Chapter 22
Twenty-Two
Rash actions were always unwise. He’d made far too many of them of late. The wager had been the first, and though he found he could not regret it, he was irritated by the man he’d become.
Susceptible.
Needy.
He looked down at the lady circling him in the dance, her palm pressed to his. The Lady Frances was crème Chantilly tonight, a delicious concoction of creamy skirts and creamy skin. She even smelt sweet, some hint of vanilla and sugar to her perfume.
But whatever faint appetite she’d ever inspired in him was easy to control. It was rational and simple and entirely how it should be.
He led her in this dance, and despite the last few months of sparring, he’d led her to this point, where she smiled up at him under lowered lashes, pliable and willing at last. Later, if he took her to a quiet room and spoke half a dozen words, she would agree to become his wife.
There. Another victory for tonight.
He looked up as the dance concluded. Mrs Ardingly had danced with the gallant Captain Littleton again. Now he led her from the dance, saying something that made her smile.
Major Tait came forwards. Sebastian stiffened. His uncle took Mrs Ardingly’s hand in his bear-like grip and led her back to the dance floor.
“Now that’s interesting,” said Lady Frances. Sebastian jerked his attention back to his partner. She only smiled at his lapse. “I wonder if your uncle intends to make someone jealous?”
“I seldom deign to enquire into my uncle’s intentions.”
Lady Frances gave a slanting smile. One without much humour.
“No. So I’ve noticed.” She glanced back at the other pair.
“Your uncle and the Pretty Pariah. What a delightful mismatch. I suppose the world is a globe though, and if you travel far enough in opposite directions, you eventually meet again in the middle. Strange things happen when opposites collide. She’s not to his taste, though,” she mused, tapping her chin with her fan as she stepped back from Sebastian, both of them absently remaining in the set for the next dance. “You know he prefers his women fair.”
She gave him another strange smile. “And you, Cote? Do you have a preference?”
He eyed her glossy blonde ringlets, refusing to stare at his uncle. He would not give the man that satisfaction. But he was aware, out of the corner of his eye, that Mrs Ardingly did not look his way. She did not glance at him for help or for rescue. It annoyed him.
“It seems a trivial matter. A lady’s hair colour is hardly her most important attribute. Nor the most interesting.”
“Oh?” Smiling, a teasing light in her eyes, Lady Frances lightly fanned her chest. “What would you say is a lady’s most interesting attribute, my lord?”
“Her personality, of course.”
She laughed, as though that was a great joke. It was—he’d said it as though it was. And personality was a pathetic word anyway, a lame attempt to describe the indefinable.
Spirit. Essence. Soul.
There was a scent and a sound to a person. There was the way they moved and the music of their voice. There was every expression and response and glance. There were a hundred small things to drive you mad. Light you up. Linger in the night, the echo of a hand on your chest, over your heart.
He glanced down the line. His uncle winked.
When the dance began, Mrs Ardingly passed him one, two, three times. Twice, she did not meet his eyes. Once, she looked up with tears shining, forcibly blinked back.
He would kill him.
He would kill Jonathan Tait.
The world would hardly blame him.
When the dance concluded, Mrs Ardingly hurried away. Sebastian excused himself, pretending not to notice Lady Frances’s mocking smile. He had no time for it. He would fix it later. Right now he kept the glimpse of blue and white in sight as Mrs Ardingly hurried away through the crowd.
He followed her out of the ballroom, his distance discreet.
There was a long corridor beyond, brightly lit, many people milling about, coming or going to the card room. Mrs Ardingly rounded a distant corner and continued on. He excused himself to the people greeting him and walked carefully after her.
Another corridor. A picture gallery. The lights low, the room deserted. Still she carried on, not looking back. She didn’t know he was there.
Finally, he chased her to earth. She’d come to a stop in a small room, lit only by moonlight. A study of some kind, from the desks and papers strewn about. He paid them no heed. She turned with a gasp as she heard his step.
“Madelaine…”
“Don’t call me that.”
“No? Not when I ask you to call me Sebastian?”
“Don’t.” She turned back to the window. “Not now.”
He stopped one step behind her. The curve of bare skin at the back of her dress was pale as parchment in the moonlight. “I’m sorry for my uncle. What did he do to you?”
“Nothing.” She shook her head. A small, tight movement. “Nothing of note. It was only…only his manner. Him knowing that I hate him and that I couldn’t refuse the dance, not without making a scene. That is what I hate. I hate being forced. I hate being pressured. I hate being unable to say no.”
She was talking about much more than his uncle.
“Am I pressuring you?”
“Yes!”
“How?”
She let out a long breath but didn’t answer.
“All I’ve done is talk to you. All I’ve done is acknowledge that there is something…some feeling between us.”
“That’s enough.” Her voice was scarcely a whisper. “Just your presence is enough.”
Slowly, he closed the last step between them. Though they did not yet touch, she must have been able to feel him a scant inch behind her back. Her shoulders tensed, her breath stilled. But though she gasped when he touched her bare shoulder, she didn’t pull away.
Instead she let out a long breath, shoulders dropping.
Surrender.
His pulse pounded, fire raging through him. Finally, finally…
“Madelaine.”
That whisper was his voice. He hardly recognised it. For all the hunger thundering inside him, his voice was fragile.
He trembled, which dismayed him. But he used the hand on her shoulder to turn her to him.
Her head was bowed, her breathing as shaky as his.
The tulle of her dress clung to her curves, outlining her breasts as she took a sharp breath.
Good. Yes. He’d look there and let lust shore him up, stiffen this shivering weakness inside him.
He crooked a finger under her chin and made her look at him.
“I didn’t want this.” Her voice held despair. “I didn’t want this… I swore to myself that I couldn’t, wouldn’t, feel this way for a man. I swore it to my husband, to God…”
He dragged his gaze from her lips to meet her eyes. “You don’t need to feel guilty, Madelaine—God, I love your name; I love the way it sounds—you don’t need to feel guilty. Your husband, Alfred…didn’t you once tell me he was the most alive person you knew? Wouldn’t he want you to live?”
He couldn’t help the thumb he stroked up from her jaw to her lips. They were velvet. Perfect. Her breath stuttered at the touch and everything inside him tightened almost to pain.
“You are alive,” he murmured, stroking along her lower lip. “You are warm and alive; you don’t need to live in black forever, or be lonely, be alone… No one in heaven or on Earth would judge you for what your heart desires. Admit what you feel. Admit what we both feel.”
She didn’t speak, but there was something pleading in her eyes when she raised them to him. She trembled as his thumb touched the damp inner skin of her lower lip, gently tugging it down as he lowered his mouth to hers.
“I’ve wanted to kiss you since I first saw you,” he breathed, the words warm, a secret between their mouths.
“I’ve wanted you. Over a year ago, at that saloon, and then again when I saw you next, and again at your house with that ink just here…
” He grazed his mouth over that spot, her cupid’s bow.
She let out a shaky gasp, and he caught it with the next pass of his mouth, brushing over her lips, so soft, so warm…
He groaned and kissed her fully, taking all the plumpness and sweetness and softness of her mouth. His hand slid to the nape of her neck, and he licked along the seam of her lips. She opened to him with a soft moan, letting his tongue touch hers. Lightly, lightly, and then deep and wild.
He lost all semblance of control. Didn’t care.
Shucked it away as quickly as he shucked off his coat.
Madelaine’s hands were on his chest, on the thin linen of his shirt sleeves as he crowded her backwards against the wall by the window.
He kissed her jaw, her throat, his breathing ragged as he palmed her breast. The needy moan she gave made him dizzy.
He pressed his hips against her, hard and aching.
“Sebastian…” she breathed.
“Yes, say it, say my name… You surely know I’m yours…”
He made no sense, had no thoughts except want and more.
His hands slipped down her waist to cup her arse, and he picked her up, turning them, and put her on the desk, pushing her skirts to her waist so he could step close between her legs.
Now his hardness was pressed against her core. She whimpered as he rocked against her.
“I need you; I want you so much.” His voice was a ragged whisper. “Let me have you here, now; let us be together, today, and tomorrow, and day after day after day…”
She moaned, head tipping back as he cupped her breast, roughly pulling the fabric down to expose her nipple. He bent his mouth to it, drawing another tortured moan from her.
“Please,” he said, desperate, swiping his thumb over her nipple as she writhed against him on the desk. “I’ll make it right. We’ll discuss it all afterwards. But I need you.”
“Yes,” she breathed.
His heart thumped. His hands went to the fall of his breeches, but she stopped him as he undid the first button, her hand hot and tight on his wrist.
“But Sebastian…wait…you need to know, before we…”
“What?” He kissed her jaw, her mouth, her throat, her breast.
“Sebastian… Oh God… Stop, wait, I have to tell you something.”
What? What? That she still loved her husband? He knew it already.
“Sebastian.” She took a breath. “I don’t know if I can have children.”
He blinked. All his blood was elsewhere, but his mind was still sound enough to be confused.
“I see.”
She looked equally confused by his reaction. Or, rather, his lack of reaction, as though she had been expecting something more dramatic.
“You need to know that, before we…” She made a vague motion with her hand.
“But doesn’t it make things simpler?”
She only narrowed her eyes, more confused than ever.
“I mean to say… I’m sorry for you, if it’s something you want. But it makes things simpler for us if there’s no chance of a child.”
She seemed to think he was stupid. “But don’t you want an heir?”
Oh.
Something like horror flashed across her face even before he heard himself say, “Yes, with my wife.”
She pushed him back, hands shoving his chest then dragging her skirts down as she stood up from the desk. “And I’m not to be your wife.” Her voice was high and strange.
“Madelaine…”
“Don’t call me that! Don’t you ever call me that. You thought I would do this…” She jerked an angry hand between them. “You thought I would do this without marriage.” Her voice broke on the word, but she gulped the tears back.
“I’ve never spoken of marriage to you. You’re a widow, not a maiden.” His own voice was stiff. But he had a right to be indignant, did he not? Didn’t he? “I made no false promises. But you can hardly think I mean to use you unfairly. I would make you my mistress. We would have an agreement.”
“Mistress!”
She gasped. It seemed to stab her because she bent over, hand to her stomach. “Your mistress…and I thought you spoke of love…I thought you meant… And I have spent weeks and weeks fighting this, trying to make it right with God, with my heart, with my soul, with…with him, and all this time you…you…”
“I never said I didn’t love you.”
Her incredulous laugh was wet with tears, her eyes wide and staring. She was shaking like a rabbit in a trap, breathing like the world was ending. He took a step towards her.
He’d done this. Unwittingly, unintentionally, but still…he’d done this to her.
“Many men love their mistresses.” She didn’t seem to realise what he was saying, didn’t believe it. “They love them without caring a straw for their wife.”
“You think that argument is helpful? You think that makes any of this better?”
“Madelaine.” He gritted his jaw as her eyes flared with anger and she held up a hand.
“Very well, Mrs Ardingly.” Control. He would bring this mess back under his control.
“I am not the villain here. I apologise for the misapprehension you’ve been under, but I believed you worldly enough to understand how society works.
You surely realise the type of wife I require.
You surely realise I have very little freedom to choose. ”
“My uncle did.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“My uncle. Lord Pemberthy. A country parson’s daughter was good enough for him.”
His lip curled. “And look how society responded. They were shunned. His family standing ruined forever.”
“Of course.” She nodded to herself, looking away, smoothing the mess he’d made of her dress with agitated, hasty hands.
“Of course that’s what matters to you.” She nodded again, firmer this time.
“You’re right, Lord Cotereigh. You made no false promises.
You have been nothing other than what you are. I am at fault for forgetting it.”
Her admission didn’t feel like a victory. As she drew herself up, proud and collected, it felt very much the opposite. Something cold crept into him as he realised what this conversation really meant.
It was over.
He would not have Mrs Ardingly in any way. Not as lover or mistress. Not as friend. She would remove herself from his life, and for all his rank and status and wealth, there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it.
“Please…”
But his pathetic whisper was lost under the rustle of her skirts as she straightened them, fixing her hair with one last scathing look in his direction.
“Thank you for all your help with our society, Lord Cotereigh. But you may retire your position on the committee. My eldest brother is more than willing to take your place. No, you do not need to escort me back to the ballroom. I am perfectly capable of finding my own way. Good day to you.”
She gave one last lift of her chin before she walked out.
“May God have mercy.”