He set down the glass and leaned forward. “I want to apologize again. For earlier. For everything.”
“It’s all right,” she said reflexively.
“No…I should explain. Or try to. It’s just that…The women in London, they’re not like you, Cyn.”
Her spoon clanked hard against the bowl. She set it down. Did he think she did not know that?
“They’re more…worldly.”
“I’m sure they must be,” she ground out.
“You’re protected here in the country.”
“I’d hardly say that, Lancaster,” she snapped.
He blinked. “I’m sorry. Of course. I’m not explaining this well. And there are plenty of women like you in London. I’m speaking in generalizations instead of saying what I mean.”
“Which is?” She tried not to remember the phrase “women like you,” but had no doubt she’d turn it over in her mind for weeks.
“I’m trying to tell you that the woman I am to marry, Imogene, cares as little for me as I do for her. Less even.”
“Perhaps she is only shy.”
“No.” He smiled again, and this time it reached his eyes. “No, that’s not it, I’m afraid.”
Cyn reached for her wine. She did not like this conversation, yet she was starved for the information. “I don’t understand. Everyone likes you, Nick. And you like everyone.”
“Cyn,” he started, then began to laugh.
Lord, she wanted to melt at that sound. She’d missed it. Not only him, but that sound. His laugh was deeper now, of course, but just as decadent.
“I was a malleable child,” he finally said. “An easy child. I’ll give you that.” The laughter faded to a sad smile. “But easy is a dangerous thing.”
“How?” His words didn’t make sense, but perhaps she was distracted by the hand he’d lain idly over hers. His thumb stroked her knuckles.
“Being easy…If you were easy, Cyn, if you were recommended by that one trait, you would not have fought against this marriage.”
“I suppose—”
“Richmond would have come for you, and you’d have gone with him. And you would be broken now, instead of easy.” His thumb dipped between two of her fingers and traced their lines.
“Are you admiring my mulishness?”
The corner of his mouth quirked up. “I am admiring your strength. And I am saying that if you liked everyone, and everyone liked you…Cynthia, your life would be a misery right now.”
She tried to catch his eye. They’d been talking about him, so what did he mean? She wanted to ask, but he stared hard at her fingers and did not look up.
And then he raised his eyebrows and plastered a smile on his face. “As Lady Richmond, I mean. As miserable as one could be, I’d imagine.”
The moment was past. And if he’d meant anything else by his words, she had no doubt he’d deny it. So she matched his smile. “I wouldn’t be Lady Richmond actually. I’d have married the first man my father promised me to.”
That sparked bright curiosity on his face. “Who?”
Was he surprised someone else had wanted her? If only she could shock him with the glory of the match. Unfortunately, there’d been nothing glorious about it. “Well, the first man was Sir Reginald Baylor.”
“Sir Reggie?” he yelped, and she could do nothing but laugh.
“Yes, Sir Reggie, all six skeletal feet of him. He had some very nice grazing land to offer.”
“Good Lord, you’re kidding me.”
“I wish I was. I played the complete harridan until he finally let me be. But then he sent his son around to try his chances.”
Nick choked on a sip of wine. “Not Harry?”
“Yes. Harry Baylor. Who, despite his given name, lost most of his hair before he reached his majority. He was much easier to chase off than his father though. Not much spine to that one, despite all the bones.”
“Well, you’ve been a busy bee while I’ve been gone.”
She bit her lip. “Ten years is a long time.”
“It is. And I’ll have to leave again soon.”
Silence settled over them for a few moments and filled her with that old pain. He wasn’t back. Not really.
“So,” he murmured, “we’d best talk about your plans.”
“What plans?”
“You said you would sail to America. I can only pray you mean you have family there.”
“I do. My father’s sister. She will take me in. My stepfather never found favor in her eyes.”
“No wonder. But you would need a companion for the journey. Perhaps Mrs. Pell?”
“No, she won’t go. I’ll hire a woman. I’ve thought it out.”
“It seems you have.”
“I cannot wait to see New York. My aunt’s letters…It seems a very different place than England.”
His hand was still on hers. Did he realize it, or was she as inconsequential as a blade of grass one knotted and then tossed away? She couldn’t bear that, not when his touch was sending coils of tension winding up her arm. She eased her hand away and placed it carefully in her lap so that the feelings would not slip away too quickly.
When he curled his hand into a fist, Cynthia pretended that Nick was doing the same thing.
Exhaustion lay over him like a sticky film, invading every pore. A long day of climbing and hiking after a sleepless night…and still Nick couldn’t sleep.
The day had fit together with all the cohesion of an irrational dream. First, the resurrection of Cynthia. Then the story of smugglers and buried treasure and sailing to America. He could’ve handled that. He could even have seen his way through the adventure of searching sea cliffs for hidden gold. But what had happened on that damp, windswept beach with Cynthia…That he couldn’t reconcile.
He loved women. He’d always loved women. Old or young, beautiful or homely. It wasn’t necessarily a question of sex. He loved the way they smiled and chatted and laughed. Loved to watch the wheels turn in their mind as they puzzled over a problem. He liked the smell and sound of them. The smoothness of their skin and the sharpness of a witty tongue.
For Lancaster, there was nothing more excruciating than an evening at his club, surrounded by whiskered, loud, bulky gentlemen filling the room with cigar smoke and clumsy gestures.
Yes, he loved women. And that was the great tragedy of his life. The dull, constant ache that he could never forgive or forget. The unavoidable feeling that the axis of his world was broken, and he was being pulled ever so slightly out of balance.
If he were still normal, still whole, Lancaster knew what his life would have been. He could see it clearly, a bright and raucous scene painted in yellows and reds.
He would already have fallen in love a dozen times, sure that each woman was the one, whether she was a shy virgin or the jaded wife of a boorish lord. He would have loved them all, cheerfully and completely. And when it proved time to take a wife, he would have loved that woman too, marriage of convenience or not.
And his nights…his nights would have been so different. Hours of pleasure and companionship. Laughter and warmth. Tangles of limbs and stroking hands and kisses.
He’d give anything—anything—to simply lie with a woman and feel. Be kissed and caressed. Stroked. Held.
Lancaster closed his eyes and tried to ignore the tight band squeezing his chest. It didn’t matter what might have been. He was not a caring and careful lover. He was a man who needed something darker than that.
He’d thought he could control it with Imogene. Grit his teeth and ignore his needs. But with Cynthia…My God, with Cynthia he’d lost control over a simple kiss.
He couldn’t want her like that. He couldn’t. And yet his body was hardening at the very thought of her beneath him, her arms stretched high above her head. He wanted her like that again, skirts rucked up, arms pinned down. He wanted to have her there in the sand, like a doxy.
But she was his Cyn, and even if he weren’t betrothed, he couldn’t do that
.
Hating himself, Lancaster slid his hand slowly down his body and took his arousal in hand. The thought of what he wanted made him ill, but that did not stop the wanting. It never did.
Chapter 8
Face pressed to the cliff, Lancaster flinched and tried to tug his fingers out of their rocky vise. “Pardon me, but would you mind removing your foot from my hand?”
“What?” Cynthia shouted down.
“Your foot!” he yelled.
She frowned past her shoulder as if she didn’t understand, but her boot finally lifted. Lancaster could only hope that the howling wind stole his groan away.
“Come along. We’re almost there.”
“I don’t like this,” he muttered with a glance down to the sand ten feet below him. He didn’t like this, but his guilt overrode all his objections. Guilt and Cynthia’s ornery nature. So now here they were, perched far too high on this blasted cliff while the wind tried its best to set them flying.
“Cyn!” he called. “Stop! This is far higher than we thought.”
“I’ve reached it!” she screamed back, hoisting herself up and disappearing into the rock.
“Damn it.” Lancaster very carefully placed his foot on the next niche and pushed higher. If she was going to kill him, very well. His blasted brother could marry Imogene Brandiss and save the family. The surge of anger helped carry him up the last few feet. Pebbles slid and bounced to their doom as he boosted himself onto the ledge.
The cave wasn’t as big as it had seemed from the imperfect vantage point below. Cynthia couldn’t stand up straight, and it would be a tight squeeze for both of them to crouch in there together. He briefly considered the benefits of joining her, but Cyn interrupted his unwise thoughts.
“There’s something here!”
“Really?” Despite that they were hunting for treasure, he’d be damned surprised if they actually found it.
“Just a moment,” she breathed. “I think…it’s…”
He was twisting toward her when she screamed. Lancaster lurched to his feet while his stomach tumbled right off the edge of the cliff. “Cynthia!”
He’d almost reached her when she backed into him with a strangled squeal.
“What’s wrong?”
“I’m sorry, I just…I pulled that out of a hole…” Her whole body shuddered as she pointed at a dull white object about the size of his fist.
Lancaster leaned closer. “What is that? A cat’s skull?”
She edged past him. “I don’t know what it is, but there’s still little bits of…stuffing inside it.”
“Stuffing, hm?”
She rubbed her hand furiously against her skirt.
“Why don’t you wait out in the sun while I check the rest of this cave.”
It didn’t take long. A few more bones lay scattered about. An ancient bird’s nest and some mouse droppings.
“There’s nothing here, I’m afraid.”
She nodded, but he could see the disappointment in her eyes. “Best to move on then. Maybe we should split up. We’d make better time.”
“Not a chance.” When he joined her and dared to look toward the ground, Lancaster regretted it. Somehow it hadn’t occurred to him that the trip down would be more harrowing than the journey up. And the rope wound around his waist proved a complete waste without a tree to anchor it to. None of the rocks here looked sturdy enough to support a child, much less two adults.
“I’ll go first,” he said. “You follow.”
When she nodded, he took a deep breath, turned his back to the ocean, and eased down to his knees. Four feet later, he finally exhaled. It couldn’t be more than another three yards, after all. “All right, Cyn. Slow and careful now.”
She dropped a leg over the edge, far too casually in his opinion, then searched around for a toehold for a good thirty seconds. His arms ached with the urge to reach up and help, but there was nothing he could do but hope that if she fell, he would cushion her landing.
Finally, she found a steady perch and eased her body out into open air.
Her hiked skirts dragged even higher. The tops of her mended stockings showed now, then her bare thighs, trembling with strain. Thank God Mrs. Pell had come through with the stockings. Those naked legs had played a significant role in his fantasy last night. Of course, he could see beyond the stockings now.
Perched on the side of a cliff, hanging by his fingertips, Lancaster forgot to dwell on the height and began to dwell on Cynthia’s thighs. One of her boots pointed as she lowered a leg. The other knee bent.
The hem of her chemise tightened to a band at an awkward angle, then gave up and inched higher.
Lancaster narrowed his eyes, studying the sunlight glow off the silk of her inner thighs. The muscles flexed, pointing a line upward. His eyes followed….
“All right!” Cynthia called, startling him from his disrespectful reverie. “You can move lower now.”
In the end, his guilt proved his undoing. Mind swirling, he stepped blindly down and found nothing but air beneath. His other foot slipped. His hands, sweat-slick for some reason, lost their grip on the rock. He was falling.
The sound of the wind rushing by his ears diminished Cyn’s scream to the cry of a startled bird. Her face grew smaller. The waves roared louder.
And then everything stopped.
The world stopped, and he went on, still alive despite the complete cessation of sound and light and air.
Air. He couldn’t breathe.
His mind exploded in a melee of fear. He couldn’t breathe.
Suddenly he could feel it, the rope tightening around his neck. He wanted to claw at it, but there was no air left to power his arms. His lungs burned until the ache rose up to meet the fire at his neck. He was dying. Again.
“Nick.” The ringing bell sounded strangely like his name.
“Nick!” Now a chorus of voices shouted, each one barely overlapping the other, drawing his name out for miles.
Something landed hard on his chest. Light flared back to existence. Cold air rushed into his lungs.
“Nick. Oh, God, Nick.”
The dark blob hovering over him sharpened into the shadowed oval of Cynthia’s worried face.
“Are you hurt?”
He thought of nodding, and her head wobbled, so perhaps he managed it.
“Where?” She moved, looking over his torso. She was touching him. He could see that she was touching him, but since he couldn’t feel much of anything, he could let it happen. Just to know that her hands rested on his chest, slid down his arms, measured his legs.
Lancaster smiled at the sky.
“Where are you hurt?” Cyn cried.
“Just…Just knocked the wind out,” he managed.
“Oh, Lord above, are you sure?”
“Aye.” Either that or his spine had cracked like kindling, but they’d find out soon enough.
She hovered for a moment, quiet and calm, then collapsed right onto him, as if she were a puppet whose strings had broken. Her head rested on his chest, her hands held his shoulders. He waited for the panic, but long seconds passed and none came. Lancaster willed his arms to curl around her and they did.
“Thank God,” she breathed into his shirt.
Yes. Thank God. He held her to his chest and let her weight soak into him, shocked to realize he could feel her now. His hand cupped her head. Her hair slid against his fingers. Then her hands shifted, sliding over his shoulders in a tender caress.
Lancaster closed his eyes against the tears.
“You were right,” she murmured. “We shouldn’t have dared that. I’m so sorry.”
“You managed just fine.”
“But we are a team,” she answered simply, drawing a smile to his face.
Until she jerked up. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t be squashing you like that!” She pushed off him.
“No,” he gasped. “Please don’t.” But she was already twisting away to lie on the sand beside him.
“Is t
hat better?”
No. No, it was as lonely and cold as it ever was. His fingers gripped the beach instead of Cynthia. And a great glob of sand seemed to have settled in his throat as well. He could neither speak nor swallow it away.
Minutes passed in silence. Real life seeped back into his body, but he didn’t move.
“You keep your hair so short now,” Cynthia murmured.
The ghost of a cruel grip twisted in his hair. “One must keep up with fashion, of course,” he lied, forcing a jaunty smile.
“Of course.” Her voice shimmered with amusement. It swelled over him and washed away the last of his inertia.
“All right.” Muscles screamed when he pushed to his elbows, but his body seemed in working order. “Back to the hunt.”
Cyn sprang up beside him. “Don’t be an idiot. We’re going home.”
Lancaster opened his mouth to protest. He was a man after all, and eager to show off his amazing fortitude. Nothing short of death could stop an animal as virile as he.
But then she said it again. “Let’s go home, Nick.”
And that sounded like a fantasy. Like an invitation to go back where he wanted to be. “Yes, then,” he agreed. “Yes, let’s go home.” When he pushed to his feet, he was glad he’d agreed. Virility aside, his legs hadn’t appreciated those moments without air. But he could make them work if it meant going home with Cyn.
The warmth of the kitchen was such a change to her chilled body that Cynthia felt as if she were cocooned in wool blankets. Or as if Nick had teased her into joining him in a glass of whisky.
Their hike home had coincided with the rising tide, and a sudden wave had slapped right into her skirts. It had receded before she’d even had time to shriek at the cold, but the damage had been done.
When she shivered at the memory, Nick poured another serving and pushed the glass toward her, his movement drawing her eyes to his bare forearms. The formality of a coat was hardly called for in the midst of what could only be described as a bathing party.
“I insist you go first,” Nick said, tilting his glass in her direction.
“Nonsense. You need to soothe your back.”
“My back is good as ever, thank you very much. And I shan’t soak at all if you don’t go first. I am nothing if not chivalrous. You’re cold. And your hair needs washing.”
One Week As Lovers Page 9
