“I am.” Her eyes fluttered closed and she leaned into his touch the way a kitten might seek warmth on this chilled day. “What is the alternative? Accepting that my fate has been sealed and I shall be forever whispered about and never wedded?”
At those last words, warning bells went off in his rogue’s ears all the louder. Of course the romantic, hopeful Prudence would dream of marriage. Yet, hearing that word uttered was enough to cause his feet to twitch with the urge to turn on his heel and stalk off. This effervescent, unspoiled by life woman did not belong to cowardly bastards with nothing to offer her, particularly men such as he who did not trust the sentiment of love. “Your view of the world is an idealized one.” He let his hand fall to his side.
She must have heard something in his tone for her frown deepened. “You must see the good that exists.”
His ears rang with the sobs and screams of men drawing their last breath upon the bloodied fields of Waterloo and he ached to clamp his hands over them and blot out the agonized sounds that would never go away.
“Christian?” she prodded gently, concern underscoring his name.
He gave his head a shake. “My experience on the battlefield has taught me that goodness is more fleeting and rarer than a star streaking across the night sky.” Yet this woman was proof of the good that still lived. He curled his hands tightly. He’d long ago given up the right to anything good.
“How old were you when you left for war?”
He blinked at her softly spoken question. “Seventeen.”
Shock, horror, and sadness marred the delicate planes of her face. She angled her head. “But you were so young.”
Unease stirred at the questions in her eyes and on her lips. He’d spent years avoiding all talk of the war. “As old as most of the men fighting.”
She touched her trembling fingers to her lips and, for an instant, he detected a faint sheen over her fathomless, blue eyes.
The tears he’d known from women through the years had proven a carefully crafted ruse to weaken him. He was fast learning however, that there was no artifice where Prudence was concerned. Christ. He did not want pity from her or sadness. Unable to bear confronting all the emotions he spied in her expressive eyes, Christian looked away. Needing to say something, he said, “It was a long time ago.” Those words said nothing about him or who he was or what he’d done, or in this case, not done…and by her next words, she knew as much.
“That does not make that experience go away.” She slid her fingers into his, and at the unexpectedness of that gentle, comforting touch, he stiffened. “That is why you do not believe in hope and love,” she said that last part more to herself.
He did not believe in love because he’d given his heart to a woman. Trusted her with his secrets; secrets that hadn’t been solely his. And through that youthful naiveté, he’d cost so many everything on the battlefields of Toulouse.
Prudence raised her gaze to his and he braced for her inquiries. Inevitably, they all asked. With the women before, it had been more a macabre fascination with a gentleman who’d slayed people with his hands. With Prudence, there too were questions, but these were ones of emotional depth, ones he’d avoided discussing with anyone—including his closest friend, Maxwell, who’d danced with the devil alongside him on those fields of Europe.
“Why would you have gone off to battle?” she asked softly.
Why, indeed.
Her inquiries were not the ones put to him by those fascinated ladies. Hers pertained to who he was and decisions he’d made, and not those horrific deeds in the name of war and honor. “I was young. I was brash and hopeful.” The need to place distance between him and this young woman filled him and drove him away from her. He wandered closer to the thick trunk of the elm and ran his gloved palm over the hard, uneven surface. All the while he spoke, his skin pricked with the intensity of her stare. “I was also only a baronet’s son. A poor one at that.” He chuckled, the sound mirthless, devoid of any real humor. Baronet or marquess, he was doomed to be a pauper. “I thought it sounded a grand adventure and then, I was always eager for a grand adventure.”
Prudence stood with her gaze fixed on Christian. The air thrummed with charged energy between them. Her heart pulled at the ragged emotion in those chocolate brown eyes. He spoke of his previous need for adventure. How very alike they were in that regard. She had spent the better part of her life wishing for more, wanting to see more, and detesting the constraints that kept her bound. Yet, Christian had moved beyond their isolated world. He’d gone to war. He’d seen too much. She thought of Sin’s revelation at Lady Drake’s ball. “I had heard—” she said softly. She bit the inside of her cheek.
Christian shot a glance over his shoulder. “I didn’t take you for a gossip.” Having a brother who’d plotted and longed for escape from his bothersome sisters, she recognized in this man a hungering to be free of her. Or was it this exchange he wanted over?
She tipped her chin up. “I am not.” Pain pulled at her heart, hating both options that left the affable, charming man she’d met on the street, bitter and angry with the past.
When he looked back, he favored her with a dry half-grin. “Were you making inquiries about me, my lady?”
At the faintly mocking challenge, she pursed her lips. “I was not making inquiries about you,” she lied. A splash of guilty heat slapped her cheeks and she prayed he’d credit the color to the winter cold. Did it truly count if one had asked one’s family about the gentleman?
The ghost of a smile hovering on his lips indicated he’d detected that mistruth. Christian swept his lashes downward. “Do you know, Prudence?” he whispered, his gaze lingering upon her burning cheeks. “I do not believe you,” he spoke on a husky whisper while slowly striding back over to her.
Prudence backed up a step. She’d sought him out. Yet she did not know what to do with Christian’s primitive rawness. “D-do not be s-silly,” she stammered, casting a glance about, knowing how those panicked deer felt when hunters came near. For Christian, with his piercing stare and unrelenting set to his jaw, was very much a hunter who’d have truths from her lips. “Wh-what could I possible w-wish to find out about you?” Other than his suitability as a husband and the story of his past?
As if he’d followed that dangerous to any rogue path her thoughts wandered, he narrowed his eyes all the more. “What knowledge could you possibly wish to know about?”
If he knew, he’d surely turn on his heel, running. “Er, is there specific information you think I should know?” After all, he would know a good deal more than Sin, who’d merely offered bits and strands of gossip that, together, probably could not make a whole fabricated story about the marquess.
“Do you wish to know my favorite color?”
How could that innocuous question contain this seductive, dangerous undertone?
Prudence backed into the tree trunk and shot her hands out to steady herself. She cocked her head. “B-blue?”
He eyed her as though she’d sprouted another head. “Oh, you were being sarcastic.” She skirted ’round the tree, keeping close to the steady, comforting strength of the trunk. “I am dreadful with detecting sarcasm. Why can a person not simply say what they wish and mean what they say?” Oh, blast she was running on like a magpie in spring. Stop rambling, Prudence. She promptly closed her lips.
Old, dried leaves and snow-covered earth crunched noisily under his riding boots as he resumed walking and daunted by the powerful emotion emanating from his person, she retreated another step.
The sketchpad slipped from her fingertips and landed with a thump on the ground. She stopped and eyed it for a moment, and briefly, very briefly considered abandoning her beloved leather book. Except, too much of her past existed within those pages, and she’d not be cowed into abandoning it by a prickly marquess who sought to run her off. Prudence bent and retrieved it. When she straightened, a startled gasp escaped her. Her heart thundered hard.
Christian stood with just a h
andbreadth between them, eying her through his thick, golden lashes.
Prudence held that book close to her chest and tipped her head back to meet his gaze square on, that courage belied by the fluttering nervousness in her belly. “Do you know what I believe? I believe you seek to change the subject away from yourself, my lord.” He jerked erect. Was she accurate in her supposition? “I believe it is far easier to don a cold, aloof edge and pepper me with questions than it is for you to share more of yourself than you already have.” Her chest rose and fell with the force of her emotion and her breath stirred the air about them.
Silence fell between them and she remained stock-still as he ran his heated gaze over her face. What was he thinking? She would trade her left littlest finger for that truth. “I have never met a woman such as you.”
Her heart flipped over itself and the fight went out of her. Through the years, she’d endured the at times nauseating endearments her brother bestowed upon his beloved wife. “Goddess of my heart” had been the one to make her point her eyes to the ceiling. “Keeper of my soul” had been another phrase to earn frequent giggles from the Tidemore sisters. Yet, in secret, through each hungering look and stolen caress, Prudence had averted her gaze and wished. Wished to know a love such as theirs. Wished to have a good, devoted, and passionate gentleman who saw her and only her. Wished to have one of those compliments paid her by a man who loved her.
I have never met a woman such as you…
And yet, somehow the raw honesty and simplicity of Christian’s words washed over her with more power and warmth than any effusive, flowery language ever would. “Thank you,” she said softly. “I suppose I should hope to be more like all those other Societal ladies. My mother despaired of me ever becoming like them and yet—”
“Do not change.” He palmed her cheek once more, and she closed her eyes a moment, hating Society’s call for gloves, and even the cold winter for meriting the need for those gloves anyway that denied her the feel of his skin against hers. “There are enough vapid, emotionless ladies. I would have you as you are.”
Oh, God. Another portion of her heart sliced off and fell into his hands; this man who waltzed with forgotten wallflowers, and rescued young girls from the park, and as she’d discovered today, a gentleman who’d fought upon the fields of battle. Until this exchange she’d only known a piece of him. This was the man she’d want. This was the brave, courageous figure she’d take as her husband. “You would have me as I am?” she asked, shamed at her own small-mindedness. “You would praise me with your words as though I am someone honorable, but I am not. Not in the way you, yourself are. You are a hero, Christian. A man of honor and valor and courage—”
Christian leaped away from her as though her skin had burned him. By the furious adamancy in his eyes, her words had roused a volatile, seething emotion that threatened to spill over and consume the both of them. “You would call me honorable, based on what, Prudence?” His voice came out a harsh, gravelly whisper that caused her to flinch. “Because I told you of my past? Do you see the same brave, daring, courageous soldier and hold me upon a pedestal for it?” As all the other ladies did. The unfinished words hung in the air between them so that her skin burned with embarrassed shame at being placed into a neat, organized category of all the women who’d held on to the dream of Christian, the Marquess of St. Cyr.
For a brief moment born of cowardice, she glanced back in the distance to where she’d left Poppy and their maid a short while ago, contemplating a hasty escape. But by the ragged draw of his breaths, he expected that of her and Prudence had spent the better part of her life proving she never did what was expected of her. She turned to face him once more. “I do not know who you were, or the circumstances that shaped you. I know when most gentlemen would bask in the praise of their efforts,” he stiffened, “you do not.” She drew in a steadying breath. “I know that you turned your nose up at Society’s disdain of me and partnered me in two waltzes.” When he made as if to protest, she held up a hand, silencing his words. “What would you say to me? That they were merely dances and were no heroic feat?”
A muscle jumped at the corner of his eye, confirming that she’d been very nearly on the mark, but he remained otherwise silent.
“Perhaps to most, those dances would have been nothing more than polite, gentlemanly tokens for a forgotten wallflower.”
He scowled, seeming to take umbrage with her self-disparagement. “You are no wallflower,” he spoke in sharp, angry tones.
She snorted. “Have you seen me at ton functions, Christian? Come, of course I am. When you are disdained by Society and given the cut direct by gentlemen and ladies alike, you come to find heroism in the actions of one who is undaunted by the dictates of gossips.” This time, he stood stock-still, frozen by her words? Her actions? Her honesty? She advanced on him. “So even as you might convince me you are not the man I believe you to be, I know the truth from what I know of you.”
Christian closed his eyes a moment and a spasm wracked his face. When he opened his eyes, there was a hard sheen of ice that belied the warm, affable gentleman who’d called her my love and plucked her away from a shopkeeper’s dirtied water. “You do not know me,” he said, his frosty words could rival the frigid winter chill. “Not truly.”
Then with a boldness that stunned even her, she pressed a hand to his chest. “Perhaps not, but I would very much like to.” In the distance, thundering hooves filled the quiet. Christian’s horse pawed the hard earth with his front legs.
“Go.”
Did that terse command belong to her or him? She hesitated a moment, but then the mantra ingrained into her, only recently too easily forgotten, rolled through her head. No scandals. No elopements or rushed marriages…
With the wind whipping at her cloak, Prudence spun on her heel and with an unladylike pace that was the least of her scandalous acts that day, she sprinted toward where she’d left her sister. As she raced the short distance through the park, she clutched her sketchpad close to her chest where her heart pounded in a hard, fast rhythm that had little to do with her exertions and everything to do with the revelations made by Christian.
By the snapping fury in his eyes, and the uncharacteristic coldness coating his words, he’d not wanted to speak of or share in his past, and yet he had. And that had to mean something. For he’d let her into his world in a way she suspected he allowed very few in. As she crested the slight rise, her sister pulled into focus. Her chest heaved from her efforts. Poppy lay on her side stroking Sir Faithful, with their maid seated upon that bench just where Prudence had left her. She slowed her steps and stared at the peaceful tableau presented by them.
She had wandered off with her sketchpad in her hand, in an orchestrated attempt to see Christian. Yet some great fundamental shift had occurred in which he’d ceased to be that affable rogue on Bond Street, and instead became this very real, very powerfully affected man. Prudence bit the inside of her cheek. How very small her worries were when presented with his talk of war and, more, his desire to shrug as though he’d not taken part in and witnessed hell.
She wheeled around and squinted in the distance. Astride his mount once again, he conversed with Lord Maxwell. What did those two talk about? Did they reminisce on those battles he’d fought in? The weight of sadness pressed on her chest. A smidgeon of her optimistic heart hoped he spoke not of that darkness but rather, of her.
As much as Christian’s words had been intended as a warning, a deterrent to send her fleeing, his raw honesty and lack of conceit over his efforts during the war had only heightened a resolve she’d come to days earlier—she was going to marry that gentleman.
Now, it was merely a matter of following through.
Chapter 14
Lesson Fourteen
Sometimes a lady requires assistance in bringing a gentleman up to scratch…
Through their ride in Hyde Park, Maxwell had mentioned nothing about coming upon Christian just as Lady Prudence Tidemore dashed
madly away. His longtime friend had said nothing as they’d left the park and ridden through the still-quiet streets. And as they’d entered the hallowed halls of White’s that same afternoon, the other man was unexpectedly silent so that he was left to wonder if the other man had, in actuality, failed to see the young lady.
As a liveried footman settled a bottle and two glasses before them, Maxwell spoke and promptly disabused Christian of any such notion. “Early morning meetings with a lady, sans chaperone?” He swiped the bottle from the mahogany surface and poured himself a healthy glass of brandy. “I have heard your expectations for your marchioness and have listened to your thoughts on wedding one of those wide-eyed debutantes—”
“Shut your bloody mouth.” Christian withered him with a look that quashed any mention of Prudence’s name. Should one nearby servant or a lord hear mention of the lady, their names would be inextricably linked which would be disastrous for the both of them.
“I daresay there can be no more perfect pair than you two. The lady comes from a scandalous family with few options.” Again with this bloody old argument. Christian abhorred the flippant manner in which Maxwell spoke of her future and past. He gripped the edge of the table until his knuckles turned white. “You,” his friend waved a hand in Christian’s direction, as though there were another possible “you” in question. “You need a wife. A wealthy one.”
Christian gritted his teeth. “I am not wedding the lady.” He gave a look to Maxwell indicating that he considered the matter at rest. Grateful for his friend’s blessed quiet, he thought of his carefully crafted plans to find his marchioness. Only now the prospect of settling on one of those ruthless, title-grasping ladies which had seemed the best course for him, the easiest course, now scraped at his insides. For along the way between having his toes hopelessly trod on by Lady Prudence in Lord Drake’s ballroom and their exchange in Hyde Park earlier that morning, she’d presented herself as a glimmer of sun in an otherwise dark, desolate world and God help him for craving the warmth upon his person. He swiped a hand over his eyes. Bloody hell, what was the matter with him? He was no lovesick swain mooning over an innocent miss who wore hideously ruffled white skirts, no less.
Lords of Honor-The Collection Page 33
