With her resolve crumbling like a fallen flower vase, she bloomed, opening for him. She let him kiss her for yesterday, today, and tomorrow.
His hands went under her cloak tracing the lace of her tucker, sizing and squeezing, taking inventory of her shape, testing her lack of resistance.
He’d always been a good shut-up-I-can’t-think kisser, but this was wrong and thoughtless. Anger at herself began to boil in her gut. Her desire waned. Reason, the better R word, came into her head, and she caught one of his hands.
That stopped one, but not the other. It took over, smoothing and tickling that patch behind her shoulders or that spot along a rib that made her sigh.
His fingers tugged at a ribbon holding her sleeves.
She broke from his kiss, shoved at his hands. “What do you think you are doing?”
“Exactly what you think. We are starting over, or where we left off. Father’s not standing in the way this time. You only have to sign the leases to finish the peace.”
He’d used her weakness to coerce her? “No, you bounder!” She drew up her cloak, hating how breathless and alive she sounded. “Seduction with Daddy’s blessing? That’s a new trick.”
He undid his now-mangled cravat. “Theo, we’ve been apart six years, but I know you. I know you to be a headstrong beauty who’d rather chew nails than admit to faults or regrets. But I know desire even better. Etched in my brainbox is the way your eyes burn when you want more of me. You haven’t changed. You need me. Does that scare you as much as thunder?”
“Yes.”
Shrugging, he set his open palms on the seat. “Theo, I know my father did something that made you scared. You were left vulnerable, which went against everything he said he’d do while I served. I know you well enough to know that somehow Mathew Cecil came upon you in your time of need and took care of you, ingratiated himself upon you. If you weren’t in trouble, my beautiful strong Theo would’ve never been snared by an old man.”
“What? Who told you this? Your mother?”
His brow squinted then smoothed. “No one had to tell me. I figured it out. Tell me I’m wrong. Then tell me you don’t desire me.”
“This is what you figured out and now this story makes everything that has happened matter less.”
Ewan nodded, and her insides erupted in raw, hot venom.
She forced her voice to a purr. “You want to know desire, tell the driver to go to Beaufort Wharf.”
His eyes widened and crinkled as a smile exploded onto his face. He knocked on the roof, stopping the carriage. He stepped out and then returned like a flash of lightning. Soon they were moving.
Ewan held her hand, drew her fully into his embrace. “We’re both too stubborn, but I will say it again, I have missed you, Theo.”
She didn’t respond, and kept his hands locked upon hers where she could see them.
When she peeked out and saw the familiar buildings near the banks of the Thames, she climbed up onto the seat. Her knees sucked into the tufts of the squab and she tried to look happy and wild, while not losing her balance. “You are right. Why fight this feeling bubbling between us? Let me show you my desire.”
She threw her arms about his neck and kissed him soundly, pretending that nothing mattered but emotions.
His fingers were in her hair, knocking pins, forcing her chignon down her back. “This hair. Silky and strong. The slight curl, not delicate. I still dream of it, of you and me.”
Righting herself on the seat, she pulled up her cape, restoring her hood. “Let’s continue inside. Help me down.”
He jumped to wet ground, his low boots kicking up a splash. “Yes, I want to see you in the light, Theo, how time has sculpted you to perfection.”
When he turned and reached for her hand, she held onto the door. “Go inside to Adams Four, to room four.”
He looked about. His face became more painted with questions. “A dark road? Dingy docks? Theo, not here. My flat is nicer. You and I—”
“Go in. Look for the crawlspace behind the curtains. It should still be there.”
“Theo, I don’t understand.”
Scooping up his hat, she tossed it at him. “You wanted to know why I’m afraid of thunder. Because the sound is so much louder if you have to hide in a tight coal scuttle, as you wait for your mother, the harlot, to finish with the man who bought her for two bits.”
He jammed on his hat, his face clouding in the shallow light of the moon. “I’m so sorry, Theo. I didn’t know. We don’t…. Let me get you home.” He tried to climb back in, but she put up a hand in protest.
“Don’t come back in here or come anywhere near me. You have your play. You’re a handsome man. A Fitzwilliam. You shouldn’t have any problems finding a bedmate.”
“Theo. I shouldn’t have—”
“Go on with your life, Ewan. That’s what I’ve done.”
“What if that life should have you in it?”
“No more lies or twisted truths. You made me a harlot once, by bedding me, then no next-day wedding. You changed our plans.”
“But you agreed. You said it was the right course, given my father’s offer.”
“What choice did I have?” She wiped at her face, but held fast to her resolve. This mixed-up passion for a man who could never be all she needed, ended now. “Tonight, I changed your plans. Pity your only consequence is finding a street hackney for a ride. And hear this from me. I chose Mathew Cecil. He didn’t trick me. I decided to become his mistress. I came to him. I lay at his feet. And I offered him whatever he wanted.”
Ewan’s mouth dropped open. He wrenched at his neck as if that would make her statement of wantonness easier for his pride. “So you went after him?”
“Yes. I am everything that you wrote in your play.”
“No. That’s not true.” He put his large hands on the door and pried it open. “Let me come back in. We can discuss this.”
“Why? So, you can have another go at me? I don’t want to be in your next play. My regret…is you. You said we were running away to marry, but the storm happened. And we had to wait it out in the carriage house. I was so in lo…dazzled by you. I believed you, I gave into feelings I didn’t understand. Then your father caught us, and you told me to wait for you. Can’t you hear your mother’s laughter? You truly thought a harlot, the daughter of harlots, would wait for you? You are as big a fool as I am.”
“Theo, that wasn’t what it was. We weren’t like that. Theo?”
She waved her hands wildly, pushed away his fingers, then slammed the door again.
He pried it open an inch, but she clung to the handle. “Please.”
She wasn’t letting him back inside. Angry tears flooded her throat, but she swallowed the itching fire. He needed to hear her, and she needed to be released from the second biggest regret of her life. “I’m no longer like my mother. I’m not going to be bedded like one ’cause of a storm and nice-sounding lies, you manipulative man. I’m an honorable woman because of Mathew Cecil. He married his mistress and gave me a true name. Go on with your life, change all the names in your play back to Theo the Flower Seller, for that girl doesn’t exist.”
“You’re hysterical.” His voice fell softer. Maybe he could feel the anger she’d hidden in her bones for him not standing up for their love.
“I have regrets, too Theo. Even if you can’t or won’t admit to them, I will. Let’s talk. Let…”
Regrets? Is that what he called leaving her unprotected to a family that would have her starve to make sure no black blood mixed in their bloodline? “No more R words about what we had, Ewan. That love vanished into thin air. It’s a ghost to me.” Theodosia tapped the roof and the carriage started moving. The door whipped shut, barely missing his fingers. He didn’t hold on. Maybe her words made him not try.
She sank into her seat. Blanketing her cape tightly about her shoulders, she waited for her heart to stop pounding, for her lips to stop vibrating from Ewan.
Hopefully, he hated her
enough now that he’d release her from his hauntings and his heart. For a determined ghost would destroy the only thing she valued: the honorable name of her son.
Chapter Eleven
The Depths of Hope
Ewan climbed down from his borrowed gig and stowed it in the carriage house at Grandbole. The morning sky had cleared, but the ground and air still smelled of yesterday’s heavy rain. He stretched his stiff limbs, being dumped in the middle of the docks had left everything sore, including his heart.
With a shake of his head, he unhitched his horse and handed him over to the groom. The young boy looked as if he still had sleep in his eyes. “Thank you.”
He headed to the door but stopped and examined the place, the heavy oak planks forming the walls. The old building might be the oldest on the family property. The loft was piled high with bundles and gear, but maybe there was still room up there for two.
He took another breath, gazing at the opening above and the hooks decorating the walls with harnesses, reins, and wheels, but he turned to the ladder leading to the loft, the quietest place to read and dream. Six years ago, he and Theo had waited out a storm up there. They had talked gibberish of what they would do when they married. Then they’d purposed to elope and they had decided, no, it was better to wait out the storm in the carriage house.
Touching the knurled ladder, he remembered the shy girl, the one so overcome by his telling her of his love, that she had allowed him every liberty. He hadn’t coerced her. They’d been in love. Had Theo forgotten that?
Fisting his hands about the pole, he almost climbed the ladder but his legs weren’t steady. Up all night, walking off a lifetime of anger, and even beating up a welcome footpad would make anyone unsteady.
His knuckles were raw, but he’d been thankful, ever so grateful, for something to thrash. Pounding his own skull wasn’t the best option. No, Theo had done that enough.
One minute loving, alluring, responding to his touch. The next, tricking him out of her carriage. Accusing him of misleading her, of using her fear to take advantage of her.
She thought him a bounder.
But it was worse listening to her admit that she’d harlotted herself to Cecil. She hadn’t grieved Ewan’s alleged death not even a month before taking up with the rich man.
His father had been right. She’d become the Circe of his play, Theo the Harlot.
Yet. It still didn’t feel quite right. How could the shy girl he’d once loved go on to another man so soon?
Jasper strolled through the door, his arms filled with cut flowers. “So this is where you spent the night. You look awful. Must not have gone well at the theater. Sorry, Ewan. I thought the play—”
“No. Mr. Brown wants to buy my play. I need to bring him the final copy. He’s excited for it.”
Nodding, a clear-eyed Jasper sniffed at the big bouquet in his arms. “Well, you look like you’ve had a rotten night.”
The groom walked past them, yawning, and left. That left the brothers alone in the carriage house. This was bad, for Jasper had the questioning look upon his face with his happy, lopsided smile, his bright eyes searching for the right matches to set the Ewan tinderbox ablaze.
“Did you get caught in that wicked thunderstorm last night and take shelter here? Is it more comfortable here for successful playwrights? Not too drafty.”
“No.”
“Did the widow meet you here? I hear she came back late, very late. I was at the tavern this morning and heard some odd things.”
“Tell your drunk friends she went to the theater, then returned.”
“Seems one of her chatty footman talked of a lover’s spat. Very unusual, since the woman has been cloistered in black and gray for months. She’s been a monk, as far as they know.” His brother’s amused gaze disappeared. His pupils narrowed and fixed upon Ewan’s hands. “You haven’t been out carousing, as Father puts it. You’ve been in a fight, Brother. What happened last night? Did you have to defend the Blackamoor beauty from a bounder?
“No. Can we stop this conversation, Jasper?”
“Did you have to stop someone from attacking her, angry at her race? I’d assume with the Abolitionist movement starting, a buffoon might have the wrong idea. I hear they call slave mistresses fancies in the Americas.”
Hot, blind rage crossed Ewan’s eyes. Pulling his bruised hands to his back, Ewan spread his feet apart and prepared to strike his own brother. “Don’t call her that around me. There’s an unlucky footpad who stumbled upon me looking for money. He caught the bad end of my fists. I am unharmed.”
Jasper’s grin disappeared. “Sorry. You look mostly unruffled on the outside, but that’s the outside.”
Foolscap, on reams of paper, that was where Ewan wrote of his black insides. Not accustomed to talking things out with anyone anymore, he shrugged. “You look like you’re getting ready to go court someone. Have you given up on your letter-writing widow? Going to try it the old-fashioned way? A matchmaking mama or my matchmaking mother taking the reins?”
“No. And no. I can wait to see what the widow answers. These blooms are for Father. He’s going into Town to see your mother. He said it was your suggestion.”
With a shake of his head, Ewan tried to dismiss an image of the old fool showing off his scowl to his poor mother, the gentle, sweet woman. Yet, Theo had lumped the lady into her list of complaints. Why? He rubbed his brow. “So the old earl is going to see her. Maybe there’s hope of someone reconciling.”
“Maybe he’ll bring her back to help with the girls, but they’ve kind of scared her out of that grandmotherly role.” Jasper moved from his post at the door, his head swiveling and studying, as if he’d never come to the carriage house before. “So this was where you secreted away, you and your flower seller before you were caught.”
Ewan glanced at the loft and thoughts of Theo rushed his soul. He could still hear her laughter, her shattered breaths from his kisses.
So much like last night. He hadn’t expected to rekindle things, but he hadn’t expected to have her in his arms. Or that she’d dump him on the road, as if he were a blackguard. He swallowed the awful lump of gall filling his dry mouth. “Jasper, you have flowers to deliver. Don’t let me keep you.”
His brother came closer. Not a hint of brandy was in his breath. “We used to be able to talk. We used to see things the same.”
Ewan touched the flowers, swirling the reds and pinks. “That was before you left for your grand tour, before you married, and before I took up with someone of another race. A Blackamoor. I loved her, Jasper. Maybe as much as you loved Maria.”
The pronouncement startled him as much as Jasper, but it was true.
“Father said he caught you two here. He said he called her every evil name he could conjure up but you stood up to him, even more so than what you did with me. She had to be special.”
“Aye. But then I did the unthinkable. I agreed to the earl’s demands. He said he’d give his permission for us to wed if I served a year in the militia. I served, and I lost her. But the earl was right about her not being faithful. That she’d be ruinous to me. She admitted last night to seducing Cecil and becoming his mistress. I wasn’t cold in the ground a month.”
Jasper lips thinned. The big man swirled a long rose as if it was one of his swords. “Interesting. Why would Cecil marry his mistress? With a mistress, you get the benefits of the milk and cheese for which you’ve paid. One doesn’t have to own the cow and put your name to it.”
“The widow is not a cow.”
“Ewan, I think there are answers you need to figure out.”
“Why?” Ewan looked at the ladder, which led to loft. He climbed the first rung but stopped. She hated him, such awfulness had flowed from those wondrous lips. “What good would it be to hear the reasons? It wouldn’t change a thing.”
“Perhaps, perhaps not. But maybe she needs to hear why you agreed to the earl’s demands. You loved her. You said she loved you. The two of you were set to elop
e, but then you agreed to the old man’s demands. Why?”
The old reasons of wanting his father’s approval had cost him. Ewan rubbed at his neck. “I wanted the old man to not hate me for loving her. I didn’t want him savaging another play like he’d done with my first. But it doesn’t matter anymore. I couldn’t have made Theo happy. She once mentioned wanting to own a flower store. She has the money for several, but she’s purchased none. Her dreams have changed. She’s changed. It doesn’t matter now.”
His brother strode over to him and hefted the floral arrangement into his hands. “Maybe you can use these more than Father.”
Ewan squinted at the big hulk of a man. “I don’t understand.”
“You’ve beat someone senseless over her. You’ve used your muse to write a play about her. Until last night, not a hint of scandal about Cecil’s widow. I suggest you go to Tradenwood, apologize for everything, and tell her you want another chance.”
Every bit of the frustration from last night still boiled his blood. It pumped and burned and stung every organ. Head down on the ladder, Ewan dropped the flowers, then jumped down upon them. “She called herself a harlot for loving me. She condemned herself and me for giving into passion.”
He kicked the pile and sent more petals flying. “She is done with me. Maybe you should go to her. You both are widows. She seems to like neighbors.”
Jasper bent and picked up a few of the undamaged buds. “Maybe I should go court one of the young women your mother has foisted upon me at her parties. Seems newspaper advertisement number four hasn’t written back.”
“Good. You don’t need anyone who can’t admit regrets.”
“But what of you, Ewan? You’re besotted with Cecil’s widow but won’t go down to Tradenwood because you don’t want to admit your own regrets.”
“You mean go down there and say anything to have her sign away the rights to the waterway? Maybe you’re more like the earl; her money now makes the neighbor acceptable.”
The Bittersweet Bride Page 17
