Slightly Tempted (19 page)

"Thank you," she said. "I will not be leaving, though, until I have heard something definite about Alleyne."

It jolted her somewhat to realize that she had not thought of him for the past hour. No, that was not quite accurate. Always, beneath every thought, every emotion, ran her leaden anxiety over Alleyne. But for an hour she had spoken of other things and enjoyed someone else's company and drawn some peace from the outdoors and the natural surroundings of the park.

She had the Earl of Rosthorn to thank for that.

But what would happen, she wondered, if shenever heard anything definite? When would she admit to herself . . .

But whenever that time might be, it was not yet. She fell into step beside the Earl of Rosthorn.

FOR THE NEXT FOUR DAYSMORGAN TENDED THEwounded with as much energy and devotion as before. They lost one more to death and battled to keep several more alive as the fever raged in them. But gradually most of the men began to recover, some of them quite rapidly. By the end of the fourth day there were only seventeen still at Mrs. Clark's.

It felt like suspended time to Morgan. She knew the days could not go on forever just like this. Soon most or all of the men would be gone-either back to their regiments or shipped off home to England. And she knew that most of the other women, Mrs. Clark included, were only waiting for word from their husbands before following them to Paris.

Soon, Morgan knew, she was going to have to face up to reality. There could be no reasonable explanation for Alleyne's long absence-only the obvious one. Wulfric had a right to know that he was missing. Sir Charles Stuart would surely inform him of that fact soon if she did not. But she was not ready yet. Whenever her mind touched upon the subject, she turned it firmly away.

True to his promise, the Earl of Rosthorn came each afternoon to take her walking. Often he ran errands for Mrs. Clark first or helped lift a patient too heavy for them. Once he wrote letters for a couple of the men who had friends or neighbors literate enough to read the letter to their family.

All the wives were a little in love with him, Morgan thought fondly. They all believed that she was fully in love with him. She was not. At the moment she could not even think of him in terms of love and courtship-or dalliance. But she did not know quite what she would have done without him. She would have managed alone, she supposed. Indeed, she undoubtedly would. But she was very grateful for his presence.

Sometimes they hardly spoke at all as they walked. She was often too tired to get her thoughts straight, and she believed that he sensed this and merely strolled with her so that she could breathe in fresh air and feel the warmth of the sun on her face without having to feel obliged to make conversation. Sometimes they chattered on a variety of topics. He was well read, she discovered, and knew a great deal about art and music. He had visited some of the most famous galleries on the Continent and had seen some of the most famous sights. He shared his impressions with her with an eloquence that convinced her of his intelligence and the quality of his education.

Perhaps, she thought sometimes, shewas a little in love with him. But such feelings were unimportant. Romance was the furthest thing from her needs during those days.

And then on the evening of the fourth day there was news at last.

Morgan was bandaging the stump of an arm when Mrs. Clark came to relieve her.

"You have a visitor," she told Morgan. "I have put him in the kitchen."

There was nowhere else to put a visitor. But he could not be Lord Rosthorn. He would have come to announce himself or he would have sent word and waited outside. Some instinct stopped Morgan from asking who it was. Mrs. Clark had bent very quickly over the wounded man being bandaged.

He was an aide of Sir Charles Stuart's. He introduced himself with a deferential bow. Morgan had met him before, but she did not remember his name. She did not catch it this time either. She could feel the blood drain out of her head and curled her hands into fists at her sides, imposing control over herself.

"Sir Charles has sent me, my lady," he said after clearing his throat. "He is busy at this very moment penning a letter to the Duke of Bewcastle."

Morgan lifted her chin and looked very directly at him.

"A letter was delivered into the hands of Sir Charles an hour or so ago," the aide explained. "It was mud-caked and tattered and several days old. But it was recognizable, my lady, as the letter his grace, the Duke of Wellington, dictated to an aide, who then gave it into the care of Lord Alleyne Bedwyn."

Morgan continued to stare at him. He cleared his throat again.

"The letter was discovered earlier today," the aide told her, "in the Forest of Soignés north of Waterloo."

The letter. Not its bearer. He did not say so. He did not need to.

"Sir Charles authorized me to inform you, my lady," he said, "that with the deepest regret he must now abandon hope that Lord Alleyne Bedwyn still lives. He sends his warmest sympathies and asks what he may do for you. May he arrange for your return to England, perhaps?"

Morgan stared at him but did not really hear him.

"Thank you," she said. "And please thank Sir Charles for informing me. I wish to be alone now, please."

"My lady-" he began.

But from pure instinct Morgan leveled upon him the Bedwyn look of amazed hauteur.

"Now," she said. "Please."

She was alone then, staring at a row of onions hanging from the ceiling and listening to the kettle humming on the hearth. She did not know how much time passed before she heard the rustling of skirts behind her and two warm hands grasped her by the shoulders.

"My poor dear," Mrs. Clark said. "Sit down and I'll make you a cup of tea."

"The letter has been found." The sound came out as a whisper. Morgan cleared her throat. "But not Alleyne."

"Yes, dear," Mrs. Clark said, squeezing her shoulders almost painfully. "Have a cup of tea. It will help dispel the shock."

But Morgan was shaking her head. She felt something like panic building inside her. She could not sit down and sip tea. She would surely explode. She must . . .

"I am going out," she said. "I need to walk. I need to think."

"It is evening," Mrs. Clark said. "I cannot spare anyone to go with you. Come and sit-"

But Morgan broke from her grasp.

"I am going out," she said. "I do not need a chaperon or maid. I need to be alone."

"My dear Lady Morgan-"

"I am so sorry to abandon you in the middle of my shift, but . . . I must go outside." They were in the hall already and Morgan snatched her shawl off a hook and wound it about her head and shoulders. "I will be quite safe. And I will be back soon. I need tobreathe !"

She was out of the house then, hurrying down the steps and along the street, not knowing where she was going, not even caring. She dipped her head down and walked fast-as if she could outstrip the knowledge that she had still not admitted into her deeply guarded spirit.

She had known for days.

There had been no real hope almost from the start.

For days she had thought she was preparing herself. But there was no preparing oneself for the moment when it came.

Alleyne was . . .

She was panting when she eventually stopped walking, as if she had been running for miles. She did not even know where she was. But when she looked about her in the growing dusk, she realized that she was outside the house on the Rue de Brabant that the Earl of Rosthorn had pointed out to her four days ago. There was light behind an upstairs window.

Had she intended to come here? she wondered, dazed. Or was it pure coincidence?

It did not matter.

She stepped up to the door, lifted the brass knocker, hesitated for only a moment, and then let it rattle back against the door.

CHAPTER X

WHEN HE HEARD THE KNOCK ON THE OUTERdoor, Gervase drew back the curtain in his sitting room and peered downward. His landlady and her daughter were out for the evening. So was his valet, this being his regular half day off work. There were servants in the house, but they were probably gathered in the kitchen area at the back. There was no one on duty in the hall since no visitors were expected.

Her head was covered with a shawl, but he recognized her instantly. Good Lord! Whatever was Lady Morgan Bedwyn doing on his doorstep at this time of the day? It was well into the evening and almost dark-the candles were already burning. His first thought as he dropped the book he had been reading onto the nearest chair and shot from the room and down the stairs was of propriety. If anyone were to see her . . . But even before he reached the bottom of the stairs he remembered telling her to come here to him if she was ever in need. This, obviously, was no social call.

A manservant was shuffling into the hall from the nether regions of the house.

"I'll get it," Gervase said to him in French. "It is a friend of mine."

Fortunately, the servant did not wait to see who the friend might be. He nodded, turned, and shuffled back in the direction from which he had come.

Gervase opened the door, took one look at Lady Morgan's face, shadowed by darkness though it was, and dismissed any thought he might have had of stepping outside with her and marching her away from the house. Instead he grasped her by the upper arm and drew her inside before closing the door.

"Come upstairs where we can be private," he said. "Then you can tell me how I may serve you."

She was pale and obviously distraught. She said nothing as he hurried her up the stairs and into his sitting room and shut the door. Actually, he thought, it did not take much intelligence to guess what must have happened.

"The letter Alleyne was bringing back from the Duke of Wellington to Sir Charles Stuart has been found," she said, lowering her shawl to her shoulders. "It was lying abandoned in the forest between Waterloo and here." Her voice was hollow and expressionless. She gazed at him with eyes like huge pools of night in her face.

"Ah, yes,chérie, " he said. He took both her hands in his. They were like ice blocks.

She half smiled. "He is dead, is he not?"

Was she still trying, then, to cling to some shred of hope? But it was time to face the grim reality. It was why she had come to him, he realized. Someone from the embassy must have brought her the information, but he was the one to whom she had instinctively turned for the final interpretation of the facts. He wondered when exactly they had become such precious friends.

"Yes,chérie, " he said, "you must accept that he is dead."

She stared at him though her eyes were focused on something a million miles beyond him. Her shawl slipped slowly and unregarded from her shoulders and settled in a soft heap on the carpet at her feet. He released her hands and set his arms around her, one about her waist, the other about her shoulders. He drew her against him, and she turned her head to rest one cheek against his neckcloth.

"He is dead." She shivered.

"I'm afraid so."

She wept almost silently. He would hardly have known she wept at all if he had not felt the tremors of her body and the warmth of her tears as they soaked through the layers of cloth at his neck. He held her close and closer. He did not know quite how it had come about, this friendship that was deeper than any other he had known with either man or woman. It was the circumstances, he supposed-the far from ordinary circumstances that had drawn them into a far from ordinary relationship. Certainly it was not something that had developed from the early days of their acquaintance.

He continued to hold her long after she stopped weeping. She made no move to pull away. If she still needed the illusion of comfort, he would offer it for as long as she needed it. But finally she tipped back her head and gazed into his eyes in the shifting candlelight. Her tears had dried, though her face was heavy and puffy with grief.

It was the most stupid thing in the world to do. He could not explain it either at the time or afterward. It certainly seemed to be about the most inappropriate thing he could possibly have done-except that he was not afterward convinced that the action was not mutual.

He lowered his head and set his mouth to hers.

It was not like either of the two kisses they had shared before. This one was a hot and urgent embrace during which her mouth opened wide beneath his and his tongue plunged inside. Their arms closed about each other and clung like iron bands. It was a deeply, mindlessly, inexplicably passionate kiss. Life making its fierce protest, perhaps, in the face of death? But he had no real excuse, as he admitted to himself later.

And no excuse whatsoever for what followed.

He lifted his mouth a few inches from hers and looked into her dazed, passion-clouded eyes.

"Chérie," he murmured.

"No." Her voice was throaty with need. "Ah, no." And she closed her eyes and pressed her parted lips to his again and kept one arm about his waist while the fingers of her other hand tangled in his hair.

He felt her grief, her agony, her need. And he felt his own need to comfort her, to give whatever it was she craved. But it was an emotional response that did not touch upon his intellect at all. He was not thinking. This was not an occasion for thought or cool reason. She needed him. And so he folded her to him, kissing her more deeply, more passionately even than before.