A Promise by Daylight

by Alison Delaine

  “And just look at that,” Sacks went on approvingly, watching Winston and the princess. “He won’t be turning ’is back on ’er, no sir.”

  Sacks was right. Winston may have hidden from Tensie, but he would not be hiding from Princess Katja.

  “I’d better go see if anything’s been overlooked in ’er rooms,” Sacks said now. And then, turning back in the doorway, he grinned. “Perhaps she’ll fall sick while she’s ’ere and need your services.”

  “I should be so fortunate,” she said, offering the expected grin back but letting her smile fall the moment Sacks walked away.

  The window drew her like a siren’s call. And she shouldn’t look, had no reason to look, but...

  Oh.

  There, between the first and second ponds, Princess Katja had her face upturned, her hands resting on his chest...and he was kissing her.

  It was impossible to look away. He had his hands on her wrists, holding her delicately the way one would hold a princess. Not searching beneath her clothing, the way one apparently touched...

  A distraction.

  And still her body taunted her, burning with new desires that would not be cooled.

  Her, Millicent Germain.

  Who knew better.

  Who had always, always been sensible.

  Out in the garden, the kiss ended. The princess tucked her hand into Winston’s arm, and they continued slowly past the pond.

  Millie finally turned away from the window, breathing past a tightness in her chest, feeling...

  She wasn’t sure what she felt. But it didn’t matter, because Winston was finally succumbing to distraction, and that was exactly what she’d hoped for.

  * * *

  SEVERAL HOURS LATER, alone in the vast and wondrous library without fear of revelers seeking a place for a quick tryst, Millie was deep in the solace of a newly discovered treasure—a treatise about medicinal plants of Africa and the Barbary Coast—when Winston entered at the far end.

  Everything inside her stilled.

  He hadn’t seen her. And watching him was the last thing she should be doing, but he was just so...fascinating.

  She studied the angle of his nose. The pure sculpture of it.

  The slash of cheekbone and jaw.

  He was a devil indeed.

  And then he spotted her and started in her direction.

  Every coherent thought fled, and blast it all, she was more intelligent than this. But with every step of his approach, her body came alive in places that needed to stay dormant. A deep breath, another, and thoughts returned, though not helpful ones.

  Thoughts of touching him. Of tangling her tongue with his, of his hands cupping her breasts, of the hardness in his breeches rocking against the softness in hers.

  She stood up quickly, facing him, because otherwise she might not ever be able to tear her gaze from the page and look him in the eye.

  “We need to finish our conversation,” he said, stopping a few feet away.

  “I’m not resigning,” she told him now.

  “You should,” he said flatly.

  “Yes. I should. But I won’t.” She called up her outrage—at herself as well as him. “And I expect that nothing like what happened will ever happen again.”

  What happened.

  Him kissing her, reaching beneath her clothes, touching her bare skin. She could still taste him. Her lips still felt raw. She felt like someone else—someone languid and sensuous. Reckless.

  She couldn’t afford to be reckless, not with her livelihood on the line.

  “Forgive me.” His voice was low. Rough. His mouth was tight.

  He was...apologizing?

  “A vow, it seems,” he went on, “is only as good as the character of the man who makes it.”

  The vow that made no sense. “I don’t understand. What vow?”

  After a moment he said, “Edward’s been telling me for years that I should devote myself to a quieter and more moral mode of living.”

  But there was a heat in his eyes that betrayed thoughts that were anything but quiet and moral.

  “And...you’ve vowed to do that?” It didn’t seem possible.

  “Amusing, isn’t it?” One corner of his mouth quirked up, and he wandered a few steps away, pulled a book randomly from a shelf. Leafed through it ten or twenty pages at a time. “It wasn’t a conscious decision. It was more of a semiconscious impulse, brought on by large chunks of masonry crashing dangerously close to my skull.” He shoved the book back into its place. Looked at her over his shoulder. “I’m not even certain that counts as a vow. Do you think?”

  The accident. His brush with death. Those moments must have been terrifying, and rightly so.

  She thought of the man whose burial Winston had attended. The torment in his eyes that day. Are there any medicaments you can prescribe that will undo the past, Mr. Germain?

  She’d assumed he was talking about the accident. But now...

  “Did you...vow to change?” she asked, incredulous. “Is that why you came here?” She thought of his reading. His insect-collecting.

  His lips were still turned upward in self-mockery. “I can’t say I’ve fully committed to it.”

  And now, suddenly, things made sense: his throwing everyone out in Paris—and inviting them back again. His storing away all those erotic statues, storing away the princess’s portrait. Allowing his uninvited guests to stay—yet refusing to join them. Or resisting, at least.

  The decision to come to the estate instead of proceeding with his planned debauch in Greece.

  “And that’s why you were hiding from Tensie,” she said now.

  “I wasn’t hiding,” he said irritably, as the amusement fell away from his mouth.

  “Avoiding, then.”

  The only thing that still didn’t make sense was why he’d spied on her in the bath. And why he’d kissed her.

  Improvising to distract himself from the real temptations, probably. Or erupting frustrations after denying himself what he wanted so badly.

  And even though she knew better, she asked, “And what about the princess? Will you avoid her, as well?” Hope rose frighteningly in her chest.

  “I can’t avoid her.”

  The hope shriveled and sank.

  “There are political implications,” he explained.

  “And she is your lover.”

  “Was.”

  “And hopes to be again, else she would not have come.” That kiss in the gardens had not happened in the past tense.

  “It’s not as if a man can truly change, not after so many years,” he said, picking up a polished stone obelisk that sat between two rows of books. “But then, you’ve already discovered the truth of that.”

  “There must be a reason you think you should, or else the thought would never have occurred to you in the first place.”

  “Reasons hardly matter, as one cannot undo the past.” He turned the obelisk in his hands, set it back in place and looked at her. “I shan’t make you any more promises if you stay on in your employment. I shall only say that I will do my best to conduct myself in a moral fashion where you are concerned.”

  He wasn’t going to tell her the reason, not even now.

  “Thank you.” With the princess here, there wasn’t any risk that he would repeat what he’d done this afternoon.

  He bowed, excused himself, and she stood watching him walk to the other end of the library, her fingers still gripping the edge of the table behind her bottom, hating that she wanted him to repeat it.

  All the while he was trying to live a more moral life, she was slipping into a sensual quicksand.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  AN HOUR LATER, while Winston and Princess Katja ate in the great dining room, Millie sat down at the writing desk in her dressing room. Slipped out a sheet of paper that already had writing at the top.

  Dear Katherine,

  That was the problem. The address was far too presumptuous under the circumstances.

&n
bsp; She set that sheet aside, took out another. Dipped her pen.

  Dear Captain,

  And then she sat there, ink drying on the nib of her pen while no words came.

  It shouldn’t be so difficult. She’d written to India weeks ago, from Paris, just before her employment with Winston. Had somehow found the words to apologize for aiding India’s marriage to a man India hated. For accepting money from that same man in exchange for her betrayal.

  India had trusted her.

  As had Katherine, who had offered Millie a new life, only to have Millie steal her ship when circumstances changed. And Philomena, India’s aunt and Katherine’s closest friend.

  And William.

  Her crime against William was the most unforgivable of all. Knocking him unconscious, taking over his ship... And all he’d done was whip her, when he’d had every right to hang her from the yards and toss her body overboard. She knew better than to imagine, even for a moment, writing an apology to him.

  She set down the pen and rested her face in her hands. If only.

  She thought of Winston and his efforts to change. The uselessness of it all. Because, as he’d pointed out, one could not undo the past.

  Being here was her own fault.

  Millie raised her head and sat back in the chair. The only point of hope was her new life as Miles Germain. Certainly she’d masqueraded as a man occasionally. Aboard the ship, she’d worn breeches. But now she’d become Miles Germain, and she was making her way in the world alone. As a man.

  No, there was nothing princesslike about her at all.

  And Winston would not be touching her again with Princess Katja here, she could be certain of that. Yet even now, the memory touched her skin, parted her lips, ignited a fire on the inside—a slow burn that needed more of what he’d begun this morning.

  She pushed back from the desk, grabbed up a book that had turned out to be not so useful, after all, and headed toward the library.

  Into the corridor, past the door that led into Winston’s dressing room, through which she caught a glimpse of his bedchamber, where only a short while ago she’d experienced a man in a way she never dreamed.

  She hugged herself against a nonexistent chill, rubbing her upper arms. Stop. Just stop!

  There would be no more of that. She was Miles Germain. Needed to be Miles Germain. The best thing she could do toward that end was admit that Winston could easily find someone to replace her, and then collect her wages and leave.

  Except that wasn’t the best thing at all.

  As Miles Germain, she could hire on to a ship’s crew bound for the Mediterranean—unless someone saw through her disguise as Winston had, in the cramped quarters belowdecks where little could remain secret among sailors.

  But if she spent the money to book passage, it would leave her too little on the other end.

  In the library, she stared blankly at the enormous cavern of books. What were the chances, really, that she would ever have enough money to support her studies? Even if she worked weeks more for the duke, even if she somehow managed to find the Possession and sneak aboard and retrieve her hidden stash of money...

  Students did not scrap by on a modest sum they’d saved. They had patrons. Or family wealth.

  She would have a tiny rented room somewhere in Valetta and a fast-dwindling reserve.

  But what was the alternative? There wasn’t one. Staying and collecting as many wages as possible from Winston was the only option—except for prevailing upon the very people she had betrayed and who would laugh at her for imagining that they would help her now.

  Choices, she’d learned, were a luxury. For a woman, life tossed you about like a dying fish in the surf until a merciless, foraging gull devoured you.

  But she was Miles Germain now, and she was making a choice—the choice to stay with Winston a little while longer.

  * * *

  HE DIDN’T GO to Katja that night, even though he’d installed her in the same wing as himself for the sake of convenience. Instead, he lay in his bed thinking of Miles. Miss Germain, if Germain was even her true surname.

  Miss Germain, who refused to resign.

  Miss Germain, whose kiss raced through him like fire.

  Miss Germain, whose breasts were gently curved, with silken skin and firm, peaked crests.

  His cock strained beneath the covers, demanding more of what he had tasted this morning. And how in God’s name he was supposed to exist under the same roof with her without giving into temptation again, he didn’t know.

  He probably should have terminated her employment this afternoon in the library. It would have been the wise thing to do. The moral thing.

  He told himself he hadn’t because the wounds on his back still presented a risk.

  He knew Katja to be a midday riser, and so he rose early and went to the stables. Pulled himself delicately into the saddle once his horse was readied and felt an immediate sense of relief. He put his weight in the stirrups and shifted to take the pressure off the wounds on the backs of his legs, which turned out to be impossible, but he didn’t care.

  He needed to ride.

  And he needed to speak with Edward.

  He took it slow and easy at first, walking. Found a trot unbearable, and slowed. Reached an open field and urged his horse into a gallop—full weight in the stirrups, horse thundering beneath him, every thought except this very moment taken by the wind.

  It ended too soon, but he felt a good deal better by the time he rode into the village. And then everything turned for the worse.

  The church stood up ahead, and the vicarage. He would go in, bare his soul to Edward. Tell him about the vow and how he’d broken it, how he had failed at considering his ways.

  He stopped his horse in the middle of the road in front of Cara and Edward’s home.

  He couldn’t do it.

  He looked the other way, toward the river and the old mill. He urged the horse forward, away from the vicarage now and through a small meadow to the river. Stopped by a stand of trees.

  Stared at the waterwheel, turning, turning, turning.

  Splash-splash-splash.

  The reins lay slack in his hands, but his fingers were tight around them. He needed to turn around. Edward would have the answers he needed.

  Instead, he dismounted, looped the reins around a low limb and walked closer to the waterwheel, still fascinated by its motion. Perhaps a man could spend his life like this.

  He’d only stood there a moment when he saw Edward walking toward him from the road.

  And the spell was broken, and watching Edward approach, he knew he wasn’t made for a life of quiet goodness and contemplation.

  “Don’t tell me you’re thinking of replacing this with some new kind of machine,” Edward said as he joined Winston, assessing the mill with his hands on his waist. “Old Kane would never stand for it.”

  “Not at all,” Winston said, laughing a little. “I wouldn’t dare.”

  They exchanged a few more pleasantries, a few more observations about the mill, and then Winston couldn’t stand it anymore.

  “Edward—” He broke off, suddenly unsure how to say what he wanted to say. His friend merely waited for him to gather his thoughts.

  “Suppose one makes a promise,” Winston began slowly. “During a moment of grave danger.” Of course, Edward would know Winston was talking about himself.

  “A promise to whom?”

  And he wasn’t going to tell Edward that he was the object of Winston’s vow, so he said, “I don’t know. To whomever might be listening.”

  Edward smiled a little. “‘Lord, only save my life, and I shall never sin again’?”

  “Something along those lines.” Winston shifted his attention back to the waterwheel. Thought of Miles, and how badly he burned for her. “Does such a promise count?”

  “Count against what?”

  “Is it valid? As a promise?”

  Edward thought for a moment. “I’m not sure that’s precise
ly the right question. I rather think one would ask whether the action promised is reasonable—nay, even humanly possible, for we are human, after all, and prone to failings despite our best intentions.”

  Indeed. Edward knew all about Winston’s failings. And now Winston was teetering on the edge of failure again, and he needed Edward to pull him back.

  “And then,” Edward went on, “I should think one would consider the origins of the promise. Whether it has its roots in one’s conscience, perhaps in some defect of character one is already aware of. And whether the promise, if attempted but not fulfilled, would nonetheless tend to elevate one’s spirit.”

  Attempted but not fulfilled. He’d bloody well attempted to keep from touching Miles. Perhaps that was enough.

  “Tell me about the promise you made,” Edward said quietly.

  There was pressure in Winston’s chest, in his throat, in his head behind his eyes. But he made himself look at Edward. “I vowed to consider my ways.”

  Comprehension settled instantly in Edward’s eyes. “And what have you determined?”

  “That celibacy is killing me.”

  Edward laughed. “Please don’t tell me that is what’s meant by ‘considering one’s ways.’ I couldn’t survive it, either.”

  The difference being, Edward cleaved only to Cara, while Winston had always cleaved to whichever pair of thighs he fancied at the moment—or pairs, as the case may be—and there didn’t seem to be a reason to do anything differently.

  “Forgive me, my friend,” Edward said now, and turned to face him squarely. “When I’ve suggested in the past that you consider your ways, I meant your motives. The effects of your actions on others. The activities that occupy your time, and whether they feed your soul or eat away at it.”

  And there was the issue. The effect on Miles if he gave in to his desire and seduced her. It would take nothing—he knew that for certain now. And he would leave her ruined, possibly pregnant, and then there would be another irreparable harm eating away at his soul, just as Edward said.

  He preferred his sins to be of the mutually beneficial variety.

  “Still no thought of marriage?” Edward asked.