by Tracy Fobes
“Do you know what frightens me most?” she pressed, her voice soft. “The notion that you might come to resent me if you have to give up everything for me. I don’t ever want you to resent me, because love requires acceptance.”
He didn’t deny her logic, and somehow, that hurt even worse than his insistence that they marry. She pulled away from him and fixed her gaze on the canopy above her bed. She felt cold inside. Wounded. “Perhaps you ought to go now.”
Quietly he sat up. “Would you like me to help you change the linens?”
“No. Just go.”
Pausing long enough to press a kiss against her forehead, he stood, shrugged on his clothes, and left. As soon as the door closed behind him, Sarah hugged his pillow to her and surrendered to tears that lasted almost until daybreak.
When the sun finally did reach its bright fingers into her bedchamber, she groaned aloud. Her head aching and her nose completely clogged, she managed to wake herself up enough to climb out of bed, don a fresh nightgown and change the blood-speckled sheets. She threw them along with the black nightdress into the bottom of her carpetbag, the one she’d brought with her from Beannach, and fell back asleep.
Later, Mrs. Fitzbottom roused her with a cup of hot chocolate and a scone. The older woman studied her for a short time, then clucked sympathetically. “I know your first party didn’t go so very well, but don’t despair, lass. I’ve seen the preparations the duke has already made for your debut, and I promise you, no one shall ever forget it.”
Sarah drew a cover over her head and groaned.
“Come now, lass, it’s time to get up,” the housekeeper remorselessly informed her. The older woman managed to coax Sarah out of her bed and into a pretty sprigged muslin.
Feeling ragged and unattractive, Sarah left her bedchamber at Mrs. Fitzbottom’s insistence and went downstairs to the drawing room. It was in this ugly mood that she ran into Lady Helmsgate, who looked as fresh as a spring rose in pink satin.
“Good morning, Lady Sarah,” the blonde greeted her, her brow arching. “Did you sleep well?”
Sarah muttered a reply and grasped her embroidery hoop, determined to put a few stitches into the damned thing.
Her head tilted, Lady Helmsgate moved past Sarah to study several books upon a shelf. “Perhaps you can help me,” she said to Sarah, her attention remaining on the books. “I’d like a book on . . . poetry. Are you aware of any?”
Sarah’s fingers stilled, her needle poised just above the fabric. Colin’s poems came to mind. “What sort of poetry?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Love poems, I think.”
“I can’t help you,” Sarah informed her abruptly, then dropped her gaze to her embroidery. She pushed the needle into the fabric.
“Did you know that Lord Cawdor writes poetry?” the other woman asked, her tone arch.
Sarah gave up all pretense of embroidering and focused fully upon Lady Helmsgate. “No, I didn’t.”
“He writes love poems.”
“Do tell.”
“He’s written me several.”
Sarah’s insides twisted painfully. “Oh?”
“Would you like to see them?” Lady Helmsgate dug into her reticule and produced several pages of parchment. She sauntered to Sarah’s side and dropped them into her lap. They covered her embroidery like a funeral shroud.
Sarah stared at them. “I don’t want them.”
“Can’t you read?” the other woman prodded.
“Of course I can. I’m simply not interested.”
“Quite frankly, my lady, I think you need to see them. He’s not very good at it. But it’s the sentiment that counts, no?” With that, the other woman left the drawing room.
Her lips tight, Sarah picked up the poems and glanced through them. They all praised Lady Helmsgate’s beauty, talked of love, or spoke about some other intimate nonsense. An ache stabbed into her heart. She wanted to rail at Colin, to accuse him of being a heartless seducer who used every means at his disposal, even poetry, to conquer his victim. But how could she admit to knowing of his poems about her without revealing her own bad behavior? After all, she’d stolen the poems from the writing desk.
She crumbled the parchment into a ball and wadded it into her reticule. She knew Lady Helmsgate was deliberately egging her on, but that didn’t change the fact that Colin had used poetry to seduce both her and Lady Helsmgate. And though he’d offered to marry her, saying it was the gentlemanly thing to do, he hadn’t told her that he loved her when she’d asked him directly. So why should she think that in her case, the verses he’d written about her had been designed for anything but seduction?
Regardless, she would see that Lady Helmsgate and her blond companion were sent packing. She’d had enough of their antics. Her chin firm with purpose, she marched off in search of the duke.
16
C olin left Sarah’s bedchamber and went straight to the study. He knew sleep would prove impossible. Instead, he settled down in front of the fireplace, brandy in hand, and brooded. How had it happened? When had it happened? He couldn’t guess. He knew only that thoughts of her had plagued him unmercifully from the first day they’d met, and now he finally understood why. He loved her. He loved everything about her — her quick wit, her smile, her generosity, her sensuality . . . everything.
Generally, he mused, everyone experienced at least a few defining moments in life, when some simple truth finally became clear. And when that truth surfaced, it often felt like a revelation, shockingly powerful and driving all other thoughts from the mind. Well, he’d experienced one of those moments in Sarah’s bedchamber. When she’d said she wouldn’t marry him, bells had damned near rung in his head, leaving him in a fog.
He still felt in a fog. So far, the brandy and the fire had done little to burn it out of his mind. Yes, he loved her. But if they married, the duke would see that they had each other, and no one else. She’d been very wise to suggest that love might not be enough.
She was wrong, though. For him, love was enough. He was determined to marry her.
Of course, he had no idea what she felt regarding him. She probably didn’t love him at all. He had to admit that he hadn’t behaved very honorably toward her. A true gentleman would have taught her what she needed to know without trying to kiss her at every opportunity. But he hadn’t been able to keep his hands off her, no matter how many threats the duke threw at him.
Frowning, he set the brandy snifter on a side table and rested his head against the back of his chair. At the moment, he wasn’t very happy with himself. Indeed, what a fool he was! One would think that a man of his sophistication could polish an innocent young country girl without falling in love. But look at him now, moping about like some moonstruck calf.
Well, he had a difficult piece of work cut out for him this time. He had to convince Sarah that he was a man of honor, one more than capable of remaining faithful to her and madly in love with her. By the time Mrs. Fitzbottom served breakfast in the dining room, he had an ache in both his head and his heart and an uncertainty that he could do either.
The duke observed him with a raised eyebrow when he entered the dining room. “Good God, man, you look as though you haven’t slept a minute. Is something wrong?”
Colin scanned the room and found no sign of Sarah. “I’ve a bit of a headache, nothing more. Has Lady Sarah recovered from last night’s festivities?”
Just then, Sarah paused in the doorway to the dining room. Purplish shadows had gathered under her eyes. “Yes, I’ve recovered,” she said, directing a cool glance in Colin’s direction before she sat near the duke, leaving him alone on the opposite end of the table.
Startled, he studied her closely. Their discussion after they’d made love hadn’t been the happiest, but neither did it merit such a cold reception. What bee had gotten into her bonnet this time?
Throughout the following hour, he tried several times to engage her in conversation. Each time, his gambit was met with disinterested answers.
The atmosphere in the dining room went from cool to frigid. Even the duke began to shift uncomfortably on his chair and took to reading a correspondence, the letter lifted in front of him like a shield.
Colin’s blood heated in contrast. He was starting to feel angry. What in hell was wrong with her? Did she resent him for making love to her, despite her assurances otherwise last night? She’d called him a rake and a seducer more than once. Maybe upon reflection she felt he’d dishonored her. At the very least, she had come to regret their intimacy.
His own speech becoming tense and clipped, he asked her to join him in the drawing room for another music lesson. She refused. Then he reminded her that they’d agreed some time ago to review formal dining etiquette with Phineas before her debut. She said no. At his wits’ end, he finally asked her to meet him in the study, to discuss a private matter.
“A private matter? Of what sort?” the duke asked, putting his correspondence down.
“Sarah needs my advice on a certain . . . purchase.” Colin shot a meaningful glance at Sarah, hoping she would remember her request for ideas on what to buy the duke, as a token of appreciation.
Sarah patted the duke’s hand. “I’d completely forgotten about asking the earl for his advice. He’s quite correct, however. I do need to speak to him privately.”
The older man looked unconvinced. “I don’t like secrets.”
She smiled. “And I suppose you always spoiled the yuletide by demanding to know in advance what people had bought you.”
His cheeks growing ruddy, the duke smiled, too. “My pardon, dear, for acting the part of a nosy old codger. Of course you must speak to Colin.”
“Before I go, however, I would like to speak to you about our houseguests. Privately,” she added, her gaze flitting to Colin.
Her use of “the earl” rather than “Colin” not lost on him, Colin stood and left the dining room. Once in the study, he sat down and waited for her. She joined him in less than five minutes, a frown on her face. He didn’t know if the frown was a result of her conversation with the duke, or a reaction to the sight of him. Judging by her mood in the dining room, though, he’d wager on the latter.
After she’d perched herself on a hard-backed little chair, Colin closed the door to the study and selected the closest chair to her. For a moment, they stared at each other, saying nothing.
Her eyes had no sparkle in them this morning, he mused, and her mouth had a pinched look about it. “You seem bothered,” he said after a time, breaking the silence between them.
Turning to look out the window, she shrugged.
“Is it about last night?” he ventured.
“No.”
“Has something happened, then?”
She didn’t answer.
“Obviously something did happen.” He rubbed his jaw with two fingers, casting about for possible scenarios that would have put her nose out of joint so thoroughly. Then a thought occurred to him. “May I assume Lady Helmsgate lies at the heart of it?”
“Lady Helmsgate lies at the heart of all misfortune,” she said, turning around without warning to face him. Her lower lip trembled and moisture shone in her eyes.
Sighing, he settled more easily into his chair. This, he could handle. “What did she say, or do?”
“She gave me these.” She flung a wad of paper at him. It struck him in the chest, then fell to the floor.
He snatched the wad up, unfolded it, and read. When he realized he was staring at his own poems, written for Lady Helmsgate, he grew very still. The heat just seemed to drain out of him. “She dared give you these?”
She supported her forehead with a trembling hand, her attitude one of confusion and deep hurt. “Why, Colin? Why did you write these for her?”
“God curse that woman,” he snarled, furious with Lady Helmsgate for hurting Sarah so terribly, and furious with himself for contributing to that hurt, however unintentionally. He crumbled the poems up again and hurled them into the fireplace. “Sarah, I know you have no reason to believe me given the evidence, but I swear to you I never loved her.”
“Then why did you write what you did?”
Shoulders slumping, he knew if he ever wanted to gain Sarah’s trust, he would have to be honest, regardless of how it might ruin his chances with her.
“I wrote them to seduce her,” he admitted baldly.
“You selfish bastard,” she muttered, her gaze fixed on her hands, which she’d folded in her lap. A tear dropped on her wrist.
Raw pain clawed at his gut. He’d done this to her. The Earl of Cawdor, great rake and seducer, had broken the heart of perhaps the most gentle and beautiful woman in England, and now, when he had come to believe that he just might not be able to live without her, she would never have him.
“Were the poems about me written to seduce me, too?” she asked, another tear falling onto her hand.
He drew in a quick breath. “How do you know about the poems I wrote about you?”
Her voice almost faded into nothingness. “I . . . I found them on the writing desk in the drawing room, the day Lady Helmsgate arrived.”
Startled, he cast his mind back to that fateful day. He remembered struggling at the writing desk with a few poems that refused to take form for him. Had he thrown them out or left them there by accident? He wasn’t certain. Still, he did recall Sarah fussing around the writing desk later on, just as he was about to start their first music lesson. “If you found them, you weren’t supposed to. I had no intention of showing them to anyone.”
She looked up at him suddenly, revealing dark, wounded eyes. “Are the sentiments contained in your poetry about me true?”
Caught in the hurt that her gaze revealed, Colin found himself at a loss for words. The declarations that had come so glibly to his lips for other women had deserted him, now that he actually meant them. He hadn’t the slightest idea how to best tell her that he loved her outside of a bald assertion that she had no reason to believe, and her attitude toward him certainly didn’t encourage him to unburden himself.
“I don’t think this is the time for a declaration of love,” he murmured.
“Love? You don’t know how to love,” she cried. Surprising him completely, she jumped out of her chair and raced into the great hall.
“Sarah, wait,” he shouted, and started after her.
By the time he made it to the great hall, she had already sped through the front door and was running across the grounds. Just as he reached the front door, a footman from outside opened it.
The duke walked in, his eyes very wide. “Colin! Good God, what did you and Sarah talk about? She just ran past me, and when I asked her what was wrong, she began sobbing. Is she upset that I refused to send Lady Helmsgate packing? Lord Helmsgate is a very old friend of mine, and I didn’t want to insult his wife by refusing to allow her to attend my daughter’s debut into society.”
“Sarah and I have had a misunderstanding,” Colin growled, and started past the duke.
The older man grasped his arm, stopping him in his tracks. “What sort of misunderstanding?”
Colin shrugged out of the duke’s grasp. “That’s between Sarah and myself.”
“Oh, now wait. It is most certainly not between you and Sarah. Do you remember my warning all those weeks ago?”
“How could I ever forget it?” Colin snarled. “In just that one breath, you condemned me to misery for the rest of my life.”
The duke frowned. “Misery? Calm down and tell me what you mean by that.”
“Haven’t you guessed it yet?” Colin threw caution to the winds. “Bloody hell, I’m in love with her. Somehow, she made me love her, and now I can never marry the woman I love, thanks to you.”
“You? And Sarah? In love?” The duke’s eyebrows crept upward to meet his hairline.
“I do love her,” Colin declared. “But because of my damned reputation and Lady Helmsgate’s machinations, I can assure you she will never love me. Don’t worry about it, Edward. I won’t s
oil your daughter by marrying her. She won’t have me.”
“I didn’t know,” the duke spluttered. “I had no idea. When did this all happen?”
“Gradually. It happened gradually. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to find her and apologize for my latest mishap.”
Still looking amazed, the duke nodded dumbly.
In the back of his mind, Colin noticed that the duke had seemed more shocked than outraged over his declaration. He wondered if the duke would truly stick to his threat if the old man felt certain that the love he bore Sarah was genuine. Filing the thought away for later examination, he hurried out the front door, then paused. Where had she run to? The kitchen gardens? No, she’d been wearing a riding habit, he remembered. She’d probably gone to the Maltlands.
He ran down the gravel path toward the large complex of barns that glowed whitely in the afternoon sunshine. A breeze sprung up behind him and seemed to be pushing him toward the barns, while the trees, caught in that same breeze, pointed their leaves in the identical direction. He almost felt as though it were a sign from above to find her quickly. His pace increased.
The sound of hooves pounding furiously gave him but a few seconds’ warning before a horse and rider came pelting out from beneath the central arch leading into the courtyard. Shouting, he jumped out of the way and got a good look at the rider. Sarah, riding without a saddle, bent low over the horse’s mane. Astride, her skirts bunched up around her thighs, she spared him nary a glance as she galloped past. He didn’t even think she’d seen him. She raced off into the fields, heading south.
Alarm for her safety left him with a tight sensation in his throat. The little idiot was going to get herself killed, riding so wildly without even a saddle to hold onto. He ran into the courtyard and practically bumped into an openmouthed groom.
“Bloody hell, man, what’s wrong with you?” Colin shouted. “Are you insane, to let my lady ride off without a saddle? I’ll see you sacked for this.”
“I didn’t even see her enter.” The groom, a mere youth judging by the peach fuzz coating his chin, had gone completely white. “I heard her horse whinny. When I ran to see what was the matter, she was astride her horse like a . . . like a man and riding away.”
