Folly's Reward (25 page)

“Hal,” she gasped.

He stopped and looked up at her. “What is it?”

“I can’t. I shall fall.”

“No, angel. You won’t fall. Here, take my hand. Just bend your knees and take a step.”

Prudence shook her head.

The harebell eyes studied her gravely.

“This is the other thing it takes to be human,” he said quietly. “Courage and trust. Don’t look down. Just look at the place where the wide part of the step meets the wall. I won’t let you fall.”

His palm felt warm under her own. Warm, reassuring, full of strength.

Prudence took a step, then another. With her eyes fixed on Harry’s, she slowly descended the spiral staircase until they arrived safely at the bottom.

“Where’s your room?” Harry asked.

“No, I’m all right, really. Let me get you some willow!”

“Prudence, leave me to my own demons. You, too, are exhausted, worn down, stretched thin as a sail in the wind. It is you who needs to lie down.”

Prudence allowed him to lead her along the hallway and into her room.

As she sank into a chair, he kneeled at the hearth and set a spark to the fire. She wanted to reach out and touch his shoulder.

Instead, she gathered more courage and readied herself to strip off another layer.

“It’s not done yet, Hal. Neither of us will rest until all of it is faced.”

Still crouching, he spun on his heel and stared up at her. “You don’t know what I’ve done, angel. You don’t know what I am.”

“Then tell me! Let me judge for myself. Who are you to decide what I shall or shall not condemn?”

Harry leaned his back against the base of a heavy settle and stretched his legs in front of him on the hearthrug. His boots almost touched her skirts. The bruised, tired lids dropped over his blue eyes, as if he couldn’t bear to see her reaction to what he would say.

“I was my father’s favorite child. I never let him down. Nor did I ever willingly let my brother down. Last winter, when Richard was being hunted by an enemy, I dropped everything to help him where I could.”

“And saved his life. I know.”

Harry shrugged. “I’m lucky enough to be a dead shot, that’s all. Better by far than Richard. He doesn’t mind. But he had left a failure behind him in Paris, a brothel filled with English children that he hadn’t been able to shut down. I was so damned cocksure that I could do better that I went there myself.”

“And?”

“I shut it down. I burned it to the ground, in fact.”

“Was anyone killed?”

“No.”

Prudence hugged her arms around her own body. She was glad that he couldn’t see her. It made it easier to talk to him as if she had the right to do it.

“Then why this anguish, Hal? What is this about?”

His voice was very soft, but he did not hesitate or stumble over the words.

“It’s about failing myself, I suppose. In order to get the trust of the madam, I became her lover. She liked using young men. My degradation was her pleasure. Can you understand that?”

It was as if the words were dropping into a deep well, and she couldn’t understand them until they reached the bottom. Then the water roared up in a great wave as the words hit.

“I don’t know. Yes, I think I can.”

“It touched too deep, angel. I hated her for what she did and for what she was, but I wasn’t left detached and distant, as I thought I’d be. I foolishly believed I could handle it, that it would be amusing, even if maybe a little distasteful—like putting on a wet greatcoat when you’re already chilled. After all, I’d had lovers before.”

“But it wasn’t like that?”

“No. In spite of everything I knew about Madame Relet, and everything I wanted to believe about myself, my body responded with pleasure to her touch. I found myself wanting her, even as I was disgusted at my own reaction.” He covered his face with his hands to wring the long fingers over the drawn skin of his cheeks. “What the hell does that say about me, do you suppose?”

The ripples at the bottom of the well spread away in ever widening circles, carrying her with them into an unknown darkness.

“That you’re a man, I should think,” Prudence said.

His head flew up, and the blue eyes looked into hers with open astonishment.

“I have two brothers, one in the navy and one in the army. We are very close. They tell me things.” Her heart pounded like a blacksmith’s hammer. “That’s an ability that men have, isn’t it, to separate lust from love—or even from conscious desire? If you had not found something in you that wanted her, you couldn’t have satisfied her and rescued the little English girls. Why do you torture yourself about it? You had a natural male reaction to a skillful harlot. But don’t your motives count? Isn’t it how you acted on it that matters?”

Harry moved faster than she could react, so that he was kneeling at her feet with both of her hands imprisoned in his. His gaze bored into her face.

“Angel, I can’t believe this. You’re not shocked?”

Prudence looked down at the ridge of his nose, the lush eyelashes, the defined curve of his upper lip, and felt only love.

“Yes, I’m very shocked. But I was forewarned. Helena told me something about this business, you see. And with Helena, too, your actions were honorable, even though you were afraid of your feelings at the time.”

“But I’m still afraid, angel. Afraid that I’m no better than those men who came to Madame Relet’s as clients. How fine a line separates us!”

But if she doesn’t do it right, he dies.

“We traveled together and even shared a bed,” Prudence said desperately. “If you were not different from those men, then I wouldn’t still be a virgin. Unless your flirtation was all idle nonsense, and you never really wanted me.”

Harry slid his hands up her arms and pulled her forward from the chair.

Prudence closed her eyes as she tumbled onto him. They fell back together onto the hearthrug in a tangle of skirts. Flames flared up the chimney in the sudden rush of air.

She heard his next words dropped clear and clean, to wash their import over her head and drown her.

“Oh, I want you, angel. Do you need me to prove it?”

* * *

Lord Belham turned to face the woman who had taken his virginity.

Lady Dunraven glared back.

“You cannot hurt me anymore,” the marquess said. “And in trying, you have only hurt yourself. All of Dunraven, these lochs and mountains, woods and fields, this castle and the house that our son Henry built for his young wife, are Bobby’s. I am his legal guardian. Management of his estates falls to me.”

“I knew it,” she cried. “I said you would turn me from my home.”

“Yes, Lady Dunraven, I shall. I didn’t want to then, but I do now. I don’t want you this close to my grandson when he comes home. You will be pleased to pack your things. You may have use of the house in Edinburgh. I will make you an allowance suitable to your station. Think how much you will enjoy that gossipy, close-knit little world! You can blacken my name to your heart’s content, and the Edinburgh biddies will enjoy every shudder. Now, get out of my sight!”

Her face as white as her hair, Lady Dunraven drew herself up with undiminished dignity and stalked from the room.

“Good heavens,” Lady Acton said. “Do you suppose it would be possible to ring for some tea?”

“Harry wants to marry her, Mother.”

Lady Acton turned to Richard and raised an elegant brow. “What? Who?”

“Harry wants to marry Miss Drake. He isn’t in love with Helena, in spite of what he said. He’s very desperately in love with Prudence Drake. How the devil are we going to get Father’s approval for their wedding?”

“Richard, please be realistic. Acton will
never
allow it. And you know quite well that I don’t have enough influence in this to sway him.”

“I married Helena without his permission, and he forgave us.”

“Yes, but Helena turned out to have property. She had perfectly respectable connections. There’s no comparison.”

“No, of course not. For even though I’m his heir, Father doesn’t really care about me. It’s only Harry who must do no wrong. Well, that’s been nearly enough to destroy him all of his life. He must be allowed to be free of it.”

“Richard, it’s not something I can change.”

“Can’t you, Mother? Well, it’s something I intend to change, if I can.”

Lord Belham turned from the arrow-slit window, where he had been standing, and walked back to join them.

“May I offer to intervene? For God’s sake, far be it from me to stand by while young lovers are separated by their parents. Isn’t Harry of age?”

“Yes, of course.” Lady Acton gazed up without artifice at her first love. “But Lord Acton controls his allowance and the secondary properties—everything that might be left to Harry, or given to him on his marriage. I do not speak without due knowledge, Alex. If Harry marries this Scottish girl, his father will disown him. They will be penniless.”

“But not forever,” Richard said. “I can make them an allowance. And more than that, I shall move to King’s Acton after Father dies. Then Harry and Prudence may have Acton Mead.”

“Richard! But you love Acton Mead.”

He shrugged. “I love Harry more.”

“And in the meantime? I know you’ll be generous, but Harry won’t let himself live off his brother’s charity.”

“There is another solution.” Lord Belham smiled. “We are very busy plotters, aren’t we? But how do we know that Harry will ask her, or that Miss Drake will accept him if he does?”

* * *

Harry rolled Prudence onto her back and pinned her there with one leg across hers. He leaned on one elbow and gazed down at her, while he stroked the hair back from her forehead.

“I very much wish to marry you, Miss Drake.”

Prudence shook her head.

“Why not? Don’t you want me?”

“How can you ask me now? You are ill, and exhausted, and—”

“Mad with lust? Yes, I’m tired. So are you. We’re seeing each other at our worst. What harm in that? For I have just recognized something that I suppose I was just too deuced foolish to see before. Thanks to you and Madame Relet.”

“What is that?”

She longed to reach up to touch his face, the strong contours of jaw and nose, the crease left by the dimple in his cheek.

“The difference between love and lust.”

“And?” Prudence said.

“Love isn’t something that exists in contrast to lust. They can be separate, but they can also be together. As they are now. I love you, Prudence. I also want you very badly in my bed. Will you marry me?”

“Harry, I can’t.”

“Not because of Helena, surely?”

As he grinned at her, Prudence saw how emotion and fatigue had stripped him to the bone. Nothing could remain between them now but truth.

“No,” she said. “Not that—or only a very little.”

“What I felt for Helena was love, certainly. It still is. But there was never lust in it, or this soul-stirring desire, this knowledge that I have met my
partner
. She dazzled me a little, that’s all, because I’d never met a woman like her.”

She knew he spoke with absolute candor. That he had felt and acted as he had about his brother’s wife only made her love him more. Who would not love Helena? But how many men would have worked to save that brother’s life and marriage, in the face of it, as Harry had done?

“Neither have I,” Prudence said.

“Yes, but now I’ve met one better. What I feel for Helena is right and perfect. It has nothing to do with how I feel for you. Marry me, angel!”

“I can’t,” she said. “Your father would destroy you.”

“He can’t. He can take away my money. No doubt he will. I shall earn us a living. Why not? That’s what second sons do.”

“Not second sons of earls.”

“Of course they do. In the army, often enough.”

“You will not join the army?”

“No, I don’t think so. But I’ll find us something. What the devil do position and wealth matter without love? Now, please, say you will marry me.”

“Harry, you must give this more thought.”

“I have given it every ounce of my attention, Prudence. I know what it will mean. I don’t ask lightly. But any material sacrifice for me, I make willingly. And I assure you that I shall give you a more secure future than you have now as a governess. Don’t you love me?”

Prudence closed her eyes to block the tears. “With all my heart, Harry.”

His lips touched hers with infinite tenderness. His body seemed to melt into hers, so that she fit perfectly against him. He held her face gently in both hands, while the kisses became deeper, burning into her blood with a pure flame.

She knew her lips were becoming swollen. Harry kept kissing her.

He kissed her as his hands ran over her, pulling her against him, exploring the curve of her back and waist—and then her breast, and her thigh, and the swell of her buttock.

Prudence moved to help him, running her hands under his shirt.

He released her and suddenly sat up.

“What is it?” she whispered.

Fabric muffled his reply as he stripped off his coat, then pulled his shirt off over his head. His strong, lean shoulders danced with light and shadows in the firelight.

“We shall burn it away,” he said fiercely. “Every last vestige of foolishness. But only if you will marry me, Prudence.”

“It’s too much to ask.” She sat up to put her hands on his shoulders. His skin felt warm and smooth, lovely. “Why should you give up everything? Forget marriage! I shall love you anyway.”

She leaned forward to kiss his chest. A fast intake of breath made his muscles leap under her fingers. She touched his small, hard nipple with her mouth, and felt his response burn in answer to her own.

But he took her head in his hands and kissed her again on the lips.

Then he gazed down at her, his eyes as dark as the midnight ocean.

“Promise to marry me, or I shall walk out of your life. I will not make you my harlot, Prudence. I want us to have children. I want us to be together when we’re old and roaring with gout. I want the man at your hearth with the double-barreled shooting piece to be
me
. I want us
married
.”