The Designs of Lord Randolph Cavanaugh

by Stephanie Laurens

  So much lay between them—so much needed to be said—yet now was not the time.

  Patently, not the time.

  After a moment, somewhat gruffly, he offered, “I doubt we’ll see Mayhew again.”

  Slowly, he lowered his arms, releasing her from their cage. When she stepped back, he reached out and closed his hand about one of hers. “We’d better get back to the house.”

  She nodded, and they set off, walking slowly but steadily along the path.

  “He was intending to kidnap me and hold me in a cottage to force William John not to present the engine at the exhibition. He said he would let me go once the exhibition was over.”

  He managed to grind out, “Did he hurt or harm you in any way?”

  She shook her head. Then on a spurt of shaky laughter, she said, “I suspect I hurt him significantly more when I tripped him and fell on him.”

  “Good.” He would prefer to tear Mayhew limb from limb, but that could wait.

  As they tramped beneath the trees, through the soothing woodland quiet, his wits started to settle and function again. “Mayhew has to be working for someone. I’ve no idea whom.” He glanced at Felicia and briefly met her eyes. “I’m going to send to Raventhorne Abbey. It’s not far, and my brother can and will provide the men we need to ensure we get the engine and carriage to Birmingham safely—on time and in one piece.”

  Her gaze on the path, she nodded.

  They reached the edge of the woods and walked onto the lawn.

  Felicia waved at the jumble of items strewn on the grass. “He even left his things—his satchel, easel, and stool.”

  Rand halted and considered the sight. “Those are his tools of trade. He must have wanted very badly to stop the invention succeeding.”

  “I’ll send one of the footmen to gather them up. Who knows? If we ever catch up with Mayhew, they might prove useful in some way.”

  He saw no reason to argue. In his experience, artists were protective of their equipment. If they did catch up with Mayhew, his well-used easel, stool, and satchel might help to pry loose the name of whoever had hired him.

  They started up the long slope of the south lawn. Looking ahead, Felicia heaved a resigned sigh. “I suppose we’d better go and see what William John blew up this time.”

  Rand nodded because she expected him to. In reality, the Throgmorton engine and William John’s endeavors had sunk low in the scale of what was important to him; they now rode well below the lady whose hand he held firmly in his grasp.

  The lady his inner self had already decided he should never, ever, let go.

  CHAPTER 11

  The moon was riding high in a black and cloudless sky as Rand slowly paced the terrace. Night had fallen hours before, but the emotions roiling inside him, along with the inevitable conjectures—the what-ifs that rose to plague him—hadn’t yet settled enough to allow him to relax, much less sleep.

  His hands clasped behind his back, his gaze fixed unseeing on the flagstones before his feet, he slowly walked the balustraded expanse; at least he’d stopped pausing to stare through the darkness at the far end of the lawn.

  Beyond a bruise or two, Felicia had suffered no hurt—or so she’d assured him and Flora. They’d shared what had happened with the older lady, as well as with Shields, Johnson, and the rest of the staff; by mutual agreement, they’d decided not to distract William John with news of the attack on his sister. Although, on several occasions, he’d been present when Felicia, Rand, and Flora had discussed the artist, they seriously doubted he’d paid attention enough to remember, and the explosion that had distracted Rand and Flora and given Mayhew the chance to seize Felicia had ruptured several pipes and a gasket. William John needed to keep his mind on the engine; all final testing would have to be successfully completed by Tuesday evening—forty-eight hours from now. They were running out of time.

  Unsurprisingly, Mayhew had vanished. On returning to the house, Rand had dispatched Shields and Struthers to the Norreys Arms in the vain hope Mayhew had returned there. Instead, they’d learned that the artist hadn’t been putting up at the inn. Presumably, since returning to the area, he’d been staying at the cottage he’d hired to hold Felicia. That suggested the cottage would not be easy to find.

  Given the circumstances—given the timing—there was no sense in attempting to pursue Mayhew. Not at this time. Later, Rand vowed, there would be a reckoning, but for now, he had to let the artist go.

  By the time Shields and Struthers had returned with their report, Rand had had a letter for Ryder waiting. He’d sent Shields to Raventhorne to deliver the missive. By horse, the Abbey was only about three hours away.

  To Rand’s surprise, the knowledge that Ryder would have received Rand’s request by now, and the safety of both Felicia and the invention on the way to and at the exhibition was thus assured, hadn’t calmed him as much as he’d expected.

  Hadn’t eased the tension gripping him to any noticeable degree.

  He knew what had caused that tension to rise, accepted it as inevitable—an unavoidable consequence of the connection that had come to be—yet acceptance didn’t make the inner turmoil, the primitive and potent passions roiling in his gut, any easier to subdue.

  He paced on. With those primal emotions still churning within him, he felt like he imagined a caged tiger would—poised on the edge of dangerous violence.

  The faint scrape of a sole on stone had him whirling—to see Felicia step out of the drawing room into the moonlit night.

  Like him, she was still dressed as she had been at dinner; the pale green of her silk gown, its lines clinging to her slender figure, converted to a more silvery hue in the moon’s argent light.

  He’d halted. Her gaze had been on him from the first. Slowly, she glided to meet him.

  To his eyes, she was his goddess—the one he worshipped. His senses locked on her, and her nearness reached for him like a physical caress and set his nerves flickering.

  Waiting.

  Strung out and aching.

  Through the long windows, Felicia had seen Rand pacing implacably, the long planes of his face hard, chiseled, his expression almost forbidding. Something inside her had responded to the sight; as she neared, she sensed that the restless, turbulent compulsion that had driven her downstairs, that had intensified in the instant she’d seen him, pressing her to go to him, to soothe him and seek her own solace with him, was of a piece with the powerful feelings transparently gripping him.

  She didn’t stop until she stood before him, close enough that, even through the shadows, she could read his eyes, his face.

  Deliberately, in a gesture akin to a gentle challenge, she steadily held his gaze and let her lips lightly curve. “I couldn’t sleep, either.” She’d pitched her voice low, her tone suggesting she viewed her state—and his, too—as inevitable, a truth she’d only just realized.

  She turned her head and looked down the lawn—to where Mayhew had seized her and dragged her into the woods. For a moment, she remained silent, marshaling her thoughts and her words, then she drew in a deep breath and said, “I know you don’t want to hear this, but I want to—indeed, I need to—thank you. Properly.”

  Since returning to the house, she’d attempted to thank him several times, but every time, he’d managed to adroitly sidestep and divert the conversation.

  In the cool of the night, she wasn’t about to be gainsaid. Evenly, she continued, “If you hadn’t been watching—hadn’t cared enough to spend your afternoon loitering in the woods being supremely bored—if you hadn’t been there to see and come racing after me, I wouldn’t have escaped Mayhew. He would have caught up with me and seized me again. Then he would have carted me off and done as he’d said, and the Throgmorton engine would have remained at the Hall and not been presented at the exhibition.”

  She drew in a deeper breath and faced him, her gaz
e steady on his face. “The invention would have failed. You and your investors would have lost your funds. Your reputation would have been severely damaged. William John would have been ruined and any hope he has of becoming an established inventor would have vanished. The household would have been ruined, too—we would have had to sell up. The workshop would be lost, my family as it has been would cease to be, and I...” She focused relentlessly on his shadowed caramel eyes. “I would have been damaged goods. There would have been no future for me, and if William John and I managed to avoid ending destitute, it would only be by the charity of others.”

  His jaw tightened as if he was holding back words—a dismissal he knew she wouldn’t accept. Her own expression firming, determined to say all she felt she must, she went on, “So hear me, Rand Cavanaugh, and know that, from the bottom of my heart, I thank you for being there when I needed you to be.”

  Even as the words fell from her lips, she realized that was, for her, the critical and most fundamental point. He was the first and only man in her life to have shown her such simple yet steadfast loyalty. No matter they’d known each other for mere weeks, she knew beyond question that he would always be there if she needed him, that she could rely on him as she had never been able to rely on any other.

  The insight left her feeling both vulnerable and invincible.

  Rand looked down at her, into pretty green eyes, silver-pale in the moonlight, his self, his senses, locked on her while he fought to keep back the words he felt he could not yet—did not yet have the right to—say. She and William John and the household at the Hall would never be destitute; he wouldn’t allow it.

  Yet while he battled to suppress those words, others—fueled by a source even more powerful—rose to his tongue. “I don’t want your thanks. I don’t want your gratitude.” Even to his ears, the words sounded gravelly and dark. Belatedly, he tried to rein himself—his true inner self—back, but it was too late. Far too late. He held her gaze and succinctly stated, “I just want you.”

  Her eyes widened. Then she blinked and tipped her head, regarding him with a frown slowly investing her eyes and her expression.

  He suddenly realized she might misconstrue; the possibility horrified, and he hurried to clarify... For a moment, he was lost, then, as if a dam broke, words rushed to his tongue. “That kiss in the woods today—and the one before. In neither case did I kiss you because I intended to seduce you...or rather, I do hope to seduce you, but not in any way to your detriment.” The more rational part of him wondered where the hell he was going with this, yet her expression said she was listening, and the words kept flowing. “I said we should leave dealing with whatever was between us until later—until this business with the engine was over and done with, and we would be free to think of ourselves.” His eyes locked with hers, he shook his head. “This afternoon, when I thought I’d lost you, my world came crashing down. I had thought other things”—his wave encompassed the world beyond the lawn—“were more important—or, at least, equally important—but in that, I was wrong. This afternoon taught me exactly how wrong.”

  All of him—all he was, every last particle of his being—was focused on her. Blindly, he reached for her hands, gathered her fingers in his, and gently squeezed. “Regardless of the brevity of our acquaintance, something in me knew you for what you were in the first instant I saw you. You are the most critical thing—far and away the most important thing—to me. To my life, to my future—to the future I want to have.”

  His eyes on hers, he raised one of her hands to his lips and brushed a soft kiss to the backs of her fingers. “I want you. I want you to be mine—to be my wife. I want you to share your life with me and become the lynchpin of mine.” He lowered her hand, but continued to hold her gaze as he softly said, “After this afternoon, that’s what I want. You.”

  Felicia had stopped breathing; as the last word sank into her soul and resonated there, she dragged in a shallow, shaky breath and tightened her grip on his fingers. Holding fast to that anchor, holding hard to his gaze, she gathered her courage. Sincerity and honesty were the strengths behind his words; standing before him in the moonlight, she wanted to—felt compelled to—give him the same. “No simple phrase can carry enough meaning to respond to that.” Her heart thudded in her chest, its cadence a compulsion all its own. “You arriving at the Hall, you being the man you are, was the catalyst that opened my eyes on so many levels. Because of you, I found my talent for helping with inventions and, finally, gained some understanding of my father and William John. Because of you, I’ve lifted my head and seen that my life’s horizons are much broader than I’d known. But most importantly, you and your regard have brought me to see the possibility of a different type of partnership.”

  She paused, her eyes steady on his as, in her mind, she looked back over the last days. “I didn’t know how you felt—that you felt this way about me—but you had already said enough to make me consider, to make me think about how I felt about you. And yes, this afternoon brought a revelation for me as well. When I realized what Mayhew intended and how his plans would inevitably affect me and the future I wanted...in that moment, just how desperately I wanted that future struck home.”

  Again, she paused, needing to ensure that her next words carried the full weight of her own sincerity, her own honesty. “The events of the afternoon rendered in stark clarity what I need to make me whole—to give me the chance to live my life, to live a full and rounded life, to the very best of my abilities.”

  He shifted fractionally closer; his fingers gripped hers more tightly. The intensity of his focus on her never wavered. “And what is that thing you need to make you whole?”

  She let her lips curve, let her eyes light with the emotion behind her answer. “You.”

  His smile bloomed, then she was in his arms. She moved into his embrace as his arms closed about her. She tipped up her head as he lowered his, and his lips found hers.

  Anticipation and promise—both were equally vibrant in that kiss. Equally heady.

  His lips moved on hers, tantalizing and tempting. She kissed him back, following his lead, wanting, needing, hungry for more.

  The kiss drew out, sensations stretching and spinning—an unspoken vow in the silvery night.

  She broke for just a second to murmur against his lips, “I want you. I need you.” She gripped his lapels for emphasis.

  He feathered kisses over her jaw and cheeks. “Not half as much as I need and want you.”

  Their lips met again, fused again. This time, it was he who drew back, just a fraction, to say, “You called this a different partnership. That’s what I want, too. I want a marriage of minds as well as bodies.”

  She looked up at him and wouldn’t have been surprised if he saw stars in her eyes. “Sharing inventions as well as a family?”

  “Precisely.” He held her gaze for several seconds—as if committing to that and reading her corresponding acceptance—then he bent his head and their lips met again, and this time, metaphorically, he took her hand and drew her into the dance.

  Into the swirling whirl of their desires, into the heat of their rising passions.

  His lips turned demanding, commanding, and, eager to learn what more lay in store, she parted her lips, and he plunged into her mouth and explored.

  He kissed her deeply, in patent relief and with a passion their words had freed from all restraint.

  Gladly, exuberantly, she followed him into the burgeoning flames, returning each caress with equal fervor. For long moments, they communed in the dark, exploring and learning, clinging to each other as their senses waltzed and their wits fell away.

  With deliberate focus, she set her senses free—let them soar.

  Opening herself to the moment, sinking herself into the kiss, she set herself to savor every moment, every nuance.

  Every thudding beat of her heart, the steadily escalating heat of the kiss
, the increasing hardness of the muscled arms that surrounded her and held her to him. The potent thrust of his tongue that she welcomed with her own, prelude to a more intimate joining.

  She wanted to—needed to—get closer. She pressed herself to him and gloried in the hard ridge that impressed itself against the softness of her belly. She might be an innocent, but she was no prude; the raw evidence of his desire for her set her pulse racing.

  Sliding her hands up, over the contours of his heavily muscled chest—drinking in its splendor yet again—she raised her palms to his cheeks and framed them, the better to meet his heated forays as he devoured her with single-minded passion.

  Her senses, her wits, had drawn in; she no longer had any interest beyond the merging of their mouths—beyond following the path that had opened between them and merging their bodies and, ultimately, their lives.

  Between them, the heat and an increasingly explicit hunger grew and swelled. Welled, until it became a pounding beat in her blood, a driving force too powerful to deny.

  On a gasp, she pulled back, although their lips parted by less than an inch. They were both breathing raggedly. Giddy, her lips all but brushing his, she whispered, “Is it wrong to want to give in to this—this hunger, this need? To fling all restraint to the wind and follow this path to its ultimate end?”

  She raised her lids enough to see him do the same. Their gazes met and held.

  He looked into her eyes and, with simple candor, replied, “We’re going to marry. I’ll be your husband, and you’ll be my wife. Between us, indulging our desires—yours for me, and mine for you—will now and forever be our right.”

  She let a heartbeat pass, savoring the prophesy of his words, then she slid her hand to his nape and drew his lips to hers. “Good,” she declared and kissed him.

  In open invitation and none-too-subtle demand.

  Rand responded, feeling a rightness and an eagerness he’d never before felt, but they were on the open terrace. Gently, he drew back, raising his head to look down at her face—at her swollen lips and shining eyes. At the glow in her cheeks and her desire-etched expression. “Your room or mine?”