The Pursuit of Pleasure (36 page)

They might have both laughed if there were enough room between them to draw sufficient breath, but he could feel her smile. And hear it in her voice.

“I’ve missed you.” It was a quiet admission, but he would have heard it in a room full of noise. He’d been waiting and longing to hear it.

“I have missed you, too, Lizzie.”

But all this emotion, all this sentiment was too much for her. “How can you miss me when you haven’t gone away?”

But this time he caught the self-mockery in her languid humor. He did laugh then and kissed the top of her head. He picked up a strand of her silky hair and ran it through his fingers. It was rather extraordinary, talking to her, being with her like this.

She glanced cautiously at his face before she asked, “What are you going to do now?”

“Tonight? Or rather today? My duty.” He thought she had finally come to understand this, but he had to be sure. “Figure out which one of your guests is our smuggler. Which one of them killed Frank.”

“And when this particular duty is over?” Another careful probe.

“I’ll receive another posting from the Admiralty. Hopefully, a more straightforward posting to a frigate or any ship in one of the fleets seeing action.”

“And what about me? Are we even really married?” This time he could feel the quiet tension of her body.

“I suppose that depends on you, Lizzie. I thought—” he hesitated. “I hoped you loved me.”

“Perhaps I did.” Her voice was quiet and small. “But that was before you lied to me. No, that’s not right, is it? That was only before I found out you’d lied to me. You’d been lying all along. I just didn’t know it.”

“I don’t suppose you might forgive me?” The tightness in his chest grew unbearable. He supposed he really ought to breathe.

“Is that what you thought I’d do?”

“Don’t know. I suppose I thought you’d shrug your elegant little shoulder and tell me you didn’t give a royal damn what I did so long as I said I loved you.”

But she remained quiet. He could feel her eyelashes against his chest, fluttering back and forth as she blinked. Trying to find an answer. Or hold back tears.

“Can you forgive me?” The tightness grew into a sharp, steady pain.

“You left me in gaol,” she whispered, her voice thin and haunted. “Your plan, or mission, or whatever it is, landed me in Dartmouth Gaol, for weeks. Endless weeks,” her voice cracked. “I don’t like being in my house, my own house, for longer than a few hours. I hate being shut up. You know I can’t even abide a carriage ride, and you left me there, locked up for days and days, and I got infested with vermin, and I’ve neverbeen so dirty or so humiliated in my entire life. And you just left me there.” She was crying now. He felt the warm wash of her tears against his skin.

“I’m sorry, Lizzie. So sorry.” And he was. Deeply. And he would make it right. He would give her the future she wanted, even if it didn’t include him. “I’ll make it up to you. I promise. I’ll buy you another house all your own. One made entirely of glass so you’ll never feel closed in.”

“But that’s this house. Glass Cottage. That’s why I love it. Why I can’t leave.”

But she was still holding on to him, her arms latched around his neck. It occurred to him that she was not letting go. That she was staying with him. So he continued to hold her carefully and reverently, and stroked her hair and her back and kissed away her tears until she settled back against his chest. She wasn’t leaving him.

“But the house is just a building. Suppose we could, or need to, live elsewhere? What if I asked you to come live aboard a ship? My ship.”

“Would you really? I would say yes.” Sweet, emphatic Lizzie.

“And you wouldn’t need this house?” He wanted to be sure. He remembered how he’d wanted her to admire the house, so she’d admire him.

“It’s not just the building. The house was the answer, I suppose. My answer to my discontent.”

“Lizzie, how could you be discontented? You had everything—family, fortune, education placed in your hands.”

“I
didn’t have them, not truly. My father did. And once I grew up, all of those things I had were to be denied me, just because I am a woman.”

“I don’t understand? How could he deny you what he’d already given?

“By simply removing them. I had no further education, and no choice about the manner of making my fortune. And for no other reason than that I was a female. My only choice, other than—I don’t know, becoming a starving, ill-thought-of old maid—was to marry.” She rolled onto his chest, poking it with a stiff little finger as she made each of her points. “By the simple fact of your birth, you have, by right, everything—education, affluence, and influence. How can you wonder when some portion of that comes our way, we should not grasp it with both hands? That is what this house was—my opportunity.”

“Your opportunity for independence?”

“Yes. Do you see? The only real way for a woman to make her way in this world, in this society, is to marry. I was never inclined towards that state, but I needed to be ‘got rid of,’ hadn’t I? My father gave me a fine dowry, but that money wasn’t ever to be mine. It was for my husband to control, and would never have been given to me for my own use if I did not marry. Though he has never spoken of it to me, I know he has left his estate entirely, less my mother’s jointure, to his nephew.”

“But that is life. That is simply the way of the world, Lizzie. You should be glad of what he did do for you. I had only education from my father. Affluence and influence I have had to make for myself.”

“So you of all people should understand. My education was cut off, just as it would have made me capable of making my own affluence. Such a thing is feared above all else: that a woman, at least a woman of my class, should use her mind to make her way in the world. They had much rather she use her body, for all their moralistic talk.”

“Don’t say bad things about what happens with our bodies—I hold that rather sacred.”

She rolled over onto her back and stared up at the low ceiling.

“I had never realized how dependent I was. I had taken it all for granted. I never dreamed it could all go away. That he could take it away. And all I could do was marry, but I don’tpossess the happy faculty of making men feel pleased with themselves.”

“I beg to differ. You make me very happy. When you’re not making me unbearably sad. But can you forgive me?”

She didn’t answer right away. She shut her eyes for the longest time before she spoke. “That all depends on you, Jamie. The other day you reminded me of our vows. To love and honor. Why couldn’t you do that? Why did you choose to use me, and place your mission before me?”

Marlowe didn’t hesitate. “I was committed to this mission before I ever thought of you. No, that’s not right. When I was assigned to come back to Dartmouth all I could think of was you. How I could use my position to my advantage to get you. To get you back. You were all I ever wanted. All I had ever loved. And it seemed at first that we would both get what we wanted. I just hadn’t weighed the cost, to you or to my family. I thought it would all come right in the end. But then you were taken.” He rolled away and scrubbed his hand over his face. “Nothing in my life, no assignment, no battle, no loss, has ever been so hard as seeing you in Dartmouth Gaol. Nothing on this earth has ever tested my resolve that much. Nothing. Because I never expected you to fall in love with me.”

Lizzie’s eyes grew bright with tears. He thumbed them carefully away.

“And I can’t swear to you that something like that will never happen again. Because you’re you and I’m me, and we seem to have an unholy talent for getting ourselves in trouble together. But I am sorry for what happened, and I’ll spend the rest of my life doing whatever it takes to make it up to you. I will care for you. I will protect you. I will never leave you alone again if you can forgive me, and let me stay.”

C
HAPTER 22

J
amie walked Lizzie back across the lawn in the cool night air, his arm thrown around her shoulder. They walked all the way around to the library, where she’d left open the latch before she’d slipped out of the house to be with him. When they reached the terrace, she turned and he kissed her softly on the lips. She leaned back against the wide casements and pulled him against her, absorbing the last vestiges if his heat and warmth. His love.

“Try to get some sleep,” he said, before he kissed her one last time on the forehead and moved off into the dark to relieve McAlden.

She stayed, pressed back against the casement of the door, and watched him move off through the first faint glimmer of dawn. When she couldn’t see him anymore, she opened the wide French doors and slipped inside, stifling a large yawn. She could possibly catch a few hours of sleep before she had to put in an appearance. And she was the hostess—she could set the tone. Most women of her acquaintance who were on the social whirl never rose before noon.

“I must say, I am disappointed. Consorting with the footmen? Really, Mrs. Marlowe, that really is too vulgar. It showsthe morals of a she-cat. Even for a widow so young and newly bereaved as you.”

Lizzie’s absolute fright and horror dissipated quickly under Wroxham’s scorn. At the first sound of his voice, her hand had flown to her chest, but her heart was already regaining its normal, steady beat. Indeed, such sniping was the normal order of the day with Wroxham. It was their getting along that had been so unusual.

“Wroxham. I didn’t see you there.”

“Evidently not. And why would you, with your arms all over your footman?”

“He was the groundsman, really.” Lizzie was feeling wonderfully perverse. “I prefer that hearty, out-of-doors type.”

“Really? Dirt under the fingernails? How gauche.”

“As you noted, I’m a widow, Mr. Wroxham. My preferences are nobody’s business but my own.”

“True, but I have to wonder if your tastes have deteriorated because you live so far out from town and have become, shall we say, countrified. Or if you choose to live so far from town to satisfy your deplorable taste.”

“Is there a point to all this elegant abuse, Mr. Wroxham? I really am quite tired.”

“Yes.” He drew himself up before her. “I’d actually come to seek you out earlier and I waited. I waited a long time actually. Because I thought …” He paused, and shook his head, weighing his words carefully. “I had thought you and I shared … a certain sensibility. But you’re a newly bereaved widow and very young. And in such a circumstance I suppose a certain amount of … allowance needs to be made. I had hoped you might give some thought to allowing yourself to be guided by an older and wiser, more experienced hand. My hand.”

There was a very awkward silence, during which Lizzie tried desperately to misunderstand his words.

“Mr. Wroxham, I am … confused.” She tried to keep her tone as polite as possible. A gentleman who made dramatic, break-of-dawn proposals was bound to have delicate sensibilities. Especially a gentleman who had all but called the woman to whom he was proposing a whore. It was bound to be difficult. And she was far too tired for a fuss. “Are you by any chance offering to make me your mistress?”

He pursed his lips together tightly and then said, “I said my hand, cousin Elizabeth. My hand.”

He must be very, very hard up for money. Lizzie raised her eyes heavenward to contemplate the beamed ceiling, as she thought of what on earth to say. The wooden molding was covered with beautifully carved scrolls of flowers and flower faces, and there, in the corner, near the casement for the French doors, was the carved leaf-face of a Green Man, the pagan god of the forest, of whom she was particularly fond. But the little green gentleman had nothing to say and no advice to give in the present circumstance.

There was really nothing she could say besides “no thank you.” There was no explanation she could give.
Sorry, but your cousin, my husband, isn’t really dead, and I’ve spent the night being well…
would only make everything,
absolutely
everything, so much worse.

But a thwarted proposal
would
give her a very convenient and plausible excuse for vacating the premises and taking herself off to Hightop Manor, or London, or Manchester. Some place suitably remote where she couldn’t be accused of fomenting treason.

And still she had her delicate refusal to give. By now, the first warm glimmers of dawn had already crept over the cliffs and swept over the lawns. She could begin to see Wroxham more clearly. He stood, stiff and still, with his hands clasped behind his back, waiting. Waiting for her answer.

How had she ever thought he was anything like Jamie?

“Mr. Wroxham, you do me a great, undeserved honor byyour proposal. I am only too sorry to be unable to accept it. Now, if you’ll pray excuse me, I must be alone.”

He did not take the hint and retreat in haughty dignity as he was meant to. He didn’t do anything. He just stood there and let the silence build.

Oh, Lord. This was going to be terribly awkward, and he was no doubt going to say all sorts of things unbecoming to a gentleman, and she was going to say all sorts of things she would never have the scruples to regret. But she ought to try.

“I am sorry, Mr. Wroxham. And I am very tired. It has been a very trying night. It’s been a very trying month, don’t you know?”

The sun continued its slow climb to the treetops, and even though they were on the north side of the house, the golden light of morning was warming the rich wood tones of the paneling. It really was a very pretty room. She was going to miss Glass Cottage desperately. She was going to miss Jamie desperately. But she was going to do as he asked and leave the rest of the entire business to him. For the time being. It was as much as she could promise.

But there was still Mr. Wroxham, who would not go. The faintest poundings of a headache began at the back of her neck near the base of her skull. She straightened her shoulders to shake it off. And changed the subject.

“It really is a very pretty room, isn’t it? And the rest of the house. It all came together quite nicely, don’t you think?”