Her Only Desire (38 page)

She gazed at him in unstinting admiration as he strode toward her in bone-colored trousers, loose white shirt-sleeves, a dark brown neckcloth casually knotted, and a single-breasted waistcoat of sky-blue and tan pinstripes. He looked beautiful, she thought, and thankfully, sane again.

“Need some help with that?”

She handed the stubborn wine bottle over to him with a smile.

“Papa! Come back!”

“Time for lunch, Matt,” he replied as he uncorked the wine bottle with ease.

“But I'm not hungry! I want to play!”

Ian sent her a twinkling glance. “I think it's your turn to entertain him.”

“I'm not half bad at the old kick-to-kick, I'll have you know. I did grow up with brothers, after all.”

“I don't doubt it, my love, though you may be the first marchioness ever to possess that skill.”

She laughed, and he leaned down to give her a kiss.

“Papa, somebody, play with me!” Matthew insisted.

“That boy needs a little brother or sister,” Ian said softly.

“In due time,” Georgie murmured with a smile. “Matthew, Papa is going to eat now!” she called. “Why don't you try kicking the ball against the tree and let it bounce back to you? We'll watch.”

“All right.” He heaved a long-suffering sigh.

“There,” Georgie said to Ian in a low tone. “Now perhaps you can have a nice glass of wine with your wife, and a little peace.”

“Hope springs eternal,” he said sardonically.

She laughed and lifted her empty glass, and Ian poured for them both. He sat down across from her and they both began helping themselves to the simple luncheon fare, cold meats that she would not touch, cucumber sandwiches, potato salad, some cheeses and fruits, and soft rye bread.

Georgie was glad she had come up with this idea. A relaxed afternoon together on a balmy summer's day was just the thing. More important, it provided her with the perfect chance to try to find out what was bothering him.

Slanting a probing glance his way, she noticed him rubbing his shoulder. “Sore?”

“Bit of a twinge. Can't say I'm used to swinging a pickax.”

“No, I should hope not. Here. Let me help you.” She set her plate aside, got up, and knelt behind him, massaging his sore shoulder.

“Mmm, that feels good.”

“You know, darling, yesterday—that attack of yours on the roses was a little strange.”

“Eh, I couldn't stand looking at them anymore.”

“Why?”

“They were ghastly. Honestly, aren't you glad they're gone?”

She lowered her gaze. “If it makes you feel better, then of course I am.”

“They were hers, you know.”

“Your mother's?” she inquired, recalling his childhood anecdote of gathering a bouquet for his mother and being punished for it, but Ian shook his head.

“Catherine's.”

“Oh!” she murmured, pausing.

“For such a well-bred girl, she really had some low and vulgar tastes.”

“Hey! Did you see how good I kicked it?” Matthew exclaimed, holding the ball triumphantly over his head.

All this time, he had been running back and forth, kicking the ball against the tree trunk, frequently missing altogether and having to chase it, and carrying on a chirpy monologue that he presumed they had been heeding. Now, however, little Lord Aylesworth realized in all his aristocratic hauteur that their attention had strayed from him. “Watch me!” he ordered them. “Papa, you're not watching me!”

“I'm watching you,” Ian called back wearily.

“No, you're
not
!” In a defiant show of temper, the heir to the marquisate drop-kicked the ball into the air. It flew up with impressive velocity, ricocheted off the underside of a thick gnarled oak branch, and careened down, meteor-like, onto Ian's plate. It knocked his food all over him, splattering him with potato salad and spilling his glass of wine across his lap.

Georgie gasped. Ian jumped to his feet with a curse, and Matthew's jaw dropped, his brown eyes growing perfectly round.

“Young man!” he bellowed. “Get over here, sit down, and eat your lunch, as you were told!”

Georgie rose and sought to intervene with the utmost delicacy as Matthew and his puppy both visibly cowered. “Darling, he didn't mean to do it. I'm sure it was an accident—”

“Don't defend his actions. That was a thoroughly obnoxious stunt and he knows it! Get over here, Matthew.
Now!
” he thundered.

Matthew sidled over to the blanket and dropped into position, as ordered, suddenly making himself look quite tiny and pitiful, his shivering puppy huddled beside him.

“Matthew, I think you had better apologize to your father,” Georgie advised in an even tone.

“Sorry, sir.”

Ian leaned down slowly. “You cannot throw a fit of temper every time you don't get exactly what you want. That is no way for a Prescott to behave! So help me, you will not grow up to be spoiled like your mother was! If I want to have a conversation with my wife, you will wait until it is your turn to speak.”

“Ian, that's enough!” Georgie exclaimed. “The boy's been through a lot of late! You're scaring him—and you're scaring me.”

Her words caused Ian's jaw to clamp shut. He turned pale, staring at her for a second. Without another word, he reached down for a large table napkin, then straightened up again, pivoted, and began marching away, angrily brushing himself off with the cloth as he stormed off.

“You're leaving?”

No answer.

Georgie watched him in disbelief. All of a sudden, she felt her lungs seize up in response to his abandonment, and her temper frayed. “Ian, tell me what is wrong!” she cried.

“Trust me, Georgiana,” he bit out, pausing only for a moment, “you don't want to know!” Then he turned around again and kept walking, and he didn't come back.

         

Scared her, did he? No doubt of that. No doubt he scared his son. God, maybe he really was a monster. Just like Catherine had said. What kind of foolish monster ever hoped he could be loved?

Ian stood above the swirling river a short while later, his heart pounding. The broken bridge looked terrible, unmended as a gaping wound.

He closed his eyes, struggling for control with a slow, lengthy breath. The sound of the rushing river below filled his ears, and the scent of it teased his nostrils. If only he could make her understand!

He had been raised from the cradle with a lofty role to live up to, a gleaming family image to fulfill. He had worn this bright and polished steel armor for so long that it had fused into his skin. How could he rip himself open just to show Georgiana what he truly was?

Leave her her illusions.
She did not really want to know.

Nobody did.

Yet he could not escape the feeling that the writing was already on the wall. She was going to leave him. It was only a matter of time. She was getting too close to the truth, just like she had with Queen Sujana. There could be no secrets with Georgiana Knight.

She'd find out, and then the only way to keep her would be to make her his prisoner, just like the beast he knew he was.

Only, Ian could not bear to make his bride unhappy.

When he flicked his eyes open again, the swirling waters of the River Griffith swiftly mesmerized him, always gliding by, catching against strewn branches and twigs, spinning leaves in the current. Spiraling miniature vortexes turned where the water seemed calm. Foamy rills, deadly rocks. One particularly jagged stone whose sharp edge matched the scar on his shoulder.

“Catherine!” His roar had echoed down the gorge.

“Let go of the horses, you brute! I'm leaving you, I hate you, you monster! Brute! I hate the very sight of you!”

“Hate me all you like, but I will not permit you to abandon your newborn son.”

“Oh, really? Watch me.”

He shut his eyes again, trying to ward off the memory. The past was behind him now, the future ahead, with Georgiana.
Please don't make me tell her.

It was the first time in his life he'd had anything close to real love, and if he told her what had happened that night, she would run from him, and he might never get her back.

Honestly, he did not know how much more of this he could take. He was on the verge of going mad, consumed by guilt, never-ending dread that she might find out some other way.

But then again, surely he was aware that Georgiana had given him another chance after his display of violence in Green Park. He refused to squander it by informing her that he was capable of even worse than what she had seen. He didn't want her to know. He didn't even like to acknowledge it to himself.

No, he could keep this awful secret bottled up tightly inside him. He knew that he could. Keeping secrets, hiding his feelings, these were his forte, were they not?

She loved her humanitarian diplomat, her noble justice-maker, her man of reason.
Oh, Jesus, he was such a goddamned fraud.

When he had taken it into his head to marry Georgiana, he had been thinking logically, not realizing that things would ever become so…
sticky.
He'd had no way of knowing how it would be when they had grown so truly close.

Intimate.

But how could their love go any farther with this terrible secret in his soul forming a chasm between them? And yet he was sure if he told her, she would be gone.

It was not lost on him that in a sense, he was doing the same thing to Georgie that Catherine had done to him, coming into the marriage representing himself as something other than what he really was. But he couldn't help it. He loved her so much. He would have done anything, been anything, to win her.

Somehow, he would fight this secret back into its cage and carry on in the hypocritically proper Prescott way, just as he had since that unspeakable night.

Henceforth, he would simply have to try harder to be the man she wanted, loved, needed him to be.

At the very base of it all, though, as deep as the dark silt and cold black river rocks, he knew that he did not regret a thing. He had told Georgiana a lie, true—he had told the whole world a lie—and now he had to live with it. But although it hurt, he would do so happily.

For Matthew's sake.

         

Matthew went down for his nap later that afternoon. After the boy had dozed off, safe in his bed back at the house, Georgie decided to walk for a bit through the grounds.

Her husband's brooding lately must have turned contagious, for she found herself still hurt and troubled by his abrupt exit from their picnic. Things had started out so well today, but now she saw that the trouble was still there, only hidden, just beneath the surface.

Lord, what had she gotten herself into? Married scarcely a week, and already her husband had barked at her, clearly wishing her to leave him alone.

Well, if that's what he wanted, that's exactly what he would get, she thought stubbornly. She wasn't going anywhere near the man until he apologized.

Wandering across the green meadows, Georgie took solace in the company of pale yellow butterflies that zigzagged across her path. Now and again, she could swear she sensed somebody watching her, possibly following her, but when she glanced back, peering over her shoulder, no one was there.

July had come. Her English-born husband thought this weather too hot, but Georgie was still used to India. She was comfortable, strolling through the sun-splashed parklands. Birds flitted about in the lilting fountain, and here and there, a rabbit nibbled the taller grasses in the shade.

She walked on. But when she spotted the top of the white marble obelisk beyond some robust saplings, she decided to go and have a look at Ian's monument to her dead predecessor. Maybe it would hold some answers about the mysterious man whose life she and the late Catherine both shared.

A meditative silence reigned in the gentle hollow from which the white marble needle rose to rake the azure sky. A tall square column that tapered to a pyramid at the top, the obelisk's setting was a perfect circle of crushed gravel, surrounded, in turn, by low boxwood parterres and a wreath of flower beds planted with violets and forget-me-nots, with burgeoning white azaleas here and there.

There were two curved benches where those who came to pay their respects could sit and remember Catherine in solemn serenity. Georgie wondered if Ian came here during those lonely hours when he wandered off away from the house.

She chose not to sit, but walked across the crunchy gravel to study the portrait of her predecessor inside an oval medallion set into the front of the monument. The picture showed an unsmiling, pale-skinned blond with brown eyes like Matthew's.

There was a Latin inscription scrolled around the portrait, but Georgie had never learned Latin and could only wonder what sort of lofty platitude it communicated.

She was studying it pensively when a thin, quavery voice behind her broke the silence. “You've married the devil, my girl.”

Georgie nearly jumped out of her skin. She whirled around, clutching her chest. “Oh, my word! Mother Absalom, is it?” She laughed in relief, recognizing the old midwife whom they had seen hobbling along the side of the road on the day of their arrival. “Goodness, you gave me a start!”

“You
should
be frightened, dearie. I'd be, if I were you.”

“Ah,” Georgie answered with a bemused but patient smile. She was glad that Ian had warned her the old woman was senile. Even so, her words were a little disturbing under the circumstances. “No apples today?” she asked in a friendly tone.

The old midwife carried no basket now, but instead leaned upon a gnarled walking staff to support her wizened frame. She cupped her ear. “What's that, dearie?”

“No apples,” Georgie repeated, smiling. “I saw you on the road when we arrived. You had a basket of apples that day.”