A Breach of Promise (9 page)

Lydia’s hair was tousled beyond any possibility of redemption, her lips kiss-swollen, and her eyes held that sultry luster produced only by the languor of a good romp. In sum, she looked thoroughly and charmingly tumbled. Marcus watched her set to work repairing the visible damage of their love play.

“The damage is still done, Marcus. My reputation can never survive this. I can never survive
you
!” Her trembling hands grappled impotently with her laces. Her face mirrored a riot of emotion. Her eyes shone. She looked about to crumple.

Anticipating her tears, Marcus pulled her against his chest, enfolding her in his arms, resting his chin upon her hair. He soothed her, rubbing her back and massaging her temples as her body shook with sobs muffled against his shirt. “There you are wrong, my dearest. While my motives were not the most honorable when you entered this carriage, I
did
leave you a choice.”

Lydia’s head jerked upward knocking painfully into his chin. “What choice?”

Damn!
Marcus rubbed his jaw. “I mean I had every intention of taking your maidenhead, but contrary to my notoriously selfish inclinations, I left the decision to you. Now I ask you to make it.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I want you, Lydia,” he groaned. “Bad enough that I’m about to say something I never thought would pass my lips. I’m asking if you will have me as your husband and your lover. I’m
asking
you to marry me, but if you wish me to humble myself by kneeling at your feet again, I won’t be held responsible for my actions.”

He watched her face as myriad emotions battled for supremacy, uncertainty and distrust foremost among them. He grazed a warm finger over her cheek. “I can’t believe you feel nothing for me. Despite your recent protests, I was under the belief that you once desired our union.”

“I did. Once. When I was just a foolish girl thinking you the very sun that my world revolved around but people change. Feelings change.”

He took her chin in his hand, forcing her to meet his gaze. “I never meant to hurt you, Lydia, but I could never have lived up to your ideal. I don’t know if any mortal man could have.”

“I know that now. I was a girl. I am a woman now.”

“I noticed,” Marcus said with a raffish curve of his lips. “I know how to please you, Lydia, and I intend to please you frequently and exhaustively in the marriage bed. Would that be so very bad?” He bent his head to kiss her.

She averted her face. “I can’t deny my attraction to you but lust is not love, Marcus. To my understanding a man can perform the animal act of coition in virtually any circumstance without emotional engagement of any kind.”

The smile in his eyes vanished, his gaze narrowed. “You imply men and women don’t have an equal capacity to love.”

She looked perplexed. “Do they? Do you?”

“Yes. No. I don’t know,” Marcus raked a hand through his hair with a groan. “There are differences. To a man, lust and love are commingled, the latter cannot exist without the former. A man doesn’t express love by spewing poetic nonsense, Lydia, but by worshipping a woman’s body and conversely a woman does not perform acts of love with the passion you display unless she feels
something
.” He grazed a finger along her cheek. “Why do you fight the attraction between us? Do you think such passion exists between every betrothed couple?”

“Why, Marcus?” she cried. “Why can’t you understand I need more than you can offer me? Why do you persist when we both know you don’t love me? Is your pride so great that you would condemn us both to misery rather than let me go?”

“Misery?”
Bloody hell! I’ve just taken her to paradise and she speaks of misery?
The thought filled him with exasperation, vexation. It was an effort to moderate his reply. “Is that how you really envision a life with me?”

“Much of that life would exist outside the conjugal bed. I won’t enter such a marriage, Marcus. I won’t be cast aside for other women. I realize that many women turn a blind eye regarding their husband’s paramours, but I am not one of them. I won’t enter any marriage without friendship, respect, and if not love, at least the hope of genuine affection?”

Once more he looked pained. “Why must you only assume the worst of me, Lydia?”

“You have given me little reason until now to do otherwise.”

“Have you so little faith in my integrity?”
Where the devil have I gone wrong?

For the second time, Marcus felt as if she’d struck him. “Friendship. Respect. Genuine affection. Even after this time together, you still don’t believe there is hope of having
any
of this with me?”

He regarded her intently, patiently, forcing her to search her own heart. His moment of vulnerability moved her more than she liked. Her second glimpse behind his mask set her stomach fluttering and pulse racing with hope. Until this moment she had thought him nothing better than a shallow, self-centered cad, but how much was really a façade?

She wondered if they might be able to build a true life together, if his earlier declaration of affection could grow in time into genuine respect, into love, but then briskly reined herself in with the dimming apprehension of what her reality might really entail—being left behind again or, even worse, settled at some dingy diplomatic domicile while he conducted various illicit liaisons.

While he didn’t flaunt them, Marcus’ amours were no secret from her. How else could he have learned the mysteries of a woman’s body but by long practice? He’d filled her with bliss beyond her wildest imaginings and now the thought of him with any other woman, kissing her, doing those same wicked things with his tongue, filled her with a jealous passion. How could she bear to see him with another? How could she ever trust him again with her heart?

“I— I don’t know, Marcus,” she spoke in a strangled whisper.

Another emotion flashed briefly across his face. Pain? Remorse? Regret? It was there and gone.

“Then perhaps you are right,” he said, his manner suddenly rigid, his face grim. “It is exceedingly unfair of me to make such a monstrous demand of you simply over my injured pride. Therefore, I offer my most profuse apologies for having molested you with my unwanted attentions.”

“Monstrous demands? Unwanted attentions?” Lydia’s throat constricted on the words.

“Why, I thought I was quite clear, Miss Trent.” Marcus’ smile was full, brilliant and brittle. “I concede the field. I grant your wish to end our betrothal.”

* * * * *

They rode another half hour in strained silence until the chaise pulled into the cobbled yard of a coaching inn. Marcus was quick to alight, barking directions to the postillion before turning back to Lydia.

“Pray wait here, Miss Trent, while I procure a private chamber where you might take refreshment and repair yourself. I’ll send Sally when all is in readiness. Will an hour be sufficient to your needs?”

“Yes, Ma— My lord. I can be ready to depart again within the hour.”

“Very good then.” He tilted his head in stiff acknowledgment and turned toward the public taproom in long, purposeful strides.

Lydia tried to console herself that she’d been wise to escape a loveless marriage, the trap of so many miserable women whose husbands eventually and universally abandoned them for the arms of a mistress. She should have been pleased by the news. It was what she’d wanted, wasn’t it?

The stark truth pierced her chest. No. It was what she’d
said
she wanted. If she were brutally honest with herself, she’d never stopped wanting
him
, but her pride would not allow her to be taken with indifference. She had told Lady Russell that she’d rather be despised than merely tolerated. That was a lie as well. What she truly and desperately wanted was what he had given her in those blissful moments when he made her feel like the most important thing in the universe.

That was why her chest tightened so painfully and her throat felt like sandpaper when he donned his polite and indifferent mask, or avoided her gaze altogether as he’d done for the last half hour. Lydia had accused Marcus of pressing his suit only out of injured pride, but she’d seen the raw desire in his eyes and glimpsed the man behind the mask. Honesty forced her to confess the same sin for which she’d condemned him—her miserable, damnable pride. She’d thought to save herself heartbreak, but how could her heart ache any more than being ripped from her chest? For that’s what she felt now—alone and empty with her cold, passionless pride. Marcus hadn’t broken her heart this time—she’d done it to herself.

* * * * *

“I’fackins!” Sally cried when Lydia entered the hired chamber. “Your gown and hair! You surely mustn’t appear at Woburn Abbey in such a state, m’lady! We must order the gown pressed and I’ll do up your hair. By the look of it, ye must ha’ fallen asleep in the coach?”

“Travel does weary one so,” Lydia said.

“For my life, I can’t imagine how a soul could sleep with all that rocking and jostling.” Sally gave her a sly look. “Though I don’t know how any female with breath in her body could sleep in ‘is lordship’s company neither. ‘E’s an exceeding ‘andsome gent, Lord Marcus, don’t ye think m’lady?” Sally gave Lydia a knowing wink.

Lydia caught a glimpse of her reflection with a gasp of horror.
I’fackins indeed!
With her hair a nest of tangles and her bodice unevenly laced, she truly did resemble a Covent Garden doxy! No wonder the maid was so cheeky! Flushing rubicund, Lydia replied with icy hauteur. “I only think you’ve a saucy tongue in your head, Sally, which will surely lead you to trouble. Now please help me with my laces.”

“Aye, milady.” Sally’s stifled giggle said the dignified affectation had failed.

Having helped Lydia out of the gown, Sally descended the stairs in search of the innkeeper’s wife to order its pressing, leaving Lydia in only her shift and stays. Pulling the remaining pins from her hair, she attempted to finger-comb the mess of tangles. At the light tap on the door, she flung it open, expecting Sally with the tea tray.

It was Marcus.

He froze in the doorframe, tea tray in hand, raking over her dishabille—taking in the mounds of her breast clearly displayed by low-cut stays, her hair hanging loosely over her shoulders—his dark-blue eyes dilated to the deepest shade of indigo.

Lydia’s breath hitched. She took three steps backward, her gaze flying over the room in search of anything to cover her near-nakedness.

“Pray don’t trouble yourself on my account,” Marcus said in a low rumble, as if reading her mind. Stepping into the room, he kicked the door closed behind him.

“Wh-what are you doing here?” Lydia’s eyes were wide, her breath coming fast.

“Why delivering your tea, Miss Trent.” Marcus advanced two more steps into the room, his heated gaze never leaving her but flickering and flaming into a raging, blue blaze. “It seems the maid, Sally, must press your gown herself. It may take some time, I’m told.”

“The gown?” Lydia blinked.

He stared, his eyes undressing her. The air between them crackled with the heat of sexual awareness.

“Aye. The gown.”

“Th-the tray.” She swallowed hard and stepped forward to take it from him.

“Devil take the tray.” Marcus dropped it with a clatter and jerked her into his arms, jolting a bolt of fire to her belly. There was no gentleness in his hold. His voice was low and ominous in her ears, his breath hot and moist against her neck. “You didn’t tell me to leave, Lydia.”

“No,” she whispered, her heart hammering apace. “
Don’t
leave.”

His hands squeezed her shoulders. A muscle twitched in his jaw. “Do you know what you’re saying?”

“Yes, Marcus.” Her mouth was dry. She wet her lips and upturned her face. “I know exactly what I’m
doing
. Please lock the door.”

He dragged her hard against him, hungrily seeking her mouth. Groping blindly at their clothes between fevered kisses and hungry moans, they backed toward the door. The tumblers turned with a loud click and Lydia was crushed between the hard, cold panel at her back and the hot, solid wall of Marcus at her front.

Tearing his mouth from her, Marcus yanked her laces and ripped at linen, divesting her of shift and stays. Cupping and squeezing Lydia’s breasts, he dragged his lightly stubbled face against her neck, following her heated pulse with hot tongue, open kisses and love bites.

Lydia clutched his hair, cupped his nape, and roamed the broad expanse of muscled back to settle on his firm, taut buttocks, pulling him into her, seeking relief for the aching emptiness. He groaned into her mouth, buckling his knees and seeking her heat, driving his hard, full length against her pubis. He suckled her breast and lightly bit down, sending her whimpering, rubbing and wildly grinding against him.

Reaching between them, groping frantically for the placket of his breeches, she gasped out, “I want to feel you, Marcus. I want to touch and kiss you the way you touched and kissed me. I want to give you the same gift that you gave me.” Her chest heaved with ignited passion. Her eyes shone fever bright. She silently cried out the rest of the message.
I want to show you I love you. I want you to love me too.