Season For Desire Page 19

  “I have no idea what that means.” Audrina swiped at her face.

  “No, the other cheek. It means you look tired and miserable, my girl. You need a distraction.”

  “I probably do.” She swiped at her face again.

  “Well, come and play cards with Richard and me. He only bets chicken stakes, but he’s not altogether terrible. I’ve come in search of a new pack because I suspect him of throwing the ace of spades into the fire.”

  “How devious.”

  “A bit, at that. There’s hope for him.” The countess’s mouth crimped tightly at the edges, which Audrina knew to mean I can hardly contain my delight, though I regard that as a sign of weakness.

  “I had best leave you to your own game.” Kind of the countess to offer, but she and Richard Rutherford would better enjoy their distraction—whatever form it might take—as a solitary pair.

  Leaving Lady Irving behind, cursing and clutching at her turban as she searched a sideboard, Audrina mounted the steps.

  Last time she had been here, she’d wished for time to flit forward. Now she wanted it to drag. She was too far away from London, and her head was too full: her distant family, the endangered wedding; Charissa’s happiness and the Duke of Walpole’s stern demeanor; the puzzle boxes and their codes. The Rutherfords’ inevitable departure.

  Had she been able to lay down these worries, this snowbound sojourn would have been a respite. For these few days, Audrina had been just that: herself. No parties or falsehoods, no barbs from a disappointed parent or lover. Just good humor, and a bit of work, and—and Giles, who wondered why she did the things she did. Who told her she need not change who she was.

  Intoxicating thought.

  Already the snow was soft and heavy from sunshine upon it, and the unfortunate stableboy had been tasked with shoveling paths from stable to carriage house, from entrance porch to road. If the skies stayed clear, tomorrow the travelers would be on their way.

  She was studying her boots as she mounted the stairs, each polished tip ink-black on the smooth stone-plated treads. Bump. At the top of the staircase, her head collided with a wall.

  Which proved not to be a wall at all, but the chest of Giles Rutherford. Nicely clad in a waistcoat checked in dark blue and green.

  “If you want attention, just say so.” He steadied her with a gentle grip on her upper arm. “No need to put your balance or your fancy coiffure at risk.”

  “I was woolgathering.” Her cheeks warm, she used this excuse for the second time within a few minutes.

  “About wanting attention?”

  “Ha. No.” Maybe. Yes. She wished she had stepped into the retiring room to clean her face and set her hair to rights.

  He stood aside and let her precede him into the corridor. “Did you get the bread pummeled into submission?”

  “More than you know. Jeanette and I beat it so much that it might not rise at all. But if it does, we’ll feast on fresh bread this afternoon with our Yorkshire Christmas pie.” A thought struck her. “Were you about to go downstairs? If so, I warn you, Lady Irving will offer to play cards with you. But under no account must you say yes, because then you will have to watch her flirt with your father.”

  He made a mock grimace. “That’s not something I want to witness, though I’m sure they’re having a pleasant time. No, I was coming in search of you.”

  “Why?”

  “To see how you were doing.”

  “Oh. I’m—fine.” Again, she dashed a forearm across her face. Did she look as disheveled as she felt within? She’d had not a moment to compose herself, although a moment would hardly be enough.

  “I don’t mean to imply that you’re lying,” Giles said thoughtfully, leaning against the plastered wall, “because that would be rude. But if you’re fine on Christmas away from your family, with as many worries as have been jostling for space in your head, then you must have turned into an automaton.”

  “Not an automaton. I am merely a proper English lady of good breeding.” She held up a quelling hand. “I know, I made it easy for you to compare. ‘What is the difference?’ Ha ha. Let me pass, please.”

  “Pass whenever you like. I’ve shoved myself against the wall so I’m not in your way. And no, I would never make that comparison in regard to you.” He folded his arms. “For one thing, you’re not as proper as you pretend to be. For another, I know there’s a big difference between not showing a feeling and not having one. And so no, I don’t think you’re fine. But if you want to act like you’re fine, that’s your business.”

  She could not trick those blue eyes; she did not want to. And yet there was so much to say, or hide, that speech was impossible for the moment.

  She shook her head.

  His expression softened, mouth in a sweet quirk. “Come with me, princess.”

  The corridor made a leftward jog, then extended straight to the north face of the building. Passing by the bedchambers flanking the corridor on the left, Giles opened a door on the right. “After you, dear lady.”

  Audrina entered not a squat, dark bedchamber—scandalous thought!—but a great square ballroom that soared to the inn’s rafters, slicing through the attic story. The floor was oiled and painted a glossy brown; the ceiling in imitation of marble. Two rows of windows broke the outer wall: the lower of normal dimensions, the upper ones smaller to tuck under the roofline. Molding framed these stacked windows, striping the light-colored walls with chestnut brown.

  “Fancy, isn’t it?” Giles said as the door closed behind them.

  Quiet. Pressingly quiet, like wind in one’s ears muting all other sound, and empty. A puzzle box with nothing inside, but there was no guiding message scrawled on its inner surface.

  “Look, we’re by ourselves now.” Giles seated himself against the far wall, across from the windows. “If you want to talk about what’s making you all twitchy and shy, fine. And if you want to just sit here and not worry that someone is going to try to extort money from you in a game of whist, or make you eat a pie made of five kinds of bird and a rabbit, that’s all right, too.”

  Audrina hesitated. She should—she wanted to—she ought to—

  Damn it all. She wanted to sit next to Giles.

  So she walked over to him and did just that.

  The ice that had coated the windows yesterday had fallen, heated by the sun. A cold but clear light filtered into the great room.

  “Giles, is it possible . . .” She chose her words carefully. “Could it be that you do not have the same ailment as your mother?”

  “That would solve a lot of problems, wouldn’t it?” His expression was wry. “I’ve often thought so. But no, it came on right about the same time hers got very bad. Pain in the wrists and forearms—it’s unmistakable.”

  “Jeanette told me her grandmother had arthritis in her hands, and that it never got better with rest.”

  “Different people feel it differently, I expect.” His tone was light, but its tenor was unmistakable: That’s enough. “I can leave you alone if you like.” Already, he had rolled into a crouch, ready to stand.

  “No, stay. Please. I would like the company.”

  He searched her for a long moment, eyes clear and piercing. The scrutiny was awkward yet pleasurable, a slow sweep of blue that made her insides clench and heat. She could not break the gaze, and yet to look at him for so long was a type of nakedness she had never felt before.

  “All right.” He settled back into place beside her, close enough that his coat sleeve brushed the long sleeve of her gown. The fine hairs on her arm prickled. Her throat felt dry.

  “We shall be leaving tomorrow, I think.” Her voice echoed with false brightness in the high-ceilinged room.

  “In time to get you back to London for your sister’s wedding.” Giles folded one leg into a careless triangle and slung his arm over the top. The icy sun paled his skin against the dark green of his coat. “That’s what you’ve wanted, isn’t it? To get back to London?”

  “I
want my sister to be married. Once she is, Llewellyn’s threats will not matter.”

  “They’ll still matter to you.”

  She clenched her fists in her lap, wishing for a shawl to worry at. “Maybe. Yes. But that is not the most important thing right now. Protecting my sister is.”

  “From Llewellyn’s schemes? Or from that duke she’s going to marry?”

  “Decidedly the former. If Charissa fears anything about the duke, it is that she may not enchant him as much as he enchants her.” Blithe Charissa desired her wedding day’s arrival with single-minded delight. They was no room for any anxiety in her mind, except a pleasurable flurry of nerves about pleasing her stiff-necked betrothed. “She . . . loves him,” Audrina added as though it were an afterthought.

  When of course it was everything. Loves—a word of only one syllable, yet so weighty it was almost impossible for Audrina to pronounce.

  For now, Charissa was happy, and Audrina must make sure her own actions did not endanger that feeling.

  For that matter, their elder sisters Romula and Theodosia were happy, too. Quieter than Charissa or Audrina, once they had been scarred by smallpox, they were content to abandon society for a country life with men who loved them.

  And then there was Petra, the fourth daughter, who had expressed such a strong desire to study art in Italy that she had retreated to her room, crying, for days on end. Finally, the earl and countess had let her go. For a year they had received chirpy periodic letters from her, and even a painting the previous Christmas.

  Petra had found happiness, too.

  That just left Audrina, sitting on the hard wooden floor of a ballroom in a York inn.

  “Charissa. Audrina.” Giles ticked the names off on his fingers. “Petra. And who else?”

  “Romula and Theodosia are oldest.”

  Giles whistled. “Your parents certainly didn’t give you ordinary names.”

  “They did not want us to be ordinary.”

  “What’s so bad about ordinary? Ordinary is the way most people live.”

  “That alone makes it unacceptable.” She stretched out her legs, keeping her focus on the glossy toes of her boots. Blinking too often by far, but there was no help for that. An occasional tear must leak out with these words. “And yet I am just like everyone else, Giles. There are five of me within my own family. I could do nothing that had not already been done first or better. So I could only do things last and worst.”

  “Not worst.” He spoke low and gently. “Different. I guarantee you none of your sisters has done anything like what you’ve done over the past week or two.”

  She could make no response but a tight smile. Tense, to hold in feeling that trembled like a plucked guitar string. Love and joy come to you . . .

  A man like Giles could only have come from a family where he was loved enough to stretch, to go his own way and come back. A land where buildings were new and snow scrubbed the sky clean and blue and white. None of these gray winters, these gray people in ossified buildings.

  Maybe he was not her equal by birth, but she was not his by behavior. She was the one who had been foolish and weak and tricked.

  But he had never held that against her. She was the one who had chosen to dwell on it. She had agreed, meek and tired, to stay away from London. She had let her father tell her she was not welcome at a family wedding. That she was an embarrassment.

  Because she believed him. Because she had put her trust in the wrong person, and he had betrayed her, and therefore she deserved to be punished.

  Once upon a time, maybe, there had been bravery in secretly doing what she ought not. Oh, what a clever girl to take a lover. To slip from the house to call on a scandalous friend. Oh, how cunning and sly to do these things and smile demurely over dinner, no one the wiser.

  But there was no such thing as a secret. Any interaction—from conversation to intercourse—involved at least two. Though she might guard her tongue and her speech and her behavior, that other person had the power to make a different choice.

  Had power over her.

  And now she was eaten by the idea that no one on earth was proud of her, not even herself. To be different was to be unacceptable. To be ordinary was to be unacceptable.

  To hold oneself at a chilly distance was intolerable, but to mingle with servants would never do. To bake was improper; to be idle was insufferable.

  She was familiar with every negative prefix the English language had to offer, but she did not know their converse. What to put in their place? How to fill the gaps in her time and her heart?

  “No,” she said quietly. “None of my sisters has done what I have.” None of them had wondered like this. None of them had needed to.

  Giles Rutherford seemed to like her the way she was. Not as a reflection of her family, or a purse to be dipped into. As fellow travelers, they were on their own, divorced from the outside world.

  But the world waited. It crouched outside the snowbound inn, with the sharp claws and teeth of rumor and ticking time. It would tear apart Charissa’s wedding, and that would tear apart their family.

  So what was Giles’s opinion worth if she knew he was wrong?

  And if he was wrong about her, why was it so reassuring to be near him? To breathe in his scent, soap and starch and something sweet, like sugared coffee or a stolen apple tart. To study the map of freckles over his cheekbones; the thin slice of a scar through his lip, permanent proof of his devotion to a younger brother. To admire his hands, his strong-fingered, broad-palmed hands, and to want them tracing every line of her body.

  Not worse, he had said. Different.

  Maybe different was better—or could become so.

  The air between them was thick and vibrant as crystal.

  “Giles. Will you come to my chamber?” she asked.

  Eyes closing, he took a deep breath; a breath that looked as though it hurt him or scoured him clean. She could not tell which, and her heart tottered, ready to fall into despair or delight.

  When he opened his eyes, they looked like a warm summer sky. “Lead the way, princess.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Wherein Giles’s Hands Could Carry the World

  As soon as the bedchamber door locked behind them, Audrina understood why she had requested the same room she had stayed in two weeks ago, when first arriving at the Goat and Gauntlet. It was for the unspoken hope of a moment like this: to replace the shame and fright of locked away from with the delight of locked away with.

  She turned from Giles to remove her boots, feeling nervous and powerful at once. It was an unlikely setting for a seduction, this simple, clean bedchamber with a small desk and a privacy screen—and a pencil post bed, covered in a pale piecework quilt that seemed, in its elegant jumble of patterns, an apt reflection of Audrina’s feelings.

  The walls were blue as Giles’s eyes; the fireplace of white-painted brick. It was like being in the sky, unmoored and free.

  But this was hardly a moment to go flitting off into fancy. This was a moment for locking the door. Building up the fire. Pulling back the counterpane on a bed that seemed very large. A cocoon of crisp sheets and heavy bed-curtains.

  This whole journey was a cocoon, and soon enough she would have to leave it and stretch her wings. For now, though, she was wrapped in lost time, and when she turned back to Giles, tall and solid and smiling, he cradled her face in his hands.

  Gently, he brushed her lips with his, then pulled back to look at her. “When I said I was not going to kiss you, I couldn’t bear for that to be the end of the sentence. The word yet always followed in my thoughts.”

  “Yet you seemed so determined not to.”

  “I had to be very determined indeed. When a beautiful, brave, curious, passionate woman wants to kiss a man—well. It seems like the best thing in the world.”

  “What’s different this time? Are you going to stop?” She covered his fingers with hers, holding his hand to her cheek. “Tell me now if kisses are all you wa
nt, or if you want to stop.”

  “I never wanted to stop.” His thumb traced her cheekbone. “The difference this time is why we are doing it.”

  “What it means.” Her voice was quiet over the desire that began to flow and pool, liquid within her.

  “Yes.” He seemed to look deep into her, sifting through her every thought. But she could not read his, and what it meant to him, she did not know. Again, she wanted to lose herself. To let the outside world fall away with its troublesome past and future; to live only in the pleasure of the moment. But it was different this time, because she chose him as her partner: not because he was at hand, but because he was Giles.

  When he kissed her again, she rose to her toes to meet his lips. A deeper kiss, and she threaded her hands through the short silk of his hair to pull him closer. Sipping, tasting, a pressure of lips melting into a sweet clash of tongues. The heat of his mouth on hers made winter fall away.

  Was this wrong? Too much or not enough? She couldn’t ask what passion meant to him; not now. Not when she was all stammering need, halting and wanting and hoping. She did not even know what she hoped he would say.

  So they kissed: deep kisses that made wetness slick between her thighs, gentle ones that made her strain for more. Laughing kisses as his mouth danced over her cheeks and nose; then demanding kisses that crushed their bodies together until she could feel his solid shaft, pressed between their bellies.

  When she sank down from her tiptoes, breaking their link, he was breathing as hard as she was. A hot flush colored his cheekbones. God bless the complexion of a redhead, which proved he felt as much desire as she.

  “We must get you undressed,” she said. It was the work of two to tug free his boots and strip off his heavy woolen coat. His cravat, he untied with steady hands and a slight smile as she watched, hungry for every fraction of skin exposed.

  Then he worked free his cuff links, smooth jasper set into gold.

  Audrina smiled and laid them on the wooden desk for him. “When you removed these in the kitchen yesterday, I had a treacherous urge to take them away from you so that you couldn’t put your sleeves back down.”