His voice broke off abruptly, and all of a sudden, Adena understood.
“To get back to the mainland,” she said quietly, staring at Luke in amazement. But there was no amazement on his face. There was horror.
“Adena,” he began, but she spoke over him.
“You knew! You knew that there was a place where the tide did not reach, where the sand was still dry, where you could still get across to the mainland!”
He was staring at her, aghast, and Adena could feel fiery anger bubbling up inside her.
“Listen to me – ”
“I will not listen to you!” Adena almost shouted, she was so furious. “You knew that we could have made our way back to shore last night, did you not? You knew that we were not really trapped – Squire’s Isle indeed!”
“That is the local name,” Luke said hurriedly.
Adena made an irritated sound. “So you gave me the correct name for it, do you believe that this suffices? Did it slip your mind to mention that we could also make our way home last evening, too? Did you accidentally forget that we were not marooned on an island?”
His mouth was opening and closing now but no words were coming out of it.
Adena flung back her head and laughed bitterly. She had been so stupid, so stupid! “Is this a trick that you play on all visiting gentlewomen?”
“Trick – no!” Luke shook his head violently and tried to reach for her hands, but she snatched them away. “Adena, listen. I should have told you that we could have walked, but – ”
“Yes, you should!” She did not care for his excuses, did not care that her heart was breaking all over again – to think that she could experience such pain! “Is this just a joke to you? Do you find it funny to lie to innocent young ladies about how they are trapped all night on an island, just with you?”
She started to walk away from him, determined to put as much distance between him and her as possible, but he walked after her, and his strides were longer.
“Adena, listen, I knew that I should tell you but I was so intrigued by you, so fascinated – ”
But Adena did not want to hear it. “I have heard enough!”
“You must listen to me!” Luke grabbed her arm and tried to twist her around to face him, but she struggled against him. “Please, you must believe me that I had nothing but good intentions for hiding the truth!”
“Like seducing me?” Adena wrenched at her arm but she could not get herself free, and she was hotly aware of how close he was, how strong he was, how quickly he could fold her in his arms and kiss away all her protestations.
And by God, she would let him.
No! He lied to her, manipulated her, allowed her to let her guard down.
“I had no intention of seducing you,” Luke was saying, “quite the opposite!”
She laughed as her arms started to burn with his pressure. “Oh, so now I was not tempting enough for you?”
He stared at her, bewildered. “Which offends you more?”
But his confusion had allowed him to drop his guard, and Adena pulled away her arm, rubbing at it with her other hand.
“Leave me alone,” she said firmly. “If I had just continued to walk around this island, or so I thought it was, I would have found my way home. If you had not stopped me, told me that it was impossible, then I would not have stayed here, with you, to…to…”
Tears were returning once more, but she was not going to let them overwhelm her. She found her footing on the sand, and continued to walk back to the mainland.
But Luke was not going to give up that easily, it seemed. Keeping apace beside her, where there was nothing that she could do to prevent him from following her, he continued to plead with her.
“Yes, I was wrong to allow the deception – but it was too perfect, the first moment that I saw you I knew that I wanted to get to know you, to – to befriend you – ”
Adena let out a bark of a laugh, dark and sarcastic.
“I mean it!” Luke ran a few paces and stopped directly before her, forcing her to stop. She stared into those grey eyes and tried to quash the rush of love that was rising up in her. “Adena, I was wrong, I admit it. But as soon as I realised how beautiful you were, how funny you are, how spirited you are…it was impossible for me to let you go without trying to charm you, win you to me.”
“To take advantage of me!”
“To make you love me!”
Adena was breathing heavily, and her arm still hurt, but it was nothing to the pain that was ebbing slowly into her soul as she stared into the face of a man she had thought was good, and kind.
But he was no such thing.
“You mean to tell me,” she said slowly, staring into his eyes and refusing to look away, refusing to let the tears fall. “That you intended to secure my affections? That you acted purposefully to make love to me?”
Luke’s shoulders sagged as though in relief, and he smiled. “Yes.”
The slap across his face rang out across the water, echoing over the sea in all directions.
“You cad,” she said softly. “You have no thoughts for others, only for your own. You do not love me, or anyone, it seems. All you are interested in is yourself. You make me sick.”
Picking up her skirts, Adena ran across the sand, tears now finally falling after such resolute control, back to civilisation.
Luke stared after her in horror. That had not been what he had meant at all – he had just declared his love in the only way that he knew how, and somehow it had gone all wrong.
How was this even possible? Could he have been more direct? Admittedly, the word love had not yet passed his lips – but he had not been raised to show any emotions. Just the few words that he had been managed had been against his nature.
Perhaps he had needed to bare his soul even further to this mysterious and wonderful woman who had strode into his life through the waves, and now was running away from him across the sand.
Luke’s heart ached as he saw the figure grow smaller and smaller into the distance. Well, he had royally messed that up completely. What sort of an idiot was he? To be sure, his friends and even a few brothers had come to him for guidance in these matters, and like an idiot, he had given them his advice.
And yet when it had really mattered, when his own heart was on the line, he had been powerless to prevent it from all falling apart.
Luke kicked at some sand and watched it fly out into the wind. He could berate himself for his choice of words all he wanted, of course, but it all came down to one decision: his choice to lie, and conceal the truth of the island.
What would have happened if he had been honest in that moment: would she have stayed for a few hours with him? Probably not.
Would she have permitted him to walk her home? Perhaps, but it would have been a walk of an hour, nothing more.
It was entirely possible that, after he had rescued her from the rising tide, she would have just simply thanked him and gone on her way.
Luke bit his lip, and started to walk heavily along the same way that Adena had done. There was no use thinking about it, he supposed. The fact of the matter was that he had already chosen: there was no way of going back and undoing the stupid mistake that he had already made.
And the consequences were severe. All hope of ever seeing Miss Adena Garland again were at an end, he knew that. If chance should bring him into her company, she would not only ignore him, but certainly cut him off, reject him, leave the party, perhaps.
A flash of memory passed through his mind: the feel of her breast under his hand, the sensation of her body writhing against his.
But they were overpowered by the recollection of her laughter, the way she threw her head back to gaze at the stars, her admission that she found him attractive, the curl of her lips as she had laughed at his inept cooking.
Luke swore under his breath. Only he could find his perfect woman, charm her, delight her, strip her down and make love to her under the stars…and then lose her, all i
n one day.
9
Adena almost collapsed into the large wooden chair that sat in the hallway of the Kerrs, but whether it was from physical or emotional exhaustion, she could not tell.
In a strange way, it was as though she had never left. The grandfather clock was still ticking away, showing that the time was a quarter to nine. The candle near the door was a tad more burned down than she had remembered it, but other than that, the hallway looked exactly as it had done the last time that she had seen it.
She laughed under her breath. It could all have been a dream, for the difference that the last night had made to her life. Here she was, a little sandier than before, and in desperate need of a good wash, but nothing more.
The grandfather clock chimed the quarter hour, and a door opened to the breakfast room.
“ – and if no sign of her shows up soon, then we will have to inform – Adena!”
Adena was almost flattened by a rush of golden brown hair and sobs.
“Rowena!”
“Oh, Adena, we thought we had lost you,” her friend sobbed, breaking away from her to stare at her wildly. “You did not return from your walk, and I waited up all night! The search party, it could not find you…”
Adena could see the truth of it in her friend’s eyes: they were rimmed with grey, and red from tears.
“We thought something terrible had happened to you!” Rowena clutched at her friend’s hands, and drew them close to her. “But you are here – and you are alive!”
“Alive?” Adena tried to force a laugh, but it felt and sounded hollow. “My dear Rowena, you must accept my apologies, I must have given you such a fright. Were you concerned?”
“You have been gone all night,” Rowena said breathlessly, her eyes wide. “Where have you been?”
Adena swallowed. She should have expected this rather obvious question, and yet she had had no time to construct a believable answer. Thankfully, because she had time to answer, another voice entered the fray.
“My word, it is Miss Garland!” Rowena’s father, a tall man with an almost continuous smile the entire time that Adena had known him, was hurrying out of the breakfast room with concern and fear on his visage.
“‘Tis indeed, and she is quite safe,” Rowena said hastily. “That is – you are not hurt, are you?”
“Fetch a doctor,” said Mr Kerr decidedly to a servant who was gawking at the three of them from the breakfast room doorway. “Quickly now!”
Adena could not help but laugh genuinely now, it all seemed so strange after her night on the island – what she had thought was the island. “I am uninjured.”
Leaving aside the broken heart of course, her inner voice wanted to speak aloud, but she quashed down that particular thought as Mrs Kerr came through the door, her arms full of flowers she had just picked from the garden – flowers that were strewn on the floor as she jumped at the sight of her daughter’s missing friend.
“Lord save us, Miss Garland! You are back!”
“Yes,” said Adena helplessly, giving herself up to the chaos. “And I must apologise profusely for giving you such – ”
“A doctor,” said Mrs Kerr hurriedly, moving over to her and feeling her forehead with the back of her hand. “A doctor must be sent for.”
“A doctor has been sent for, Mama,” Rowena said with a smile, and Adena was pleased to see that she had relaxed somewhat. Her attention seemed to have moved on, and though her smile was genuine, it was a little more vacant than Adena was accustomed to. “Come now, I will help Miss Garland up to her room.”
There were many shouted protestations to this – Miss Garland could not possibly be moved, how could she think of it? Was it not best for them to wait for the doctor to arrive?
But eventually Adena was able to convince them that really, all she wanted was a little peace and quiet to rest from what Mrs Kerr termed as ‘her ordeal’.
Exactly what that ordeal consisted of, she would not say, simply affirming her desire for rest.
“Well, if you are quite sure,” said Mrs Kerr, unconvinced.
Her husband nodded at his daughter. “Rowena will help you upstairs, and we shall send the doctor up directly.”
It was a relief for Adena, after spending so much time with just herself and – another, as she would call him in her mind from now on – to be away from such a crowd of people, as the butler, two more maids, and a footman had all arrived to see what the commotion had all been about.
Finally the bedroom door was closed, and she and Rowena were alone.
“What a noise!” Adena threw herself onto the bed and closed her eyes. “I thought that we would never escape them all!”
For a moment, she thought that Rowena had departed from the room, for there was no reply. She opened her eyes, and saw her friend seated at the dressing table, fiddling with her hairbrush.
“I am glad to be back,” said Adena, more quietly now. “It was…a rather strange experience, I must say.”
She was not one to attempt to be mysterious on purpose, but she had expected her rather obtuse comment to provoke questions from her friend.
But Rowena did not turn around, did not even catch her gaze in the mirror. “Hmmm?”
Adena propped herself up on the bed, and relaxed into the soft delight of the cushions. “I never thought I would be so glad to be in a bed again!”
That, surely, was enough of a bizarre statement to elicit a response – and perhaps it may have been, for a companion who was not otherwise lost in her own thoughts. Rowena Kerr, however, seemed distracted, unable to concentrate.
“Rowena, I have to tell you,” Adena said in a rush. She knew that she would be overcome if she did not tell someone, and as her closest friend, who better to act as her confidante. “I met a gentleman.”
This at last seemed to be the cue for Rowena’s attention. She started, turned around, and smiled mischievously. “A gentleman, you say! One that I am acquainted with?”
Adena hesitated. Happy as she was to share most of the details of her story, there were some elements – some moments, some experiences – that were better kept to herself. After all, and she blushed to consider it, would she want Luke sharing exactly what they had become to each other with his closest friends?
“I am not sure,” she said carefully. “He is a marquis, and not of this neighbourhood.”
The interest in Rowena’s eyes flickered and died, and her shoulders slumped. “Oh, I suppose not then.”
Her gaze slipped away from her friend, and settled onto what appeared to Adena at least as a very uninteresting piece of carpet.
“As I was saying,” she continued, rather pertly, “I met him. He is – oh, Rowena, he is unlike any other person that I have ever met, any gentleman for sure.”
Rowena sighed. “Handsome?”
“Very,” Adena nodded, and a small smile sparked across her lips. “And yet, sometimes you can almost forget that. When you are speaking with him, I mean. His conversation is so captivating, you can at times lose yourself in….Rowena, are you listening?”
Rowena moved with a start, and gazed at Adena wildly. “What?”
Adena stared at her friend, now more curious about her than interested in sharing her story. “What has got into you, Ro? Has anything happened?”
It looked at first like Rowena was going to speak: her mouth opened and her cheeks flushed at the upcoming words, but then she seemed to decide against it.
“You must be tired,” she said quietly, rising from her seat and moving to the door. “I will leave you to rest, and prevent the doctor from being sent up when he arrives.”
Without another word, she had left the bedroom. Adena stared after her in confusion. And she had thought that she would possess the more interesting secret.
Luke’s hand felt heavy as he knocked on the door of his friend’s estate, and waited the expected two or three minutes for the elderly butler to arrive at the door.
“My lord,” said the old man in pleasa
nt surprise. “What an honour. I am afraid that Sir Moses – ”
“Sir Moses will see me,” Luke interrupted, without the typical grace and elegance that he utilised when in society. “I am sorry, Andrews.”
Pushing past the elderly gentleman who gently protested at the intrusion, Luke strode into the Great Hall of Wandorne and made his way to the room where he knew he would find the miser at this hour, or at any hour for that matter.
The library had its shutters still closed, and naught but one solitary candle gave light to the room. Sir Moses was hunched in a chair by the unlit grate.
“Andrews? Is that you?” He said gruffly without looking up.
Luke strode forward, removed the book from his friend’s hands, and dropped into the chair opposite. “I am in trouble, Moses.”
The long-haired man scowled at him. “Dang it all, Dewsbury, at least put a bookmark in it.”
Luke rolled his eyes, grabbed at a letter that was lying on the floor beside his chair, and stuffed it into the book. “I do not know how you can live like this, Moses, ‘tis barbaric.”
Sir Moses shrugged. “I like it. That is all that matters.”
Sighing, Luke placed the book down on the floor. He had heard that Moses had allowed himself to wallow in his unhappiness, but he had not expected anything like this.
“When we left Cambridge,” he said sternly to his friend. “You promised me that you would try to get back to living. To put aside the past, and take up your estate’s duties once more.”
Sir Moses glared at him, and shrugged once more. “I lied.”
Luke held his friend’s gaze for a few seconds, and then they both laughed.
“Come, ring the bell and we can get some brandy in here,” said Sir Moses with a wave of his hand. “Trouble, you say? Not a woman, ‘tis never a woman with you. Gambling?”
Luke winced as he leaned over to pull the bell beside the fireplace.
“Hurt your shoulder then – hunting accident?”
“Outdoor sleeping,” corrected Luke with a wry smile. “If I tell you that it is a bit of a strange predicament, would you believe me?”
Ravishing Regencies: The Complete Series: A Steamy Regency Romance Boxset Page 33
