“Th-the same one y-you have upon m-me.” Her breathless reply danced about him and he picked his head up. Her lips parted with desire, and her thick lashes hooding the passion teeming from her eyes hinted at a woman who’d welcome him between her thighs, and for one selfish instant, he ached with a physical hunger to be the first to lay claim to her innocence and not the bastard who would one day have the right to the delicate gift.
He slid his eyes closed, wanting to be one of those roguish sorts who’d put his own pleasure and hers before the honor of either of their names. Then, no truly honorable gentleman would be alone with an unwed lady, exploring her with his mouth, as he did now.
“Wh-why did you stop?” The tentative glimmer in her eyes wrenched at his heart.
William silently cursed and let his hands fall to his sides. “We can’t do this, Cara.” The muscles of his belly tightened. “You belong to another.” Did those gravelly-spoken words dragged from his lungs belong to him? And though he was not betrothed by anything more than a pledge he’d given his father, his fate too was sealed. Ah, God, where once that truth had filled him with a gripping rage, now he wanted to rail at the fates for the loss of this woman. He’d sold his soul for merely eight years and this fleeting Christmastide meeting.
For a moment, pain contorted Cara’s face and she may as well have thrust a dagger into his chest for the agony of causing her that hurt. “Well,” she said, her voice small, at odds with that icy, unfeeling, clipped tone she’d adopted before.
Did she believe it did not matter to him that she’d one day belong to another? Some bloody, rotted bounder who’d be the first to lay her down and know the bliss of sliding into her innocent body. A red haze of jealousy stole across his vision, momentarily blinding him. It was safer that she believed him unaffected by the magic of these few days and yet he could not ride out with her not knowing she’d left an indelible mark upon his soul in ways he still could not right.
He tipped her chin up. “If circumstances were different,” his lips pulled in a grimace and she slid her gaze down. “If I was a different man and you were a different lady and had we met…” before he’d taken that bloody barter. But then she would have been just a child. With that, an image danced forward of her as she would have been then. A young, lonely girl, alone with only her father’s icy reserve for her guidance. Pain knifed at him. How he wished there had been someone for her all these years.
And how he wished to be that person now.
“It doesn’t matter,” she began, her gaze fixed on his neck.
William braced.
“It doesn’t matter that you are illegitimate.” Her words penetrated his earlier yearnings. He furrowed his brow. She believed he was a nobleman’s by-blow? Even as he attempted to wrap his mind around the erroneous conclusion she’d drawn, Cara wet her lips. Emotion spilled from her eyes and threatened to suck him into the unspoken words hovering on her lips. Words he knew were coming. “I…” Oh, God. His gut clenched. For when she uttered them into existence, everything would change…and yet, nothing, all at the same rotted time. “I love you.” Oh, God. Her words washed over him, scalding and freeing and enticing in ways he’d never known they could be.
“Oh, Cara mia.” He brushed his lips over her temple.
“It doesn’t matter,” she said quickly and then her words ran over one another. “I know you likely believe it does to me because you think I am an ice princess without feelings.” Shame sprang in his chest and spread through him. How unfairly he’d passed judgment. He’d not bothered to think that life had surely shaped her, just as he, too, had been shaped by his dream for freedom from the stifling life thrust upon him as a duke’s son. Cara took his face between her palms. Even through the fabric of her damp gloves, her skin burned his. “I have spent years feeling nothing and believing myself incapable of feeling—anything—and not even wanting to.” A half-laugh, half-sob bubbled past her bow-shaped lips. “But you saw that as a lie. You looked at me when no one before you has, not even my own family, and I want you.” Her words echoed about the copse.
He closed his eyes once again with the promise she dangled before him—that dream his parents would withhold, for nothing more than a familial connection they’d forge with another. He opened and closed his mouth several times. Could he abandon the pledge he’d made his father? “We cannot.” But why can’t I? There was no formal contract. There was a promise made to his father and surely he’d free his son when William told him that he loved this woman.
The air froze in his chest.
I love her.
Cara’s bell-like laughter rang in the clearing. “Of course we can. Don’t you see?” She applied a gentle pressure to his cheeks. “I do not care what plans my father has for me or the man he’d have me wed. I want you.”
And God help him… He pressed his eyes closed. He didn’t care, either. That surely marked him dishonorable in so many ways, ways that mattered. But she mattered more. William looked at her again.
Her smile slipped. “D-do you not believe me?” Color suffused her cheeks. “Or do you think I cannot know these things after but a few days. I do, Will.” She brushed her lips to his.
*
Years of ladylike decorum ingrained into Cara’s every thought and actions screamed in protest, but she claimed control of her mind, and more, her feelings, thrilling at the power of it. The moment she had breathed her words of love for Will into truth, for the both of them, a giddy lightness had filled her chest. After Mother’s passing, her father had sneered at her tears and loud grief for the loss of the woman who’d held her every night and every morning. How wrong he had been. There was nothing shameful in this. There was joy and beauty and a buoyant happiness that threatened to lift her up. How did she not see that before?
Because I did not know Will.
Cara ran her gaze over his cherished face and celebrated her ruin, not of revenge that her father would likely see any match between her and Will, but for the first time having control of her emotions.
She broke the kiss. “I love you,” she whispered against his mouth. Her heart hung suspended to hear those precious words uttered back.
“I have not been fully truthful with you,” he said at last, his tone gruff and hesitant in a way she’d not heard in any of their exchanges.
“Oh, God.” Her heart dipped and then fell somewhere in her belly. A wave of coldness ran through her as an ugly, niggling possibility crept in. She sank back on her heels. Unwittingly, she scrabbled at her throat. “You are married.” Her heart ripped open at the ugly possibility.
“No.” The denial came from him harsh and guttural. He dragged a hand through his hair. “Do you think I would be here with you now if I was married?”
“I…” His words gave her pause. For that was precisely what she believed all men were capable of. Her father had proven himself a lecherous lord who took his pleasures where he willed it. The memories she had of her earlier years, when her mother lived, included a lonely woman weeping in her chambers when she’d not known her daughter listened in. It was from her mother she’d learned the cathartic healing that came from those wicked curse words. Will was different and even loving him as she did, she still didn’t know what to make of it.
He cupped her neck. Running his fingers in a soothing back and forth rhythm, he caressed her nape. “You do not have much faith in the honor of a gentleman, do you?” Regret underscored his observation.
She mustered a wry smile. “I’ve not been given much reason to.” Between her father, with his countless bastards littering the countryside, and her brother, who’d devoted his life to his own pleasures, she’d long ago accepted they were all self-serving fiends who’d place their own wants and desires above anyone and everyone.
And that was the world she’d be riding off into with the melting snow, no doubt, tomorrow. Unbidden, her gaze searched through the copse of trees to the stable where she’d left the earl’s carriage. Panic churned in her belly. For when she made the journey from t
he Fox and Hare Inn, she’d forget to smile and laugh, and slowly become the cold, lonely ice princess hated by all.
She looked questioningly up at him. “What?”
*
“Come,” William said harshly, and shifted course, leading her deeper into the copse. He brought them to a halt beside a towering juniper. “Have you ever before made a Christmas bough, Cara?” he asked as he released her and walked beside the evergreen with its needle-like cones and blue berries.
From the corner of his eye, he detected the slight shake of her head. He bent and retrieved a dagger from his boot, then carefully set to work slicing off greenery the size of his hand. “Mistletoe was sacred to the Druids,” he explained. “And once called All Heal. It was thought to bring good fortune and happiness.” He held it up for her inspection and she tipped her head, studying it in silence. Then their eyes caught and held. “It was believed that no lady could refuse a kiss under the bough.”
She touched the spindly needles with the tips of her fingers. “Oh, Will. You do not require a bough to secure my kiss.” Despite the chill of the day, her cheeks burned at that boldness.
He dipped his head and captured her lips underneath his in a gentle meeting. Her hands fluttered between them and then she rested her delicate palms on his chest. His heart pounded. William lowered his brow to hers and drew in a deep breath. He’d thought this handful of days would be enough to sustain him through the cold future awaiting him. William could not honor the word he’d pledged his father years earlier. He could not walk away from Cara and the happiness she represented. William sucked in a breath, drawing in the mint and lemon scent so that it filled his senses. “I love you.” She stilled. “And God help me, Cara, I cannot leave you.” There was something beautifully freeing in uttering those words. The time for shame at breaking an oath he’d made to his parents would come later. But Cara represented forever.
She ran her gaze over him. Fear warred with hope. William ran his thumb along her lower lip. “I want you.” But he wanted her in the way she deserved—to be properly courted, betrothed, and then ultimately married. Her lips parted and then a small sob escaped her. William folded his arms about her, drawing her against his chest. “I want to court you as you deserve. I don’t care about the man who believes he has a claim to you,” he said, rubbing his cheek over the silken softness of her curls.
Her body went still in his arms. “Oh, Will,” she said brokenly. Cara drew back with pain burning in her eyes. “My father will never allow it.”
He captured her hands in his and silenced her. She deserved the truth of his identity. “You asked for my story, Cara,” he spoke in hushed tones. “I am not illegitimate.”
She cocked her head.
“I am the heir to a dukedom.”
Through the years, that revelation had been met with fawning and preening. Once more, Cara proved herself wholly unlike any other he’d known.
Her cheeks turned white to rival the unsullied snow upon the ground. Her hands went to her throat. “Wh-what?” He frowned as she took a faltering step away.
For the first time in the course of his twenty-six years, his birthright was met with whispered horror. Did she think he’d not wed her because of his title? He turned his palms up. “You asked if I was married…”
An agonized groan from Cara cut across his words and she staggered back, clamping her hands over her ears. “Oh, God, you are married.” She stumbled over herself in her haste to be free of him and tumbled into the snow.
With a silent curse, William strode over to where she lay shivering in a drift, her expression stricken. He held a hand out and she flinched. Pointedly ignoring his offer of assistance, she shoved awkwardly to her feet. Of course, they’d known each other but these handful of days and, yet, her lack of faith in him spoke to her broken past and his pain that she’d believe him capable of that imagined infidelity. Even with the sting of the winter snow biting through the fabric of his pants, the hurt fury emanating from her taut frame threatened to spill over and burn him.
“No,” he said hastily. He held a hand out, but she glared at his fingers. On a curse, he raked a hand through his hair. God, he was making a muck of this. “I am not unlike you. My father would see me wed to a woman whose familial connections he approves of.” Cara hesitated and her rapidly drawn breaths filled the winter quiet. She peered at him with a narrow gaze and then some of the anger left her eyes. She still studied him with the same guardedness that could only come from the ugliness of her own existence as a pawn of a ruthless nobleman.
“Are you betrothed?” Her tone was flat; devoid of all emotion.
“No, Cara mia.” He took her hands and, this time, she did not shove away his offering. “That is what I am trying to tell you. I was summoned by my father with the expectation that I’d wed her.” His jaw tightened involuntarily at the young girl he remembered. “I knew her as nothing more than a child. She is my mother’s goddaughter. My only memories of her were of a girl who was cold and cruel to her servants. I have spent the last eight years avoiding the responsibility expected of me.” He gave his head a bitter shake.
“You do not love her, then?” she asked hesitantly.
He grimaced. “God, no.” He raised her hands to his lips and brushed a kiss on the inside of each wrist. “She is the daughter of a duke, a miserable extension of her father.”
Cara froze. “She is a duke’s daughter?”
At the whispered words, William managed a brusque nod.
The color left Cara’s cheeks. “Wh-what is her name, this m-miserable creature you’d not tie yourself to?”
He frowned at the shock radiating from the depths of her blue eyes. Did she believe he was a man who cared where titles were concerned? “Cara, it does not matter. There is no formal arrangement. There are no emotions engaged.” He tipped her chin up. “I would marry you.”
“What is her name?” she demanded, her tone shrill.
“Lady Clarisse Falcot, daughter of the Duke of Ravenscourt,” he said quietly and, for one horrifying moment, he imagined she knew that woman.
However, if that name meant anything to her, she gave no indication. She simply slid her gaze off to a point beyond his shoulder. Her silence stood as the only response to his admission. After a long stretch of quiet punctuated by the shrill cry of a morning bird, Cara hugged her arms close to herself. “You would marry me,” she said on a broken whisper. “But you do not truly know me.” Bitterness and hurt made her words ragged. She rubbed her hands over her forearms. “You’ve known me but these few days and you knew that other woman how long? Eleven years?” She gave her head a slight shake. “Don’t you see, I am that woman?”
William growled. “Do not say that,” he commanded. He wrapped his arm about her forearm. “You are nothing like her.”
“Aren’t I?” She winged a regal, golden eyebrow upward. “I am the same woman who ordered a servant into a blizzard to obtain my baubles.”
“It was your mother’s necklace,” he gritted out.
“And I’m the same woman who is cold and condescending.”
How could she think she was anything like that woman his parents would see him wed? He opened his mouth, but then some sad glimmer in her fathomless, blue eyes spoke of a resignation. His breath stuck. By God, she’d reject him. For her words of love and the happiness she’d professed to know, she’d reject him. And for what? A misbegotten sense of who she was.
William proceeded slowly. One erroneously wrong word and he’d lose her forever. “At first, my opinion was such,” he said quietly. “I have spent the past eight years avoiding any woman who reminds me of…of Lady Clarisse.” His lips peeled back in an involuntary grimace at speaking the lady’s name aloud. “I want you, Cara. I love you,” he said with firmness in his tone, willing her to believe that truth.
Chapter 11
Lady Clarisse Falcot. Oh, God. The woman he’d spent years avoiding, was, in fact—her. Cara’s stomach lurched. As Will spoke, his voice came
as though down a long corridor.
Her muddied thoughts spun wildly, madly out of control. Will, her stranger in the inn, was none other than the man her father would betroth her to.
She stared at him as his lips moved, trying to make sense. There should be joy in knowing the man she’d fallen in love with was, in fact, her future betrothed. But there was not. There was a grim emptiness.
Tears popped behind Cara’s eyelids and blurred Will’s visage. A panicky half-sob, half-laugh stuck in her throat at the comedy of errors that was her life in this instance.
Since her mother’s passing, all she’d wanted was to know love; wanted it, even as she’d known herself undeserving of that emotion. That wish to love and be loved had died a swift death at her father’s hands. She’d learned early on her value and worth—and it had not been much. The pain of that, of knowing she mattered so very little to the man who’d given her life, had driven her to bury that need for love. To care for anyone was to know hurt and she didn’t want any part of it.
Until Will. Until he’d shown her the splendor that came in feeling. And now this. The dream she’d carried deep within her heart, so very close, within her fingertips, and in her arms, and that dream was here. Yet, at the same time, she’d never been further from it.
She pressed her eyes closed and a single tear streaked down her cheek. This was to be her penance for the miserable, cruel creature she’d been. A woman who betrayed her half-sister, another victim of the duke’s heartlessness. Another tear slipped behind the first. Followed by another and another.
“Oh, sweet Cara,” Will whispered against her ear. He brushed his lips over her temple.
She cried because he’d spent eight years trying to forget her existence, just like everyone else. She cried because he deserved more than Lady Clarisse Falcot as his wife. “You must end it with,” me. “h-her,” her voice broke, and she cleared her throat. “Y-you must go to your f-father.” The Duke of Billingsley, who’d smiled and laughed and whom she’d avoided when he’d come to visit because she didn’t know what to make of such a very human duke. Oh, God. Another tear fell and she swiped it angrily away. “For the woman your father would have you wed, Will…she does not deserve you.” He deserved a woman who was capable of light and laughter and goodness. She’d never been that woman and even the young man he’d been at eighteen had known it, early on and had wisely fled.
To Wed His Christmas Lady Page 12
