Chapter 18 #2
“Her kindness is a trap.” Whitmore met her startled gaze and wished they were alone.
Away from this pompous fool who said pretty things in her ears.
He wanted her alone, to himself. He did not like to share, and he certainly would not like to share her.
“She lures a man into contentment, then slays him with honesty.”
Isabella arched a brow. “If I slay you, my lord, it will not be with honesty.”
“Ah,” he said softly. “Then I am safe.”
“You are never safe where I am concerned.” Their eyes caught, held. It was a foolish thing to do in a room full of people. They did it anyway.
Lord Lennox set his teacup down with a clatter. “I believe I spy a rather handsome cake. With your permission, Lady Isabella, I shall fetch a slice, unless you would like one brought over for a light repast.”
“Thank you, my lord,” she said. “I am quite content.”
“Contentment is a temporary state,” Whitmore murmured, and earned himself a glance that could have cut wire.
Lord Lennox smiled, offered a nod, and rose. He crossed to the table with the calm of a man who recognized a battlefield and chose to fetch cake rather than die upon it.
Whitmore did not notice he had gone until Isabella turned and scolded him beneath her breath. “You have made him leave me.”
“Cake called to him,” Whitmore said.
“You chased him with your talk and your temper. If he does not return, I shall blame you.”
“I welcome your blame.”
“You are unbearable.”
“And yet, here I sit.”
“Only because I cannot very well push you to the floor,” she hissed, and smiled at a passing matron as if she had said something sweet.
He stood abruptly. Movement might save him from saying worse. “I will go and plague Ravensmere in the library.”
“You will do no such thing,” she said, rising too. “My brother-in-law is at his club.”
“Then I shall plague his books. He has a well-stocked library. I shall be content to wait.”
“You will not.” She took one step after him, then another, then kept going without seeming to think she did so.
They drifted together from the parlor, through the soft net of people and talk, and no one took much notice.
A lady crossing to examine the piano forte, a gentleman admiring a portrait.
They moved into the passage beyond, then into Ravensmere’s library.
It was quiet there, the air cooler, the light softened by late afternoon.
“Now,” she said, voice low. “You have done your worst. Lord Lennox is fetching cake to avoid throttling you, and I am cross. What precisely did you hope to accomplish here today?”
“I had planned nothing,” he admitted. “I am not thinking clearly.”
“On that point we agree.”
“Excellent.” He slipped his hands into his coat pockets, certain that if he did not, they would occupy themselves with something unspeakable. Like pulling her against him. Kissing her again and relishing in her surrender. “We are of one mind.”
“We are of no such thing.” She came closer, and he could see the faint flush at her throat, the quick rise and fall of her breath. “You are jealous, and you need to leave. Stop playing with me as if I’m nothing but a game.”
“I am not.” Her words struck him like a slap. That he had started to believe them as true also did not help his annoyance.
“You are.” Her voice softened. “And you are trying to make it difficult for me to find a husband.”
“I am certainly not.”
“You are. You do it without thinking because you cannot help yourself.”
“That is absurd.” But was it? Even he could see that was exactly what he was doing. But to what end? He wasn’t even sure if he wished to marry Isabella. He glanced down at her, and something softened in his chest.
“Is it?” she said. “Then explain why you arrived here without an invitation and inserted yourself like a stray alley cat among my callers.”
“Stray alley cats are charming.”
“They mark their territory everywhere.”
“I might too.”
“I would expect no less,” she said, and that unbalanced him entirely.
He took a step back, found the wall at his shoulders, and wondered when she had become so eloquent at putting him off-kilter.
Jealousy tasted like salt in his mouth. It was ridiculous.
She was free to court and be courted. He had known it would happen.
He had told himself he wanted it to happen.
He had not expected the sensation that accompanied the sight of her laughing with another man—which felt very much like falling from a horse and not caring if he hit the ground—to be an outcome he’d suffer.
“You should not marry him.” The words wrong, but he was unable not to voice them.
She stared at him, clearly confounded. “You do not get to say such a thing to me.”
“I know.”
“You do not get to decide who is worthy.”
“I know.”
“You do not wish to marry me yourself, and yet you cannot bear that someone else might.”
He shut his eyes. “That is not fair.”
“It is precisely fair. You do not know what you want, and in the meantime you ruin my chances of finding what may make me happy.”
“And he will make you happy?” he scoffed. “What do you want, Bells? Really?” His voice was rough and he felt like everything hinged on what she said. “You kiss me and then allow Lord Lennox to court you?”
“I want to be chosen,” she said simply. “For myself, and not because someone feels sorry for me, or they’re desperate to marry an heiress.
Or because someone sees a pitiful spinster who’s in need of saving, giving them a taste of what they have never had.
” She paused. “If Lord Lennox proves himself a good man, I will not let your interest in me of the carnal kind to frighten him away. You may desire me, but you do not love me and that is why you must stop.”
He took a fortifying breath. “I do not mean to frighten him away. I like Lennox.”
“You cannot possibly like him after how you just acted.”
“I do,” he said miserably, hating that everything she said was true. He was a bastard, kissing her, wanting her in his bed, and all the while, pretending it would not affect her. That she enjoyed the game as much as he. Of course she wanted a love match, something he could not give.
She blinked, and something in her expression gentled. “Then leave me to my callers, Whitmore.”
He reached for her, needing to touch her, to have her in his grasp.
“Tell me you will not marry him without being truly certain he is everything that will make you happy,” he said before he could stop himself, closing the space separating them.
“Tell me that if our kisses taught you anything, it is that you deserve passion and love, not just a suitable, convenient marriage.”
They were close now. The room seemed very small, the air crackling with unsaid words and silent promises. He could smell roses and the soft perfume of her skin and soap. “Bells,” he pleaded.
“Do not,” she warned, trying to move away and coming up against a bookcase at her back.
“One last kiss,” he asked.
“No.” Her answer was determined, but her eyes danced with longing, burned with need.
“I cannot seem to do as you say. I’m sorry.” He moved. Or she did. Perhaps they both did. One moment they stood divided by a breath, and the next his arms gathered her in, drawing her close. He kissed her, deep and long, and she melted into his body, suspiciously made for him.
She gasped, the soft, needy sound undoing the knot of his self-control.
His mouth slanted, found hers and relished her surrender.
He gentled and deepened, scolded and apologized without words.
He picked her up and set her on the ledge of the bookshelf, clasped her face and felt the flutter of her pulse beneath his fingers, the answering throb of his own, and knew he was lost.
He broke away, breathing hard, resting his forehead against hers. “I am a fool.”
“Yes,” she said, breathless, eyes bright with anger and something else. “And you are cruel.”
“I do not mean to be.”
“Then stop.”
“I do not know how.”
She closed her eyes for a moment, as if assembling patience. “Go, Whitmore. Before someone finds us. Before you do something neither of us can mend or change the outcome of.”
He stepped back at once. That, at least, he could do right. He looked at her, memorized the set of her mouth and the quiver of her lashes and the proud line of her chin. She moved to stand and he fled like a man whose skin had grown too small to contain him, shameful and without honor.
He made it as far as the front steps before he remembered he had not brought his horse. A footman hailed a hackney for him with the serene judgment only a faultless servant could convey.
Inside the jolting carriage, Whitmore pressed his fists to his knees and stared at nothing. His heart would not steady. He could still taste her. He could still hear her saying I want to be chosen, and the words had settled in his bones where he could not dislodge them.
He did not want her for himself. Of course he did not.
He was not ready. He was ill suited. He was, by all accounts, unreliable.
He could list a dozen reasons. They sounded increasingly like excuses spoken by a man who feared the one thing he had never allowed himself, which was to want something that might break him if he could not have it.
He let his head fall back against the worn squabs and laughed once, low and without humor.
He was not certain what, precisely, he had found himself in. A courtship. A calamity. A story that refused to go the way he had written it.
He only knew that he had left her with the taste of his apology on her lips, and every instinct he possessed screamed at him to turn around and do the one thing that might make this worse, which was to ask her what she wanted and offer it like a vow.
Instead, he told the jarvey to drive on, and the city swallowed him up, including his honor.