Stealing the Bride (25 page)

She glanced at his breeches. “I would say otherwise.”

He snatched up his discarded jacket and shrugged it on, drawing the coat over the undeniable evidence she’d wrought.

“This is wrong. I can’t,” he said again vehemently, more to convince himself, she supposed.

“Can’t?” she asked. “Or won’t?”

“If we were to…were to…” He stammered over the words as if he were speaking to some ingénue bride on her wedding night.

“Make love,” she offered.

“Yes, that,” he said, waving his hand at her as if trying to catch a lifeline. “If we were to…to…”

“Make love.”

“Demmit, yes, make love,” he finally said. “I’d dishonor you. I can’t and I won’t do that. Do you know what it would mean if we were to succumb to this foolishness?” He ran a hand through his hair, letting out a long, ragged sigh and shudder. “I’d have no choice but to offer for you.”

She cast the chair aside, sending it skittering across the room.

Tully let out a yelp and then, looking from one glaring human to another, chose the chair, hiding beneath the overturned shelter.

Temple backed up, and Diana followed, stalking him across the room until she had him trapped against the wall.

She prodded her finger into his chest. “You mean to say that you won’t make love to me because if you did, you’d have to marry me?”

Temple nodded. Gads, he’d faced down enemies before, men with death in their eyes and hatred blazing in their hearts, but he’d never seen the likes of Diana at this moment.

The woman was possessed. A determined goddess in her full wrath.

“Diana, I won’t do this,” he said, praying silently that he sounded convincing.

She laughed at him. “Lawd, Temple, if I’d known that all it would take to get you before the parson was to gain your bed, I’d have bribed Elton to let me into your bachelor rooms long ago.”

He didn’t doubt she would have. Nor did he doubt that Elton would have taken the coins.

“But I don’t want marriage. Not if it means you are forced by pistols to the church and compelled against your will to take me to bride.” Her hand reached out, and once again she touched his face, her fingers running along his jaw. Her touch sent a raft of traitorous tremors through his limbs, ending in the most traitorous one of all. “I don’t want anything less than your heart—given freely and willingly.”

He closed his eyes and reached up to pull her hand from his face, then he drew her into his embrace. He tipped his mouth down to her ear, marveling at the scent of roses that always seemed to surround her.

He wanted to start nibbling and not stop. To kiss her neck, to bare shoulders, to bare her further and love every inch of her flesh.

But he couldn’t.

His fingers twined in her hair, as if of their own volition, sliding through the silken strands, taking their time so as to memorize every moment.

Then, with the dread of a man who knew no way to avoid the inevitable course of fate, he whispered into her ear, “Diana, I beg you, leave me be. I will not do this. I cannot do this.”

She shook her head, “Temple, we can—”

“No,” he told her. “What you want from me, I cannot give you.”

“
Grow bold, my love, and deliver me from this need,
” she whispered, as a hot tear spilled onto his shirt, soaking through the linen like a brand to his heart.

The familiar words left him stunned.

As she whispered the rest of the stanza in a voice filled with emotion, he felt as if he were hearing the lines for the first time.

Temple pushed her away from him. “How do you know this?” Did he really have to ask? The minx had rifled his possessions on more than one occasion from what he’d gathered. And even this, his most private of possessions, she’d dared to invade. “You shouldn’t have read that. It wasn’t yours to see.”

Her lips curved into a trembling smile, a droplet still glistening on her cheek. “I didn’t know you wrote poetry.”

“I don’t.”

She swiped at her tears with the back of her hand. “Once again, I beg to differ. Your poems are beautiful. I think they should be published. Like the exploits you keep hidden from the world, you should share your accomplishments with Society, instead of playing their fool.”

“What have you done to it? Where is it?” he asked, not listening to her pleas, instead storming past her and catching up his valise. Yanking it open, he began foraging inside, plucking out his extra clothes, his belongings, and tossing them hither and yon. Finally, he closed his fingers over the only thing that really mattered. His only legacy. His fingers wound around the familiar leather of the binding. It soothed his soul without his having to read even a line.

She stood silently beside him. “I’m sorry if my reading your work upsets you.”

“They aren’t my poems. And they weren’t meant to be read.”

“Not yours, indeed, of course they are. It has your name on the inside page and at the end of every poem are your initials.” She reached over and plucked the book out of his tight grip and opened it, pointing confidently to the telltale byline.

He glanced over at Diana. Her brows knit together as she looked from the book back up at him.

He had no choice but to answer the question about to spring to her lips. “The poems were written by the Marquis of Templeton, but not this marquis.” He took a deep breath. “They are my father’s verses.”

“Your father?” she said, her brows still arched in a puzzled line. “I know this sounds odd, but I never thought of you as having a father. Or a mother, for that matter.”

“Not many people remember my parents. They were married for a very short time, and they disavowed Society in general, preferring their own circle of friends.”

“Just the more reason you should see these published, so your father’s work will live on as he didn’t have the chance to.”

“Grandfather would have a fit of apoplexy if these were to be printed. He has an unholy aversion to those with literary aspirations.”

“Then I don’t suppose he was fond of your father’s work.”

Temple laughed, a short, bitter sound. “When my father lay dying, the duke arrived at Setchfield Park just in time for the doctor to give him the news that my father wouldn’t live through the night, he was too far gone with fever. Instead of going up to sit beside his only son and heir in his final hours, to find some forgiveness between them, he took the news as his opportunity to start burning my father’s journals and books before any mourners might arrive and discover his son’s unholy tendencies.”

Diana gasped, her hand covering her open mouth.

Rather than the pity that Temple thought he might see, he saw only the horror in her eyes at such sacrilege.

“I never thought your grandfather as bad as all that.”

“It would be like calling Boney a nice chap.”

“How did this one survive?” she asked gazing upon it with a rare regard.

“My father had it with him at his sickbed, and he gave it to me just before he died.” Temple sighed. “I wasn’t even supposed to be there, but against my grandfather’s wishes, I snuck in. The duke was convinced I was the sickly type and would quickly succumb to the same illness. I knew he planned on sending me away on the morrow, and though only six at the time, I was determined to see my father one last time.”

Diana smiled.

Temple remembered walking the long, dark halls of Setchfield Place, the great, rambling family seat. The original house had been an Elizabethan manor house, and over the centuries had been added to and changed, until it was the great sprawling palace the Setchfield dukes smugly called home.

The ghastly place always left him petrified with terror, especially the long, dark halls lined with the portraits of his ancestors. His grim relations frowned down from their heavy frames and hangers like a line of dead men on the gibbet.

But determined he was, and not even an entire gallery of disapproving Setchfields could have deterred his steps as he padded his way from the vast nursery to his father’s sickroom on the opposite side of the house.

“There was a footman in the room, and one of the maids. When I came in, my father waved them away.” Temple paused. “They knew the duke would be furious, and if I was discovered there, they’d both lose their positions. Yet they also knew this was the last time I’d see my father.”

“So they let you stay.”

He nodded. “I sat on that immense bed and held his hand until he died a few hours later.”

Great, glistening tears welled up in the corners of Diana’s eyes. “I imagine that was a comfort to him to have you close.”

“You would think so, but all he would do was urge me to go before I was discovered.” Temple cast his gaze up at the ceiling, trying to still the tears stinging his eyes. “I think he hastened dying so I wouldn’t be caught.”

Diana took his hand and squeezed it. She guided him over to the edge of the stone hearth. Sitting down before the flames, she tugged on his hand and bid him to join her. Once he’d settled beside her, she curled into the crook of his arm and lay her head on his chest, staring into the flames. “Tell me about him. And your mother, as well.”

Temple’s memories of his parents seemed almost as elusive as the fire before them, flickering and wavering, never lingering in one spot for very long, and in an instant consumed by the vagaries of time.

But still, he clung to the precious few he’d dared hold.

“My mother was beautiful. She had long black hair and dark eyes. I thought she’d been born a raven.”

Diana giggled.

“Yes, well, laugh all you want, for you will also find it amusing that I believed my father to be a dragon slayer.”

She struggled to sit up and craned her head to look at him directly. “A dragon slayer?”

“Oh yes. For whenever my grandfather came for one of his interminable visits, my mother always said we would survive because my father knew a spell to dispatch the old fire breather.”

At this, her earlier giggles dissolved into a hearty laugh. “I’m sure there are plenty in the
ton
who would like to know that spell. Your grandfather can be quite intimidating.”

At this, Temple nodded. “Try being his heir. It killed my father, and it would have killed me if I hadn’t also inherited a measure of the old goat’s stubbornness.”

Her voice fell to a soft hush. “How was your grandfather responsible for your father’s death?”

“My mother was nearing her confinement for another child and my grandfather ordered us all to attend him at Setchfield Place. He despised how close my parents were, that they lived a happy, simple life in the country and thought nothing of Society. If my father would have had his way, he would have lived his entire life in the country and never gone to London.”

“I don’t suppose your grandfather approved of that. He’s rather fond of his prominent position.”

“Too proud,” Temple said. “When my father eloped with my mother, the duke was outraged, and for a time, my parents just ignored him and lived off a small inheritance my mother had received from a distant uncle. But unfortunately, neither of them was very good with money, and it ran out. My father swallowed what little pride he had, and they went and sought my grandfather’s help.”

“And did the duke help them?”

“Oh yes, in a manner of speaking. By then, I’d been born, another Setchfield heir, so he decided to relent. He let them have use of a small manor house and property. I think he feared that if he let them into Setchfield Place, their literary friends would arrive in droves, like ants to a picnic.”

Diana laughed. “So they got their way.”

“In a sense. It was fine for a time, but then my mother started increasing, and the duke heard about it. As much as he despised my mother, he was insistent that this child be born at Setchfield Place. I hadn’t been, the first Setchfield heir not to be born within those hallowed walls, and he considered it one of my many failings.”

Temple paused for a moment, drawing a deep breath, and then continued. “They put him off as long as they could. I think they hoped to delay him long enough so they could avoid the pomp and ceremony of a birth at Setchfield Place. But the duke was insistent. He sent his carriage and an ultimatum. Come or be cut off.”

“So what did they do?”

“We went. Over fifty miles of bad road in the middle of winter, with my mother so great with child, she took up one side of the carriage.”

He stopped and turned away, the rest of the memories too hard to face.

But Diana seemed to understand, and moved closer, taking his hand in hers. “What happened next?”

“What do you think happened? The babe came early, there in the middle of a snowstorm. The drift was so deep it seemed to envelop us. The driver and my father had to lead the horses on foot, clearing a path as we went. We made it to a poor inn, not ten miles from Setchfield Place, but we couldn’t get any farther. It was there that she and the child died, before help or a midwife could be summoned. My father was inconsolable. He was overwrought with grief.”

Diana’s fingers tightened around his. “Oh, how terrible for him. For you.”

“For all of us.” Temple paused. “He came down with a fever almost immediately and perished a few days later. The doctor said it was the chill, but I know he died of a broken heart. He couldn’t see spending the rest of his life without her.”

“But he had you,” she said. “He should have persevered for your sake.”

“I thought that as well. For years, I resented that he just gave up. But I look back now and realize he hadn’t the strength to do it. With my mother at his side, he was a dragon slayer, but without her…well, he was merely my grandfather’s inept and imperfect heir.”

“So he thought it was better that he left you in your grandfather’s clutches?” Diana’s quick temper rose in defense of the child left orphaned.

Temple smiled and reached down to smooth her hair, still her passionate fires. “My father lived his life through his poetry and basking in the glow of appreciation in my mother’s eyes. She loved him not because he was the heir to a dukedom, but because he cherished her and she him. They were kindred spirits. I think my grandfather resented her so much because she spoke my father’s language—poetry, literature, the joy in beautiful things, in quiet contemplation—mind you, none of which His Grace will ever comprehend.”