“Yes,” Lottie said. “Your offer was both more interesting and more lucrative than that of my cousin, was it not, Your Grace?”
“I like to think so,” Farne said, licking his lips. He looked from her to Ethan. “I quite appreciate that this is awkward for you, my dear. Would you care to come with me now and we may continue our discussions elsewhere? I am sure that you do not wish to prolong your farewells with my son.” Ethan waited.
“Oh, I don’t think so, thank you,” Lottie said briskly, whisking over to the door and opening it wide. “I am afraid that I cannot help you, Your Grace. I’ll bid you good day.”
The shock hit Ethan so hard he rocked back on his heels. For a moment he could have sworn that Lottie’s eyes were full of tears, although there was a defiantly wicked smile tilting her lips.
Farne had also recoiled like a snake whipping its head back for the strike. “You make a grievous mistake, Miss Palliser,” he hissed.
“Alas, I am renowned for it,” Lottie said regretfully. “Do you think I would be where I am today if I had not made many mistakes?”
Ethan stepped in front of her. “If you have anything else to say, Your Grace, you can say it to me. Otherwise I suggest that you leave.”
Farne’s eyes narrowed to slits of fury. “I have nothing to say to you,” he said.
This time the house shuddered so hard with the slamming of the door that some plaster fell from the ceiling to scatter on the rug.
“How very untidy,” Lottie said, staring at it. She made for the door. “I must call Margery to sweep it up—”
“Leave it,” Ethan said. He caught her wrist. “Why did you do it?” he said softly.
She evaded his eyes. The light went out of her face. Some sort of caution crept in, as though she was hiding something. “I meant what I said to James,” she said. “Can you truly see me living quietly in a country village, Ethan, darling? You know how bored I get and how easily I am distracted.” She freed herself and moved away from him. “Besides,” she said, back turned to him, “I do have some self-respect, and to be condescended to by James’s ghastly wife, to be perpetually reminded of my scandalous past with little gibes and sneers every day until I run mad…” Her shoulders hunched. “What sort of life would that be?” She turned aside, running her hand along the table and the exquisite little china figurines that decorated it. “Though no doubt I shall regret my stance in the morning,” she said, on a sigh. “I am too impetuous and pride cannot feed me.”
“Nor can principle,” Ethan said. “So why did you turn down Farne’s generous offer to betray me? I imagine that his terms were far more liberal than those your cousin was offering.”
Lottie froze. He saw her fingers tremble a little as she withdrew her hand. “You gained no financial advantage from refusing to help Farne,” Ethan continued. “You have betrayed me several times in the past. Why stop now?”
Lottie gave a little, light shrug. “Your father is a vile man. I did not care for him or his offer.”
“True, he is,” Ethan said, “but it shows damned poor judgment to let that sway you when he could have secured your future.” He paused. “How much did he offer you?”
“One hundred thousand pounds,” Lottie said. She shrugged again. “I thought he might cheat me,” she added. Even though he was not touching her, Ethan could feel the tension in her. “I did not trust him and I did not wish to help him. And your son—” Her voice caught a little. “He does not deserve to be betrayed to such a man.”
“Whereas I,” Ethan said, with a lopsided smile, “am able to take care of myself?”
Her face lightened. She smiled that wicked little smile he knew so well. “Of course you are, Ethan, darling. You always have been.” She came across to him and put her arms about his neck. Something had eased in her, as though she felt more secure again, on familiar ground.
“Come upstairs with me now,” she whispered. “We can celebrate vanquishing the joint forces of the dukedoms of Farne and Palliser. We are both disowned twice over.” She pressed closer to him. “We are renounced, rejected, cast out,” she murmured against his lips. She was smiling.
“We are irredeemable,” Ethan agreed, feathering kisses along her collarbone and down to the soft skin of her upper breasts that was exposed by the neckline of her pretty pink-and-white gown.
“Utterly disreputable,” Lottie whispered. “Both of us.”
Ethan released her. “Come riding with me,” he said. “I want to talk to you.”
She looked confused. “Talk? Now? I thought that we would go to bed.” She started to pull him toward the door, tugging on his hand.
“No,” Ethan said. “Lottie. We must talk.” There was an odd sort of urgency in her, he thought, as though she were trying to deflect him—or to reassure herself. He wondered if it was because she had burned all her boats to be with him. He still did not understand why she had done it. She had not answered a single one of his questions, turning him away with light answers, attempting to distract him. It was true that he was easily distracted when presented with Lottie’s body, so temptingly offered, but this time he had more urgent matters on his mind.
“We can talk later,” she murmured, pressing her abundant curves against him in a blatant attempt to arouse. “Afterward. I want you now.”
She kissed him again, and he knew that she was trying every trick, every artifice she knew, to seduce him so utterly that he forgot all that had happened before. He did not respond and after a moment she stiffened in his arms, and then took a couple of paces back. It was the first time that he had turned her down. Her eyes were bright with emotion, her mouth pink from his kisses and she looked terrified.
“What is it that you are hiding from me?” he asked.
Lottie spun away from him. “Nothing! I don’t know what you mean!”
“Yes, you do,” Ethan said. “Why did you choose me? Why did you turn down all the lovely material benefits offered by both my father and your cousin and settle for nothing but me?”
She shrugged a careless shoulder. He knew the gesture was false. “Your company amuses me,” she said. “For now.”
“You burned your boats for me.”
She was fidgeting, another sure sign of her agitation. Her restless fingers were shredding the petals off the bowl of roses on the table. “Another boat will come along when I need it. They always do—for me.”
“I think it is because you care for me,” Ethan said.
For a second Lottie looked bewildered, then scornful.
“Oh no,” she said. “You cannot order my feelings and emotions, Ethan. They are not for sale. You have bought everything else—” Her gesture encompassed the room, all it contained, her own body. “It is yours. Be satisfied with that. You cannot own me heart and soul.” Her tone eased slightly as though she was still trying to please him, still trying to be the perfect mistress. “Why should you wish for more?” she added lightly. “You have all you wanted.”
“I don’t want those things anymore,” Ethan said.
He saw her freeze like a rabbit trapped in the glare of the poacher’s lamp. “You don’t want me anymore,” she said. It sounded like an accusation. “You are going to tell me it is over and you are leaving.” For a moment he saw straight into her heart and saw the terror there.
Everyone leaves. Always. I am on my own.
It was the lesson that repeated itself for her time and again.
Then he saw her straighten and transform. Her chin came up with the courage and defiance he recognized.
“Ah well.” She shrugged. “Save yourself the trouble of spelling it out, darling. I knew it would have to happen soon. As I said, I shall manage. I always do.”
“Lottie,” Ethan said. He put a hand on her arm, drew her back to him. She came reluctantly. “That was not what I was going to say to you,” he said.
He could feel her trembling. Her body had gone soft with relief. “It was not?” she whispered.
“No.” He pressed kisses
against her hair. “Listen. I want you. I never stop wanting you.”
She rubbed her cheek against his shoulder. “Sweet of you. Yet you will not make love to me.”
Ethan loosed her. “Get ready,” he said abruptly. “We are going out in ten minutes.”
“Ready in ten minutes?” Lottie looked scandalized. “Are you mad? Where are we going?”
“We are having a picnic,” Ethan said, “and we are going to talk.”
“A picnic? Really?” Lottie threw him an appalled look over her shoulder. “Darling, only rustics have picnics! Think of the butter melting in the sun and the flies in the honey!”
“You mistake,” Ethan said. “Only the rich have picnics. No one else can afford the time.”
Lottie pulled a face. “It is a privilege I would happily forgo.” She made it sound like torture. “And ten minutes?” She was already making for the door. “I will not even have selected my outfit in ten minutes!”
Ethan smiled slightly as he listened to her shouting desperately for Margery as she made her way up the stairs. She had denied that she cared for him, but it was the only rational explanation he could see to explain why she had sent both her cousin and his father packing. But of course she would never admit it to him of her own free will. All the men who had used and discarded Lottie throughout her life had hurt her badly. He could hardly blame her now if she had erected barriers about her heart.
So he would have to expose his feelings to her first. And the truth of it was that he was no better at showing such vulnerability than she. He smiled ruefully at the irony of it. Two of the most experienced lovers in the world, and yet the one thing that they could not expose was their hearts.
IN THE PRIVACY OF HER ROOM, Lottie stood with her hands braced against the chest of drawers, trying to regain her breath and her composure.
“What is it that you are hiding from me?” Ethan had asked, and how was she to answer him?
I love you. I’ve loved you for weeks. I would go barefoot for you, to the ends of the earth….
Well, perhaps not barefoot. One had to be practical. One had to preserve standards. But she had always fancied the idea of travel.
Only of course she could not tell Ethan that. Such confessions were for love-struck debutantes not for an experienced divorcée who was rather farther into her thirties than she wanted to admit. She was a sophisticated woman not an ingenue. And she never ever wanted to be at the mercy of her feelings—or of a man’s whim—again.
Ethan had wanted to know why she had rejected the more than generous offers made by her cousin and his father. Of course he had wanted to know. She wanted to know herself how she could have been so foolish as to put love before self-interest for the very first time in her life. It was inexplicable. And yet as soon as Ethan had walked in the room she had known what she had to do. She had looked at him and seen that he was twice the man his father was. A hundred times better than Farne if truth were told, honorable, principled, entirely admirable. She loved him for it. She loved him for being all the things his father was not. Actually, she loved him for being all the things that she was not. So for the first time ever she had let her heart rule her head and her wallet, and she had turned both Farne and James Palliser away.
She straightened and walked slowly over to the open window, gazing down on the leaves of the apple trees, stirred by the summer breeze. She had to admit that she had not suddenly discovered scruples, a moral code. That would have been doing it too brown. But to betray Ethan, and Arland, too, was something that she could not have lived with. The boy had already suffered too much, and the man… Her throat closed with tears as she acknowledged how much she loved him.
She had tried to put Ethan off with light answers. They were her style so it was inconsiderate of him to remain unconvinced. Then when that had failed, she had tried to persuade him with her body. It was the most frightening thing of all that he could resist her. He had never withstood her seduction before. Previously she had not even had to try too hard. Damn his persistence. Damn him in general.
She vented her feelings by sweeping her silver-backed hairbrush from the chest onto the floor where it clattered to rest against the foot of the bed.
A mistress losing her allure…
Yet Ethan had told her that he still wanted her. He was not paying her off because he had tired of her. So there could be only one other explanation. This was the moment she had been dreading. He was going to tell her that he was leaving, taking Arland and escaping abroad.
Lottie could feel the breath tightening in her chest at the mere thought of abandonment. She knew that Ethan had to go. She had realized that when Arland had run away from Whitemoor and Ethan had taken him to safety. Arland would be in hiding now and his father eager to join him so that together they could leave the country. This, she thought, must be Ethan’s farewell to her. He was going to tell her that he had to go and she was going to be the perfect mistress and say that she understood.
She went to the wardrobe and took out her riding habit, deep green velvet, buttoned tight over the bodice, with a full sweeping skirt. She always chose carefully when she selected the outfit that marked her parting from a lover. And even though her hands shook a little as she buttoned herself into the bodice, she kept her head high and a little smile pinned to her face because really there was no other way to save her pride. She wanted Ethan to remember her well. If that was all he could take away with him, she wanted the memory to be good.
She took a deep breath and went out and down the stairs. Ethan was waiting for her at the bottom. He smiled at her. Her heart cracked a little. She put her hand in his. Just a little longer to pretend.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
THE BUTTER MELTED in the sun and there were flies in the honey but Ethan thought that Lottie had probably enjoyed the picnic more than she had expected. They had ridden a mile out of Wantage, to the edge of the parole boundary, and had found an idyllic corner of a field where a stream ran softly down toward the river. They had spread a rug beneath the wide branches of an ancient oak and ate bread and ham, cheese and honeyed figs, and drank the strong local beer.
They did not talk, but it was a comfortable silence. Ethan had been surprised. He had thought Lottie would be on edge, demanding to know what it was that he wanted to say to her. But from the moment she had come down the stairs in her saucy green riding outfit it was as though they had a pact not to spoil the peace of the afternoon.
It was as though it was going to be their last goodbye.
After they had eaten Ethan lay back in the grass, jacket discarded, looking at Lottie. She was lying, eyes closed, lashes a dark sweep against her cheek, her head pillowed on one of the saddlebags. He knew she was not asleep. A ladybird landed on her cheek and she smiled and brushed it gently away without opening her eyes. The smile was lazy and sensual, and the curve of her cheek was rounded and freckling in the sun, and Ethan felt an ache inside as he watched her. She turned her head an inch to the left and opened her eyes a tiny fraction and raised her arm to shield her gaze from the sun.
“What are you looking at?” Her voice was soft and slumberous, too, like the hot afternoon.
“You.”
She smiled, contented, and closed her eyes again. She moved her left hand to catch his, the fingers tangling with his in the grass, and Ethan was shot through with such strong emotion that he almost gasped aloud. Not desire, this. It was too strong and too profound to be mere lust. Besides, lust could be sated. He knew that if he wanted Lottie she would not refuse him. She never did. Anything he wanted he took. He had bought her and so she acquiesced to all his demands. Yet strangely, her giving, her subservience, had made him humble in the end rather than arrogant. He looked at the sweet, generous contours of her mouth and he felt the same sensation, stronger than before. No, not desire, but love.
Strange, so strange, that Lottie Palliser should be the one to teach him about love. He had had many women, too many, he supposed, and always they had bored him. Lotti
e had been different from the start. He had felt an affinity with her. He had felt recognition, instinctive, primitive, and he had thought it was because they were two of a kind. But they were not. Underneath the brazen exterior Lottie had been softer and more vulnerable than he had imagined, and certainly more vulnerable than she had ever wanted to be. He wanted to protect her and care for her though no doubt she would tell him she could look after herself. She had had to do so, as a child whose father deserted her, as a young woman seeking security in marriage, as a wife, deeply disillusioned and finally discarded. She had made mistakes but she had not let them destroy her.
“You are still looking at me.” This time she did not trouble to open her eyes.
“I like looking at you,” Ethan said. He took a deep breath. “I love you.”
As soon as the words were out he felt anxious. It was a new sensation to him and he did not care for it, but the words were said now and he would not take them back.
There was a stillness, as though the day was holding its breath. Then Lottie opened her eyes very, very wide.
“I beg your pardon?” she said.
“I love you,” Ethan said again. Even he could hear the note of desperation in his voice. “Say something,” he added quickly. “Please. I am so damnably poor at this.”
Lottie rolled over so that she was lying very close to him. He could see the flecks of gold in her brown eyes, see every little line about those eyes, every crease that deepened as she smiled, every freckle. He reached out to brush back her hair where the breeze teased it and saw that he was shaking a little.
“I never thought to be so happy,” she said, and there was wonder and the surprise of discovery in her voice.
Ethan tumbled her into his arms and she came to him, laughing a little, with eagerness and pleasure. “But do you love me, too?” he asked.
“Of course I do,” Lottie said. “Of course I love you. That was why—” She bit her lip and fell silent.
“That was why—what?”
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