The True Love Wedding Dress (18 page)

“Good God, Lucy,” he said. “You are hardly an ape leader.”

Her eyes widened at his laughter, but he thought she was not altogether displeased. She tried a little imperious sniff. She wasn’t going to back off. But then, when had she
ever
backed off?

“I beg to differ,” she said in a frosted voice. “I am well on the shelf and collecting more dust all the time. Why, any honest member of Polite Society would agree that I was already on my last leg, as it were, when you finished dallying with my affections.”

“Dallying with your—” he sputtered.

“Affections,” she finished for him loudly. “
Affections
that you dallied with since I came out at seventeen. Which means that you dallied with them for . . .” She tilted her head and went silent for a few seconds. “Why, six years! I was twenty-three when you decided we did not suit. I am twenty five now.”

He took a deep breath. “First, you are not at all . . . dusty.”

“How kind of you to say so.” Her eyes dropped to her lap with every appearance of being modestly flattered, except that she had no modesty and she wasn’t flattered. Who would be at such a backhanded compliment? Damn. Now he had the disadvantage not only of sounding irritable but also of being gauche as well.

This was no way to go about winning her back. Why must she make everything so bloody difficult? Why must he find it so exhilarating?

He would
not
let her do this to him. “Second of all, I did
not
dally with your affections, and well you know it.”

She lifted her gaze to his, and for a fleeting second he saw the impish light before she donned a vastly wounded expression and sniffed back a nonexistent tear. Her lower lip trembled—possibly with laughter, though he had the feeling she’d meant to simulate distress.

“Do not say you were”—another sniff, a little gulp—“
amusing
yourself.”

God help him. He would dearly love to throttle her. Or kiss her. And he couldn’t do either.

“Yes, yes, I admit it,” he said, spreading his hands wide in a symbol of surrender. “Diabolical fiend that I am, I spent six years trailing after you, trapping you in the dark snare of my irresistibility, with but one thought—how could I maneuver you into making a fool of me at Lady Carroll’s birthday party? And waiting eagerly for you to do so again.”

Rather than the amusement he’d expected, the pertness faded from her expression, and she frowned. “Is that how you see it?”

“What?”

“That I made a fool of you?”

His ire faded. “Lucy,” he said, with a twisted smile, “
look
at me.”

She did so and had the grace to look uncomfortable. “And you, Lucy. Do you really think I amused myself with you?”

“No,” she answered softly. “I just . . . It is just that I never realized that anyone thought I hadn’t married because of . . . of what you said. And when Hugh claimed that I was a spinster because no one would have me . . . Rather than have you think that I was the only one whose reputation had suffered—which it hasn’t,” she hastily added, “I wanted you to think that you, too, had lost some of your desirability as a potential suitor.”

“Which I haven’t?” he asked with a crooked smile.

She blushed at that. He watched in fascination as the color swept over her shoulders and the snowy column of her throat. Would it warm her flesh? Would the curves and vales exposed by her bodice know different temperatures, would the crest be cool and the shadows warm? Would her pulse beat closer to the surface at her wrist, beneath her ear, at the base of her throat? He looked up into her eyes.

Her hand rose and dropped in a quixotic little gesture of exasperation. “Pride. Between the two of us, we have rather cornered the market, haven’t we?”

“Yes,” he said softly, liking this newfound candor, the tacit admission of shared accountability.

They had been so young. So certain they could have their way if only they persisted. War had taught him differently. What had taught her the same lesson, he wondered.

Her smile grew gruff. “I may still have too much.”

The carriage suddenly turned a corner, the wheel skittering on the wet cobbles, banging into the curb. It lurched, tipping sideways, and Lucy, perched precariously as she was, fell forward. Alex reached out and caught her, pulling her into his embrace and cushioning her fall.

“Oh!”

The carriage righted itself, and the hatch flew open, water streaming in. “Everyone all right?” the driver asked.

“Owen,” Lucy started angrily, glaring up from where she rested in his arms, “you’d better take—”

The hatch slammed shut, and the coach continued on.

Her lips pursed with frustration. She lowered her face and only then seemed to realize how very close he held her, her crinoline spread out behind and above her like the tail of some albino peacock. The soft mounds of her breasts, pushed tightly against him, swelled with each breath she drew. And she was drawing many, rapidly.

He looked down into eyes grown darker, the exact shade of blue that hangs above the horizon when dusk becomes night. In the amber-colored lantern light, her skin gleamed as though she’d been dipped in honey. And she was warm. The heat from her soaked through the thin bodice of . . . both their gowns.

Bloody hell!
There was no possible way he was going to pull off a seduction while he wore a dress.

He eased her and her crinoline back into the seat opposite him.

“What were you going to say?” he asked irritably.

“What?” She blinked as though coming out of a light sleep.

“You were saying something about pride and wanting my desirability as a suitor to suffer and that because of Hugh’s assumption that you are currently unwed because of . . .” He raised his brow questioningly.

“Oh, yes.” She nodded. “I could not stand to have you think no man would marry me because you wouldn’t have me—”

“Wouldn’t have you?”
Once more she’d caught him completely off guard.

He had put himself through hell not
having
her. Even now, just looking at her, with nothing more than a scant few moments of having her in his arms, his body had grown heavy with want, his heartbeat quickening with awakening desire. A hundred visceral memories filled him, thickening the blood in his veins, making his muscles contract painfully in anticipation.

How often and how near they’d come to making love: in the library, under the trees at his country estate, in the darkness of the walled garden behind her brother’s townhouse. But they never had. Because he’d loved her.

God. He closed his eyes. Wouldn’t
have
her? He’d had her a thousand times in his dreams, in his cot on the battlefield at night, and in the army’s hospital tent after the charge at Balaklava. “My
dear
girl, I have had—”

The carriage abruptly rolled to a stop, and the hatch swung up, releasing a torrent of cold rain on them. Lucy shrank back as Owen’s sodden form filled the opening.

“Pall Mall, Miss St. James!” he shouted above the thunder and slammed it back shut.

Thank God.

Lucy regarded Alex owlishly. “You don’t really mean to go out in this?”

“On the contrary.” A good cold shower sounded perfect. “Pick me up at the end of the street, if you please.”

L
ucy pressed her nose against the glass window and squinted out into the lashing rainstorm. All she could see of Alex was a large white figure striding alongside the carriage with torn skirts flapping wildly about his trousers.

She’d ordered Owen to keep the carriage pacing Alex in case he came to his senses and wanted to jump back into the cozy interior. Even Owen, dressed in his slicker and top hat, hands properly gloved and trousers tucked into his high, rubberized boots, was grumbling about the weather. Alex would be soaked by the time he made it to the end of the street and chilled to the bone.

The only good thing about the rain was that it had kept everyone inside. Those who would have been leaving parties had decided to remain sensibly at their hosts’ homes until the worst of the storm passed. Consequently, Pall Mall was deserted.

She wiped at the condensation collecting on the inside of the window with one of her skirt flounces and peered outside again. He was moving right along, like a sodden bridal ghost from a mariner’s nightmare, imperious, bold, undaunted.

He was being an awfully good sport.

Either that, or he was awfully angry. She couldn’t decide which.

For a moment there, when the carriage had tilted and he had snatched her up in his arms, she had thought she read something in his eyes, something familiar, dark, and urgent, something that had kindled an answering breathlessness in her chest and set her pulse racing. But then the moment had passed, an expression of disgust had crossed his face, and he set her aside as if he could hardly wait to remove his hands from her.

Perhaps he wanted nothing to do with her other than what he’d claimed, that she should bear witness to his keeping his word.

But then when she’d said something about his not wanting to marry her . . .

What
had
that all been about? He’d looked frightfully angry. He’d pressed his lips so tightly together they disappeared, and he’d had to force his last few words out between clenched teeth. Whatever had she said to so provoke him?

Could it be that she did not know Alex as well as she once did? The thought filled her with melancholy. She had known Alexander Thorpe all her life. Orphaned early, she and Hugh had been raised at her great-aunt Sophie’s country estate, which shared a border with the Thorpes’ property. It had been Alex who’d secretly taught her to ride astride, and she had taught him to dance the polonaise. She’d loved him for as long as she could remember.

They had been young, so green and untested. No longer. There was nothing green about the man she’d faced tonight. The years had changed him, matured him. But, she thought wistfully, his smile was still as devastating.

What did this new Alex want from his life? she wondered as she watched him marching along, the mud climbing up the ripped skirt, his stride long and easy even in the driving wind. And could it still include her?

Yes.
She was still the only woman for him. She knew it. Absolutely and without doubt. During every moment they had spent together tonight she had felt more alive, more vital, more
awake
than during all the hours she had spent without him over the past two years.

They were meant to be together, and these two years had been nothing but a detour in the path their lives together must take.

Now she had only to convince him of it.

She was so lost in her thoughts that she did not realize they had come to the end of the street until she saw Alex approaching the carriage. The door swung open. He did not get in. He stood in the light from the lantern, water streaming down his face, shielding his eyes with his hand as he called to her over the wind. “I’ll ride up top with Owen!”

“You’ll do no such thing!” This couldn’t be the end of their time together. There was so much more she needed to say, and she would not risk losing this opportunity. She’d taken that risk two years ago and lost.

He only shook his head, the water flying off his dark curls. “I’m drenched, Lucy. I’ll ruin your nice new coach.”

She saw by the stubborn tilt of his jaw that he wouldn’t be bullied.

“If you insist. But it’s not my coach. It’s Hugh’s nice new coach,” she said in a carefully neutral voice.

He tilted his head, squinting at her through the rivulets of water streaming down his face. “Hugh’s, eh?” he repeated thoughtfully.

“Yes.”

“Well, then . . .” Without further protest he swung himself up and into the carriage, pulling the door shut after him. He was indeed soaked through.

So was the dress.

Water had rendered the material nearly transparent, plastering it to his body like a second skin, leaving nothing to the imagination. Every muscle, every sinew, every rib, and every whorl of dark hair across his magnificently planed chest was delineated in breathtaking detail under the wet, clinging fabric. Even the goose-flesh rising on his chilled skin could be seen.

Oh, my.
He had always had a fine physique, or so she had concluded from the times she’d managed to pull his shirt from his trousers and smooth her hands beneath the linen, exploring his body like a blind woman. But the years and an arduous military life had made him a near perfect specimen—

“Miss?”

“Lucy?”

Alex was regarding her strangely. With a start, she realized that the hatch was again open and rain was falling on her head. “Miss St. James?” Owen said in a tone that made it clear he was repeating himself.

“What?” she said, drawing herself up.

Where to, indeed. Two years back, please, and no delay.

She glanced at Alexander. He had tipped his head and was squeezing water from a fistful of black hair. He would catch a cold if he didn’t—

“My brother’s house, Owen.”

At Alex’s startled look, she went on with a confidence she was far from feeling. “You’ve fulfilled your part of the wager. There’s no reason you should make yourself ill by traveling all the way back to my great-aunt’s house in that wet dress when my brother’s house and decent dry clothing are only a few short blocks away.”

“Well . . .” he said doubtfully. He really had changed. He was willing to be reasonable.

“I insist,” she said.

“If you insist.” He shrugged, giving in with a little less graciousness than he might have, but giving in nonetheless.

She rewarded him with a brilliant smile.

L
ucy tipped over the flowerpot beside the door and revealed a key. “Good old Hugh.”