by Juliana Gray
He’d courted her properly. He’d intended to wait until the end of summer to declare himself, just to show how steady were his intentions. At the end of August, he’d returned home from his Norway expedition, flush with success, and gone straight to his club for a late supper. He’d intended to present himself at her door at the earliest possible hour the next day, nosegay in hand. He’d just tucked into his capon and Burgundy when Sir Andrew Greentree, that ass, that sneering weasel, had dropped into the chair opposite. I say, Penhallow, you’re taking the news well. And Roland had answered, stupidly, what news? Why, that the Harewood girl’s gone and engaged herself to Somerton, ha-ha! A Christmas wedding, they say.
He’d nearly taken off Greentree’s head.
He’d nearly taken off his own.
And now? Was he still angry with her? What, exactly, had possessed him to write her that note? What did he mean to say to her, if she came? What could possibly be said, after all these years?
He leaned down to pick up a stray stalk of hay from the bales stacked nearby and twirl it between his fingers. The kerosene lantern cast out a steady golden glow, revealing the empty corner in which he stood, the blanketed heaps of Burke’s machinery sheltered in the next bay, the faint outline of the horse boxes farther up the row. He slipped his watch out of his pocket and held it against the light. The soft snitch of wheels and cogs counted out each second into the silence.
A quarter to twelve.
A movement caught the periphery of his senses.
Roland straightened. His pulse pounded hard and fast in his ears. He ought to call out, he knew; this was hardly high danger. But over six long years of training and experience held his tongue in place.
A small, dark shape crossed the shadows by the doorway and turned to the light from the lantern. “Roland?” she whispered, the thread of sound like a fist to his gut. “Is that you?”
He stepped forward. “Yes, I’m here.”
She walked toward him in lithe, graceful strides, not self-conscious at all, no hint of any kind that she might not be crossing a drawing room to greet a morning visitor, rather than walking down the aisle of an Italian stable to meet a man who had once been her ardent admirer. Raindrops glittered and fell from the brim of her hat; she shook them off with a little toss of her head. “I never thought to pack an umbrella,” she said, coming to a stop a few feet away. “One doesn’t think of rain in Italy.”
“No,” he said. His mouth dried. Every thought fled his brain except one: Lilibet. Here, before him. Alive and real and infinitely desirable.
She put out her hand. “How are you, Lord Roland? You took me quite by surprise on the portico. I hope I didn’t seem unfriendly. It really is a great pleasure to see you again, after all these years.”
Her voice rang in his ears, sincere and amicable. He took her hand and held it briefly. “Yes, of course. A very great pleasure. I . . . I’m sorry to have . . . I suppose I could have found another place to meet you. Somewhere more suitable.”
“Oh no.” Her pink lips curled upward from beneath her hat; he couldn’t quite make out her eyes in the shadows. “It’s splendid. Proper young matrons don’t often have the opportunity for clandestine meetings in Italian stables. I shall dine on it for years.”
He swallowed. The curve of her cheek gleamed with rain in the light from the lantern; he could just make out the pale skin of her neck, emerging from the collar of her coat. “I didn’t think you’d come, to be honest,” he said.
She plucked at her gloves. “Of course I came,” she said, shifting her voice lower. “Of course I came. We parted as friends, did we not? I hope . . . I have always wished you well. I have always prayed for your happiness.”
“And I for yours.”
She said nothing to that. Her head tilted downward, as if she were reading her next lines from the toes of her shoes.
“Have you been happy, Lady Somerton?” he asked softly.
“Of course. My life has been quite full.”
“No regrets at all?”
She looked up again. “Of course I have regrets. Who hasn’t? But when one makes decisions, important decisions, one can’t look back. One can’t imagine what might have been, or one would go mad.”
He took a single step forward. “And what might have been, Lady Somerton?”
Her lips parted, taking in a little breath. “I . . . I don’t know. I never had a chance to know. You were off in Norway, fishing for your blasted salmon.”
“Yes. Salmon.” His hand clenched at his side. Norway: his first assignment, a whirlwind of excitement. He’d presented himself in Sir Edward’s office on a Wednesday, and found himself rowing through a fjord at midnight on Friday.
“You were gone for weeks. I daresay you must have caught enough salmon to feed half of England.”
“It was all such an adventure,” he said. “I lost track of time, I suppose. But I hardly expected to find you engaged when I returned. To Lord Somerton, of all men.”
“Yes. Well. Neither did I. But you were gone for ages, without a word. Not a single word. And everyone was terribly persuasive, you see. My parents, his lordship.”
“I daresay.”
“I tried to write, but no one knew your direction. I went . . .” She laughed, a thin little laugh. “You’ll think me silly. I even went to the Norwegian consulate one afternoon, when Mother thought I was shopping. I asked them for a list of hotels. They must have thought I was mad.”
“Oh, God, Lilibet . . .”
“Ridiculous, wasn’t it?” She laughed again and walked past him, to where an old harness hung from the wall, its leather dry and curling with age. She fingered it with one hand. “In any case, they weren’t terribly helpful.”
“If I had known . . .”
“But you didn’t. And I can’t regret anything, can I? To regret anything is to regret Philip, and he . . . well, I suppose you’ll have a child of your own, one day, and you’ll understand . . .” Her voice quivered to a halt.
“I’m so awfully sorry, Lilibet. I was a fool, an idiot. I ought to have spoken before I left. I meant to, but our plans . . . well, I didn’t have time. I shall . . . I know you don’t feel the same, but I shall regret it all my life.”
“Don’t, Roland . . .”
“No, you must let me say it. You’ll be gone tomorrow, and so will I, and God knows when we’ll see each other again. In some damned drawing room, I suppose.” He shook his head.
A tremor went across her shoulders. She turned to him, with the lantern light full in her face, illuminating the steadfast blue of her eyes, the gleam of wetness on her lashes. She dashed her hand across her brow. “I shouldn’t have come,” she said. “This was so foolish. I only wanted to let you know that I was . . . that I’m quite all right. I only meant to be firm and friendly, and now look.”
“Don’t say anything,” he said. “You needn’t. You’ve a son and a husband. I only wish . . . I only want to say that I envy them both. I should have wished to do things differently. I was an idiot, a young fool who thought the world would stand still and wait . . .”
The words stopped in his throat.
Before his brain even became conscious of the disturbance behind him, he leapt forward and put out the lantern.
“Roland!” she exclaimed, the last syllable muffled by his hand over her mouth.
“Hush,” he breathed in her ear. “Someone’s entering.”
* * *
Lilibet’s brain spun under the shock of Roland’s body against hers. His fingers pressed her lips; his broad chest crushed her breasts; his breath, sweet and heavy with wine and some sugary dessert, curled around her face. For an instant she froze.
Roland, she thought. This is Roland’s body, Roland’s touch.
She began to thaw, bit by bit, skin and bone and muscle softening under
his.
As if her body’s acquiescence were a signal of some kind, his hand relaxed and slipped away from her mouth, just grazing the side of her breast, her hip, before bracing itself on the wall behind her.
She could see nothing. She could hear nothing, except the sound of his breathing.
“Who is it?” she remembered to ask, mimicking his own faint whisper. He was so close, she nearly touched his neck with her lips.
“Hush,” he breathed again. “Don’t move.”
Now she heard it: the rustle of feet against the wooden floor, the faint, careful clack of booted heels that wanted to be silent. Roland was listening, too. She felt the hum of tension in his body, the readiness. He covered her, filled her every sense, and yet he wasn’t paying attention to her at all. She might have been a doll, a statue.
The footsteps grew louder and then stopped. She dared not turn her head to look, but she sensed the intruder was not far away. The next bay, perhaps, with all the blanketed heaps.
A long pause, and then the footsteps resumed, more slowly now, less regular. She closed her eyes and leaned her head against the wall. It hardly seemed worth imagining what this unknown person was doing, as she and Roland rested here in the shadows, unnoticed. Far more agreeable to luxuriate in the nearness of his body, an unexpected gift, a treasure she’d never thought to receive.
She did not raise her arms to enfold him. That would be wrong. She only stood, with her fingertips pressed hard and resolute against the cold wall, and absorbed his body, the way it fit perfectly around hers: her face tucked into his neck, his chest holding her shoulders steady, his hips bracketing her belly. She noted every detail. The rustling continued nearby, odd little noises she couldn’t interpret, like a dream at the outside of her consciousness.
Her nose brushed against the skin of his neck. He smelled of wool and clean rain and . . . something else, something familiar . . . his soap, perhaps? She inhaled deeply, quietly, and in a flash she was on the riverbank at Henley again, and Roland had just emerged from the Leander boathouse, bathed and dressed and flushed with victory.
He’d been surrounded by well-wishers, of course: the hero of the hour, having stroked the eight to a heart-stopping half-length win in the Grand Challenge Cup, and everybody wanted to clap his back and shake his hand and steal some taste of his magic. He’d put on his golden smile and nodded and done his duty, but his eyes had roamed about, peering past hats and over shoulders, on the lookout.
For her.
She still remembered the way his face had lit into joy, when at last he’d matched eyes with her. Her mother hadn’t let her into the middle of the crowd, of course. He’d had to sidle past everyone, murmuring excuses, ignoring a score of flirtatious glances. And then he was next to her, tipping his straw boater in her mother’s direction, bending into her ear: Did you watch the race?
Of course, she’d said. You were marvelous. I lost my voice, cheering you on.
The hot June sun had beat against her hat, and the crowd around them had hummed with noise. He’d had to lean close to her cheek to hear her words, and her brain had spun with the clean, newly washed scent of his neck, the delicious flavor of his soap. It had seemed somehow scandalous, that she should know such an intimate detail about him. She’d wanted to drink it in, to lick it off his skin.
He’d chuckled, right next to her ear. She’d felt the vibration of his laugh, the brush of his hat brim against hers, and—knowing, she supposed, that her mother couldn’t hear him—he’d murmured back: Sweetheart, I’ll lay all my laurels at your feet tonight, I promise.
Her mother had drawn her away before she could reply, but she’d given him a parting look that said oh yes, yes, and the scent of his skin had lingered in her nose all afternoon and all that evening, while he’d waltzed her around his brother’s ballroom at the celebration party as if no other woman existed in the world.
For a long, weightless moment, it almost seemed she could hear that white-clothed crowd chattering again, could feel the sun melt the crown of her hat, could see an eternal summer lying before her. Her mother had never drawn her away to shake hands with the heir to a dukedom, and she’d never married Somerton, and she still stood on the riverbank with Lord Roland Penhallow’s coaxing voice in her ear and the sweet scent of his soap filling her head.
Roland’s body stiffened, jolting her out of her daze, back into the coldness of the present.
The soft footsteps had halted, and new ones entered the building: firm, purposeful, nothing to hide. The feet marched in their direction—even Lilibet could tell that—closer and closer, until she squeezed her eyes in anticipation of discovery and pressed her back into the wall as if it could close around her. Roland held himself preternaturally still, his body forming a shelter around hers.
The new footsteps stopped abruptly. A male voice penetrated the stillness, low and hard. She couldn’t quite make out the words, but they sounded unmistakably English.
A female voice emerged, the first intruder, answering him.
Oh God. Who was it? It couldn’t be Abigail.
Alexandra?
Alexandra? Meeting a strange man in an Italian stable?
Surely not.
A slight quiver moved across Roland’s chest. He whispered in her ear: “Lady Morley, by God.”
Don’t laugh, Roland, she thought. For God’s sake, don’t laugh. She fought the desire herself: amusement and relief and horror, all muddled together. What if she and Roland were found, clenched together in the darkness, in what could only be a lover’s embrace?
They were exchanging words, Alexandra and her male visitor. Who was it? Wallingford, probably. Hadn’t there been something between the two of them, long ago? Lilibet opened her eyes at last, trying to peer past Roland into the darkness, but his chest and shoulder engulfed her, and the only light came from a pair of dark lanterns hooked near the doorway.
Another quiver shook Roland’s chest, stronger this time. He must have known who the other man was.
The voices continued, soft and intimate. Good God, they weren’t going to . . . they weren’t meeting here to do that! Not Alexandra, not with Wallingford.
Were they?
Lilibet rolled her forehead into Roland’s shoulder. No. Anything but that. She could not stand here in the arms of Lord Roland Penhallow, of all the men in the world, and listen to her cousin engage in carnal union with the Duke of Wallingford.
Please, Lord. Please.
She listened with horrified fascination as the voices rose and fell, always too quiet to discern, the round English tones floating across the cold air, an occasional word breaking through the murmur: ravish and stepladder and devil.
Damn the both of them.
Lilibet never swore aloud, of course, but in her thoughts she profaned as frequently as the captain of a China clipper, though she supposed not with as much potency and variety. Hers had been a sheltered life, after all.
The voices dropped to whispers. Bloody hell.
And then, without warning, the words stopped altogether.
She held her breath, waiting to hear the rustle of clothing, the telltale groans and sighs and gasps. The sound of flesh against flesh, of bodies thumping on the ground or—she shuddered—against the same wall that supported her now.
But all she heard were footsteps. Footsteps, treading back down the length of the stables, disappearing out into the night.
FOUR
Lilibet sagged into Roland’s shoulder, shaking with laughter at last. His arms closed around her, held her upright as he laughed, too, in great suppressed jolts of his body. “Good God,” he whispered, “I thought we were finished. Done for.”
“I was afraid they would start to . . . oh Lord!” Tears formed at the corners of her eyes; she struggled to raise her hand between their bodies to brush the wetness away.
&
nbsp; “Start to what?”
She blurted the words without thought. “That they were lovers!”
He chuckled. “No, no. Not that. I was only afraid I’d lose control entirely and give us away.”
“Oh Lord.” She covered her face with her hands. “They’d have thought we were . . .”
“When of course we were only . . .”
The air turned to crystal between them. Roland’s hands dropped away; he took a short step backward. The separation, the loss of him, was like her heart hollowing out from her body.
“We were only . . .” she repeated softly.
“. . . saying good-bye,” he said. Without the lantern’s glow, his voice came out of the void, unmoored from his beautiful face.
She didn’t need to see his face. She knew exactly how it looked: how his hazel eyes crinkled at the corners when he smiled, how his golden brown hair curled on his forehead. How his strong jaw met his sturdy neck, how his full lips parted just before he spoke.
How would those lips feel upon hers?
She’d never known. Their years-ago courtship had been long on elegant words and clandestine glances, and short on physical expression. Proper English ladies, dutiful daughters of proper English ladies, did not accept kisses before engagement rings.
But she’d imagined his kisses, more than once, in the lonely dark hours of the night, curled in her bed, eyes dry and aching. She’d imagined more than that. She’d imagined how his body would feel atop hers. She’d imagined how his face would soften with passion as he looked down at her, how his legs and belly would stroke against her, how their limbs would entangle afterward as they drifted to sleep.
