Chapter 7 #2
“I’m overjoyed to have found you again, Maggie.” He sat on her settee and patted the space beside him. “Come, we still have years to catch up on and little time.”
She stared at the spot beside him. It would be foolish. Improper. Dangerous. And the temptation to know him better was utterly irresistible.
Maggie settled in the space beside him and sighed. “I missed you, as well.”
“I’m glad,” Algernon whispered, and then raked a hand through his hair. “I ran after you.”
“What? When?”
Algernon sighed heavily. “I was so upset to learn you had been taken away from Ravenswood without us having a chance to say goodbye that I sprinted up the drive in the hope of catching your carriage,” he admitted.
“The first I knew of us leaving was when I was woken up that morning before dawn. Papa was already packed. I think something must have happened between your father and mine the evening before,” she admitted. “He was cross with me.”
“Knowing my father’s temper, I suspect they had always disagreed about something or another. The last straw seemed to be my dunking in the muddy pond when I should have been still at my studies.”
“It was not that you should have been studying. I laughed when I saw the state you were in. We were kicked off the estate the next day,” she suggested. “A whole month before my father’s tenure should have ended.”
“But you always laughed at me.”
“But it was the first time I forgot myself and laughed at you in front of your father. I have felt bad about that ever since.”
Algernon covered her hand with his and their fingers entwined. “Don’t. I did a great many silly things on purpose just to make you laugh. You could be so serious at times.”
Maggie tightened her grip on his fingers. “I still am.”
“I was also trying to win you over,” he admitted. “I wanted you to like me more than our library.”
“Both won me on the first day. You told me that I could read any book I wanted,” she said, grinning. “I’ve never forgotten that kindness.”
Algernon raised her hand to his lips and kissed her fingers.
The sweet gesture made her pulse speed up as she stared at his lips for too long. She gulped and lowered her eyes, tugging her fingers back. When she looked up, Algernon was watching her still.
Maggie stared at him and felt a shift in his regard. He was not thinking of her as that little girl, but as a woman he fancied.
They moved toward each other at the same time.
Maggie wrapped her arms about Algernon’s neck and kissed him. She’d been hoping he might make the first move, but there had been servants around them all day.
Now they were alone, there was nothing to keep them apart. She wanted more of his kisses, and Algernon seemed only too happy to supply.
She found herself under him all too soon, but then Algernon sighed against her throat and became still. “Maggie, what happened between you and your father?”
She was taken aback by the question, which had come out of nowhere, and it poured cold water over her passion. She had not wanted to discuss her scandal with him. He might feel she deserved the ill will that came her way.
He rose up on one elbow, slipped his fingers under her chin, and drew her eyes to his. “What was the cause of your separation?”
Maggie blushed. “This.”
“This?” he repeated, frowning.
“Back then, I thought I was in love. I thought I was being courted.” She sighed and sat up, straightening her gown. “He was one of my father’s students.”
Algernon sat up, too. “You were seduced?”
“He almost succeeded, yes.”
Algernon shifted to sit close by her side and took up her hand. “Tell me everything.”
Maggie rubbed her brow. “He was a year younger than I, and I thought he truly liked me. I thought we were good friends. I thought his interest was genuine. Until the day I heard him complaining about me following him around to his brothers. So I stopped talking to him. I kept to my room and tried to avoid him.”
“Good.”
“But he didn’t like being ignored.”
Algernon’s arm wrapped about her back, and she leaned into his touch. “Did he hurt you?”
“He broke my heart,” she whispered. “He made it seem to others that I was obsessed with him. I found his things hidden in my room. Things I’d never touched or seen before.
He would wait for me on the staircases, pull me close, and then push me away just as a servant came along.
He made it seem like I was pursuing him, that I was promiscuous.
Eventually, the whispers reached my father’s ears. ”
“What did he do?”
“Outwardly, nothing until his tenure ended.”
“And after?”
“A lecture for me and then silence for a week. He could barely look at me. He believed I had shamed him and ruined myself. He believed what he’d heard from others before he listened to his own daughter.
I still possessed my virtue but he called me a liar.
” She burst to her feet. “My father could not imagine that one of his precious students might attempt to seduce his bluestocking daughter without some sort of encouragement. I must have been the one who’d crossed a line. ”
Algernon was suddenly behind her, pulling her into his arms again. “You believed him sincerely interested in you.”
“I did.” Maggie patted Algernon’s arms and stepped away from him.
“He never had any real intentions toward me, just saw me as a challenge to conquer. In the end, he wanted to put me in my place. To beat me in the only way he knew how. Proving the weakness of my sex.” Maggie drew in a great shuddering breath and let it out slowly.
“But it was a long time ago, and I learned my lesson after that. Men are not to be trusted.”
Algernon shuffled his feet, clearly uncomfortable with her statement.
She went to him and patted his chest. “You, I do trust.”
“Why am I trusted and other men are not?” he asked, frowning. He glanced at the settee beside them. “Especially after all that we have done.”
“Because you are Algernon, Duke of Ravenswood,” she said.
“I welcome your kisses and affection, but know you would never marry someone like me. I will not be misled, should anything occur between us. And anything that does will always be my decision. Not because you force me into your arms, but because I want to be there.”
Algernon nodded. “As it should always be between us.”
“I’m glad you understand,” Maggie said, looking around. “I don’t expect permanence anymore, or wedding bells, either. Respect is all I hope for.”
Algernon looked ready to protest, but she pressed her finger over his lips.
“Let’s not talk about our affair any longer. Let’s talk about something more important,” Maggie said as she sat down on the settee again and patted the space beside her. “Tell me more about Ravenswood. I want to hear all the changes you have planned for the next five years.”
He sat beside her, though a little farther away than the last time. “How do you know I have plans that far ahead?”
Maggie laughed softly. “Algernon, whenever have you not had some far-reaching scheme in mind?”
“You know me too well, Maggie Black,” he murmured, and began to explain his plans for the site where the maze currently stood.