“I am sorry,” he said helplessly.
“As am I, but I should not have been surprised.” She laughed harshly. “Although, God help me, I was.” She drew a calming breath. “Then I learn my husband knew everything almost from the start.”
She turned her gaze to his. “Why, Jason, why didn’t he ever tell me? Not later, not when he was sick, I understand that, but when he first learned why you had left? Why didn’t he tell me at that point?”
“Even then he loved you.”
“Did he?” Of course George had loved her. She’d never doubted it. But even in the beginning? She hadn’t considered it before now and had, in fact, believed George had married her more out of kindness and possibly honor than love.
He studied her for a moment. “Are you angry with him?”
“Angry? Because he loved me?” She shook her head. “I’m overset and more than a bit confused, but not angry. How can I be? How can I allow one deception to overshadow all else?
“In a way, you know, my father was right when he told you I was dead.” She smiled humorlessly. “I was for a while, I think. In my heart, at least. George brought me back to life.”
“George was a good man.”
“You can say that? Even now? Even knowing his part in all that happened between us?”
“I know why he did what he did. He loved you, and I cannot fault him for that. I know as well his part in my success. And I know his dying wish that we settle all between us.”
“I daresay it’s too late.” She pulled her gaze from his and stared unseeing at the books lining the wall. The back of her throat ached with the truth of her words.
“Is it?”
“You’ve changed through the years, as have I. I am not the trusting child whose hopes and dreams lie with the whims of a man. Any man. I’m a woman of independent means and independent mind.” Her gaze met his. “I can’t be the girl you once loved and I don’t wish to be.”
“I don’t want a trusting child.” He stepped toward her, and without thinking, she stepped back. “But you lie, Rachael. I see the girl in the woman she’s become.”
“Nonsense.” She raised a shoulder in dismissal. “She doesn’t exist anymore.”
“I see her in your eyes, the girl I loved.”
“And can you love the woman?” she said softly, afraid to hear the answer.
“I suspect I already do.” He moved toward her, and at once she knew he meant to take her in his arms.
“No! Don’t come any closer.” She thrust her hands out in front of her and tried to keep them steady. He was barely a foot from her. “You can’t—I can’t—We cannot pick up where we left off. Even if all is forgiven between us—”
“Is it?”
“How can I blame you for leaving a dead woman? Or for the actions of my father or George? But I…” She turned away and groped for the right words, then turned back to him. “I am terrified of what may happen between us.”
His gaze was as unyielding as his voice. “I would never leave you again.”
“I don’t know that.” She folded her arms over her chest. “I don’t know you.”
“Don’t you?” he said simply.
Perhaps it was the tension that hung between them or the question in his eyes or her reluctance to face the past, but abruptly, unreasonable irritation swept through her. This, at least, was an emotion she could handle. “Do not answer my questions with questions! You shall drive me mad!”
“Ah, but what a beautiful lunatic.”
She stared for a moment, then laughed in spite of herself.
He grinned back. “I could always make you laugh. At the very least, I know you. We are more than halfway there.”
She shook her head helplessly. “Jason.”
He moved nearer and took her hands in his. “If we cannot pick up where we left off, perhaps we can start anew.”
She scoffed. “Impossible.”
“Not at all.” He stepped to the door and threw it open. “Mayfield?”
The butler appeared at once. “You called, my lord?”
Rachael bit back a groan. More than likely he’d been listening at the door.
“Indeed I did.” Jason gestured at her. “Would you be so kind, Mayfield, as to introduce us.”
Mayfield’s gaze slid from Jason to Rachael and back. His words were measured. “Introduce whom, my lord?”
“Why, introduce me, of course, to this lovely stranger.” Jason’s tone was firm.
“Stranger, my lord?” Mayfield said cautiously. The poor man looked like he had just stumbled into a theatrical farce and had no idea of his lines. Rachael stifled a grin.
“You have no imagination, Mayfield.” Jason sighed. “And therefore you are of no use to me. You may go.”
“My lady?” Mayfield cast her a questioning glance as if uncertain whether to abandon her to the company of a man who had clearly taken leave of his senses.
“It’s quite all right, Mayfield. His lordship is mad but not dangerous,” she said wryly.
“Indeed,” Mayfield murmured skeptically, and left, taking care not to close the door completely in an obvious effort to hear her should she need to call for help.
“Apparently I shall have to take matters into my own hands.” Jason stepped back and bowed with a dramatic flourish. “My dear lady, I realize this is quite improper, but allow me the presumptuous effrontery to introduce myself. I am Jason Norcross, the Earl of Lyndhurst.”
“Jason, this is ridiculous.” She couldn’t suppress a smile. “Stop it this minute.”
“Jason?” He gasped in feigned shock. “I scarcely think we know each other well enough to call one another by our given names. Now, then.” He cleared his throat. “You have the advantage of me, my lady. I have offered you my name, but you have yet to reciprocate.”
She sighed in resignation. “Very well. I shall play your silly game.” She curtsied. “I am Lady Lyndhurst, the Countess of Lyndhurst.”
“I am delighted to make your acquaintance.” He stepped to her and took her hand before she could protest, pulling it to his lips. His gaze caught hers. Without warning, the teasing nature of their words disappeared.
She stared into his eyes, and a desire she’d never thought to feel again gripped her. Her throat tightened and her heart thudded in her chest. Her voice was barely a whisper. “Jason.”
“Rachael.” Her name was little more than a groan.
He pulled her into his arms, and his lips crushed hers. Warm and firm and demanding. Shock coursed through her and she clung to him, responding to his kiss with a passion restrained for a decade, at once familiar and unrelenting and, God help her, so very right. Her arms wrapped around his neck and his flesh was warm beneath her fingers and she wanted nothing more than to touch him and hold him and have him. Her body was molded hard against his in a fit true and perfect. Her mind may have forgotten, but her body and her soul knew. Had always known the truth to be found only in his arms.
He slanted his mouth over hers again and again as if he were a drowning man and she his savior, until her knees threatened to buckle beneath her and her breath came hard and quick. And even while a voice in her head cried it was too soon, too fast, too dangerous, she didn’t care. This was what she wanted. What she’d always wanted. Him and only him.
He pulled away and stared down at her, the stunned look in his eye a reflection of her own.
She gasped for breath.
“Rachael.” His voice was hoarse and choked with emotion.
“You have a remarkable way of introducing yourself, my lord.” She stared up at him.
The corners of his mouth quirked upward. “As do you, my lady.”
Rachael drew a steadying breath and gently pushed out of his arms. She stepped back, of necessity placing herself out of reach. She suspected if he took her in his arms again, he would not stop with a kiss. Nor would she want him to.
Her legs were weak and she wondered that she could stand at all. “You should not have do
ne that.”
“Why?” He started toward her, then obviously thought better of it. She was at once grateful and vaguely disappointed.
“Why?” She uttered an odd, shaky sort of laugh. “Well, we’ve just met. I barely know you. This sort of behavior with a stranger is scandalous. It’s entirely too much. Too fast. Too soon—”
“It’s ten bloody years too late.” The firm note in his voice rang in the room and echoed in her heart.
“Nonetheless, it cannot be made up all in one day.”
His brow rose in a wicked manner. “I am willing to try.”
“Well, I am not. Not at all.” She inched toward the door. “If you will excuse me, I shall retire to my rooms. Dinner is served promptly at eight.”
He crossed his arms over his chest. “Hiding, are we?”
She paused and looked at him, tall and strong, and for a moment wanted nothing more than to step back into his embrace. But she had too much to resolve within herself yet for that.
She smiled slowly. “Why, yes, my lord, hiding is precisely what I plan to do.”
She turned to the door and pulled it open, his words trailing after her. “You cannot avoid me forever.”
No, not forever. But for now she wasn’t ready to face forever and all that it might mean.
Eight
HAD ANY ONE meal ever stretched so endlessly?
Jason had chatted all through dinner, but Rachael couldn’t remember a single word he said. She sat directly across from him at the long dining room table and tried not to stare. It was a futile effort.
Blasted man. Why did he have to look as tempting as the dishes set before him? Not that she’d had any interest in the meal. She’d done nothing more than push the food around on her plate during one course after the other. Still, Cook would scarcely notice; Jason’s appetite made up for hers. In more ways than one.
The man didn’t sip his wine. His lips kissed the glass. He didn’t butter his bread with his knife, he caressed it. He didn’t stab a piece of beef with his fork, he impaled it slowly and deliberately. Every morsel that went into his mouth was greeted with a sensual movement of his lips that was nothing short of carnal. Indeed, the man didn’t eat his meal, he seduced it.
Would he seduce her as well?
Abruptly she grabbed her glass of wine and drained it.
“Did you say something?” Jason said, the spark in his eye in contrast to the innocent note in his voice.
“No.” She smiled brightly. “Nothing.” A footman refilled her goblet and she took a grateful sip. Odd, she didn’t usually drink this much wine at dinner. She must be unusually thirsty tonight. Yet, regardless of how much she drank, her mouth was overly dry and she had an unending need to continually moisten her lips.
“It appears I have rattled on through most of the meal. Now then, it’s your turn.” At once, his plate was whisked away by a servant.
Jason rested his elbows on the table, clasped his hands, and leaned forward. “Surely there are any number of things you wish to speak of. Politics? The state of the economy? The latest on-dit? Perhaps you have questions—”
“Why have you never married?” she blurted, then winced to herself. Of the hundreds of things she wished to ask him, why was that the first to slip from her lips?
“Far too easy, my lady.” He relaxed back in his chair and raised his glass to her. “I have never found a woman to replace the one I lost.”
“But surely there were women in your life.” She pressed on in spite of herself.
“Well, I have not exactly spent the years pining away in celibacy, if that’s what you’re wondering.”
“No, of course not.” A hot blush swept up her face and she took another gulp of wine. “I was merely curious.”
“Were you?” He chuckled. “I have had more than my share of female companionship. I even imagined I was in love on an occasion or two.”
“Oh?” She pushed aside a tiny twinge of jealousy.
“It didn’t amount to anything.” He shrugged.
“What a shame,” she murmured, and hid her smile with the last of her wine.
“The ladies in question seemed to think so.”
She laughed. “Were there many ladies then? Are you a rake?”
“More a rogue, I should think. Or perhaps a scoundrel.” He frowned thoughtfully. “No, on further thought, a rake might be appropriate after all.”
“Then I am dining alone with a rake I’ve taken into my home?” She grinned. “How delightful.”
He gestured to a footman to refill her glass, and she studied him suspiciously. “Are trying to get me foxed, my lord?”
“What else would you expect from a rake?” He plucked an orange from a bowl on the table and started to peel it. Slowly. “Would it do me any good?”
“I wouldn’t think so.” She couldn’t pull her gaze from his hands, large and strong and deft. She could remember how those hands had felt so long ago on her bare shoulders and her naked back and—
“Surely you have other questions beyond my various amorous activities?”
Her gaze jerked to his and again an embarrassed heat burned her cheeks. His eyes were as knowing as his smile. Still, he couldn’t possibly know what she was thinking. Could he?
“Certainly. Hundreds of questions.” Why couldn’t she think of one? Why could she do nothing more than feel a bizarre sort of envy for an orange? She licked her lips.
His gaze dropped to her mouth, then returned to her eyes. “Questions, Rachael?”
“Questions.” She drew a deep breath in an effort to concentrate on something other than the fruit in his hands. “Well, I was curious as to why you didn’t come home at once when George died. He thought perhaps you’d return before his death.”
Jason’s expression sobered. “I fully intended to. I had hoped to wind up my affairs and return to England at once, but I encountered one delay after another. Then war was declared and travel was next to impossible.” He placed the orange on the table before him and gazed at it thoughtfully. She wondered if he didn’t see the fruit at all but rather the past. “I didn’t even receive word of George’s death until nearly a year after his passing.”
“He would have liked to see you again,” she said softly.
“As would I.” He blew a long breath. “It is yet another regret in a lifetime of regrets.”
“Come now, Jason.” Her voice held a teasing note. “Not an entire lifetime?”
“No, not an entire lifetime. A mere ten years. Nothing more.”
“It does rather seem like a lifetime, though,” she said under her breath.
And wasn’t it, in fact? Absently she reached out and traced the etching on the crystal wine goblet with her finger. So much time had passed since they’d promised to be together always. Their lives had followed separate courses, the road finally bringing them together again to this point. Was it the end of their journey? Would they at last put the past behind them and move on? And would they move on together?
“Did you ever hate me?” She glanced up at him.
“No,” he said simply.
“Never? Come now.” She studied him carefully. “Not even when you learned I hadn’t waited for you? That I had married George?”
“No.”
“I said some hateful things to you when you were last here.”
“Yes, you did.” He smiled in a wry manner. “But I understood why you reacted as you did.”
“So you never despised me,” she said slowly. “And you didn’t tell me the truth when you had the opportunity to because of your concern for George.” She raised a brow. “You may well be a bit too good for me, Jason Norcross.”
He chuckled. “I doubt that.” He paused as if debating whether to continue, then he sighed. “Before you afford me the status of saint, you should know I wrote you dozens, perhaps even a hundred, letters telling you everything. And damn the consequences.”
She scoffed. “I never received one.”
“I never mailed
one.”
“Then you are as noble as you appear after all.”
“In deed perhaps, but not in thought. Not in desire.” He drained the rest of his wine and plunked the glass back on the table. “I have no need to ask if you hated me. It was obvious when last we met. Perhaps a better question would be, when did you stop hating me?”
She stared for a long moment, debating the merits of honesty. If there was to be anything at all between them, there could be no more deception. “When I received George’s letter.”
“I see.” He nodded thoughtfully. “Only yesterday then. Permit me to ask you something else.” He leaned forward, his eyes as intense as his voice. “When did you stop loving me?”
The question hung in the air and reverberated in her veins and in her heart.
Never! Her breath caught. Why hadn’t she realized it before now? Or had she always known and simply been afraid to face it? Afraid because the passion they’d shared was so deep, so consuming, the pain that accompanied it was just as overwhelming. She’d survived losing him once; she could not do it again.
“Why, my lord.” She forced a light laugh. “You do ask the most impertinent questions.”
His expression darkened. “Perhaps I do,” he said with an air of resignation. He pushed away from the table and stood to stare down at her. “It has been an exceedingly long day and I find I am somewhat fatigued. If you will forgive me, I believe I shall retire for the night.”
“Hiding, are we?” She regretted the flippant comment the moment the words were out of her mouth.
He rested his hands on the table and leaned forward to tower over her. His eyes gleamed in the candlelight “Not at all. In fact, I would not be averse to company when I climb into my bed.”
The shock of his suggestion stole her breath. Or was it the unexpected rush of longing that shocked her? She stared up at him.
“I have nothing to hide from, Rachael. I know full well how I feel. How I have always felt.” He straightened and smiled politely. “And now, my lady, I bid you good night.” He turned and strode from the room.
Secrets of a Perfect Night Page 19
