“And where is that wandering master of yours?” she asked in a whisper.
Leaving the horse, Irina walked to the far side of the stable barn and her jaw dropped open in wonder. Henry hadn’t been joking when he’d said that his course was fashioned after a military training area. Her eyes fairly goggled at the start of the path, which included some kind of woven rope ladder and a massive wooden wall pierced with studs.
She knew she should turn around and go back the way she’d come. But seeing the course was like a gauntlet being thrown. Irina grinned. There was no chance she was going home.
Adrenaline thumped in her chest as she bent to tighten her boots and then discarded the swallowtail coat. It would only get in the way. With a running leap, she threw herself onto the roped grid, hauling arm over arm as she grappled her way across some kind of mud pit. The studded wall was trickier. It was built for the span of a man, but with some creative maneuvering, she was able to get herself to the top. She rappelled deftly down the other side, feeling pleased with herself.
“That wasn’t so bad,” she said aloud, making for the next set.
Thirty minutes later, she was cursing, instead. Her lungs ached as if they were on fire. It had felt like she’d been climbing up for hours. She’d wrenched her ankle jumping from rock to rock, and was currently attempting to slide down a gravelly hill on her bottom. It was not pleasant. Or fun. Or fast.
If the earl had come this way, he was miles ahead of her by now. Dusting herself off, she navigated another rock wall and hopped across a series of carefully placed beams. Every muscle in her body burned, but even though it was difficult, Irina couldn’t help feeling a fierce burst of pleasure beneath the ache. The exertion was exactly what she’d needed.
A flimsy slatted bridge hung across a narrow gorge and swung in the breeze. It was dizzying to look down, so she hastened across as quickly as she could. Every step made it sway precariously. Gulping, she flung herself the last four feet to the other side and collapsed onto the ground. She lay there, staring up at the bright blue sky. Lord help her, she wanted to laugh with pure exhilaration.
Pushing to her feet, she followed the rest of the winding path. It seemed easy, until it opened up to a precipice. She had indeed climbed upward, she realized. The winding path through the wood had led her up to where a narrow waterfall tumbled to a pool below. Looking over the edge, she could see the stable down in the distance. It felt like she was on top of the world.
“What the hell are you doing here?”
Her breath trickled to honey in her throat as she turned. The earl stood there, a bronzed god with wide sculpted shoulders and a magnificently bare chest that tapered to a trim waist. Good Lord, he was mesmerizing, like the nude statues she’d seen in sculpture gardens in France. She wanted to stare at him, devour his shirtless nudity to her fill, memorize every single stunning line of hard, muscled flesh so that she could analyze it later at her leisure.
Beads of sweat dampened the front of him, turning the waistband of his fitted tan breeches to the color of dark wet leather. Irina couldn’t speak, much less catch a breath at the sight of the hard, defined ridges of his stomach. She dared not look lower. Dragging her burning gaze upward, her attention caught on several raised scars reaching from beneath his arms to the sides of his torso. Irina noticed other details, too, and what looked like bunched tissue at the tops of his shoulders. They did not detract from his beauty or strength, but something in her heart twinged all the same.
Seeing her stare, Henry backed away, keeping his front to her, and reached for his discarded shirt. Once reclothed, Henry strode back toward her. Swallowing hard, Irina’s gaze lifted to his, and she nearly retreated right off the edge of the cliff. He was furious, his anger fairly snapping off him as his eyes roved her from head to toe.
He clenched his jaw. “Why are you here?”
She blinked, her mouth opening and closing. “I…had to give you a message from your mother.”
“My mother?” he said, staring at her blankly. “You followed me here?”
“Yes.” Her excuse rang emptily in her own ears as she floundered in the lie, and then gave up. “I needed to find you,” she admitted.
“You fool,” he growled. “Don’t you know you could have been killed?”
“Killed? It is hardly a deadly course,” she replied, lifting her chin in the face of his fury. “How do you get down?”
“You jump.”
“Oh.” She looked down and grinned. “Scary. I can see—”
Her words cut from her lips as a piece of the cliff crumbled from beneath her sole and she lost her balance. Strong fingers curled round her wrist, hauling her body back to safety and slamming her into the solid, immovable column of his body. Every tingling inch of her was plastered to every inch of him. Henry’s eyes glittered into hers, their breaths coming in short pants as she clutched at his arms, one hand lifting to thread into the hair at her nape. With an animalistic growl, he bent his head.
Irina met him in the middle.
Henry claimed her mouth as if he owned it with hot, savage fervor. She welcomed it, savoring the arousing taste of sweat and whiskey. Heat shot through her in lightning bursts, pulsating in the area between her hips—hips that were currently glued to his, like every other shamelessly willing part of her. Henry nibbled across her lips, tearing away to nudge wet bites and scrapes along her throat, only to return to ravage her mouth, his tongue teasing hers with silky nudges and velvet licks that made her insides dissolve to water.
Sweet Lord, the man knew how to kiss.
Running her hands up and down his arms, Irina dragged his head closer, luring his tongue back into her mouth and circling hers around it with a purr of pure feminine satisfaction. The mix of lust and adrenaline shooting through her veins was like nothing she’d ever felt. The tips of her breasts ached, pressed against him as they were, and she had the indecent desire to drag them across the sprinkling of bronze hair on his chest that she’d glimpsed during her earlier inspection.
Slipping her fingers beneath his untucked shirt, she reached upward to find puckered skin.
Henry froze.
He dragged his lips away with a strangled groan. “Enough.”
…
Struggling to catch his breath and his sanity, Henry wanted to wring her lovely neck as much as he wanted to continue plundering her sultry, decadent mouth. Christ. What had he been thinking? That was just it. He hadn’t thought. All of his discipline, his willpower, had disappeared. He’d only reacted…as he always seemed to do when it came to Irina. More so here in these woods, where he always gave in to his intuition and base instinct. If she hadn’t touched his back and jolted him out of the moment, he might still have been lost to the fog of lust blanketing them.
Henry couldn’t believe she had followed him, but he had to admit it wasn’t surprising. Irina was fearless.
And bold.
And too bloody tempting.
Standing before him, she was a mess and covered in dirt, but the sight of her made his blood heat. That glorious hair of hers tumbled in silken waves down her back, making him want to sink his fingers into it once more. Henry wanted to rip the sodden, muddy waistcoat from her body, run his palms over her bare torso and around her trim bottom, still clad in those indecent breeches. He wanted to peel them from her, to kiss every inch of velvety skin, tease her with his hands and lips and tongue. Right here on the ground. She would let him, he knew, because she wanted it, too. No woman had ever met his need the way she had, the force of her desire matching his, beat for beat.
But defiling Princess Irina was not an option.
It hadn’t been before, and now that Rose had replied to his proposal, just that morning, with her conditional acceptance, it most assuredly was not.
Clenching his teeth, Henry backed away from the magnetic lure of her. No matter how many times he told himself to stay away, he could
never do it. No woman had ever affected him the way she had, driving him half delirious with lust. Even now, his body craved to return to hers, to feel its long warm length plied against his…her breasts crushed to his chest, her thighs wedged against him. One kiss and he was as hard as the rock beneath his feet. Henry stalked to the far side of the space, attempting to get his rampaging desire under control. He’d meant what he’d said about not being the right man for her.
He could never be a true husband.
Rose was different. She had consented to be married to him in name only, as a friend and nothing more. One of the conditions of her acceptance was the maintenance of separate residences, which suited him well. Per her letter, she neither wanted nor required his love or his fidelity. She already had a son, which boded well for begetting him an heir. And once that was complete, their entire marriage would be a matter of public record to satisfy the ludicrous Langlevit codicil. Rose no more wished to share his bed than he wished to share hers, and both of them would be all the more content for it.
Henry could not see Irina being so accepting of such a situation—separate homes, separate beds, separate lives. Nor would she deserve that. She deserved a real marriage with a devoted spouse…nights spent in her husband’s arms without the fear of being harmed in her sleep by a raging man possessed by unshakable demons. She deserved everything he was incapable of offering, and more.
He cleared his throat. “Irina, this cannot happen again.”
“Marry me.”
His heart stopped. “What?” he bit out.
She drew a controlled breath. “Your mother told me about the stipulation in the letters patent of your title during the carriage ride to Essex. You could marry me.”
“She should not have burdened you with that.”
Irina stepped closer, seemingly confident in herself and what she was saying. “It is no burden. Marry me, Henry, and save your title.”
“I cannot.”
“Why?”
Here it was. He could end it once and for all. Henry knew how she felt about him, the infatuation she’d borne for so many years. He cared for her, too, but they both knew he was no longer the man she’d known…the man she held in such high esteem. He’d made that more than clear. Henry steeled himself for the stroke he was about to deliver. It was for her own good. And his.
“Because what I feel for you is not as remarkable as what you are clearly imagining it to be.”
She laughed in disbelief, but not before he saw the flash of surprise in her eyes. “Not remarkable?” she repeated, her voice rising in octave as her gaze slid low. “Not to be vulgar, but I am not so naive as to believe that the way we’ve kissed is unremarkable.”
“Not to be vulgar,” he mocked her. “But you are naive if you believe this isn’t a typical male response. Or perhaps you have not been kissed very much. Trust me, it could be any other female standing there and my reaction would be the same.”
Henry braced himself against the shocked hurt brimming in her eyes. Regardless of her bravado, he could not fall prey to her tender feelings. He had to end the cycle, and for that, he needed to be brutal. Ruthless.
He waved a careless arm. “You could just as easily be Lady La Valse, or a courtesan from a gaming hell. It’s all the same to me. I am a red-blooded man, and it only takes a beautiful, willing woman, after all, which is what you are, but nothing more than that. Do not deceive yourself otherwise.”
Irina sucked in a gasp and bit her lip, but Henry forged on even as his heart shriveled in his chest at his horrible, unforgivable words. “And as much as I appreciate your kind offer, Your Highness, I am already betrothed to someone else.”
“You are a bastard,” she whispered.
“I told you as much.”
“I wish I’d never met you.” Her eyes were bright with the sheen of tears. “The old Henry would despise you. He’d be ashamed of who you have become.”
With that, she turned and jumped from the cliff’s edge. Henry darted forward, what was left of his heart throbbing in panic at the splash below. But she surfaced without so much as a shout. He stood there, watching her as she swam the length of the pool to where her horse was waiting. Irina did not look back, not once, before saddling her horse and riding away, out of his life. He’d done it, pushed her away. He should be happy, and yet it felt like everything around him had turned to gray, as if the world had suddenly been deprived of all its color. That was his world—one that was gray and dark and angry. Just because an angel had appeared for a moment and driven the shadows away didn’t mean he deserved any of it.
Irina was right about one thing though—he’d never despised himself more than he did at that moment.
Chapter Nine
In the two weeks Irina had been away from London, the city had shaken off its winter shell and cloaked itself in a bright yellow-green shawl of tree buds and new grass. It had disappointed her, coming back to town and finding it all awash with spring. She’d looked forward to the dusty, crowded, and pale city as she’d left it. After suffering the last fortnight in the lush countryside, drowning in lovely breezes, fresh air, and birdsong, she’d only wanted to return to London and ensconce herself in surroundings that matched the state of her heart.
But London was all too bright and healthy, and as she’d ridden back into town the same way she’d left it, traveling alongside Lady Langlevit’s barouche, she’d seen far too many people out and about with smiles upon their faces.
Henry had not been with them on their ride south from Essex. He’d left Hartstone only a few days after Irina had made, quite possibly, the biggest mistake of her life by setting out on that damned course of his. Not one hour of one day had passed since that she did not spend torturing herself over what she’d done or what she’d said.
What she’d asked.
Good Lord, she’d proposed. She’d asked the Earl of Langlevit to marry her.
The humiliation of his cruel rejection still made her ill to her stomach. Irina placed a hand to her waist and closed her eyes, shutting out her reflection in the vanity mirror. She was seated before it, her maid, Jane, putting the finishing touches on her hair.
“Your Highness?” the young girl squeaked, her voice so like a small mouse’s it made the hairs on the back of Irina’s neck stand on end. “Are you not well?”
She shook her head and opened her eyes again, the surge of unpleasantness receding. Though not very far.
“It’s just a spell,” she replied, forcing her voice to push through the lump in her throat. The one that had been sitting there ever since that afternoon at Hartstone, growing larger by the day.
“The traveling must have made me ill,” she added, deciding to blame her weakness on the six-hour journey she and Lady Langlevit had taken that very morning. They had left before dawn in order to arrive back at Devon Place before the ball that evening.
The invitation to the Earl of Langlevit and Lady Carmichael’s engagement gala had arrived at Hartstone less than a week ago, and from that moment forward, Lady Langlevit had been planning their return to London…and Irina had been vacillating between desolation and fury.
She hadn’t wanted to return to London at all, and she certainly did not want to go to the ball at Leicester Square in less than an hour. But with Lady Langlevit as her chaperone, there was no choice in the matter. She would go. She would congratulate the earl and his chosen bride, and she would hopefully get through it all without a single tear. Without a single bitter word spoken from her tongue.
He did not want her. He could never love her. He’d made that blisteringly clear, and Irina would not disgrace herself any further.
“You look beautiful, Your Highness,” Jane said as Irina got to her feet. The dress was a heavy affair, with layers of dark purple satin and lace designed to bring out the violet in Irina’s eyes. The bodice was not as low or revealing as the others in her wardrob
e, and the waistline was also obscured by a scalloped, beaded sash.
“I look like I am attending a funeral service,” Irina murmured in response. Jane twittered uncomfortably, as if she didn’t know how to respond without agreeing and insulting her.
Indeed, she felt like she was going to a funeral. In a way, she supposed she was.
A knock landed upon her door, and Jane went to open it. Irina expected it to be Lady Langlevit, come to fetch her, but instead, it was a footman. Andrews had sent him. There was a visitor here for Irina.
“Lord Remi,” Jane said in a conspiratorial whisper as she quickly straightened the beaded sash. Dots of color on the maid’s cheeks spoke to her admiration for Max.
Irina smiled. “He is a scoundrel, you know,” she told her, taking up her gloves and moving for the door.
“Oh yes, I know,” she replied softly, the shine of excitement in her eyes surprising Irina immensely. Perhaps this mousy maid was not as meek as her voice led her to appear.
With a laugh, and a most welcome bob of her spirits, Irina descended into the foyer. Max waited in front of the enormous gilt mirror hanging upon one of the walls, reflecting the stairwell and Max’s impeccably dashing evening clothes. Irina shook her head.
“No wonder all the maids are mad about you,” she said as she took the last step. Andrews rushed forward with her cape and helped settle it around her shoulders. Then with a bow, left them.
Max had his hands in his trouser pockets, his cravat in a loose knot that suggested a lady—or lord—had recently been playing with it in an attempt to reach his skin.
“What about the footmen?” he asked, and Irina shushed him with a wave of her hand.
“They are as well, I’m sure,” she whispered. “What are you doing here? I don’t recall asking you to escort Lady Langlevit and me to the ball.”
They had exchanged at least a half dozen letters over the two weeks she’d been in Essex, and she’d told him everything about the disastrous afternoon in Henry’s woods. She’d held nothing back, either. With Max, Irina knew she could be honest with all her flaws and mistakes and injury, and he would not judge her.
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