Chapter Eight
After leaving the dining room, Malcolm did not immediately head back to his bedchamber.
No, the idea of what awaited him there held no temptation. Usually, in his lodgings, he did not feel lonely. He hardly thought of the common comforts of life that he had rejected as not for himself. But he knew tonight those four walls would feel different.
And he knew, without a shred of doubt, if he went back to his room, he would end the night by stroking himself desperately to thoughts of Miss Scarlett Perkins.
And her delectable, creamy bosom. And the way she had moaned when her lips had closed around that strawberry.
And every other dainty, delicious charm to which he had been exposed over the course of that dinner.
He had hardly ever met a woman so to his taste.
And the idea that he would never touch her or hold her, and the fact that he would surely fantasize about doing just that anyway, well—it depressed him.
Like few things ever did or had.
So, instead, he walked in the direction of the barn.
However, to his surprise, before he was able to exit the hall, he encountered Mrs. Salisbury stepping up from the kitchens.
“Malcolm,” she said, her brows arched, “are you leaving so soon?”
He coughed and looked away from her kind, inquiring face, which, no matter what, made him feel guilty.
“Yes, I—uh—figure my work here is done for the evening.”
“Indeed, you need not feel obligated to stay with us. I thank you so much for the service you have rendered me tonight. I know that it doesn’t bring you any pleasure.”
“Anything for Parkhorne, ma’am.”
“Eleanora,” she scolded mildly. She had long asked him to call her by her given name, which his other by-blow siblings all did readily. “And I hope Miss Perkins was at least a tolerable dinner companion?”
“Yes,” he said, swallowing hard. “But I fear she would not say the same of me.”
“I am sure that’s not true, my dear.”
He only grimaced in response.
“I would love to see a lady catch your interest, Malcolm,” Mrs. Salisbury said. “And this month we’ll have more unfamiliar women about Parkhorne than usual. You might look about yourself.”
His face heated. He knew that Mrs. Salisbury was just being kind, but he hated to imagine himself from her perspective. Her worthless dead husband’s firstborn by-blow, who fit nowhere and wore his scoundrel’s face.
“Thank you, Mrs. Salisbury,” he said politely, trying to mask his mortification. “I can certainly try.”
She gave him a smile and strolled back toward the drawing room.
After that, he continued on his path to the barn.
He knew, after all, what he would find there. And it would be better than being alone.
He strode into the barn. It was all aglow with lantern light and laughter, as he knew it would be. Old Ben was on the fiddle playing a jovial air, and people crowded together under the cavernous ceiling. Two rows of dancers dominated the center of the space that had been cleared on the barn floor.
Because while the fine people might dine up at the hall, the common folk around Parkhorne needed to have their fun too.
Malcolm understood that because, after all, he was one of them. A common man.
Even though he had grown up with his grandfather, who had been the local solicitor, so technically a kind of gentleman, Malcolm had always seen himself as one of the working people.
It was probably because his grandparents had died with almost nothing to their name and because he had never had any ambition to work anywhere but outdoors.
He knew it would have pleased his grandfather if he had wanted to pursue law or medicine, some line of study, but those subjects had never interested him like farming.
Ezra, his overseer, sidled up to him. “How was the fete up at the hall?” Ezra asked, his kind face shining.
He appeared to have had a tipple this evening, not that Malcolm could blame him. He had had a glass of wine at dinner, which was more than he usually allowed himself.
“Is Mrs. Salisbury pleased with how the Hall has turned out?”
“I suspect so,” Malcolm said. “It all appeared to go smoothly.”
“Very good,” Ezra said. “Ah, there she is.”
Malcolm turned and saw that he was talking to Netty Halcombe, a sweet-faced redhead that Ezra had long fancied. With the way Netty was smiling at Ezra and how the man then put his arm around her waist, it appeared the young woman had finally favored his suit.
“We are celebrating this evening,” Ezra said, his brown eyes sparkling. “Because Netty has agreed to see me to the church door in three weeks’ time.”
Malcolm bowed his head. “I wish you both joy.”
“Three weeks!” Netty said, her faux exasperation no mask for her apparent happiness. “I never said three weeks.”
“As soon as we can get the banns read,” Ezra protested. “I can wait no longer.”
“I need at least two months. To prepare all of my things. My ma will be furious if I marry before she’s finished the sewing.”
“She can finish the sewing after we’re wed,” Ezra groaned, his eyes riveted to his betrothed’s face.
There was no mistaking, Malcolm had to note, the desire in Ezra’s expression. He had waited a long while for Netty. So Malcolm supposed he would wait the two months as well, if that was the only way he could have her.
Beatrice had often intimated to Malcolm that if he wouldn’t come to London to find a wife or court a woman from the respectable orders around Parkhorne, then he should marry a local girl like Netty.
He understood her implication. For many local girls, marrying Malcolm would be desirable from a worldly perspective.
It would be a large step up in the local hierarchy.
And there were women in this very room whom Malcolm found attractive.
Netty was very pretty herself, there was no denying.
And other women who danced and whirled in the crowd had caught his eye from time to time.
But he could never think of marrying them.
He didn’t trust himself.
Not after what his father had been.
A brute who ruined women without care.
And he suspected that, like his father, he wasn’t suited to marriage.
He wasn’t cruel like his father had been.
But he wasn’t warm, either. He didn’t know the right words to say when someone was sad or ailing.
He wasn’t the type of man who found easy intimacy with others.
He knew even his own family, his siblings, regarded him as emotionally remote.
Difficult, even. They wished him otherwise, of course, and tried to get close to him.
And in his way, he was close to them. But he wasn’t the type of man, he was sure, who could make a woman happy for a lifetime.
Any woman who married him would soon find herself disappointed.
A young woman bounded up to Netty, her dark hair flying behind her due to the swiftness of her step.
It was Kitty Rogers.
“Ah, Mr. Brown,” she said. “You’ve come to join the party.”
He nodded in response, trying not to meet her eyes.
Kitty was very pretty, a good seven years his junior, and known for having a rather flaming tendre for him.
His workers teased him about it constantly.
And at one time, he had been tempted by Kitty.
She was thin, thinner than he was wont to prefer his ladies, but still very comely and sweet. She would make him a good, eager young wife.
But after a few conversations with her, he had realized the error of his thinking.
He could not play the lover, especially not with a woman so young and ardent.
Young ladies like Kitty—just like the young ladies up at the house—wanted to be courted.
They wanted sweet nothings and a man of gallant words and sweeping promises.
While his prospects would look very good to the daughter of a cottager, he was no more capable of gallantry with her than he had been with Miss Scarlett Perkins tonight.
And, worse, if he trapped Kitty into marriage with him, she would have no resources to leave.
She would have to limp along with him, no matter how miserable he made her.
Not to mention, in their few conversations, he had observed no particular compatibility between them.
“Will you dance this evening, Mr. Brown?” Kitty asked, breathless.
Malcolm seldom ever danced.
“Not this evening, Miss Rogers,” he said.
Her face fell, as it often did around him, but he was saved from any more awkwardness by a young man, a laborer at Parkhorne, who came to claim Kitty for the next dance.
As he watched them bound off together and then her easy smiles at her partner, he suspected that someday soon the lad would probably convince Kitty to become his wife.
The thought didn’t pain him. At least not on Kitty’s account.
Malcolm didn’t stay in the barn for long. He circulated amongst his employees, trading pleasantries, and watched the dancing. He spoke to some of the older folks, those who had known him as a boy and who had known his grandfather and was grateful for the kindness he found in those exchanges.
But before long, he found himself tired of the conviviality. The night was beginning to get raucous, and he had no desire to see more.
As often happened with him, he had come to the barn in the hope that he would feel more at ease there than he had at Parkhorne.
But the truth was that the barn and its revelers fit him little better than the fine people down from London.
No, as usual, the only people he felt true ease with were his siblings.
Only they seemed to understand the strange life that attended being one of the offspring, bastard or legitimate, of Mr. Alexander Salisbury.
He left the barn and inhaled the soft night air. Then he began his solitary walk home. He was happy for Ezra, he thought, and knew that soon the man would have not just a wife, but a family.
That thought stung more than it would have yesterday.
While he had never been sorry to avoid the awkwardness of courtship, it pained him to imagine never being a father.
It was a strange regret, when his own father had been so derelict.
But—still—it was how he felt. His single state generally gave him little pain, besides the inconvenience of lust. But then there was, too, this strange, intermittent yearning after fatherhood that he couldn’t understand.
As he walked back to his room, he knew the reason for this irritating melancholy.
It was her.
Miss Scarlett Perkins.
He had never seen or conversed with a woman who interested him, tempted him, so much. She seemed to embody, much more so than poor Kitty Rogers, everything in women that it pained him to give up.
And it wasn’t just her beauty, although it tortured him.
No, it was something in her air, he thought, as he opened the door to his chamber and, as he often did, undressed quickly, without lighting a candle. He slid between his sheets.
She had a softness about her which was not weakness.
An intelligence that had nothing of shrewdness in it but nevertheless carried bite.
Strange, he thought, he could still smell her scent on him, even though it had been hours since they had parted.
It was delicate, citrus-tinted.
As gorgeous and subtle as she was.
He inhaled and it hung in the room, all around him.
He felt himself go hard.
He imagined how good it would feel to stroke himself and think of her.
He imagined pushing down the bodice of that infernal dress and touching her delectable breasts with trembling fingertips.
He imagined finding that apex between her thighs with his tongue.
The sounds she would make. He could imagine, in short, all the pleasures that would never be his to claim from her.
With his cock hard and raging, he shut his eyes.
No.
He needed to be stricter with himself.
He could not allow himself to lust after all the things he couldn’t have in this life.
And so, even though he wanted to desperately, even though her scent—somehow—was all around him, teasing his senses, he closed his eyes.
Soon, he was fast asleep.