The Dangerous Love of a Rogue (44 page)

Drew glanced back up at the house. Pembroke and his staff had gone.

They were out here alone unobserved.

Tugging their joined hands, he stopped, smiling as he pulled her closer, and then he kissed her. A long deep kiss, weighted with feeling. Love gripped at his heart as he ended it.

He tugged her hand to start them walking again.

Her smile widened.

“Caro is a little shaken and afraid. It took her courage to do it. It will take her considerable time, I think, to feel safe and settled. She’s scared Kilbride will find her. If he ever did, I’d be frightened for her. He’d beaten her this time because she miscarried his child. It is not the first time.”

“Where is she?”

She’d asked in all innocence. He smiled,
trust her Drew
. “If I tell you, it puts you in danger. Kilbride’s cronies could push you for the information.”

“You think I would tell…” She looked hurt.

“No, Mary. But I do not want to endanger you anymore than I’d risk him finding Caro. But if you must know, she’s not far from here.”

“I’d like to see her.”

“Not any time soon, sweetheart, I’m not going near her for a long while, just to be safe. Kilbride is like your brother, he has money and men everywhere.”

She looked away, and for a moment the only sound was the swish of the long grass giving away beneath their feet as they walked on.

Her fingers squeezed his.

The hill swept down to an ornamental lake in the distance.

“I’m sorry,” Mary said to the horizon, “I overheard you talking to Lord Brooke. I thought you had a mistress. You had not been coming to bed and…”

They kept walking.

Drew did not care to think of the agony she must have felt. He’d been cut by her just dancing with Peter…and she’d thought… He squeezed her fingers. “So the Duchess told me. She said your aunt told you someone saw me with Caro. I do not blame you for thinking it, Mary, I should have told you.”

She glanced in his direction. “You were not talking to me.”

“No, as I said. I am an ass.”

“You are friends with Peter again…”

“He called that night, he knows my tendency to sulk and stew. He also knows my dislike of admitting my mistakes. He probably knew I’d never go to him. Your sister-in-law found me at Peter’s.”

They didn’t talk then, for a while, walking hand in hand, his fingers woven through hers, gripping tight, for fear of losing her again.

The heads of clover amongst the grass sent sweet perfume into the air, as they walked, and bumble bees buzzed about them.

Love for her sank deep into Drew’s bones.

When they reached the lake, they walked along the shore a little way.

The water was still, like glass, a mirror reflecting back the summer sky, until a pair of swans with trailing signets glided across it, sending out fans of ripples on the surface.

“I feel like I’ve walked from a nightmare into a dream.” He looked at Mary. “Are you real? Or did I fall asleep at Peter’s. Am I dreaming?”

She stopped and turned to him, then lifted their joined hands and pressed a kiss on the back of his.

Drew remembered their last morning with painful guilt. “Why did you let me make love to you that morning? I thought…” A lump constricted his throat at the memory of her beautiful face as he’d made love to her barely an hour before she’d left.

He coughed and began again, as her smile fell. “I thought you had forgiven me, and understood, and wished to…stay… then…” Her eyes were bright with a confusing mix of love and uncertainty. “I did not like myself when I found you gone. I thought… I dreaded… Did you feel forced
?
That was my fear, Mary.” His fingers, touched her cheek. “You broke my heart.”

“My heart broke too.” She turned away, her fingers slipping from his as she walked on. “I loved you. I love you. Just one last time I wanted to pretend you loved me too.”

“You stupid girl.” He rushed her, to break the sudden melancholy, grasping her from behind, trapping her in his arms and lifting her off her feet. “If I am an ass, you are a fool, I was not pretending. I adore you woman, you may get that into your silly head if you please.”

He set her down. She laughed breathlessly.

“Let’s sit for a while.” He began unbuttoning his morning coat. She smiled, then bent and snapped off the head of a buttercup, spinning the stem in her fingers as he shrugged off his coat and then laid it on the ground for her to sit on, ignoring the fact he had no valet to repair any damage.

She swept her dress beneath her and sat amongst the long grass – a portrait.

Drew dropped to his knees, and then stretched out beside her, lying on his side, his head supported on his palm, in a nonchalant pose, denying the raging melee of emotions in his chest.

“Why were you so angry after we visited your parents?” She asked the question of the lake as she looked at the view and not him.

His view was her perfect profile, etched against the blue sky. “That is an untouchable subject. Even Brooke knows I will not converse on it.”

She looked at him. “Andrew?”

“Mary.” He broke off a stem of long grass and brushed the tip across her nose. She made a face at him, which said, speak.

“So you insist I go there, again, even though I have said I hate the subject.”

She dropped the buttercup then her arms wrapped about her knees, her vulnerability showing through, as she lay her cheek on top of one knee, looking at him. “Are we going to argue, when we have only just been reunited? If you tell me, then I no longer need to ask and we need not argue.”

Drew held her gaze. If she met Caro, Caro would tell her. Yet he did not like people knowing. His parents had never made it public, but they hardly hid it… He’d faced censure in all his years at school and from then on – ill-judgement.

He cared nothing for what others thought.

But he cared about her opinion.

Emotionally naked, he took her left hand from its grip about her knees and held it up between them, his fingers gripping the third finger that bore his ring, with the little leather cord wrapped about it to hold it on her finger. “You asked about this…” He pressed her ring finger up. “T R, whoever he is, Mary, is my father, not the Marquis. Caro and I are products of affairs my mother would like to pretend never occurred; however when a wailing child arrives nine months later they are rather hard to hide. I am named Framlington on my birth certificate, but my blood is not his. You see when I said I was an evil bastard, I truly am. Sins of the parents and all that…

“It is understandable therefore, I suppose, that the Marquis hates me. What I’ve never been able to accept is that my mother hates me with equal wrath. I am a constant reminder of her shame, an embarrassment, nothing more, as is Caro. Their manner of resolving that issue is to ignore our existence.”

“Oh, Andrew.” Mary unravelled from her self-protective pose and lay beside him, mimicking his posture as her free hand settled at his waist.

He shut his eyes rather than look at her. “If I see pity in your eyes, you will make me intensely angry again.” Her fingertips touched his cheek.

“What about love? Can I look at you with love? It’s not pity I’m offering. I love you, so I care about you. If you are hurting, I hurt. Is care allowed?”

Opening one eye, Drew gave her a crooked smile. Her eyes shone bright with concern, but mirth caught there too. He opened his other eye, and she laughed.

“Very well, I will accept care, and raise it. I admit, I want to hate her, and I tell myself I hate her, and the rest of them – but I still desperately want to belong among them – and now you know I am not an evil bastard but a bitter unwanted child.”

“Not unwanted…”

Damn it.
Her eyes glittered with pity. It pricked like a thorn in his side.

No. It is not pity. It is care.

God someone cares for me.
Warmth stirred in his chest, not anger.

Mary clasped his hand, which still held the strand of grass. “You are very much wanted.” She leaned forward and kissed the corner of his lips briefly, then rolled to her back. Looking up at the sky.

She was so beautiful. He brushed the tip of the grass he held about her cheek and down her neck. “But not by them; it is a hard lesson, well learned, I’m afraid. I steel myself by saying I do not give a damn for their opinion, or anyone else’s for that matter. But then I met you. I care for yours. You wished to meet them, and for some ridiculous reason I thought perhaps, just perhaps, my mother would like you and be proud of me. I should not have taken you there.”

“You should have said why you did not wish to go. Had you said I would not have persisted. The moment we walked in the door I knew it was wrong. But how could I have imagined that—”

“When your family all adore you.” He brushed the tip of the grass over her bodice following it with his gaze. “The Pembroke clan are like lions, prowling and protecting, preventing scandal or harm attacking their pride. Did you realise that your womenfolk have even been busy waging a subtle war against me, while your men glare and prowl.”

She smiled. “You do not expect me to pity you for that I hope? You chose to take them on.”

“And I have had my money’s worth.”

“It was my money and if you did not wish to battle them you should not have fought. Instead of making friends with them, you made them enemies.”

He dipped the tip of the grass into her cleavage, smiling. Pink stained her skin from her bodice upward. She was modest even now. A Pembroke to the heart. She would never cuckold him.

“Old habits die hard, darling. I do not trust people, especially families. I am judged by my birth and my family’s reputation, when I am responsible for neither, and if the issue is their ignorance, why should I defend myself?”

“Ah, and now we are at the crux.” Her gaze gripped his. “You do not like to be rejected, so you say you do not care what others think. Yet it is simply a mask. Avoiding that, says you care anyway, Andrew.”

Drew ignored the proclamation, his gaze breaking free and lifting to a bobbing head of clover. He broke its stem, and its sweet perfume carried on the air. He drew a line down her cheek and neck with the flower, then trailed it along the neck of her bodice. “I made up my mind, the afternoon you were ill and I saw how much I had hurt you, that I was going to go to your brother’s with you, stand up in the lions’ den and declare my love for you.”

She laughed. “If they did not believe it, then you would have then told them all to go to hell.”

Drew laughed too. “Yes, I suppose so…” He smiled wryly.

“Then my father would have told you to go to hell too,”

“Careful, if you get a taste for foul language I will divorce you. You may like your men spirited. I like my women staid.” His gaze fell to the smile hovering on her lips as he slid the stem of the clover into her bodice and left the flower there.

His gaze returned to the beautiful pale blue. “I do love you.”

Her answer was in her eyes vivid and bright for him to read,
I love you more than anything.
How long had it been there and he’d not seen, hurting her regardless. He was an ass – a bastard. He did not want to be either anymore.

His gaze skimmed down to the flower he’d tucked in between her breasts then back up.
Ah, God.
Love pierced his soul. He had her back. He leaned over, his leg sliding between hers over her dress, and his hand cupped her breast over her bodice then he kissed her…

Her tongue played with his as her fingers gripped his hair.

He longed to take her here, in the long grass, lift her dress and have their pleasure, and it would be blissful. But this was about building better foundations for them – they’d never had a problem with their physical bond.

He pulled away, his mouth hovering just over hers. “Things will be different now.”

Chapter 35

Painfully happy, but wary, Mary held on to the one thing he did not know. It made it so much more important that they resolved his issues. He’d said he did not like to admit he’d been at fault, even to Lord Brooke, and yet he’d said sorry after being so silent and cold during their journey back to London and he’d said sorry the morning she had left… He’d said sorry to her now. She hoped it was a sign he was changing.

But he was right, she liked his wildness, his freedom from restraints without those things he would be dull, and not Andrew
.

“I know you returned my dowry to John.”

His hazel eyes lost their rich amber depth and turned to shallow gold mirrors before he rolled away to lie on his back, one leg bent, his foot flat on the crushed grass as one arm slotted behind his head.

“I’m sorry it was not more.” He looked up at the sky.

Mary rolled to her side, balancing her head on her palm and looking down at him.

“I had to spend some on Caro, and I’d paid my debts of course.” His brown eyes looked to her saying,
damn the consequences
. “I am sorry it was done with your money, but I do not regret rescuing Caro from that marriage.”

“I did not ask you to regret it; I would guess neither John nor Papa would either. They will think it heroic of you.” Her palm fell on his chest over the fabric of his waistcoat, where his heartbeat beneath.

He made an uncomplimentary sound in the back of his throat. “They will think me a sop. A man has a legal right to beat his wife if he chooses too, and it was their money, they gave it to me to protect your security, not Caro’s. That is why I gave it back, you were no longer mine to keep secure…”

“I think your returning it jolted John’s opinion of you. He thought you without conscience or the ability to care, and then you did something that made him doubt that. Protecting your sister proves you can care. You have pulled a rug out from beneath any argument he may have to dislike you.”

“Except that I did once proposition his wife…” He smiled, wry amusement in his eyes.

Laughter rose from within Mary’s chest. “Ah, yes, I forgot. That is rather undeniable evidence is it not, except that you told me why, perhaps you could tell him. But that would mean admitting you care for his opinion, and that, in your opinion, is a terrible thing…”