Compromised Miss (17 page)

‘Yes. I am.’

‘Why did—?’ Adam stopped short of inexcusable rudeness, although his eyes, greyer, darker than Luke’s, sparkled with interest.

‘Why did the Earl wed me?’ Harriette supplied softly.

‘Well…’ Vivid colour again rushed into his cheeks.

‘You mean, someone so far from the fashionable ladies of the
haut ton
?’

‘Ah…’

Harriette found explanations deserting her. She would not offer trite explanations that there had been a longstanding attraction, or a sudden irresistible passion. What could she possibly say after the frigid, hurtful silence between them over the past hours? Let Luke perjure himself if he must.

‘You must ask your brother that question,’ she said.

‘Ask him what?’

She had not heard the door open, nor the silent step of his feet on the thick carpet, but there he was beside her and immediately her pulse raced simply to be close to him. Awareness became a throb of desire. The proud carriage of his head, the austerely handsome face, the tall, looselimbed grace.

‘Luke…at last!’ Adam Hallaston grinned.

‘I trust you have welcomed my wife in a suitable manner. Your waistcoat is a thing of wonder, Adam.’

Painfully fashionable, Adam had the grace to laugh at the reference to the striped magnificence, confirming for Harriette that there was an affection between them. Perhaps after losing one brother they were protective of each other.

‘Ask me what?’ Luke repeated.

He looked weary, Harriette decided, on edge. The lines beside his mouth were deeply scored. The healing scar on his cheek stood out, as if his skin was tautly stretched in some hard-held emotion over the fine bones of his face. He straightened his shoulders as if he carried a heavy burden. Before she could think, compassion touched her sore heart, but exhausted herself beyond belief, Harriette brushed it aside and gave him no quarter. ‘Your brother would ask you why you married me, so distant as I am from the ladies who usually clamour for your attention, but whose bait you have not so far taken. Lord Adam is curious. He informs me that the Hallastons never marry young.’

‘Does he now? It’s true. But as for my choice of a bride—there’s no difficulty in explaining that.’ Luke’s level gaze held Harriette’s challenging stare without compunc
tion as he lifted her hand and carried it to his lips. His mouth was as cold as his face. ‘I saw Harriette in a storm, near the sea. She was wet to the skin and her hair drenched and whipped by the wind into a tangle. Apart from her gown, she looked like a mermaid. I felt a need to wed her immediately.’ He did not smile. ‘She saved my life that night, and so I was bound to her, and she to me, irrevocably and for ever.’

A ridiculously romantic picture to save her from humiliation. A pretty confection, little of which was true except for the proximity of the sea and the danger to his life. And the picture was coldly drawn as if it held no pleasure for him. To her horror, Harriette felt emotional tears threaten to well and fall. She must be more tired than she had thought. She swallowed hard against them and summoned the brightest smile.

‘A mermaid?’ Harriette tried to smile. ‘As for saving your brother’s life—’ she kept the smile intact as she addressed Adam ‘—it was merely a matter of rescuing him from a fishy grave.’

Later, when she climbed the stairs to her new bedchamber, Harriette felt the full weight of that long day in her heart. She might feel bound to Luke,
irrevocably and for ever
as he had so charmingly put it, but his response to her on their journey from Old Wincomlee made it unbearably clear that he saw her as a burden. A misjudgement on his part. An alliance that was not to his taste.

What had she done to change his mind?

But perhaps she had done nothing, perhaps he had always viewed this marriage with regret and she had merely misread his kindness and generosity when he had taken her to bed. He had wed her because he had to and
now, returned to his life in London, wished he had not. She could think of nothing she had done or said to make him revise his opinion of her, but he had, so presumably she had misread his opinion in the first place. She could not fault his good manners, but there was a withdrawal, as impenetrable as a physical barrier, between them.

He had found her unsuitable and had rejected her.

A shaming thought crept into her mind. Had he also found her not to his taste in bed? How could she judge? His kindness might mask displeasure, disgust. Telling her she was beautiful—they were only words after all.

And in that moment Harriette made a silent vow. She would play her part in this marriage, conduct herself with appropriate dignity as Countess of Venmore and make no demands whatsoever on the Earl. He had wed her, given her respectability and an entré into society whether she desired it or not. That was as much as she would ask of him. That ridiculous infatuation—it could not possibly be love!—that had been born when had seen him broken and filthy at her feet, that crippling emotion, would be buttoned away within her heart for ever. And if sometimes she wept at the death of her hopes, then it would be entirely in private. Cool. Polite. Reserved. Because that was what he wanted from his wife—or at least from her. She would be grateful, but would preserve a formal distance, never demanding his time or his presence, not expecting him to dance attendance on her. She would never be a burden to him.

It is not my intention to inconvenience you in any way.
She practised her words silently in her head as she accompanied him up the staircase to her new suite of rooms.
You have fulfilled your duty towards me. You have given me so much, I cannot ask for your time, as well, can I?

She would never say,
I want you. I love you. Hold me, Luke, kiss me as you did at Lydyard’s Pride! Touch my body with those clever, elegantly skilful hands that make me burn for you. Tell me again that I am beautiful. Make me feel feminine and desired
. She would never say that
.

Luke came to her room. No doubt from his well-bred sense of duty and honour, she decided bitterly. Harriette had taken herself to bed, dismissing her new maid, staring unseeingly at the pages of a book of poetry that did not hold her attention.

Luke knocked, entered, walked forwards slowly to stand beside her. After a wordless moment he sat on the edge of her bed. Yes, she had been right, his features fine drawn, but this was no time for sympathy.

‘Do you have everything you need?’ he asked courteously.

‘Of course. You are most generous.’

Harriette put the book face-down and looked at him, searched his face, trying to read the thoughts behind the stern expression. What did he want from her? It would be so easy to open her arms, to allow herself to be held and kissed. How easy it would be to slide breathlessly into his embrace, to curl her fingers into the thickness of his midnight hair, to ask no questions. Simply to be and to enjoy. But that was not possible and not in her nature to ignore the distance he had put between them.

‘Did you wish to talk to me?’ she asked.

Reaching out, he lifted her hands and turned them palm up, smoothing his thumbs over them as if he would read the message written in the lines.

‘Do you want me to stay?’ he asked, all impeccable courtesy.

He would rather not be here
, she thought, even as her
heart shivered at his caress.
He is magnificently polite, but his heart is not in it.

‘No,’ she replied. How hard the words were. How difficult pride was. Her hands stiffened in his loose hold. ‘It was a long journey. I am tired.’

‘Of course.’ He dropped her hands as if they scorched him. ‘I should have been more considerate. We will talk when you are rested. It is imperative that we…’

Luke did not move, or finish his thought, but drew his knuckles gently over her cheekbone, down her cheek, her jaw, down the length of her throat. Harriette felt herself tense. Surely he would feel the pulse beating there under his fingers. Surely he would see the flush of colour as her blood raced.

Luke leaned and pressed his lips to the satin skin at the base of her throat, the fragile hollow where her heart beat so heavily, whilst Harriette held her breath.

‘Goodnight, Harriette. Sleep well. We’ll talk tomorrow.’

And Luke stood, bowed, enigmatic and reserved, turned away. Only when he had reached the door did Harriette speak to stop him.

‘Why did you not tell me about Marcus?’

He stood motionless, his back to her. Nor did he look round. ‘There is nothing to tell.’

Then he was gone. She heard his footsteps die away along the corridor to his own room. He might not care about the rift between them, but she did. His instinct, for whatever reason, might be to push her away but it took all her willpower not to beg him to stay and hold her in his arms. It broke her heart.

Turning her face into her pillow, Harriette wept as she had not done since she was a child.

Luke closed the door of his room and leaned back against it, head thrown back, eyes closed against the emptiness of the room. The silence round him was agonising. Had he wanted her when he had gone to her room, despite all his doubts? Would he have stayed if she had smiled at him? Yes, he would. The fragility of her arms, her slender hands demanded that he cover them with kisses. The curl of her neatly combed hair, the gleam of pale flesh above the lace of the robe roused an urge to stroke. She had looked lost in the expanse of the elegant bed with its flower-sprigged hangings. Instinct had urged him to strip off his clothes and take her there. To press her naked body into the sheets beneath his, and sink deep, forgetting past and future in her arms as he had at Lydyard’s Pride. To let her surround him with soft arms and thighs. She called to some basic primitive need in his blood to make her his. To awaken her nipples with tongue and teeth, to plant openmouthed kisses all the way down the soft valley between her breasts towards the dark secret place that he could claim for his own by right.

He had wanted all of that, and did so now. Luke bared his teeth as his erection strained for release. He should have stayed with her and turned her cold words into cries of searing passion.

But it was better this way. There was too much between them to simply step over and ignore. So this was better. Wasn’t it?

Then since he was so sure, why did he feel torn, his heart rent in two? It wasn’t as if he loved her or even felt anything more for her than a duty, a heavy responsibility. And yet the urge was there to open his heart to her, to tell her of the coils that trapped him, constrained him. To explain why,
in her eyes, he must apparently play the role of traitor and spy.

He could not, must not.

He had told Harriette that he had a brother in London. What he had not told her was that he had a second brother, who was now dead. Marcus, fighting with the British army under Wellington in the Penninsular War. Marcus’s death was a raw wound that refused to heal, a death with lasting consequences that no one could have possibly foreseen and that now presented him with the most difficult choices of his life.

Luke felt alone and without counsel. Pushing himself away from the door, he scrubbed his hands over his face, tunneling his fingers through his hair, and groaned as he tried ineffectually to block out the image of his dead brother’s laughing face.

‘Oh, God, Marcus.’ His harsh voice broke the silence. ‘Why did you have to die?’ And then, ‘How do I deal with this woman who pulls at my emotions but whom I dare not trust?’

Breakfast in Grosvenor Square was a quiet affair and this one, two days later, was no exception. Adam was—well, Adam was wherever a young man might be at that early hour in the morning. Which left Luke and Harriette to share the breakfast table.

The London Season was well over. The
haut ton
had decamped
en masse
to the cooler rooms of its country homes, to rural watering places, or to the coastal attraction of Brighton. All of which Harriette saw as to her advantage. She need not attend Almack’s and exhibit her lack of expertise in dancing. She did not have to curtsy to the polite world at some ball or drum or fashionable al fresco breakfast where she would be under the scrutiny of the blue blood of England. Nor did she have to preside over her own event in Grosvenor Square to stamp her presence on London society.

No one who was anyone remained in London in August. Except for the Venmore household. Which surprised her. Surely this was not the usual pattern of life for the Earl of Venmore? What could keep Luke in London, as short of
company as it was? There was definitely
something
. Not only secrets hung in the air at Hallaston House, but an unease, almost a sense of waiting—and she thought it was not estate business that kept Luke occupied. Was it all tied up with Luke’s abortive mission to France? She remembered in Luke’s senseless ravings the woman that had caused him such distress, the woman he sought and could not find. Marie-Claude. Was this unknown lady the cause of Luke’s coldness towards her? He had denied it, but did Marie-Claude stand between them? Did Luke actually love this unknown? He had not come to her bed again after her less than elegant rebuff.

Harriette was lonely and heartsore. She longed for Luke to repeat the intimate demands of their wedding night, but he would not. She considered abandoning her pride, taking his elegant lapels in her hands and pressing her lips to that sternly beautiful mouth, but dare not.

She sat and contemplated her husband. Across the table from her, Luke buried himself in the
Morning Post
. Harriette watched him covertly. In her mind she saw herself spread out before him on his bed. She saw Luke kneeling naked beside her, as his hands and mouth began an exquisite exploration…If only it could be so.

She closed her eyes against the image. For now there were other priorities.

‘Luke…’

Graves brought in a silver salver bearing a single sheet of paper, folded. He bowed, offering it to Luke. A thin line developed between Luke’s brows as Harriette watched him read. He gave an imperceptible nod. A severity touched his mouth, a distinct tightening of the muscles in his jaw, across his cheekbones.