by Jilian Rouge
Following Rue to the stone seat where she now sat, he asked, “Why did you run? I had only wanted to talk and explain to you a few things.”
Apprehensively, Rue twisted at her fingers, something he knew she did when she was reluctant to share. She burst out instead, “I needed time alone to think! Your chasing me did nothing to help.”
“Just like when we were younger, hm?” he recalled. “You were always running, and I was always chasing. It seems to be a habit with us.”
Rue harrumphed. “The one habit I would like us to break. What will your mother say when she sees the fright that is my gown?” This close to her, he could observe the said gown, along with its delectable presentation of her décolletage, a tantalizing view of her impressive cleavage.
“Tell her it was an accident, which it was,” he said mildly. “Or tell her that it was my fault. It will put you in the clear if you bring up my name in your explanation.”
Now chuckling, Rue said, “Since I have your permission, I will do just that.” Sobering, she added, “Now about your explanation, what did you want to tell me that had you give chase in the first place?”
That he wanted to take back his congratulatory wishes? He didn’t dare to put himself out there in such a manner, but he exceedingly wished Christian to the devil in that moment. For Rue to consider Christian as a future husband had him feeling all kinds of rage and jealousy.
Instead, he admitted, “I only wanted to explain that maybe your doubts and uncertainties about Christian are telling of your true feelings about marriage. That maybe you aren’t ready for the endeavor.”
Frowning, she protested, “I have been ready to marry for a long time now, but it has been only now that I have been faced with a courtship with the promise of marriage.”
“Perhaps you are only trying to convince yourself of those words when your heart is telling you differently,” he suggested. “What is it you truly feel, separate from what your head is telling you?”
Her mouth flew open, but no sound was forthcoming.
Seeing that as his chance to employ his subtle seduction, he inched closer to whisper, “Maybe I can help.”
When he said nothing further, she narrowed her eyes at him and asked, “How do you think you can help?” For her, his nearness was wreaking havoc on her own senses, rendering her mind incapable of coherent thought. It took all she had to bolster all of her faculties together in an effort to appear unaffected.
“Well, to begin with, I can help you see the bigger picture,” he said, matter-of-factly. Looking down into her upturned face, she looked entirely too serious and woebegone for his liking. Since his arrival home, he hadn’t expected Rue to be so detached, but he attributed her distant demeanor with him to Christian’s presence here and he found he didn’t like that one bit. Anxious to rid Rue of her own uncertainty and this reserve between them, Alex felt it was high time he used his skillful talents as a master seducer to justifiably ensconce her into his own plans for a future together.
Continuing, he said softly, “Let us say that if it were anybody else but Christian, you would still have the same reservations about marriage. Correct?”
She nodded once slowly, simply, her brow furrowed together as she attempted to anticipate Alex’s train of thought.
“All right. Perhaps, your uncertainty is telling you that it is too soon to be deciding about this at too early a date,” he said. Truthfully, Alex was doing his damnedest to dissuade Rue from considering marriage with Christian without disparaging his cousin in the process. Familial loyalty prevented him from dragging Christian’s name through the mud, while at the same time furthering his own plans to dive into his first endeavor to seduce a woman into marriage.
Alex smiled encouragingly at her as she looked hesitant to believe him. He persisted, “Trust me, if Christian is the gentleman I know him to be, then he would wait patiently for your answer, no matter how long it took for you to answer him.”
“If you say so,” she said doubtfully. Rue couldn’t believe that after so long an absence that Alex could easily fall back into his role as an old trusted friend when she was this panicked at his nearness. Faced with his strong appeal, she refused to be ensnared by his charm yet again, not when she promised herself to never again open herself up to a world of hurt when it came to this particular man. And here he was, acting as though he had every right to lend her advice on such an important, life-altering decision.
“I know so,” Alex said slowly.
In acknowledgment to his words, like she had done so many times in days gone by, she lifted a hand, wrapped her fingers around his steely bicep, and tried to squeeze hard. He stiffened at the touch and she pulled her hand back just as quickly, thinking he was repulsed by her touch.
In fact, Alex held back a groan at her fleeting touch, but only because he had gritted his teeth against one from escaping. Her palm had felt warm against his arm, and its momentary contact teased him straight into a broad realm of temptation. Through clamped teeth, he demanded in clipped tones, “Tell me again why you haven’t married after all this time.” Surely, he would not find himself under such torment if she had been tucked away years ago as someone else’s wife.
With her brow wrinkled in consternation, she refused to rise to his bait and lose her temper at such an officious command. She had already told him why that day in the music room, and instead she countered with a question of her own. “Why have you come home only now, Alex?”
Silence plagued the air between them, as they both stubbornly avoided answering what the other asked. For Rue, she knew that Alex had come home with the intent of advancing his plans with the lady he planned on marrying. She was dying to know whom he had chosen, or at least, set his cap for, but at the same time, she was too scared to find out. Too scared of how she would react once he announced who he had chosen for a wife.
Looking at him now, he was fascinating to her as always. She appreciated that he had long since evolved from the youthful wildness and stubbornness he once possessed and grown into a man who was aggressively merciless in his maleness, now possessing a core of granite beneath that handsome exterior. He was so remarkably changed from the youth she had once known, yet he still remained as familiar to her as though he had never left.
Alex’s mind churned with what to tell her, but his desire for her was winning out, his hold on his self-control slowly waning. Finally, while looking deeply into her liquid brown gaze, he bit out, “Rue, darling, I want—” but he didn’t finish because he was already leaning towards her and her lids had already fallen.
Their lips touched, and it wasn’t long before their kiss melded into a sweet frenzy of barely-held-in-check passion. He swept her into his embrace, and she melted further against him, wrapped securely in his arms. It was the kind of kiss Rue had pined for after a nine-year drought, and it stirred every longing and awakened every nerve ending inside her. Soon, his tongue swept inside hers to leisurely explore her taste, and she thrilled at the slow invasion of her mouth.
Hungry as their kiss was on either side, Alex breathed her name against her lips, taking them again and again. Rue knew he was a consummate expert at seduction and who better to reacquaint her with the wonders of kissing than a renowned rake? However, because of his reputation, she knew he only wanted her for the relief her body could bring to him. But the sweetness of their kiss had her reluctant to pull away.
He felt her surrender and her need through her kiss, her touch. Rue was lost enough in their kiss that she belatedly realized he was now brushing a warm hand against her breast, his thumb strumming against a pebbled nipple.
She sank against him, her body shivering in response to his touch. He gave her no chance to further tease him or drive him demented, and he took her luscious lips, tasting her with ravenous abandon.
With their passion hot and heavy between them, her hands crept up his chest, over his large shoulders, and locked in his hair. Now, she was teasing him mercilessly with her touch, rendering him powerl
ess to keep himself in check. All he wanted now was to bear her down, crazed with the ruthless need to primitively claim her as his.
A stone bench was the last place he would have chosen for a proper seduction, but the temptation of Rue was too much for him to think of a better place. With his desire at its fevered height, he was on the verge of splaying her body flat on the bench’s cold surface to better fete out his brand of pleasure upon her.
However, Rue was not one of his past doxies with whom he could dash through a quick tumble.
Reluctantly, Alex drew back to whisper, “Rue, I want you—”
Those words had Rue abruptly pulling back, and she pressed a finger to his lips to stop the next flow of words from his mouth. As much as her body was screaming at her for denying it the pleasure Alex could give her, she fought hard to stand fast against his request to be his mistress.
“No, Alex,” she said definitively. “I can’t be what you want. I can’t be your mistress when you have a proper wife waiting for you in the wings.”
“No, Rue, you’re mistaken! I don’t have anyone waiting for me! Just listen to me and let me explain,” he implored. He tried to draw her back into his arms once more, but she pushed at him to prevent him from doing so.
Understanding dawned on him and he could have laughed at his own expense if it didn’t make him look like a damned bedlamite. Unfortunately, with a reputation such as his, it was no wonder that Rue believed he was out to make a dishonest woman out of her, when it was entirely the reverse that he sought! He just hadn’t expected her mind to take that road, especially since he hadn’t been given enough time to properly state his case.
But Rue made good her escape before he could utter another word as she hastily scrambled off of the stone bench and scurried away from him through the maze. Dumbfounded that she would leave him thus, Alex sat frozen for a few moments before tardily chasing after her. She runs, I chase, he thought morosely.
Neither Alex nor Rue caught sight of the figure who watched them flee from the maze, raging fury coloring the heavy stare aimed at the pair of them.
9
The Next Day
If Alex didn’t love and respect his mother as much as he did, he would have throttled her for her meddling.
Her meddling landed him in the unenviable position of accompanying the entire gaggle of the ladies on her exasperating list while on an outdoor tour of the estate. Unfortunately, there was no pressing estate business to hide behind for him to extricate himself from the chore, and he would have gladly used such an excuse to get out of it. Lady Edith believed he wasn’t doing his due diligence by ignoring them, and thus, here he was escorting all six of them, along with their doting mamas in tow.
Listening to each of the young ladies his mother had chosen for him prattle on and on about London gossip for the past fifteen minutes, he wasn’t sure how much more he could take. But his duty as their host forced him to be charming and add a few comments here and there when asked. Otherwise, he remained mostly silent, almost stand-offish, while they made their way through his home.
As the Ladies of the List (Rue’s fault for the moniker he now used in thought only) had arrived only the day before, he thought it best to show them the house proper. Leading them through the hallways of his ancestral home, he was glad that he had spared no expense in reinstating Ravenscroft’s resplendent glory, satisfaction and pride settling warmly within his chest. After all, it had taken nine long years away to be finally able to witness what his labors had wrought.
His gallery, for example, now contained a large collection of valuable works of art that he had acquired, not because of his appreciation for it, but because he now had the means to have such costly pieces. While the ladies were absorbed in the admiration of said pieces, he took a moment to glance outside the gallery windows while waxing introspective.
To any observer, Alex looked like he was simply taking in the view of his vast property with its rolling hills and pastoral setting. A wide blue sky overlooked an extensive plain split haphazardly by a narrow, winding ribbon of a river that opened onto a small lake. He had fond memories of swimming and boating on that lake as a boy.
However, if any one lady present in the gallery were even minutely aware of his thoughts at the moment, they would have surely been displeased at the uncharitable nature of those thoughts.
He had made up his mind that none of these ladies would do as his wife. It was impossible for him to look at any one of them and imagine spending a lifetime with someone who was too attached to London, not when he planned to live the rest of his days here at Ravenscroft. Of course, when Parliament was in session, he would occupy his seat in the House of Lords, but other than his royally-sanctioned duty, he chose to cut off all ties to the city that had caused him so much loneliness.
Wincingly, he realized too late that it was a mistake to allow his mother to handpick these insipid, colorless ladies who were much too young for him. While any one of these ladies would be a perfect wife by Society’s standards, his mother had obviously chosen them based on specific criteria that he himself stipulated in his letter to her. To measure her choices among the ton, Alex had given her a template with distinct features: well-connected; good breeding; wealthy, but not overly so; young; and virginal.
Although his mother had certainly delivered on his requests, none of the six ladies presented to him seemed an appropriate choice as his wife. He had come to a point where he looked forward to ruling his little domain with a wife at his side, and together, they would raise a family here. As an only child himself, he had always felt a little bereft at not having any siblings to grow up alongside, and he rather thought that he would like to have a large family to make up for that lack.
Most of all, the idyllic life he envisioned for himself included someone who felt just as strongly about his dominion as he did. Someone who would give their heart and soul to Ravenscroft just as he did in the years he was away. Someone who found this corner of the world to be as inherent a part of them as it was for him.
Despite his own resistance to the idea, he pictured Rue at the core of his aspirations, and the realization was powerful enough to stir in him a deep longing for her. While his body recognized her as his equal, he now believed she was perfect for him in every way.
Just as he did, Rue appreciated the history of the valley in which they both lived; both of their ancestors had lived here for generations. She was perfect for Ravenscroft as his chosen bride, and she alone fully understood that these lands gave him a deep-rooted sense of belonging developed from a longstanding and abiding love for his home.
Now, he was grateful to have given up his idea of dismissing passion from his own marriage before he could make a muck of things. Once upon a time, he had thought that passion would do nothing good for a marriage, that it had no place in a ton marriage, not when so many had sought to use it as a weapon against him.
At the breakfast table that morning, he had watched Rue as she sat and ate with her companions, grateful that Christian was otherwise occupied by one of their aunts. From across the room, he had been drawn by the compelling sound of her voice, entranced by the lilt and timbre of the syllables spilling from those lips. By then, he had been mesmerized enough by her to let his gaze wash over her, fixing and lingering on the parts of her that pleased him. Remembering, his heated gaze had swept along the side of her neck and shoulder, exposed by her gown, then from her shoulder to the swells of her breasts, bare above her neckline. Rue must have felt his gaze on her as he witnessed her quick intake of breath and her eyes shooting to meet his, only to quickly avoid his gaze in the next second.
Having known Rue all of his life, the comparison between her and the Ladies of the List was simply no contest. In his eyes, Rue won him over without even trying, simply by being herself.
With the memory of her delectable body never far from his mind, his jaw hardened with possessive lust. If Rue at nineteen could surrender to passion with wild and complete abandon, he could
only imagine what she would now be like in his bed. Their shared history and his knowledge of the deepest part of Rue had him sure that she would love with all of her heart and soul just as she did in everything else. The Rue he had grown up with and had loved with his body on that one special evening had unknowingly ensnared him, succeeding where all other women had failed to hold his notice for longer than a single night.
He had spent all night thinking of and lusting after Rue as she now was. Agonizing that he hadn’t properly explained himself the night before, after their kiss in the maze. And thereby, his decision of who he would not marry seemed to have been made for him. Deep inside, he knew that none of the Ladies of the List were meant for him. Not when Rue was around to torture and torment him with the wanting of her. It was enough that she was a thorough distraction for him, fiercely attracting him to her without her knowledge.
His ears suddenly perked up at the whispered words close by, snapping him out of his musings.
