All That I Want (The Hesitant Husbands #2)

Chapter 13

“Ahhh…”

Gavin’s power of speech apparently deserted him, so Lainey explained. “The wind took my bonnet into the pond and Mr. Mayfield tried to rescue it for me. Only the rescue mission didn’t quite go as planned, as you can see.”

“I would say not,” the viscount observed dryly.

“Looks more like Mayfield should have been rescuing you instead,” Donovan said with a chuckle.

“Well, he did. Sort of. This is all rather embarrassing…”

“Indeed,” Aidan said, narrowing his eyes at his sister. “It is time to return to the house anyway. I suspect you’ll want to change?”

Lainey rolled her eyes at the earl the way only a sister could. “How very astute.”

“I’ll help you, Lainey,” Elizabeth said, rising from the blanket and giving her husband a speaking look. “We’ll ride on ahead. I trust you can gather the guests?”

Aidan nodded, moving his eyes from Lainey to Gavin and back again. Elizabeth retrieved her horse and the ladies moved off in the direction of the house. Gavin lifted a hand and indicated the ladies.

“I’ll just go with—”

“You will stay and help gather everyone into the carriages,” Aidan commanded. “I would like a word with you.”

Gavin’s throat constricted. This wasn’t going to be good.

Once in Lainey’s room, Elizabeth rang for Meg and helped Lainey out of her wet clothes while they waited. The horrified maid pulled a fresh outfit out of the closet and gathered up the muddy things before they could dirty anything in the room, leaving Elizabeth to help Lainey dress.

“All right, out with it,” she demanded as she tightened Lainey’s dry corset. “What were you two up to at the pond?”

“I told you. It was a rescue mission gone awry.”

“Balderdash,” Elizabeth stated. “There is something happening between the two of you, I can see it.” She hooked Lainey’s skirt. “He kissed you, didn’t he?”

Lainey froze. Was it that obvious?

“I’ll take your silence as an affirmative answer.”

Lainey spun toward Elizabeth. “You mustn’t tell anyone!”

“I knew it!” Elizabeth clapped her hands together. “Lainey, that’s wonderful!”

Lainey snorted as she stuffed her arms into her sleeves. “Not as wonderful as you may think.”

“He’s a bad kisser?”

Lainey laughed out loud. “Heavens no! He’s…accomplished in that department.” She bent her head to do up the hooks and eyes, and to hide her furious blush.

“Then what is the issue?”

“He doesn’t want to marry. Ever.”

“Well, we will just have to change his mind.”

Lainey regarded her friend for a moment, the awful truth of the matter on her tongue. She turned with a sigh and sank down at the vanity, removing the pins from her disheveled hair.

“Oh my,” Elizabeth breathed. “You are in love with him.” She came up behind Lainey and rested her hands on her shoulders when she didn’t reply. She caught Lainey’s gaze in the mirror. “It was him, wasn’t it? He’s the one who broke your heart, and you are falling for him all over again.”

Tears pricked Lainey’s eyes. She hated herself for being such a silly goose over someone who clearly did not return her feelings. Desire was different from love.

“I’ve spent two years trying to get over him,” Lainey admitted. “I thought I had. I thought I was finally successful in walling off that part of my heart. I was ready to move on and make a marriage with someone else and be my own person, and then he came here—because I demanded it—and…and then he kissed me, once again because I demanded it, and all those stupid old feelings came roaring back to the surface and I don’t know what to do with them because obviously nothing has changed in his mind. And he thinks he’s so clever, but I know that blasted man bought me a blasted kitten and he did it just because it made me smile. Honestly, who does that?”” She ran out of breath and fell silent, swiping viciously at a tear that escaped down her cheek. “Oh, I am so stupid! He didn’t want me then, and he doesn’t want me now. Why can I not get that through my head?”

“Love makes fools of us all, Lainey. But…why did he kiss you if he doesn’t have an interest in you?”

“Because I asked him to.” Lainey buried her face in her hands, groaning. “Oh, my humiliation is complete, Eliza. I am so undesirable that I actually had to beg a man to kiss me!”

“Elaine Lockwood, that is simply not true!” She dragged a chair over and sat facing Lainey. “You are not telling me everything. Start talking fast before Meg comes back to fix your hair.”

Lainey sighed. “I overheard Mr. Devereaux talking to some of the other gentlemen about me the other night. He complained that I might be too prim and proper for him…was worried I might not be adventurous enough for the type of bedsport he enjoys, whatever that means. He even bet them twenty pounds that I had never been kissed!”

“The cad!”

“It was mortifying to hear myself discussed in such a manner, but I don’t blame him. Such things are important to men, and I have no wish to make an unhappy match, either.”

“Such things are important to women too, you know,” Elizabeth grumbled. “I used to think like you, too. As long as the man was happy, what did it matter if I enjoyed myself? Well, that’s just rubbish! And how arrogant of him! Who’s to say he knows what he’s doing enough to satisfy you?”

Heat infused Lainey’s face. “Well anyway, I was so humiliated I went to Aidan’s study and got drunk.”

“Lainey!”

“If you wish to hear the rest of the story you will not judge me, Eliza.”

“Sorry, do go on.”

“Well, Gavin came home from his evening of cards and found me there, and I thought, why not? A girl my age should have indulged in a harmless kiss or two long ago. Gavin is a lifelong friend who I trust…and I’ve heard rumors that he does, in fact, know what he’s doing as far as that’s concerned.” She giggled. “So, I asked him to kiss me.” She paused.

“And?”

“And he did, after I practically begged him.”

“And?”

“Well, for heaven’s sake, you don’t need to know all the details, do you?”

“Yes!”

Lainey huffed out a breath. “It shook me to my core. And I knew then that I was not over him in the least. And then today—”

She broke off and Elizabeth’s eyes grew round. “What happened today? Because it honestly looked as though the two of you were rolling around in the mud.”

Lainey sheepishly pulled the last pin from her hair and Elizabeth began to detangle it for her. “You’re not far off, though I told the truth about my bonnet…except that Gavin was the one who caused it to fly into the pond because he was teasing me. I tried to help him retrieve it and we both fell in. But when we were lying there on the grass after…I don’t know what happened, we just wound up in each other’s arms. Now that we’ve touched each other once, it’s as though we can’t stop.”

“But that’s wonderful!”

“No, it’s not!” Lainey wailed. “I am in hell! What good is desiring a man who does not want you?”

“Oh, he wants you,” Elizabeth said sagely.

“I don’t mean physically. I mean for good. He just keeps telling me he can’t marry me but he won’t say why.”

“Well…we will have to figure out what he’s hiding and make him see the light.”

“No,” Lainey said firmly. “No, we will not. If he hasn’t changed his mind in two years, he’s not going to change it. I am not going to beg or force him. I need to stick with my plan and that’s all there is to it. I can make a happy life with someone else.”

Elizabeth eyed her dubiously. “If you say so. But I really think—”

“I mean it, Elizabeth. I can’t torture myself any longer. I have to move on with my life and forget all this business with Gavin ever even happened.”

“And how do you plan to do that?”

“I have absolutely no idea.” The door opened and Meg returned. In a matter of minutes, she had Lainey’s hair done in a simple knot, not at all fashionable but Lainey didn’t want to fuss. Once she was presentable, they made their way downstairs.

“What do you think of the viscount, Eliza? I rather like him,” Lainey noted.

“He seems a lovely man indeed. But he’s quite a bit older than you.”

“That doesn’t really matter to me. As long as his character is sound and he treats me well, that is all I require. He’s very easy to talk to. I like that.”

“And what of Mr. Devereaux? He is obviously quite taken with you. Are you giving him any further consideration after what he said about you?”

“Ah, Mr. Devereaux. It was in rather poor taste to discuss me the way he did…but I can’t really blame him for stating the obvious, can I? I am prim and proper. Perhaps too much so.”

“Do not judge yourself on one person’s perception.”

“The trouble is, I don’t think it is one person’s perception. I’ve spent my life trying to be a paragon of good character. Perhaps I’ve taken that a little too much to heart.”

“A paragon of good character wouldn’t get drunk and ask a man to kiss her,” Elizabeth teased.

“Oh, hush!” Lainey admonished. “My one slip and you have to give me grief about it.” But she laughed in spite of herself.

“Perhaps you ought to do things like that more often. Have a little fun! Show Mr. Devereaux your adventurous side. Besides, I think Mr. Devereaux makes Gavin insanely jealous.”

“Now, Eliza, none of your matchmaking interference, please. We agreed, I have to stick to my plan.”

“I agreed to nothing,” Elizabeth pointed out. “Regardless, I think it is time to let loose and show off your true personality, the one you show me every day. You sparkle, Lainey. A pox on anyone who makes you feel like you don’t.”

“I don’t know, Eliza. It’s one thing to say I need to l liven up, but to actually do it? I’ve shown one face to the world for so long…won’t people judge me?”

“Do you want to find a husband who makes your heart sing?”

Lainey was quiet. The organs that sang when Gavin touched her had little to do with her heart. “Truthfully, I just want someone who cares for me as much as I do him, and accepts me for who I am.”

“Then you’d better start showing your true self, or you are going to be stuck with someone who expects you to be prim and proper for the rest of your life.”

“But Gavin knows that side of me and look how well that turned out.”

Elizabeth pulled her to a stop. “Lainey. Trust me when I say that I don’t believe the problem lies with you. There is a reason Gavin is not offering for you, but it’s not because you are flawed in any way.”

Easy for her to say. Lainey was so pathetic, her friend felt sorry for her after Gavin tore her heart out and offered to marry her. And then even he couldn’t go through with it.

Then again, perhaps she’d gotten it wrong all this time. She’d seen how giggling girls attracted attention during social events…she’d always thought them insipid and silly. But she was willing to bet those girls had their first kiss before the age of twenty-four.

“All right. I will try.” They resumed their path. “I do not want a husband who is distant and staid.”

“That would never do for you. So, let’s see if we can open our gentleman’s eyes to the wonder that is Lainey Lockwood, shall we?”

“I rather think you are laying it on a bit thick, Eliza.”

“And I rather think I am telling the truth. Come along, they will be back soon. I hope you are ready to be peppered with questions!”

With every shift of the horse’s gait, Gavin chafed. He absolutely deserved any discomfort he was feeling. God, he’d had his hands all over Lainey like she was a common trollop. What the hell was wrong with him? They’d been friends for most of his life and he’d always managed to keep his hands to himself. It was that damn kiss in Aidan’s study. He never should have allowed it. One ill-advised kiss had brought everything he’d suppressed for all those years roaring to life.

God help him, he wanted Lainey. If only he—

“Gav, may I ask you something?”

Gavin started. He hadn’t even heard Aidan pull up beside him. “Of course,” he replied, eyeing Aidan warily.

“Is there something going on between you and my sister?”

Bollocks. “What makes you say that?”

“The two of you just seem…at odds with one another. Have you been quarreling about something? She didn’t push you in the pond again, did she?”

Gavin laughed. “Thank you for bringing that up. No, it happened as she said.”

“Then what is going on? Is it this whole sudden marriage thing? Are you upset because she’s going to marry someone else?”

Gavin snapped his head toward Aidan. “Someone else?”

Aidan shrugged. “I just thought…look, I know I was loaded up on laudanum last June when I suggested you marry her, but there may have been some truth in that request. The three of us have been inseparable for most of our lives. I suppose I’d always thought you’d offer for her.”

Gavin groaned. “Not you, too!”

Aidan tossed him a cocky grin. “Not the first person to suggest this?”

“Not by far.”

“Sorry. It’s just that when Lainey got engaged you seemed so…withdrawn. Don’t think I didn’t notice that you two stopped speaking to each other for a while. I thought maybe it was because you were disappointed and hoping to win her for yourself. But when her engagement was broken and you didn’t offer for her then, I pushed that thought aside. Now another engagement looms and I see you behaving oddly again, and I have to wonder if I may have been right? And if so, what is holding you back?”

“Absolutely nothing.” Liar.

“Because if our friendship is preventing you from offering for her, I just wanted to make sure you know that I would be happy to have you as a brother-in-law. I know you would take care of her.”

No, no, no! Do NOT give me your blessing! Gavin turned toward Aidan and held his gaze. “Aidan. I love Lainey, I do. I love you both. But Lainey and I are just friends. I don’t think of her in that way.” How many times did he need to say that in order to convince himself it was true? “I do not wish to marry anyone, let alone your lovely sister. You know my family history, Aidan. How could I subject anyone to that?”

Aidan allowed the horse to plod along in silence for a few moments. “I know that is a heavy burden for you to bear, Gav. But don’t let it rule your life.”

“Easier said than done.”

“I know. But you deserve happiness, too.”

Gavin grunted. “Marriage has made you soft, Ashby,” he tossed over his shoulder.

Aidan laughed, the rich baritone getting under Gavin’s skin and forcing a smile. “Trotting out the title, eh?” Aidan replied. “You only do that when you are actually trying to insult me. I do believe I’m hurt.” He put his hand to his heart in mock offense.

Gavin chuckled, his discomfort momentarily forgotten. “Sod off, my lord,” he said with a grin. Aidan barked a laugh and the two fell into companionable silence.

Gavin’s thoughts soon turned to Lainey. Aidan had unknowingly just stripped away one excuse to not marry her. If only the other were so easily resolved. He couldn’t help but wonder what it would be like to call his best friend his brother in truth and be swallowed into a family with only love to share instead of secrets.