Slightly Tempted (32 page)

"Morgan was thinking of coming with us," she said. "Are you still considering it, Morgan?" She darted a curious glance at Gervase.

"But no," he said. "I absolutely could not bear such a long separation from my betrothed, and I am confident that Morgan agrees with me." She was sitting beside him. He turned his head and smiled into her eyes. "You will not be going to the Lake District, will you,chérie ? You will come to Windrush instead?"

"But of course she will," his mother cried from farther along the table, as if it had all been settled long ago. "I have my heart set upon introducing my future daughter-in-law to our friends and neighbors. I have already written to my daughters with the happy announcement. I am quite sure they will want to come to Windrush to meet her and to see Gervase again. I will plan some grand betrothal celebration-a garden party or a ball, or perhaps both."

"Perhaps,Maman, " Gervase suggested, "Morgan's family would care to join us too and help us celebrate."

"But that is a delightful idea,mon fils, " she said, clasping her hands to her bosom and beaming at everyone about the table. "In another minute I would have thought of it for myself. Lady Aidan? Lady Hallmere? Bewcastle? Do agree to join us in the country."

Gervase turned his head and smiled at Morgan again while touching his fingertips to her hand on the table.

"This will please you,chérie ?" he asked her, his voice low. "That we spend the summer together at your future home, so that you may make the acquaintance of all my family and your future friends and neighbors?"

"It will please me of all things." Her eyes glowed.

He was, he realized, enjoying himself enormously. He was very glad she had decided to fight him. He was horribly guilty where she was concerned. Although not all her accusations against him were true, hehad used her quite deliberately and abominably. He had sunk into a deep gloom after she sent him away from Bedwyn House when he had gone there to offer for her. Even though he was free and even though it had seemed to him that she did not suspect the truth about him, he had felt wretched about the deceit and about all the scandal he had drawn her into.

But she was fighting back in a totally unexpected and intriguing manner. She would use him until she was ready to discard him, she had promised. She would make him fall in love with her and then break his heart. Or she would make him hate her and then force him to marry her anyway.

He could not help but be amused. At the same time, he thanked providence for giving him a chance somehow to make amends. He was not quite sure how he would do that. Perhaps it would involve nothing more than allowing her to do exactly what she had threatened to do. But he was not going to be abject about it, he had decided. He was not going to allow her to punish him simply because he deserved punishment.

She would not enjoy that.

He would play her at her own game. If she won fair and square, then he would have to accept graciously that he had lost. But he was not going tolet her win. She would surely spit in his eye if he tried any such thing.

He would play her love game to win, then.

He had not yet asked himself what winning would mean exactly.

They had postponed their journey to the Lake District last year in order to go to Penhallow in Cornwall after Freyja became betrothed, Lady Aidan explained with a laugh. They must do the same this year for Morgan, then. Did not Aidan agree with her? Lord Aidan did, it seemed. And since she did not know when she would leave Cornwall again once she returned there, as she was in a delicate way, Lady Hallmere thought it would be a shame not to see Morgan's future home while they had a chance. Hallmere agreed that a week or so in Kent would be perfectly agreeable.

Bewcastle declined the invitation-with courteous thanks to Gervase's mother.

And so it was all settled. The summer was to be spent at Windrush.

"I suppose," Morgan said to him the following morning when they were riding on Rotten Row, a little ahead of Lord and Lady Aidan, "you think to embarrass me by inviting both your family members and mine to Windrush and by planning lavish betrothal celebrations there. I am not easily embarrassed, Gervase."

"I know it,chérie, " he said. "But it is I who am to be embarrassed, is it not? It is my family and my servants and tenants and neighbors who will be witness to my deep infatuation for you and who will then pity and scorn me when you spurn me."

"That is exactly correct," she said.

"Unless," he said, smiling and drawing his horse a little closer to hers so that his knee almost touched hers, "I can persuadeyou to have pity on me instead, my charmer."

"It is not going to happen," she said, smiling dazzlingly and actually reaching out quite outrageously and touching her gloved hand briefly to his thigh.

"I will take you shopping later this morning," he told her. "I must buy you jewels,chérie . I would be a sorry excuse for a fiancé if I did not buy you a betrothal gift, would I not?"

"I am not interested in jewels," she told him. "What would I do with them after we have parted? I would despise the very look of them."

"What, then?" he asked her. "I may not buy you clothes yet. It would be deemed scandalous."

"Paints and painting supplies," she said after a moment's consideration. "I did not bring my own with me to London, and I am pining to paint again. I will paint at Windrush. You may buy me easel and paints and brushes and canvases and paper and charcoal and anything else I think of in the next hour or so."

"Doyou paint?" he asked her. "Are you good at it?"

"That is a foolish question," she told him. "How am I to know if I am good or not? And what does it matter anyway? I paint because I love to do it, because Imust do it. I paint so that I may get inside reality, get behind surfaces, search out the heart of meaning. I am not a dabbler, a lady who paints picturesque canvases in picturesque surroundings so that I may encourage some lovelorn swain to swoon over me."

"Ah." He chuckled. "Then I will exercise great fortitude,chérie, and endeavor not to swoon over you. Paints and painting supplies it will be-all of the very best quality and in copious amounts so that the world will know how I love you."

She smiled into his eyes, her own shining all the way back to their inner depths-or so it seemed.

"Thank you, Gervase," she said. "Oh,thank you. How Iadore you."

For a moment he gazed at her, arrested. She was beautiful and vibrant, and all the beauty and vibrancy were focused upon him. It seemed almost impossible to believe that she did not mean every word.

And then she laughed.

WULFRIC WAS RETURNING TOLINDSEYHALL ONthe same day as Morgan left for Windrush with Aidan and Eve, Freyja and Joshua. He had said very little about the betrothal even though after she had told him about it on his return from the House of Lords the day it happened he had raised his quizzing glass all the way to his eye and regarded her silently through it for what had seemed like five minutes though in reality it had probably been less than one.

He had a private word with her before she went out to the waiting carriages, though.

"Nothing is irrevocable," he said, "until the nuptial service is over. I urge you, Morgan, to consider whether this is something you are doing merely because I advised you not to."

"How foolish you are, Wulf," she told him crossly. "I am marrying Gervase because Iwish to do so. And you are wrong about him, you know. He did not ravish Marianne. She entrapped him because she did not want to marryyou ."

She wished then that she had not put it quite like that, but it was too late to change the wording. He gazed back at her with hard, bleak eyes.

"I thought you less credulous," he said. "I forget sometimes just how young you are."

"And it wascruel of you," she said, "to pretend that you had not seen the brooch and set it on a table yourself as you were leaving Marianne's room with Gervase."

He nodded slowly. "You are besotted indeed," he said. "One can only hope that he has changed in the course of nine years, though so far the evidence would suggest otherwise. I would have you know this, though, Morgan, before I let you go. Your happiness is more important to me than being right is. Consider your own happiness without any reference to me."

She had always loved Wulfric. She could not remember either of her parents. Wulfric had been a father figure to her all her life, and she had always felt wonderfully safe and secure under his rule and guidance. She had never doubted that he had her best interests at heart. At the same time, she had never really thought of him as loving her-or her sister or any of her brothers either. She had always seen him as a man incapable of any warm emotion-including anger.

It struck her now with some shock that perhaps he did care after all-not just for her safety and consequence and reputation, but forher . And she almost blurted out a reassurance, an explanation of the nature of her betrothal, a promise that soon it would be at an end and he would finally be able to forget all about Gervase Ashford, Earl of Rosthorn. But if she said anything, he would probably forbid her to go to Windrush and to open herself yet again to scandal-a worse scandal than before.

She stepped forward impulsively and hugged him.

"I am going to be happy," she told him. "And I am going to make you happy for me. You will see."

"Yes, well," he said, his tone cool-and perhaps embarrassed? "You are keeping Eve and Aidan waiting, Morgan."

By late in the afternoon they were approaching Windrush Grange in Kent, and Morgan was looking beyond the windows with great interest. The park was large. The carriage moved along a winding, wooded driveway for a full mile or two before the house came into sight. It was a romantic-looking mansion with its red brick and gables. It was surrounded by smooth lawns and colorful flower gardens.

"It is quite magnificent, Morgan," Eve said from the opposite seat on the carriage. "How very exciting this must be for you."

"It is," Morgan agreed.

It was a week since she last saw Gervase. It was a time during which her outrage and resentment against him had grown. If there had not been that week or so in Brussels after the Battle of Waterloo, she had thought over and over again, perhaps she would not now hate him so much. Before and after that, after all, he had not made much pretense of doing anything more than flirting with her. But there had been that week when he had become more dear to her than anyone else in her life had ever been, and she felt horribly betrayed.

But it was a week too that had felt dreadfully flat. She had missed him, his ironic smile and his banter and attractive French accent. She hated him even more for the fact that at some time over the past few months she had slipped into love with him and was having a hard time adjusting her emotions to the reality of his character and the nature of their relationship.

The double doors at the head of the horseshoe steps stood open, she could see as the carriage passed a flower arbor and turned onto the wide, cobbled terrace before the house. Two liveried footmen were descending the steps, one on each side, a black-clad servant who must be the butler stood at attention outside the doors, and a whole host of people, it seemed, including Gervase and the countess, were emerging from the doors and hurrying down the steps behind the footmen.

So this, Morgan thought with mingled elation and nervousness, was what she had set in motion. She drew a deep, steadying breath and smiled.

It was all very dizzying. Gervase handed her out of the carriage and then reached out his hand to help Eve alight. The other carriages-the one bringing Freyja and Joshua, and the one bringing Becky and Davy and their nurse-drew in behind and disgorged their occupants. Morgan found herself being enfolded in the countess's embrace and then being introduced to the Reverend Pierre Ashford and his wife, Emma, to Lord and Lady Vardon-Lady Vardon was Gervase's sister, Cecile-and to Sir Harold Spalding and his wife, the other sister, Monique. The gentlemen all bowed and Emma curtsied. The sisters, with the Gallic enthusiasm of their mother, both hugged Morgan and exclaimed over her beauty.

Gervase meanwhile had taken charge of greeting Morgan's relatives and presenting them to his own.

Children-hordes of them, it seemed-were dashing exuberantly about with no sign of any nurse to curtail their glee except Nanny Johnson.

There was a great deal of noise and laughter. Servants were unloading the baggage coaches, which were last in line. Summer sunshine beamed down on the scene of happy confusion. Gervase caught Morgan by one hand-and then the other too.

"The week has been endless,ma chère, " he said, raising her right hand to his lips. "Welcome to Windrush." He raised her left hand to his lips. "Welcome home."

While his sisters exclaimed with delight and several other unidentified persons murmured with satisfaction, he leaned forward and kissed her on the lips.

"Every day has seemed like a week in itself, Gervase," she said, squeezing his hands tightly. "I am so happy to be here at last."

It pleased her, she thought as he offered his arm and they led the way up the stone steps and into the house, that he was still shamelessly flirting with her. If he had turned grim and apologetic and abject since she had forced this betrothal on him, she might have forgiven him and let him go, but she surely would have despised him-more than she already did, that was.