Annie Burrows

by Reforming the Viscount

  ‘Perhaps,’ Lord Rothersthorpe continued, having raised his glass to Rose in salute, ‘it is just that something about the expression on your face reminded me of the girl you used to be. Which, in turn, made me behave like the green boy I used to be, too. An attack of nostalgia.’ His expression cleared. ‘Yes, that must have been it.’

  ‘You must certainly have changed since those days,’ she said, with a touch of asperity, ‘if you have to examine your motives for wanting to speak to an old friend.’

  ‘And thank God for it,’ he replied, his face turning cynical. ‘In those days I was completely taken in by that air of fragility you used to cultivate. Though fortunately, you have lost it, now.’ He frowned. ‘At least I thought you had.’ He gave a short, harsh laugh. ‘And yet you only have to look the slightest bit troubled to have me galloping to your rescue all over again.’

  ‘You never once galloped to my rescue,’ she retorted.

  ‘Oh? That is not what you used to say. Whenever I asked you to dance, you used to hang on my arm, looking up into my face as though I was a knight on a white charger.’ He bit the words out between clenched teeth. ‘You used to plead with me to take you out for air on the terrace, or a walk in the park...’

  ‘I did no such thing!’

  ‘Perhaps not in so many words, I will concede that point. But you used to plead with your eyes. They used to have such a speaking expression in them. Like a spaniel,’ he finished on a sneer.

  ‘Well I...that is, m...’ She finally managed to untangle her tongue. ‘I wonder that you b-bothered with me, then, if I reminded you of a d-dog. And exactly how did taking me for a walk equate with rescuing me?’

  ‘I took you out from under the shadow of that chaperon of yours, that’s how. The minute I pried you away from her you blossomed. You lost your stutter, you laughed and smiled. Sometimes, you looked so pretty I wondered that other fellows did not notice it. Though I gather that was the whole point, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Pretty?’ The shock of having a compliment flung at her in a way that made it sound as though he would rather have been insulting her filled her with a strange mix of emotions. ‘You thought I was pretty?’ The past swirled round her, like a gossamer cloud. She’d adored him and he’d secretly thought she was pretty. He’d never said so, but then he’d done all he could to keep things between them light. Paying compliments would have led her to hope for things he wasn’t prepared to offer.

  Still, she had dared to believe he genuinely liked her, because nobody had forced him to take her for walks in the park. He had not needed to dance with her every time they attended the same balls, either. There were plenty of other damsels in need of a hero to brighten up their evening, were he really indifferent to her. But he had not been indifferent to her. Which was why, when he’d started to talk about marriage, she’d very nearly believed he’d meant it.

  ‘No,’ he said in a tone she’d never heard him use before, harshly scattering the shreds of memory to the four winds. ‘I thought you could become pretty, if someone were to take care of you properly. Well,’ he said with another harsh laugh, ‘time has proved me correct in that respect.’

  He ran his eyes over her body with an insufferably insolent intensity. It made her blush all over.

  ‘You have become just as beautiful,’ he grated, ‘as I always suspected you could be.’

  ‘B-beautiful?’ That surpassed pretty. Prettiness was something that was easy to dismiss. Beauty implied a kind of power over the beholder.

  ‘Oh, come,’ he sneered. ‘You know very well exactly how alluring you are. I despise you and everything about you, and yet you only have to hang your head, or look the slightest bit anxious, to have me running to your side.’

  Her heart was beating very fast. He thought she was beautiful? Alluring? She could scarcely believe it. And yet here he was, pressing champagne on her and telling her he despised her, yet being completely powerless to stay away from her.

  For the first time in her life, she felt as though she could almost be dangerous. It was a heady sensation. But the feeling only flared for a moment before fizzling out and plummeting her back down to earth.

  ‘You despise me,’ she repeated, looking up into his face in pained bewilderment.

  ‘Are you surprised? You made me believe you needed gentle handling, someone to cosset and care for you. What an idiot I was. All you needed was a man with an open purse. Any man, to judge by the indecent haste with which you dragged Colonel Morgan to the altar.’

  Anguish coiled inside her like a snake. And like a snake, it reared up and struck out.

  ‘At least he was prepared to go to the altar. Which you,’ she reminded him, ‘were not.’

  He clenched his jaw against the words that clamoured for release. He could not tell her what he thought of her inconstancy, not here in this crowded drawing room. And as for claiming that he wasn’t prepared to go to the altar... He raised his glass to his mouth and drained it of its contents. Better than calling her a liar to her face.

  How could she say he hadn’t been prepared to go to the altar when he’d asked her, outright, to marry him?

  At least, his conscience nudged him, he’d asked her to think about it. And she’d given him her answer by marrying someone else.

  ‘I don’t know how many times you warned me you were never going to marry,’ she said, sending a cold sensation swooping through him.

  Had he been as adamant as that? If he had, he’d conveniently stuffed that fact to the back of his mental wardrobe. But now that she’d dragged it into the daylight, he supposed he could see exactly how he might have given her that impression. At first it was because he’d begun to suspect she might have been falling in love with him. He’d wrestled with his conscience, wondering if it would be better for her not to have any more to do with him. He hadn’t wanted to hurt her.

  But he hadn’t been able to stay away from her either. She’d exerted a fascination which he’d been increasingly powerless to resist.

  Until he’d decided to stop fighting it and simply surrender to marriage.

  Only she hadn’t trusted in him, had she? While he’d been raising the funds to pay for a wedding licence, she’d gone and married her nabob.

  Though that hadn’t been the only reason she’d spurned him.

  ‘You certainly did not want to marry a fribble like me anyway, did you?’

  She’d told him she loved being with him because he made her laugh. At the time, he’d taken it as a compliment, fooling himself into believing she actually liked him. It was only later that he’d realised it was the exact opposite. All he’d been to her was a bit of light relief during intervals between the serious business of husband-hunting. She’d actually admitted that she used him to make her look attractive to other men. In short, he’d been the equivalent of the clown during the intermission.

  ‘You never took me seriously. You even went so far,’ he said resentfully, ‘as to say you did not have to bother trying to impress me.’

  ‘I never said any such thing! I valued the time I spent with you. You made me feel as though I could just be myself. It was such a relief to think I had one friend in town who liked me just as I was.’

  She looked up at the cold, hard stranger who had once spent hours coaxing her out of her shell.

  ‘What happened to you? It is as if all the laughter has gone out of your life.’

  ‘You could say the scales fell from my eyes.’ Which they had done, the moment he heard she’d married that dried-up old stick of a man. Because he’d been rich.

  The money he’d had in his pockets, of which he’d held such high hopes, had suddenly seemed pathetic. He’d felt ridiculous when he’d heard about the opulence of her wedding, compared to the one he would have been able to pay for. He’d congratulated himself on having enough of the ready to obtain a licence and a ring. But she’d got lace and jewels from her nabob. A generous allowance, no doubt, and a life of utter luxury which he’d had no chance of matching.
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  He’d slunk back to Hemingford Priory after the encounter with Robert, rather than return to his rooms in town. He couldn’t face the prospect of having to give explanations to the crowd he ran with in those days. How could a man admit to feeling incapable of resuming his life of drinking, gaming and kicking up larks, simply because a woman had jilted him? He would have been a laughing stock.

  Hemingford Priory, of course, had been purgatory in the state he was in. He’d never been much of a one for country pursuits. Fishing was dull work and shooting entailed tramping through muddy fields ruining his boots.

  And to crown it all, his father had been in residence, throwing one of his infamous house parties. He’d taken to riding out during the day, in order to avoid the roistering. And before very long, he started to put up in whatever wayside inn he happened to be closest to when he felt exhausted enough to sleep as soon as his head hit the pillow. It beat the alternative—tossing and turning all night in his own bed, lurid visions of what Lydia would be getting up to with her husband stoked by the noise of what amounted to an orgy going on all around him.

  It hadn’t been long before he’d begun to notice that all was not right with others, besides himself. Wherever he went, he found surly faces turned upon him. At first, he’d thought he was imagining the way conversations between the labourers would cease whenever he strolled into the taproom. But he could not mistake the open hostility of the man who’d spat on the floor one day, as he’d been leaving, after muttering, ‘Like father, like son.’

  And he’d started to look, really look, at the state of the villages over which his father held sway.

  And what he saw was that although his father entertained his cronies in lavish style up at the house, his father’s tenants lived in hovels. His own gardens might be well groomed, but the fields that should have been productive were left unploughed. A lot of the villagers looked ragged and hungry. In fact, everywhere he looked, he had found evidence of neglect and mismanagement.

  For the first time in his life, he’d actually had a good, hard look at himself, too. And what he’d seen was that the lifestyle that he had taken so much for granted had beggared these simple, labouring folk. He’d been ashamed of the way he’d been idling his life away, drinking and gaming, following blindly in his father’s footsteps, letting himself be carried along with the crowd of bucks who were also frittering away their inheritances in a veritable orgy of waste.

  He’d even conceded that Lydia might have had a point, when she’d looked down her nose at him the day he’d admitted losing all the money he’d won on the mouse by backing the wrong horse.

  And a wave of something hot and bitter had swelled up inside him. He was damned if he was going to end up like his father. He’d show these locals how wrong they were to write him off without giving him a chance to prove himself.

  And he’d show Lydia, too.

  ‘You say you think I have changed,’ he said coldly. ‘And I am glad to say I think I have, too.’

  In a strange way, he supposed he owed it all to her. She’d certainly started it, by making him wish he could be a better, more stable man. And even though she’d flung his good intentions back in his face, that desire to prove himself had only grown stronger.

  ‘Clowns,’ he drawled, ‘are all very well, in their place, but a man of my rank has an obligation to behave responsibly.’

  ‘A clown? I never thought of you as a clown,’ she said. ‘I don’t understand why you have become so...’

  ‘So what?’

  She lowered her head. She had been going to say cold, or hard, or bitter. It appalled her to think that, for a moment, she had been so upset she had forgotten her manners.

  ‘I beg your pardon, Lord Rothersthorpe,’ she said, pulling herself together with an almighty effort. ‘I almost forgot that you have, as you pointed out, come into a very noble title. Naturally, you would not behave as you did when you were a young man, without the cares and responsibilities that go with the role. And I apologise if I spoke out of turn. It is just that we were used to talk to one another so freely, that—’

  She broke off.

  ‘Yes, we did, didn’t we?’ He stroked his chin as he looked at her downbent head. Perhaps it had not all been an act on her part. Perhaps she had begun to develop a little bit of genuine affection for him. As much as a woman so shallow was capable of feeling.

  And perhaps, given that her stammer had put in a reappearance, she really had been as timid as he’d thought her, too. He could not discount the amount of pressure that Westerly woman had been putting on her to marry. If she really hadn’t believed he was in earnest when he’d asked her to marry him, maybe she just hadn’t had the strength to hold out against such a glittering offer.

  Perhaps he had to take some responsibility for her refusal. He had, after all, deliberately hidden his true feelings from her, even once he’d admitted them to himself.

  It had certainly been easier to assume he’d been taken in by her, than admit he’d made a total mull of proposing. Easier, too, to make himself believe he hated her, whenever he imagined her willingly opening her legs to...

  He slammed the door on that train of thought. But even so, he did not feel the terrible roiling jealousy that permitting himself to veer in that direction normally produced.

  It was as though confronting her like this, and finally hearing her point of view, had released a great deal of the poison that had been festering inside him.

  He tried to recall, without the veil of resentment, what she had really been like, back then. And what he had been like. It was not easy to regard the past with impartiality.

  Though one thought did manage to swim clear of the maelstrom of clouded memories. And it was the knowledge that they had both been very young and not very wise.

  But what did it all matter? He was no longer looking for someone who would make him feel as though his life had some purpose. He had a purpose in life. He had responsibilities, as she’d just said. He had a duty to his tenants to find a wife who would work alongside him, in the areas particularly reserved for that sex.

  He did not want a frail, delicate blossom who needed constant care. He was looking for a partner in his life’s work. He wanted to marry the kind of woman who would visit the sick and do something about the education of the village girls so that they wouldn’t leave in droves for work in the mills.

  And from what he’d seen of the mills he would one day inherit, he wanted a woman of compassion, and vision, who would stand shoulder to shoulder with him as he did something for the lot of the miserable wretches who currently slaved for a pittance there, too.

  Lydia would have been of no help whatsoever. In fact, her constant demands for attention might well have hampered him in his quest to turn his estates around. He threw his shoulders back. He’d achieved everything he’d set out to do without her.

  He hadn’t needed her.

  And he didn’t need her now.

  So why was it, dammit, that he was still standing here, letting the awkward silence between them lengthen, when all round the room were women who were eminently suitable?

  ‘I wish...’ she eventually said, very softly.

  He’d been impatiently scanning the room, but at her words, he looked down into her upturned face. And his heart thudded.

  God, not only was she more beautiful than any woman had a right to be, but no other had ever managed to have such an instant, visceral effect upon him.

  Even though he knew that she was nothing but a worthless piece of fluff, he still wanted her.

  And by the look in her eyes, the faint flush that was spreading across her cheeks, the pulse that fluttered in her throat, she wanted him too.

  An intense surge of lust coursed through his veins. So intense it sickened him. All she had to do was flutter her eyelashes at him and murmur something that might be taken for an invitation, and he was ready to take up where they’d left off. Even though she hadn’t been prepared to stand by him when it would hav
e mattered. Even though she was the very last woman he should ever wish to get entangled with again.

  ‘Don’t look at me like that, dammit,’ he snarled.

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘It is no use opening your eyes wide and feigning innocence.’ He leaned forwards, so that he could hiss his resentment into her ear.

  ‘You want me. You are practically licking your lips and imagining what you will do with me if you ever succeed in getting me into your bed.’

  And the worst of it was that he wanted it as much as she did. By God, she was like a kind of sickness. He’d thought he was cured of her, but after only one exposure to her, he’d gone down with the fever all over again. Even down to making excuses for the inexcusable.

  For had not even her stepson said there could only be one reason for a girl of her age to marry a man like his father? And he should know. If Robert said that Lydia was mercenary to the core, it must be true.

  Lydia reared back in indignation and had actually opened her mouth to refute his allegation when she realised she couldn’t. For it would be a lie.

  She did want him. She’d always wanted him.

  She couldn’t help it.

  And even though she was rather shocked at the way he’d spoken so bluntly about sexual desire, her traitorous body was responding with an enormous great wave of it. It totally eclipsed the pattering of her heart and the weakness of the knees she’d previously experienced in his vicinity. If he led her out of the room right now and they could find a secluded, horizontal surface on which to lie, he would find her completely ready for him.

  She had never, ever, responded in this way to talking about the marital act. When Colonel Morgan had asked her if it would be convenient for him to visit her room, though she had never refused, the knowledge that he would be availing himself of his conjugal rights had never had this effect upon her.