Three Weddings and a Kiss

by Kathleen E. Woodiwiss

  Some hours later, Gwendolyn was sitting on a stone bench in the Earl of Rawnsley’s garden, watching the blood-red sun’s slow descent over a distant hill. The storm had long since swept off to ravage another part of Dartmoor, leaving the air cool and clean.

  She was clean and neatly dressed in the green silk gown Genevieve had brought her from Paris, and her unruly hair had been temporarily tamed into a relatively tidy heap of curls atop her head. She hoped it would still be tidy by the time Rawnsley emerged from his meeting with the lawyers.

  Gwendolyn’s hair was the bane of her existence. The Powers that Be, with their usual perverse idea of a joke, had given her Papa’s hair instead of Mama’s.

  She did not mind the color so much—at least it was interesting—but there was so much of it, a hodgepodge of twists and bends and corkscrews, each of which had a mind of its own, and all of them demented.

  Her hair, which was the complete antithesis of her level, steady, and orderly personality, made it very difficult for people to take her seriously—as though being a female didn’t make that hard enough already. Thanks to the crazed mass of red curls and corkscrews, every new person she met represented yet another uphill battle to prove herself.

  She wished wimples would come back into fashion.

  She wondered what Rawnsley’s raven mane was like when it was clean and combed. She had not seen him since Bertie had taken charge of him.

  She wondered why the earl kept his hair long, whether it was merely some odd masculine vanity or an act of defiance—against convention in general or, more likely, his straitlaced grandfather in particular. She could certainly understand that.

  Rebellion did not explain, however, why the earl so little resembled his tiny portrait. The puffy face in the miniature had seemed to belong to a rather corpulent man. The one Gwendolyn had met hadn’t an ounce of excess flesh upon his six-foot frame. His drenched shirt and trousers had clung like a second skin, not to rippling rolls of fat, but to lean, taut muscle.

  Whatever was wrong with him was obviously confined to the contents of his skull.

  Gwendolyn watched the light of the lowering sun spread a red stain through the deepening shadows of the moors while she searched her mental index of brain diseases. She wondered what malady corresponded to the “crumbling” he’d mentioned.

  She was considering aneurisms when she heard footsteps crunch upon the gravel path.

  Turning toward the sound, she beheld her betrothed advancing toward her, his face set, his right hand clutching a piece of paper.

  At that moment, medical hypotheses, along with all other intellectual matters, sank into the deepest recesses of Gwendolyn’s mind. When he paused before her, all she could do was stare while her heart beat an erratic rhythm that made the blood hum in her veins.

  He wore a coat of fine black wool, whose snugly elegant cut hugged his powerful, athletic physique. Her glance skidded down over the equally snug trousers to the gleaming toes of his shoes, then darted up again to his face.

  Cleaned of the mire’s vestiges, his countenance was pale, chiseled marble. The long black hair, gleaming like silk, rippled over his broad shoulders. A burning golden gaze trapped hers.

  If she had been a normal female, she would have swooned. But she was not normal, never had been.

  “Good grief, you are impossibly handsome,” she said breathlessly. “I vow, I have never experienced the like. For an instant, my brain stopped altogether. I must say, my lord, you do clean up well. But next time, I wish you would call out a warning before you come into view, and give me a chance to brace myself for the onslaught.”

  Something dark flickered in his eyes. Then a corner of his hard mouth quirked up. “Miss Adams, you have an interesting—a unique—way with a compliment.”

  The trace of a smile disoriented her further. “It is a unique experience,” she said. “I never knew my brain to shut off before, not while I was full awake. I wonder if the phenomenon has been scientifically documented and what physiological explanation has been proposed.”

  Her eyes would not focus properly but wandered fuzzily downward again…and stopped at the piece of paper. The document snapped her back to reality. “That looks official,” she said. “Legal drivel, I collect. Is it something I must sign?”

  He glanced back toward the house.

  When his attention returned to her, the half-smile was gone, and his expression had hardened again. “Will you walk with me?” he asked.

  The backward glance gave Gwendolyn a good idea of what the trouble was. She kept her thoughts to herself, though, and stood obediently and walked with him in silence down a path bordered by roses. When they reached a planting of shrubs that shielded them from view of the house, he spoke.

  “I am told that, in view of my prognosis, a guardian ought to be appointed to oversee my affairs,” he said. His voice was not altogether steady. “Abonville proposes to act as guardian since he’s my nearest male kin. It is a reasonable proposal, my own solicitor agrees. I’ve inherited a good deal of property, which must be protected when I become incapable of acting responsibly.”

  A stinging stream of indignation shot through her. She did not see why he must be plagued with such matters this day. All he needed to sign were the marriage settlements. He should not be asked to sign his whole life away in the bargain.

  “Protected from whom?” she asked. “Grasping relatives? According to Abonville, there’s no one left of the Camoys but a few dithering old ladies.”

  “It isn’t merely the property,” he said. His voice was taut, his face a rigid white mask.

  She wanted to reach up and smooth the turmoil and tension away, but that would look like pity. She plucked a leaf from a rhododendron and traced its shape instead.

  “The guardianship includes legal custody…of me,” he said. “Because I cannot be responsible for myself, I must be considered a child.”

  He was not irresponsible yet or remotely childlike. Gwendolyn had told Abonville so. She knew her lecture had calmed the due down, yet it was too much to hope that her speeches could fully quell his overprotectiveness. He meant well, she reminded herself. He assumed the marriage would be too great an ordeal for her and wished to share the burden.

  She could hardly expect her future grandfather to fully understand her capabilityies when none of the other men in her family did. None of them took her medical studies and work seriously. Her dedicated efforts remained, as far as the males were concerned, “Gwendolyn’s little hobby.”

  “It is very difficult to think clearly,” Rawnsley went on in the same ferociously controlled tones, “with a pair of lawyers and an overanxious would-be grandpapa hovering over me. And Bertie’s holding his tongue was no help, when he had to stuff his handkerchief into his mouth to do it, and he still couldn’t stop sniffling. I came out to clear my head, because…damnation.” He dragged his hair back from his face. “The fact is, I do not feel reasonable about this. I wanted to tell them to go to the Devil. But my own solicitor agreed with them. If I object, they’ll all believe I’m irrational.”

  And he was worried he’d end up in a madhouse, Gwendolyn understood.

  That he’d come to her with his problem seemed to be a good sign. But Gwendolyn knew better than to pin her hopes on what seemed to be.

  She moved to stand in front of him. He did not look down at her.

  “My lord, you are aware, I hope, that the 1774 Act for Regulating Madhouses included provisions to protect sane persons from improper detention,” she said. “At present, only an examining body composed of imbeciles and criminal lunatics could possibly find you non compos mentis. You need not sign every stupid paper those annoying men wave in your face in order to prove you are sane.”

  “I must prove it to Abonville,” he said stiffly. “If he decides I’m mad, he’ll take you away.”

  She doubted the prospect was intolerable to him. She knew he’d agreed to marry her for what he believed were the wrong reasons. She doubted he’d developed
a case of desperate infatuation during the last few hours.

  It was far more likely that he’d come to test her. If she failed, he would believe it was wise to let her go.

  Gwendolyn had been tested before, by certified lunatics, among others, and this man was no more deranged at present than she. Nevertheless she did not make the mistake of imagining this trial would be easier—or less dangerous. She had marked him as dangerous from the first moment he had turned his smoldering yellow gaze upon her. She was sure he fully understood its compelling effect and knew how to use it.

  Her suspicious were confirmed when the brooding yellow gaze lowered to hers. “What’s left of my reason tells me you represent an infernal complication, Miss Adams, and I should be better off rid of you. The voice of reason, however, is not the only one I hear—and rarely the one I heed,” he added darkly.

  His gaze drifted down…lingered at her mouth…then slid downward to her bodice.

  Beneath layers of silk and undergarments, her flesh prickled under the slow perusal, and the sensations spread outward until her fingers and toes tingled.

  He was trying to make her uneasy.

  He was doing a splendid job.

  But he faced madness and death, she reminded herself, next to which her own anxieties could not possibly signify.

  By the time the potent golden stare returned to her face, Gwendolyn had collected at least a portion of her composure.

  “I am not sure you have identified the correct voice as reason’s,” she said. “I am absolutely certain, though, that if Abonville tries to take me away, I shall take a fit. I went to a good deal of trouble to get ready for the wedding. My head is stuck full of pins and my maid laced my stays so tight it is a wonder my lips haven’t turned blue. It took her a full hour to tie and hook me into this gown, and I shall likely be three hours trying to get out of it.”

  “I can get you out of that gown in a minute,” he said too quietly. “And I shall be happy to relieve you of your painful stays. It would be better for you not to put such ideas into my head.”

  As though they weren’t already there, she thought. As though he hadn’t warned her: he hadn’t had a woman in a year.

  Though she knew he was testing her maidenly fortitude, his low voice set her nerves aquiver.

  He was taller than she. And heavier. And stronger.

  A part of her wanted to bolt.

  But he was not on the brink of a violent lunatic fit, she scolded herself. He was feigning, to test her, and allowing him to intimidate her was no way to win his trust.

  “I do not see why it would be better,” she said. “I do not want you to be indifferent to me.”

  “It would be better for you if I were.”

  He had not moved an inch nearer, yet his low voice and glowing eyes exerted a suffocating pressure.

  Gwendolyn reminded herself that the Almighty had been throwing obstacles in her path practically since the day she was born and had confronted her repeatedly with men determined to browbeat or frighten her.

  That was sufficient practice for dealing with him.

  “I know I am an infernal complication,” she said. “I realize you feel put upon, and I do understand your resentment of your—your masculine urges, which incline you to act against your better judgment. But you are not looking on the bright side. A lack of such urges would indicate a failure of health and strength.”

  She caught the flicker of surprise in his eyes in the instant before he masked it.

  “You ought to look upon your animal urges as a positive sign,” she persisted. “You are not as far gone as you thought you were.”

  “On the contrary,” he said. “I find myself in far worse case than I had imagined.”

  He directed his yellow stare to a point on her left shoulder where the neckline of her growth left off and her skin began…and instantly she became hotly conscious of every square inch of her skin.

  She heard a crackling sound. Looking down, she saw the paper crumpling in his tightly clenched hand.

  He looked there, too. “It hardly matters what I sign,” he said. “Nothing matters that should.” He crushed the document into a ball and threw it down.

  Her heart was pumping double-time, speeding the blood through her veins in preparation for flight.

  “Damn me,” he said. He advanced.

  She sucked in her breath.

  He grasped her shoulders. “A pretty fellow, am I? Take a fit, will you? I’ll show you a fit.”

  Before she could exhale, he clamped one hand on the back of her neck, pulled her head back, and brought his mouth down upon hers.

  It was her fault, Dorian told himself. She should not have looked at him in that bone-melting way. She should not have stood so near and caught him in her scent, rich and heady as opium to his starved senses. She should have run, instead of staying so close and snaring him in awareness of the fine, porcelain purity of her skin.

  He could not help yearning for that purity and softness, and then he could not keep from reaching for her.

  He clamped his needy mouth upon her soft, trembling one, and the clean, sweet taste of her made him shiver—in pleasure or despair, he couldn’t tell. For all he knew the chill was the emptiness inside him, ever-present, impossible to fill.

  He should have stopped then, for his sanity’s sake, if nothing else. He knew it was hopeless. This innocent could never sate him. No woman, no matter how experienced and skilled, had ever done it.

  But her lips were so soft, warming and yielding to the pressure of his. He had to draw her nearer, seeking the warmth of her young body while he savored the untutored surrender of her innocent mouth.

  He pressed her close, greedy for her warmth and softness. He pressed her to his famished body while he deepened the kiss, seeking desperately, as always, for more.

  He felt her shudder, but he couldn’t stop—not yet. He couldn’t keep his tongue from searching the mysteries of her mouth…feminine secrets, promising everything.

  Lured by scent and taste and touch, he slipped into the darkness. He stroked over her back, heard silk whisper under his fingers, and felt her shift under his touch. Then he was truly lost because she moved into his caress as though she’d done it many times before, as though she belonged in his arms, had always belonged.

  Warmth…softness…sinuous curves under whispering silk, melting against him…woman-scent, enveloping him…and her skin…

  He trailed his lips over her satiny cheek, and she sighed. The soft sound ignited the too-quick inner fuse of desire. His fingers found a fastening…

  “If you’re trying to scare me off,” came her foggy voice, her breath tickling his ear, “you’re going about it all wrong.”

  His hands stilled.

  He raised his head and looked at her. Her eyes opened, and slowly her hazy green gaze sharpened into focus. His own haze instantly dissipated under that penetrating study.

  “I was taking a lunatic fit,” he said, aware that his thick tones told another story. He wrenched his gaze from the mesmerizing trap of hers and drew back.

  Curling red tendrils had escaped their pins to tumble wildly about her flushed face and neck. Her gown was twisted askew.

  He stepped back and looked at his hands, afraid to think where they’d been and what he might have done to an innocent, lusting oaf that he was.

  “What is wrong with you?” he demanded. “Why didn’t you make me stop? Do you have any idea what I might have done?”

  She tugged her gown back into place. “I have a very good idea,” she said. “I am familiar with the mechanics of human reproduction, as I told Mama. But she felt it was her maternal duty to explain it herself.”

  She smoothed her bodice. “I must say, she did point out a few subtleties I was unaware of. And Genevieve, as you would expect, enlightened me further. It turned out to be not quite as simple as I thought.” She pushed a few pins back into her hair. “Which is not to say I haven’t experienced considerable enlightenment under your tute
lage, my lord,” she added quickly. “It is one thing to be told about intimate kisses. Experiencing them is another matter altogether. What are you staring at?” She looked down at herself. “Have I missed something? Is anything undone?” She turned, presenting, her slim back. “Do I need fastening?”

  “No.” Thank God, he added silently.

  She turned back and smiled.

  Her mouth was overwide. He had noticed that before…and felt and tasted every luscious atom of it.

  He could not remember seeing her smile before. If he had, he would not have forgotten, for it was a long, sweet curve that coiled about him like an enchantment.

  He did not know how to resist its warm promise. He did not know how to fight her and himself simultaneously. He did not know how to drive her away, as he must, when she made him want so desperately to hold her.

  It seemed he did not know how to do anything.

  The document he’d been asked to sign, the reasons they’d given him for signing, had made him face what he’d tried to ignore. He’d come, intending to scare her off for her own safety—and his peace of mind. Yet he, once capable of making hardened whores tremble, could not stir the smallest anxiety in her, any more than he could rouse his feeble conscience.

  Once capable.

  Past tense.

  Before the headaches. Before the disease had begun its insidious work.

  The answer came then, chilling him: the tenuous link between will and action, mind and body, was breaking down already. He was healthy and strong, she’d claimed, but that was only outwardly. His degenerating mind was already sapping his will.

  He turned away, lest she read his despair in his countenance. He would master it. He needed but a moment. It had caught him unawares, that was all.

  “Rawnsley.”

  He felt her hand upon his sleeve.

  He wanted to shake it off, but he couldn’t, any more than he could shake off his awareness of her. The taste of her lingered in his mouth, and her drugging scent wafted about him. He recalled the soft look in her beautiful eyes and the smile…warm promises. And he was cold, chilled to his soul.