Chapter Twenty-Four
Lissy failed to find Roland in the coach house. His luggage was still there, but every personal trace of him had gone—only the faint smell of his shaving soap remained. This wouldn’t do—they must talk before he walked out of her life forever. She must get a chance to explain her feelings.
Explain her feelings? Hah! She barely understood them herself.
She was a fool to even consider marriage to a man who’d lied to her for weeks and whose only real concern was for his reputation, for the opinion of a few worthless young men whose main purpose in life seemed to be beating one another at cards.
No! Roland wasn’t like them, not anymore.
He’d proved his manhood like some knight of old—he’d made his confession and cleansed his soul, ready to embrace life as a better person.
She had trespassed too, and risked bringing shame to her entire family, all because she’d felt stifled by her mother’s influence.
Both she and Roland had been made fools of by others, cunning manipulators who’d taken advantage of their good nature.
But they had also both faced their demons and—hopefully—been forged anew because of their experiences.
How she wanted to hear Roland jest again, make jokes of people’s names, laugh at her, tease her! But the Roland who had walked away that morning had lost his vital spark, and she wondered what it would take to ignite it again.
She closed the door of the coach house and crossed the yard, just as a few drops of rain began to fall.
Perhaps he was outside. Perhaps he’d forgotten to take a coat.
This gave her the perfect excuse to hunt for him.
Seizing an umbrella from the house, she scurried up a spiral staircase to the top of the castle wall, from which she could get the best view of the grounds.
She soon located him, wandering along the gravel paths of the formal gardens, shoulders hunched against the rain.
Hurrying back down to the courtyard, she paused.
Was it quicker to take the door from the conservatory into the gardens, or to make her way through the dungeons to Hugo’s hidden postern?
No. She wasn’t yet ready to face the castle’s haunted depths by herself.
She ran into the house, battled through the uncut vines that hung in swathes across the conservatory’s outer door, and slipped out into the gardens beyond.
The rain was coming down in sheets, swallowing the world in a gray veil, but Lissy ran through it as if she could outrun heartbreak itself.
“Roland!” She had to lift her skirts shy of the puddles as she stumbled across the gravel toward the solitary figure.
“Roland, please—stop!”
He froze.
For a heartbeat, the only sounds were the rain hammering against the yellowing leaves and the wind hissing through the yew hedges. Roland did not turn. Terrified that he would stride away from her, she hurried up to him, clasping his sleeve. The wool of his coat was wet and cold beneath her touch.
“You’ll catch your death. Here, share my umbrella, and we’ll go back to the house to talk. I’ll send for some tea.” How mundane that sounded!
He turned toward her. His handsome face was shadowed, his jaw clenched, and his hair was plastered to his forehead. She was right. The usual glint of humor in his eyes had been extinguished and it wounded her to see it.
“You shouldn’t be out in this.” There was no emotion in his voice. “Go back inside, Lissy.”
“Not unless you come with me. You’re not yet recovered from yesterday’s blow to the head.” She planted herself more firmly in front of him, trying to echo her mother’s authority.
“We shouldn’t be alone together. Not now. Not anymore.”
His words were so final, so dismissive. She couldn’t bear it.
She stepped closer, holding her umbrella over them both but the water dripped from its edge and down the front of his caped coat.
His eyes were dark, boring into her, and he pushed his shoulders back. “Go indoors, Miss Ashby. I won’t be held responsible for you catching a chill.”
“You think I’m afraid of a little rain? What I fear most is you walking away from me. Out of my life. Forever.”
She almost wished the world did know about the night they’d spent together at Metsons’ farm. He’d offered to marry her then. Was it such an impossibility now?
She heard his breath catch. For a moment, he simply stared at her, his eyes storm dark and tortured. Then he shook his head.
“I’ve hurt you too much already. I’ve betrayed your trust. Your mother’s trust. I’ve let Mrs. Dove-Lyon down, and I need to return to London to pick up the pieces of my life.”
“You’ve been lied to,” she cut in fiercely. “Used. But you were still prepared to risk everything to protect me from Oscar.”
“That doesn’t excuse my deceit.”
“You were doing what you’d been employed to do. Stop torturing yourself, you impossible creature! I’m the judge and jury here, and I decide if you should be tortured!”
He backed under an arch of thick yew hedge, drawing her with him. The space offered only the slightest shelter, and she was forced to close the umbrella. He moved into the gap, protecting her from the angled rain with his body.
“I suppose I’d better listen, then, if you have so much power over me, Miss Ashby.”
She wasn’t sure if she had any power at all, but she wasn’t going to give up without a battle. The Ashbys were stalwart, if nothing else.
“You think you’re the villain in this story,” she whispered. “But you’re the man who saved me.”
Water trickled from his jaw, catching in the hollow of his throat. If only he would put his arms around her, enfold her into his embrace! She was sure that if she could make him remember their touches, their kisses, he would open his heart again.
He swallowed hard. “Lissy . . . please don’t make this harder. I have to go.”
She reached up with shaking fingers and brushed wet hair from his face.
“What about me? What if I don’t want you to go? Roland, I forgive you. I . . . love you.”
He recoiled as if she’d struck him. No, no, please, not again! Don’t let her bestow her love on someone incapable of returning it! But the words were out there now, and she couldn’t take them back. She must let them do their work.
And trust to hope.
He stared at her—eyes wide, lips parted, rain dripping from his lashes.
“Lissy . . .” His voice was raw. “You can’t say that. You can’t mean it.”
“But I do. From now on, every word I say is going to be the truth. I’m not going to try to deceive anyone, like I did poor Mama, and I will always say exactly what I mean.”
He closed his eyes. “I’m not worthy of you, my sweet.”
“Let me be the judge of that.” She touched his cheek.
He leaned into her palm, then pressed cold, damp lips against her skin.
“You have reached into my chest and dragged my heart from my body. To say that I have fallen deeply, irrevocably in love with you would be an understatement, my brave, beautiful girl. Right now, hearing that you return my feelings, I’m finding it a struggle to behave honorably. ”
“I understand. I share your struggle.” Her voice shook—not from cold but from the sheer force of the emotion battering her. Her lips parted in a breath she couldn’t quite catch.
Roland cupped her face between his hands. Rain threaded down his fingers, cool against her skin.
“We shouldn’t—” he breathed.
“But we’re going to. You do want to marry me, don’t you?”
“Of course, you little fool!” A groan escaped him. Then his mouth found hers.
His kiss was fierce, hungry, and unrestrained as he pulled her hard against him, his coat damp with rain, his body burning beneath it.
She clutched at his lapels, desperate to be closer, reckless with need.
“Lissy,” he gasped against her lips, “if we don’t stop—”
“I don’t want to stop.”
Her lips trailed to the corner of his mouth, the line of his jaw, the warm, rain-damp skin beneath his ear.
How had she become so bold? She’d never felt this level of passion, of need, when Oscar kissed her.
Compared to Roland, he was an empty husk of a man.
She would let all memories of him float away like chaff in the wind.
“You don’t understand,” Roland rasped, gripping her waist to steady them both. “If we go any further, I won’t be able to let you go.”
“Have I not made myself clear? I don’t want you to let me go.”
“If only I could be confident that you meant it. The events of yesterday may have clouded your judgment.”
The rain thrummed on the yew canopy above, the world narrowing to the heat between their bodies, the taste of him on her tongue, and the trembling ache in her limbs.
She pulled away, then took his hand. “Come. Let me show you something.”
There was a moment of resistance, but then gallantry won out, and he allowed her to lead him out from their shelter and along the gravel path back to the conservatory. The warmth of the room drew steam from their clothes, and she quickly moved to the range and stoked it into a bright flame.
“Take off your coat,” she ordered, as she removed her own. Leaving it to dry on the back of an ornamental bench, she picked up her old drawing book from amongst the pile of art paraphernalia on the table and held it out to Roland. Then she stood back, flushing.
He raised his eyebrows. “Your sketches?”
“You haven’t seen all of them.” She gestured with her head, and he began flipping through the pages.
Then his expression changed, and she knew he had found her recent portraits of him.
There were several, some genuine studies, some imagined.
But she hoped he would read into the pictures what she’d felt when she’d painted them—admiration, affection, possibly even infatuation.
But her hand could never have sketched the curve of his cheek, the line of his jaw, the blue spark of his eyes so expertly without the love that blossomed in her heart.
He closed the book and handed it back to her. The missing spark had returned to his eyes—in truth, it had become a furnace, and she wilted under the heat of his gaze.
“Very well, Miss Ashby,” he said, his voice sliding along her senses like the nectar of the gods, “I’m not one to refuse a request from a lady. Shall we continue our conversation upstairs?”