My Reckless Surrender (32 page)

“Diana, we should go.” He drew her hand away from his
face but kept sure hold of it. He turned and led her into her father's garden. “I don't trust Burnley.”

She nodded and pocketed his handkerchief. He noticed she seemed calmer, less poisoned by regret. Even her voice was no longer laced with guilt. “He can't hurt us, Tarquin. Not when we love one another.”

Joy welled, threatened to overflow. He stopped and lifted the hand he held to his lips. “I'm so happy about the baby. I've never had a real family.”

“We'll make a real family together.”

The certainty in her tone ignited imperishable hope in his heart. He and Diana would prevail. They'd struggled through the fires of hell to reach this moment, but now the future extended before them like a broad, sunlit plateau.

His hand tightened on hers. “I'm set on becoming the dullest of fellows. The reformed rake. The faithful husband. The doting father. I hope you won't rue the change, my love.”

“Am I, Tarquin?”

He didn't immediately hear the quiet question. Most of his attention focused on whether Burnley's minions skulked ready to ambush them. “Are you what?”

“Your love.”

He halted as if he smacked into a pane of glass and released her, Burnley completely forgotten.

Foolish woman. Of course she was his love.

Good God, he'd loved her from the first, although it took him an absurdly long time to recognize it.

Surely she knew. Surely he'd told…

He'd never said the words.

Not in the heights of ecstasy. Not when he'd proposed. Not when he'd snatched her away from his despicable father.

What a blundering dunderhead he was.

“Diana, you're my reason for living.” He caught her arm and waited for her eyes to meet his. The doubt he saw there made his gut clench. His voice deepened with sincerity. “After the beating, the memory of you kept me alive. The
doctors were convinced I'd die. But I had to live to find you. You're my shining star in the darkest night. You're the music that makes my soul sing. You're the air I breathe. You're everything to me.”

A faint troubled line appeared between her delicate brows. She studied his face as if what he said made no sense. “But do you love me?”

“What do you…” Devil take him, he realized he still hadn't said the words.

He paused and sucked in a deep breath. Strangely what he said next emerged from a deeper part of his soul than his earlier declaration, heartfelt as it was.

“I love you, Diana.”

For a moment, she was so still, he thought she hadn't heard him. Then the tension rippled out of her, and her eyes sparkled dazzling silver. “And I love you, Tarquin.”

He smiled at her. She was his beloved and his life. “Anything else is a mere afterthought.”

She cast him a glittering glance under her eyelashes. His soul expanded with delight as she became again the alluring siren he remembered from all those decadent hours in London. Apart from the tearstains on her cheeks, little trace remained of the distraught woman who had sobbed in his arms.

“Don't you think you should kiss me?”

“Already I become a henpecked husband.”

Her lips twitched. “A mere shadow of your former self.”

“Indubitably.”

“A disgrace to the fraternity of rakes.”

“A complete disaster as a rake.”

She tilted her head up in unmistakable invitation. “Shall we proceed, my lord Ashcroft?”

He swept one arm around her waist and drew her unresisting body close. “With all my heart, my dear Mrs. Carrick.”

For all the lightness between them, his heart gave a premonitory thud. He couldn't mistake the significance of this moment. From here, his existence started anew.

Very gently, he placed his mouth on hers. Passion was never absent when he was with her, but right now, reverence emerged paramount. He loved her more than he'd ever imagined he could love anyone. And against all logic, against all justice, against all common sense, even, she loved him back.

She trembled with swift response and parted her lips, kissing him with a fervor that told him more clearly than words how she'd missed him.

From now on, she'd never miss him again. His Diana indeed.

Forever.

Vesey Hall, Buckinghamshire
October 1829

D
iana, Countess of Ashcroft, rose from the satinwood desk in her sitting room. She placed her hands behind her back for a long and satisfying stretch. All afternoon she'd been poring over the estate accounts.

A child's laugh outside attracted her attention, and she wandered to the open window. In the garden below, Laura presented the young Lady Hester Maria Catherine Vale to her grandfather.

Her heart brimming with poignant joy, Diana watched her father settle the usually rambunctious eighteen-month-old child on his lap. Hester was, without question, a hellion, and she caused endless chaos and trouble. But strangely when she was with John Dean, she transformed into a perfect angel. Now she sat with completely uncharacteristic stillness while her grandfather traced her face.

Diana heard the door open behind her but didn't turn. The sudden charge in the air told her exactly who it was.

Strong arms circled her waist and drew her against a hard male body. “They're kindred spirits, aren't they?” Tarquin's voice was a baritone rumble in her ear.

She relaxed back against him, glorying in the warm security of his embrace. When she'd married him, she'd loved him to distraction, but two years together had deepened and strengthened the bond between them until she felt they shared the same heartbeat.

“How I wish I had his magic with her.”

“You have plenty of magic for me.” Tarquin nuzzled her neck and desire sizzled through her. She'd wondered if time would temper her physical response to him. But she wanted him more with each passing day.

She placed her hands over his where they laced at her waist. “I should hope so.”

Not that it had been unalloyed tranquillity and joy since her wedding. Her father hadn't immediately reconciled himself to her union with a man of Lord Ashcroft's reputation. At first, his hostility and disappointment had been marked, for all that he'd accepted Tarquin's offer to live with them. Lately, to her relief, she'd noticed a thawing in John Dean's attitude, but a distance still extended between the men she loved. Perhaps it always would.

Her father had needed time to forgive her too, although these days, they regained much of their former ease. Hester helped. It was hard to be on one's dignity in her vivid presence.

The sticklers in society treated the earl and his lowborn wife with disdain. Tongues still wagged about the Ashcrofts' quick marriage and the untimely arrival of their first child. Wild stories about Tarquin's dramatic appearance in the church at Marsham had circulated, and a large segment of the ton was convinced Burnley must be Hester's father.

Diana hardly cared. A little ostracism was small price to pay for happiness. And she couldn't help but be thankful
that none of the gossip, however vicious, verged near what had actually happened between her and Tarquin and Burnley. That would ignite a scandal indeed.

“I just went through the post,” Tarquin murmured against her skin.

“Oh?” He found the spot on her neck that always drove her wild, and she couldn't summon much interest in letters.

To her regret, he lifted his lips and rested his chin on her shoulder. “The new Marquess of Burnley is setting the ton on its ear. He chews tobacco, he wears moccasins to assemblies, and he refuses to allow people to address him by his title. He's a backwoods democrat through and through.”

She laughed softly. “Oh, poor Burnley. He'll be rolling in his grave.”

Or burning in hell. Tarquin didn't need to say the words.

Burnley had died at Cranston Abbey a few months after Diana deserted him at the altar. He hadn't lived to learn that his longed-for male heir was in fact a girl.

In her white-hot outrage after discovering how Burnley had ordered Tarquin beaten, she'd wanted him to atone painfully and publicly for what he'd done. But her husband, whose judgment she'd come increasingly to admire, had reminded her that people other than Burnley would suffer if details of their tangled past emerged.

She'd had to find satisfaction in the knowledge that Tarquin's enemy spent his last days stewing on the collapse of all his wicked plots. For a man as addicted to power as Burnley, his impotence in every sense would sting worse than acid.

Tarquin's arms tightened around her, drawing her closer into his big, powerful body. “I'm considering asking for the American's support in Parliament.”

“He's your cousin, I suppose.”

“He'll never know.”

She and Tarquin had discussed ways to straighten the snarled threads of family history. In the end, it seemed best
to leave well enough alone. He was Earl of Ashcroft for good or ill. Too late to go back on that, even if he could. But in an attempt at recompense, he'd gifted the eldest sons of the various branches of the Vale family with estates. Most of which the spendthrift fribbles were quickly driving into bankruptcy.

The best of it was that in the process, Tarquin finally made peace with his past. He'd even called Hester after his mother. Yet again, Diana marveled at his generous heart.

“Are you busy?”

A slow smile curved her lips. She knew where this was leading. “Not right now.”

“I think Laura and your father will be occupied for a while. Don't you?”

Her smile broadened as she looked out on the sunlit landscape. “It's likely. But I don't want to take you away from anything important.”

She still loved to tease him. That hadn't changed.

His hands tautened on her arms, and she felt the impatient nudge of his erection against her buttocks. “Believe me, this is important.”

“A large matter indeed.”

“Definitely.”

As he turned her to face him, she didn't resist. She responded to his kiss with joyous abandon. When he lifted his head, she was breathless.

“You still drive me mad,” he groaned.

“I'm glad.” She traced the thin white scar down his cheek, the only relic from his savage beating. She rather liked it. It made him look dangerous, a pirate. Her pirate. He no longer walked with a limp, and his body had regained all its former strength and vigor. “But you should be gentle with me today.”

He frowned in quick concern. “Aren't you feeling well, Diana?”

Her laughter bubbled with joy. “I'm feeling marvelous. Although that may not last. With Hester, I cast up my accounts with revolting regularity the first few months.”

Pleasure illuminated his intense features, and he kissed her quickly. “I'd hoped. When?”

“If I'm correct, next spring.”

His stare was purest jade. “Diana, you make me so happy.”

The sweet sincerity of his words brought tears to her eyes. “I was horribly weepy in the first weeks too.”

The devil's smile appeared on his face, more devilish these days because of his rakish scar. “You just need distracting.”

Excitement made her heart race. “Here?”

He arched his eyebrows in the familiar expression. “It wouldn't be the first time.”

She twined her arms around his neck and yielded to bone-melting anticipation. “You're insatiable.”

His smile was all libertine. His smile was all for her.

“For you, my darling, always.”

 

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Returning home to Cornwall after unspeakable tragedy, Sir Gideon Trevithick stumbles upon a defiant beauty in danger and vows to protect her—whatever the cost. Little does he know the waif is Lady Charis Weston, England's wealthiest heiress, and that to save her he must marry her himself! But can Charis accept a marriage of convenience, especially to a man who ignites her heart with a single touch?

 

T
here is one alternative.” Gideon's tone was neutral, artificially so, Charis thought. His eyes didn't waver from her face. “We could get married.”

For one radiant moment, joy flared inside her.

Married…

She rose and took an unsteady step toward him. “Gideon…” she began as wild happiness exploded in her breast.

His troubled expression halted her in her tracks and reminded her of his pain when she'd told him she loved him. She sucked in a tremulous breath and looked at him properly.

Her glittering palace of hope disintegrated. The hands that had risen toward him fell back to her sides and formed fists of anguish.

“What's this about?” she asked in a flinty voice.

He shifted away from the windows, back toward the fire. He stopped before her, still too far away to touch. Of course.

“It's the obvious solution, Charis.” An unexpected moment to realize he'd started to use her real name naturally. He spread his gloved hands as if appealing to her to see things his way. “If we're wed, I have a husband's legal rights.”

Since she'd met him, becoming his wife had been a hopeless dream. Now he proposed, and she wanted to run away and cry her eyes out. Because he married her to save her, not because he wanted her as his life companion, the woman in his bed, the mother of his children.

“You said you'd never marry. Never have a family.” Her lips felt as if they were made of wood. “That's changed?”

“No.” He held himself rigid as a soldier on parade. His voice was implacable. “It will be a marriage in name only.”

 

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