by Hale Deborah
Perhaps the strong spirits in his cup had begun to work on Morse. Certainly the next words out of his lips took him by surprise.
“I want to do you proud, Leonora. More than I want that plantation in the colonies. More than I’ve ever wanted anything.”
Morse sensed his last words were not entirely true. There was something else he might want more, if only he dared let himself acknowledge it.
Oh, this man! He did have a knack for saying exactly what she wanted to hear. The notion warmed Leonora even as it unsettled her. She wanted to dismiss his compliment with a self-deprecating quip. But she could not, on the off chance that he’d truly meant it.
As she plundered her mind for something to say, the trio of musicians Sir Hugo had engaged struck up a familiar tune.
Morse sat straight in his chair and smiled. “‘Upon A Summer’s Day’! We can’t have practiced that so often in the past weeks only to sit it out in company.”
He heaved himself up, flinching when his lame leg took weight upon it. “Will you do me the honor of this dance, Miss Freemantle?”
Much as she longed to take the floor on his arm, Leonora shook her head. “You’ve already had more dancing than is good for you, tonight.”
He caught her hand and hoisted her up from the floor as if she had no more weight than a butterfly. “Ah, but I insist.”
Leaning closer, he whispered, “I’ve done my duty dances. Surely you wouldn’t deny me one purely for my own pleasure.”
Leonora might have denied him. If only she could have found her voice. If only her hand did not clasp his arm with a will of its own and her feet move toward the dance floor entirely of their own accord.
They had practiced this well-known dance often, as it was often played in assembly rooms. Though it had a sprightly tune, the tempo of the dancers was not too quick. And it was performed in sets of three couples. Morse and Leonora, Algie and Miss Taylor, Dickon and the game-keeper’s daughter had practiced it over and over until the six of them could almost have danced it in their sleep.
“I see you’ve had the same idea.” A beaming Algie towed Elsie behind him.
They made a six with Sir Hugo and Colonel Morrison’s widowed sister. As they led up and fell back, Leonora watched anxiously for signs that Morse’s leg pained him. Perhaps the short rest or whatever he’d been drinking had eased him, for he did not so much as wince.
She relaxed a little, letting herself enjoy the warmth of his hand on hers as they led. The brush of her gown against his breeches as they turned.
Algie and Sir Hugo joined hands to create an arch, as did Elsie and Sir Hugo’s partner. Morse and Leonora led down the center, then separated—him to go through the men’s arch, her to go through the women’s.
It struck Leonora as an apt metaphor for their future. In the past weeks they had worked together, toward a common goal. Once they won the wager, however, they must part. Morse going off to the rough-hewn, masculine world of the colonies. She settling into a kind of feminine cloister with her school. And how she would miss him!
A lump rose in Leonora’s throat.
For all their hard work and occasional bickering during the past months, she had become accustomed to Morse’s presence in her life. His going would leave a void even her long-dreamed-of school might not productively fill.
The lyrics often sung to this melody were also a distressing reminder of things to come. A discourse between a young lady and her soldier beau going off to war. Leonora had always been skeptical of the outcome of that exchange—the woman declaring she would follow her lover to war, rather than die of worry and heartbreak waiting for his return. A woman of sense could not simply abandon the life she knew to follow a man.
Or could she?
As they joined hands again for the final double, Morse leaned toward her and whispered, “Come back to earth, Leonora. Where have your thoughts been? Not here on the dance floor, that’s for certain.”
She flashed him a brief smile of apology. “Only thinking of what’s still to come. I’m sorry if I spoiled the dance for you. I didn’t mean to be so preoccupied.”
He escorted her back to the alcove, his limp more pronounced. Had he been masking it before? Or was he exaggerating it now, to deflect the hopeful glances cast his way by Mrs. Bonnell and Miss Morrison the Younger?
“I can’t very well blame you.” He spoke quietly, imparting a confidence. “I have found myself preoccupied all day. I can’t stop thinking about what happened between us last evening.”
Leonora’s stomach constricted and her breath fluttered high and shallow in her chest. “The kiss you mean.” She let her voice drop to a whisper on that word, almost as if she was afraid to say it.
Morse gripped her arm tightly as he eased himself back into the chair. His weight pulled Leonora forward, until she could feel the whisper of his breath against the bare flesh of her décolletage.
“The kiss,” he murmured, “and all that went with it.” The husky quality of his voice sent bewildering sensations snaking through her. Almost as if he had run his hand over her body from ankle to shoulder.
“It was a mistake.” The words choked her. Would she ever learn to admit error or weakness without feeling so terrifyingly vulnerable? “I shouldn’t have thrown myself at you like that.”
“I didn’t notice any throwing.” Morse chuckled. “I think something…sparked between us just then and we hadn’t any choice but to act on it.”
Leonora shook her head. “People may not choose how they feel, but they always have choices in how they act.”
She couldn’t live without that measure of control, seductive as it might be at times to slough off responsibility for those deliberate decisions. “I wanted to kiss you, so I did. I suppose I was curious.”
Even in the shadows of the alcove, his eyes glittered perceptively. A half smile crinkled one corner of his mouth. “Is there anything else you’re curious to explore, Leonora?”
She hovered over him, her back to the rest of Sir Hugo’s guests. None of them could possibly see Morse reach up and swipe his fingers across the bodice of her gown. As the sensitive tips of her breasts hardened and set a moist inferno blazing between her thighs, Leonora felt the whole company must be gaping at her. Knowing every wicked thought that passed through her brain.
Pulling back from Morse, she put a safe distance of several steps between them. If he touched her like that again, she might be forced to abdicate her will. Tossed perilously on a stormy sea of impulse and indiscretion.
“I am not about to jeopardize my future simply to satisfy my curiosity.”
She was a twenty-seven-year-old virgin, and unless she lost the wager with Uncle Hugo, she intended to remain one. She could hardly run her school while trying to raise an illegitimate baby. Or was Morse suggesting he would take responsibility for their choice by making an honest woman of her, if need be?
For the first time in her life, the notion of marriage and a family tempted Leonora.
“No need to jeopardize anything.”
She should have known he was not advocating a course as foolish as wedding her.
“There are ways a man can bring a woman pleasure without…” He groped for the right word. “…without any bothersome consequences.”
“There are?” The words squeaked out of her parchment-dry throat.
Lounging back in the chair, Morse nodded slowly. His sinful smile and sultry gaze suggested what those ways might be.
At that moment Leonora understood how Eve must have felt, tempted by the serpent in the garden. Did she dare to taste the forbidden fruit Morse offered her?
“It’s beginning to look as if we may win this wager with your uncle,” said Morse. “If you are bent on adopting a life of single blessedness, I feel it’s my duty to help you make an informed choice. How can you do that if you have no idea what you’ll be missing?”
Oh, Rifleman Archer had the serpent beaten altogether. Leonora scraped together enough poise to observe, “You
are quite the logician, sir.”
His grin broadened. “I am a rogue at heart, and none of your gentlemanly polish will alter that.”
If his words were meant to warn her off, they had quite the opposite effect on Leonora. She could almost feel contrary forces tugging her in two different directions.
Her head and her will pulled one way. They were strong, having ruled her life for so many years unopposed.
But perhaps they had grown somewhat lax, lost condition, from the lack of rivalry. Now her body and her heart were putting up a fight, fueled by their resentment at being so long stifled.
“What do you say?” prompted Morse. “We have a fortnight before we must leave for Bath. Shall we turn the tables for a while and let me teach you?”
“Leonora, my dear!” boomed Sir Hugo from behind her.
She could not suppress a guilty start, but she rallied her composure enough to turn and smile. “Yes, Uncle?”
“The Morrisons are leaving. You must come along to the door with me and bid them a good night.”
“Of course, Uncle. They have been most congenial guests. I want to thank them for coming.”
Her mind welcomed the distraction. Now it would gain time to reinforce its defenses and temper potent weapons, such as the memories of her past.
As she made to follow her uncle away, Morse called, “Well, Leonora? Don’t leave me in suspense. Are you willing?”
Her mind scrambled to repulse this sneak attack, but her tongue suddenly turned traitor, siding with her heart.
“I am.”
Two tiny words. But would her whole future hang on them?
Chapter Twelve
Are you willing?
The memory of his words stirred Morse, even as he cringed at his own audacity. What had possessed him last night?
Could it have been the draft he’d taken to deaden the pain in his leg? Or the heady rush of his first social triumph? Or had he been swept away by a riptide of attraction to Leonora that he’d been swimming against for weeks?
Contemplating her answer to his question roused Morse even more. Leonora had taken up the gauntlet of his challenge, daring him to follow through.
A niggling whisper in the back of his mind urged caution.
This would not be like any of the fleeting encounters with women he’d enjoyed during his years abroad. Though he’d done his best to leave his partners well satisfied, his own pleasure had always been the object. What he had proposed to Leonora was less like teaching and more like service.
He’d been well instructed in the ways of such service. Cultivated as an instrument to bring a woman pleasure. At the time he hadn’t realized it, though. He’d been sufficiently naive and infatuated to believe a man and a woman were equal partners in bed, no matter what their positions in the world. And he’d been foolish enough to expect that bedroom equality could carry over into the world.
Even a decade later, the hurt of it still gnawed at his heart. Morse was no longer certain what tormented him most—Lady Pamela’s betrayal, or his own humiliation.
He’d been a young footman at Granville Manor, chafing at his servitude, when he’d caught the eye of his master’s young wife. While old Sir Winthrope was alive, he had managed to keep his distance from Lady Pamela, though he burned with longing for her.
After his master’s death, Morse had surrendered to that longing.
It had been heady stuff for a young man’s first love affair. A very beautiful woman, somewhat older than he and infinitely more experienced. The dizzying euphoria of first love mixed with the dark thrill of intrigue to compound an intoxicating elixir.
Secret encounters. Furtive couplings. Coded gestures and looks.
He had come to crave her like a drunkard craved gin. Willing to go anywhere, at any time, do anything to be with her. Believing she loved him with equal fervor, he had begun to dream of a future for the two of them.
What a simpleton!
Her money had never been his object, so the circumstances were perfect. With no children and an entailed estate, Lady Pamela would have only a small widow’s jointure once her late husband’s will went to probate.
Not much, but enough to buy a modest cottage and set Morse up in a respectable trade.
Some scrap of gentle sensibility had kept him from asking for her hand while her first husband was barely cold in his grave. When he finally screwed up his courage to do it, she laughed in his face.
“Oh, my darling Archer, surely you jest! Me—settle down in some dreary village as the wife of a common wagonwright or brewer?”
His whole body blushing with anger and humiliation, he still tried to persuade her. “Better a cosy little house we could call our own and go off to bed early of a night whenever we felt like it. Instead of sneaking around a great drafty mansion.”
She smiled then. At least, her lips raised at the corners. “I rather like the sneaking, Archer, darling. I find it most stimulating. Now do stop talking nonsense and come kiss me.”
He kissed her, with everything in him, hoping it might convince her that his love was worth more than possessions or status.
“You have to be out of Granville Manor in another month, anyway,” he persisted when they paused for air. “If you have to live more humbly anyway, why not with me?”
“Because, my sweet rustic footman, I have already promised my hand to someone else. And I won’t be living more humbly. My new husband may be somewhat beneath my last one in social standing, but the depth of his purse will more than compensate. Now go bolt the door, there’s a good fellow. I plan to enjoy your company often until then.”
“You can’t mean it. You can’t do it! I love you, Pamela, and I want you to be my wife.”
Her countenance hardened then, and Morse knew there would be no persuading her. “You’re becoming tiresome, Archer. If you can’t see why wedding you is totally out of the question, there’s nothing I can say to dun it into your head, I suppose.”
Sidling up to him, she unbuttoned his coat, waistcoat and shirt, running her hands over his chest. Her touch did not excite him as it once had.
“You won’t have to part from me, if that’s what’s worrying you. Mr. Hill has assured me I may retain as many of the servants from Granville Manor as I wish to bring north with me. Of course, I shall give you glowing recommendation. Nothing needs to change between us.”
Morse felt as though she had slapped him hard across the cheek, her nails gouging his skin.
He understood then that he’d never been more to her than a servant. A servant with special, intimate duties, to be sure. But always at her command, never his desire. Valued no higher than the cook for her puddings or the gardener for his neatly trimmed hedges. Not on any account to be viewed as a person with his own needs, dreams and griefs.
His mistress pouted her lips in a wordless demand that he kiss her again.
He didn’t.
Instead Morse put his lips and his hands to work on other parts of her body, until she was purring and panting. Judging her on the very brink of ecstasy, he pulled away.
To her frustrated squeal, he replied, “Go to hell, Lady Granville.”
There and then, he’d quit Granville Manor and enlisted in the Rifles, vowing he would have nothing more to do with women above his station. He had kept that vow most strictly, until he’d come to Laurelwood.
Did he dare to make an exception for Leonora Freemantle?
Leonora squeezed her bloodless fingers around her coffee cup to still their trembling. Toying with her breakfast, she only half listened to Algie and Uncle Hugo’s animated discussion of the party.
She’d passed a miserable night, wishing she could take back the words she’d flung at Morse. Her sleep-starved mind almost looked forward to the day when he would be gone from her life, leaving her to untroubled slumber.
Yet, at the thought of his going, a deep chasm of loneliness seemed to open at her feet, threatening to swallow her whole.
If you can’t abide the
notion of losing him now, her reasonable self admonished, how much worse will you feel if you let him closer?
But how could she let him go without satisfying her curiosity? For the rest of her life, she would think of him and wonder.
“Sorry I’m late.” Morse took his place at the breakfast table, his limp more pronounced than in several weeks.
Remembering what he had done for Dorothy Yates and her other pupils at the party, Leonora’s heart softened toward him.
“Not much wonder you overslept, old fellow,” mumbled Algie through a mouthful of kippers and toast. “After all that dancing and punch, I slept like a top. Splendid party, Sir Hugo,” he said for perhaps the tenth time that morning.
Thank heaven Morse was going to win her wager. No matter how fond she’d grown of Algie in other ways, Leonora knew she could not abide rising every morning to face his hearty good humor. A week into their honeymoon and she’d probably be hurling soft-boiled eggs at his head!
“Glad to hear you slept well.” Morse tucked into the breakfast he’d been served with table manners a good deal more genteel than Algie’s. “I had roughish night.”
Was it her imagination, or did he venture a furtive glance her way?
“A bit too much dancing to suit my leg,” Morse concluded.
“You need to build up strength in it.” Algie looked to Sir Hugo for an endorsement.
“So you do,” agreed the older man. “Now that the weather’s got milder, you should go for a walk every day. Leonora can trot along with you and lecture, if you’re worried about missing lessons.”
“That sounds like a fine idea.” Morse looked at her, his eyes sparkling with amusement, or perhaps challenge.
She could not bring herself to look away, but neither could she summon up an answer.
A walk—away from Laurelwood. The chance for privacy.
“Right after we finish breakfast, I’ll get my coat and walking stick.” Morse’s eating seemed to increase in tempo.
“I…suppose.” Leonora forced the words out, embarrassed by the high, tight quality of her voice. She sounded like such a coward.
