by Maya Rodale
“I’m too plump,” she mumbled. “I’m too . . .” She was going to list all the reasons he couldn’t possibly want to do this with her.
Darcy pulled away from her. Held her face in his hands. Looked her in the eye.
“No, you are not,” he said in his I-am-a-lord-I-am-right voice.
“Oh,” she sighed. Oh, why hadn’t anyone ever said that to her before? Oh, why hadn’t she known? Oh, why did it have to mean so much to hear him say it? Oh, why did he have to make her feel like this?
Like she couldn’t remember why she had refused him, even though she’d had very good reasons, she was certain of it.
“I have longed to kiss you here,” he whispered, pressing his lips to the delicate skin just above the line of her bodice. Sparks. She felt more sparks. In a hoarse whisper he continued, “I long to kiss you everywhere.”
She felt his words. Everywhere.
“Bridget . . .” Her name was a plea, a question, in a voice laden with longing.
Then he kissed her.
She could taste how much he wanted her. He was confounding. Maddening. But dear Lord above, did the man know how to kiss a woman. The more he kissed her, the more she forgot about slights, perceived or real. She forgot about ladylike rules of behavior. Nothing mattered anymore except this strange, new wonderful feeling of his lips against hers. A tingling of her skin. A heat in her belly. A feeling of being wanted, desperately wanted. She couldn’t get enough of it.
She kissed him back. She touched him, feeling his hard chest beneath her palms. His heart pounded. He wanted her and there was no pretending otherwise. Thinking soon became impossible, save for one thought: Yes. More. Bridget felt hot inside. She wanted more, and yet the more he kissed her, the more she wanted.
Then he gently pushed aside the sleeves to her gown and dropped a kiss on her bare shoulder. Sparks. His hands rested on her shoulders, slowly sliding the silk away, moving lower. Smolder.
There was just enough light to see him gaze up her, asking with his eyes for permission. She sighed. That was all, just a little sigh of pleasure.
“I wanted to do this ever since that day in the lake.”
He teased the centers of her breasts with his thumb, lightly, back and forth. She sucked in her breath as her nipples stiffened under his touch and the cool air.
Then when he did the same with his mouth, she gasped, and something in her core tightened. She moaned in pleasure. And forgot to breathe. She’d had no idea that he had wanted her like this, and had wanted her for so long.
And that was almost as arousing as that wicked thing he was doing with his mouth. To her breast. In the butler’s pantry. How so very un-Darcy.
“Bridget . . .”
He kissed her again. She pulled him in close, savoring the sensation of his body against hers. She felt him, hard, pressing into the vee of her thighs. She couldn’t help but move against him, driven by instinct and desire. “Yes . . .” he rasped. “Please . . .”
His hands skimmed up her thighs; she felt his hands pause where her silk stockings ended and her bare skin began. This was dangerous territory now, wicked territory, unknown territory. Whatever it was, every nerve in her body was aching for more of his touch.
“Yes,” she whispered.
As they kissed, his fingers pressed upon her secret place and she moaned softly. He knew just what to do, just how to touch her, to fuel her desire, to make that maddening tension within become tighter and tighter. Here, just as she was, bare to him, there were no rules to follow. She gave in to instinct and surrendered to her desire for this man.
And then it was all a blur of sensations: the feeling of his soft hair between her fingers; his lips upon hers; his fingers, there, driving her mad in the most wonderful way; the sound of her skirts rustling as she moved; the sound of his breath; the pounding of her heart.
And then she could take it no more. She cried out in pleasure; he captured the sound with a kiss.
Bridget melted against him, breathing hard, trying to comprehend what had just happened to her. Something had changed. Everything had changed.
“Bridget . . .”
Desire for his touch, his kiss, for him was making her lose her wits. Gone was the woman who demanded love. Gone was the woman who had tried to hold herself to higher standards, and who played by the rules, even if she didn’t understand them. This potent kiss, that exquisite pleasure, made her forget herself, but it couldn’t just change everything.
That he loved her mouth didn’t change the fact that he didn’t think she would make a good countess. A good wife.
Bridget broke away.
“You cannot just kiss me in the butler’s pantry and expect . . .” She didn’t know what else to say. And it was more than just kissing that they had done.
“I have no expectations. I just . . .” He stepped away from her and pushed his fingers through his hair. Then, slowly, he turned. “You have an effect on me, Bridget.”
“My apologies.”
“Don’t apologize. I think you are what I need.”
She needed to catch her breath. She needed her heart to slow down. She needed to think. And she could not do any of these things while he was so close, so bare to her.
“We should return to the others.”
She turned and opened the door and stepped out into the foyer. Darcy did not stop her.
The good thing about having hair that never looked quite done was that if someone were to mess it up in the throes of a passionate encounter in a closet, no one would be any wiser.
Or so Bridget hoped.
Lady Francesca was standing there, in all her elegant glory. She tilted her head curiously.
“I should be surprised to see one my guests emerge from the butler’s pantry,” she said. “But with you, Lady Bridget, I’m not surprised at all.”
Gad, now she would have to lie about trying to steal the silver—anything was better than the truth.
“Bridget, wait—” Darcy said, having thrown open the door and rushed through it. He stopped suddenly as well. Bridget didn’t need to turn and look at him to know that.
Lady Francesca’s eyes widened. She opened her mouth but closed it quickly, for once at a loss for words. Well, there was one guest she was shocked to see emerge from the butler’s pantry in the middle of the dinner party.
Bridget held her breath, waiting for a reaction. Then Lady Francesca, having collected herself, smiled. Oh, this was terrible.
“Don’t worry Lady Bridget. You can be assured that I won’t breathe a word of this to anyone. Come, Darcy, the gentlemen are having their port. Bridget, all the ladies are in the drawing room for tea, wondering what has become of you.”
The carriage ride home was agony. While their carriage was large, luxurious, and well sprung, it was also packed with the family, all of whom had burning, unspoken questions about the state of her coiffure (a mess), her lengthy disappearance during dinner (no comment), her silence (Darcy had left her speechless. Still.).
Finally, it was Amelia who broke the silence.
“What did Darcy want with you, Bridge?”
Oh, just to ravish me in a closet. Just to bring me to such pleasure as I have never known. As one does.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she replied, staring out the window, not that she could see very much at this late hour. She hoped, desperately, that no one could see the hot blush on her cheeks as she thought about what Darcy had wanted with her. Just the way she was.
It was Claire who explained, patiently. “You left the table. And then he left the table. And then time passed. And then you were both out of sorts and, dare I say, slightly disheveled, for the rest of the evening. Everyone noticed.”
“I don’t know what you are talking about,” Bridget repeated.
“Darcy would be an excellent
match for you,” Josephine said. But she also thought Mr. Collins would be a good match.
“Except that it wouldn’t be,” Bridget replied. And she could not explain that while he might love to kiss her and do other wickedly wonderful things with her, he would be embarrassed to call her his wife. He might value family, but he would be embarrassed by hers, scandal-plagued as they were. He lusted after her, and would come to regret it. “I could not be happy married to a man who valued reputation and wealth and estates above all else.”
“You don’t know him at all, do you?” Amelia asked softly. Amelia! Bridget turned to her, incredulous.
“And you do? I have not seen you exchange more than a few sentences with him.”
“He is the reason I returned home after I ran away.”
The silence had gone from awkward to stunned with this revelation. This was the first Amelia had spoken of her great escape since she returned.
“He’s not the only reason but he did find me, and reminded me what I was missing, should I not return soon. He did not speak of what the ton would say or what a lady ought to do. He spoke of love, Bridget. You all ought to thank him.”
“Do you mean to say you would not have come home?” James said, sounding bewildered and possibly heartbroken.
“The possibility crossed my mind,” she admitted. “But I won’t be leaving you anytime soon. I shall plague the lot of you for years to come.”
Then she turned to look out the window.
So Darcy had gone to rescue her sister. He had done a great service to her family to bring her home safely and not breathed a word of her disappearance. And he hadn’t mentioned it. If he were really the man she thought him, he would not have tried to salvage Amelia’s reputation; he would have left her to the consequences of her actions.
“It sounds like he is quite the hero,” the duchess remarked.
He had saved her sister for no reason other than they had asked for his assistance. He kissed her like he was a drowning man and she was air. And he liked her, just the way she was. In fact, he loved her.
If he was not the man she thought, then perhaps she was not the woman she believed herself to be. She had clung to her own stubborn view of him, warped by her insecurities. She had not tried to understand him, but dismissed him as another judgmental English lord and simply rejected him out of her wounded pride. Bridget choked on a sob. She had been such a fool.
Chapter 21
The dinner party was horrible, save for the part where Darcy nearly ravished me in the butler’s pantry. After he declared that he likes me just the way I am. What does this mean? WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?
Lady Bridget’s Diary
The revelations about Darcy continued the next morning, making it impossible for Bridget to ignore how very wrong she’d been about him. She’d been alone in the drawing room, writing in her diary, when Pendleton interrupted.
“You have a caller, Lady Bridget.”
“Who is it?”
Darcy? Her heart leapt at the possibility. Or did it lurch? She was expecting to see him this morning. After what had happened last night . . . there were things to be said. Questions to be asked. Honor demanded it. But so did love.
Love?
“Mr. Rupert Wright.”
“Please show him in.”
The butler returned with her guest a moment later, and then stepped away, leaving the door to the drawing room ajar.
“Rupert! It’s so good to see you. It has been so long.”
It had been a fortnight, in fact.
She crossed the room and clasped his hands. It was so good to see her friend. But it was also . . . strange. She and Rupert shared something and yet she had indulged in all sorts of liberties with his brother, just last night. And in a butler’s pantry, no less.
“It has indeed. I have been traveling. With Darcy.”
“Oh.” She faltered at the mention of his name. “Yes, I saw that he is back in town. I saw him at dinner last night.”
I felt him at dinner last night.
“Well, that explains his dark mood,” Rupert said.
Oh God, what does that mean? She wanted to grab Rupert by the lapels and demand he tell her everything about Darcy’s dark mood, and how dark was it, and did he happen to say anything about her? But then again, perhaps it was all nothing. Darcy was always dark and brooding.
“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean,” she said, joking. But Rupert didn’t catch her meaning.
“I know you don’t,” he said, utterly serious. She suddenly became aware of the beat of her heart and the temperature in the room. She had never seen Rupert serious. “And that is why I’m here. There are some truths you must be made aware of, Bridget.”
“I’ll just sit down then,” she said in a small voice, and sat on the settee.
Rupert paced.
“For the past few months, I have been blackmailed.”
She gasped dramatically because the news shocked her and the situation seemed to call for it. Rupert continued to pace back and forth, taking long strides across the carpet.
“Someone possessed knowledge about me that would have ruined me,” Rupert said. She immediately thought of murders or robberies or other heinous crimes. But she could not picture Rupert engaged in such nefarious activities. It was . . . Rupert. “I would have had to leave the country. Indefinitely. I would have had to leave behind my friends, my beloved brother, my life here.”
“Is this what you needed the money for? I thought it was for gaming debts.”
“Yes.”
“But Darcy wouldn’t give it to you.”
“Oh, he did. For most of the year, he gave me the funds I required, no questions asked.” Oh. Bridget clasped a handful of fabric from her skirts, needing to hold on to something. She had wrongly accused him of refusing to help his own brother, saying it was the worst thing she could imagine. She felt, in that moment, quite awful. “I had to let him believe that it was for gaming debts. But eventually, he cut me off and I cannot blame him. He wanted me to be responsible for my own actions. But once he learned the truth, he did the Darcy thing.”
“What is the Darcy thing?” Bridget asked, a hitch in her voice. She suspected she knew.
“Ride in. Issue orders in that lordly, commanding way of his. Save the day. Take care of everyone, except for himself.”
She turned away, to look out the window into the garden, but saw nothing of the scenery outside. If anything, she saw a scene from days, weeks earlier when she had accused him of being cruel to his own brother. If that is what you are determined to believe . . . She had been blind.
She recalled Amelia saying, You don’t know him at all, do you?
So very, very blind.
But then again, he’d never let her see these things.
“But you see, Bridget, I don’t think he put a stop to the blackmail because of the money, which matters little as we have plenty of it,” Rupert continued. “I don’t even think he did it entirely just for me, even though I know he would lay down his life for me unblinkingly. I think he did it for you.”
“I don’t see how this has to do with me.”
“I was going to propose to you,” Rupert said. Her breath caught. “I needed to wed for the sake of my reputation. I care for you greatly. I thought we would get along. But I would never make you happy the way a man ought to make a woman happy.”
“Whatever do you mean?” She had asked James about this and he’d hardly been forthcoming with an answer.
Rupert’s cheeks turned red and he looked away.
“I do not have . . . romantic inclinations toward women.”
She knit her brow, confused.
“It is not something to be spoken of,” he said. “And it was the reason for the blackmail.”
And then her heart broke for him as much as for her. While s
he had written their names over and over in her diary, he was dealing with grave life or death matters. She had been blind to that, too.
Rupert quit his pacing and dropped into the chair opposite her. He leaned forward, gaze locking with hers.
“Can you imagine what torture it would have been for him to be in love with his sister-in-law? And to know that I wasn’t making you happy? Or how unfortunate for you to be wed to a man who loved you only as a friend?”
She thought to protest that he would have made her happy. But then she thought better of it because if she was understanding him correctly, Rupert would never, say, become overcome with passion for her in a butler’s pantry. Or at a gazebo in a rainstorm in the afternoon. He might love her, but only as a friend. Not the wild, tumultuous, confusing, maddening, yet wonderful, falling-head-over-heels kind of love she wanted . . . the kind of love she might possibly feel for Darcy.
“I care for you deeply,” Rupert continued. “Which is why I am telling you this. And why I will not propose to you, or any woman. You deserve real love and true happiness. And so does my brother.”
“This is . . . unexpected.”
That was the understatement of the year. She found herself shocked, confused, and terrified of the implications of what he was telling her. She might have been gravely wrong about Darcy. And thus, she might have thrown away her chance at true happiness.
“Our father raised him to think only of his duty to the estate and to the family name. There was no Colin, there was just Darcy. If that makes sense.”
He wasn’t pushing her away because he was embarrassed by her, but because of his own desire. His offer of marriage was so tortured because he was, in effect, potentially sacrificing his brother to make it. His battle wasn’t between lust for her and what everyone in the haute ton thought, it was between everything he’d been raised to believe and to value and his love. For her.
“I see,” she said. Two little words. I. See. But it was everything.
“I think he loves you,” Rupert continued. Then, looking into her eyes, and possibly the depths of her heart, he added, “And I think, Bridget, that you might love him, too.”
