“Is he here?” Her mouth went dry as she asked the question. It was foolish, she knew, but she got butterflies in her stomach at the idea that Alec might be no farther than the next room.
Paddy frowned suddenly, and shot a quick look down at Pearl. She twinkled saucily up at him. The look Paddy gave her was admonishing.
“He is. Pearl, why don’t you take her along to your rooms, and I’ll bring him down to her?”
“You think ’e can still walk?” Pearl asked, grinning. Then she poked Paddy in the ribs with her elbow. “Go on, let ’er go up. Alec needs to be shaken up a little, and she’ll sure do that.” Pearl looked at Isabella again. “ ’E’s been a regular bear since ’e came back from France. If you can sweeten his disposition, ’alf of London’ll fall on your neck.”
“I’ll try,” Isabella said, smiling in turn. Pearl, for all the havoc she had caused, had a charm that was irresistible. “Where is he?”
“I’ll take you up. Come on, angel.” Pearl turned in the direction of the stairs.
“But, sweetheart, don’t you think—” Paddy protested, sounding worried.
“Oh, pooh! Go on about your business, you great oaf, and leave matters of the ’eart to us what knows about them! Go on now, shoo!”
Paddy, still looking unhappy, shrugged and took himself off into the parlor from which he had emerged.
“What was that all about?” Isabella asked as she followed Pearl up the stairs and along the second-floor corridor.
“Oh, Alec’s been trying to drown ’is sorrows as men do. He’s drownin’ ’em right now, as a matter of fact, and Paddy likely thought you’d take a pet if you found out. But I think you’re made of stronger stuff than that, angel. You give that man a good strong clout on the ear, and tell ’im to behave ’imself in future. ’E’ll do it, for you. I’ve known Alec a long time, and I’ve never seen ’im in such a case over anything as he’s been over you.”
Pearl stopped walking then, put a finger to her lips, and opened a door at the end of the corridor. Looking over her shoulder into a sumptuously furnished bedroom, Isabella was shocked to see two nearly naked females ministering to a totally naked man sprawled out in a bathtub before the fire. The man, whose back was to the door, had tawny hair, a fat cigar dangling from his mouth, and a bottle of brandy in one hand. As she watched, he pulled the cigar from his mouth with one hand and tilted up the bottle with the other, swilling down a large mouthful without so much as bothering with a glass. Alec! Isabella recognized that hair and those broad, bare shoulders with a sense of shock. Then the shock lessened, replaced by a bubbling of anger. She’d come all this way to lay her heart at his feet, only to find him disporting himself with a pair—not one, mind, but a pair— of Cyprians! Her fists clenched involuntarily at her sides as she absorbed the scene before her.
One scantily clad young woman was at that moment engaged in adding a bucket of hot water to what was already in the tub. The other scrubbed Alec’s back. Both looked up as the door opened, although Alec, taking another swig from the bottle, remained oblivious. Pearl silenced the surprised girls with a gesture, then beckoned them from the room. As they spared speculative looks for Isabella, Pearl pushed her into the room in their place.
“Don’t be too ’ard on ’im, angel. ’E’s been breaking ’is ’eart for you, truly ’e ’as,” she whispered, then left, closing the door behind her.
LXIV
“Dahlia, sweetheart, where’d you go? My back still needs washing.”
Clearly unaware that the adoring handmaiden he addressed was no longer present, Alec plopped the cigar back in his mouth and flexed his wide shoulders in anticipation. Standing behind him, Isabella eyed that tawny head, and debated whether or not to make her presence known. But she felt suddenly, ridiculously shy. Perhaps it would be better to let him discover her presence for himself. So she walked up to the porcelain tub, picked up the sponge Dahlia had abandoned, and began to run it over his back without a word.
“Ummm, that’s nice. Can you get a little lower?” Without waiting for a reply, he leaned forward so that she could scrub the small of his back. Isabella eyed that broad, bare back with an expression that was halfway between amusement and anger. He could consider himself lucky if she didn’t squeeze the sponge out over his head, the wretch!
“That’s good. Ah, you smell nice, sweetheart.” His back apparently scrubbed to his satisfaction, Alec leaned back again, his neck lolling on the lip of the tub, his head tilted up. His eyes were closed, and a wreath of smoke from the cigar encircled his head. Even sprawled naked in a bathtub, puffing on a filthy weed, he was still the hand-sorriest man Isabella had ever seen in her life. Just looking at him made her heart contract.
Still she said nothing, obediently sloshing the sponge over his shoulders and the wide, hair-roughened upper reaches of his chest as she waited for him to open his eyes and discover her.
“A little lower here, too,” he murmured sensually, and reaching for the hand that held the sponge, guided it down beneath the level of the water to where the male part of him waited, already semierect.
“You libertine!” Isabella gasped, dropping the soaking sponge full in his face.
“Christ! Isabella!” Swatting the sponge from his face, blinking furiously to rid his eyes of the soapy water, Alec sat bolt upright. Although his vision was somewhat blurry, he discovered to his amazement that his ears hadn’t deceived him. Isabella stood before him, cheeks and eyes blazing with temper, fists on hips and arms akimbo as she greeted him with the fiercest scowl he’d beheld in months. He stared at her, dazzled. With that frown, she was certainly no mirage.
“Isabella! My God, how did you get in here?” He looked quickly around, saw that they were alone, and began to smile. She was the most wondrous sight he had ever beheld in his life, scowl and all. He got to his feet, not caring about the huge wave that sloshed onto the floor, and stepped out of the tub. The bottle of brandy was dropped, forgotten, to add what remained of its contents to the mess on the floor. The cigar he pulled from his mouth as he approached her.
“You blackguard! You were going to … to … to make love with that … that girl!” She backed away from him as he drew closer.
If he’d harbored any doubts that his senses were playing tricks on him, and Isabella was not really there, her choice of epithets erased them. No one but Isabella talked like that.
“Now that you’re here, of course, I won’t,” he murmured wickedly, knowing that it would enrage her further and chuckling inwardly at the prospect. God, how he’d missed her! More than he’d ever thought possible. He loved the bloody girl, and that was the truth of it. Hell, he was so besotted that he had lurked about that bloody French wood when his own presence was unnecessary—he’d already posted a man to keep an eye on her—just so that he could get a glimpse of her on her daily walk. So besotted that all he could think of now was pulling her into his arms.… Even if her leaving broke his heart, he’d make the most of the time while she was here.
“Don’t you dare touch me!” she spat. He laughed, and caught her up in a great bear hug, pulling her up off her feet and swinging her around in a wide are that made her skirts bell out.
“Alec …!”
He silenced her with a kiss. When she sighed into his mouth and locked her arms around his neck, he knew it was safe to release her.
“You’ve got me all wet,” she said with mild dismay as he let her go at last. Alec realized as her eyes ran over him that he was stark naked, clutching a stogie and grinning at her like a damned fool. Reality descended on him like a thunderclap.
He took a step backwards, and the grin faded from his face. As she had said once, it was time to awaken from the dream, however painful that might be.
“What are you doing here?” he asked, quietly this time, and stuck the cigar back in his mouth. It was going to be all he could do to let her leave again, and he cursed her for taking him unaware. If he’d had any inkling she might come, he would have prepared himself for
this.
“I thought you might be … missing me,” she said softly, those huge eyes that had taken on the lavender hue of her gown looking up at him with the soft innocence that never failed to drive him wild.
“As you saw for yourself, I’ve managed to keep myself entertained.” His voice was cool, and he congratulated himself for it.
At that her lips compressed, and a militant glint entered her eyes. She hadn’t liked finding him with Dahlia and Daisy; that much was obvious. For a moment he silently conjured up a day of reckoning with Pearl for letting such a thing happen. Then he decided that it was all for the best. Isabella mustn’t even begin to guess how much he still cared.
“Pearl said you were drowning your sorrows.”
Alec’s eyes narrowed dangerously. Damn Pearl for talking too much, as usual!
“Did she now? And what else did Madame Gossip say?”
“That you’d been breaking your heart for me.”
That soft statement jarred into his gut with the impact of a knife and twisted there.
He essayed a jeering laugh. He only hoped it sounded better to Isabella’s ears than it did to his own.
“Pearl’s a regular fount of misinformation, isn’t she? Perhaps my heart was a little bruised, once, but I’ve found consolation, as you saw.”
Isabella wet her lips. The sight of her small pink tongue moving over that wide, tender mouth caused an unwanted—and obvious—physical reaction that for the first time in his life embarrassed him. Scowling, he returned to the tub, and sat.
She walked forward until she stood beside the tub looking down at him. Her small hands gripped the lip of the tub, nervously, he thought.
“I didn’t mean what I said that day in the Champs Elysées. I don’t care a fig about your birth. I love you.”
This was going to be harder than he thought. Alec fought the urge to close his eyes. It wasn’t fair, that she’d said the very words he’d been dying for months to hear.
He sat up very straight and met her eyes head-on.
“What are you saying, Isabella? That you want to be my mistress whenever you’re in London? Hell, I’m willing. Take off your clothes and climb into bed and I’ll join you as soon as I’m done with my bath.” This he capped with another snide laugh.
The look she gave him was reproachful, and his fists clenched beneath the water where she could not see. It was all he could do not to grab her and pull her into the tub with him and kiss the life out of her and love her and refuse to ever let her go.
But for the second time in his life—the first being when he had killed her bastard of a husband for her, then left her to enjoy her rightful place in society without the encumbrance of a gutter rat like himself—he was going to do the noble thing. He was going to set her free if it killed him.
“I said I love you, Alec.”
“Damn it, Isabella, you’re bringing this on yourself. I didn’t want to hurt your feelings, but the truth is that whatever we once had, it’s over. What you need is a husband, a nice, noble husband, and what I need is a string of wenches who are ripe and ready to please. Not a silly little girl who fancies herself in love with the first man to show her a good time in bed.”
“You could do it again.”
“What?” He eyed her, not quite sure of her meaning.
“Show me a good time in bed.”
She caught him by surprise, he had to give her that. Alec sat in the rapidly cooling water, gaping at her. To his astonishment she smiled at him, and then, just as coolly as if she did it for a living, she reached behind her and began to unfasten her dress.
“What the devil do you think you Ye doing?”
“Getting naked. Didn’t you tell me once that that was the proper way to make love?”
If she’d meant to shock him, she succeeded. His eyes widened as she slid the lavender dress down over her arms, then started on the tapes of her stays. Alec swallowed, and frowned direly.
“Damn it, Isabella, didn’t you hear what I said? I don’t want you! It’s over between us! Go home!”
She smiled at him, took off her stays, dropped them on the floor, and slipped out of her petticoats. Unwillingly, Alec’s eyes ran over her. She was clad only in a flimsy chemise, white silk stockings and ribbon garters that left the tops of her creamy thighs bare. Unable to help himself, he took a deep breath, and fought to keep his bodily urges under control.
“If all you want is a mistress, then I’ll be your mistress. But it might be rather hard to explain to the children.”
“What children?”
“Ours.”
She was peeling her stockings off, one by one. Alec shut his eyes in sheer self-defense, but it didn’t help. The image of her next door to naked burned through his closed lids. Christ, if he got any hotter, he’d catch fire!
He felt her slide into the water beside him, and his eyes shot open. She was half sitting up, half lying on him, smiling beguilingly into his eyes. To his horror Alec felt his limbs begin to shake.
“Love me, Alec,” she whispered, and that throaty whisper was his undoing. For a long moment he battled his impulses, but the fight was lost before it had even truly begun. Cursing his own weakness under his breath, he yanked her against him, not gently because she was driving him mad, flipped her onto her back, and took her right there in the water while she clung and moaned and called his name.
When it was over, he buried his face in her hair and inhaled her fragrance. And then he acknowledged it: with the best will in the world, he was never going to be able to let her go again.
“Do you still mean to send me home?” she breathed into his ear. From the sound of her voice Alec realized that she was teasing him. She knew the truth of how he felt as well as he did. He sat up, eyeing her askance, but she continued to loll against the side of the tub, smiling at him in a droll way that was pure enchantment.
“I didn’t mean it. You know I didn’t mean it. Christ, I was thinking of you.”
“That was very noble of you, darling,” Isabella acknowledged gravely. “But don’t you think we’ve both been noble long enough?”
“Meaning?”
“Marry me,” she said, and her eyes blazed purple fire at him. Alec caught his breath.
“Isabella …”he began, but then she was coming away from the side of the tub, catching him by the ears, and planting a remarkable kiss on his mouth.
“Do you love me or not?” she demanded a little shakily when she lifted her lips from his.
“Oh, God, more than my life,” he admitted, surrendering with not even a fleeting regret. “But marriage … Love, you can’t marry me. I’m a gutter rat, remember. Countesses don’t marry gutter rats.”
“Don’t you want to?” She looked wounded. Alec shook his head, stood up suddenly, and picked her up in his arms.
“Of course I want to,” he growled, stepping out of the tub with her and carrying her toward the bed. “But—”
“Alec Tyron, you told me once that you would marry me if I was free. Well, a promise is a promise, and I’m not going to let you go back on it!”
“Isabella …” He pulled the covers from the bed, dropped her on the mattress, and rolled in beside her, yanking the covers back up over them both. Chilled and damp, she cuddled close to him, and he wrapped his arms around her and pressed his mouth to her hair.
“Do you mean to keep your promise or not?”
She was a persistent little thing, he had to give her that.
“Isabella …”
“Would you stop saying ‘Isabella’ in that ridiculous way and give me an answer? Yes or no? and I warn you, if you say no, I’m going to put my clothes on and go home.”
“Hell,” he said, giving up. “Hell, yes. I’ll marry you, tomorrow if it’s possible and the next day if it’s not, and the rest of the world can go hang.”
“That,” she purred contentedly, “is what I was hoping you’d say.”
Her hand curled around the back of his head, and she pulled his
mouth down to meet hers. And then they didn’t talk again for a very long time.
When he surfaced at last, it was because he was too physically exhausted to continue. He leaned back against the pillows with her cradled on his shoulder, his eyes possessive as they studied her slender, naked body.
Suddenly it occurred to Alec that he was seeing her just exactly as he had fantasized on that long-ago trip from London to Amberwood: naked except for the amethyst necklace and earbobs he had given her.
For the first time in a long time, Alec genuinely smiled.
“What’s so amusing?” Isabella asked sleepily.
“ ’Tis merely that I’m happy, love,” he answered innocently, and, still grinning, leaned over and kissed the softness of her exquisite mouth.
About the Author
Ever since I was a little girl, I’ve loved to write. My first book was a ten-page effort written at age five for my grandmother. Throughout grade school, high school and college I wrote for various school publications. When I was eighteen, my first professionally published piece—a humorous anecdote—appeared in Reader’s Digest. Still, it never occurred to me that I might become a professional writer. I aimed for a career as a lawyer and was actually in law school when I sold my first book. When that happened, the world lost a would-be lawyer and gained a writer. That book, which is still in print, is Island Flame, and it was published when I was twenty-four. Since then, I’ve written over forty books, which regularly appear on the New York Times, USA Today, and Publisher’s Weekly bestseller lists, among others. The mother of three sons, I read, I write, and I chauffeur children. That’s my life.
Connect with Karen Robards Online
Website: http://www.karenrobards.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheKarenRobards
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