Lady Reluctant

by Maggie Osborne

  “Please.” She touched his cheek, believing it to be the last time. Her fingers lingered before she made herself lower her hand. “I know her, Thomas, it’s best if I confront her. I insist.” Raising her dark curls, she looked at the frosty stars overhead. “And it’s best if she blames me. It will be easier for us all.”

  “No, I’ll offer to withdraw from the betrothal.”

  She looked up at him and wanted him with all her selfish heart. “Can you do that, Thomas?” she asked softly. Pain laced each breath. “Can either of us bear to wound Cecile?”

  He swore and leaned his hands on the stone wall. “I do love her, Blu. She’s like a sister to me. Can you understand? I would not hurt her for the world.”

  “Aye. I love her too,” She straightened her shoulders and glanced toward the ballroom. “So. Let Lady Katherine believe the fault is mine. Cecile need never know what happened here.”

  Before he could protest further, she gathered her skirts and bolted for the double doors. Dashing inside, she nearly toppled Cecile from her chair.

  “I’m sorry, Cecile.” Scarlet flamed in her cheeks, and she quickly looked away from Cecile’s surprise.

  “Whatever is happening, Blusette? First Mama comes running inside as if she were being chased by an imp. And now you.” Looking past Blu, she lifted her eyes. “Edward? What is—”

  Blu didn’t wait. Slowing her steps, she wove through the dancers, nodding here, smiling there, until she gained the foyer. The staircase leading upward had never appeared so daunting. After drawing a deep breath, she raised her skirts and climbed the steps to receive her chastisement.

  “How could you!” Lady Katherine hissed when Blu rapped and entered her closet. “Is this how you repay my hospitality? By betraying my daughter?” Eyes so dark they seemed almost black, she advanced on Blusette. “How could you do this to her? You can have any man you want! They follow after you with their tongues hanging down.” She threw out her hands. “But who does Cecile have? Only Edward! That is all. If you take him from her, she will have no one!”

  Blu stood her ground, though it cost her to do so. “I never intended to steal His Grace from Cecile,” she said, attempting to hold her voice steady.

  “Liar! Are you brazen enough to stand there and ask me to deny the evidence of my own eyes? You threw yourself at him. You were kissing him! I saw you!”

  “I admit I kissed him. But I swear it was a momentary lapse. It will not happen again.”

  “Do you expect me to believe that? It should never have happened at all! But you must have whatever you want when you want it. With no thought for anyone else! You take, Blusette. You take what you want and you think of no one else!”

  Stung, Blu drew back and her eyes hardened. “Perhaps I come by the trait naturally. Did you think of anyone else when you abandoned me? Did you pause to consider the difficulties my father would encounter trying to raise a child? Did you think how his life would change? Did you ever once think of me? Did you think what my life would be if you did only as you wanted? No. You pleased yourself and the devil take the rest!”

  “And I have regretted that choice every day of my life! If I told you differently, it was pride speaking. Don’t you think I have relived that day a thousand times? Don’t you think I have tormented myself remembering the day I sailed from Morgan’s Mound and left you and William behind?”

  “Flam! All you care about—all you have ever cared about—is your precious social position! Your name, your reputation. That’s all you care about. You! Just you.”

  “Even now, even after all we have been through since your arrival, you still refuse to admit one’s name, one’s honor, is all one has!”

  “Aye, I admit it. But your idea of honor and mine lie worlds apart. Your precious reputation, Madame, is but cat ice spread thin atop a murky pond!”

  “And for that you would punish me all the days of my life!”

  “No, Madame. It is you who punish me. For my very existence!”

  Both were red-faced and powerful in their conviction and anger. Blu chanced to observe their images in Lady Katherine’s mirror and she gasped at their resemblance. The likeness was utterly repugnant.

  Biting her lips, she cut off further discourse. She jerked up her skirts and ran from the chamber, not knowing where she would go, only that she could not bear her mother’s presence another moment. What she wanted was to fly on the night wind, to be transported to another place far from Grosvenor Square.

  Choosing the servants’ back staircase, she clattered down the twisting steps and pushed through the garden door at the bottom landing. Slipping in and out of snowy moonlit shadows, she ran down the garden path toward the mews in the alleyway behind the garden wall. The gate banged behind her, then she was inside the stables, finding it deserted. The grooms and stableboys were around front, in the square sharing a pint with the coachmen and footmen. Very well. She would saddle a horse herself. She had seen it done often enough.

  She found a saddle and her fingers had curled about the edges before she felt Thomas’s hands on her shoulders, heard him whisper her name. Bending forward, she covered her face. A sob tore at her throat.

  “Oh Thomas. She hates me.”

  “No, Blu. She doesn’t hate you.” Turning her in his arms, he held her and pressed her head to his shoulder. “She fears for Cecile’s future.”

  Blu’s shoulders dropped in despair. “And she is right to do so. There can be no one else, not as long as Cecile is confined to her chair. If you...”

  He stroked her back, kissed the tears from her eyelids. But what began as comfort flamed into passion. They trembled in each other’s arms. Then, as a moth is drawn and finally overwhelmed by the flame, their lips met and clung. And the inevitability of their passion overpowered caution and sensibility.

  Blu felt herself melting, sinking to the hay beneath her slippers. Then he swept her into his arms and carried her to the deeper shadows of a clean, empty stall. God help her, she knew what was happening, but she could no more have cried halt than she could have held back the tide. In her deepest being, she did not want him to stop.

  “Yes,” she murmured against his parted lips. The words tore upward from her heart. “Yes, yes, yes!”

  “Blu. My beautiful Blusette.” His hands covered her swelling breasts with a thrill of heat and she heard his groan. “Oh God, your skin is like silk, Your breath like perfume.” His mouth possessed her, urgent and demanding.

  When his lips released hers, she was panting for breath, bathed in perspiration. A heated void opened within her and she needed his fullness to fill her. She needed him as she had never imagined needing anything. Nothing mattered but him. And the great trembling emptiness, the sense of being not-whole, incomplete unless he came to her now.

  Without remembering how or when it happened, she discovered they were naked. And he was beautiful, as magnificent as she had imagined in a hundred nights of longing. Marveling, she trailed her shaking fingertips down his body, following the arrow of dark hair that pointed to his need for her. And when her fingers curved around his strength, she raised wondering eyes and whispered.

  “It feels like velvet. I didn’t know. So strong, yet so soft.”

  “Lie back and let me love you,” he commanded in a hoarse voice.

  Gasping, she did as he bid, arching her body as his tongue and lips tasted her breasts, explored the side of her waist and dropped to lick her inner thighs.

  “God’s teeth, Thomas! I cannot bear it another instant. Please! Please...” Her fingers clawed at his shoulders, drawing him up to her desperate mouth where she buried herself in his kisses.

  Then his fingers moved between her thighs, in the dark thicket that tangled there, guiding her legs apart.

  And then... and then she cried out as a sharp pain cleaved her.

  “Did I hurt you, my love?”

  “No worse than a scraped knee,” she said against his lips, staring up into his smoky eyes. “Don’t stop.” The pain,
already receding, was sweet and cherished, a prelude to the night’s symphony.

  The emptiness swelled, then fell away, closing around a rich, moist fullness that expanded until she screamed softly with the joy and wonder of it. There was a moment when she looked at him and thought of him and knew she loved him. Then all thought whirled from her mind and she became but a receptacle for pleasure and sensation, giving herself in willing surrender to the waves that carried her upward, upward.

  “Thomas!” she gasped, thrashing beneath him. “Something... don’t stop... something is... I...”

  Thought and flesh rushed inward, tumbling one over the other until a merger formed within herself, with him, with a universe that suddenly shot outward with a force that shattered her like an exploding star. Gasping, hovering between pain and exquisite pleasure, Blu clung to him until her universe contracted inward and she came together once more.

  When it finished, she fell limp against the damp straw and stared up into his smiling eyes, her own gaze soft and stunned with wonder.

  “Do it again,” she whispered when she had recovered her breath enough to speak. “Oh, Thomas, that was lovely! Please do it again!”

  Laughing softly, he smoothed the wet tendrils from her cheeks and kissed her tenderly on the mouth. “My dearest Blu. A man does not recover so easily. I’ll need a moment or two.”

  “I love rogering!” She cupped his face between her palms and her brows met in an anxious line. “Was I good at it? I was, wasn’t I?” In the heat of the moment, she had forgotten to notice her performance.

  He grinned at her. “My darling savage, you were wonderful.”

  Reassured, she wrapped her arms around his neck and buried her nose against his chest. “Oh, Thomas. I love the smell of you and the taste of you. I love your hands on me and the rogering. I love you. If you don’t love me back I shall die!”

  “I love you, Blu.” He held her so tightly she finally laughed and protested. “Having found you, I cannot bear to let you go.”

  “You don’t have...” A hand flew to her lips and she sat up in the straw. “Cecile! Oh my God.”

  Cecile’s betrayal was complete. In their passionate need for each other, in their love, they had forgotten Cecile. She stared at Thomas, her eyes wide with guilt.

  For a moment they peered at each other, smiles fading, then Thomas gently touched her cheek and she placed her palm flat against his chest. They dressed in silence.

  As Blu pulled the straw from her hair and replaced the pins, she heard Lady Katherine’s accusation ringing in her mind. What Lady Katherine had said was true. All Blu’s life she had taken what she wanted when she wanted it. That was the way on Morgan’s Mound. That had been the lesson of her youth.

  She understood that what she was about to do was the first genuinely unselfish act of her life, and the most agonizing. One love warred against another, but there was only one honorable victor. Pain tightened her throat.

  “This cannot happen again,” she said in a dulled voice.

  “Dammit!” Thomas struck the stable wall with his fist, then opened his hand and leaned against the weathered boards, his head dropping. “No. It cannot happen again.” After a moment he raised his head and looked at her. “I despise myself for dishonoring Cecile.” When he saw her wince, he added in a low voice, “But God help me, Blu, I would change nothing. I love you.”

  “I love you too,” she whispered. Clutching her skirts, she ran toward the stable doors, not wanting him to see her anguish. But before she ran from him, she turned hungry eyes back for one last, lingering look. “Thomas? Thank you from my heart for not souring me forever. I will remember this moment always, and I thank you for it.”

  The cold struck her like a physical blow the moment she bolted from the stables. Avoiding the music and blazing candlelight spilling from the windows and doors, she again chose the servants’ staircase and climbed to her room. Shivering, her teeth chattering, she knelt before the fire in the grate.

  But the chill of her betrayal and the cold knowledge of her loss pervaded her bones and no matter how much wood she fed the flames, she could not warm herself. Covering her face in her hands, she wept.

  ~ ~ ~

  “Edward?” Cecile touched his hand and looked up from her chair. “Where have you been? Everyone seems to have disappeared.” Anxious, she peered behind him. “Have you seen Blusette? People are beginning to leave. They’re asking for Mama and Blusette, but both have vanished.”

  Guilt constricted his features and he closed his eyes when she spoke Blusette’s name. Cecile was so sweet and gentle, so trusting; she deserved a better man than him. She deserved someone who would love her as he loved Blu.

  The admission rocked his thoughts. He loved Blusette Morgan. She was wild and marvelous, a hothouse hybrid bred from a cool English rose and a Venus’s fly-trap. An exotic creation who enchanted, exasperated, annoyed, amazed. She was a marvel and an all-consuming mystery a man could spend a lifetime failing to solve.

  He loved her.

  He, who had thought love incomprehensible, who had believed love, if it existed, could be nothing more than creative illusion, a trick of an unstable imagination. He loved her. Love existed. He felt its transcendence, its union. And when he looked at Cecile, he felt love’s agony.

  “Edward?” Clasping his hand in both of hers, Cecile gazed up at him, her eyes tender with worry. “Are you ill? You look... I’m not certain... you look strange. Not like yourself.”

  He bowed over her hand, brought her fingers to the lips that had betrayed her. “Forgive me, my dear, I must leave now.” He signaled Mr. Apple to fetch his cloak and hat.

  “But Edward—we’ve scarcely exchanged a word all evening. Must you go? I had hoped you would remain until everyone has gone. I ordered champagne for the family, to celebrate our triumph.”

  He pushed her chair into the black and white tiled foyer and positioned her beside Aunt Tremble, who stood shivering in the doorway, bidding the guests farewell. A dim glow of dawn tinted the East Side chimney pots.

  Taking a quilt from Mr. Apple’s hands, Thomas spread it over Cecile’s lap, tucking the edges around her crippled legs. “It’s cold in the doorway.” This small act of concern only increased his guilt. Straightening, he glanced toward the gallery at the top of the staircase, toward Blusette, unseen but sensed, then he touched Aunt Tremble’s fingers to his lips and stepped into the shadowy predawn cold.

  Bewildered, Cecile watched him go, then she turned her head slowly toward the upper gallery.

  “I don’t know what has possessed Katherine lately,” Aunt Tremble grumbled, clasping her velvet wrap tightly to her throat. “It isn’t like her to vanish and abandon her guests. Good night my lady, Your Lordship.” After bowing out Lord and Lady Mittenly, she leaned past Cecile to peer toward the guttering candles in the ballroom. “Is that the last?”

  “I’m sorry, did you say something, Aunt?” Cecile looked away from the upper gallery and into the vacant square before Mr. Apple closed the door.

  “I said everyone is behaving most strangely.” Aunt Tremble spat her plumpers into her palm and yawned. “One would think Katherine and Blusette would be here, savoring their triumph to the last drop. I don’t understand it. And Edward. Why did Edward go running off?”

  “Would you like some champagne, Aunt, to celebrate?”

  “Without Katherine, Edward, or Blusette? Actually, dear, I think I’d rather delay our celebration and just go off to bed. If you don’t mind too dearly.”

  “No,” Cecile said as Mouton appeared to carry her upstairs. “I think I would prefer to wait too.”

  “Please don’t look at me,” Aunt Tremble begged Mouton, hastily turning her face aside. “I’m too exhausted to faint.”

  “That does not make sense, Aunt,” Cecile said, smiling with genuine amusement for the first time in hours. Mouton carried her upstairs and then returned to the foyer for her chair. While she waited, she thought about her mother refusing to bid her guests
good night. And Blusette’s disappearance. And Edward’s long absence followed by his abrupt withdrawal.

  She looked up as Mouton placed her chair on the gallery landing and wheeled it toward her. His expression was fierce and distracted, a dark blending of anger and sympathy.

  “Mouton—is something amiss?”

  When he stared straight ahead and pretended not to hear, Cecile frowned. Mouton’s refusal to answer added to her growing unease. Something was very wrong.

  18

  Aside from Aunt Tremble and Cecile, it seemed no one spoke to Blu. In the carriage, on their way to pay calls or to take their daily turn in Hyde Park, Lady Katherine faced the window in grim silence and spoke not a word which was not essential. Mouton steadfastly refused to meet Blu’s eyes; Monsieur did not respond to her knock on the library door.

  It was possible Mouton had followed her to the stables. She had been too agitated to think of it that night, but she had thought of it the next morning. When he refused to meet her eyes or respond to her entreaties, she knew her guess was correct. Mouton had followed her. Obviously he had told Monsieur what he had seen and overheard.

  She knew what they were thinking and feeling throughout the next weeks. She felt it too. Like all who knew Cecile, Mouton and Monsieur had been conquered by her sweetness and generosity of heart. They experienced pain and anger at her betrayal, and though they loved Blu, they also blamed her.

  .Rocking with the sway of the carriage, Blu ducked her head and watched her gloves plucking aimlessly at her skirts. One more call and they could return home. She longed for the solitude of her closet and an escape from the sight of Lady Katherine’s pressed and silent lips.

  Home. Grosvenor Square was not home. It was no longer tolerable. Wherever she turned she saw evidence of her betrayal. There were those who would not look at her; she could not look at Cecile. The inhabitants of Grosvenor Square were locked in a maze of dark emotion. And underlying it like a strong, swift current was the agony of her love for Thomas. The torment of overhearing his voice in the foyer and Cecile’s soft reply. The twisting pain of meeting his gaze across the drawing room and being unable to touch him or to speak freely, of knowing Lady Katherine watched them with stony, accusing eyes.