A Reckless Desire (24 page)

“You were exactly as I wanted you to be,” she said, coming to stand in front of him. “I wanted to be as much a part of you as I could, Rivers, to join with you not just with our hearts, but in every way, and so I trusted you, and it was…it was magic. Oh, I know you must think that a foolish way to describe it, but that's how it was to me. Magic.”

“I don't think you're a fool,” he said. “I think you're entirely right. It was magic, the purest, most passionate magic of all.”

“
Most
passionate magic,” she repeated, clearly delighting in the phrase. “I didn't understand at first, but later, after you told me you wished to watch the sun rise with me, I did. I knew you wouldn't wish to undo what we'd done, not after you said that.”

“Of course I wouldn't,” he said. “Why should I wish to undo something I'll never forget?”

“Oh, Rivers,” she said, dipping her chin and smiling with pleasure in a thoroughly disarming way. “But you see, that's why I didn't tell you I was still a maid, or even that you are the only man I've ever kissed.”

“Ever?” he repeated, stunned, and aroused as well by the thought that he was the first man in her life.

“Ever,” she said with unimpeachable finality. “But you are so noble and gentlemanly that I didn't want to risk having you refuse me if you knew.”

He smiled ruefully. “I do not believe I'm half as noble as that, Lucia. Not with you.”

“But you are,” she insisted. She reached up to cradle his jaw against her palm, and he could have sworn there were tears in her eyes. “
Il mio caro, dolce, leone d'oro!
You have given me so much already, and yet I wanted this, too. For this night, I wanted to be yours.”

Gently he took her hand and turned it toward his lips so he could kiss her palm, then ran his lips down to the inside of her wrist, to where he felt her pulse quicken beneath his kiss.

“For this evening, and many more besides,” he murmured. “Do you believe I'd be content with only tonight?”

Swiftly she turned her hand and covered his mouth.

“Don't say that,” she said. “You mustn't. We cannot count on anything beyond this, here. Minute by minute, day by day. That is what we have together.”

“And whatever fate and the stars decree,” he said, repeating what she'd told him in the garden. “I haven't forgotten.”

“Then you understand,” she said, her voice husky yet achingly bittersweet with unshed tears. “Oh, Rivers, I did not intend to be so weak and weepy!”

“You're hardly that,” he said. “You are so many things to me, but weak and weepy are not among them.”

She shook her head and turned away from him, looking up at the sky, fighting both her emotions and the tears. He slipped his arm around her waist and drew her close, her back to his chest. It was warm and familiar, holding her like this, and with a sigh she leaned against him, resting her head against his shoulder.

“Would you like me to send for our supper?” he asked, hoping such a bland subject would help her to collect herself. “That is, if Mrs. Barber hasn't given us up completely by now.”

“Hah, one more reason for her to fault me,” Lucia said with a sigh. “But I find I'm not hungry just yet. Later, perhaps.”

“Then what is your wish?” he said. “For this minute.”

“
This
minute.” She twisted, her face turned toward his. She circled her arms around his waist and teasingly slipped her hands up inside his shirt to find the bare skin of his back. “I want to love you, Rivers, lie beside you and gaze up at the stars, and I want you to show me every one, and then the sunrise besides.”

“Then you shall have it,” he said, unwrapping the sash on the dressing gown as if he were unwrapping a gift. “All the stars, and Venus and Jupiter besides.”

Ever since she'd been a child, Lucia had believed in magic. It wasn't the kind of petty magic that conjurers performed in the park, making coins appear from behind their ears. Instead it was a private, personal, and hazy definition of the word, an indefinable force that would come and somehow transform her life for the better. Through all the bad times and unhappy days—and she suffered through many of both—she had steadfastly clung to this notion of magic, certain that it would come.

And in this balmy month of June, the magic had indeed come: first in the form of Rivers himself, whisking her away to the country, and then in the opportunity he'd offered her to become an actress, and finally, now, the love that they'd found together, a love that blazed hot and bright with the desire they'd discovered there on the roof of Breconridge Lodge.

Under the stars, the magic was everywhere.

They had spent the entire first night beneath the crescent moon, exactly as he'd promised, and they'd exhausted themselves making glorious, shameless love. Lying together with their arms and legs intimately tangled, they had watched the night sky fade beneath the morning star and the dawn turn the east a golden rose with the new day.

They had spent the next two days in each other's company, eating in the garden, walking in the woods and beside the lake, and in his bed and hers and always ending up in the one they shared on the roof. Not once did he fault her accent, nor did she accuse him of living too much in his books, and the only time that
Hamlet
was ever mentioned was in inappropriate passages quoted and chosen to make the other laugh.

That is, until the morning of the third day, when Rivers told her that they were expecting a visitor later that morning.

“A visitor,” she repeated. They had awakened to a sky that was a dull pewter gray this morning, the air heavy and chill with a coming storm that would surely mark the end of their sunny June days. Sudden gusts of wind ruffled the tops of the trees and made the canopy overhead puff and blow like the sails of a ship. Yet still they lingered in their rooftop bed, snug beneath a pile of striped coverlets and unwilling to be driven into the house just yet. Lucia was lying lazily half-across Rivers, her breasts crushed against his chest and her chin resting on her folded hands, while he kept one arm possessively flung over her hips.

“A pox on your visitor, Rivers,” she said. “Who would come to call upon you here?”

“He's not calling to see me, Lucia,” he said, shoving a pillow behind his head so he could better see her. “He's coming to call upon you.”

“Oh, no, he's not,” she scoffed. “In all my days, not one person has called anywhere to see me.”

“Then today's visitor shall be the first,” he said, and yawned extravagantly—and, suspected Lucia, purposefully as well. “I hope you'll manage to be civil to the poor fellow, considering he will have come all this way from London for the express purpose of calling upon you.”

Swiftly she ran through any possible men who might make the long ride from London for her sake. Among her acquaintance, only Uncle Lorenzo possessed the wherewithal to make such a journey, but she doubted very much he would so much as cross the lane to see her, especially given their last conversation.

No, she was certain that Rivers was teasing her about having a caller, and she glowered at him.

“You are filled with rubbish, Rivers,” she said, thumping his chest to make her point. “I don't know anyone who would come here for me. You have invented this phantom caller entirely to plague me.”

He yowled dramatically and clutched at his chest before shoving her aside.

“Very well, then, madam,” he said, pretending to be wounded. “You may believe what you choose. I shall simply have Mr. McGraw turned away when he arrives, and told that you are not at home.”

“McGraw?”
she exclaimed, sitting upright. In the world of London playhouses, there was only one Mr. McGraw, but she couldn't dare hope that this was the one that Rivers meant. “Which McGraw?”

Rivers screwed up his face as if to think deeply. “I believe he is
the
Mr. McGraw, the manager of the Russell Street Theatre. But since you have no knowledge of any such—”

“What have you done, Rivers?” she demanded, her heart racing with anticipation, and a bit of dread as well. “When last we spoke of it, I was to perform in a public room for an invited audience. You have never said a
word
to me of Mr. McGraw!”

Smiling serenely, Rivers sat up against the pillows and linked his hands behind his head.

“Then I shall say them now,” he said. “When first we made our agreement, I believed that a performance in a public room would suffice to silence Everett and secure the wager, and also display your accomplishments to a select audience.”

“Yes, yes,” she said impatiently. “That is what we agreed, without any mention of Mr. McGraw. You must tell me, Rivers. What have you
done
?”

“What I have done, Lucia, is to reward your talent and hard work.” His expression lost its teasing edge, and his smile faded. “I realized that you deserved a far better audience than the circle of my friends. Therefore I wrote to Mr. McGraw, and invited him here for a private audition with my dear friend Mrs. Willow. If he is suitably impressed—which I do not doubt he will be—then he will consider staging a single-night benefit performance of
Hamlet
featuring the actors of his company, and you as Ophelia.”

She gasped, and pressed her hands over her mouth. It was more than she'd dreamed, and far more than she'd expected. She knew from her family's company that most theatrical benefits lasted only a single night, but if the performance was well received, then the house's manager could extend it into a regular run of a week, a month, or even longer, if the play became a sensation—and the actors and actresses with it.

“Richard McGraw is coming all this way to audition me?” she asked, wanting to make absolutely certain she hadn't misheard. “Me, here?”

Rivers laughed, and nodded. “Your reputation precedes you, sweetheart.”

“Only because you told him,” she said, letting the wonder of what he'd said sink in. An audition for Russell Street! There would be no better way to become a celebrated actress, and to have the career she'd always wanted. She knew she could win audiences. She
knew
it. The chance was waiting for her. All she'd need do would be to seize it, and impress Mr. McGraw the way she knew she could.

“I've so much to do if he's arriving this morning,” she said, her mind racing ahead. “How shall I prepare for him? How can I know which scene he'll wish to hear?”

“You
are
prepared,” Rivers said. “He can ask you to speak any scene, and you'll know it.”

“But managers try to trick actors during auditions,” she said. Too excited to remain still, she slipped from the bed and reached for the striped silk dressing gown that had become hers. “I saw it at King's. Mr. Lane is the manager there, and he'd interrupt actors during their auditions and toss out lines from other plays, just to fuddle them.”

“That doesn't mean McGraw will do the same,” Rivers said, watching her pull the sash snug around her waist. “Russell Street is a few rungs above King's.”

“Which only means Mr. McGraw will have more cunning ways to try to confuse me,” she said, her agitation growing as she began to pace alongside the bed. “What shall I wear? Should I try to contrive a costume fit for Ophelia?”

“He'll be expecting Mrs. Willow, not Ophelia,” Rivers said. “Any one of your new gowns will do.”

Lucia shook her head, not really listening. “I must review my lines again, so they'll be perfect. We haven't done anything these last two days.”

“I would hardly say we've done nothing, sweetheart,” Rivers said drily. “Besides, you already know your lines perfectly.”

“But this is my one chance,” she said, more to her pacing feet than to him. “What if I forget the words, what if I—”

“Lucia, please.” Rivers caught her by the arm to stop her pacing, and pulled her onto his lap. “You will not forget your lines. You will choose the perfect gown. You will stun McGraw with your brilliance, and he will fall at your feet in amazement at your talent.”

She pursed her mouth, unconvinced. “I wish I were as certain as you.”

He kissed her lightly, a kiss of reassurance rather than passion.

“You should be certain,” he said. “I would not have asked the man to come here to the Lodge if I didn't believe you were ready.”

An unsettling doubt, perilously close to suspicion suddenly clouded her thoughts. “When did you invite him?”

Rivers shrugged, tracing his fingers along her collarbone as he eased the dressing gown aside. “I do not recall the exact day that I wrote to him. Sometime last week. Why does it matter?”

She pulled the gown back into place. “When did you receive a letter in reply from him?”

He frowned at her once-again covered chest. “His letter was delivered to me before we left for Newbury. A sorry, scribbled thing it was, too, for all that it contained such excellent news.”

She would not be distracted by McGraw's penmanship, and she twisted around on Rivers's lap so she was facing him directly.

“So you knew of this when we drove to Newbury,” she said softly, “and in Mrs. Currie's shop, and on the ride back to the Lodge, and then when we came here to the roof?”

His expression didn't change. He was the same irresistibly handsome Rivers that she loved, tousled and with a night's worth of beard glistening on his jaw. Yet she couldn't help but sense that he was holding something back from her, and that there was an unfamiliar air of distance in those blue eyes.

“I did,” he said simply. “I did.”

“And all through these last two days?” she asked, incredulous. “You knew, yet you did not choose to tell me until this morning? Until now?”

He sighed, and leaned back against the pillows and away from her. “I judged it best for you, Lucia. I didn't want you fussing and worrying for the two days before McGraw's arrival. By the way you're behaving now, I was right to do so, too.”