Wedding of the Season: Abandoned at the Altar

by Laura Lee Guhrke

  She followed him into the knee-deep water and helped him beach the boat well above the water mark. “Now what?” she asked.

  “C’mon.” Grabbing his boots, he beckoned her to follow him. She started to reach again for her own shoes, but he stopped her. “You won’t need them.”

  She gave him a puzzled look, but he didn’t enlighten her. Instead, he led her to the edge of the beach, where the sand ended and the woods began. There he paused long enough to brush the sand off his feet and put his boots back on, and then he turned to her. Wrapping one arm around her waist, he hooked his other arm beneath her knees and lifted her.

  She laughed, curling her arms around his neck as he carried her into the woods. “Trying to impress me?” she asked.

  “Yes,” he confessed, turning down a well-worn path that led through the woods and around a rocky bit of the shoreline. “Is it working?”

  “That depends. Where are you taking me? I know, I know,” she said as he still didn’t answer. “You’re not telling.”

  “Don’t need to,” he said, emerging into a clearing. “We’re there.”

  “There?” she echoed, sounding even more puzzled than before as she looked up at him, but when she saw him nod to something behind her, she turned her head, and gave an exclamation of surprise and delight. An ancient elm tree stood on a jutting bit of headland overlooking the sea, and hanging from one of its stout branches was a swing. Its plank seat and twin ropes swayed ever so slightly in the ocean breeze, and behind it, above the endless stretch of ocean, a crescent moon hung in the night sky, surrounded by a million stars.

  “It’s beautiful!” she said, laughing. “But I don’t remember a swing being here when we were children.”

  “There wasn’t one. Marlowe and his boys put it up this summer. I heard them talking about it the other day, and they told me where it was. I remember how your nanny didn’t like you to play on the swing Paul and I put up at Danbury.”

  “I remember, too,” she murmured. “But you used to swing me up really high when she wasn’t looking. And I’d laugh and give the show away, and Nanny would look up from her knitting and scold you like anything.”

  He leaned close to her ear. “Care to have another go now that you’re all grown up?” he murmured.

  She nodded, and he carried her over to it. When he set her down, she settled herself on the seat. He grabbed the ropes and took a few steps backward. “Hold on,” he said, and gave the swing a shove forward to start it going.

  “What a lovely view,” she said as she came falling back to earth, and he gave her another push.

  “Perfect spot for a swing, eh?”

  “Mmm,” she agreed, and with that, both of them fell silent as he pushed the swing for her. She leaned back in the seat and stretched out her legs in front of her, moving with the motion of the swing in a rhythm every child learned and every adult remembered.

  He gave the swing a harder shove, and she sailed up precariously high. “Will!” she cried, laughing protest, but he paid no attention. The next time she came back down, he sent her even higher, laughing with her as she went up, up, up toward the stars. “It’s a good thing I didn’t wear a dress tonight,” she told him as she came back down. “That’s why Nanny didn’t let you swing me up high, you know. My dress might go flying up.”

  Her nanny wasn’t the author of that silly rule, he knew perfectly well, but he decided there was no point in bringing up the fact that her father was a controlling bastard whose ideas of what was appropriate recreation and behavior for his daughter dated from medieval days.

  “Well,” he said instead, “if you ever do finally agree to marry me, and if we have daughters, they’ll be allowed to go as high up on the swing as they want.”

  “You say that now,” she said over her shoulder as he pushed her toward the stars again, “but what about later?”

  The fact that she wasn’t protesting the possibility of marrying him gave him another spark of hope. He might, he just might, be able to win her over after all. “Later?” he asked, not pushing the swing as hard this time, but letting momentum alone carry it so that it would slow down. “What do you mean by that?”

  “What about when they’re older?”

  “I still don’t know what you mean. They’ll be able to go on swings no matter what age they are.”

  “I’m not talking about swings. What about when they meet young men who want to sneak them out of the house for midnight adventures?”

  She swung back down toward him, and he caught her, stopping the swing by wrapping his arms around the ropes and her and digging his feet into the sand beneath them. “I’m not worried about that.”

  “No?”

  “No.” He relaxed his hold and leaned down, tilting his head to press a kiss to her temple. “I sleep lightly, and I’m an excellent shot.”

  That made her laugh, and she didn’t pull away when he kissed her cheek. “So shooting your daughters’ suitors would be your solution?”

  He nodded, inhaling the delicate scent of gardenias as he brushed his lips against her ear. The skin of her earlobe felt like velvet against his mouth. “Yes.”

  She turned her head, twisting in the swing to look at him. “That’s so hypocritical,” she accused, but she was smiling when she said it.

  He moved around to the front of the swing and sank to his knees. Grasping the ropes to hold the swing still, he leaned closer to her. “Very hypocritical,” he agreed, and his lips brushed lightly against hers. The contact sent fissures of pleasure through his body. “What can I say?”

  He wanted to kiss her fully, feel her mouth open and willing beneath his, but before he could act on that delicious impulse, her voice—suddenly serious—stopped him.

  “But there’s really no point in discussing how we would raise our daughters, is there, Will? Because we’re never going to have any.”

  He drew back again. Letting go of the ropes, he cupped her face in his hands. “Don’t say never, Trix. I told you before, that’s a very long time.” He paused, then, forcing offhanded lightness into his voice, he said, “Besides, I’m still hoping to persuade you to come back to Egypt with me.”

  “If that’s the case, you’re wasting your time. I don’t want to go to Egypt.”

  “Why not?” He pressed a kiss to her forehead. “There isn’t anything stopping you anymore,” he pointed out as gently as possible.

  “Yes, there is, Will.” She gestured to their surroundings. “My life is here. In Devonshire. And I like it that way.” She drew a slow, deep breath. “That day in Halstead’s Bookshop, when you said I dream of going places but I never go, I can’t deny that, for it’s true. But I’ve never really minded being an armchair traveler.”

  “You only say that because this is what you’re used to. You would love to travel, if you stopped wishing about it and actually did it.”

  “I confess, I would like to go to Florence one day, and I’m not saying I wouldn’t like to see the Pyramids or take a boat up the Nile or unearth some pretty Egyptian jewelry or alabaster jars, but I don’t want that to be my life. I do like adventures, but only as long as they aren’t too scary and I can come back home when they’re over to my soft bed and my afternoon tea and my English rain and my cottage garden. Because deep down, I’m just an ordinary English girl, and I want an ordinary English life.”

  She paused a moment, then went on, “What you overheard Julia say to me the other day was true, too. It wrecked me when you left, and it took me years to accept that you really were gone for good, that you weren’t coming back, and that you didn’t want the life I did.” He started to speak, but she pressed her fingers to his mouth, stopping him.

  “After Papa died,” she said, lowering her hand again, “that was when I finally realized how short life was, and how mine was going by. I knew I had to accept that you weren’t coming back, that I had to make a life without you. Julie dragged me to Cornwall, and we had a lovely holiday, and then I met Aidan. You’re right that we wer
en’t in love, but we were fond of each other, and he wanted all the same things I did, and it seemed that marrying him was the right thing to do. Some might call that settling for less than you really want because Aidan and I weren’t deeply in love, but at twenty-five, I was already well and truly on the shelf, and I wanted to be married and have children more than anything, you see.”

  Will didn’t want to hear this, but he knew he had to. “And now I’ve ruined all that for you. Again.” He gave a sharp sigh and looked away, letting his hands fall to his sides. He felt his desire fading, along with some of his optimism. “I wish I could make it right.”

  “You can’t. Because we don’t want the same things, Will, and without wanting the same things, we can’t be happy together, no matter how many adventures you take me on. You see, I like my plum pudding at Christmas, and coming to Pixy Cove in August, and watching the races at Ascot. I like the smell of apple blossoms in the spring and roasting chestnuts in the autumn. Those are the things that matter to me. And I’ve never been able to understand why they don’t matter to you.”

  They’d had this discussion so many times, he thought in frustration, and it never seemed to go anywhere. It never accomplished anything. “It isn’t that they don’t matter to me. They do.”

  “But not enough to stay.”

  “It isn’t only that. I want my life to mean something. I want what I accomplish to be more important than the next race meeting or the next London season. And the work I do in Egypt isn’t just something I love. It enables me to earn a living. You’re telling me I need to be responsible, but I think what I’m doing is responsible. It’s important work. Here, I would have nothing to do and no way to support you or any children we might have.”

  “I have a dowry.”

  “No.” His voice sounded hard, even to his own ears. “I will not live off my wife’s money.”

  She nodded slowly, as if she hadn’t expected any other answer. “Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose,” she murmured, and a wistful little smile curved her lips. “I’ve ruined our adventure now, haven’t I?”

  “No.” He cupped her face in his hands again, savoring the soft warmth of her skin against his palms. “You haven’t ruined anything,” he said, and his words were confirmed by the fact that as he caressed the cupid’s bow pout of her lips, his desire for her began flaring up again and spreading through his body.

  He reached behind her head and began pulling out her hairpins.

  “Will,” she whispered, reaching behind her head, pressing her palm to the back of his hand, stopping him, “what if someone sees us?”

  “You always say that,” he whispered back, smiling. “We’re on Smuggler’s Island, remember? Around the point and a mile away, and if that’s not enough to reassure you, we’re on the seaward side and it’s the middle of the night. Who’s going to see us? Pirates?”

  She made a stifled giggle at that and lowered her hand to let him begin pulling out hairpins. When he succeeded in removing all the pins, he tucked them in his trouser pocket and freed her hair from its bun. It came down, and he spread it out around her shoulders, where it gleamed in the moonlight like waves of liquid platinum. In his fingers, it felt like strands of silk.

  He raked his hand through it, wrapped a handful of it around his fist, then tilted her head back. Her lips parted and her lashes lowered a fraction, the first sign of yielding in their favorite adventure of all, but just as he had done all those years ago in the gardens at Danbury, he held back, controlling his own desire, reminding himself to wait for hers to catch up. He slid his hands back into her hair and brushed his lips lightly across her cheeks, her forehead, down the bridge of her adorable, doll-like nose, and back to her gorgeous mouth.

  The moment his lips touched hers, waves of pleasure fissured through his body, pleasure born of need not yet fulfilled, of desire never sated, of anticipating the next time when, perhaps, satiation would come. It had taken six years for him to forget this, but the memories were rushing back now, renewed and heightened so that his need for her seemed higher than ever. This was Trix, this was her kiss—her soft, full lips pressed against his own, her tongue touching his, her sweet taste. This was her body, all lush curves and soft, velvety skin and the heady scent of gardenias.

  He eased his tongue between her teeth, and when her mouth opened, it sent him right over the edge of desire and into full-blown lust. He pulled her off the swing and onto her knees, her arms came up around his neck, and he lowered his hands to cup her buttocks, pulling her fully against him as he began to imagine a fantasy he hadn’t allowed himself in years. A fantasy that had given him sleepless nights ever since he was seventeen years old, a fantasy that had never been fulfilled.

  He imagined pulling her down into the sand and taking off her clothes. He imagined her breasts cupped in his palms and her naked hips against his and her hair falling around his face.

  He groaned against her mouth, feeling his wits slipping. He broke the kiss and buried his face against her neck, working to regain his control, even as he slid his hand along her neck to where the softness of her skin gave way to the crisp muslin fabric of her shirtwaist.

  He unfastened the first three buttons, then pulled the edges of her collar apart and pressed kisses along her collarbone, his excitement rising even higher at the sight he’d exposed, the bare skin from beneath her jaw to the shadowy cleft between her breasts, and he knew he could not take this any further without annihilating what remained of his self-control, knowing she wasn’t ready for where all this kissing and petting was bound to lead. Their adventure was over. At least for tonight.

  With another groan, he pulled back before he could change his mind, and stood up. “We should go back,” he said, and held out his hands to help her up.

  When she was on her feet, he knew he ought to step back so that she was out of reach, but he couldn’t bear to leave off touching her completely, and he began buttoning her shirtwaist. It wasn’t easy, for his hands were shaking with the effort of holding back.

  She stared at him as he fumbled with the three buttons, her eyes wide and dark, her hair falling like waves of moonlight on either side of her face. “I’d forgotten how it felt, Will,” she whispered. “I’d forgotten.”

  He left off fastening buttons and caught her by the arms, then pulled her close and kissed her again, a hot, quick, fierce press of lips. “I tried,” he told her, his voice a ravaged whisper as he lifted her in his arms again. “God knows,” he added with a hoarse chuckle, “I tried my damnedest.”

  As he carried her back to the beach, he strove to regain his control, but when she stepped into the boat, the sight of her bare calves was almost his undoing, and he very much feared that cooling his lust enough for sleep was going to be impossible. Neither of them spoke as he rowed back to Pixy Cove, but once the boat was docked and they were walking back to the house, he paused on the path. “You go on.”

  She paused beside him, surprised. “Aren’t you coming?”

  “No. But I’ll see you tomorrow, either at breakfast or at the gazebo afterward. We start work at nine o’clock. Don’t be late.”

  “I won’t.” She smiled at him in the moonlight, a wide, radiant Trix smile that was for him and would always be only for him. “I’m not the irresponsible one, remember?”

  He laughed, hope rising inside him like a wave. He watched her as she walked the steep path up to the house. He waited, watching her window, wondering if she would remember, and when he saw the brief flash of lamplight that always told him she was safely back in her room, he grinned into the dark.

  “Good night, Trix,” he murmured, and then he turned and started down another path away from the house, heading to Phoebe’s Cove. There he did what he’d often done during previous romantic adventures with her. He stripped, marched naked and still fully aroused into the water, and started swimming.

  A few more adventures like this, he thought wryly as he took laps back and forth across the cove, would result in eith
er matrimony or insanity. Just now, he wasn’t sure which. God, he hoped it was the former.

  Chapter Fifteen

  When Beatrix came down the following morning, Julia and Eugenia were in the dining room with Lady Marlowe and little Ruthie, having breakfast. Will, she learned, was already down at the gazebo working on the artifacts, and everyone else had gone with Sir George and Lady Debenham to Smuggler’s Island for a day of picnicking.

  At the mention of Smuggler’s Island, Beatrix’s thoughts immediately went to the night before, and a swing in the moonlight under the stars. Trust Will to come up with something like that, she thought, smiling as she poured herself a cup of tea. Pushing her up high on the swing when no one could see because she hadn’t been allowed that joy as a girl.

  She stared at the oil painting of Pixy Cove that hung behind the sideboard, and as she remembered other childhood adventures, she felt a bubble of pleasure rising inside her, pushing up against her chest. Will had always come up with special things to do, which was why life had seemed so colorless after he went away and why she’d needed so long to accept that he was gone.

  She’d become sure over the years that he’d forgotten her, forgotten everything—days at Pixy Cove exploring the caves at midnight and reading Poe, and how much she’d loved going high on the swing at Danbury when Nanny wasn’t looking, and how she’d wanted to go to Florence when she was fifteen. She’d convinced herself Will had forgotten all that; eventually, she’d even half forgotten it all herself.

  I tried. God knows I tried my damnedest.

  The pleasure inside her deepened and spread, becoming so keen, so poignant, that it almost hurt. She tried to suppress it, tamp it down, remind herself that what he’d said last night didn’t really change anything, but her efforts didn’t stop the feeling inside her, and she recognized it for exactly what it was. She was happy.