Lords of Honor-The Collection

by Christi Caldwell

  “Was I seen?” she whispered and her warm breath fanned his cheek.

  Once again, his body responded to her slender form flush against his. His mouth went dry…and he made the mistake of looking at her.

  Healthy color now restored to her face, Gemma stared boldly at his mouth. Surely she was thinking of Westfield and the potential risk to her name. Should they be discovered, there would be no recourse for either of them, except marriage. The thought should bloody well terrify him. He’d long ago lost his heart to another; a young woman he’d called friend, whom he’d eventually come to crave more from.

  But in all his imaginings of Eloise, his body had never felt—this.

  “Why are you looking at me like that?” Gemma’s whisper danced in the air between them.

  Richard swallowed reflexively. “And how am I looking at you?” As though I want to touch my lips to your flushed, heated skin and explore your body in every way, unlocking the secrets within.

  “As though I’m a plate of those kippers you so enjoy.”

  Or like that.

  There should be humor at the likening. There should be amusement and, at the very least, a reminder of their innocent exchange in the breakfast room when they’d sparred and battled as almost enemies. “Ah, those kippers you so despise.”

  Gemma ran her gaze over his face “Do you know, Richard? I do believe you are correct.” She wetted her lips and he followed that innocent, and yet wholly erotic, movement with his gaze. “I unfairly judged those kippers. I do not believe they are quite so horrible, after all.”

  He froze, as her meaning shifted into focus.

  She reached between them and brushed a strand of hair behind his ear. “And I think those kippers will make someone a fine meal.” Just not me…

  Of course, it wouldn’t be Richard. Wordlessly, he looked off to the paragon in the distance. Eloise had chosen Lucien. Just as Gemma had chosen Westfield. As the second son of a viscount, Richard had never been, nor would he ever be, the man women chose to give their hearts to.

  He stilled, suspended by the suffocating fear of his ponderings. He did not want Gemma Reed’s love. She was nothing more than a woman he’d had but five exchanges with. Granted there had been two kisses there, as well. But still, five exchanges all the same.

  Richard rolled onto his back, putting much needed space between them. Fishing around the front of his jacket he pulled out his flask and took a long swallow. A gentle breeze stirred the branches overhead and he stared at the dancing green leaves. “So why, Westfield?”

  For a long moment, she said nothing, and he angled his head slightly, thinking she’d either failed to hear that inquiry, or ignored him.

  Gemma lay on her back beside him, staring at the same canopy overhead. She chewed at her lower lip contemplatively.

  “Beyond the terrier-like attributes,” he said, infusing as much humor into that prodding as he could call forth.

  She looked at him with a twinkle lighting her fathomless eyes. “I thought it was a hound?”

  They shared a smile, but then his grin fell. “A dog is a dog.” Just as certain men were rewarded with the love of a good lady. The Westfields and Luciens of the world. Both men, deserving of those very emotions and, as such, love found them.

  Gemma shifted onto her side so she lay looking at him. “But that isn’t true,” she corrected. She propped her head on her hand. “Not even every terrier is the same. Redesdale terriers are vermin hunters and even-tempered. The Fox terrier,” she waggled her eyebrows, “also, a terrier, mind you, but bred with a tempered aggressiveness to flesh out foxes.”

  He stared at her, bemused. “You know quite a lot about a lot of different topics, don’t you, Gemma Reed?”

  With a sound of frustration, she flopped onto her back beside him. “Much to my mother’s chagrin,” she muttered. “The ton hardly sees the benefit in a lady knowing anything about horses and dogs.” And yet, even as Society favored a lady adept at the sport of archery, Gemma remained on the fringe, secretly participating in a way that wouldn’t garner her notice.

  Laughter filtered again in the distance, followed by the smattering of applause. Richard ignored it. For years, he’d admired but one woman, and that admiration had been built on a lifetime of friendship. He’d believed himself incapable of looking upon any woman, particularly one of noble origins, as different than the ladies in the distance vying for Westfield’s hand.

  Again, Richard looked at her. The walls he’d carefully built about a heart he’d thought forever numbed by Eloise’s marriage to his brother, cracked.

  As though feeling his gaze, Gemma turned and their gazes locked. “What is it?”

  “You are a remarkable young woman,” he said quietly.

  And how had he failed to realize the lady’s beauty at their first meeting? Except, he’d noted, and lying beside her, with her wide, brown eyes trained on his face, he had a staggering fear that now that he had noticed, he’d never stop.

  Chapter 9

  Many words had been uttered about Gemma in the course of her life. Most of them beginning with the prefix “un”: Unattractive. Untalented. Unimpressive.

  Never, in all the words whispered about by the ton, or captured on the pages of the scandal sheets, had a single person penned remarkable beside her name. Not even the mother who’d given her life or the brother who loved her had seen her in that special light. Rather, she’d been recognized more as something of an oddity who would find love by sheer devotion.

  Emotion swelled in Gemma’s throat and she stared as the leaves danced overhead and revealed soft, white clouds as they rolled by. She turned her head. “No one has ever called me remarkable,” she said softly to him.

  A wry grin formed on his lips, but he didn’t bother to take his eyes from the same clouds she’d previously studied. “Well, that is a near impossible feat. It would require a lot of unremarkable people to see something wholly absent inside themselves inside another.” He spoke with a matter-of-factness that sent heat spiraling to her heart. Then he shoved himself onto his elbows and took another swill from his flask. Putting the top on, he stuffed it into the front of his jacket, and lay down on his back, once more.

  Disappointment gripped her. Of course gentlemen drank spirits and, yet, his casual sipping from his flask, in that roguish manner, rankled. Rankled her, when it really wasn’t her affair whether Lord Westfield’s friend sipped spirits on Sunday with the devil himself. But she’d been so caught up in the beauty of Richard’s words and now he’d dull that treasured moment…with liquor.

  “So you never did tell me, Miss Reed,” he said with that slightly mocking edge he’d used at their first meeting, bringing a frown to her lips. And when had she become Miss Reed, again? “What are the reasons you find yourself hopelessly in love with Lord Westfield?”

  “Do you not believe him worthy of those sentiments?” she shot back.

  “Quite the contrary. Though a rogue, Westfield is, as you said, loyal and kind. A better man than most of all Society.”

  She frowned. “Well, for one, he’s not surly.”

  With their shoulders flush, her body trembled at the slight tensing of his bicep muscles. “Are you calling me surly, Miss Reed?”

  “Are you calling me Miss Reed because you’re being surly?”

  He snorted. “Touché, Gemma. I wasn’t always surly, you know.” No, she didn’t know. For she didn’t truly know anything about Richard Jonas. Yet, at the same time, he knew more of her than any other. Even Lord Westfield… Unsettled by that truth, she fixed on the sound of his husky baritone. “In fact, I’ve been touted as one of those charming sorts.”

  She giggled. “Have you?”

  In one smooth movement, Richard flipped on his side. “Not charming enough if that is any indication.”

  Her heart tripped a beat. Too charming if her pounding pulse was any indication.

  She forced a smile. “And he smiles a good deal.” At his silence, she asked, “Shall I continue?”<
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  He inclined his head. “By all means.” He dipped his lips close to her ear and slight shivers radiated at his nearness. “If you can, my lady.”

  If she could what? The muscles of her throat worked. “Er…” and she blinked several times, feeling as though he’d turned her in a hundred dizzying circles. “Of course I can.” Of course she could what? Think, Gemma Reed. Think. Lord Westfield! Of course, they were speaking of Lord Westfield. Her future husband. Only, where her desire to capture that gentleman’s notice had sustained her through three lonely Seasons, now, she struggled to draw forth his image.

  Richard stared at her with a triumphant glimmer in eyes so gray they could rival a tempestuous summer storm. “Then please do continue.” What a hopelessly disloyal creature she’d proven—and all because of Richard’s roguish half-grin. And his teasing. And his compliment that surely hadn’t been intended as a compliment.

  Think of all the ways in which Richard was not perfect. Her eyes snagged upon the front of his jacket. She stared damningly at it. “Well, he assuredly does not carry a flask in his pocket and drink with a staggering frequency.”

  He bristled. “I do not drink with a staggering frequency.” Richard followed her stare. “Most gentleman do carry a flask,” he mumbled under his breath.

  Warming to all those needed reminders, Gemma went on. “Nor in all the years I’ve known him has he mocked his sister for her romantic tendencies and he certainly believes they exist.”

  A muscle jumped at the corner of his mouth. “I believe in love.”

  “You?” She rolled her eyes. “A gentleman who’d mock me for my words? Who in our handful of meetings has expressed cynicism for that sentiment? You don’t believe in love, Richard, but it is real. It is…” Gemma trained her gaze on him, her words momentarily fleeing at his nearness. Heat poured from his thickly muscled chest and warmed her more than any summer sun could or ever would.

  In a touch as fleeting as a butterfly’s kiss, Richard ran his knuckles over her jaw. “For your opinions on me, Gemma, and your perceived thoughts on how I view love, you would be wrong.”

  She bit her lip and his eyes took in that slight movement, and for a heartbeat she thought he’d again kiss her. Thought it. Wanted it. Needed it—Then his words registered.

  He spoke with a solemnity, devoid of cynicism that she’d not known of him these past days at the duke’s summer party. “You speak as one who has known those sentiments,” she ventured hesitantly, not knowing why it should matter if Richard Jonas had entrusted his heart to another.

  “I have,” he quietly confirmed.

  And yet, it did. It mattered a great deal. A quiet silence fell between them with the revelry from the duke’s arranged games forgotten.

  “You have,” she repeated blankly. He’d been in love. Or he still was.

  Richard shifted his gaze and looked overhead and that slight distancing pulled at her heart. With that move away from her, he’d been drawn back to the lady who’d earned his love. She bit the inside of her lower lip, torn between asking questions that sought answers about who had hurt him and never wanting to know that there had been another…mayhap a woman who’d also known his kiss first. “I was in love.”

  Her heart missed a beat. Was. Not—am. “Is she the reason you carry that flask?” Hers was a bid to infuse levity back to their easier exchange, bringing them ’round to the safer discussion on those decorous traits one would expect of a gentleman.

  He nodded. “I was not always cynical. I was very much in love.”

  Very much in love was so greatly different than just “in love”. The regret in his tone spoke of a man who still cared deeply and Gemma ached to take that hurt away. For she knew what it was to care for another and to be very nearly invisible to that person. Abandoning all hint of hesitancy, Gemma flipped onto her side. “Why did you love her?”

  He cocked his head.

  Making a clearing noise with her throat, Gemma pushed herself up onto her elbow and looked at him. “Well, you see, I loved Lord Westfield because he so gallantly danced with me when no others would.” Or will. She opened her mouth to continue but her breath caught as he rolled onto his side.

  He brushed his thumb over her lower lip in a fleeting, too quickly ended caress. “Love.”

  Her mouth parted under his tender ministrations. “What?”

  “Not you ‘loved’ him. Rather, you love him.”

  She formed a circle with her mouth. “Did I say ‘loved’?” Surely she’d not make such a mistake. Surely, she’d at the very least recall making such a mistake?

  His lips twitched. “You did.”

  “Humph,” Bristling at his obvious amusement, Gemma frowned. “If I did say that, which—”

  “You certainly did.”

  “Then, it was said in error,” she spoke over him. “Regardless,” she gave a flounce of her hair, never wishing more for a set of perfectly coiled ringlets than this very instant. “Why are you in love with…” She didn’t want the lady’s name, for it would make her real in ways that Gemma rather preferred her not to be. “Your lady,” she finished. The muscles of her stomach knotted. Why should she care either way who Richard Jonas loved? Why, unless…?

  “Why?”

  For all the consternation in that one-word utterance, she may as well have asked him to deliver a lecture on the origins of life before the Royal Academy.

  She stared expectantly at him.

  “There is no one like her.” That gruff reply came almost grudgingly. “She can fish and swim better than most gentlemen I know.”

  Again, Richard proved himself a man who desired more, wanted more, than the empty-headed debutantes flitting about London. Unlike the lords who craved a Diamond, he with his words proved himself one capable of appreciating a flawed, cracked, and more than slightly dulled diamond. It was on the tip of her tongue to add that she herself could no doubt best Richard himself in any lap across a lake. Not that she was competing with the nameless young woman he spoke of. She wasn’t. Gemma chewed her lower lip. Well, mayhap a bit in her unspoken thoughts she was.

  “Who was she?” The bald question slipped from her lips.

  “She…Eloise, was a childhood friend.”

  Only, one would never be invisible with a childhood friend. Rather, that person he spoke of was a lady who’d know all the secrets he carried, and stories of his family, and all of him, really.

  And Gemma really didn’t wish to know anything more than that. For that lifelong connection spoke to more than a fleeting love that had come from a perfectly timed waltz, then quadrille, and pleasant exchanges at ton functions. Yet, he spoke in the past tense. “Was a—?”

  “Is,” he swiftly amended and hopped to his feet.

  Pushing herself up onto her elbows, Gemma took in his restless movements. He flicked his gaze about the copse, his stare lingering in the direction of the distant amusements being enjoyed, concealed by the thick brush.

  A private smile formed on his lips and it was as though he recalled memories only he knew of the lady. Envy snaked through Gemma. “She taught me to bait a fishing pole when I was a squeamish boy.” He chuckled. “And she could curse and spit with an ease that would have impressed a hardened soldier.”

  Only one purpose had driven her efforts for this summer party; one man—Lord Westfield. That same gentleman now forgotten, Gemma climbed to her feet.

  Tension dripped from Richard’s tautly held frame. The hard glint in Richard’s eyes spoke of a man who didn’t care to discuss those parts of his past.

  Selfishly, she wanted to know anyway. “What is she like now?”

  He pierced her with his questioning gaze.

  Gemma ran her palms down the front of her skirts. “Well, it is just the memories you speak of…” she picked her words cautiously, a near impossible feat given one so wholly inept when it came to Social discourse. “They are memories of your childhood. Who did she become as a woman?”

  With a furious restlessness to his m
ovements, Richard moved toward her. “Are you questioning whether or not my love for the lady is real?”

  Unease raced along her spine at the volatile anger lighting his eyes. The gentleman was really not much more than a stranger and yet…she forcibly relaxed her shoulders. He’d not hurt her. “I am merely pointing out the memories you’ve shared, your reasons for loving her, they are borne from moments long ago. Who is she as a woman?”

  He folded his arms in a defensive manner. “She is loyal, dedicated, devoted to her fam…” His words trailed to an abrupt end and a flush marred his harsh, angular cheeks.

  Did he recognize the hypocrisy in spouting nearly the same words Gemma had so recently about Lord Westfield? “Forgive me,” she said quietly. “It was not my reason to question your devotion to the young woman.” She spoke in truth. Rather, her inquiries had been borne on an inherent need to know about what had shaped this man into the person he’d become. By his accounts, a man he’d only recently become. “What happened to her?”

  Silence ticked on and she expected he’d not honor her with any additional answers about his past—and his love.

  But then…

  Richard lifted his shoulders up and down in a casual shrug. “She married another.” A mirthless chuckle rumbled past his lips. “Two different someones, rather.”

  Two different…? Gemma creased her brow.

  “Eloise left for London when she was eighteen and had her first Season.” He gave his head a slight, sad shake. “I was too much a coward to confess my feelings for her.”

  “What happened to her?” she asked, the question tumbling out.

  “She married an earl.” A muscle leapt at the corner of his mouth. “A good man who left her a young widow.”

  That telltale tic gave her pause. Did Richard judge his own self-worth against those distinguished titles afforded a man for nothing more than his birthright? In truth, Gemma had never given a jot if a man was a duke or a driver; she judged their worth in the quality of their character. “And she remarried again after her husband’s passing?” she put forward based on his earlier statement.