He laughed, took her face in his hands, and stroked his thumbs along the line of her jaw. "Deeply and completely. What fools we have been, eh? Each of us secretly pining after the other. We must name our first child after Hartwell for hatching the scheme that finally brought us together."
She smiled at the implication of his words, and was tilting her mouth up for another kiss when a shriek from the shrubbery interrupted them.
"Lydia! What on earth are you about?"
Dear G.o.d, it was her mother. She looked anxiously at Geoffrey, who kissed her hand and rose from the bench.
"Not to worry, Mrs Bettridge. Miss Lydia and I have come to an understanding. I trust you will forgive us for behaving improperly, but we were too excited and happy to resist a kiss or two."
"Well." Her mother frowned, but she did not fool Lydia. She was surely thrilled beyond measure. "I suppose one must forgive high spirits at such a time. You will, naturally, call upon Mr Bettridge tomorrow."
"You may tell him to expect me."
"Good. In the meantime, Lydia, come with me. You must not been seen coming out of the garden with Mr Danforth, regardless of his intentions. People will talk, you know. Come along now."
Her mother linked arms with her and walked towards the house. Lydia cast one last, longing look at Geoffrey before following her mother out of the garden and up the terrace steps.
"Well, my dear." Her mother gave her arm a fond squeeze. "What an interesting evening you have had. Aren"t you glad Philip Hartwell didn"t show up for that first set?"
"I have never been so glad of anything in all my life."
And she would thank him for it for staying inside on a rainy day, for explaining the male psyche, for concocting a most excellent plan and for giving up his role in it. But mostly, for helping her to achieve her heart"s desire. At long last.
Upon a Midnight Clear.
Anna Campbell.
North Yorkshire December 1826.
The crash of shattering wood and the terrified screams of horses sliced through the frosty night like a knife.
Sebastian Sinclair, Earl of Kinvarra, swore, brought his restive mount under control, then spurred the nervous animal around the turn in the snowy road. With cold clarity, the full moon shone on the white landscape, and starkly revealed the disaster before him.
A flashy black curricle lay on its side in a ditch, the hood up against the weather. One horse had broken free and wandered along the roadway, its harness dragging. The other plunged in the traces, struggling to escape.
Swiftly Kinvarra dismounted knowing his mare would await his signal and dashed to free the distressed horse. As he slid down the icy ditch, a hatless man scrambled out of the smashed curricle.
"Are you hurt?" Kinvarra asked, casting a quick eye over him.
"No, I thank you, sir." The effete blond fellow turned to the carriage. "Come, darling. Let me a.s.sist you."
A graceful black-gloved hand extended from inside and a cloaked woman emerged with more aplomb than Kinvarra would have thought possible in the circ.u.mstances. Indications were that neither traveller was injured, so he concentrated on the trapped horse. When he spoke soothingly to the animal, the terrified beast quieted to panting stillness, exhausted from its thrashing. While Kinvarra checked the horse, murmuring calm a.s.surances throughout, the stranger helped the lady up to the roadside.
With a shrill whinny, the horse shook itself and jumped up to trot along the road towards its partner. Neither beast seemed to suffer worse than fright, a miracle considering that the curricle was beyond repair.
"Madam, are you injured?" Kinvarra asked as he climbed up the ditch. He stuck his riding crop under his arm and brushed his gloved hands together to knock the clinging snow from them. It was a h.e.l.lishly cold night.
The woman kept her head down. From shock? From shyness? For the sake of propriety? Perhaps he"d stumbled on some elopement or clandestine meeting.
"Madam?" he asked again, more sharply.
"Sweeting?" The yellow-haired fop bent to peer into the shadows cast by the hood. "Are you sure you"re unharmed? Speak, my dove. Your silence strikes a chill to my soul."
While Kinvarra digested the man"s outlandish phrasing, the woman stiffened and drew away. "For heaven"s sake, Harold, you"re not giving a recitation at a musicale." With an unmistakably impatient gesture, she flung back the hood and glared straight at Kinvarra.
Even though he"d identified her the moment she spoke, he found himself staring dumbstruck into her face a piquant, vivid, pointed face under an untidy tumble of luxuriant gold hair.
He wheeled on the pale fellow. "What the devil are you doing with my wife?"
Alicia Sinclair, Countess of Kinvarra, was bruised and angry and uncomfortable and horribly embarra.s.sed. And not long past the choking terror she had felt when the carriage toppled.
Even so, her heart launched into the wayward dance it always performed at the merest sight of Sebastian.
She"d been married for eleven long years. She disliked her husband more than any other man in the world. But nothing prevented her gaze from clinging helplessly to every line of that narrow, intense face with its high cheekbones, long, arrogant nose and sharply angled jaw.
d.a.m.n him to Hades, he was still the most magnificent creature she"d ever beheld.
Such a pity his soul was as black as his glittering eyes.
"After all this time, I"m flattered you still recognize me, My Lord," she said silkily.
"Lord Kinvarra, this is a surprise," Harold stammered. "You must wonder what I"m doing here with the lady . . ."
Oh, Harold, act the man, even if the hero is beyond your reach. Kinvarra doesn"t care enough about me to kill you, however threatening he seems now.
Although even the most indifferent husband took it ill when his wife chose a lover. Kinvarra wouldn"t mistake what Alicia was doing out here. She stifled a rogue pang of guilt. Curse Kinvarra, she had absolutely nothing to feel guilty about.
"I"ve recalled your existence every quarter these past ten years, my love," her husband said equally smoothly, ignoring Harold"s appalled interjection. The faint trace of Scottish brogue in his deep voice indicated his temper. His breath formed white clouds on the frigid air. "I"m perforce reminded when I pay your allowance, only to receive sinfully little return."
"That warms the c.o.c.kles of my heart," she sniped, not backing down.
She refused to cower like a wet hen before his banked anger. He sounded reasonable, calm, controlled, but she had no trouble reading fury in the tension across his broad shoulders or in the way his powerful hands opened and closed at his sides.
"Creatures of ice have no use for a heart. Does this paltry fellow know he risks frostbite in your company?"
She steeled herself against the taunting remark. Kinvarra couldn"t hurt her now. He hadn"t been able to hurt her since she"d left him. Any twinge she experienced was just because she was vulnerable after the accident. That was all. It wasn"t because this man could still needle her emotions.
"My Lord, I protest," Harold said, shocked, and fortunately sounding less like a frightened sheep than before. "The lady is your wife. Surely she merits your chivalry."
Harold had never seen her with her husband, and some reluctant and completely misplaced loyalty to Kinvarra meant she"d never explained why she and the earl lived apart. The fiction was that the earl and his countess were polite strangers who, by design, rarely met.
Poor Harold, he was about to discover the truth was that the earl and his countess loathed each other.
"Like h.e.l.l she does," Kinvarra muttered, casting her an incendiary glance from under long dark eyelashes.
Alicia was human enough to wish the bright moonlight didn"t reveal quite so much of her husband"s seething rage. But the fate that proved cruel enough to fling them together, tonight of all nights, wasn"t likely to heed her pleas.
"Do you intend to introduce me to your cicisbeo?" Kinvarra"s voice remained quiet. She"d learned that was when he was at his most dangerous.
Dear G.o.d, did he intend to shoot Harold after all?
Surely not. Foul as Kinvarra had been to her, he"d never shown her a moment"s violence. Her hands clenched in her skirts as fear tightened her throat. Kinvarra was a crack shot and a famous swordsman. Harold wouldn"t stand a chance.
"My Lord, I protest the description," Harold bleated, sidling back to evade a.s.sault.
Was it too much to wish that her suitor would stand up to the scoundrel she"d married as a stupid chit of seventeen? Alicia drew a deep breath and reminded herself that she favoured Lord Harold Fenton precisely because he wasn"t an overbearing brute like her husband, the earl. Harold was a scholar and a poet, a man of the mind. She should consider it a sign of Harold"s intelligence that he was wary right now.
But somehow her insistence didn"t convince her traitorous heart.
How she wished she really were the impervious creature Kinvarra called her. Then she"d be immune both to his insults and to the insidious attraction he aroused.
"My Lady?" Kinvarra asked, still in that even, frightening voice. "Who is this . . . gentleman?"
She stiffened her backbone. She was made of stronger stuff than this. Never would she let her husband guess he still had power over her. Her response was steady. "Lord Kinvarra, allow me to present Lord Harold Fenton."
Harold performed a shaky bow. "My Lord."
As he rose, a tense silence descended.
"Well, this is awkward," Kinvarra said flatly, although she saw in his taut, dark face that his anger hadn"t abated one whit.
"I don"t see why," Alicia snapped.
It wasn"t just her husband who tried her temper. There was her lily-livered lover and the perishing cold. The temperature must have dropped ten degrees in the last five minutes. She shivered, then silently cursed that Kinvarra noticed and Harold didn"t. Harold was too busy staring at her husband the way a mouse stares at an adder.
"Do you imagine I"m so sophisticated, I"ll ignore discovering you in the arms of another man? My dear, you do me too much credit."
She stifled the urge to consign him to Hades. "If you"ll put aside your bruised vanity for the moment, you"ll see we merely require you to ride to the nearest habitation and request help. Then you and I can return to acting like complete strangers, My Lord."
He laughed and she struggled to suppress the shiver of sensual awareness that rippled down her spine at that soft, deep sound. "Some things haven"t changed, I see. You"re still dishing out orders. And I"m still d.a.m.ned if I"ll play your obedient lapdog."
"Can you see another solution?" she asked sweetly.
"Yes," he said with a snap of his straight white teeth. "I can leave you to freeze. Not that you"d probably notice."
Her pride insisted that she send him on his way with a flea in his ear. The weather and what common sense she retained under the anger that always flared in Kinvarra"s proximity prompted her to be conciliatory.
It was late. She and Harold hadn"t pa.s.sed anyone on this isolated road. The grim truth was that if Kinvarra didn"t help, they were stranded until morning. And while she was dressed in good thick wool, she wasn"t prepared to endure a snowy night in the open. The chill of the road seeped through her fur-lined boots and she shifted, trying to revive feeling in her frozen feet.
"My Lord . . ." During the year they"d lived together, she"d called him Sebastian. During their few meetings since, she"d clung to formality as a barrier. "My Lord, there"s no point in quarrelling. Basic charity compels your a.s.sistance. I would consider myself in your debt if you fetch aid as quickly as possible."
He arched one black eyebrow in a superior fashion that made her want to clout him. Not a new sensation. "Now that"s something I"d like to see," he said.
"What?"
"Grat.i.tude."
He knew he had her at a disadvantage and he wasn"t likely to rise above that fact. She gritted her teeth. "It"s all I can offer."
The smile that curved his lips was pure devilry. Another shiver ran through her. Like the last one, it was a shiver with no connection to the cold. "Your imagination fails you, my dear countess."
Her throat closed with nerves and that reluctant physical awareness she couldn"t ignore. He hadn"t shifted, yet suddenly she felt physically threatened. Which was ridiculous. During all their years apart, he"d given no indication he wanted anything from her except her absence. One chance meeting wasn"t likely to turn him into a medieval robber baron who spirited her away to his lonely tower.
Nonetheless, she had to resist stepping back. She knew from bitter experience that her only chance of handling him was to feign control. "What do you want?"
This time he did step closer, so his great height overshadowed her. Close enough for her to think that if she stretched out her hand, she"d touch that powerful chest, those wide shoulders. "I want . . ."
There was a piercing whinny and a sudden pounding of hooves on the snow. Appalled, disbelieving, Alicia turned to see Harold galloping away on one of the carriage horses.
"Harold?"
Her voice faded to nothing in the night. He didn"t slow his wild careening departure. She"d been so engrossed in her battle with Kinvarra, she hadn"t even noticed that Harold had caught one of the stray horses.
Kinvarra"s low laugh was scornful. "Oh, my dear. Commiserations. Your swain proves a sad disappointment. I wonder if he"s fleeing my temper or yours. You really have no luck in love, have you?"
She was too astonished to be upset at Harold"s departure. Instead she focused on Kinvarra. Her voice was hard. "No luck in husbands, at any rate."
Kinvarra suffered Alicia"s hate-filled regard and wondered what the h.e.l.l he was going to do with his troublesome wife in this wilderness. The insolent baggage deserved to be left where she stood, but even he, who owed her repayment for numerous slights over the years, wouldn"t do that to her.
It seemed he had no choice but to help.
Not that she"d thank him. He had no illusions that once she"d got what she wanted a warm bed, a roof over her head and a decent meal she"d forget any promises of grat.i.tude.
In spite of the punishing cold, heat flooded him as he briefly let himself imagine Alicia"s grat.i.tude. She"d shed that heavy red cloak. She"d let down that ma.s.s of gold hair until it tumbled around her shoulders. Then she"d kiss him as if she didn"t hate him and she"d . . .
From long habit, he stopped himself. Such fantasies had sustained him the first year of their separation, but he"d learned for sanity"s sake to control them since. Now they only troubled him after his rare meetings with his wife.
This was the longest time he and Alicia had spent together in years. It should remind him why he avoided her company. Instead, it reminded him that she was the only woman who had ever challenged him, the only woman who had ever matched him in strength, the only woman he"d never been able to forget, desperately as he"d tried.
He smiled into her sulky, beautiful face. "It seems you"re stuck with me."
How that must smart. The long ride to his Yorkshire manor on this cold night suddenly offered a myriad of pleasures, not least of which was a chance to knock a few chips off his wife"s pride.
She didn"t respond to his comment. Instead, with an unreadable expression, she stared after her absconding lover. "We"re only about five miles from Harold"s hunting lodge."
The wench didn"t even try to lie about the a.s.signation, blast her. "If he manages to stay on that horse, Horace should make it." Fenton showed no great skill as a bareback rider. Kinvarra recognized the wish as unworthy, but he hoped the blackguard ended up on his rump in a hedgerow.
"Harold," she said absently, drawing her cloak tight around her slender throat. "You could take me there."
This time his laughter was unconstrained. She"d always had nerve, his wife, even when she"d been little more than a girl. "Be d.a.m.ned if you think I"m carting you off to cuckold me in comfort, madam."
She sent him a cool look. "I"m thinking purely in terms of shelter, My Lord."