[Samuel Barbara] Lucien's Fall(Book4You) (6 page)

Jonathan emerged from behind, cursing loudly in the bright afternoon. He reigned his horse before it could take the ditch. "Blood hell, Lucien!"

"Mind yourself, sir!" the marquess cried. "There is a lady present."

"Oh, dear." Jonathan bowed toward her. "A thousand pardons, my lady."

Lucien laughed.

Madeline almost could not bear to look at him. In his dishevelment he was as unrepentantly virile as a stallion in a field of mares; he even seemed to smell of an extraordinary heat and pleasure. She found her gaze on the muscled length of his forearm, brown and strong below his rolled sleeve, covered with crisp hair that gave off gold sparks in the sun, and on his hands, long-fingered and strong, the sinews and bones covered elegantly with smooth, sun-warmed skin.

But it was his hair, loose and long and black on his cambric-clad shoulders, that alarmed her. "You look like a savage," she said disdainfully, but there was an unaccustomed roughness to her voice.

His eyes, almost turquoise in the bright light, blazed. "And how would you know?

How many savages have you seen?"

"None." She lifted her chin. "Nor have I seen elephants from India, but I assure you I’d recognize one if I did."

He laughed, tossing his head with impudence. A small, hot ripple touched her.

Jonathan rode smoothly between them, effectively dousing the rising tide of heat in Madeline’s chest. "Might we join you?" he asked.

Madeline wanted to refuse, and she could see by the amusement in Lord Esher’s devilish expression that he not only knew it but knew the reason why: that she was moved by him, and that he provided an altogether unpleasing contrast with the marquess.

"I’m afraid you’ll find us dull," she said levelly. "We’re only chatting and riding calmly. No wild races—of which you seem overfond, Lord Esher."

"I? No, ’tis Jonathan who goads me."

His horse moved restlessly and Lord Esher moved easily with the beast, bringing him back under control. "Jonathan could not bear that I bested him yesterday, and begged a rematch."

The marquess spoke. "We’d be delighted, of course, to have you ride with us. I’m afraid I’d rather lost myself in regaling Lady Madeline with tales of my travels."

"Oh? What travels, sir?" Jonathan rode ahead, alongside the marquess.

With some annoyance, Madeline realized she’d lost the battle to rid herself of the rakes. Not only that, but the road was narrow, leaving room for only two horses to ride abreast. With Jonathan taking up the attention of the marquess, Madeline was forced to ride alongside Lucien Harrow.

"Do you mind so much?" he asked quietly enough for her ears only. "Jonathan desperately wants to ingratiate himself with Beauchamp for a business proposition."

"You mistake me, Lord Esher," Madeline replied, her chin high. "It is always a pleasure to share the day with guests who might not be accustomed to our country lanes."

His grin was crooked and knowing. "Perhaps I was mistaken, but didn’t you call me a savage only a moment ago?"

Steadfastly, Madeline avoided the lure of looking at him. "You’re improperly dressed for a gentleman."

"Ah, but I am no gentleman. And even when I pretend to be so, I am not very proper about it."

Madeline lifted an ironic brow. "At least you’re honest."

"Only when it suits me."

For a moment, Madeline regarded him. If he used honesty like any other tool in his quest for seduction, then he must believe somehow she needed to know he planned to seduce her, that a direct approach would be more effective than another method. What benefit could there be to it?

She frowned a little. It seemed important to stay abreast of his motives as well as she was able; he was too clever by half and she was rather too sharply attracted to him. A slight carelessness and Madeline could easily be lost.

As if he’d been waiting for her conclusion, he looked at her with no expression at all, and said not a word. She flushed and faced forward.

The road, following the river, broadened. With relief, Madeline rode up beside the marquess and Jonathan, who were discussing again the Italian countryside. Madeline seized upon a bit of overheard conversation from the other two men. "Have you been to Pompeii, Lord Esher?" she tossed over her shoulder.

"Yes."

She glanced at him, but he seemed disinclined to say more. "You did not care for it?"

"On the contrary, I cared very much for it." He turned his head. "It moved me as much as anything I’ve seen in my life."

A bitter applause was on Madeline’s lips—wasn’t that just the sort of calculating thing a rake would say to engage the emotions of his quarry?—when Jonathan let go of a derisive laugh.

"It put him on the melancholy, he means. I vow he was drunk for days and never did gather his courage to go back."

"Madeline said it affected her the same way," the marquess said. Madeline heard in his offering the soothing oil of justice of one who dislikes conversation to belittle anyone else. She admired his fair-mindedness. "Only a moment ago," he went on, "she was suggesting that perhaps there’s some lingering impression there, left by those so suddenly killed."

Lord Esher looked at her, his eyes very still. "So you are not the pragmatist you’d have us believe."

"Oh, but I am. Why cannot there be some scientific explanation for the strong emotions some people feel there?" she said. "You felt them, as did I—at different places and at different times."

"Please!" protested Jonathan, blustering. "Surely you can’t mean there is some magic force at work, holding the emotions of fifteen hundred years past in thrall. If that were true, why wouldn’t all who enter the ruins feel the same things?"

Madeline frowned, looking toward the treetops of waving green fronds and into the pale blue English sky. In her imagination, she saw ash-whitened columns, the forgotten gardens, all buried alive one violent day and thus frozen for all time.

"I think," she said slowly, "one must be tuned to it, or not. Yes," she said,

"perhaps that’s just what I do believe. There was such trauma that day that it has left behind a lingering cry to echo through the ages, but only if you have a certain sort of—"

she struggled with a word that would sum up her feelings, "openness will you notice it."

"I believe Lady Madeline has the soul of a poetess," Lord Esher said. The words did not seem to be ironic.

"No poetess," she said. "Only a simple woman who mourned those poor people, torn from the middle of their lives so violently."

"Would you not agree, my lord?" persisted Lord Esher, his eyes upon Madeline.

"Perhaps she does." With a kindly smile, he winked at Madeline, a jest for the pair of them. As she returned the smile, she wondered if it were luck or accident that he had thus thwarted Lord Esher’s attempt to flirt with her.

"Does that make you a poet, too?" she asked Lord Esher, and immediately wished she could call the words back.

It was not he that replied, but Jonathan. "Don’t you know his painful history?"

There was again tension in his words, a sharp glitter in his eye that said he knew his words would hurt or embarrass his friend. Madeline looked from one to the other, wondering what caused the enmity. "The great Lucien’s prodigal talents?"

"Jonathan," Lord Esher said. The word carried deep warning.

Heedless, Jonathan rushed on. "He was nearly as famous a prodigy as Mozart when he was ten. Played Vauxhall and Bath."

"Really? What did you play?" Madeline asked.

"That’s enough, Jonathan," Lord Esher said. His posture was deceptively relaxed.

"Played everything!"

Madeline sent a questioning glance toward the marquess, who shrugged in bewilderment.

"The antics of a trained monkey," Lord Esher said dryly. "No more."

A dark burn of annoyance or anger colored his cheeks. Madeline watched him in some wonder, surprised to see such deep emotion in him.

"It’s that passionate Russian blood, y’know," Jonathan said.

Real fury flashed in the jeweled eyes. To forestall the fisticuffs she could see brewing, Madeline rode between them. "Are you Russian, Lord Esher?" she asked lightly.

"Half. My mother was Russian, from Saint Petersburg. My father met her on a diplomatic trip." Along his jaw, the muscle pulled tight, but he took a long breath as if to calm himself. "I spent much of my childhood there."

"How romantic," she said, again playing the flirtatious hostess attempting to hold her raucous guests at bay. The marquess gave her an approving nod. "Do tell us a little of it."

"It’s been too long," he said dismissively.

"Oh, surely you remember something."

He turned to her, and even as Madeline watched, he seemed to take on some wild power from beyond himself, gathering a wide appeal from the very air. The power centered in his face, on his mouth and in his eyes, and he focused it with particular intensity upon Madeline. "I remember," he said, and there was the faintest rolling to his
r’s,
"the white nights and the ladies in their dazzling gowns dancing in the soft bright midnight."

Madeline swallowed. "It sounds lovely."

"There was music," he said, his voice rougher, lower. "Everywhere. Everywhere,"

he repeated. "I remember the snow, too, falling from a dark cold sky, dancing like diamond feathers on unseen winds."

His gaze moved from her eyes to her lips as he spoke, and he lifted a finger to touch his own mouth. Transfixed, Madeline watched his long, lean finger move on his firm lips, and found herself leaning ever so slightly forward...

"Why that’s rather poetical, too, isn’t it?" the marquess said. "Bravo, Lord Esher."

"Indeed," said Jonathan.

Startled by their voices, Madeline realized her posture, realized her lips were slightly parted and her breath came between them in hurried fashion, and that Lord Esher smiled, an ironic and triumphant gleam in his eye.

Abruptly, she straightened, feeling a warm flush crawl in her cheeks. A distinct tingle remained in her lips as she tried to recompose herself, and she bit down on them hard, trying to drive away the oddly aroused sensation.

He was very, very dangerous. It would take every shred of skill she’d accumulated to resist him.

As they neared the house, he rode close enough to brush her calf with a hand, discreetly so neither of the others would notice. "I won that round," he said, his voice inaudible more than a foot away. His fingers caressed her leg as if in promise, then he let her go.

With a wicked, free laugh, he rode away from them, coaxing his horse into a hard run. They moved together as one creature, Lord Esher low over the horse’s neck, his hair and the horse’s mane flying out on the wind, his shirt a billowing flag of white.

"By God, he’ll kill himself," the marquess said, aghast as Lucien rode for the hedges at a dead run.

"No," Madeline said.

The trio paused to watch. The wind picked up, blowing a scurry of leaves into the path, but there was no other sound until Lord Esher cried out into the darkening day,

"Go!"

Horse and man leaped and flew and hung against the sky. Madeline’s heart swelled. Barbarian beast he might be, but she doubted she’d ever met anyone so free as Lucien Harrow.

How in the world could she ever resist his ploys to bed her?

There was only one way. She’d stay away from him as much as she possibly could until he tired of chasing her. And tire he would. Another woman would catch his fancy, a chambermaid or a matron at a party or some heiress from town.

She simply had to wait him out.

But that might make her seem as if she were more of a challenge. She frowned.

That wouldn’t do—he’d only pursue her all the more, and she couldn’t bear a full assault.

Even she, with her impatience for matters of the heart, would fall to the concentrated sensual powers of an accomplished rake like Lord Esher.

What, then, would she do?

The real trick would be to seem not much of a challenge, or to make it seem as if she were chasing him. A shudder touched her. Too dangerous.

No, she’d simply have to spend as much time as possible with the marquess and hope that when she had to greet Lord Esher, she’d be filthy from the garden.

Soon or late, he’d tire of the chase.

No springing beauty scapes my dart

And ev’ry ripe one wounds my heart;

Thus while I wound, I wounded am.

—Charles Cotton

Lucien believed there was
no woman who was completely immune to seduction.

Some could be wooed with flowers or sweet words or food. Some only needed a slight encouraging push; some a good deal of cajoling flattery; still others needed to be plainly ignored.

From the beginning, that first night on the balustrade when she surprised him with her bold talk, Lucien had known Madeline would prove to be more difficult than most to woo. Not only had she been raised by the countess of Whitethorn, who was nearly as notorious as Lucien himself, but Lucien also sensed an innate goodness about her, and a sensibility not easily ruffled by the usual sleight of hand of good looks, flattery, and charm.

He watched her. Experimented a little with a bit of flirting, a little flattery, a little of the promised watching—which served to unnerve her, make her blush, but little else.

Until now, Lucien believed all woman had a need to save the unsalvageable rake—to be the one woman who could redeem the most hardened heart. But not even that singular motivation seemed to hold much sway over Madeline. She was not vulnerable to the call of a rake’s lost soul, sensibly concluding it was a loss of his own making.

And after all, saving souls was for the vicar and the church and God. She made no pretension to being any of those.

He’d met difficult cases before. There was always a weak point, and a clever man could use such a point to gain a woman’s trust.

Lucien observed her.

She was not invulnerable to him. A pulse in her throat beat faster when he smiled at her, and her pupils grew larger, her lips softer—women gave themselves away with a hundred tiny details.