After the Kiss

by Joan Johnston

  Nothing more?

  There could be nothing more. He had lived life on the edge, but he knew better than to let himself get carried away by passion. No woman was worth the trouble such emotions caused. Not even the enticing Miss Sheringham.

  “Come on, brat,” he said, using a term Julian had often applied to her. “It is time we got you to bed.”

  “Are you planning to join me there?” she asked with an arch look.

  For an instant he wondered if she meant her words as an invitation. He decided she could not possibly. He shook his head as he reached down for her hat. “Oh, no, my dear. Not me. You are entirely too dangerous.”

  He handed the hat to her, careful not to touch her skin, and watched as she began tucking her hair back under the concealing beaver wool felt.

  “You may have one of the rooms my batman secured for us at the inn before we decided to spend the night in the stable,” he said. “I will rejoin Reggie and Becky.”

  “You must promise not to leave without me tomorrow morning,” she said as they made their way back to the inn.

  “You may be sure I will be your constant companion until you reach your destination,” he said.

  “I appreciate your kindness, Captain. More than you know.”

  Marcus could not remember being called kind by anyone in recent memory. He was not the least motivated to help Miss Sheringham by feelings of kindness. After all, he was a rogue and a rake. If it were not for her connection to his best friend, she would have been lucky to escape his clutches with her good name intact. But it seemed unwise to remind her of his reputation for moral corruption when they were about to set off on a journey together.

  When they reached the door to the inn he bowed, one gentleman to another. “Good night, Miss Sheringham.”

  She executed a quite competent bow in return. As she straightened, she gave him a gamine grin and said, “I look forward to traveling with a rake. It is only too bad I will be in disguise. It will not be half so much fun if no one knows it is me riding beside you. Good night, Captain.”

  He stood gaping as she disappeared inside.

  “What is taking Uncle Marcus so long?” Reggie whispered to her sister. “He left with Miss Sheringham hours ago. He should have been back by now.”

  Reggie was not the least bit sleepy. Unfortunately, even with her eyes wide open, she could not see a thing, it was so very dark. She reached out and nudged Becky’s shoulder. “Are you awake?”

  “Hmmm.”

  Barely, Reggie decided. It was awful having a sister who always fell asleep before she did. Reggie felt bereft, abandoned, alone.

  She took a deep, sighing breath and let it out. The pungent odors of hay and horse and manure were not at all unpleasant. They reminded her of the time she had climbed into the loft of the barn at Blackthorne Abbey and accidentally fallen asleep.

  The household had been in an uproar, she learned later, looking everywhere for her. Father had finally discovered her in the loft and woken her with a shake. He had actually picked her up in his arms and carried her down the ladder himself. The punishment he had meted out for worrying her governess had been a small price to pay for being held so very close to him for those few moments.

  Reggie inhaled deeply. The smells had been the same that memorable afternoon as they were now.

  “Becky?” When she got no answer, Reggie pinched her sister.

  “Ummph,” Becky protested.

  “Do you think Uncle Marcus will try to kiss Miss Sheringham?” Reggie whispered. “I have heard that is what rakes like Uncle Marcus do. Miss Sheringham seemed to like him well enough, even after their rough and tumble fight. Do you think she will let him have his way with her?”

  “Hmmm.”

  “I suppose not,” Reggie said. She picked up a piece of straw and used it to draw circles and squares and triangles on Becky’s back. The way Becky wriggled, she knew her sister was more awake than she pretended to be. “I have never seen a woman fight like a man. Did you not think she was magnificent?”

  Without pausing for a reply she continued, “I want to be like her—not afraid of anything. I am sure it would help my confidence to be so tall, but it must be a nuisance to stand head and shoulders above everyone else, would you not agree?”

  Becky grunted.

  It was all the encouragement Reggie needed. “I was so surprised when her hat fell off, and her hair fell all the way to her waist! Would you not say it is nearly the same color as Father’s favorite hound, Rex?”

  When Becky did not offer a reply, Reggie nudged her with an elbow. “Are you awake?”

  “Ow!” Becky rolled over to face her. “Of course I am awake. You have been talking without a breath ever since Uncle Marcus followed Miss Sheringham from the stable.”

  “Then why did you not answer me?”

  “You seemed happy to carry on the conversation all by yourself,” Becky replied.

  Reggie stuck out her tongue. Unfortunately, in the dark, Becky could not see it.

  “Put your tongue back in your mouth,” Becky said.

  “How do you know I stuck it out?”

  “I can smell your awful breath,” Becky replied.

  Reggie breathed hard on Becky, who made a sound of disgust and rolled over, hiding her head in her arms. “Go to sleep!”

  “Admit it,” Reggie said, speaking directly in her sister’s covered ear. “You are as fascinated by Miss Sheringham as I am.”

  Becky groaned in surrender. “Very well. I admit it. Now may I sleep?”

  “Oww!” Reggie grabbed her nose. “Why did you hit me?”

  “It was an accident,” Becky said. “I was turning over to get more comfortable. I didn’t know you were there.”

  Now that she knew her sister was also wide awake, Reggie began to ask questions in earnest. “Have you ever thought what it would be like if Father remarried, and we got another mother?”

  “No.”

  “I have. I think it would be nice to have someone like Miss Sheringham to hold us and kiss us and tell us stories at bedtime.”

  “Mother never did those things.”

  “She must have. Once upon a time.”

  “Not in my memory,” Becky said. “Go to sleep, Reggie.”

  “I can remember …” But the recollection was fleeting, shrouded by time. Reggie had thought it must be Mother she remembered hugging her and kissing her, because Father never had much to do with them. But what if it had been Father? Why had he stopped loving her? What had she done wrong? What could she do to make him love her again?

  Reggie closed her eyes against the sting of tears. Why was Father so distant? Uncle Marcus acted more like a father than Father did.

  It was her last thought before she fell asleep.

  Eliza had little difficulty passing herself off to the innkeeper as a friend of Captain Wharton. And since the captain had already paid for the room, the innkeeper did not quibble about giving her a key. It was not until she closed the upstairs bedroom door behind her that she realized she had left her traveling bag, with clean clothes for the morrow, in the stable.

  It would be far too dangerous to retrieve it tonight. She would go down and get it in the morning.

  Quite simply, Eliza was not sure she could resist temptation a second time. It seemed she had no more willpower to refuse that handsome rogue’s entreaties than a baby offered a stick of candy. She had very much liked the feel of his lips on hers. She had very much wanted to know what it would feel like to be held in his arms. Scandal be damned. She had very much wanted to be seduced by Captain Wharton.

  That made no sense to her when she loved Julian so desperately. Could a woman be in love with one man and enjoy another’s kisses? Crave another’s kisses? Apparently she could. Maybe she was her father’s daughter, after all.

  Eliza had never been told what sin, exactly, her father had committed. It seemed impossible he could have ruined some woman’s reputation. She had seen her parents together, and they were deeply
in love with each other. Her father had been a good and kind man, devoted to his family. He did not drink to excess or cheat at cards or have any other vice that one associated with scandal. So what had Papa done?

  It should not matter. Except she had grown more and more certain over the years that Papa’s disgrace had something to do with her. Had her mother Iain with another man before she married the earl’s son? Was she not her father’s child? Was that why the earl had disinherited his only son?

  She had never asked her parents for the truth. And they had never offered it. Sometimes she suffered nightmares in which she was lost and calling for Papa. She was hungry and thirsty and her voice was hoarse from crying. But Papa never came.

  It all seemed so real. She would awake drenched in perspiration, feeling desperate to escape, and realize she was safe in her own bed, in her own room. Maybe her dream had something to do with Papa’s disgrace. Maybe she had been lost, and he had not tried hard enough to find her.

  That did not seem a great enough sin to banish a man forever from his family and all of Society.

  Over the years, partly to confirm opinions she knew had already formed about her, Eliza had defied Society to banish her. Thanks to the tabbies, she was scandalous without having done a single truly scandalous thing. She had her virtue, her personal sense of honor, and her own standards of behavior to which she had rigidly held. In one evening, Captain Wharton had convinced her to throw them all out the window.

  But if kissing the Beau was wrong, why had it felt so right? Maybe that was the lure that led one to scandal. One deceived oneself into thinking that black was really white. That wrong was really right. That because someone was nice to you, he had your best interests at heart.

  She had underestimated the seductive power of the Beau’s charm. She would have to guard her heart more carefully from now on. After all, it was Julian she loved, Julian she would marry.

  Eliza undressed down to the female chemise and men’s smalls she had worn under Julian’s clothing and slipped between the bedsheets. Her feet were cold, and she tucked her legs up under her chin to try and warm herself.

  As she drifted off to sleep, Eliza thought how disappointed Aunt Lavinia would be when she discovered Eliza had run away instead of attending the house party at Somersville Manor. Eliza had been reluctant to spend two full weeks in polite company, since there was no way she could have blunted her sharp tongue for that long. But Aunt Lavinia had argued at length to convince her she should go.

  “It will get you away from Ravenwood—and your cousin Nigel—for two weeks,” Aunt Lavinia had said.

  Her aunt had apparently deduced from Eliza’s tone of voice when she spoke of Cousin Nigel that the two of them were not faring well together. A respite from his company would be lovely.

  “With luck,” Aunt Lavinia added, “you may even find a husband.”

  “Surely you cannot want me to leave you here at Ravenwood and go live in some stranger’s home.”

  Aunt Lavinia made a clucking sound and rearranged her knitting in her lap. “I would hope your husband will not be a stranger to you. Or if he is,” she said, deferring to the realities of English upper-class marriage, “it would not be for long. You must resign yourself to marrying and having a home of your own without me.” She paused, then said, “Someday Nigel will corner you where there is no escape.”

  Eliza gasped, amazed that her aunt had discerned the nature of Cousin Nigel’s offensive behavior. “How did you know?”

  “I am merely blind, my dear. Not deaf and dumb. You must many, to save yourself from this untenable situation.”

  Eliza stared at her aunt, who stared right back. “Have you considered the fact that no gentleman at the party may want to marry the impoverished daughter of a disinherited earl?”

  “Considered it and rejected it,” her aunt said flatly. “Look at me, girl. Your future can be as bright as you choose to make it. You must take the chip from your shoulder and give people a chance to like you. You are an amiable young lady, you know.”

  Eliza dropped her eyes to escape her aunt’s piercing gaze. “If you say so,” she muttered.

  One of the things that so unsettled people meeting her “blind, elderly aunt” for the first time was the fact that Aunt Lavinia’s pale gray eyes did not look sightless. When Lady Lavinia angled her head and stared at you, it appeared she was really seeing you.

  Though no one had taken the time to formally educate a blind female child, Eliza found her aunt extraordinarily wise. And Aunt Lavinia was the only one of her father’s family who had come to visit him after he had been disinherited. Her aunt had been Eliza’s anchor in the months after her father’s death, six years following her mother’s, which had left her orphaned.

  “There must be some other way to escape Ravenwood,” Eliza said. “Can we not go back to live at Father’s house? It is mine now.”

  “Nigel is your guardian until you are five-and-twenty, or until you marry. I doubt he will allow it. Without his approval and support, we would have no wherewithal to live. My father, the former Earl of Sheringham, assumed I would never leave Ravenwood, so he accorded me nothing in his will except the right to live here the rest of my life.”

  Eliza settled on the lush carpet beside her aunt’s chair, and laid her cheek on her aunt’s knee. The needles stopped clicking as Aunt Lavinia reached out to touch her, to stroke her face and her hair.

  Eliza had learned over the years that touching made things real for her aunt. But Eliza wondered how much her aunt could really “see” with her hands.

  Aunt Lavinia could surely feel the warmth of the fire on Eliza’s hair, but there was no way she could see how the flames turned Eliza’s chestnut curls a burnished copper. She could feel Eliza’s downturned lips, but she could not see the faraway look in her eye. She could feel the tension in Eliza’s shoulders, but she could not know it came from seeing Cousin Nigel pause at the sewing room door to stare in at them. Yet, Eliza was constantly amazed at Aunt Lavinia’s powers of perception.

  “I am having a private tête-à-tête with my niece, my lord. Would you mind closing the door for us?”

  Cousin Nigel scowled, but pulled the door shut.

  “However did you know he was there?” Eliza asked.

  “Nigel smokes a truly wretched tobacco. Something he inherited from my father, no doubt. The stench precedes him wherever he goes.”

  Eliza laughed. “Only you could leave an earl looking sheepish for interrupting two ladies in his care.”

  “Fiddlefaddlingsticks,” her aunt said.

  “I think you mean fiddle-faddle,” Eliza said with a grin. “Or fiddlesticks.” She was certain her aunt used the malapropisms on purpose. They were absurd enough to break the tension when Eliza was upset, or irritating enough to distract her when she was angry, and silly enough to make her laugh when she was sad.

  When she corrected her aunt, as she always did—because that was part of the game—Aunt Lavinia would harrumph, as though anyone with any sense would have known that was what she had meant all along.

  Aunt Lavinia harrumphed.

  Eliza laughed and kissed her aunt on the cheek. “You are absolutely incorrigible.”

  “That is the kettle calling the pot black,” her aunt retorted. “As I was saying, before the earl so impertinently interrupted us, I believe you would enjoy yourself at Somersville Manor. From what you have told me of your friend, the Countess of Denbigh, I am sure she will have chosen the perfect husband for you.”

  “What?”

  Aunt Lavinia chuckled. “Dear child, I forget sometimes how innocent you are. Surely you must realize your friend will have invited a number of eligible gentlemen for you to interview as potential husbands.”

  “But that’s awful!” Eliza said, lifting her head to stare into her aunt’s sightless gray eyes. “You expect me to choose a husband from a pack of male wolves?”

  “Just be sure to get the pick of the litter,” her aunt said with a chuckle.

>   “I would rather run away than be forced into a loveless marriage,” Eliza said.

  “Don’t speak foolishness,” her aunt said in the harshest voice Eliza had ever heard her use. “What other future is there for a woman except to marry and breed up an heir for her husband?”

  “It is not enough,” Eliza said in a whisper. “I want more.”

  The problem was, she did not know what form that “more” should take. Something was missing from her life, but she did not know what it was. She had never let herself contemplate marriage, because she had been so certain no man would ever want her. But she could not stay at Ravenwood. Marry she must.

  However, not just any man would do. She needed someone willing to accept a blind, elderly woman as part of the package, because she had no intention of leaving Aunt Lavinia behind. Still, stalking a husband like a deer seemed a bit unfair, if not downright unscrupulous.

  “I never thought I would hear you say I should make a marriage of convenience,” Eliza muttered.

  “I did not say you could not like the man,” Aunt Lavinia retorted. “Merely that you must choose one and button yourself to him.”

  “That’s buckle, Aunt Lavinia. Buckle myself to him.”

  Her aunt harrumphed. “Button, buckle, it’s all the same. Give love a chance, Eliza. You cannot find your Prince Charming if you do not attend the ball.”

  Eliza laid her head back down on her aunt’s knee, the only sign of capitulation she was willing to make. When the knitting needles began clacking again, she knew Aunt Lavinia understood she was willing to do what must be done. Truthfully, if she must marry, she had already picked the groom.

  Her cousin, Major Julian Sheringham.

  That afternoon, Eliza wrote a letter to her friend, Charlie, the Countess of Denbigh, who was best friends with the Duchess of Braddock, asking her to please make certain that Major Julian Sheringham was invited to the party and giving his direction in London. Once Eliza had posted the letter, she felt much better about attending.

  But before her letter could possibly have gotten to Charlie, Cousin Nigel had attacked her and she had fled Ravenwood. It had made more sense to go to London and speak directly with Julian, than to attend a party to which he had not yet received an invitation, and where she might have to wait an entire week for him to arrive.