Chapter 15
CHAPTER 15
G azing up at the front facade of the Ashmolean Museum, at the four tall columns with their massive Corinthian capitals with lateral projecting wings, Alice easily made the correlation between the museum and the Temple of Apollo.
“It is all very intimidating, isn’t it?” Penelope whispered by her side.
“Come on, girls,” Aunt Agatha called while she held onto her husband’s arm as they took to the steps. Eliza was on her father’s other side. “We shan’t dilly-dally.”
Glancing down at the invitation for an up-and-coming artist’s debut that Benedict had sent her, Alice swallowed and looked up again. Linking her arm with her sister, they headed up the stairs as well, careful to not trip over their feet.
While most of the museum was closed for the night, there were three other parlors that were open for viewing: the antiquities, coins, and Eastern art.
It had been two weeks since the disastrous visit to Edward’s home and as much as she tried to put it out of her mind—she couldn’t. Benedict had been over twice, they’d taken strolls in Hyde Park and even gone to Gunther’s for their famous ices, but Alice could not shake the feeling that the enthusiasm he’d once had was waning.
After handing in their invitations, she looked up at the soaring roof and the liveried waiters with trays of champagne wandering through the crowd. This was an event where the true crème-de-la-crème of the ton was attending.
“Oh my,” Penelope whispered. “Is that man over there one of the royal family?”
“I think so,” Alice replied after peering in the direction, then nodded to their aunt. “Aunt is overjoyed at attending this night. She’d always wanted an in with the beau monde and this might be it.”
Aunt Agatha fiddled with the grey velvet turban slipping over her faded brown curls, her small hands pushed the headpiece back as she verily vibrated with energy. She wore an indigo-colored velvet that was four seasons behind and was thick and rather shapeless.
“Does she not see the ladies looking at her as if she were a three-eyed fish?” Penelope asked.
“I don’t think she cares,” Alice replied. “What I do care about is you and Lord Rutledge. How is that coming along?”
Shouldn’t he have proposed marriage by now? It was in his agreement, or, well, his order from that mysterious man.
“He’s been… polite,” Penelope sighed. “But I cannot help but think he is being disingenuous in it. I don’t think he wants anything to do with me, Alice, and while I thought I was in love with him, now I am wondering what I ever saw in him.”
Her sister’s words made Alice stop cold. “But Penelope—” she dropped her voice, frantic with worry. “What about the…”
“I will bear it,” Penelope whispered. “But I am not sure he will be a willing father either.”
Alice cast through her head on how to reply—but no words came to her mind. She didn’t have a moment to worry about that as her aunt began making a spectacle of herself.
“Lady Somerset!” her aunt tittered, “and Viscountess Rutherford. So delighted to see you two! How do you do?”
“Isn’t that Lady Tulloch and Countess Trent?” Penelope whispered. “Is Aunt addled?”
Alice flushed with humiliation as her aunt continued to greet the occupants of the room; some of them by their right titles but most of them far from it.
Despite the polite murmured replies, Alice saw the raised brows and mocking smirks behind the champagne flutes and fans. She could practically hear what they were thinking; is this woman fit for Bedlam or has she just been released from it?
Eliza was halfway across the room, talking with two other ladies, ignoring her mother completely. Her uncle, as unseasoned as he was with the ton, could only stand by and watch in polite mortification as his wife did her best to ingratiate herself into the upper class.
A bell rang, calling the guest’s attention to the host, who told them the exhibition was open and for them to follow him.
“Please, start from the right to the left,” the host began. “Monsieur Lefebre has indicated that is how they are to be viewed.”
After waiting for most of the guests to go before them, Alice and Penelope began to take in the artwork, which started with a young girl in a field of daisies, her dark hair fluttering in the wind, as did her small white dress. The art was so detailed and precise, Alice half wondered if she were not looking through a window and gazing at a real meadow.
The portraits continued with the same girl turning into a young woman in a Grecian white dress, sitting atop a tree limb—the third had the girl in the arms of a young man, gazing at him with the expression of a lady in love.
The fourth had the lady with a young boy in her arms, and the last, the young woman as an old woman, her dark hair now grey through the roots, leaning on her husband while waving to her son in the distance. But what was so intriguing and utterly enthralling was the field stretched from the first painting to the last, unbroken.
“It is a solidarity in change,” Alice noted. “The one thing that never changes, even as she ages.”
Penelope leaned in; her eyes widened. “Alice, these strokes are so fine, they look as thin as a strand of hair. It must have taken ages to paint all these.”
Joining her sister to peer at the minutiae of the painting, Alice pulled back. “You are right. The brushwork is so precise. That is marvelous.”
At the end of the line, Penelope nodded over her shoulder. “Duke Valhaven just walked in.”
Instantly, her calm mood vanished and anxiously, she slid her palms down her gown. The washed ivory was the most beautiful color she’d ever seen, and when she had sewn it, she’d felt happy that it would highlight her complexion. Now she worried if it made her look like a pasty mess.
She glanced up and her gaze clashed with Edward’s. Her breath caught; he was always handsome; in his evening attire, he was breathtaking.
Don’t do it. Don’t look at him.
“Would you like to visit another exhibit?” She asked Penelope pointedly. “There are three more rooms we can visit.”
“I think I’ll stay here for a while,” Penelope said, “But go on if you’d like. Oh, His Grace is approaching.”
Her heart stopped for just a moment and then sped up as he crossed the room coming directly toward them; before he bowed, she dipped into a curtsy. “Your Grace.”
Alice snapped open her fan to distract herself while Penelope openly ogled the Duke; she blinked, realizing that the man who’d played such a large part in her life and her latest discoveries about herself had never met her sister directly.
Which made her sad. If he’d been her beau… But he isn’t, she chastised herself.
“Miss Penelope, Miss Alice,” he greeted cooly, his gaze as distant and detached as his voice. “I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but my brother will be absent tonight. His professor is forcing him to stay all night with a tutor to rewrite a paper. However, he gives me his word that he will visit on the morrow.”
Her heart sank. “I am sorry to hear that. I’d hoped—” she sighed, “—never mind.”
“I hope you can enjoy this evening anyhow,” Edward said calmly. With a bow, he left to a trio of men, artlessly snagging a glass of champagne as he went.
Alice allowed her gaze to trail after him and it lingered for a while, until Penelope gently elbowed her in the side and with some quiet parting words, she left for the other exhibits. This room, two long corridors away, housed antiquities, and she gazed with wonder at a mural from Mesopotamia and vases from Ancient Egypt.
A statue of Poseidon poised to throw his trident, but the deadly weapon was missing. She pinked and averted her eyes from his male member and turned to another vase that showed a man fondling a woman’s breast through her gossamer clothes.
She turned away to view another statue; a trio of water nymphs, all three of them naked, their generous curves and sylphlike bodies were masterpieces in themselves.
“Is it not amazing that the ancient people had such reverence and regard for the human body?” Edward murmured from behind her, startling her so much she nearly tripped forward into the statue.
His hands thrust outward catching her, before steadying her and getting her back on her feet. The heat of his hand permeated through the layer of silk and cotton and seared her skin.
She pulled away and shivered. “Why—why are you here?”
He quirked a brow. “Can a man not explore more than the primer attraction?”
“Oh... of course.” Her lashes lowered, and her cheeks warmed.
“This was five centuries before Christ,” he gazed at the sculpture. “When did society turn us into such prudes?”
Her face flamed. “That is improper talk in front of a young woman, Your Grace.”
“It would be,” Edward said while rounding the statue and meeting her eyes with a smoldering gaze. “If I didn’t know how passionate you are. Admit it, Alice. Are you really going to let all your passion go unplumbed for the rest of your life?”
She bristled, “What matter is that of yours? You are not agreeable to marriage or anything else than what delights you for a moment and then you will invariably move on. I am not foolish enough to buy into your game.”
His lips ticked down at a corner, “I suppose I am selfish.”
“Yes, you are,” she agreed. “Why are you so against marriage anyhow? Was it a bad example your parents had set for you? Was your heart broken in the past? Why are you so staunchly against an ordinary tenant of existence?”
His jaw worked as he stared at the statue, “This isn’t the sort of thing one talks about with a well-bred miss,” he muttered, “I don’t want to shock you, Alice.”
She straightened. “Try me.”
“When I was six-and-ten, I came home from my last year at Eton, primed and ready to go off to Oxford. I walked in on my father having relations with two women who were certainly not his wife.”
She winced, “Good god.”
“He noticed me and told me I could claim one if I wanted,” Edward said hollowly. “Disgusted, I turned away, walked right back to my carriage, and went back to Eton.
“I couldn’t forgive my father for that blatant abuse of his vows, and I felt soured about the very idea of marriage. It was not right to trick a woman into marriage when you know you have no inclination of holding to that vow. It was better to stay unattached than be a heinous deceiver.”
“I am so sorry.”
He tensed. “I don’t want your pity, Alice.”
She kept her voice calm. “There’s a difference between pity and empathy, Edward. I don’t feel sorry for you —I feel sorry that you had that dreadful experience.”
He did not reply to that, only stared at her long enough that she grew antsy. “What?”
“That is the first time you have said my name.”
“Is it?” she asked. “I apologize, that was overdue.”
Footsteps entered the gallery, and Edward, after darting a look at the door, reacted the same way he had done in the maze garden, tugging her around a corner at the back of an open sarcophagus. The space had clearly been designed for one person, but now there were two bodies in the tight space—and one of them was quite big.
She and Edward stood facing one another; she was squished between his hard frame and the open tomb. Enticing heat exuded from his body and she felt like she was pressed tightly onto a heated wall.
“ Be silent .” His quiet words brushed hotly against her ear, while moisture trickled beneath her bodice. She felt flushed all over. His eyes were firm. “And stop wriggling about.”
“Why are we hiding?” she whispered. “We were not doing anything wrong.”
In the dimness, she could make out the harsh jut of his jaw and the tiny nook in his nose; his clean male musk pervaded her nostrils, affecting her... strangely.
“For God’s sake, stop moving.” His voice sounded oddly husky. “Do you want us to be found?”
A woman’s high, quivering voice said, “Didn’t Duke Valhaven come this way? I’d wanted to talk to him about him possibly courting my daughter.”
Her mouth fell open. “ Oh .”
“I don’t know why you keep with this, Morana,” another woman tutted. “The Duke has made it clear that he is not one to marry. It is common knowledge in the ton and across the continent. What more do you want from him? To write it in the sky?”
Clamping her lips tight, Alice waited for the group to leave before she whispered, “I see why you wanted to hide. Are you so terrified of marriage-minded mamas?”
“ Frustrated more like,” he grunted.
She licked her lips—unintentionally. “Are you going to let me go now?”
His eyes honed onto the motion. “Not when you do things like that.”
Instinct told her what he was about to do. “We can’t.”
“Just this one last time,” he breathed raggedly, and in the next instant, his mouth was on hers; his hard, firm lips ignited a submerged need inside her. She felt something deep inside respond to the dominance, her heart wanted to give him something from deeper. A hunger for something she’d never known came roaring to life inside her, and the feeling was astonishing.
A soft moan escaped her throat, and Edward swallowed it like a man dying of thirst. His low growl shivered through her moments before their tongues twined and tangled.
Then the kiss deepened, and while her knees were tempted to give out, she didn’t fall; instead, firm unmovable hands were holding her fast, and all she could do was cling to the warm, hard muscles that anchored her.
His tongue slid against hers again, and the slippery twist released a molten rush between her thighs. She moaned and the kiss tangled, getting hotter and hotter. Her head ran with the pleasure of it and just as she felt weak enough to faint, he left her lips to suck her earlobe, to lick his way down her neck.
“Stop, stop,” she pulled away and gasped. “I need—I need to leave.”
Edward stepped away, his expression that of a man deeply conflicted, and Alice slipped between him and the sarcophagus and away, her hand pressed to her swollen lips.
Her heart was in knots and her head swirled with fear. How could never again become once more? And what was worse—she had a creeping feeling that it would not be the last time.
Slowly making a round through the other three galleries, Edward knew the thunderous emotion he sported would deter everyone from approaching him. He needed time to think.
The storm within him was roiling at full gale, and he was equally provoked and bewildered by the intensity of emotion Alice provoked in him. Why did she have such an effect on him? How was it that she was tempting him to step away from his decision to be a bachelor for life and give her what she wanted?
Returning to the main chamber, he spotted Alice with her sister, but while she was blissfully unaware, her waspish cousin was gazing at the two with nothing but blistering envy and hate on her face. Edward was not one to scare easily, but a twist of worry tightened under his breastbone.
What was the little conniving Miss up to?
Sipping a new glass of champagne, he promised himself to protect Alice, even when she didn’t know about it—because the girl was up to something. He could wager half his wealth on that.
How could he go about it though?
Keenly, he watched the girl go over to a trio of ladies: Miranda Valentine, a tall, thin woman, a short woman with an upturned nose, rather like a pig, and a third one who looked like she only had air and sliver netting between her vacant blue eyes. She whispered something to them before looking over to her relatives.
He saw how the cousin pandered to the tall one, and knew while she was spiteful as a rearing snake, she was not the ringleader, the tall one was. Turning away, he smiled to himself; all he needed was to know where that one lived and find a servant who needed coin.
On the other hand, he needed more protection for Alice in case the cousin made a move away from their home.
Runners , he told himself. I’ll have them protect her in my stead.
Instantly, his head and his heart hurt—because he knew, without a doubt, he wanted her for himself. At any other time, he would have used his prowess to get what he wanted—but he couldn’t this time.
Not with Alice, she was too precious, too pure.
Alice was right; he’d stabbed Benedict in the back too much; he was selfish. It was about time he did right by his brother—by staying away.
But what if she does not want Benedict…. What if she truly wants me? What then?