The Seduction (35 page)

"How noble of you to try! What did you offer
him for it?"

"Something Ι believed he would value
far more. In fact, Ι was devilish certain of it." He turned to the
window and leaned there, staring out. "Ι misjudged that, too. He
wouldn't bite. Why did he want the locket so much, Juliet?"

"Don't use my name!"

His back became rigid. Suddenly he banged one
fist on the shutter, making it rattle. "Faith, ma'am! We have been
lovers!"

She leaped up. "Lovers? What the deuce do
you know of love?"

"Lovers!
You gave me your body. Ι gave you mine.
Perhaps it was for all the wrong reasons. Perhaps it happened because an
enemy's foul machinations threw us together. Yet for one night we were naked in
each other's arms, innocent of anything but that one glorious fact."

"The animals in the barnyard do as
much."

"Don't you dare tell me that!" He spun
like a fencer, his body a weapon, his voice deadly. "Our hands gloried in
the feel of each other's skin. Our lips and tongues and fingers ran free as the
wind to seek and explore in pure delectation. Your legs wrapped eagerly about
mine. My very soul emptied in worship of your body. We devoured each other as
if it were the dawn of creation-"

"It meant nothing - a coupling!"

"Ι know you regret it. Ι
cannot!
And neither, devil take it, will Ι let you deny what really happened
between us."

She pointed to the door, ablaze with anger.
"Leave!"

"As you wish. But let us have this one thing
clear: we were magnificent lovers-"

"What difference does it make?"

"This difference, Juliet." He stalked
toward her until he stood close enough to touch. His clean male scent enveloped
her. "The facts. You desire me as much as Ι desire you. Ι shall
not act on it. Ι shall not-"

"Ι
hate
you," she insisted.

"Yes, you hate me." Sunlight dazzled
behind his fair head. "That changes nothing. Α desire like this
flames with its own logic. If Ι were to kiss you now, you would kiss me
back, with passion, with fervor, with an open, seeking mouth."

"Ι would not," she said, though
her lips burned and heat ran in treacherous waves over her skin.

"Don't you dare deny it! If Ι were to
touch you - even your shoulder or your hand - your legs would tremble, your
body burst into flame, as mine would, as mine does just to stand this close.
Your skin smolders now. Ι am scorched by the heat of it."

She closed her eyes and wrapped both arms over
her breasts. "For pity's sake!"

"How the devil can Ι be merciful
now?" His voice vibrated with passion. "Ι am in an agony of
hunger for you. If Ι were to slide away that ugly gown and cup your naked
breast-"

"Stop it!" she begged. "What are
you trying to prove?"

His heels struck hard on the floorboards as he
strode away and wrenched open the door. His answer came back as if he Bung it.

"The sheer magnitude of what we give up, if
we never make love again, and that even if you hate me, you can trust me to
admit the bloody truth and still not act on it!"

The door slammed.

Juliet staggered to the bed and curled up. Her
heart raced, thundering in her chest. He was right. Oh, God, he was right! Her
whole being was consumed with longing. If he had kissed her or touched her,
they would be together now, naked, in this bed. Her legs burned, her groin
ached. Her body yearned to open and welcome him.

The shame of it scorched into her soul, burning a
yet deeper trace of hatred. He never doubted his own allure. He was so certain
of his potency, he no longer even tempered it with charm.

Ι fear my stay at the Three Tuns will
require me to exchange pleasantries with rustics in the taproom, until Ι
forget that Ι ever knew anything besides turnips and mangel-wurzels. You
cannot be cruel enough to condemn me to such a fate

He was right. She was not cruel enough. She' must
harden her heart, until she could become so.

Shadrach leaped onto the pillow-soft marmalade
comfort. Meshach sat licking a paw in front of the fireplace. Abednego arched
his back and hissed as the door opened and a string of servants entered with
her breakfast and bath. Behind them came the maid who had shown Juliet to this room
the night before. Her arms were full of clothes.

"
Υ
our things, ma' am."
The maid curtsied.

The girl was carrying Juliet's own gowns and
petticoats that George’s men had thrown out into the garden yesterday as valueless
- all except the pink dress she had worn in the carriage with Alden, which they
had carried off to sell. So in the dark, wet garden, he had even gathered up
her dresses.

The maid blushed, reminding Juliet of Tilly -
that nervous awareness such girls always showed around a man like Lord Gracechurch.
"Ι have a message from His Lordship."

Juliet sat up, filled with a nervous awareness of
her own. "A message?"

The girl looked at the ceiling, frowning with
concentration, as if trying to retrieve each word exactly from memory.

"Lord Gracechurch said he hopes your clothes
are adequately cleaned and pressed, ma'am, seeing as how he don't keep a
ladies' wardrobe in the house. Even though, His Lordship said, he thought as
how you might believe that he would."

The maid grinned
triumphantly, bobbed another curtsy, and carried the clothes into the dressing
room.

Juliet burst into laughter. It gave way, at last,
to tears. The three cats jumped onto the bed and curled up beside her, as if to
offer comfort.

EVEN IN HER BEST BLUE GOWN, JULIET KNEW SHE
LOOKED NO better than any of the servants on their afternoon off. Nothing
could be more irrelevant. As soon as she had eaten breakfast and dressed, she
walked down into the gardens to find a quiet place where she could think.

How on earth to plan for the future? She had
nothing, literally, but the clothes she stood up in. Her family had disowned
her. Anything she possessed, or could earn or acquire, belonged, and would
always belong, to her husband, who - in spite of everything - had offered her
a home.

What other alternatives remained? Only
prostitution of one kind or another. Disgraced wives had chosen before to live
in scandal as another man's mistress. But not, of course, with this man. Lord
Gracechurch might offer such a position, but only to use her, devour her sou1,
then cast her off. It was what such men did. Even with Alden Granville, even
with him, it would only be harlotry in the end.

George knew that. He had known in Manston Mingate
that her refusal to return with him was empty. Even if he starved her or beat
her, even if he punished her for her adultery for the rest of her 1ife, she had
nowhere else to go.

If Lord Edward had been p1anning this revenge for
five years, he had certainly planned it well!

Α small rustle startled her. Juliet looked
around and her breath stopped. Α blond head was poking out from some
bushes.

Air rushed from her lungs. "Sherry?"

The boy crawled on all fours onto the gravel
wa1kway, then stood up and grinned at her. Leaves were caught in his hair.

"Have you seen Lord Gracechurch?" the
child asked.

The stubborn litt1e chin and something about the
set of the nostrils reminded her so fiercely of Kit she felt ill. Juliet shook
her head.

"Ι want to show him something."
Sherry felt in a pocket with one grubby fist.

She was fifteen again, older sister to a little
boy like this, the longed-for son who would inherit her father's lands and
title, the baby who had been born after her mother had lost so many others -
in the womb, in the cradle - with a solid grasp on his sister's heart. Viscount
Kittering: with his death had come the end of the family's hopes. Now the
earldom would die with her father.

Without thinking, she reached for her locket and
found only naked skin.

Juliet took a deep breath, then another. At
fifteen she had never been kissed, never had any thought for the future.
Whenever George Hardcastle came across her in the house or garden, he had been
respectful, deferential. She had thought of nothing in those endless summer
days but playing games in the gardens with her brother, reading, sewing, riding
in a decorous little party across her father' s great estates, always with a
groom, a maid. Yet George had still found ways to come upon her alone.

Kit was dead, drowned in a swollen ford.

This child lived.

"What do you have to show him?" she
asked.

"We're collecting birds' eggs," Sherry
said. "Mr. Primrose and me."

"Ι had a little brother once. He liked
to find birds' eggs, too. How many do you have?"

Sherry pulled several little bundles of rags from
his pockets and set them on the bench. He unwrapped them one at a time.

"A robin, a yellowhammer, a bullfinch, a
hedge sparrow, a blackbird and a wren. That's six. Mr. Primrose said I'm to
find ten different kinds, because we must never take more than one egg from a
nest. Do you like birds?"

"Very much."

Yellow hair tumbled over the boy's forehead. Yet
she folded her hands in her lap and watched him, holding in the pain and trying
to bury it.

"This speckled blue-green one is a
blackbird's. Bullfinch eggs are greenish, too, with these little brown
marks." His forefinger pointed. "This one's the wren's."

The child's neck seemed so slender, such a slight
thread supporting such a precious life.

"And who laid this one?"

He looked up, just as Kit would have looked up,
with a tiny scorn. "That's a robin's. Everyone knows that! Ι found
the nest in some broken bricks in the garden wall. This pink one with the
purplish squiggles is a yellowhammer's, but sometimes they're more white,
too."

"And the hedge sparrow's egg is as blue as a
summer sky," a man's voice said. "Her nest is mossy and grassy, but
not as neat as a chaffinch's. Did your sparrow line the inside of hers with
wool, sir, or horsehair?"

Alden stood with arms
folded, leaning against a tree a few feet away. He looked as if he had been
standing there for a very long time. His gaze was shadowed, though the sun
brightly burnished his hair and played lovingly over the rich cream brocade of
his jacket. He met Juliet's startled gaze and smiled.

"Wool!" Sherry shouted. "
And
hair!"

Ignoring the man's costly clothes, the boy
launched himself at his protector, shrieking as Alden swung him up in the air
with both hands. Juliet felt instantly excluded. Man and child laughed together
until breathless. It was a rough-and-rumble, masculine good humor - even in the
little boy - banishing anything female and soft.

"The woodpile!" Sherry yelled.
"Ι found it in the woodpile."

Still laughing, Alden set him down and allowed
the child to lead him back to the seat. Juliet wanted to leap up and leave. For
Sherry's sake, she did not. Instead she sat, her blue skirts spread next to the
birds' eggs, and suppressed her rush of bodily awareness.

For several minutes man and boy studied the eggs.
While Sherry chatted excitedly about birds, Alden added grave comments, taking
the child's interest perfectly seriously. The wren's nest lined with feathers.
The blackbird building her neat cup of grass and mud and dead leaves in the
hedge. The handsome bullfinch with his rose-pink breast. His drab mate hiding
her nest deep in a bramble patch, where only a determined child could wriggle
his way in.

"Now, sir," Alden said at last.
"Take the eggs to Mr. Primrose. He is waiting for you in the herb garden.
He has some bugs to show you, and you can learn which ones the birds like to
eat."

The boy obediently wrapped the eggs, thrust them
back into his pockets and ran off.

Juliet stood up and watched him go, feeling as if
part of her heart were running away on those stout little legs.

"Ι came here to apologize," Alden
said. "Ι didn't expect to find Sherry."

"Apologize?
For destroying my life, or for forgetting your
manners?"

Alden closed his eyes, almost as if he were in
pain. "The boy is safe here only thanks to you. Ι hope you may derive
some comfort from that, at least."

Comfort?
Sherry disturbed her, opened that aching, lost
place in her heart where she had stored her memories of Kit: bittersweet
memories that time had already blurred, however fiercely she tried to pay
homage to them.

Now the child's guardian stood, tall and
powerful, offering his empty repentance and refusing to meet her accusatory
gaze.

She took a deep breath. "Yet it was your
idea to risk his future and this entire place over a wager."

His lids flew open, revealing that passionate
blue. "How very careless of me! When Ι have worked so deuced hard to
save it."