It goaded her to admit it, to admit that not only did she actually believe he would, but that she was looking forward to it. He’d take her up on his horse before him and she could once again feel the weight of his arms around her, the hard press of his chest against her.
“You’ve lost your senses, Augusta,” she said aloud. There was no refuting the assessment.
As he rode his mount toward the small cottage, Hugh realized that it was not just an ordinary rain. It was bitterly cold, almost as much ice as rain. The pellets had stung his skin and left a thin coating of ice on his clothes. The rain was freezing, turning to ice almost as soon as it hit the ground or any other surface.
Rather than leave his horse out in such horrible conditions, he went around to the back of the cottage and the small stable only yards from the house. Once the animal was settled, he made his way to the kitchen door, slipping and sliding all the way. They would not be returning to Seffington Park any time soon. If Augusta was even in the cottage. Hugh realized there was no fire, no lights, no sign of habitation whatsoever. Had she reached there safely, or was she lying somewhere along the road side, injured, hidden from his view by the driving rain?
“Augusta!” Fear made his tone sharp as he pounded on the door. “Augusta?”
The door opened. She looked as worse for wear as he did. Her hair was soaked and plastered to her neck and face. Her clothing was drenched and her skin was positively blue from the cold.
“It is you,” she said. Her expression and her tone were at odds, one sullen and the other oddly relieved.
The statement lacked any real heat largely due to her shivering and the chattering of her teeth. She was half frozen and soaking wet. “Let me in before we both freeze,” he insisted.
Reluctantly, she stepped back and the door swung inward. Hugh followed her inside. Instantly, he noticed that she was limping, favoring her left leg considerably. At least, he thought, whatever injury she’d sustained was not life threatening and they had suitable shelter from the raging elements. The cottage was small, but sound. The furniture was still draped in cloths to protect it from dust.
“I’ll lay a fire to keep us warm,” he offered.
“I’m not sure you can. If Rachel was telling the truth… the fireplace is not working. Apparently, the chimney needs to be repaired,” she answered.
Of course, he thought. “You cannot remain in those wet clothes. You’re half frozen as it is.”
“Well, I’d hardly remove them with you here! I’ll be well enough until we can return to the house!”
Hugh closed his eyes and dragged one hand through his wet hair. “We will not be returning to Seffington Park… not for some time at any rate.”
“We cannot stay here,” she stated emphatically. “Mrs. Brandon would crow about it for weeks!”
“We’ve no choice,” he insisted. “The rain is turning to ice. The roads are treacherous and not even the surest footed mount could navigate them in such a state, especially carrying the weight of two. We’ll have to wait it out and pray the storm is short lived.”
The look of panic that crossed her face was impossible to mistake. She would clearly rather take her chances with the rain and ice than with him. Had she not been injured, she’d already have been on the road. “That simply will not do. We cannot remain under this roof without a chaperone—even in these conditions!”
“We’d hardly engage in inappropriate behavior,” he snapped, “when you’ve made it abundantly clear that you cannot abide the sight of me. I had to practically sell my soul just for a kiss! As for propriety, there is no one to know other than Daisy Atwell and your friend, Mrs. Wilmont, and since I’ve little doubt those self appointed cupids are entirely responsible for our current dilemma, we could hardly count on them as chaperones! They will deal with Mrs. Brandon, rest assured.”
She rose from her chair again, glaring at him. “I hardly asked them to arrange such a situation. I’ll thank you very much not to speak to me in such a manner. I am not a servant to be ordered about or a child to be spoken to as if I had no sense. I fully recognize the culpability of my friend and her cousin and I will deal with both of them upon my return… It may matter little to you, my lord, but even in the face of my reputation being tattered beyond repair by being labeled a fortune hunter, no one ever had cause to question my virtue.”
Hugh had lost his patience. Frustrated by her intractability, by their situation, and with his foul mood fueled by last night’s excess, he knew that he was being an ass. Taking a deep breath, he offered, “For the moment, can we simply not ignore our past and focus solely on our present? We are both near frozen, our garments are soaked through, and you are injured… and like it or not, for the present, we are essentially stranded here. Can we please stop snarling at one another long enough to deal with the immediate concern of keeping us both alive?”
“There must be another way!”
“If Mrs. Atwell and Mrs. Wilmont are responsible for this, then we are both precisely where they wish us to be… trapped here together. How likely an occurrence do you think it would be for them to suddenly have a change of heart and send help even if we could be reached?” he demanded in exasperation.
She looked away, clearly nonplussed by the logic of that statement. Grudgingly, she admitted, “I concede that they may have planned our being stranded here, but I hardly think they intended for it to be overnight! Once they realize how severe the weather is, they might send a carriage.”
“And that carriage would fare no better on the ice than the mangled mess you and Mrs. Wilmont were traveling in.” Done with fighting, too tired and too ill from the previous night’s excesses to continue battling with her, Hugh said, “Remaining in these wet clothes will see us both ill. If you wish to remain in yours so be it, but I’ll be shedding mine.”
She gasped and rose to her feet. “You most assuredly will not, Lord Elwynn! I cannot be here with you in such a state!”
Angrily, Hugh tugged at his coat, freeing his arms from the sleeves. His cravat and waistcoat followed. As he reached for the hem of his shirt, she gasped and turned away, fleeing, albeit slowly, to another room. He used the chair she’d vacated to sit long enough to tug off his boots. His breeches followed and he pulled one of the dust cloths from another chair to wrap himself in. Covered enough to preserve her modesty, as he had little care for his own, he went in search of her. She’d remove those sodden clothes or he’d remove them from her, he thought grimly.
It hadn’t been offended modesty that sent Augusta fleeing. It had been the traitorous voice inside her mind. She wasn’t completely ignorant of things that happened between men and women, but she wasn’t foolish enough to think that a man who had the ability to make her forget herself entirely with nothing more than a kiss should be underestimated. While her virtue remained intact, her ignorance had not. The kiss they’d shared had plagued her, haunted her since that moment. Curiosity and an insatiable desire to know what he’d look like outside of the trappings of sophisticated gentlemanly dress would only lead to disaster and ruin. She could ill afford either.
Hobbling on her injured foot, clinging to the bannister, she made her way up the stairs. It was imperative to put as much distance between them as possible.
Augusta had just reached the door to one of the two small bedchambers when she heard him coming up the stairs. The sound of his bare feet slapping against the wood as he stalked after her was both frightening and thrilling. It was the inner desire to allow him to catch her, to see precisely where he would take things given the opportunity that her conscience was at war with.
Ducking into the bedchamber, she locked the door behind her. But as she glanced around the room, her dismay grew. It was clearly a carefully laid setting for seduction. A hamper of food including champagne had been laid out on a small table before the fireplace. Wood was stacked neatly in the grate so apparently at least one room in the house could be heated. The bed was made with linens—much too fine for a simple cotta
ge. It could not be more obvious that they had both been duped and trapped. A sense of inevitability fell over her as she looked around.
From the hall, Hugh’s voice carried loudly, forcefully. “Open this door, Augusta, or I will break it down.”
“I’m not letting you in here while you’re indecent!” she insisted, fighting against both her own desires and the machinations of friends and acquaintances. “You’ve already breached propriety too many times as it is!”
“Propriety be damned, Augusta. You’re injured and you’re freezing. Let me in!”
“I’m perfectly fine! It’s only a turned ankle,” she insisted.
The loud and forceful thump as he rammed the door made her jump. The fact that the door actually began to crack under the force was the deciding factor for her. “Stop it! Just stop. You’re behaving ridiculously.”
“I’m not the one who is injured and at risk of freezing to death who has locked herself in a bedchamber!”
“I’ll open the door if only to keep you from tearing the entire house down,” she shot back as she stepped forward and freed the bolt.
Immediately the door swung inward forcing her to step back. She knew, instantly, that it had been a mistake. He was wrapped in one of the cloths that had been used to cover the furniture, but that was all. She’d seen bare chested men before, laborers and even bare knuckle fighters at a fair once. But nothing could have prepared her for the sight of Hugh in such a state of undress.
His shoulders were broad, and while he was lean, the corded muscle playing under his skin was far too enticing for her peace of mind. The light dusting of dark hair that covered his chest and arms was a stark reminder of just how physically different their bodies were. It also made her yearn to explore that knowledge, to acquaint herself more fully with those differences. Anger aside, hurt feelings and hurt pride aside, she could not forget how it had felt to be held in his arms while they danced. Even now, her stomach fluttered with a thousand butterflies at the prospect of his nearness, at the very idea that he might touch her again.
“Let me see your ankle,” he demanded. His tone was brusque, his manner clearly annoyed at her attempts to maintain a proper distance between them.
“It’s only turned, I’m certain of it,” she insisted again. “You’re behaving brutishly for absolutely no reason.
“Then I will bind it for you to keep the swelling down,” he said, ignoring her scolding tone. “But you will let me tend it or I will bind more than your ankle and see to it anyway.”
“You’re being an absolute bore!” she said.
“What does it matter how I behave? You’ve made your degree of hatred for me quite apparent… whether I’m polite and distant, whether I am earnest and apologetic, or whether I behave like a braying ass, your response to me has been the same. So, let me see your ankle and let us be done with it. Once it’s tended, and if you promise to remove those wet things, I’ll go below stairs and you can stay up here. We can ignore one another as long as you wish. I’ve had years of practice!”
Disgusted with his attitude, with her own wayward thoughts and the meddling of her friends and acquaintances, Augusta took a seat on the very edge of the bed. “Fine. Have on with it.”
Hugh didn’t say anything in response but she did see him roll his eyes to the heavens, as if in sufferance. When he knelt before her, Augusta noted that the makeshift toga he wore slipped just a bit lower on his lean hips.
Her thoughts were temporarily pulled away from such immoral musings when he lifted her foot to examine the injury. The pain had her hissing out a breath between her teeth.
“That is a nasty sprain,” he said. “How on earth did you manage to get yourself all the way here after sustaining such an injury?”
“It wasn’t far,” she said. “I was just beyond the gate when I twisted my ankle.”
Hugh rose, adjusting the cloth that covered him, and began rifling through the wardrobe in the corner. In the bottom drawer, he found spare linens and began tearing a sheet into strips to bind her ankle. When he returned, he knelt before her again. His touch was infinitely gentle, and despite the chill they’d both been exposed to, his fingers felt incredibly warm on her skin with only her thin stockings between them. But when his hands slid further beneath her skirt, loosening her garters and rolling her stockings down over her legs, her breath rushed out for an entirely different reason. It felt less like tending an injury than something sensual and even a bit wicked.
As he worked, wrapping the linen round and round, the silence grew, filling the room and highlighting the tension that existed, ebbing and flowing, between them. She became aware, on a primal level, of the beating of her heart, of the blood rushing in her veins. Her skin tingled with it, with his nearness and the knowledge that whatever else had passed between them, the attraction they’d both felt so long ago still burned bright.
“That should do it,” he said. While his tone was softer, his voice had grown deeper and more gruff.
“Thank you,” she replied, keeping her gaze averted. Looking at him was more temptation than she could withstand.
“Augusta—.”
“Don’t. Please, don’t…,” she whispered.
“It’s impossible to be this close to you,” he said. “When I’m near you, all I think of is what might have been… what we might have had if I hadn’t been so incredibly foolish. It tears me apart inside. You must understand that!”
“Don’t offer me things and make promises. Don’t pretend that the last twelve years simply didn’t happen!”
“I won’t pretend they didn’t happen, but I also won’t pretend that the feelings we once had for one another have vanished. Tell me, truly, are you so indifferent to me?”
She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter. Nothing can come of it.”
“Why not?”
“Because nothing ever does… I’ve learned to live without expectation. In my circumstances, that is the only way to avoid heartache,” she admitted grudgingly. “Your position in society has not changed, but mine has. If I was deemed below you before, what would be said of me now?”
“Beneath me? Augusta, I have never cared what your social status was. And I no longer care for the opinions of those to whom such a thing would matter,” he said firmly. Still, guilt clawed at him, ugly and dark. It welled inside of him as he recognized just how much she had been changed. Robbed of the ability to hope, the ability to except that good things could come into her life, it was little wonder that she was bitter and angry. “Of all my sins, robbing you of the ability to hope, to believe that happiness can be had, is perhaps the worst.”
“That was not your sin… not yours alone at any rate.” She looked at him then, her gaze shuttered. “Society can be brutal. If they feel you have broken their rules, whether they have proof or not, they will see you punished. Shunned, ostracized, given the cut direct by those whom you had once called friends… I think they are far more to blame for my current state than you are. You might have broken my heart, Fitzhugh, but they wounded my pride… and that is an unpardonable sin.”
There were more confessions to make, things that might broaden the chasm between them even further. But if he did not tell her truth now, any reconciliation would be built on the most precarious of foundations. “I did not know that they were bringing you here. If I had, I would have kept my distance. I know you can never forgive me, and I’ve no right to ask you to…There are things you do not know, Augusta, things that are truly unforgivable.”
“What could be worse than offering marriage and then withdrawing?”
Hugh looked away. “The rumors about you being a fortune hunter, the zeal with which every gossip mongering female in society chattered about your downfall and the downfall of your grandfather… my mother was at the root of it. She feared that I would not keep my word and marry Felicity, that I would back out at the last moment. So she ruined you in the hopes that it would place you forever out of my reach.” He waited for her to denounce
him, to scream and rail, but as always, she remained cool.
When she replied, her voice was low, barely a whisper. “I know. I have always known. In fact, she made it quite clear during one of my last forays into society before I became such a pariah that no invitations were forthcoming. She would personally see to it I would never be entertained in any drawing room in all of England, ever again.”
“No wonder you hate me… Dear God, I was so selfish, thinking only of my own misery, that I sank into a bottle of brandy and didn’t come out of it until the day of the wedding. By then it was much too late to repair the damage.”
“The damage was irreparable. If anyone is to blame, it is my grandfather. I was a fortune hunter… an unknowing one, but one just the same. He used every last cent we possessed to drag us to town and foist me into a society that had little use for us if the truth were known. I should have stayed in the country, I could have married a member of the local gentry and been content, but that was not what he wished for me. He wanted something grand and he risked everything to get it. In the end, we both paid the price for that. His heart failed him and then everything was gone.”
They sat there, the quiet growing between them. It wasn’t an uncomfortable silence, but it was very much a loaded one. Somehow, in those moments alone together in the small cottage, things had shifted between them, past the point of return.
Chapter 12
Augusta took a deep breath, and then another. He was so very close. She could smell the faint scent of his shaving soap. She could see the glint of the few silver strands that had begun to weave through his dark hair. And if she were inclined, she could reach out and touch him, to feel the rasp of his whiskered cheek against her palm, or against her lips if she were to kiss him. The urge to do so was overwhelming.
“I’m afraid,” Augusta admitted finally. “I’m terrified and using my anger as a means of keeping you at a distance because I cannot bear the thought of letting you break my heart again. And you could… so very easily.”
Worth the Wait Page 9
