The Bargain

by Jane Ashford

  Tears gathered in her eyes. Her lips parted as if to speak, but she didn’t.

  “Ariel,” he murmured helplessly.

  Looking utterly desolate, she turned away. She began walking toward the door of the room, but her steps were uncertain and erratic. She moved like someone who had taken a stunning blow, he thought.

  “I’ll get Hannah—” he attempted again.

  “No!” she said fiercely. “Nor Ellen. They’ll just tell your mother and all your family. I can’t bear that.”

  She continued into the hall. He followed and watched anxiously as she began to stumble up the stairs.

  He couldn’t leave her, he thought. But he couldn’t stay.

  Ariel tripped on a stair tread and caught the banister to keep from going down.

  Alan tightened his jaw. He was a man of science, he thought. He was capable of remaining in control no matter what the circumstances. “You should lie down,” he said firmly and went to support her up the steps.

  The first room they reached on the upper floor was Bess Harding’s former bedroom, with its gigantic four-poster bed. Ariel turned that way, and he guided her through the door. “You should rest,” he told her.

  She raised her head to look at him, her face like a flower. Almost too soft to hear, she murmured his name.

  Alan gritted his teeth. He was going to have to lift her onto the bed, he realized. The image was so vivid, and so enflaming, that he couldn’t move.

  Ariel turned a little. She was looking at him as if he were some answer to her grief, some compensation for all that she had lost. Alan’s heart was pounding heavily, his breath had shortened. If only she wouldn’t look at him like that.

  She put her hands on his chest, then slid them up around his neck. The look in her eyes was less tragic now. Her full lips were parted and expectant. She leaned against him, feeding the fire burning through his veins.

  Alan’s resistance wavered—and broke. His arms came around her, pressing her tight against him. He captured her mouth and kissed her hard. She melted against him with no hesitation whatever, and the kiss went on and on until any hope of restraint was scattered to the winds.

  Finally, after an eternity, Alan raised his head to look down at her. Ariel’s eyes were closed, her mouth a little open. She was heartrendingly beautiful. Moving fast, he went to shut and latch the chamber door, then he came back and pulled her close again, trailing his lips lightly, slowly, across her mouth, feeling his whole body prickle with the thrill of it. He moved down her neck with quick, featherlight kisses, to her shoulder and then to the swell of breast above the neck of her gown. His hands roamed over her body, savoring it, smoothing her hair, caressing her back, cupping her waist. Ariel arched up against him, wanting more, and any remaining control he might have had went up in flames.

  He took her lips again, increasing the urgency of the kiss, feeling her fingers tighten in his hair. He slid his hands down to her buttocks and pressed her hard against him. Ariel made a small, tremulous sound.

  Alan buried one hand in the coils of her shining brown hair, reveling in the silken feel of it. He scattered the pins so that it came tumbling down around her shoulders, as he had so often imagined. He pushed the sleeves of her gown off her shoulders, exposing the rosy tips of her breasts, tight and erect. He showered more quick kisses on the soft mounds, then took one of the buds in his mouth and teased it with his tongue, exulting at Ariel’s gasp of surprise and pleasure.

  His lips found hers again, and he tempted the tip of her tongue with his. Her wholehearted response sent a galvanizing pulse of desire through him. All the hounds of hell couldn’t have stopped him now.

  Finding the fastenings of her dress, Alan undid them. As its folds pooled on the floor, he shed his own coat and shirt. Bending, he caught the hem of her shift and pulled it upward in one long gesture. Ariel raised her arms to let him cast the garment aside, her eyes wide and dark on his. When he pulled her to him again, the intimate sensation of his skin on hers enflamed him even further. She put her arms around him and ran her hands over the muscles of his back.

  He pushed her back onto the wide four-poster bed. In the fading light, her hair gleamed and her skin was cream and roses. He reveled in the beauty of her nakedness, the sweet curves and enflaming secret places. “Alan,” she murmured in a voice that struck deep inside him, and he knew all was lost. Joining her on the bed, he slid his thigh between her knees as he pressed her to the coverlet, his lips covering hers.

  Ariel’s hair had spread in a silken fan across the pillows. Alan breathed in its sweet scent as he kissed her neck and fragile collarbone. His lips roamed over her, eliciting gasps of pleasure as they fluttered on her pink nipples, whispered over the enticing softness of her stomach and hip.

  He trailed his fingers like a feather along her inner thigh, up and down, up and down. Ariel shivered and moved so that the next time his fingers encountered the taut flesh between her legs. Then, she cried out at his touch and said his name in a way that drove him nearly mad.

  Alan heard his own breath rasping in the quiet of the room. Jerking at the fastenings of his breeches, he rose above her, crushing her lips in a last tormenting kiss. Then, at last, he entered her—and came up against resistance. Like a man stumbling, he tried to catch himself, but in the next instant, the force of his longing had broken through. He hesitated.

  “Please,” Ariel whispered, clasping his waist, kissing his arm and shoulder and neck.

  He began to move slowly. She matched him. Together, their tantalizing rhythm quickened. Then Alan had to go faster, and she clung to him with surprising strength as he guided them both through a flood of sensation that rose and rose until it flowered into ecstasy. Waves of pleasure shuddered through him, and he heard himself groan her name before he collapsed and lay still.

  Fourteen

  Ariel woke alone, in dimness. She lay still for a moment, disoriented. She was not in her own room. The early evening light from the window was in the wrong place, and this bed was too high. She had an instant’s fright, and then memory returned. She was on the four-poster bed in her mother’s old room—naked with a corner of the coverlet thrown over her—and Alan was somewhere nearby. She reached out across the broad expanse of the bed. It was empty. Perhaps he had stepped out for a moment.

  Drawing her arm back, Ariel hugged herself under the silken folds. She could still feel his hands on her skin, his lips on hers. Her senses were filled with the power of him and the amazing responses he had drawn from her body.

  Minutes passed, and there was no sound. Where could Alan be? Ariel wondered. Sitting up, she crawled across the huge bed to the opposite side where there was a small table holding candles and a tinderbox. After a few fumbles, she got a candle lit and held it up to survey the room. It was empty but for her. Her clothes had been picked up from the floor where they had scattered and hung over the back of a straight chair. Of Alan’s clothes, there was no sign whatsoever.

  Ariel ran her eyes over the room again. But there was nothing more to see. He had dressed, and he was gone.

  She put the candlestick down, sitting with her legs dangling over the side of the bed. He couldn’t be gone. He couldn’t have left her. She bit one knuckle, thinking, and noticed her mother’s agate ring, which had somehow found its way to her own finger. She had begged him not to leave her alone, Ariel thought. He must be here somewhere.

  Slipping from the high bed, Ariel dressed quickly. Taking the candlestick, she moved quietly to the door and opened it a crack. The hall was empty. It was very quiet. Standing still, she strained her ears, listening. Nothing. She crept down the stairs, drawing only a few creaks from the old boards, and paused in the entryway. The place might have been completely empty, she thought, as empty as she felt at this moment.

  Then she caught a murmur of sound, a suggestion of life. Moving toward the back of the house, she lost and found the threa
d more than once before she realized that it was coming from the kitchen in the basement.

  Had Alan gone down to visit Hannah? she wondered incredulously. The idea was ludicrous, yet when she stood at the top of the kitchen stairs, she could definitely hear a male voice coming from there. Militant, she marched down, pushed open the door, and confronted the pair sitting at the kitchen table—Hannah and Nathaniel Gresham.

  For a moment, they all stared at each other. The candlestick wavered in Ariel’s hand, sending shadows jumping on the wooden floor and walls.

  “I… I was looking for Lord Alan,” she managed at last. And then wished she hadn’t said it.

  “Don’t believe he’s here,” replied the viscount. He looked at Hannah, who shook her head.

  “Oh. I thought he… was.”

  “He left hours ago,” responded Hannah, without any special emphasis. Ariel wondered whether she was glad or sorry that no one had noticed the length of his stay earlier. Or perhaps she was going mad, she thought, putting a hand to her head. Perhaps none of it had happened at all. But her own body told her differently.

  “Is anything wrong?” wondered Hannah.

  “No.” She shook her head to reinforce the lie. “No.” He had left her. Not only that, he had sneaked out, as if he were ashamed of what they had done.

  Lord Highgrove cleared his throat. “I… er… I decided to take you up on your offer,” he ventured.

  Ariel stared at him.

  “Came to visit Hannah,” he pointed out.

  She mustn’t give anything away, Ariel thought. It would be too humiliating if they realized how she felt just now. She let out a long breath. “How… how nice,” she said. “Are you having tea? I should like some.”

  Hannah rose to find another cup.

  “You said I should come,” added Lord Highgrove.

  Ariel tried to smile pleasantly at him. “Yes, it’s very…” Then she finally remembered their earlier conversation. “Oh, yes,” she went on in a different tone. “Of course.” She made a massive effort to gather her wits.

  Hannah put a tin of chocolate biscuits on the table along with Ariel’s tea. All of them sat down. Lord Highgrove’s hands opened and closed nervously on the tabletop. “If Violet’s grandmother could see this…” he muttered.

  “She wouldn’t approve?” asked Ariel, conscious of Hannah’s suddenly alert expression.

  “She doesn’t approve of anything.”

  “She must approve of you,” Ariel insisted.

  He gave a mirthless laugh. “Me least of all. And if she knew what I was doing here, she’d…”

  “What?”

  He blinked at her.

  “What would she do?” asked Ariel. “Call off her granddaughter’s marriage to the eldest son of a duke, who’s rich besides?”

  “She would make my life a living hell,” he burst out, then flushed, looking from her to Hannah. “I beg your pardon.”

  “And how would she do that, precisely?” Ariel asked, ignoring his apology for his language.

  “By continually mentioning my lapses,” he answered. “By pointing out my deficiencies and implying that I am not a paragon of perfection in absolutely every area of life. By dropping hints to Violet that she really ought to bring me to heel, and making her feel as if getting married is a dead bore—no, worse, a positive penance!”

  “Why do you allow it?” asked Ariel.

  “What?” he said a bit wildly.

  The eldest Gresham son seemed to be an admirable fellow, she thought. If she were less agitated over her own dilemmas, she might go more slowly with him. But tonight all her patience was gone. And Hannah watching her like a hawk didn’t help her temper. “I don’t wish to embarrass you,” she said to him, “but you must be an extraordinarily good catch. There can’t be a great many wealthy dukes’ heirs available.”

  A hint of amusement had entered his expression. “I believe we are rather thin on the ground,” he acknowledged.

  She nodded. “So Violet’s family must consider itself fortunate. And I’m certain that if you hinted to one of them—you will know which would be best—that Violet’s grandmother is giving you a distaste for the whole venture, someone would tell her to keep her opinions to herself. You might even imply that you are thinking of crying off.”

  “I could never do that,” he responded, shocked. “Violet would be terribly upset at the idea.”

  “Tell her what you are going to do. I assume she does not agree with her grandmother.”

  “No. That is, I don’t think she does.”

  “You don’t know?”

  He shook his head despondently.

  “Don’t you talk to each other? I thought you had been acquainted practically all your lives.”

  “We used to talk. There never seemed to be enough time to say everything we had to say. But lately… all the wedding preparations and… and so on have kept her so occupied. And her grandmother… does not approve of giving engaged couples a great deal of time together.”

  “Why don’t you both tell her to go to blazes?” Ariel suggested.

  “You don’t understand.”

  Ariel opened the tin of biscuits, offered it to him and to Hannah, then took one herself and bit into it. “Explain it to me,” she said.

  He turned the confection over in his hands. “Violet and I have a great responsibility, you see. We will be—years and years from now, of course—the Duke and Duchess of Langford. We will represent the name and a long, proud tradition. It sounds a bit wet, I suppose, but we are both very conscious of that. We don’t wish to do anything that would… well, put a bad light on the family. We have to be completely correct.” He put the biscuit down as if it were heavy, and sighed.

  “Just like your father was,” said Ariel, taking a chance. “And your grandfather.”

  There was a small, unidentifiable sound from Hannah.

  The viscount looked surprised. “Oh, well, as to that…”

  Ariel gazed at him with wide, innocent eyes.

  “My father kicked up a bit of a dust when he was young,” he said slowly. “Always said I wasn’t to follow his example.”

  “Did he? But your grandfather was a model of virtue, I suppose?”

  A light blossomed in Lord Highgrove’s blue eyes. His lips curved ever so slightly upward. “He was a dreadful old rip,” he said. “I remember he always smelled of brandy. They say he fought more than a dozen duels and nearly had to flee the country twice.”

  “Indeed. What a trial he must have been to your grandmother.”

  The viscount actually smiled. “I’m not sure she noticed. They do say that two of my great-aunts were most likely fathered by…” He stopped short, flushed, and cleared his throat again. “That is, she wasn’t exactly a stay-at-home.”

  “Really?”

  He laughed aloud.

  “You know, I understood it was quite customary to allow engaged couples some time to themselves,” mused Ariel.

  “By Jove, it is,” he agreed.

  “You and Violet probably have many matters to discuss,” she suggested.

  “I shan’t waste the time discussing anything,” he declared. “That is…” He flushed again.

  “These biscuits are quite good,” said Ariel, taking another. “Where did you find them, Hannah? Won’t you try one?”

  Lord Highgrove took up his again. “Thank you,” he answered in heartfelt tones and bit into it with enthusiasm.

  Ariel sipped her tea and saw over the rim of the cup that Hannah was watching her. She tensed slightly, but the older woman merely raised her own cup and gave her a small salute.

  ***

  Full night had fallen by the time Lord Highgrove departed. Ariel went up and straightened her mother’s bedroom before going to her own. She didn’t want to have to make explanations to Hannah. B
ut once this was done and she had gone to her own bedchamber, she was left with nothing to distract her from the fact that Alan had left her without a word or a sign.

  How could he do this? she wondered. It was devastating, infuriating, insulting. Surely he must have known that it would be.

  A sudden thought chilled her. Would he disappear now that he had conquered her? That was what Bess would have predicted, and she had no strong arguments to counter that inner voice that told her she was ruined. Not her reputation, she thought despairingly, but her heart, her very soul.

  Suddenly, the words of her mother’s note came back to her in a rush, and along with them a feeling of such desolation and loneliness that she wrapped her arms around herself, shivering. She wanted Alan so much that she didn’t think she could stand it. If he were here, the emptiness would go away, the grief and pain would be manageable. She drew her arms tighter, wishing for him with all her might, praying that he would somehow hear her and return.

  The house remained dark and silent. Even outside, there was no sound. And then a piece of the shadows detached itself and jumped onto her bed, resolving into a feline shape, which butted its head against her elbow.

  “Prospero,” Ariel said shakily. She reached out to scratch one of his ears, and he gave a low rumble of approval. “I am not feeling too… well,” she told the animal.

  He gazed at her, his eyes seeming to shine with their own light in the dim room, and that steady gaze brought Ariel crashing back to reality. What had she been thinking? she wondered. Lord Alan Gresham was not going to come and comfort her. Her connection with him rested on the haunting of Carlton House, which was now over. He would be returning to Oxford, and the work he loved. There was no place for her in his life, and indeed he had never hinted that there could be. It was foolish… insane to fall in love with him.

  Ariel’s breath caught in a gasp. She was insane, she understood, because she had fallen hopelessly, helplessly in love with him—the son of a duke, the man of science who spurned the whole concept of love. She had gotten what she had told her mother she wanted more than ten years ago—love. And it appeared that Bess had been right about this, at least. It hurt like the very devil.