Chapter Eleven #2
Durward’s lips quirked into an odd little smile. “You really don’t know, do you?”
She shook her head impatiently. “I don’t even know how he got here. They don’t even know Lady Grandison or the Coles or Sanderly.”
“Apparently Emily Carlisle brought them at the last minute, since she couldn’t shake them off.
Everyone relies on Lady G’s good nature.
But he won’t bother you tonight. I had a word with the night porter, and he’ll keep an eye on Mansel.
” He took a breath. “Look, I can’t stay here, for obvious reasons, but you know you can wedge the back of the chair under the latch? Like this.”
He swung the chair around from her desk and she moved aside to watch him.
“Thank you,” she said gratefully. So simple, yet she would never have thought of it.
He set the chair beside the door and, the practicalities dealt with, looked up and caught her gaze. “Why did you offer to help me?”
She swallowed. “Because of what has happened. You have to go to be safe.”
“I am always safe,” he said with sudden bleakness. “It’s Foster whose life I have played with and lost.”
“You were friends,” she retorted. “Would he want you to die? And in such a way?”
“No. But then he’ll be dead and his family clearly want me punished. I can’t blame them.”
“Then go. My father could help... If he is...” She trailed off, biting her lip.
“Sober? He was when I saw him a couple of days ago. Struggling, but sober.”
A smile tried to form on her lips but then the tears started to her eyes. If Papa was sober then it was not all falling apart. Through the film of tears, she saw him move restlessly, as though drawn to the blackness of the window. She had not drawn the curtains.
“You know, somehow I had fooled myself that you would be more pleased to see me,” he said abruptly. “I never expected you to have left Harwich.”
“I never expected you to come back.” And I heard you were flirting with someone at Lady Hawthorn’s. How trivial that seemed. It was in his nature to flirt.
But he was frowning at her. “I promised I would come back.”
“Words,” she retorted. “You made it clear.”
“Made what clear?” he asked, his brow twitching with genuine bewilderment.
She opened her mouth, realized the impossibility of the words, and closed it. She bit her lip and tried a different approach. “You were escaping again. From me.”
He stared at her, then began to walk slowly toward her inexorably, as though drawn by some invisible string. Some new lightness had dawned in his face, though the frown remained. “That is what you thought?”
She could not speak. He stood too close, his beloved face warm with understanding and something else that set all those remembered butterflies soaring in her stomach. He raised his hand, which wasn’t quite steady, and touched her cheek.
“You thought I was rejecting you?”
She closed her eyes. “What else could I think?”
“That I was saving you from me. For the first time in my life, I considered someone other than myself. If I had stayed another minute that night...” His voice dropped to an intense, seductive whisper. “Oh, if I had stayed...”
Her eyes sprang open as fresh tumult overwhelmed her.
“And here we are again,” he said, softly caressing her cheek, “alone at night, with your reputation hanging by a thread... I was trying to make everything right, Cara, shoulder my own responsibilities, make a proper home for you so that I could ask you to be my wife with just a little honour. Yet here we are again and still I cannot ask. None of my options are good. I can either run or I can face the consequences.”
“Your...your wife?” she stammered.
His smile was tender. His fingers trailed over her lips. And yet his eyes brimmed with sadness. “One of the many tragedies caused by my own idiocy. I love you, and for some reason I can’t fathom, I believe you love me. I cannot ask you now.”
“And if I offered?” she blurted, for this changed everything. Everything... “If I escaped with you?”
He let out a groan. He bent his head and for an instant his mouth touched hers and everything inside her leapt. “Cara, Cara, don’t tempt me. That is no life for you. You are content here, valued.”
“I am half-alive.”
His gaze hadn’t left her lips and with an inarticulate sound, he drove his fingers though her hair, sending pins flying in all directions, and took her mouth in a wild, frantic kiss that made her gasp and clutch him for support.
She pressed into him desperately and he dragged her so close she felt every glorious inch of his lean, hard person.
She stroked the hair at the back of his head, kissing him back with all her love and longing.
He broke the kiss at last, cradling her to him, his cheek warm and just a little rough against hers. “I cannot think when I’m in your arms... But I know I cannot take you with me, give you a disgraced name, divide you from your father who is trying so hard.”
“He can come too. He can sail us anywhere we wish to go, earn a real living away from everyone who knows and judges him. And we can adventure together.”
“Adventure together,” he repeated, and groaned. “Oh, Cara, please do not tempt me. I am not yet sunk so low...”
“Why is it low to court me? In my father’s company...?”
His breath caught suddenly. She could feel new excitement thrumming through him. “We could sail to Scotland and be married there without fuss.”
“And by then, perhaps we would know about Mr. Foster for sure.”
His arms tightened. “Carina, Carina, why does this make sense when I know it is wrong?”
“Because it is not wrong. It is possible.”
He raised his head, gazing down at her in wonder. “I am no real use to Duncan. He has Bethany and Baldeston, and I can keep in closer correspondence with the school. And with my new stewards...”
A smile trembled on her lips. “You see? It is possible. And right. We can do this, together.”
He gave a soft little laugh that blended delight and tenderness. He kissed her cheek, her lips, and her hand. “I must think for both of us. All of us. But you give me hope, Cara. Kiss me once more and bid me goodnight...”
She raised her face willingly and drowned in his kiss for a long, long moment.
It was he who ended it, his breath unsteady, his eyes shining with purpose. He touched his forehead to hers, and then backed away, slipping from her arms to the door which he opened and closed silently behind him.
She followed, listening for the sound of his fading footsteps.
They didn’t come, until she wedged the chair against the door as he had shown her.
He even tried the handle before softly patting the door with approval.
She smiled as he retreated, her heart still drumming with passion and happiness and eagerness for the morrow.
HALF AN HOUR ALONE with her and the weight of the world seemed to have lifted from Durward’s shoulders.
Not only that but he was filled with hope and possibilities that were by no means all bad.
All of that without even indulging in the pleasures of blind lust. Just to know that she loved him was enough to inspire his ridiculously jaunty return to the room he shared with Duncan, where he fell almost at once into a deep, untroubled sleep.
When he woke in the morning, it was with excitement and the realization of what he had to do.
He would stand up with Sanderly, see the man married to his true love.
And there would be no more running from anything.
He regretted stealing their governess, but they would understand.
Sanderly had already interrogated him about Carina.
Before the bombshell of Foster’s relapse.
Durward’s name might be disgraced, but his title and his estates would be hers. That was the best protection he could give her. For the future, he loved the idea of adventuring with her, whether here or abroad, but it was not yet written.
His high good humour that morning seemed to take Duncan by surprise and he at least had the satisfaction of seeing the crease of worry fade from the boy’s brow before he went downstairs and left Duncan to join the children in the nursery...and Carina.
Her name was a song in his heart that robbed all his cheerfulness of pretence. She loved him, she would run away with him. The wonder of that overrode everything else.
Encountering the Duke of Isbourne at the breakfast sideboard, where there was only tea and toast to keep body and soul together until the wedding breakfast, he had another notion. “I don’t suppose your grace numbers a yacht or two among your vast possessions?”
“Just the one,” Isbourne said, equally casual. “It’s kept seaworthy. One of my uncles uses it occasionally, though not recently. It is, of course, at your disposal.”
“That’s very decent of you,” said Durward, who’d been prepared to plead. “Er...where is it anchored?”
The ghost of a smile crossed the duke’s serious young face. “Harwich.”
Durward threw back his head and laughed. It was all falling nicely into place.
“A crew is retained,” Isbourne said, “though I’m afraid the captain may be unavailable for the next fortnight.”
“Oh, I have a captain,” Durward said cheerfully. “May I let you know at short notice?”
“Of course.”
“Wonderful.” And best of all, in just an hour, he would see Carina again...
The wedding guests gathered in the garden salon at the appointed time, with the terrace door flung open to let in the fresh scents of cut grass and summer flowers.
The clergyman, who was the recently ordained son of a nobleman, seemed to find the whole business vastly entertaining, and greeted the bridegroom and Durward with a boyish grin.
While Durward would probably have chosen him for his own wedding, he doubted that he would have been Sanderly’s first choice.
But the earl merely shrugged. “Lady G. was seduced by his rank,” he told Durward. “Since no bishops were available. She claims he has dignity when it counts.”
It seemed she was right. Silence fell in the room, and the young clergyman sobered without losing his good humour.
The grace of his office seemed to fold around him and Durward’s lips twitched in appreciation.
He tried to catch Sanderly’s gaze, but the groom had half-turned away and was gazing at the terrace door.
Durward heard his breath catch, and realized the poised Snake was not nearly as calm as his outward appearance.
The bride entered from the terrace on Sir John’s arm.
For an instant she looked almost frightened, then Grandison murmured something to her and she smiled.
Her gaze found Sanderly and stayed there as they made their stately way between rows of guests toward him.
Behind them came the bride’s attendants, all her sisters, looking positively angelic in their white dresses and little hats.
Harriet herself was radiant, now that her nerves seemed to have dissolved.
“Lucky man,” Durward breathed.
“Oh yes,” said Sanderly.
Durward said no more, for he had just seen Carina at the back of the room in a gown of saffron muslin. His heart seemed to ache and rejoice at the same time, for Snake and for himself.
The ceremony was short. The couple made their promises in clear voices. Sanderly put his ring on his bride’s finger, and the lordly young clergyman pronounced them man and wife.
Everyone swept forward to congratulate them.
Durward, being nearest, got there first, kissing the bride’s cheek, and thumping Sanderly on the back before making his way towards Carina.
Little Orchid was jumping up and down with excitement as he passed the girls.
His eyes swept over Duncan and Alex, grinning together but clearly on their best behaviour.
Durward shouldered his way nearer Carina.
He began to feel he was in one of those dreams where you never quite get to your destination, however hard you try. ..
Then, through the babble of voices and laughter, the door to the hall swept open to reveal the outraged butler being barged out of the way by a grim-faced man in a red waistcoat.
“Oh-oh,” Jonathan Berry said into the sudden silence. He happened to be right beside Durward, who heard him quite clearly. “I know that face. His name is Dance and he’s a Bow Street runner. Time to—er...run, my lord.”
“Marmaduke Travis, Viscount Durward,” the runner intoned loudly, “I have a warrant for your arrest, on a charge of the attempted murder of Arthur Foster.”