Julianne MacLean (13 page)

“No, it’s
not
just that,” she said.

Damien’s gut wrenched.

Then she turned to him and began to speak quickly. “Harold is a wonderful man, I know that. I just wasn’t expecting so much grandeur. I had no idea I would be living in a house like this. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. How will I know when to curtsy or not to
curtsy, or how to be a proper hostess? I’m not prepared for this. How will I ever manage? Do you think I made a mistake coming here? Or did Harold make a mistake, believing in me?”

“You’ll learn,” he said. “You’ll learn all of it, because you’re smart. Harold wouldn’t have proposed to you otherwise.”

“But do I
want
to learn it? Maybe it’s too much. I’ve always done what my parents wanted me to do, but sometimes I think they may have overestimated me. They always said I was the most sensible and dutiful of their daughters, and I suppose that’s what I’ve always thought I was born to be—sensible. I’ve been playing that role, but now I’m not so sure. I’m tired of this perfect life—the jewels and the shiny chandeliers and the astonishingly overwhelming wealth. I don’t want all those
things
, I just want…” She gazed up into his eyes, looking almost frantic. “Sometimes lately, I find myself not wanting to be sensible. I’ve never felt that way before. I’ve never been tempted to do anything that was different from what was expected of me. I was content to just do what people told me to do. But since the kidnapping, I’m questioning that. And it scares me.”

Her eyes were pleading. What did she want? Answers? Answers to what? Her place in the world? Her purpose? Her desires?

“There’s a great deal in life you haven’t experienced yet, Adele. That’s all. You’ll figure it all out in time.”

“But I’m going to become someone’s wife
soon. I am to choose my whole future, the rest of my life. What if I discover that’s not what I’m meant to be?” She stopped talking and bowed her head and cupped her forehead in her hand. “Oh, listen to me. How very silly I must sound. I have cold feet, that’s all, and I’ve been listening to my sister too much.”

“What does she say to you?” he asked.

The pleading look disappeared, and Adele’s voice took on a calmer tone. “She’s always wanted me to go out and have an adventure before I settle down. But I already did that, didn’t I?”

“Does she approve of your decision to marry Harold?”

Adele blinked a few times. “Oh yes. She likes him very much. Who wouldn’t?”

“Of course,” he replied.

Adele’s gaze swept over his face, from his eyes down to his lips, to his hair and back to his eyes again. He simply stood there, letting her look at him.

“I’m sorry,” she said, “for being so emotional. It’s not like me to act that way.” She paused, staring at his face as if she were pondering something. Then at last she added, “Sometimes I feel like I’m a different person when I’m with you.”

He gazed down at her wet, ruby lips, glistening in the sunlight beaming in the windows, and an unexpected shiver of need coursed through him. She was unlike any woman he’d ever known.

Perhaps it was because she opened up to him and told him things she didn’t tell other peo
ple. Or perhaps it was her innocence and her goodness.

No, it couldn’t be. The only thing he thought about when he looked at her was everything that defied innocence and goodness. What he felt for her was dark and sinful and wrong.

She gazed up into his eyes and said with a deep, resounding sadness, “Damien, sometimes I worry that I don’t really know who I am.”

“
I
know who you are,” he softly replied.

He stepped forward, closing the last bit of space between them, and took in a deep, liberating breath.
At last
, he thought, feeling a blazing hot surge of anticipation in his veins. But with it came shame and remorse—before he’d even done anything.

She looked into his eyes and shook her head, and he understood what she was saying without ever really saying it.
This is wrong
, she told him with her eyes.

It was wrong, he knew it was, but he could not stop. He could not.

He folded her into his arms and held her, as he’d held her on the bed when she’d had the nightmare. Only then he’d done it because he’d had to. He’d had to keep her safe when he was bringing her home to Harold. He’d been acting as her protector.

Now he had no excuses. They had arrived at Osulton. She was safe in every way but one. Because
he
should not be holding her. Harold should be holding her.

But still, Damien could not let go. He could not. His heart was pounding, racing out of control.

He pulled back, took her face in his hands, and kissed the tip of her nose, then her forehead, then he lowered his mouth to hers—softly, wetly, so achingly that it hurt inside him. Blood pounded in his brain. He swept his tongue into her mouth, and she made a little sound—a sweet, innocent whimper full of pleasure and awakenings.

Savoring the breathtaking sensation of her soft, luscious body pressed closely to his, and responding to the feel of her breasts crushed between them, Damien deepened the kiss.

Adele wrapped her arms around his neck, ran her fingers through the hair at his nape, and Damien’s sexual impulses, like fire under a splash of kerosene, flared high with a gusty roar. He devoured her deliciously soft, supple lips with his own, and finally—
God, finally
—let himself cherish her.

Giving in to it—all of it—was like taking a cool drink of water, when he’d been almost dead from thirst. He couldn’t stop guzzling. He wanted more and more and more.

He turned her in his arms and slowly backed her up against the wall, his lips never leaving hers. Harold could have been watching from outside one of the windows, and Damien wouldn’t have been able to stop this. That’s how badly he wanted her—with desperation and a fierce, fiery need more powerful than anything he’d ever known.

He had lost himself. He was doomed. Yet still he couldn’t stop, because the pleasure was so good, and the need to touch her and hold her was so great, he thought he might suffocate if he let go.

Bending slightly at the knees, he thrust upward with his hips. She raised a knee to open to him, while she drove forward in return, applying an exquisite, stimulating pressure against his erection. Again and again, he bent at the knees and thrust upward between her legs, and each time, she let out a tiny whimper of delight.

It all came so naturally—this tantalizing, erotic dance that mimicked sex—even though they were fully clothed, upright against a wall.

Damien’s senses reeled with a fierce, surging lust. He wanted so much more than this. He wanted to bury himself inside her and feel the hot wetness of everything she contained. He wanted to take her—in every way she could be taken—here and now on the cold, hard floor of this rotunda.

Sucking at the soft skin just below her earlobe, he let his hand drift up the side of her body to stroke the side of her neck. She sighed with pleasure, and the deep, husky sound of her voice, full of raw, sexual arousal, sent his heedless desires ramming hard against the crumbling wall of his self-control.

Feeling her hands cup the back of his head, he moved lower to kiss her neck, while he unfastened the top buttons at the collar of her bodice.
Adele
…He wanted to say her name,
whisper it in her ear, but he didn’t want to break the fragile spell. He kept quiet.

She moaned again, stroking his leg with hers, running her hands through his hair and making a terrible mess of it, while Damien dropped reckless, openmouth kisses across the moist, creamy skin just above her corset. He cupped her breast in his hand, lifting it, massaging it, suckling and wishing his mouth could reach her nipple, if only it weren’t constrained beneath the tightness of her underclothes.

“Damien,” she whispered, panting, as she tossed her head back. “Please, stop.”

He heard the desperation in her voice, and realized she was pleading with him again, only this time for something very different from before. She was asking him to back away, because she didn’t have the strength or the discipline to do it herself.

Damien labored to throttle his mounting desires, to choke them. Before his body had a chance to resist the order, he quickly stepped back and raked a shaky hand through his hair. Breath sailed out of his lungs as if he’d been punched. It was a reaction to his sexual desires being suddenly and swiftly interrupted by an instantaneous, stinging regret.

Adele stood against the wall. She gathered the top of her bodice in a tight fist and held it closed. Her cheeks were flushed. She looked shocked. Dismayed.

“
God
,” he whispered. He was disgusted with himself.

Adele’s eyes filled with tears. “How could we have done that?” Her voice was quiet with disbelief.

“It was my fault,” he said shakily.

“No, it was my fault, too. Something inside me wanted you, but I don’t
want
to want you.”

Her statement hurt, even though he knew it was the way things were. He didn’t
want
to want her either.

“Please go away,” she pleaded. “Go to London until this passes. It’s wrong, Damien, and we both know it. Please go away.”

He stared at her sad, shimmering beauty in the brightness of the room as she pleaded with him to do the right thing.

He nodded, and walked out.

Damien strode to the house to leave a note to his aunt, to tell her he was leaving. He passed his cousin Violet on the way up the front steps. “Damien,” she said, “where are you going?”

He did not stop to talk. “To London.”

“But what about tonight? We’ve been rehearsing a scene from
King Lear
.”

“It’ll be stupendous, I’m sure.” He entered the house and slammed the door behind him.

Violet remained on the steps, staring after her cousin, who seemed in a most impulsive hurry.
He is probably going to see that actress
, she thought, lifting her parasol over her head and turning to continue down the steps on her way to the gar
den, where she’d heard Lord Whitby had gone walking.

Lord Whitby
. Violet inhaled deeply and sighed. He was so impossibly handsome, she couldn’t bear it. She’d once heard that opposites were attracted to each other. Perhaps it was true. She did love his golden hair. Thank heavens he hadn’t come back from America engaged to one of those heiresses. And thank heavens Harold
had
come home engaged to one.

Violet smiled. Fate was kind sometimes, was it not? Who would ever have thought Harold would manage such a thing, and secure Violet’s own future? And secure it soundly, because she had always been able to pull her brother’s strings. Now it would be the family’s purse strings she would pull.

She glanced over her shoulder to where she had just met Damien a moment ago. He—on the other hand—had no strings to pull. He was no one’s puppet. Lucky for her, the heiress still wanted to marry her trouble-free brother.

And thank God Damien was leaving.

Violet stopped. She stood motionless on the grass. Was she being selfish, she wondered, wanting Harold’s marriage for her own advantage? She recalled what the vicar had said in church last week: “We must think of others before ourselves.”

Perhaps she should try to be a better person, she thought fleetingly. One eyebrow lifted, and she gazed upward as she considered it. She pic
tured herself helping out in the chapel or doing something charitable. Could she help the vicar when he went to collect bread for the poor?

Then she thought of the horrid, cheap cologne he wore. Violet wrinkled her nose and started walking again. No, she didn’t need to work at being a better person. She had been blessed with a pretty face, and very soon a full bank account. Besides, the vicar was annoying. Everyone said he was a nice man, but he had a squeaky voice. She certainly didn’t want to end up married to someone like him.

An hour later, after Adele had returned her horse to the stable, she entered the house, her heels clicking as she walked quickly across the main hall to the stairs. She had just grabbed hold of the newel post, when she heard someone at the top. Glancing up, she saw Damien.

Their eyes met, and they both halted where they were—she at the bottom and he at the top. She had not expected to see him. She had hoped he would be gone.

She considered backing off the step and standing up against the wall to make way for him to pass. Or perhaps she could keep her head down and dash up the stairs, passing him without a word.

After a few seconds, Damien started hesitantly down the steps again, his eyes never leaving hers. All she could do was stand there, frozen in her place, waiting to see what
he
would do.

He slowed when he reached the step she
stood upon, and stopped beside her. Her heart was pounding; she half expected him to tell
her
to leave Osulton Manor. She was the outsider, after all.

But he said nothing…nothing as he took her hand and led her off the step and into the quiet, private confines of the library.

D
amien opened the library door, peered inside to ensure it was empty, then brought Adele in and closed the door behind him.

“We shouldn’t be in here,” she said, crossing the dark paneled room to stand in front of the window. “Not alone.” She had to force herself to turn and face him with an appearance of confidence.

He had changed into city clothes—a crisp white shirt under a black jacket, and a long overcoat, open in front. Yet his wavy, black hair was in chaos, and despite the fine clothes, he had that wild, rugged look about him. His chest and shoulders were inconceivably thick and broad. He was a mountain. A windswept mountain.

When he finally spoke, his voice was deep
and controlled. “I need to say something to you before I leave.”

He is going to apologize and say it will never happen again,
she thought.
Then it will be over, and by nightfall, he will be in the arms of his mistress.

She clung to the image of his mistress. It strengthened her will.

He took a step toward her. “Are you absolutely sure you should marry Harold?”

Adele stared at him, dumbfounded. It was not what she’d expected him to say. And why was he asking her this? Did he mean to convince her she should
not
be sure? Was Damien willing to consider fighting for her himself?

She imagined becoming his bride instead of Harold’s, and a part of her basked euphorically in the notion that it could happen, that she could be loved, truly loved, by her wild, black knight. There. She’d admitted it. A part of her was indeed dreaming of such an end to this situation.

But no. She clenched her fists suddenly. She should not fantasize about him that way. He was not the husbandly kind. He was currently in love with a scandalous actress, and he had no loyalty. He went from woman to woman. Adele should not imagine him to be something he was not.

She reminded herself that he had unleashed her passions, certainly, but that wasn’t necessarily a good thing. This change in herself was disconcerting and frightening. She didn’t know what was on the other side of it, or how far it would take her. She didn’t want to end up like Frances Fairbanks, promiscuous and not re
spectable and living for pleasure alone. Could that happen to Adele? Damien was a powerful temptation. He had enormous pull. Hence, he made her fear the possibility of tumbling into a dark abyss, a future full of regret. A life ruined, all because of a passionate, “temporary madness.”

“I’m sure,” she replied firmly, embedding herself in her determination not to be carried away by it.

He slowly crossed the room, growing closer and closer until he was standing in front of her with only a foot of empty space between them. Adele realized she was holding her breath. She had to consciously force herself to let it out slowly.

“I’ve spent the past hour killing myself wondering if I should tell Harold what just happened,” Damien said.

Startled by the suggestion, Adele blinked up at him.

“Don’t panic,” he continued. “I would never hurt him for the sake of easing my own conscience. But I
would
hurt him to protect him.” He began to pace around the room. “He lacks experience with women, Adele. He’s innocent, and he’s naive. What kind of wife will you be?”

The breath she’d been holding sailed out of her lungs in a single, thunderous heartbeat that shook her. So. He did not bring her in here to convince her to marry him. He brought her in here because he doubted her decency.

Though a part of her was having doubts about it herself, her pride nevertheless bucked. “Damien, I value my integrity, and when I
speak my marriage vows, I will not take them lightly.”

“But when I kissed you, you kissed me back.”

Adele raised her chin.

“Maybe you’re not as strong as you and everyone else thinks you are.” He took another slow and careful step toward her. “That’s what worries me. My mother was not faithful to my father, and their marriage ended very badly. I won’t let that happen to Harold.”

He crowded her up against the wainscoting. God, she could smell him. She could see the rough texture of the stubble along his jaw. She could feel the size and the weight of him, as if he were on top of her, which in a way, he was.

“I will never be an unfaithful wife,” she said.

Breathing hard now, she gazed at his lips, so full, so soft-looking. Despite everything, she remembered what they felt like, what his tongue felt like inside her mouth.

“But you’ve been an unfaithful fiancée.”

Her eyes widened. He was right. She
had
been. But that didn’t make it any easier to hear, coming from him.

She felt angry all of a sudden. Life had been so simple before she’d met him. Adele defiantly raised her chin again.

“How dare you reproach
me
, when I had never sinned before I encountered you. If I have fallen from my pedestal, it was
you
who brought me down.”

“Is that how you see me? As some kind of immoral snake?”

“Isn’t that what you are? You bed scandalous women, you don’t pay your debts.”

Heated shock flashed in his eyes.

“And you betrayed someone you cared about,” she continued. “What happened between us was about temptation and weakness, and now you’re comparing me to your mother, who was an adulteress. It’s all despicable. I’m sick over it. Everything between us has been immoral and I regret all of it.”

Just saying the words was like a stake she was thrusting into her own heart. She had never been immoral before. She had always been good. And she hated to think that what they’d shared had not been tender and loving. There was a part of her that cherished what they’d done.
Cherished
. She’d felt cared for and safe in his arms. It broke her heart to think that it was dirty or shameful.

“You’re too close, Damien,” she said, laboring to stay focused.

Damien’s eyes softened, and at long last, he stepped back. Adele grabbed hold of the windowsill beside her.

He stared at her for a long, excruciating moment. “Part of me wishes you were not so strong, Adele.”

Anger and confusion all welled up inside her and burst forth like water breaking through a dam. “Why? So I would betray Harold and you could congratulate yourself for being right about all women being like your mother? That’s why you haven’t married before now, isn’t it? You think all women are wicked and unfaith
ful, and you had to prove it with me. Harold told you I was saintly and you didn’t want to believe it. You didn’t want to believe that
you
might be afraid to love someone, afraid to trust someone like Harold trusted me. You didn’t want Harold to have what you couldn’t have, because it made you jealous. Jealous of him for being able to love and trust someone. You are deficient and you know it, and you want to pull someone down with you, and that someone is me.”

Shock and fury coiled together within her. She could barely fathom what she’d just said to Damien. She’d never attacked anyone like that before—attacked his heart and soul in such a direct, cruel way.

But she’d needed to be cruel. She was angry with him. Angry with him for making her feel guilty and immoral, and for making her want him when he could not be had. She was angry with him because he was not willing to fight for her—to choose her over Harold and become the man she wanted him to be. To let go of his own misguided belief that no woman could be trusted. He was using this—these accusations about her integrity—to release himself from what would be a painful undertaking.

He turned and walked to the door. “No. Because this would all be easier to bear if I could think badly of you. I want to, Adele. I want to hate you, but all I feel is guilt, because you’re right. I did bring you down.”

He did not look back. He simply walked out.

Adele collapsed into a chair and struggled to catch her breath.
I did bring you down.

Her heart throbbed painfully over all the hurtful words they’d just spoken. Damien did not respect or trust her. All he saw was her propensity to be just like his mother and cheat on Harold. He thought the worst of her. And Adele had told Damien he was deficient and immoral.

She didn’t
want
to think those terrible things about the man who had saved her life, the man who had kissed her and held her in his arms, but they were true and she knew it. She had to accept it. She had to accept that he would never be hers. He would never be her prince charming.

She waited for a few minutes until she was sure he was gone, then she hurried from the room.

Violet, however, did not hurry from the room. She rose very slowly from the sofa she had been reclining upon—a sofa that faced the fireplace on the other side of the library.

She wanted to strangle Damien. Strangle him! Was there not one woman in England he could keep his hands off of? Harold’s perfect, virtuous fiancée, no less?

Violet ground her teeth together and cursed her cousin.
Damn, damn, damn him
! She would not let it happen. She would not let Harold lose the one and only woman who had ever managed to lure his attention away from his precious laboratory long enough to get him to propose. Violet had never thought she would see the day, and if Harold lost Adele, it might be another complete lifetime before he looked up from his bloody experiments to take notice of
another woman. And what were the chances the woman he noticed would be an heiress as wealthy as Adele?

Slim. Very slim.

Violet stood up and walked out, resolving that she would do something about this. She didn’t know what yet, but she would figure out something, because she would not let those American dollars slip so easily from her grasp.

Damien knocked on Frances’s dressing room door as he always did after a performance—twice, then twice again.

“Come in, darling,” she called to him from inside.

He pushed the door open. The room smelled strongly of the red roses that were lying about in bouquets. Sparkling costumes were draped over the backs of chairs, and decorative dyed feathers stood in tall vases.

He walked in and closed the door behind him with a quiet click. Frances swiveled around on the stool in front of her mirrored vanity. She wore only her chemise, corset, and stockings, along with her stage paint and heeled boots. She had taken the pins out of her thick, wavy red hair, and it spilled wildly upon her shoulders. She knew that was the way Damien preferred it. She did not know, however, that he would have preferred to see her without the paint.

Saying nothing, Damien slowly sauntered across the room, tugging at his neck cloth along the way.

He usually smiled at her when they went through these motions after a performance, but tonight, he had no smile for Frances. He wanted only one thing, and that was all. He felt no need to charm. But she was not the type of woman who required it.

She slowly stood, meandering teasingly toward the red chintz sofa against the far wall, and sat down, leaning back. Damien came to a full stop in front of her, looking into her eyes while he finished loosening his neck cloth. He left it dangling around his collar.

She looked up at him for a moment, reading him, then she sat forward on the edge of the sofa cushion. The corner of her full mouth turned up in a wicked grin, and her green eyes sparkled mischievously.

“Someone’s in the mood for something very naughty,” she said, then proceeded to unfasten his trousers.

He closed his eyes, waiting to feel the desire flow through him as it usually did—a desire that he wanted and needed to feel tonight—but to his surprise and annoyance, a spontaneous reflex brought his hands up to gently take hold of her wrists.

Before he knew what he was doing, he had taken a well-defined step backward, and Frances was looking up at him with an expression of bewilderment on her face. “What’s the matter?” she asked.

For a long moment, he had no answer, then at last he said, “Good God, Frances, I’m sorry.”

She shook her head, not quite able to understand. He wasn’t sure he understood it fully himself. He didn’t understand anything about himself lately.

“Sorry for what?”

He took a few more steps backward, then turned away from her and fastened his trousers. “I shouldn’t have come here.”

Her voice took on a haughty tone. “Why not?”

“Because I would only be using you,” he said flatly.

She stood. “I’ve never minded before.”

Frances. She was like no ordinary woman.

He faced her again. “But it was different before. Before, I came for more than just the sex. We’ve always been friends, and you’ve known that.”

Her eyes narrowed with anger. “So what’s different now? It’s not because of the bracelet, is it? I certainly didn’t mean to become possessive, Damien.”

“I know that.”

“Then what’s the problem? Are we not friends anymore?”

He hated this.
Hated
it. “I believe the time has come for us to be
only
friends, instead of what we are at the moment.”

“Why?”

There was no point dragging this out. She deserved the truth—at least part of it. The rest he would keep to himself, until he could figure out how to deal with it. “Because it’s time I found a wife.”

Her jaw jutted forward. “That doesn’t mean we have to stop seeing each other.”

“Yes, it does.” Because no woman would have him if he was still seeing Frances, and he
needed
someone to have him. He needed a wife of his own. The sooner the better.

Frances’s head snapped back as if she’d been hit in the face with a ball. “I’d tarnish your reputation, you mean.”

He said nothing.

“I have news for you, Damien. Your reputation was tarnished long before I invited you into my bed.”

Her eyes flashed briefly with shock and fury before she turned without warning and picked up a pink perfume bottle from her vanity, and hurled it across the room at him, striking his wrist bone. As luck would have it, the bottle was open, and the lilac scent poured all over him.

He was still recovering when a tall, glass paperweight of a nude woman came whirling through the air and smashed into his face.