Undoing of a Lady (8 page)

Nat was still standing where she had left him. Even as she thought that he would not make a scene
in a public place by demanding to accompany her or to speak further with her she realized that she had made a serious mistake. There was a single-minded resolve in Nat now that would not baulk at causing a scene. She saw him start to move toward her with absolute determination—and then Priscilla Willoughby drifted across to him and claimed his attention with a hand on his arm, and Lizzie whipped though the door as quickly as a cat and slipped away, her heart beating fast.

It was warm in the carriage and she was alone and she felt unhappy so she reached for the hip flask that she knew Monty kept concealed there. Actually it was not very well concealed, merely shoved under a cushion. She took it out and drank from it and the brandy was villainously strong and almost made her choke, but she could feel her body relaxing, too, and her mind turning numb again. It made her happier. For a little while.

H
E WAS SO ANGRY
he thought that he would explode. He was angry with a special sort of fury that only Lizzie could arouse in him, a mixture of protectiveness and complete exasperation.

Nat had made his excuses to Lady Wheeler, and given his apologies to Priscilla Willoughby, whom he had shed with a ruthlessness she deserved. When had Priscilla become so shockingly persistent? He did not remember her being so pushy as a debutante, but then he had been fathoms deep in love with her in his salad days and so had probably not minded her draping herself all over him and claiming his attention at every possible opportunity. Now her clinging only served to irritate him when all he wanted was to talk to Lizzie. He had to confront her. The need to do his duty, to offer Lizzie the protection of his name, drove him. So did the need to have her in his bed.

He had followed Lizzie back to Fortune Hall and seen her tumble out of the carriage. He had been prepared to accost her on the doorstep, but
then she had bidden the coachman and groom good-night and had started to walk away from the house and toward the woods instead. Nat did not approve of her strolling around in the dark on her own, of course, but it did at least give him the opportunity to speak with her alone and he had been waiting for that for over a week. He had called; he had looked everywhere for her. The servants had told him that she was sick, she was out, no one knew where she was. Nat had not believed a word of it and if he had not been called back so abruptly to visit his family he would have forced Lizzie to see him before now.

“Lizzie!” He caught up with her on the edge of the wood and as soon as she turned toward him he could smell the brandy on her and see the flask dangling from between her fingers, gleaming silver in the moonlight. His heart sank. He knew that Monty Fortune had a problem with alcohol; he knew, too, that Lizzie’s mother had died abroad, an old soak, people said, disgraced and abandoned. He could not bear to think of the same thing happening to Lizzie herself if she turned to drink in her unhappiness.

“Nat.” He had expected her to run away from him as she had done before, or at least to tell him to leave her alone, but she did neither. She stood blinking at him whilst the light and the shadows played around her and turned the rich auburn of her hair to dark.

“You’re drunk,” Nat said taking, the flask from her
and throwing it into the bushes. “You took too much wine tonight and now you’re on the brandy.”

“You are a spoilsport.” She pouted. So she was sweet drunk not angry drunk. It did not appease him. Fear for her mingled with his exasperation. It was as though she lived on a high wire. He did not understand what it would take to bring her safely back to earth.

“There wasn’t any left in the flask anyway,” she said. She turned and walked away from him, into the moonlight. It sculpted her face in silver making her look pale and fey, a fairy from another world. Nat looked at her with her bodice slipping and her shawl sliding off her shoulders. She had pulled the neckline of her gown down too far earlier and the curve of one small breast showed now. He wanted to trace the line of it with his finger. He wanted that quite badly. Lizzie did not have Priscilla’s opulent curves. He had noticed them since Priscilla had been thrusting her breasts in his face all night. It had not attracted him. He had wanted Lizzie’s delicacy instead. He wanted her so much that he ached.

“John Jerrold wouldn’t have thrown the flask away.” She was taunting him now. “He would have fetched me more brandy.”

“Jerrold is a bad influence on you,” Nat said. She was surrounded by bad influences, her dead parents, her drunkard elder brother, her profligate younger one, now John Jerrold. He had wanted to hit Jerrold and it was not solely for his lack of judgment in en
couraging Lizzie’s drinking. If she had gone outside with Jerrold would he have found them with Jerrold’s hand down her bodice or up her skirt?

“I was only flirting with him,” Lizzie said. Her smile was sweet, her eyes wide and bright.

“You were playing reckless games.” Nat sighed heavily. She looked so young in the moonlight with her gown falling off her like a child let loose in the dressing up box. “You don’t know how dangerous it is,” he said coldly. “Jerrold wanted to kiss you—”

“I’ve kissed other people before.” Lizzie sounded cross, defiant. “It is not just
you,
Nat. I know how to go about it.”

Dear God, he didn’t want to think about it. Other men kissing Lizzie, plundering that soft, sweet mouth of hers as he had done…And tonight she had been flirting as though her life depended upon it, tempting them with other liberties far beyond mere kissing. There was knowledge in her eyes and the promise of temptation. How far would she go? As far as she had gone with him? He would kill any man who took her up on that offer because it was his fault that she had the experience to follow through.

“You must marry me,” he said, following that train of thought. “It is the only way to put matters right.”

“No.” She swung away from him. “What you mean is that it is the only way to make
you
feel better.”

Devil take it, he thought, she was right. He felt all manner of emotions, of which guilt was only a small
part. Self-loathing, disgust at his lack of control, regret at the way in which he had obliged Flora to free him and now an equal regret that he and Lizzie were trapped by their situation…And then there was the almost paralyzing fear over the need to gain a fortune and quickly, for his sister’s sake if nothing else, to end the blackmail…

But there was also that deep and undeniable sensual attraction to Lizzie, too, which seemed undiminished by the guilt and reproach, a wicked, dangerous desire that tempted him to take her again
because he wanted her.
He wanted her with a hunger so sharp and so deep that it made his breath catch. Lizzie had made love in the same way that she did everything else in life—with hunger, with recklessness, with an appetite that left no space for caution or care.

“Lizzie,” he said, “what if you have a child?”

Her face seemed carved from stone in the moonlight. “I won’t.”

“Do you know that or are you just being wilfully stubborn?”

She made no reply and suddenly he realized with a pang of the heart that the blank look on her face was not obstinacy but fear, that her persistent refusal to face the truth sprang from terror. Lady Elizabeth Scarlet might be twenty years old yet she was still little more than a child herself in temperament. It was one of the reasons why he had always taken care of
her, because she had seemed so dangerously careless of herself.

“I won’t,” she said again. “There will be no child.”

“Do you know that for sure?” Nat pressed, wondering as he did so why he was asking. It made no difference to him or to what he had done. Even if there were to be no obvious consequence of their mad, mindless passion, it had still happened and he still had to put it right.

“I don’t feel any different,” Lizzie said. She sounded very young. “I am sure that if I were pregnant I would be able to tell.”

Nat almost laughed but he had heard the edge of fear in her voice again, the note that betrayed her.

“I do not believe one can always tell at first,” he said carefully.

She shot him a look that was full of defiance. “How would you know? You are a man.”

She had a point, Nat thought. But even so…

“How long is it until you expect your courses?” he said, very careful again. He saw her blush pink even under the pale gilding of the moonlight. She might be wild but she was not so immodest as to be familiar discussing intimacies with a man.

“I…in about five days time, I think. Perhaps a little less…I never pay much attention to them.” She raised her chin. “I think it stupid to let such matters govern one’s behavior.”

Well, quite. He could imagine that Lizzie would
not let such a trifling matter interfere with her riding or her other activities as many women did. Nevertheless it would have been useful if she had paid more attention to them because by his calculations that put their night of mad passion in exactly the most dangerous time of the month.

“Then I think it essential we wed by special licence as soon as possible,” he said.

“And I think it better that we do not wed at all,” Lizzie said.

Nat looked at her, wondering if she was trying to deny both what had happened and what the consequences might be. He wondered if she wanted children. They had never talked about it. He had thought that they were friends and yet there were so many things that they had never discussed. He wanted children—with the right mother. He had always imagined that he would marry someone like Flora, or Priscilla Willoughby, who were dutiful and well-bred and would surely give birth to dutiful and well bred offspring. Was it wrong to think that Lizzie could not be a good mother, twenty years old and yet still behaving like a child herself? The only real example of motherhood she had had was the Countess of Scarlet, who had been selfish and neglectful.

Lizzie had walked away from him again, graceful as she dipped in and out of the shadows. The leaves rustled in the night breeze and it spun tendrils of her hair.

“You are free,” she said, over her shoulder. “There will be no child. I am sure of it. So no one will know what happened and we can pretend that nothing did.”

“We can pretend…”

Nat was shocked to realize just how tempted he was to turn his back on what
had
happened and join in the pretence. A marriage made in hell, not heaven, with the possibility of a child that had never been planned…

How easy it would be to put honor aside and agree with her, play along with the charade.

“No one will know…”

He had thought from the first that Lizzie would make the devil of a wife. They were not well suited. In point of fact they were not suited at all. A marriage between them would probably be a disaster. Yet how could he, in honor, join her in her pretense?

It was not just honor, he acknowledged. It was greed for the money. He
had
to have it. And it was lust. Having once tasted Lizzie’s tempting beauty he was tormented by her. It was not a good reason for marriage, in his opinion, but it was better than asking her to be his mistress. He wanted her here, now, against this tree, or on the grass beneath them. He had never felt like this before, had never been possessed by such single-minded desire. It still shocked him because he simply was not a man driven by his lusts. Except that he evidently was.

“No.” He caught her arm. She felt warm beneath his touch. “
I
know,” he said roughly. “
You
know.
Even if there is no child, even if no one else ever found out, we two would know what happened.”

“So?” She raised her chin. “I can forget.”

Nat thought about how impossible he found it to erase the memory of how she felt in his arms. He could not forget that. There was a tumult of intense emotion within him, the desire, the need, and the longing. He slid his hands up her arms, drawing her toward him. He moved with unmistakable deliberation so that she had time to escape him if she wished, but she stood quite still, watching him with those huge, clear eyes.

“Have you forgotten this?” he asked, in the second before his mouth covered hers. “Do you want to forget it?”

Delicious. Hot. Urgent. She matched his passion effortlessly and for a moment Nat felt the world spin and he was in danger of losing control in the same way that he had done the week before. She tasted so sweet, a mixture of brandy and something that was her own essence, fiery, tempting and yet poignantly innocent. She held nothing back and that was almost his undoing. With a fierce effort he reined himself in and kissed her more gently, teasing her tongue with his, courting her response rather than demanding it. Her tongue slid against his, seeking, a little hesitant in her inexperience and all the more seductive for it. And suddenly, helplessly, they were sliding toward heated passion once again and reality splintered
around him and he was aware of nothing but his driving need for her as he gathered her closer and the feelings consumed him alive.

It was Lizzie who drew back this time. She was panting for breath. For a brief moment the moonlight shimmered on some expression in her eyes that he did not recognize and could not read and then she moved away from him and the shadows fell across her face and swallowed her up.

“No,” she said. “I have not forgotten it.”

He came after her, still driven by need, and caught her hand. “Then marry me, Lizzie.”

“So that we can make love again?” Her tone was light, unrevealing. “It isn’t a good enough reason, Nat.”

In that moment it felt like the best reason in the world to him. Devoured by his lust for her, single-minded in his desire, he could think of none better. But Lizzie had freed herself. Her hand slid from his and once again she slipped away.

“I do not wish to marry you,” she said. “You know we would not be suited. Even as friends we fight like cat and dog. It would be willfully foolish to make matters worse by marrying each other.” She sighed. “This isn’t like the time I fell from my horse when we were out riding together and you carried me home, Nat. This time you cannot rescue me. We made a mistake, I provoked you and you were angry with me and it should never have happened.”

Nat could not dispute a single thing that she said,
except that he knew that mistakes of that magnitude could not simply be brushed aside.

“You
must
marry me,” he said. “It will put matters right.”

“So now you give me a different reason,” Lizzie said. “First the possibility of a child, then lust, now reputation.” She looked at him, a mocking half smile tilting her lips. “And you have not even mentioned my money yet.”

She was so cynical, Nat thought. It was experience of life that had made Lizzie such a skeptic for she had seen from an early age the things men—and women—did for money. And the hell of it was that she was absolutely right. He had not mentioned the money because out of all of his motives it seemed the least honorable, yet to him it was becoming the most pressing need. He simply had to pay off his blackmailer before the truth of his sister’s disgrace was spilled before the world like an ugly stain.