Chapter 18
I just recalled another passage from Oscar Wilde’s A Picture of Dorian Grey: ‘The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it.’
I find it rather convenient that that would be the passage that leapt to mind after what happened this morning. It was all I could do not to put action to words.
––––––––
A strangled cry rang over the music, and Aylesbury turned toward the townhouse at a jog. Carriages were lined up before Harrowby’s townhouse, but he saw no sign of anything amiss.
“Stop it,” a female voice demanded angrily, followed by another more panicked scream from the square’s east corner.
Skirts flashed behind the first carriage in line before disappearing.
A few of the waiting coachmen who hadn’t shown any concern moments before turned at that scream.
One standing high in his box tossed aside his cigar with a curse just as another cry sounded.
“Oi there! Leave that lady be!”
Then...“Harry!”
It was Fiona! Startled into action, he bolted in that direction and merged with a trio of liveried drivers on the brick sidewalk. At the corner of the square, he could see her fighting against her attacker as he tried to bodily lift her into the carriage.
She struggled and kicked with all she was worth, and beneath his fear, he felt a burst of pride for her bravery and not a lick of pity for the man evoking her fury.
“Let me go,” she screamed as her assailant lifted her around the waist, throwing her elbow back into his face. The man howled in pain and released her, clutching his nose. She dropped to the ground and sat there breathing heavily as Aylesbury and the coachman arrived.
Lifting her into his arms, he ran his hands over her, checking for injuries while the coachmen ran off in pursuit of her attacker as he fled, leaving his carriage and horse behind.
..if they were his at all. She was trembling beneath his touch, clearly shaken by the attack. “Are you all right? Did he hurt you?”
She shook her head and melted into his embrace. Her arms wound around his waist as she buried her face in his chest. He stroked her hair comfortingly, though inwardly, he seethed with rage, wishing he might pursue the ruthless lout himself.
He wasn’t alone in that. Fiona cursed a blue streak against his shirtfront, casting aspersions against the ruffian’s lineage and threatening harm to his more valued body parts. Amusement warred with anger, both of which only served to blanket the fear that chilled him.
“What happened? I thought you were going back inside?”
“I was,” she sighed. Regretfully, her tight grip on him slackened, and Fiona stepped back with a sigh. “I returned to the door and just decided that I—I could not. I sent one of the footmen inside to let Francis know I was leaving.”
“And you just decided to walk back home?”
“Yes.” She shrugged. “It’s just a few streets away, after all. That man offered me a ride at first, then grabbed me when I refused, trying to force me into the carriage. I don’t think it was even his.”
“I hardly think that matters.” He frowned. “Let’s get you back inside. Your brother needs to hear of this.”
“No,” she protested. “I can’t do that. Not right now. I can’t walk back in there looking like this.” Aylesbury looked down at her torn and dirtied gown, feeling the anger stir within him again. “And if you were to accompany me, everyone might think that you...that we...”
Fiona shrugged again, but Aylesbury understood her point. He’d already gained a reputation as a hothead since Piper’s disappearance. He didn’t need to be thought a rapist as well. “Come with me.”
Knowing he would owe Lady Onslow more than flowers after abandoning her daughter yet again, he took Fiona by the hand.
Pulling her behind him, he rounded the corner to the eastern side of Belgrave Square.
Eight columns supporting an iron-railed balcony at the center of the street marked his townhouse.
The house was quiet as it usually was when Aylesbury went out, his servants likely entertaining themselves in their parlor below but for the lone footman left above to see to the door.
Leaving him with orders to send up a maid with tea and towels, he led Fiona to a small drawing room on the ground floor.
“We’ll have some tea to help calm you. Then I will let you freshen up before I escort you home.” He turned up a single gas sconce to light the room.
“Thank you, Harry.”
He turned to find her standing in the middle of the room watching him, her arms crossed tightly over her chest. She looked more fragile than he had ever seen her. Even in the dim light, he could see the shimmer of tears in her eyes.
As vulnerable as she was, he doubted she would be able to gather enough of her interminable ire to stop him if he were to gather her in his arms.
With what had happened between them earlier and her pride, he also knew she would probably resent him for witnessing her moment of weakness.
The only solution then was to supplant that helplessness with a touch of anger, and thankfully, there was a topic readily at hand that would not bring that anger down on him.
“You know, I think someone might be trying to kidnap you.” Despite the seriousness of his supposition, Aylesbury was happy to see fire light her eyes, driving out the fear as he hoped it would.
“My, my, how clever you are. Are you just figuring that out now?”
God, but she was so impertinent! Spirited. Challenging. Alive.
Striving for more, he responded with a mocking inflection. “It occurred to you before this? You must think yourself so much smarter than I.”
“Oh, not so much smarter,” Fiona shot back with a toss of her head. Aylesbury was hard put not to grin with pure delight.
“But I am Aylesbury, my dear,” he drawled as if that said it all.
It did say enough to inspire a cheeky spark in her eyes as she finally, finally looked at him fully for the first time in all the days since they had met again.
If he’d known irritating her was all it would take to gain such a response from her, he wouldn’t have been so bloody polite to her all week.
She snapped her fingers. “Ah, yes, nobility! An excellent substitution for intelligence.”
He ignored her neat parry, expounding with mock hauteur, “And as an Aylesbury heir, I went to Cambridge. A-levels in Mathematics, Chemistry, and Latin. Do you speak Latin?”
She lifted an equally arrogant brow. “Francis agreed that it’s hard to imagine what part of my life would require me to speak Latin.”
“Admit it,” he teased. “I am better educated...”
“Education does not trump intelligence, only ignorance,” she pointed out. “You might be better educated. However, that doesn’t make you smarter.”
“I certainly didn’t teach me how to be as stubborn and unforgiving as you. I will allow that much.” He let the banter lie, as entertaining as it was, to readdress his original subject. “But I digress. You knew then?”
“That someone was trying to kidnap me?” she asked, then sighed heavily as if she were sorry to see their exchange end as well.
The short train of her gown swished behind her as she paced the room, lifting or touching a knickknack here and there.
“Yes. Unfortunately, it wouldn’t be the first time something like this has happened, but I had never been the target, if you will, before. ”
She sounded remarkably blasé about the whole idea. “You will have to explain that.”
“Last year, one of the nursery staff was caught trying to sneak Preston out of the house,” she told him indifferently as she examined a small Rodin bronze near the window. “She confessed that she and her brother were planning on holding Preston for a king’s ransom.”
Whatever Aylesbury had been expecting, that wasn’t it. “My God! How did I not hear of this?”
“And you really think you’re so much smarter than I?” Fiona asked with a spark of that feistiness she had brandished so well moments before. “If they had reported it and the news made the papers...”
“It would have only served to spread the idea amongst others.”
“Ah, a learned man indeed.”
“I fear I haven’t a classical education in villainy and sadism,” he countered, following in her path as she continued to move about the room.
And out of his arm’s length? He shook his head.
“Still, I cannot understand their motive. Why target Glenrothes? There are other nobles with higher rank and connections to the Crown who would have made more prime targets than Glenrothes heir.”
“No A-levels in Economics then?” Fiona tsked. She picked up a crystal orb from the mantel, absently turning it in her hands. “You are forgetting that Francis has something that none of those high-ranking nobles have. Eve.”
“Lady Glenrothes?”
“And her money, yes. Don’t you recall? Eve and Kitty’s father was one of those shipping barons you hear about. They have millions. Each.”
“American dollars,” Aylesbury dismissed.
Fiona laughed aloud at that and set the crystal back in place. “How very British of you, Harry. But the translation of those pitiful ‘American dollars’ into pounds is still more than enough to prompt avarice, envy, and treachery in even the most saintly Briton’s heart.”
Taking a moment to absorb what she was telling him, he leaned a shoulder against the mantelpiece nearby with a sigh.
Eve and her sister had made their debut in the year or so before his father’s death.
At the time, he’d been at university and not current on the ton’s gossip.
Even so, enough casual references were made among the MacKintosh clan during the time he lived among them to make Fiona’s reasoning make sense. “That much, then? I had no idea.”
“Most don’t. Even the nursery maid who attempted Preston’s kidnapping was motivated by nothing more than gossip among the household staff.” Her spirits dimmed once again. “If the truth were to get out...If it already has...”
As much as he hated the thought of her facing any danger, Aylesbury had to admit that her deductions made sense. “You believe someone is kidnapping you for monetary gain?”
“I’m an easier target than any of the children now. They are well-guarded,” she told him, with a shrug as she continued her perambulation around the room. “What else could it be?”
What else indeed? “Why don’t we get you home and let your brother know what has happened? Perhaps he will have some theories of his own.”
“No! That is the last thing I want to do,” she argued. “Francis and Eve live in fear of this after what happened with Preston. I’ll not worry them anew over nothing.”
“Nothing?” he retorted incredulously, pushing off from the limestone fireplace to trail her once more. “You think this is nothing? If I hadn’t been there this time...”
“I will take precautions not to be alone,” she assured him. “I will stay in public, surrounded by people.”
“You were in public, surrounded by people just then,” he pointed out. “It didn’t seem to stop him.”
Fiona winced but didn’t give in. Instead, she set her jaw stubbornly. It seemed she didn’t like to be challenged, even on matters that had nothing to do with him. If it weren’t so tragic, it might have been reassuring for his cause. “The driver timed that very well.”
“It could happen again.”
“That is not your problem.”
She turned to face him with a stern look that he suspected was meant to brook no rebuttal, but what Fiona didn’t know about him was that under the affable exterior she knew from him in the past, he possessed an intractability to match her own.
His jaw tightened as he caught her shoulders, frowning down at her. “The hell it isn’t. I can’t let you endanger yourself.”
“And I can’t have you about, Harry,” she admitted, then bit her lip. “What I mean is, I have my brothers’ company to keep me safe, and I will use it. You needn’t worry over me, though I appreciate the concern.”
“It isn’t something so impersonal as concern,” he told her. “Though you refuse to accept it, you must at least see that I care for you.”
She laughed lightly. “And that isn’t impersonal?”
“There’s nothing impersonal about this.”
Aylesbury arms slid around her back, drawing her closer until her soft curves pressed against him. His hands roamed upward once more to stroke her back and skim her bare shoulders. The slender line of her neck. She stilled beneath his caress, her breath growing shallow.
“Impersonal, Fiona? Does this feel impersonal to you?”
“Don’t, Harry.” She turned out of his arms without even bothering to look at him. “I can’t...”
“Are you just going to pretend there is nothing between us?” he persisted. “Well, I can’t. Damn it, woman, you’ve given me something to care for when I thought I had nothing left. You make me feel alive again.”
Her heart leapt at his words. Oddly enough, it was the frustration lacing them that nearly convinced her that he spoke true more than any romantic prose might have.
“I’m so glad you feel alive, Harry,” the words laced with more than a little fallaciousness, “but I don’t feel anything more than anger.”
“Nothing?” he asked gruffly.
Shaking her head emphatically, she watched Harry warily as he sauntered closer, like a tiger on the prowl, and she was nothing but his weak prey. “No.”
She shivered as he neared. Shivered from the touch that never quite caressed her skin as he lifted a hand to hover over her cheek. From the heat of his body still inches away. From the warmth of his words as they brushed over her cheek as he leaned closer to whisper in her ear.
“Liar.”
“Truth,” she choked out.
He closed the remaining distance between them until her every breath and heartbeat fluttered against him. Caressing her cheek lightly but insistently, he forced her to meet his gaze.
“Look at me, Fiona.”
She turned her head, tearing her gaze away from the dark emotion in his eyes.
“Fiona,” he commanded insistently, turning her face back to his. “How can you ignore this? Deny this?”
Her chin trembled as she stared up at him with wide eyes. “How could you?”
It wasn’t that night she spoke of, but nights long past. Nights she didn’t understand. Nights for which she would listen to no explanation.
Tenderly, he brushed his thumb over her lips; he whispered the words that were more of an answer than she might ever know.
“I cannot. Not any longer.”