It had been Sir Moses, after all, who had requested that it was not emotional, Chloe reasoned with herself as she reached out to pour herself some tea. And she had agreed: she had been intrigued, curious to experience the delights that a man could give a woman, and a woman could give a man. She did not want to be tied to a man through marriage, and she had been the one who had promised him that he would owe her nothing.
So why was she desperate to catch his eye? Why did she want him to speak, and to speak kindly, to speak with words of care and in tones of devotion?
If there had been words in her soul that were right to say, she could not find them. Instead, Chloe avoided his eye completely, and pulled toast towards her and started to butter it furiously, as though it had once done her a serious wrong.
Should he wish to speak, Chloe told herself, he could speak. She would not prevent it.
Just as she had this thought, Sir Moses cleared his throat, and she found herself looking upwards far more eagerly than she would have liked.
“Yes?”
Sir Moses picked up a letter that was lying on the table next to his plate. “This arrived for me this morning, Miss Vaughn. Would you like me to read it to you?”
“If it is a letter for yourself, ‘tis no business of mine to know its contents,” replied Chloe stiffly. How could he look at her with such lack of warmth, without any feeling whatsoever, when just hours ago he had been crying out her name?
“‘Dear Sir Moses, your letter came at such a time when I was so concerned, I truly think it was brought to me by Heaven,’” began Sir Moses in a dry and slightly bored monotone. “‘For when I think of the agonies that I underwent when I returned home to find Miss Vaughn not waiting for us as I had assumed but instead missing with none around me sure of…’ There is a long paragraph here, Miss Vaughn,” he said, eyes raised from the letter in a sardonic eye, “I will not bore you with it.”
Chloe flushed. She recognised the good hearted concern of the letter, even when read aloud by Sir Moses’ bored voice. So, poor Lady Kathryn had not known where she had gone and had evidently gone to much trouble in order to find her.
“‘I am relieved therefore,’” continued Sir Moses in a dry voice, “‘to hear that my charge has been rescued by you, Sir Moses, and I thank you for offering the shelter of your illustrious home until the morrow, when I shall arrive at eleven o’clock in the morning to take her back into my care.’ So there we have it, and you have but half an hour to wait until you are rescued from me.”
Disappointment welled up in her heart, but Chloe did her best to ignore it. So, he could not even bring himself to ask her to leave but instead announced it through Lady Kathryn’s letter. He did not even have the decency to look her in the face as he summarily dismissed her, to all intents and purposes his lover, from his house.
7
Before Miss Vaughn could reply, tiny silver bells were chiming the half hour, and she rose hastily before Moses could ask her to stay.
“I will wait in the morning room for Lady Kathryn’s arrival,” she said in a quiet voice. “Please do excuse me, Sir Moses.”
Moses’ mouth was open, but he had no words. What did you say to a woman who you ravished the night before in the heat of passion, and a medley of emotions that you never thought you would ever be able to feel again?
If he could be honest with himself, he was disappointed. The letter, he had thought, would sadden her with its suggested early departure from him. Chloe – Miss Vaughn, he must remember to call her that now that they were in polite society again – Miss Vaughn had not even questioned it or asked whether it was necessary for her to go so immediately.
It hurt to discover how greatly he wanted her to ask to stay longer, or sigh that Lady Kathryn’s arrival was too sudden. Even now she was curtseying her exit and asking in a quiet murmur to Baxter where exactly the morning room was.
She had just accepted it. There did not seem to be any excitement in her features, that was true, thought Sir Moses as he turned over the sardine on his plate, appetite lost. She did not seem to want to leave him, and yet there was no interest in remaining either.
A thought struck him, and hope rose in his chest. Perhaps she would say something, before Lady Kathryn arrived. There were still thirty minutes. Thirty minutes for something truly incredible to happen. Perhaps she was just waiting for the right moment.
He would give her one. Abandoning his breakfast, Moses almost dropped his knife and fork on the floor in his haste to move. As he stumbled through the doorway of the morning room, Chloe – Miss Vaughn, Moses hastily corrected himself silently – must have only just seated herself. Her slender and elegant fingers were arranging her skirts around her as she looked up in surprise.
“Sir Moses! I … thought that you were finishing your breakfast.”
He swallowed. There was a space beside her on the sofa, but did he dare sit there? Light was streaming through the tall wide windows, and they illuminated several other places that he could sit – the chair by the fireplace, another by the little card table – but he was determined.
She did not make any move as he sat down beside her, and a hand now finished with its skirt moving task laid motionless beside her. It was mere inches from him, and Moses felt his heart quicken. All he had to do was reach out – just reach out with his own, and he would be able to take her hand in his, and the contact between them would no doubt spark a conversation where they could be honest, finally, about the emotions that were crashing through –
“I wonder whether my friend Rebecca will be accompanying Lady Kathryn this morning,” said Miss Vaughn in a light tone, lifting her hand and placing it within her lap, out of Moses’ reach.
He had reached out, of course, and he grabbed at a book that was lying on the table before them in an effort to hide the real reason why he had lunged towards her.
“Perhaps,” he said without thought, trying to fight the flush of embarrassment from creeping up from his cravat. “Would you like to see her?”
Miss Vaughn smiled, but it looked brittle. Small talk, thought Moses bitterly. It was the last thing that he wanted between them.
“I enjoy her company, and it would be lovely to see her again,” was the staid and polite reply.
Moses could feel his temper rising: was he to be inflicted with this type of nonsense? But then his shoulders relaxed, and he leaned back slightly against the back of the sofa. Surely she could not be this calm, not after what happened last night. A little prod in the right direction would get Miss Vaughn speaking her true mind before long.
“And,” he said lightly, as though the question had no real import, “will you tell Miss Rebecca exactly what has happened between us?”
Whatever reaction he had been hoping for, the one that he received was certainly not it.
“Excuse me, sir,” Miss Vaughn said with fire spitting from her lips, “but if I recall correctly, there was an agreement made between us that quite explicitly forbade any such intimations to anyone, by either of us.”
Moses was out of his depth. “Why yes, I remember, but – ”
And now Miss Vaughn had risen from the sofa in a great swell of anger and rustling skirts. “I would think that a gentleman would be able to trust a lady’s word – and keep his own, if it comes to that. I hope that I can rely on you, or do you think that it will be too arduous for you?”
“I do – I mean, I do trust your word,” Moses said hastily. By God, how could this all go wrong so quickly? All he wanted was a little honesty between them … but what if this was her honest thoughts? What if she felt nothing for him at all? “I just wondered, that was all. I was curious whether your friendship with her would – ”
“Ah, I see.” Miss Vaughn was staring at him with a glint in her eye, and with a sinking feeling Moses realised that he was completely outgunned in this particular battle. “It was a test, was it not? And should I feel grateful to have passed, Sir Moses?”
Heat was rising from his stomach now
as irritation blossomed into fury. He must control his temper, he reminded himself silently, and a smile that was more akin to a grimace appeared on his face.
“It was not a test, just a question,” he said, and heard with horror that the anger was in no way hidden in his voice. “Look no deeper than that, Miss Vaughn, for there are no hidden depths to my words.”
Feel something, he wanted to say, to cry out, to beg. Tell me something, reveal to me actually how you feel. How have we managed to end up in a polite bicker?
Her eyes, even more green in the morning light, were attempting to look away from him, fixing on something out in the garden but flickering back to him every ten seconds or so. Is this hostility because she does feel something for me, or she does not, Moses wondered helplessly. Perhaps, and the thought made him feel even more miserable, she was just as afraid of intimacy – real, emotional, vulnerable intimacy – as he was.
Chloe tried not to watch him through her lashes, but she was drawn to him like a magnet. He was handsome, yes, and now that she had seen the full richness of his body currently hidden by those clothes, it was all she could do not to stare at him openly – but she wanted more than that.
Why did he not follow her as she moved across the room? She wanted the feel of his hand on hers, the heavy and reassuring weight of his arm around her shoulders, the sense that he wanted her to stay, that he hated the idea that she would be gone within minutes.
When the topic had danced close to their incredible night together, she wanted him to admit that it had meant something to him: that all their talk about emotionless lovemaking was nonsense now that they had shared it together, that it meant something, and that it could not be allowed to occur just once …
And yet he just sat there. As Chloe’s eyes flickered over to him once more, she saw with sadness rising in her heart that his head was low.
Her lips parted to speak, but no words came out. What could she say? That she ached for him because she knows that he has been hurt before? That she ached for him in that darkest and most delicious part of her that he had teased to ecstasy mere hours before?
She wanted to tell him that he was a gentleman who she never wanted to leave, and that she was a lady worthy of him too, worthy to be a baronet’s wife. Perhaps she could rise, perhaps she could step over across those few feet between them, take his face in her hands, and kiss him …
“You said to me,” Moses had said, “that you do not believe romance to be necessary for a successful marriage. What was it you said, exactly – that it is possible for two people to come together – ”
She shivered. She would not force him to it then, as he had been so set against it. The last thing that she would want to do is put him in a delicate position that he could not escape from. But would she regret that for the rest of her life?
“Sir Moses,” she began gently. His head rose quickly and his dark eyes brightened as they beheld her. Something in Chloe stirred and her heart began to race.
And then his head turned from her and looked out of the window. A carriage was pulling up to the house.
Her heart sank. It was not a carriage that she recognised, to be sure, and she could not be entirely certain that it was Lady Kathryn within – but then the tall carriage clock was chiming the hour of eleven, and could it not be Ramsbottom’s carriage which she had borrowed, it being statelier to visit a baronet?
From this perspective, she could not see who descended from the carriage as it stopped at the door, but she just knew it in her heart. Lady Kathryn was here to take her away from this place, and from Moses. The man that she had fallen completely in love with, but who did not even seem to notice that she was about to leave.
“Ah,” said Sir Moses in a slightly strangled voice. “I see that … Miss Vaughn, before anyone arrives I must tell you that – ”
The door of the morning room opened, and Chloe did not turn around, her spirits were so despondent. So, Lady Kathryn was here, and all she had to do now was depart with a polite smile, and her acquaintance with Sir Moses Wandorne would be at an end.
“May I introduce the Count of Stratham and Lady Olivia Stratham, his sister,” came Baxter’s voice.
Chloe jolted in her chair and rose hastily. A tall man with chestnut brown hair and a laughing voice was striding into the room, accompanied by a dazzlingly beautiful woman wearing a light blue gown of the latest fashion, and her hair elegantly piled upon her head.
Sinking into a deep curtsey that was completely ignored by the new arrivals as they walked into the room with their eyes fixed on Moses, Chloe felt her long hair around her shoulders and cringed slightly at her appearance. Of course she would look like this when a Count came to call!
“By Jove, you are actually properly dressed for once, Wandorne!” The Count laughed as he strode forward and shook Sir Moses’ hand.
Chloe, unsure exactly whether she was permitted to sit down if the Count and his sister had not yet acknowledged her, stood awkwardly. As if she had not been an imposition enough, here she was, interrupting a visit between her host and what must be a very close friend, if the way that the Count now threw himself onto the sofa and pushing Moses away to sit elsewhere was any indication.
“Now then, Wandorne, you see what I have brought you?” The Count gestured lazily at his sister, who had remained standing but smiling at their host. “Your fiancée, as promised – and not a day too late I assure you!”
Cold ice sank into her heart. There was ringing in her ears that could come from no precise source, and she felt dizzy, with a pain in her chest.
“Ah, but I see that you have company already!” The Count beamed at her, and nodded his head as a greeting. “Not going to introduce us, Wandorne?”
“It … it was all a lie,” Chloe managed, her eyes fixed on Moses, who did not yet seem to understand her words. Burning shame and regret was pouring into her lungs and she could barely speak. “A lie. You lied to me.”
There stood the fiancée that had supposedly died. There sat the brother who had supposedly been a poor doctor. Hot tears threatened to fall, but Chloe dashed them away. How could she have been so stupid? A dead fiancée, a miserable life: it had all been a lie to entice her into his bed – and she had followed like a sheep, so easily, so willingly.
“I apologise, my lord. I have to leave,” was all that she could manage before the tears started to fall, thick and fast down her cheeks, and she ran out of the room as the shouts from Sir Moses, muffled by the confused cries from his friends, echoed behind her.
8
Nausea rose in his chest, and bile bit at his throat.
“Chloe,” Moses muttered without conscious thought and started to run towards the door where she had just disappeared, but a strong hand pulled him back.
“Wandorne?” Anthony, the Count of Stratham, blinked at him confused. “What the devil is going on?”
“Let me go!”
Anthony laughed. “Well I will not let you go, and let that be a lesson to you! Tell me what is – ”
“Blast you, Stratham!” Moses exploded, almost relieved to pour out his fear and panic. “What in God’s name did you think you were doing, eh? I certainly did not invite you, and you are unwanted, uncherished, and an idiot!”
Lady Olivia raised her eyebrows, shocked at his outburst, but Moses did not care. What did he care for society’s norms and rules? Chloe had just left him, thinking that he was engaged – thinking that he had lied, that everything he had said to her was a falsehood!
“You have ruined everything,” spat Moses, tugging his arm free of Anthony’s arm. “If there is one thing that the teachers at Eton never managed to do, it was to make you learn when to keep your big mouth shut!”
Splutters of confusion and offence were now emanating from the Count, but Moses did not heed him. All his thoughts were on Chloe; she could not have gone far. He had not heard Lady Kathryn’s carriage, after all, and the grounds were not extensive. He could find her, he could catch her up and explain ev
erything!
Sprinting out of the room, he almost floored a housemaid who shrieked and dropped the tray that she was carrying. Tea, china, and sugar cubes flew into the air but Moses did not care.
The hallway, that would be where she was. She would find Baxter, and Baxter would stop her – or would he? Moses thought he was going to be sick as he raced down a corridor. The last instructions that he had given Baxter with regard to Chloe was to throw her out of the house – what if he allowed her to go?
“Chloe!” He shouted as he skidded into the hallway – empty. The front door was open, and into the bright brilliance that shone into his eyes in the darkness of the hall he saw three things that almost made his heart stop.
Firstly, a carriage, large and stately. Second, Baxter, standing by it. And thirdly…
“No, Chloe wait!”
But his words were ignored as Baxter held out his hand for Miss Vaughn to enter the carriage. Pelting through the door, Moses saw in horror that Lady Kathryn must have arrived one or two minutes after Anthony.
But he could make it – he was mere feet from it. “Miss Vaughn – ”
The horses were whipped and the carriage pulled away, gravel flying in Moses’ face as he watched helpless. The carriage picked up speed, and was soon far down the drive.
Moses spun around. “Baxter, why did you not stop Chloe … Miss Vaughn from leaving?”
Baxter raised an eyebrow at his breathless master, and Moses felt a wash of embarrassment overwhelm him. “Why, sir, I was not aware that I was required to. I was under the impression that sir wanted to be left alone. Was that wrong?”
Moses turned his head to watch the carriage turn the corner, and disappear out of sight. No, Baxter had not been wrong. But twenty four hours ago, he had been exactly correct: but now that he had met Chloe, what did her company compare to lonely solitude? She made him feel like he was not alone – not simply because she was company, but because she understood him. She saw the great depths of pain he had suffered, his bitterness, his hatred of fate and the world, and she had embraced him as though … as though she had …
Ravishing Regencies- The Complete Series Page 50
