Slightly Tempted (41 page)

She set her hand upon his sleeve without a word and allowed him to lead her onto the dance floor.

"You are wearing what you wore in the Forest of Soignés," she said. "I thought then that you chose such pale colors because most of the other gentlemen would be wearing scarlet coats."

"Exactly right,chérie, " he said. "Who would want to pale into insignificance at his own entertainment?"

"I am surprised you would wear the same clothes tonight," she said.

"Are you?" he asked, dipping his head a little closer to hers as he drew her into his arms in anticipation of the opening bars of the music. "And are you surprised that I have asked you to waltz with me? The last time was at your sister's ball in London-alone together in an anteroom. The time before was at my picnic-alone together for a few minutes before a hundred or more pairs of eyes. And before that at Viscount Cameron's ball, where we met."

"I hardly need to be reminded," she said. "But I am glad I have been. It will make things easier tomorrow or the day after when Eve and Aidan and Freyja and Joshua leave here and I decide to go with them."

The music began, and he led her slowly into the opening steps of the waltz.

"Will you,chérie ?" he asked her, his eyes steady on hers. "Leave with them? Leaveme ? Never to see me again?"

"You know I will." She tossed her head back but would not remove her eyes from his.

He pressed his hand more firmly to the back of her waist and swung her into a twirl, lengthening his steps as he did so.

She laughed with delight.

He had even told the orchestra leader what tunes to play. He could see suddenly from the arrested look in her eyes that she recognized the one playing now. It was the very tune to which they had waltzed that first time.

They danced in silence, not once removing their eyes from each other. He danced her in and out among other couples, slowly, faster, twirling and spinning until he could feel the smile on his own face and see the color rise in her cheeks and the sparkle deepen in her eyes.

It was only after the music was ended that they spoke again.

"You waltz so very well, Gervase," she said, dropping her arms to her sides until the music would begin again. "As you do many other things well. You are an expert at flirtation and more than just flirtation. You swore that you would makeme fall in love withyou . That is what this is all about, I suppose. Just as it was that very first time. So that you may manipulate me, turn me from my resolve, defeat me even if you must marry me in the process. I am only a little older chronologically than I was in Brussels at the Cameron ball, but I am years and years older in experience. Sometimes I really hate you."

"Hatred is an improvement on yesterday's indifference,ma chère, " he told her. "Has it occurred to you that I try to make you love me becauseI loveyou ?"

She shook her head impatiently and lifted her hand to his shoulder again as the music resumed.

"I will be leaving with my brother and sister when they go," she told him again.

The trouble was, he thought, that she very probably meant it. Her pride would not let her change her mind. Neither would her newfound maturity and caution. She had been very badly hurt. And he had very little to offer in self-defense. Some, it was true, but not much.

It was no defense that he loved her with every ounce of his being.

They did not speak again until the set was drawing to its end. There was one set of country dances left, but they could not, of course, dance it together.

"Chérie," he said, "come walking with me after this is all over?"

"Tonight?" She looked up at him with raised eyebrows. "Where? Outside?"

"Outside." He nodded.

"Why? So that you may seduce me?" She gazed haughtily at him. "Are youmad ?"

"Only desperate,chérie, " he said. "I am running out of time, and I can see that you are determined to harden your heart and punish me by deserting me. Let us talk. Give me this one chance to change your mind. On my gentleman's honor I swear not to lay one lascivious finger on you without your permission. Give me this chance."

"On your gentleman's honor?" she said softly, her eyebrows arched scornfully. "But thereis no chance that I will change my mind."

She frowned, and for one moment he glimpsed something in her eyes that gave him hope despite her words-some doubt, some vulnerability, some hint of misery.

"Give me that chance anyway," he asked her.

The music had stopped and the other couples were leaving the floor. Soon-in a very few moments-they would be conspicuous if they stayed where they were. And he knew that if she did not speak during those few moments it would be too late for him. He would have lost her.

"Very well," she said. "But it is pointless."

He smiled at her and drew her hand through his arm.

CHAPTER XXII

THIS WAS SO POINTLESS,MORGAN THOUGHT.The day had been an agony to her for the very reason that it had seemed so successful to everyone else. It had been a glorious celebration of her betrothal to Gervase.

It was a betrothal she must break the day after tomorrow when Freyja and Aidan were to leave Windrush. She must harden her heart against all arguments to the contrary. Yet she had agreed to give him this private time in order that he might try to persuade her to change her mind. And it was the middle of a cool, star-filled night when they had just waltzed together and she was raw with emotion.

She was almost sure she knew where he was taking her too, though she would not ask. She would not say a word until he did, and he seemed content with silence while they walked. She had expected that he would stroll on the lawns with her or perhaps take her down by the lake or maybe to the summerhouse, where they would be out of sight from windows in the house. Though secrecy was not necessary. He had announced that they were going out for a walk, and Aidan, though he had given them both a hard look, had remarked that it was unexceptionable for a betrothed couple to say good night to each other away from the prying eyes of their families.

Why had she changed into a serviceable day dress, which was covered up with a warm cloak, if she expected that this was to be just a very brief conversation in which he would attempt to use his charm to persuade her to stay and she would simply say no?

She was afraid of her own self-deceptions, her own weaknesses.

He had brought a lantern with him-an affectation while they were on open ground lit by moon and stars. But of course it was a great help along parts of the wilderness walk, when the sky was almost hidden above a canopy of tree branches. He held her by the elbow to steady her over the uneven ground. Apart from that, he seemed content not to touch her at all.

By the time they reached the grotto after scrambling up one slope and down another in darkness apart from light afforded by the lantern, Morgan was feeling very angry indeed-not so much against him as against herself. Did she notknow him by now? Did she not know that he was pitting the power of his charm against the strength of her will?

Or was he? Had he changed since Brussels? But would she be a fool simply to forget what he had done to her there-particularly after Waterloo? It broke her heart to remember that week of tenderness, when he had seemed her dearest friend and had even become her lover. It had all been deception, all of it. She could not simply forget now.

She turned to face him as he extinguished the lantern light-it was no longer needed, since the moon was beaming down upon them and glimmering in a band across the water of the river.

"I suppose," she said, realizing as she did so that she was standing on almost the exact spot where she had lain with him just a few days before, "you think these surroundings romantic enough that I will be seduced away from common sense and rational choice?"

The surroundingswere romantic too-horribly so. Moonlight was sparkling off the stream of water arcing out of the cherub's vase.

"I was wrong, then,chérie ?" he asked her with an exaggerated sigh. "It is not going to be that easy?"

It was the sigh that did it. Could he never take anything seriously? Was he so sure of her? Or did he really not care at all?

"It is not going to bepossible, " she cried, her hands curling into fists at her sides. "Do you not understand that, Gervase? You are handsome and charming and attractive. Of course you are. I would be foolish to deny it. It was those facts that made me fall in love with you in Brussels, even though I knew you were also a flirt and a rake. It was those facts that led me into such an indiscretion at Freyja's ball and that led me into lying with you here a few days ago. But I know too the cynicism, the hatred, the cold calculation, of which you are capable. I know myself to have been your victim-right up to Freyja's ball-perhaps right up to the present moment. How can I believe you when you say you love me, that you really wish to marry me? How can I believe anything you say to me? How can I evertrust you again? We might as well go back to the house without further ado and get some sleep. I am going away when my family leaves here. I am going to leave you and forget about you."

He had gone to stand against the stone wall to one side of the grotto entrance. His arms were crossed over his chest.

"Chérie," he said softly, "you agreed to give me one last chance to persuade you not to leave me, not to break my heart."

Even now, she thought, he could be teasing her. How could shebreak his heart ? Could he possibly love her that deeply? She was afraid to believe. She was afraid to hope.

She hated being only eighteen. Shehated it.

"Very well," she said, gazing at him with all the hauteur she could muster. "Talk away. But you will be wasting your breath."

She turned and moved off a little way, stepping among the flowers, and set one hand upon a cold stone wing of the cherub.

"I cannot deny my guilt,chérie, " he said. "Although it was your beauty that first drew my attention, it was your identity that led me to seek an acquaintance with you. I meant mischief, and Icaused mischief. I used you quite coldly and quite callously to annoy your brother."

It still hurt to remember that picnic in the forest and to know that it had not been a mere outrageous, extravagant act of flirtation on his part but a calculated outpouring of hatred.

"But I liked you," he said, "and began to realize-too late-that you were more than just his sister. I ought not to have involved you in something that concerned just him and me. But I make no excuses here. I am guilty and I am deeply ashamed."

She stretched out one hand and held it for a moment in the stream of water coming from the vase. But it was cold. She drew back her hand and tucked it inside the folds of her cloak, drying it against her skirt as she did so. She tried to think of mundane things-what she would wear on the journey home, whether or not she would take her new painting supplies with her, whether she would go to Leicestershire or Oxfordshire or Cornwall-or whether she would simply go to Lindsey Hall and spend the summer with Wulfric.

"When I saw you at the Duke of Richmond's ball," he said, "I stayed away from you,chérie, until I saw you standing alone after the officers had all left. You looked upset and forlorn. You looked in need of comforting. And so I went to comfort you if I could. I went because you wereyou, not because you were his sister. I did not eventhink of that fact."

"It was too late by then," she said, bowing her head and closing her eyes.

"And then," he said, "a few days later I saw you at the Namur Gates long after I assumed you were gone, dirty and disheveled and flushed and beautiful as you leaned over and tended a private soldier who had had half his leg blown away. From that moment on, from then until we landed together at Harwich, you were Morgan Bedwyn to me, and I came to like you and admire and respect you and even to love you, though I do not believe I fully recognized that last sentiment until later. You were not the Duke of Bewcastle's sister in those days,chérie . You were yourself-and without my even realizing it, you became the focus of my whole world, the love of my heart. When you came to me in my rooms that evening, I ought not to have allowed our embrace to go so far, but I loved you and could think of no other way to take you into myself, to take away your pain. I did not even realize it was love I felt until later, but it was. I am guilty of what went before,mon amour, but not of anything that happened during those days. I was your friend and ultimately your lover."

She trampled wildflowers underfoot as she hurried toward him. Her hands were in tight fists again.

"You lie!" she cried. "You are lying to me. Don't do this, Gervase. Don'tdo it. I can't bear it. And what about Freyja's ball? If you loved me after Waterloo, if you were sorry for the way you had used me, why did you do as you didthere ? I cannot trust anything you say. I cannot trustyou ."

She was crying then in noisy, agonized gasps and fumbled for a handkerchief with shaking hands. She hated watering-pots. She had never been one.

He kept his arms crossed over his chest. "I wish I could say I was as innocent then as I was in Brussels after Waterloo," he said. "I cannot, though. I went to London to offer for you, but I will not pretend that it was only my love for you that occupied my mind when I faced Bewcastle in his library at Bedwyn House-I am not sure that even then I recognized that itwas love I felt. I wanted to see his rage and enjoy it. And then afterward I could think only of ways by which I could force him to allow me to pay my addresses to you. It was only when it was much, much too late that I understood my true reason-not so much that I wanted to hurt him as that I could not bear to lose you. It happened in that small room at your sister's ball, when I had meant simply to waltz with you but found myself kissing you. It was then that I understood and knew in a flash that I must get you out of there before scandal erupted. But even as I raised my head I was aware of Bewcastle standing in the doorway and of other guests strolling past or simply standing, staring. And so it was too late to find an honorable way of wooing and winning you."