.

“I asked you to trade rooms with me at midnight, and when I came up here and you were gone, well, I naturally assumed that you…” She trailed off, her wide eyes narrowing. “If you haven’t been in my room, where have you been? And dressed like that?”

“I…I have been looking for Mr. Goodwin, of course.”

“All night?”

“Yes.” Helena nodded, feeling stupid and callow.

“Oh, my dear!” The coverlet slipped lower, and Flora sat up, holding her arms out. “My darling friend. But you needn’t have! If only you had read the note. For, indeed, Mr. Goodwin is here!”

With a flourish worthy of the best magician, Flora whipped off the coverlet, revealing a red-faced but beaming Oswald Goodwin. Thankfully, wearing a nightshirt.

Helena stared at him, open-mouthed. “What is Mr. Godwin doing in my bed?” she asked, and then, “No. Do not answer. Get him out of my bed, please. At once.”

“Of course, Miss Nash,” Oswald said and slipped to the far side of the bed, where he pushed his arms into what Helena tentatively identified as one of Flora’s dressing gowns.

“Do you realize that if you are caught—”

“Well, Helena, really!” Flora popped out of her side of the narrow bed. “How stupid do you imagine us to be? Of course we realize the consequences of being caught. That is why we traded rooms with you. Aunt Alfreda seldom visits me at night, but she would not be caught dead coming to a servant’s room.”

“And what was I to have said if she had appeared in your room and found me there?”

“You would have thought of something,” Flora replied confidently.

Canny, Helena thought dazedly.

“Still, could you have not waited to…to…be with one another?” Helena asked. “Because Mr. Goodwin assured me that his boat, so to speak, is about to come in.”

“Indeed, yes,” Oswald said, smiling sunnily as he tied the dressing gown’s pink satin sash into a bow. “That is why I sent Flora that message saying I would come to her last night. Things will be settled in two days, as a matter of fact.”