A Gentleman Never Tells

by Juliana Gray

  It was only the ruse, of course. She was just doing it to lure him in, as planned. Except the door was locked, and Abigail wouldn’t be able to spring through and shout Aha! and stop them.

  “It’s wrong,” she whispered. “You mustn’t.”

  He went silent, allowing the air between them to pulse with unspoken words, with shared knowledge. The fire spread warmth into her toes and up her legs, and Roland’s body pressed strong and solid against her thigh, her waist, her ribs. Her head was a hairsbreadth away from resting in the hollow of his shoulder.

  “Something’s different about you,” she said at last, in a low voice.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’re not . . . the way you were, back then. So sweet and earnest and straightforward. And you’re not like you seem now, in public, with the others: careless and lighthearted.” Her thumb moved, almost by itself, along the line of his forefinger.

  His body stiffened, ever so slightly. “I haven’t the faintest idea what you mean. I’m the same man as always.”

  “No, you’re not. I know you, Roland. You forget that. I know you better than anyone.”

  “Hmm.” His forefinger grazed her thumbnail, responding. “Tell me something, darling. How did you discover this castle?”

  “I don’t know. Alexandra saw an advertisement, I think. It was all rather sudden.” She closed her eyes, letting the spell of the moment drift over her. He was behaving so beautifully: reassuring and tender, not overreaching. Nothing daring. Nothing wrong, exactly. Just . . . comforting. Safe, somehow. The secure knowledge that he loved her, that she returned his love, that nothing more was needed than that.

  “Sudden? What do you mean? Did something happen?” His voice was neutral, almost careless.

  “We had . . . Somerton and I . . . a . . . a row.” She opened her eyes. “A fierce row. He accused me of things. And he did things that, afterward, I couldn’t tolerate. I could no longer stay with him, in honor.”

  His arm tightened along her shoulders; she felt a lithe tension hum along the hard curve of muscle beneath her hand. “Did he hit you? Hurt you?”

  “He . . . no.” She stared at the fire, at the pattern of black coals and red flame, seething with heat. That last night with Somerton: How could she explain it? She’d tucked the memory away, bound it up with paper and string, shoved it to the back of her mind with all the others. Only images remained to slip, brief and sharp, across her head. His naked flesh, his dark, angry face. The hot burn of his body, ferocious and inexorable.

  “What, then?” Roland said.

  She took in a long breath and picked her words with care. “He’d quite ignored my existence for some time. I hardly saw him at all. But the night we fought, he was . . . he wanted to prove to me that I was still his wife. And he did. He didn’t force me,” she added quickly, feeling Roland coil like a spring beside her. “I felt . . . well, that I was his wife, and I hadn’t the right to refuse him outright. But the next morning, when he’d gone, I realized, I understood at last, that I did have that right. That he’d forfeited whatever claims he once had to . . . to physical intimacy with me.” She picked up the sash of her dressing gown with her other hand and slid her thumb along the silken weave, up and down. She whispered: “I simply couldn’t bear it any longer. I decided. I had a duty to myself and my son that went higher than the vows I’d made to my husband, long ago, in my innocence and faith.”

  “I’ll murder him . . .”

  “You won’t!” She twisted in his arms. “You won’t! You won’t do anything! This has nothing to do with you, Roland Penhallow. I won’t exchange my husband for a lover. I won’t do it.”

  “You already have,” he said fiercely.

  She sprang from the sofa. “I haven’t. That was a mistake, an idiotic mistake. The wine at dinner . . .”

  He rose to loom over her. “Not so very much wine.” He spoke with resonance, self-assurance. His genial smile had disappeared; his brow flattened into severity. His eyes seemed to bore right through the mask of her face, to read the truth written on her bones.

  “You don’t understand, do you?” she said hotly. “I wasn’t thinking of the future, that night in the stables. I was only thinking of the past. I wasn’t making love to you, Roland. I was making love to the young man I adored more than six years ago. That sweet and lovely boy, who wrote me poetry and swore he’d love me an eternity. An eternity, it turns out, that only lasted a month or two.”

  “That’s not true. I love you still. I always have.”

  Words, always words. Lovely, meaningless words. Anger bubbled inside her, rising through her body like a head of foam. “Oh yes. No doubt. Tell me, did you love me when you were in bed with all those women afterward? Did you love me when you lay naked with them, when you took them with your body? Did you?”

  He took her shoulders. “Did you still love me when you lay with your husband? When you let him bed you, take you?”

  The words bolted through her chest.

  “How dare you!” She was so angry, her voice emerged as hardly more than a squeak. Her eyes overflowed, tracking tears down her cheeks; she brushed them away with her fists. “How dare you! I married him because I had to, because I hadn’t any choice. Papa’s debts, and Mama . . . and you were gone, left! I’d no one to help me. No friend or ally of any kind. Alexandra was off on her wedding trip, and . . .”

  He was slipping his arms around her, drawing her into his chest, absorbing her sobs into the lapels of his woolen jacket. “Hush, hush. Ah, I’m sorry, darling. I didn’t mean it. Hush.”

  “And then you came back, and I kept hoping. Hoping you’d come to me, go to my parents, sway them somehow. Your brother or your grandfather; any of them! But you were silent, all of you. You left me to him.” The words tumbled into his chest, muffled and broken. His jacket smelled of smoke and outdoors, masculine and comforting.

  “My stupid pride. Ah, damn! What an ass I was, an unpardonable ass. Forgive me, darling. Stupid, stupid ass.” His lips pressed into her hair, over and over, punctuating each word.

  She went on quietly. “And then I heard all the stories. Your debauchery. And I thought I was well rid of you.”

  “I’m sorry.” His voice stirred her hair. “I’m sorry.”

  The mad tide of rage receded within her. “Don’t be. I had no claim on you. My pride was hurt, of course, but I couldn’t blame you for it.”

  His hands stroked along her back, slow and tantalizing. Her nerves traced the movement, up and down; long, lazy circles, rippling her skin. “Can we not start anew, darling?” he asked. “Put the past behind us, and begin again?”

  That persuasive voice of his, low and alluring. How she loved it; how she hated it. It made her want to believe impossible things: that he was sincere, that he wasn’t like other men, wasn’t the fickle aristocrat he appeared; that he would put aside all those women and be faithful to her alone. But she knew better. Out of spite and hurt pride, he’d let her marry Somerton. Out of pure faithless desire, he’d then plunged himself into endless rounds of women and pleasure.

  She couldn’t endure that again.

  She laid her cheek against his chest and felt the beat of his heart into her ear. Her eyes rested on the spot where Roland and Philip had sat an hour ago, flipping through the pages of a book on warhorses. Philip, sleeping upstairs in the trundle next to her bed, cheeks flushed and curls tumbling.

  Nothing was worth the loss of him. Not even the chance of it.

  “No,” she said.

  “No? Really, Lilibet?”

  She rubbed her thumbs against his back, unable to help herself. When might she have another chance, after all? “We can’t, Roland. It’s too late.”

  “It’s not too late. I’d brave any scandal for you, Lilibet. Find any way to make you mine.” His arms tightened; his voice took on a n
ote of pleading. “Won’t you . . . Can you not do the same for me?”

  “I can’t.” She drew back and met his eyes, and something in her chest dissolved at the sight of him, at the expression of impassioned tenderness in his features. She had to end this, before her weakness betrayed her, before she let him seduce her again. She had to find a way to make him bolt.

  She could think of only one thing.

  “We can’t, because I have a husband, a husband who has the right to take away my son, if I betray him with another man.”

  “Then I’ll take us all away, where he can’t find us . . .”

  She held up her hand. “That’s not all. We can’t, because . . .” She swallowed, gathering her courage, hating herself. “Because I’m carrying his child.”

  * * *

  A whirling buzz descended around Roland’s ears.

  Lilibet’s face gazed up at him, blue eyes wet and shining and guileless. She couldn’t be lying.

  Could she?

  All the long afternoon he’d been turning over the coded message in his mind; wondering exactly how Somerton fit into the picture, wondering whether Lilibet wasn’t making a fool of him. He’d gone back through the terraced gardens to the shore, to the exact spot where he’d shared a picnic with her. He’d stripped his clothes and plunged into the lake, into the frigid grasp of the new meltwater; he’d stroked across and back, his brain tracking every word he’d heard her speak, every gesture, every expression. He’d considered her possible perfidy over dinner, theorized her intentions in the library.

  Could she possibly have plotted with Somerton? Arranged her travel to coincide with his; seduced him deliberately in the stables, then withdrew her affection in order to evade suspicion? Was she luring him in, trying to gain his confidence?

  He’d agreed to meet with her in the library tonight with the firm intention of having it out of her.

  But one look at her, at her blue eyes dark and huge with apprehension and her hand fisting nervously in her dressing gown, and he’d known she wasn’t in league with Somerton. No actress could perform her role with such consummate artlessness; no honey trap he’d ever encountered could execute such dizzying reverses, luring him in and pushing him away at the same time.

  But now this.

  “Carrying his child?” he repeated. His arms dropped away from her.

  “Yes.”

  Images filled his brain, loathsome images of Somerton’s body heaving over hers, his greedy eyes devouring her breasts, his broad hands pawing her skin. Roland shoved them ruthlessly away. Not relevant. Not useful. Emotions clouded the intellect, and he needed to think, needed to encompass this new information. He kept his voice steady. “Are you . . . are you quite sure?”

  “Quite sure.”

  He glanced down at her belly, flat and small beneath the belt of her dressing gown. His eyes narrowed. “When are you expecting?”

  Her voice faltered. “I . . . I think . . . in the fall.”

  “December, perhaps?”

  “Yes, I suppose. Yes, December.” Her Adam’s apple rose and fell along the column of her throat.

  He placed his hands on her shoulders. “Then it might be mine.”

  “No! No, of course not.” She shrugged off his hands and pulled away.

  “Yes, it might. If the dates are that close, you wouldn’t know for certain.”

  “Of course I would!”

  “No.” He was unequivocal; if she thought she could rely on a general male ignorance of female biology, she was quite wrong.

  She tossed him a defiant look. “November, then. I miscounted.”

  “No. Your waist is tiny, and your breasts”—he stole a look down the front of her nightgown, quite without shame—“are still the delightful peaches I remember from nearly a month ago.”

  “They’re not.” She took another step backward and crossed her arms before her chest.

  “I’m an impeccable judge of these things.” He studied her for a moment, a smile growing across his mouth. She stood near the lamp, and the faint glow lit her clear skin into purest ivory; her hair, coming loose from its pins, curled around her face like a dark cloud. “It might certainly be mine.”

  A blush spread upward from her neck, glowing across her cheeks. “Of course it isn’t,” she whispered. Her hand went to her belly and fiddled with the sash of her gown.

  What had she said, a few moments ago?

  He’d forfeited whatever claims he once had to physical intimacy with me.

  I decided I had a duty to myself and my son that went higher than the vows I’d made to my husband.

  Ah. Beautiful Lilibet. Brave, frightened Lilibet. She was not a citadel to be stormed by force; he must conquer her bit by bit. He couldn’t convince her to be his wife, not yet. She wasn’t ready for that. But she’d taken the first step already. She’d separated herself from Somerton, both in body and mind. Whatever she might say, however she might protest, she no longer, in her heart, considered the earl her husband.

  Which meant Roland was free to seduce her.

  Right now, and as often thereafter as it took to convince her that her future belonged with him.

  He stepped toward her, smiling. “Really, Lilibet. Did you really think to push me away with that?”

  “You can’t possibly want me now.”

  “But I do. I want you terribly.”

  Her lips parted with a little gasp. She backed away: one faltering step, then another. “It’s indecent.”

  “It isn’t indecent. It’s the most decent thing I’ve ever contemplated.” He matched each of her steps with one of his own, driving her slowly to the bookcase. “I love you. You love me.”

  “I don’t love you. I loved you once. I loved the man you were.” She bumped against the bookcase and gripped the edges of a shelf with both hands. The impact loosened one of her hairpins, and a few dark curls tumbled onto her right shoulder. Her chin tilted upward defiantly.

  “Lilibet.” He reached out and took her hand and placed it against his jacket, over his heart. The soft pressure made his loins ache, made every filament of his body long to join with her. “Look at me. I’m still that man.”

  “No. You’re different.”

  “Not in the essentials.” He felt her fingers curl around his lapel and smiled. “You see? You remember.”

  She jerked her hand back to the shelf.

  He leaned closer. He could see the little changes time had wrought in her face: the tiny lines about the corners of her eyes, the new tautness of her skin against the elegant bones of her face. No longer an apple-cheeked schoolgirl, but a woman. Her breath caressed his face, sweet and warm, the only sound in the still air between them; her black lashes drooped downward as her eyes considered his lips.

  Roland bent his head toward her ear, nearly brushing her skin with his mouth. “Only you, Lilibet. Only you know me as I really am. You’re the only one who knows me like this.” He slipped his hand to her waist and rested it there.

  “I, and a hundred other women over the past few years,” she said huskily.

  “No.” He kissed the tip of her ear, brushed his lips against her cheekbone. “You understand me, darling. Every inch of me. You always did.”

  “Once. A long time ago.” Her words were a breath of air.

  Slowly, deliberately, he raised his other hand to the sash of her dressing gown. “Do you remember,” he said, nibbling at her temple, at her forehead, with tiny gossamer kisses, “when we first danced together?”

  “Lady Pembroke’s ball.”

  What a delightfully exact memory. “Yes. Only two days after we met. You were wearing the loveliest dress of pale pink, as was proper for a debutante”—he tugged, ever so gently, at the end of her sash—“and you stood under the lights, with your fan waving like a hypnotis
t’s watch in front of your bosom. I lost my breath at the sight of you.” The sash slid undone; with patient fingers he parted the edges of the wrapper and found the thin silk of her nightgown. “And I came up to you and demanded your next waltz.”

  “Which was already taken.”

  “That sort of thing could hardly deter a chap who’d just discovered his future bride.” He slipped his hand under the dressing gown, around her waist; his other hand rose to lift her hair from her shoulders and expose the tender skin of her neck. “We danced two waltzes, I recall. And I tried to lead you out on the terrace, but you had better sense.” He kissed a slow path from the lobe of her ear to the hollow of her collarbone, tasting the salty-sweet tang of her skin, the faint essence of lavender that drifted from her clothing.

  Her breath sang out in a sigh. She sagged against his hands. “Better sense?” she repeated.

  “Yes. Because if you had, I might have tried this.” He put his hand firmly on her cheek, settled his mouth on hers, and captured those round lips at last with a slow and purposeful kiss. He felt her startled protest melt almost at once into cooperation; her lips began to move with his, lingeringly, allowing him a fraction deeper, and then a fraction more. Her breath tasted sweet, decadent: He remembered the panettone and dried fruit at dessert, and the tiny glasses of grappa.

  “Roland, please,” she said.

  “Hush.” He kissed the corner of her mouth and let his hand drop from her cheek to the edge of her dressing gown. With his thumb he brushed the bare silken flesh of her chest.

  “I shall hate myself.”

  “Darling.” He slid the gown over the smooth ball of her shoulder and kissed her there, through the nightgown. Her skin hummed with warmth beneath his lips. “What adorable scruples you have. I shall take great pleasure in divesting you of them, one by one.” He gave the gown a little tug with his other hand, and it slipped to the floor with a heavy sigh. “Do you know what I think?” He placed his lips in the hollow of her throat and ran the tip of his tongue along her delicate skin. “I think you’re far more wicked than you let on.”