“But could you forget? Because if you are already in too deep, you might as well cherish your final moments.”
Marianne didn’t answer. Her eyes were shining and she was staring at Becky.
“My Lady,” she squeezed her hands as she spoke. “You have been clever all your life. You have done everything that is expected of you. And it has not made you happy. Take these precious moments of happiness.”
Marianne offered her a wobbly smile. “I thought you did not want to see the White Knight again.”
She smiled. “I will suffer him for your sake.”
Marianne leaned closer, suddenly taken by such a fierce feeling of affection. “Oh I do adore you, Becky. That is another reason I don’t want to go back. I feel that you and I are true friends now. That we can be free with one another in a way that we couldn’t be as lady and maid.”
This made Becky’s eyes twinkle with watery feeling. “I feel the same way, my Lady,” she whispered. “But perhaps, in private, we can still have this friendship between us?”
Marianne nodded. “I would like that very much. If I am to miss the Knight, I cannot bear to miss you too.”
They sat there for a long time, still holding hands but neither of them speaking. Marianne felt… bleak. A feeling she wasn’t accustomed to. She’d always been the optimistic sort. Perhaps to a fault. But there was no space for optimism in this situation.
It wasn’t until an hour before the fair commenced that she decided they would go. It took a great deal out of her to reach that conclusion, but choosing anything else would have taken far more.
They got ready and she tried to forget about her impending separation from the Knight. She kept telling herself to just try to enjoy this as much as she could. While it lasted.
They were a little late to the fair, because her indecision had cost them the time they needed to get ready. And because Marianne almost changed her mind on the way and asked the carriage driver to stop her a moment so that she could regain her resolve.
But when she arrived and saw him standing there, looking anxious, checking the time, fidgeting… she smiled. She was so pleased that she’d decided to come. Because seeing him like that made her heart leap with affection for him.
“Did you think we would not show?” She asked, from behind him.
The Knight turned and the relief on his face was entirely undisguised. “I did wonder,” he admitted, with a shy smile. “But I am so very glad you did.”
They didn’t waste time quibbling tonight. The Knight extended his arm and his friend did the same towards Becky. Without complaint, Becky took the gentleman’s arm and walked away with him. Leaving the Knight and Marianne alone.
For a time, they were quiet. It felt like there was so much they needed to say, but it felt too soon. She wanted to feel joy with him, but there was this tangible wall between them. And she was beginning to feel that it wasn’t entirely one-sided.
“I am sorry I am quiet,” she said, then swallowed.
“Are you not well?”
“No, I’m quite well. I’m only a little tired. Are you well?”
He nodded, though she could see that he was lying. “Quite well,” he assured her. Again, they walked a while in silence. How she wished she could shatter it open. But she didn’t feel like the country girl she’d been pretending to be anymore.
She felt like Lady Purcell.
“Would you like to dance?”
“Certainly,” she answered, with a small smile.
“It’s the last night of the fair,” he remarked, as he took her into his arms.
“Yes,” she said. “It’s very sad, isn’t it?”
The Knight looked about him. “They do not look sad.” He was looking at the townsfolk. “They look happy.”
He then smiled down at her sadly, as if to say… but we are not happy.
“I do not understand them,” she said. “How can they let all this go?”
* * *
Lord Alexander Anthony Redmond, Marquess of Riversdale
“They’re not letting anything go, I suppose. This is their lives.” He was looking around himself at the townsfolk. Their unhindered rapture. Then he looked down at his Fairy Queen, who wouldn’t be his much longer. “This is your life too.” Because she was just a country girl. A brilliant, clever, funny, wonderful country girl who would meet a country boy and marry for love one day.
Why did that make his heart pang? She looked down and away from him, but he needed to see her eyes. As they swayed, he put his finger beneath her chin and lifted it.
“What is there for you to let go of?”
Her eyes were glistening with tears, but they didn’t fall. “You,” was all she said. “I can’t see you again.”
It hurt him to hear her say that, and yet it was the truth for him too. “I can’t either,” he admitted. He wanted to ask her why, but what did it matter? For whatever reason, they were both in the same boat. And in some small way, he was glad that the obstruction to their relationship wasn’t on his side alone. It made him feel less like his choices would ruin him. Because he might be able to change his mind, but he couldn’t change hers too.
So what was the point in trying? He knew his place. And it wasn’t here.
She nodded shakily. “Then I suppose we will have to say goodbye tonight.”
“But not yet.” His finger tipped her chin just a little higher, then his palm slid about her cheek and he lowered his face.
When he kissed her, the Fairy Queen’s mouth was soft and supple. It was mystical. It was pure fantasy. She parted her lips to suck in a breath, then sealed their mouths together without fear or shame.
He kissed her, as he should have kissed her the night before, until the pair of them were breathless. They were surrounded on all sides by people dancing, but they were in their own universe where her mouth nourished his.
It started slow, until he felt the tangle of her fingers through the hair at the nape of his neck. She pressed against him with more force and he could feel a teardrop squashed between their cheeks. He didn’t know if it was hers, or his.
When he felt the soft glide of her tongue across his lip, he shivered hard and gripped her waist with renewed energy. They moaned at the very same moment, his deep voice and her high one mingling into a harmonizing chorus. He felt like their moans were singing the story of their fast and inevitably doomed love for one another.
Yes, he realized, as they kissed. He thought he loved her. And he thought, perhaps naively, that she might love him too.
When they broke from one another, she gasped in a breath. Their eyes were still closed, their forehead’s touching and they had to take a moment to regain their composure.
At last, he opened his eyes and saw that she was watching him. “Might I…” he whispered, but his voice was broken by desire. “Might I have a moment alone with you somewhere?”
He saw the center of her neck bob as she swallowed and nodded.
“I would go anywhere with you,” she said.
Chapter 11
Lady Marianne Purcell, Daughter of Baron Westlake
That kiss would stay with her forever. A kiss that had made her feel like letting this man go would be impossible. All of her resolve started to whither as he led her towards the small grove of trees they’d visited before. It was empty, just like last time, and they took their place on the fallen tree.
The moment he sat, she cupped his cheek and pulled his face back towards hers. She kissed him like he was her’s, taking him deep into her lungs.
And he kissed her with equal vigor. When she felt his hand upon her knee, bunching her skirts up in his fist, she jumped a little but didn’t stop kissing him.
She trusted him. And rightly so. Though his hand moved higher along her thigh, he didn’t move beneath her gown. And when he reached the most secret part of her, he stopped. She could feel his hand shaking.
The Knight stopped kissing her. “I am sorry,” he whispered, in a ragged voice. “I do
not know what has come over me.”
Before he could take his hand away, she clutched it in hers and held it against her leg. “Don’t be,” she replied, in an equally unsteady voice.
They smiled at each other a little shyly.
He looked down at their hands.
“I have not felt this way before,” Marianne murmured.
“Neither have I.”
“It is…”
“Frightening,” he concluded, on her behalf, with a sad smile up at her.
Marianne nodded. “We have never spoken of after… not really.”
“Because there can be no after, my Fairy Queen. Each of us knows that this is goodbye.”
Her eyes filled with tears, but she didn’t cry. “But does it have to be? Truly? I don’t know why you believe we can’t make something work between us. I only know my own reasons. And yes, they are many and they are formidable. But if we try, perhaps-”
“I am certain our reasons are very different,” the Knight interjected. He brought her cupped hand up to his face and kissed the knuckles. “But my reasons cannot be conquered. It is the terrible truth we must accept.”
“I do not know if I can accept it,” she answered, with a voice that broke.
“You must. And I must.”
She curled her hand against his jaw, feeling the bristles of his stubble on the backs of her fingers.
Marianne took a moment to sniffle back the last of her tears and nodded shakily, like a resolved soldier.
“Very well,” she murmured, but could not quite meet his eye. “Then this is goodbye. But there is something I want from you before we part. Just one thing.”
“Anything,” he professed. “Anything at all.”
Marianne looked back up at him.
Then she lifted her hands towards his face, slowly. He must have thought that she meant to kiss him again, because he closed his eyes and expelled a soft breath of expectation. But her mind and heart were set on something else. She felt along the corners of his mask with her fingertips.
Just one move and she’d see his face. The face she’d been trying to imagine since the moment they’d met. It was irresistible and she didn’t care about the illusion anymore.
She started to pull.
But before the mask came free, the Knight jerked away from her as if she’d made an attempt to stab him with a blade. He staggered to his feet and clutched the mask back against his face. “I… I…”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I can’t.”
There was a desperate look in his eyes that made her freeze. She started to stand, to put her hands out towards him. Her lips parted to beseech him.
Before she could speak… he had turned away. And he ran.
She watched him disappear out of the grove, but she didn’t move herself. Her feet were frozen, heavy weights keeping her rooted to the ground.
He’d come back, she told herself. To say a true goodbye. He wouldn’t leave like this.
But the Knight didn’t come back. And Marianne sat back down on the mossy log, pouring tears into the earth.
* * *
Lord Alexander Anthony Redmond, Marquess of Riversdale
He’d run away. When she’d lifted her hands to his face, he’d thought that she was going to kiss him again. His heart had been in the pit of his stomach, making him feel sick, because he knew that this would be their very last kiss.
He closed his eyes to accept it and so she wouldn’t see how close he was to breaking. But she didn’t kiss him. She started to pry free his mask.
Alexander wasn’t sure what compelled him to leap away as he did. Perhaps it was an image of his father, or of a future spent with his disappointment hanging over his head. Because this could so easily go awfully wrong. He didn’t truly know this girl, though he felt like he was falling in love with her. And without truly knowing her, he couldn’t be sure that she wouldn’t discover his identity by his face and spread the word that the Marquess of Riversdale had been gallivanting at a fair.
If people learnt of what he’d got up to in those past few days, he would not be able to withstand his father’s disappointment. And his father’s approval had been first in his sights ever since he was able to speak. Nothing mattered more to him.
But as he’d staggered back and said he was sorry, he felt like she could have meant more to him. If he’d just let her.
He went through the fair with wild eyes, looking for Julius. He needed to leave. Not just the fair, but Bath. Now. This place had messed with his head and made him feel like someone else. Just as he’d wanted. But now he saw how dangerous that could be. A danger that had crept up on him and taken hold; he’d almost forgotten who he really was.
When he stumbled upon Julius, he stopped in his tracks. His friend was kissing the girl, though it was clear it had gone no further. “Julius,” he called and his friend looked up suddenly at the sound of urgency in Alexander’s voice. “We have to go.”
Becky pushed Julius away and put her hand over her mouth as if she’d been under some spell. She was blushing and, he realized, she had her mask off. So did Julius. The girl looked down and wouldn’t meet his eye. Which was of no matter to him. Before Julius could deny him, Alexander grabbed him by the arm and hauled him away.
“Where are we going?” He bemoaned, struggling a little to loosen Alexander’s grasp. But he held tight. “Did you see what you just interrupted? This better be a damned emergency.”
“It is,” Alexander said, walking faster and faster.
“Well, what is it?” Julius responded, with greater concern. “Is your Fairy well?”
Not in the least, he thought. He felt sadness strike him. So sharp and overwhelming that he couldn’t speak another word. When Julius saw his raw, despondent countenance, he didn’t push for anymore answers until they were home.
“Will you talk to me?” Julius pressed.
“I can’t right now. Not right now.” Alexander was packing his things as he spoke and Julius stood in the doorway, frowning at him.
“We needn’t leave so urgently. We could stay a while longer, couldn’t we?”
Alexander couldn’t imagine why he’d care. And was too caught up his own feelings to give it any real consideration. “Please,” he beseeched. For a moment, he stopped packing and just looked at his friend. “Please, leave with me.”
Julius regarded him for a long minute, with obvious concern and perhaps a little reluctance.
But then he nodded and went to his room to pack.
* * *
Lady Marianne Purcell, Daughter of Baron Westlake
And so Marianne and Becky went home, the very next morning. Neither of them said much about the night before. Becky didn’t ask her any pressing questions and she was glad of that. In fact, Becky was unusually quiet as they rode back to Mayfair.
Becky had happened upon her in the grove the night before, long after the Knight had left her. She’d held her a while, before taking her home.
Marianne rested her head against the windowsill and watched the world roll by. She’d done the very same thing three days earlier, with a sense of adventure in her belly and a lust for life.
Now she felt as though she’d left her heart behind in Bath, with a country man who clearly didn’t want it. In his absence, with a head made clearer and sadder by distance, she wondered what the real truth was.
Perhaps he was married and bored of his wife.
Perhaps he was a criminal.
“It doesn’t matter why he can’t be with you,” Becky reminded her when she spoke her thoughts aloud. “Because you can’t be with him anyway, my Lady. So what weight does the truth have? That was why we came, wasn’t it? For a slice of fantasy. Did we not get that, my Lady?”
She was right, but Marianne couldn’t bear to say it.
By the time they reached home, the prospect of seeing her mother and sister – of resuming her old life – was cripplingly painful.
They walked inside together.
“
Oh thank God,” her sister said, with her hand over her heart. “I am so glad to see you.”
This surprised her for a moment, until she realized that Eliza wasn’t talking to her. She was talking to Becky.
“The seamstresses in this house are abysmal,” Eliza said, as she pushed a pile of linen into Becky’s hands, which were still holding luggage. But Eliza didn’t care about that. “But you do an alright job of it. Have it done by tonight?”
“She’s tired, Eliza,” Marianne said, which made Eliza blink at her like she’d spoken a foreign language.
Regency Diaries of Seduction Collection: A Regency Historical Romance Box Set Page 34
