“Good evening, Lord Ayr.”
Hero’s soft greeting drifted across the first-floor rotunda, capturing Ian’s attention as he emerged from his rooms that evening. He looked across the hall to find her doing the same from her rooms on the other side of the grand staircase. Impossible as it seemed, she was even lovelier than she had been earlier that day. Unlike the previous night, tonight Hero wore modest jewels. A choker of three pearl strands with a large jade cameo accented her long neck. Matching earrings dangled from her ears.
Ian thought that the jade would perfectly match the green edge of her eyes. Though the polished jade shone even in the dim light, her eyes sparkled brightly. Ian took a step toward her, but instead of approaching him, Hero indicated with a tilt of her head that she was going toward the Blue Drawing Room and walked along her half of the oval of the grand staircase, trailing her fingers lightly along the balustrade while Ian matched her progress on the other side.
Ian watched Hero as she went, disappearing behind each column only to quickly reappear, casting him sidelong glances flirtatiously from beneath her lashes as she did so. She paused just before the halfway point of the oval near the drawing room and waited for Ian there. “Good evening, Lord Ayr,” she said with a smile as he reached her.
“Good evening, Lady Ayr,” he responded with a bow and held out his hand. She slipped her small hand into his larger one, her smile broadening.
“Thank you again for a pleasant afternoon,” he said.
“Thank you for a pleasant day,” she countered pertly, reaching up to adjust his cravat. “You look very handsome tonight.”
Ian felt inordinately pleased by the standard compliment. Reaching out, he smoothed her hair from her temple unnecessarily, since every strand was in place, but he wanted to touch her and any excuse would do. Unable to help himself, Ian ran his finger down her long neck, bared by her bound hair. He would love to see those golden locks hanging loose about her. “And you are exquisite, though there is something in your eyes. They are dancing with the devil tonight. Why is that?”
A blush brightened her cheeks becomingly and her hands left Ian’s cravat to smooth down his shirtfront. “Oh, nothing really. Just …”
“Wondering?” he asked, though he already knew the answer. His pulse already racing, he bent his head to whisper in her ear, “Anticipating?”
She inhaled sharply and swayed toward him even while she shook her head. “Of course not. This is hardly the time …”
“No?” Ian brushed the back of his fingers down the slope of her bosom. “I shouldn’t take my kiss right here? Isn’t that what you were hoping for?”
“No,” she shook her head. “Not here. Maybe.”
“Maybe?” he leaned closer, his lips just inches from hers.
“Yes,” she sighed, and Ian brushed his lips gently over hers, triumphantly claiming the kiss that he had anticipated all day.
“Daughter, is that you?” Beaumont bellowed from the drawing room. “Come in! Come in! You simply must see this!”
Rolling his eyes, Ian shook his head at Hero. “Honestly, I don’t know whether to love him or hate him.”
“I did say this wasn’t the right time,” Hero said teasingly, but there was regret in her eyes as well. Her cheeks were flushed, her lips moist, and Ian was hard put not to drag her off to his chamber and leave her father to his own devices.
Hero reached out and caressed his cheek, her lips parted as if she meant to speak, but the duke yelled once more. “I shall come in, Papa, only if you promise me you are decently clothed,” she said, even as she entered the room.
“I am. I am.”
Stifling his burgeoning desires once again, Ian followed Hero into the drawing room, only to come up short at the sight of the duke lying on his back in the middle of the library floor, staring up at the ceiling. “I say there, Harry, are you all right then?”
“This is the most marvelous thing.”
“Papa has been examining the ceiling friezes since he arrived,” Hero explained, biting back a smile. “He feels that lying in the center of the room provides the most advantageous viewpoint to study them.”
“Is that so?”
“Perhaps it was a good thing you missed breakfast this morning,” she went on, humor lacing her voice. “He took the opportunity to lie on the table to get a closer look.”
“That provides a more visual illustration in my mind than I care for,” Ian teased.
“The rondels in this room are extraordinary,” Beaumont went on enthusiastically. “You must take a look. Come, now!”
Obediently, both Ian and Hero tilted back their heads. “No! No! Come down here and look up.”
“I will do no such thing, Papa,” Hero said primly, moving instead to the room’s pianoforte. “However, I will play for you until Boyle announces dinner.”
The duke scowled in disappointment, only to turn his expectant gaze to Ian, who merely shrugged and slipped out of his jacket. His new valet, Dickson, might not appreciate the rough treatment of his evening clothes, but what did it matter? It hurt no one at all to give in to the duke’s request. Dropping gracefully, Ian laid back on the floor.
“Ian,” the duke whispered at his side. “Isn’t that correct?”
“Aye, Harry, that’s right.”
Beaumont’s face folded into a broad smile. “I like you very much.”
“I like you as well, your grace,” Ian assured him, tucking his arms behind his head and looking up at the ceiling.
Hero began to play at the piano, a complicated piece that after a few moments Ian recognized as Mendelssohn’s Opus 30. Turning his head, he watched her face as she played. She played with passion, her eyes closed as if she felt every note in her heart. He wanted to see her face looking that same way every day but he wanted to be the one to rouse the passion in her. He wanted to take her to heights he suspected she had never achieved.
“Spectacular, is it not?” Beaumont asked, recalling Ian’s attention to the ceiling.
It was a spectacular thing, as all of the friezes in the castle were. Here in the Blue Drawing Room, a trio of matching designs marched the length of the room. Circles within squares punctuated with delicate carvings of urns and vines, the corners of the square anchored with larger friezes of griffins. The white outlines of the connecting circles looked like a string of pearls against the pale blue ceiling. Ian appreciated the crisp clean lines of this particular room and, as did Harry, took pleasure in the rondels, circular frescos of about two feet in diameter that marked the center of every section. Each of them portrayed three of the nine muses at play in the forest. In the center, Euterpe, the muse of music, played a small harp and Terpsichore danced sensuously while Erato, the muse of love poetry, lounged against a tree with pen in hand. It was a surprisingly erotic piece even for a private drawing room.
Worth sharing.
He lay there contemplating the piece until Hero finished the opus with one softly played note. “Won’t you come take a look, my lady? I doubt you’ll be disappointed.”
“I can see it just as well from here,” she responded.
Hero met Ian’s steady gaze across the room, seeing the challenge in his eyes, as if he dared her to do something she would never have dreamed. There was more than that though. There was a dark light in his eyes that told her the dare extended to so much more than merely lying on the floor.
“Please,” he asked softly. The husky plea sent butterflies through her stomach and Hero knew that she had little hope of denying him anything.
“Oh, very well.” Hero crossed the room and lowered herself down a few feet away from Ian, taming her hoop skirts into lying flat against the floor until finally she was settled in a pool of green and ivory silk. It was ridiculous, she thought, to be in such a position. “Thank goodness papa hasn’t yet discovered the armory. I should hate to think what positions I might be forced into there.”
Ian chuckled at her grumbling and reached out to envelop her hand in his own. The
warmth of his rough fingers against hers set Hero’s heart racing, just as it had before. In just a pair of days, there had been so many small moments such as this already. Brief moments of intimacy, the brush of a hand, the tender looks, and those short-lived kisses. She wanted so much more, which should have seemed ridiculous given the length of their acquaintance, but again Hero couldn’t shake the feeling that she’d known him much longer. That he’d been with her always. He haunted her dreams, lingering just outside the boundaries of reality before, but was now by her side. She could feel the very real heat of his body and wondered what it would be like to feel that presence next to her every night.
“Well?” Ian asked, prompting Hero to give her concentration to the plasterwork above. She did have to admit that the symmetry of the frieze from that angle truly did display the delicate plasterwork to its best advantage without being skewed by perspective.
“They are lovely,” Hero conceded. In truth, over the years that she’d lived at Cuilean, Hero had never given the ceilings themselves a great deal of consideration, taking them as a part of the whole but never dissecting them into an individual element. That was Adam’s legacy. The whole of the space was so unified; there wasn’t just one factor that stood out.
Ian was that same way. Hero turned her head to look at him. She took him as a whole, every quality packaged together to create an extraordinary, alluring man. What were the parts of him, though? What was it about him that was so irresistible? Granted, he was an astonishingly handsome man. Rugged, dark. That was appealing, but Hero thought his humor even more engaging. She liked the dry wit that went along with those laugh lines. And he was caring, but modest. Each part added to the appeal of the whole until the whole was undeniably attractive.
Just like the rooms at Cuilean, and Hero told him so … though she left out how she inwardly related the idea to him.
“That it is part of the whole is a fine point,” Ian told her, “but look at the rondels. I would wager you never have before. What do you think of the muses?”
Ian’s eyes gleamed but not with humor. Hero couldn’t identify the emotion. Looking up at the painting, the near nudity of the muses, their postures, Hero saw for the first time their true nature. Romantic and sensual without being salacious. She finally understood what the look in Ian’s eyes meant. With a blush, she thought she must seem naïve not to have recognized the allusion in them before. “They’re very … spirited.”
A knowing grin lifted the corner of Ian’s mouth. “I was thinking that very thing.”
“I’m sure you were.” Hero rolled her eyes and inwardly grimaced when Ian’s smile widened. Surely, Ian was used to women with a bit more worldly polish than she had displayed that day, and she wished that she were capable of executing the same sort of subtle innuendo.
“They are quite spirited,” Beaumont agreed from Ian’s other side. “Excellent choice of words, my girl. They seem a most merry trio. I wonder who the artist is.”
“Antonio Zucchi,” Ian said.
Hero shot him a surprised glance because he was right. “You recognize his style?”
“No,” Ian grinned once more. “After our talk last night, I spent some time earlier reading up on the ninth earl’s notes on the renovations.”
““You’re a very clever lad,” Beaumont commented, levering himself up onto his elbow. “Isn’t he a clever lad, Hero?”
“Aye, Papa, he is.”
“Harry,” the duke insisted with a frown, prompting Hero to frown right back at him.
“Come, Papa, let’s get up now. If Boyle comes in, he will think us mad.” Hero pushed herself into a sitting position, arranging her skirts as she did so, but her father and Ian remained lounging.
“One might think to be thought mad the very worst of fates,” Beaumont told her solemnly. “But this is not madness.”
“Is it not?”
“No, call it a finer appreciation for life. A man lives his life thinking he has all the time in the world to do the things he dreams of doing. That there will a come a moment when he might explore the world as he always wished to, spend an afternoon fishing on a lake, or merely watch a sunset holding the hand of the woman he loves. One always thinks about what must be done rather than what should be done. I’ve spent my entire life doing what was expected of me, only to discover that I have lost the opportunity for so much more.”
Ian and Hero exchanged astonished glances at Beaumont’s surprisingly lucid speech. Hero couldn’t think of a moment in the past several years when her father had offered any words so profound. She wondered if his words about holding the hand of the woman he loved were merely an analogy or if he truly felt that he hadn’t appreciated his time with Hero’s mother well enough. It was sad to think that he held so many regrets—if his words were more truth than rambling.
Would she die having regretted the things she did not do more than those she did, Hero wondered? She didn’t want to. The day Death finally came looking for her, she wanted to be able to meet his eye knowing that she had grasped every opportunity, every moment that made life worth living.
Staring into Ian’s dark, turbulent gaze as he raised himself to sit, Hero could see that he had come to the same conclusion. Life might be short. One never knew how much time they might have to live.
Or to love.
Ian reached out to caress her cheek, and Hero turned into his hand, pressing a kiss to his palm. She meant to embrace every moment she had before her with Ian, meant to take whatever fate would allow her.
Unaware of the tumult his words had spawned, Beaumont lazed back once more to stare at the ceiling. “I wonder what’s for dinner.”
Hero smiled widely, a gesture Ian returned as he stood and helped her to her feet. She would have to embrace moments like these with her father as well. Her time with him was valuable as well, and she was only just discovering how much she might learn from him.
“Your father is a very clever man,” Ian whispered, raising her hands to his lips and kissing each palm tenderly.
“Yes, he is.”
Chapter Fourteen
The next few days were like heaven on earth for Hero. In the mornings, Hero would walk Ian through some aspect of the estate’s business, explaining everything she knew. They toured the brewhouse, gashouse, and, finally, the icehouse on one particularly hot afternoon. After luncheon, they would engage in outdoor activities, making the most of the unusually warm and sunny weather. Often in the company of her father, they would ride through the park or up north of the castle to the home farm. Hero took him to the orchard and showed him the gothic orangery.
Sometimes they walked about the grounds arm in arm. Through the family cemetery or along the ancient viaduct. It didn’t matter to Hero. She simply enjoyed being in Ian’s company, showing him all the things she loved about Cuilean, and seeing a similar love for the estate growing in him.
Ian even took her out on the pond in a little rowboat one afternoon, rowing steadily across the length of the calm waters. Away from her father and out of sight, he teased and flirted with her. Always, he would find a moment to steal a kiss, though her father inevitably interrupted those magical moments. Rather than being annoyed, Ian had begun to view it as something of a challenge to find private moments with her, and Hero was happy to assist as she could.
Through her single London Season, Hero had never been wooed romantically. Any man who might have been interested in her in such a way either hadn’t been granted her father’s permission or hadn’t the nerve to approach a duke’s daughter. Her beaux had courted her father, had earned his respect and permission. Robert had bargained for her hand without ever once placing a kiss on it.
The idea of being seduced for her person alone was a novel one, and having a man like Ian become her seducer was thrilling. He couldn’t seem to stop touching her, and his eyes burned with desire that even she could recognize. Hero shared his fascination. She couldn’t seem to help reaching out to him. Feeling his warm skin beneath her fingertips.
Feeling his fingers curl around hers. With each caress her heart would race and her spirits balloon.
She was falling for him, Hero knew. It was ridiculously fast but impossible to stop. Ian at least liked her as well, she was certain. He seemed to enjoy her humor and their more intellectual conversation. Already they had desire and liking and perhaps they would share even more than that as time went on.
Perhaps that was why Hero had begun to look forward to the evenings as a favored part of her day. After the three of them dined and perhaps played cards, her father would retire to his rooms, leaving her alone, blissfully alone, with Ian. In his husky brogue, he would softly invite her to walk with him on the ramparts. Aware of the curious eyes of the staff on them, Hero would calmly agree and take his arm until they reached the narrow passage. Hero would walk ahead of him then, counting to the sixth indentation in the wall, where she had sat after dinner that first night. And just as it had then, her heart would be pounding in anticipation.
After maintaining a certain distance throughout the day, after hours of polite conversation, between those two battle-worn walls was the privacy that no room in the castle could provide. There was a shelter away from prying eyes, the beauty of the moon on the waters of the firth, and the glory of Ian’s strong arms around her. He would press her back against the lower embattlements and kiss her gently, making love to her mouth with his lips and tongue. His powerful hands would massage her shoulders and back but that was all.
Hero knew that he held himself firmly in check, reining in his passion, but still he never went any farther.
Each night, he would finally break away from her, as if he couldn’t bear her touch at all. His normally warm, chocolaty eyes would burn through her like hot black coals full of feverish want, and he would escort her to her rooms, leaving her with a tender kiss on her cheek. He was forever a gentleman, no matter how Hero tried to encourage him. What her father had said had touched her deeply, and Hero wanted to embrace the life she had remaining and she wanted to do that with Ian for however long fate would allow her.
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