The Rogue's Reluctant Rose (14 page)

Araminta, however, felt a sense of dawning realisation as she watched him. His accusation had been both unacceptable and entirely without merit. His manner to the stable groom had been nothing if not abrupt. She almost forgot her anger as she stared at him in wonderment.

He was jealous, she realised, suddenly very sure that her realisation was spot on.

Chestleton seemed to guess what she was thinking. Her eyes narrowed furiously as he laughed at her. “You think that
I
would rather be a recipient of your affections? Perhaps you think me
jealous
?” he scoffed. “Nonsense. What grounds have I for being jealous, Miss Barrington? You mistake me for your beloved Sir Timothy.”

Araminta was not convinced. She was sure she had been right, that his curtness with the groom had been nothing but jealousy! For some reason she would never dare name, the thought that such a man as he would be possessive of
her
sent a warm, tingling feeling into her stomach. She considered him for a moment in cool silence.

At last, Araminta turned and, ignoring him, proceeded to the back of the stables, where she could just see Nightstar peeking out of the stall. The horse gave a whinny of recognition when he saw her, and her face lit up with genuine pleasure when she extended her hand for him to nuzzle.

Jasper watched her lazily for a moment. He knew that in the name of propriety she ought to have stormed righteously out of the stable. Her chilly decision to stay, however, felt like an acceptance of a challenge that he had not known he had issued. Patting Dante’s nose, he watched her coo to her horse, for all the world as if the fearsome black stallion were nothing but a puppy.

Jasper waited a few minutes longer, feeding Dante sugar cubes which he had produced from the pocket of his coat. At last, feeling that the young lady’s temper had had sufficient time to cool, he approached Araminta. She turned her head to regard him as he approached, and he extended a gloved hand towards her, offering her sugar cubes for her horse.

Araminta accepted the cubes warily, her other hand stroking Nightstar’s majestic mane.

“His name is Nightstar,” she volunteered a moment later and the marquis felt confident that they were on their way to calling a truce. As they were leaving the stables, Jasper introduced her to Dante, and Araminta reached out to pat the stallion’s nose before Chestleton could stop her.

Dante had always been a temperamental horse and wary of strangers. It had taken a lot of sugar cubes for the Dillwood grooms to be able to approach the stallion.

“Miss Barrington!” he exclaimed as she reached out a hand, which Dante seemed to calmly accept.

“What is it?” She did not even look at him.

“I thought that Dante might bite you. He is not very friendly to strangers. You ought to be careful.”

“But he did
not
bite me.” Her voice sounded amused at his concern.

“And I am very surprised by that.”

“Perhaps Dante is not as bad as you would paint him, marquis,” she murmured, before fishing an apple from a nearby basket and feeding it to Dante, who whinnied his appreciation.

“Perhaps. Or perhaps it is you who has a magic touch. Shall we?” He offered her his arm once again.

“How fanciful. No, that cannot be right.” She accepted his arm, and they headed out of the stables. She was in a merry mood after visiting Nightstar, and as she exited the stables, she stepped carelessly on the wooden steps leading out of the side door. Unexpectedly, her ankle turned, and she would have fallen had Chestleton’s arm not shot out and grasped her around the waist, pulling her securely against his own body.

“Oh! How clumsy,” she stammered in embarrassment, as she felt the warmth of his body and his muscular build even through his frock coat. “I am so very embarrassed, Lord Chestleton.”

He did not immediately let go of her, and she did not immediately step away from his proximity. “Not at all, Miss Barrington. Are you quite alright?”

“Yes. Yes, perfectly alright.” She quickly stepped away from him, retaining only a hold on his elbow as she experimentally moved her turned ankle. “It is nothing. Only my pride is hurt, really.”

That unfamiliar sense of protectiveness flooded through Chestleton yet again at the sight of the abashed look on her pretty face, and he found himself seized by a strong desire to regain his close hold on her waist, to hold her securely against him and to keep her from falling. He was appalled at this compulsion, for it was not in his stormy nature to feel that way about any woman. Such feelings were dangerous, and only a fool would put himself willingly in the path of danger.

A part of him, which he immediately fought to suppress, pointed out that he had put himself on that path the moment he had picked her up that night in the storm, her form so fragile in his arms that, in that instant, he would have laid down his life to protect her.

***

That night, supper was a muted affair. Araminta sat across the polished dining table from her enigmatic host. Some sort of truce seemed to come over them, and they had managed to avoid any arguments as they spoke quietly over their food.

Araminta’s eyes were involuntarily drawn to his long pale fingers, curled carelessly around the stem of his wine glass. They were a musician’s hands, and she wondered idly if he played the pianoforte, or perhaps the violin. She didn’t know how to reconcile this picture of him with what she knew of his wild nature. She pictured him briefly, in his shirtsleeves and with his cravat untied, playing a passionate violin serenade under her window in the moonlight. With his dark looks and strong features he would cut a most dashing figure, like a gypsy king out of a fairy tale, come to lure her away to his kingdom of night and fire.

“Miss Barrington?” his voice dissipated her daydream, and Araminta started, catching his eyes glinting at her across the table. She could not see very clearly in the candlelight, but she was sure his expression was amused, as though this was not the first time he had called her name, and as if he had caught her staring at his fingers like an infatuated waif. “I asked how you were enjoying your roast.”

“Oh. It is lovely. Thank you,” she stammered awkwardly. “Do you play the violin?” she blurted out before she could stop herself. A dark eyebrow quirked up at her, and he was no longer hiding his obvious amusement as he watched her.

Araminta wondered what had possessed her to say such an absurd thing out loud, though she tried to comfort herself with the thought that he could not possibly have known what she had been thinking earlier. Suddenly very interested in her silverware, she felt like a coward. She shifted in her seat and forced herself to meet his gaze. Once again she marvelled at the strange power of his eyes, which seemed to look right through her, to read her every secret.

“What a curious question. I wonder what brought it on, my rose?” he drawled, “but no, as it happens, I do not. Though I do play the pianoforte.”

“Ah. Yes. A fine instrument.”

“Indeed.” She had the distinct impression that he was laughing at her.

***

That night, after Lord Chestleton walked her to her door and graciously bid her goodnight, Araminta found that she could not sleep. A maid Araminta did not know, who must have belonged to the marquis’s staff, had come in to help her undress and prepare for bed, and Araminta’s mind kept returning to a picture of his eyes watching her as they spoke softly in the candlelight.

At last she was alone, and she tried not to linger on the sensation of his lips just barely brushing across her skin as he kissed her hand before departing.

Logically, Araminta knew that he was a rake. He was infamous for his charm… And all the more dangerous for it. She knew that she had to resist him, resist even her own feelings, those strange, dark feelings that surprised and frightened her. She could not allow herself to succumb for even a moment, or all would be lost. She could risk neither her virtue nor her heart in playing the dangerous game into which the dark marquis was drawing her.

She had never believed herself to be the sort of girl who would succumb to the wicked charms of such a man. And yet, she was not entirely sure that Jasper Devereaux
was
the kind of man his reputation made him out to be. She was sure that she had caught glimpses, brief though they might have been, of something more beneath his carefully constructed veneer. A capacity for tenderness, which he kept carefully locked away. She wondered at the reason for this, and her thoughts strayed to the child she had met in the rose garden. Did it have anything to do with the girl? The more she thought about it, the more curious she grew as to Charlotte’s connection with Chestleton.

Or perhaps he was exactly the disreputable kind of man with whom she had no business being acquainted. Perhaps it was all nothing but an act to draw her in, even to seduce her. She blushed at the very thought. No, she would do well to keep away, lest her heart succumb to his alluring magic.

Or, even worse, what if it was too late, if his magic had already enchanted her? Was she on her way to being as dissolute as he? Was she just another Violet Grey?

Her candle blown out, Araminta lay for a long time in the darkness, unable to fall asleep, tossing and turning, thoughts racing through her mind. He had asked to accompany her on a picnic the following day, if the weather was clear, and she had found herself accepting before she was fully cognisant of her own words.

When she did fall asleep at last, she dreamed of thin, sensual lips travelling across her skin, and a velvet voice murmuring unmentionable things into her ear. A warm body pressing hers onto her bed and hands raking through her unbound hair. The stranger in her dream bore a striking resemblance to the dark marquis.

***

Jasper Devereaux was having as much trouble sleeping as his beautiful guest. He was feeling restless. Earlier he had found himself pacing the length of his room, like a caged lion. Now, he lay for a long time in his large bed, unable to forget the feeling of Araminta in his arms, her body pressed against his, as he had caught her after her near-fall outside the stable.

He had not failed to notice the way she had been watching him at supper, the way her eyes had travelled over his hand and the way her gaze seemed to lock momentarily with his when she realised that he had witnessed her scrutiny of him. He was not certain what she had been thinking about, but from the way she had stammered out her answer and from the mortified flush on her cheeks, he felt sure that she had not been contemplating his wine glass. He knew now, without a doubt, that she desired him, if only she would admit it to herself, just as much as he desired her.

He found that he longed to be able to read her mind, to understand what went on behind her beautiful eyes. Try as he might to gauge her moods or predict her reactions, she somehow succeeded in circumventing his every effort. More curious yet, she did not seem aware of her own mysteriousness. Araminta Barrington, for all her attempts to catch a moneyed husband, had not the guile that he had come to associate with women, both high-born ladies and
demi-monde
mistresses. She seemed to play no intentional games of seduction, to employ none of the usual tricks in netting herself a man. And yet, she did play games, games he found that he could not understand. She seemed to exist bound by a completely different set of rules from those he had always understood.

The image of her flashing eyes when he had made her angry, and the soft, guileless expression on her face at supper, continued to haunt him throughout the long, sleepless night.

***

The first thing Araminta thought of when she saw Chestleton the next morning was the dream she had had the night before. The second was an observation that he was every bit as fine a specimen of manhood as her imagination had painted him the previous night. Murmuring a shy ‘good morning’, she quickly dropped her gaze and busied herself with her breakfast, thereby failing to observe his own curious expression at her strange behaviour.

Aware that she had agreed to go on a picnic with him, she desperately regretted her own impetuosity the previous night. She had contemplated feigning illness or a headache to avoid having to go on the picnic. She was sure that she would be unable to be alone with him in such close quarters without reviewing the finer details of her dream in her mind’s eye, and she was not sure her composure or her sanity would be able to survive
that
.

And yet, Araminta suspected that if she were to fib her way out of the picnic, he would immediately know what she was about. No, she needed a better plan. Mrs Becker perhaps, could be prevailed upon to come along, for she would need a chaperone. But Mrs Becker had proved to be unreliable the previous day when she had left them in the rose garden, and she might leave again, more likely than not, Araminta suspected, at the marquis’s own instruction.

“My dear, I hope you are still agreeable on having a picnic lunch today? The weather promises to be very fine,” Chestleton observed, looking out of the breakfast room window.

The weather appeared fine indeed, and Araminta felt resentful at the injustice of this. It had been perfectly dreadful when she had gone riding, landing her in this sorry mess, and now that what she truly needed was a good, sound storm, the sun had obstinately decided to come out.

“Oh, yes,” she lied in answer to his question. “Certainly, it will be a fine picnic in such weather. I wonder though…” she began with studied uncertainty, at last coming onto what seemed a promising idea.

“Yes?” He looked up at her over his cup of coffee.

“The little girl — ”

“Charlotte, you mean? My niece. The daughter of my late brother, and my ward,” the marquis informed her smoothly, and Araminta suddenly felt very silly and slightly guilty over the assumptions she had been building in her mind. Niece! Of course, it was as simple as that. She had not known that he had ever had a brother.

“Oh. I see. Well, yes, Charlotte. She seemed to enjoy your company very much yesterday and was reluctant to leave you. Perhaps you would like for her to come along?”