“What a splendid ball,” Eleanor said when Max claimed her for the first set. “I am impressed that a mere man could arrange things so well.”
“Thank you. I’ve never acted as host on such an occasion. And I will not do so again. Not at Longford, at least. As of this morning I relinquish all control over Robert and the Townsend estate.”
“How long will you stay?” she asked, as they moved through the dance.
“That depends.”
“On what?”
“On whether Robert allows me to remain his guest.” His lazy smile sent a different message.
“Ah, you fear summary ejection. Have you been such a cruel, strict guardian then?”
Max turned to the lady on his other side. Eleanor felt her toes curl and a foolish grin stretch her lips. In evening clothes of gray and deep red he looked far handsomer than any gentleman in the room. “He and the boys intend to leave here in a day or two,” he said, once the dance brought him back to her side. “He’s not cut out for country life and chafes for London.”
Eleanor looked at Caro, who was gazing at Robert as they danced. “It’s probably just as well,” she said. “Caro will be sad, but they are both too young to marry.”
“Worrying about your charge?”
“She’s not mine tonight. Her mother is present.”
“All the more attention for others, then, ” he whispered, as the movement of the dance drew them apart again.
“I’ll never be host at Longford again,” Max said a minute later. “But I have my own house, near Newmarket. It’s not as large as this one but I hope you would like it.”
“That’s one part of England I’ve never visited,” she said, trying to sound indifferent. “For some reason I have no relations there. I would like to visit Cambridge. The colleges are said to be very fine.” Once again the movements of the dance separated them.
“Eleanor,” he said softly, when they came back together. “Are we going to spend this evening discussing the beauties and antiquities of England?”
“I generally find travel to be a fine topic when one is traveling through a country dance.”
“In that case,” he said, “I hope you will reserve a later set for me and we can forget the dance and walk outside. The gardens are very lovely at this time of year.”
Her heart hammered and her breath increased. A tingling of her lips anticipated that kiss she’d promised herself. Just a kiss. And she wouldn’t go far from the house. This time she was not going to lose control of herself.
“There’s nothing like an evening walk,” she said. “Meanwhile you may tell me about the fen country. What is it like?”
“Very flat.” His smile made her wish the promised later set was now. She felt herself drowning in a heated gaze that seemed incongruous in such limpid blue eyes.
The ball was endless. Max fretted through half a dozen sets and the tedium of supper. In a house filled with the cream of Somerset gentry, there was only one person whose company he desired. Finally it came time for his promised dance with Eleanor. She, ravishing in blue, stood with her cousin, the impossibly unpleasant Mrs. Brotherton.
“Will you do me the honor, Miss Hardwick?”
“I would be pleased.” Her demure answer was belied by the smoke in her gray eyes. “But I find the room a trifle overwarm.”
“In that case, may I suggest a stroll under the stars?”
“This has been the longest evening of my life,” he said once he had her on his arm. “My job as Robert’s guardian is supposed to be over today, but the wretched boy keeps disappearing, leaving me as sole host. I’m afraid he’s dicing in the stables with the other youngsters. The three of them are probably fleecing the rustics, as Lithgow so charmingly puts it.”
“As long as no one’s fleecing Caro of her virtue, I don’t care.”
“Good God! I hope not. Why would you think such a thing?” Surely Robert wouldn’t? Max beat aside his uneasiness at the suggestion.
“Just a joke, a poor one. My duty is to prevent Caro and her mother from being at odds. She’s dancing with Lord Kendal now, which will please Cousin Elizabeth. I don’t really believe Mr. Townsend would seduce her.”
The light remark fell into a pool of silence, pregnant with meaning and memories. “Do you know what day this is?” he asked.
“Of course I do, but I didn’t expect you would.”
A number of guests had come out to seek the cool of the night, but Eleanor and Max were far enough from the house to be out of the earshot of others. Max halted and gazed down at her face, pale and lovely against the dark halo of her hair. He itched to frame the soft cheeks in his palms, delineate the high cheekbones with his thumbs, kiss the elegant nose whose slight prominence gave her face such character. He contented himself with taking her hand. She did not pull away.
“Not a day goes by when I do not remember that night.” A wisp of a breath was her only response. Max chose to find hope in her silence. “When you returned my letters I despaired, but I never wholly gave up. I always hoped we would meet again.”
As he spoke he saw pain in her eyes that squeezed at his heart. “Why?” she asked. He bent to hear the repeated word. “Why?” For his forthright Eleanor to speak so softly was another testament to how badly he’d hurt her. “It’s not so much the original contest. I know men can be foolish, especially when they drink too much. But why did you boast about it to Sir George Ashdown?”
“Boast? To an oaf like Ashdown? I did nothing of the kind.”
“He told me you had. In the carriage on the way home from Petworth. He said the officers of the regiment had a contest to see who could win a kiss from me. When you claimed the prize, you implied that you’d won far more. I’ve never been so humiliated in my life.”
“Ashdown lied.”
“But you did win two hundred pounds.”
“When we returned from the lake that night, Ashdown asked me if I’d fulfilled the terms of the contest—to kiss you, nothing more—and I told him I had. To my shame, I took the money. I’m not a rich man and I was intending to be wed. To you. But I promise you Eleanor, I swear on every scrap of honor I ever possessed, that nothing I said to Ashdown can have given him the idea that we did anything more that night than exchange a kiss. I told him I would call the next morning to offer for your hand because I was in love with you.”
“You said that?”
“My dearest Eleanor. I fell in love with you that week and that night I thought you felt the same.” Joy seized his heart. Eleanor and he had been victims of a misunderstanding. Now they could be happy.
She hadn’t quite reached the same state of bliss. She was looking for answers. “Ashdown said he forced you to propose to me. That you were reluctant, but after much persuasion you agreed that you owed me marriage.”
“Good God! No wonder you sent me away. Why would Ashdown play such a trick?”
“Because he is a horrible man and wanted to revenge himself on me. Poor Sylvia, his wife, has six children and still he would not leave her alone. I advised her to stand up to him, to refuse to let him into her bed for at least a few months. I knew he was angry with me for helping my cousin find a backbone, but I had no notion he could be so vicious. Where are we going?”
The last question was a response to Max’s dragging her by the hand toward the shelter of a convenient shrubbery. “I’m not waiting another minute to kiss you.”
She was not, thank heaven, reluctant. As soon as they were safely out of sight, she fell into his arms. They devoured each other with the same hunger they’d shared five years ago, almost to the hour. Yet it meant so much more this time, because he’d lost her and had found her again. The way her body strained into his was a gift that humbled him, the taste of her kiss a priceless treasure. Five years deprived of Eleanor made every fraction of a second in her presence infinitely precious.
His darling was a woman of powerful appetites beneath a serene exterior. There was nothing tentative or restrained about her
embrace, not a trace of maidenly reluctance. She demanded, sucking his tongue into her mouth while emitting an animal purr from the depths of her throat. No puny ladylike creature she, with strong arms that snaked beneath his coats to caress his back, her fingers delicious fiery brands through the linen of his shirt. Why did women have to wear so many layers? his brain hazily wondered, as his own hands sought the ecstasy and comfort of skin and flesh and found only the sturdy cloth and bones of her stays. Finally, in desperation, he relinquished her mouth so that he could taste the long column of her neck, the expanse of chest, and the smooth firm breasts thrust upward for his delectation by the same corset that frustrated him elsewhere. Her head fell back to give him access and at the same time her hands grasped his satin-breeched buttocks and pulled his swelling cock against her center, grinding into him in time with her speeding breaths.
What a marriage they would have! What days and nights of delight!
He stopped trying to burrow beneath the lace edge of her gown to find her nipples. “Eleanor,” he whispered. “Enough.”
An incoherent moan of displeasure accompanied an attempt to find his lips again.
He put a few inches of air between them so his thoughts would no longer be scrambled by her touch. “Let us not repeat our mistakes. Before we go any further, let us set a wedding date.”
She blinked in a flattering state of bedazzlement, shook her head a couple of times with resultant danger to the state of her coiffure, and then opened her mouth a couple of times as she formulated a speech that he hoped would run along the lines of next week.
“Are we betrothed?” she said.
He laughed. “I should know better than to take you for granted, my darling. Do you want me to propose on one knee?”
She waved aside the question, as though it was an irrelevance. “I’m not sure I wish to be married.”
“What?” Max was outraged. “You just kissed me as no lady should kiss a man who is not her betrothed or, preferably, her husband.”
“Don’t be prissy, Max. We’ve done nothing that makes it essential we wed.”
“I thought you’d forgiven me.”
“I have.”
“Five years ago, you were ready to marry me, until Ashdown interfered. Why not now?”
“Actually,” she said, “I wasn’t intending to wed you then, either.”
“What?”
“Hush! Do you want to summon a crowd?”
With some difficulty, Max moderated his tone. “Do you mean to say you lay with me, you surrendered your virtue, with no intention of marrying me?”
“I’ll admit I wasn’t thinking very clearly that night. I was a little carried away. After it happened”—she smiled at the reminiscence in a way he could only characterize as lascivious—“I might have considered wedding you. Sir George Ashdown quickly squashed that idea.”
Max felt the ground slipping out from under his feet. “Do you love me, Eleanor?” he asked, trying to bring the discussion back under control. “I loved you then and I love you now. You are the only woman I have ever loved, the only one I wish to marry and live with for the rest of my life.” An astonishing and hurtful idea occurred to him. “Did you love me? Or was I merely a week’s flirtation to be used and set aside?”
She took his hands in each of hers and looked up at him, her head tilted to one side. “I think I did love you, Max. Maybe I still do. More than any other man I’ve ever met. Will you give me time to think about it?”
“How much time? Five minutes, ten?”
“A little more than that.” She stood on tiptoe to kiss the tip of his nose. “At least a few days.”
He didn’t want to wait a few days. Desire and low cunning overcame his scruples and all his resolutions to exercise restraint. Deciding to use every weapon at his disposal he gathered her into his arms again and took a long, delicious kiss that left them both shaky and breathless.
“Give me your answer tomorrow,” he said with a gasp.
“No, but I’ll take another kiss.”
“Come to my bedchamber and I’ll do even better.”
She was considering it, he could tell. His groin ached at the thought of Eleanor naked between linen sheets, of taking her now, and not letting her go until she was thoroughly pleasured, totally compromised, and possibly pregnant to boot.
With regret and a measure of relief he watched her slowly shake her head. “It’s just as well,” he said. “I want you to come to me freely, without a shadow of doubt or coercion. You are worth waiting for.”
A dazzling smile was his reward. “Thank you, Max. I’m tempted by your offer, but I don’t want to risk getting with child. I only returned your letters when I knew I had not conceived. It would have been dreadful to be forced to wed you for such a reason. I suppose we’d better return before we create a scandal.”
He wasn’t ready to let her go. “I’d like to show you something. Beyond that topiary there’s a border planted with all white flowers. They look their best by moonlight.”
“How charming. I’d like to see that.”
“There’s a little summerhouse from which one can sit and view it. It has a very comfortable bench.”
In all her sensible days, Eleanor had never received such a romantic offer as a comfortable bench away from prying eyes and the scent of summer flowers in the night. Turning down Max’s suggestion of a bed had taken all her willpower. A wellspring of joy in her breast made her want to say yes to all and anything Max proposed, including a hasty marriage. But a lifetime’s habit of caution told her to wait. A decision to abandon her devoutly held beliefs must be made in the cold light of day.
There was no reason she couldn’t indulge herself a little more. She could enjoy a goodnight kiss. “Lead on,” she said. “I expect you to tell me the names of all the flowers.”
He snatched a quick taste of her lips and hurried her, their fingers enlaced, into the forest of carved box topiary figures. For a minute or two, she was blind, aware only of Max’s large, rough hand guiding her, inspiring her trust. So dark was the walk, that emerging into the open dazed her for a moment. The scent of roses assaulted her nostrils and she looked about her to get her bearings. In the moonlight, she took in the promised summerhouse, a pretty faux-rustic structure of moss-covered stone.
From Max’s muttered oath she knew he saw him at the same time as she did, a man, leaving the little building, looking about him carefully. They melted back into the shadows until Robert Townsend had taken the direct route toward the house.
“What’s the boy up to…”
His sentence was left unfinished at the emergence of another figure, wearing a familiar white gown. Eleanor’s instinct was to race forward and confront Caro, but Max’s arm restrained her and a minute’s reflection convinced her that discretion was the better course.
“Oh dear,” was all she could think of to say once the girl had left.
“I’m sorry,” Max said.
“It’s not your fault. Let’s hope things haven’t gone too far.”
“If they have, I shall make sure Robert marries her. I won’t allow Miss Brotherton to be ruined.”
“What kind of solution would that be?” Eleanor demanded. “Married at the age of seventeen, to a wild youth of dubious character? What chance of happiness would she have?”
That Eleanor slept at all that night was a miracle. Lying awake for what felt like hours, unable to find a comfortable spot in her bed, she relived the evening. Max’s revelation of Sir George Ashdown’s role in the fiasco had extinguished the last vestige of anger over the bet. But now she had to face a far more frightening decision. Drowning in the memory of his kisses, the answer seemed obvious. Why not seize a lifetime of such delights? Yet as Eleanor rolled her neck on a pillow that had become lumpy since last night, her stomach lurched with raw fear. Awaking, thirsty and unrefreshed, she prayed Max wouldn’t call today. She needed far more time before relinquishing the principles of a lifetime.
It was later than her u
sual hour of rising, but still early for the morning after a ball. She’d wager Caro wouldn’t be up for hours. She rang for her maid, took a greedy drink, and washed in cold water. By the time she had dressed she felt as restless as ever. The day seemed unbearably hot.
Flinging up the sash window that overlooked the front of the house, she saw a horseman ride up. No one had a better seat than Max. Her heart skipped ten beats and her mouth became dry again. As he dismounted and handed the reins to a servant, he looked over the façade of the house, as though searching for something. For her. Even from two floors up she could see his kind, rugged face, imagine the twinkle in his eyes. Damn him! Why couldn’t he have waited another day, or three. She might very well tear downstairs and cast herself into his arms. She stumbled back from the window and collapsed into a chair, twisting her hands together.
Five minutes later a servant knocked. “There’s a gentleman to see you, Miss Hardwick.”
“Tell him I’m still in bed. I won’t be receiving callers today.”
When the door handle rattled again she panicked. “No,” she called. “I’m not dressed.”
“Yes you are!” Caro said as she came in, still in her nightgown. “Why did you say you weren’t? Oh never mind. Wasn’t that the most wonderful evening?”
Eleanor grasped at the distraction. Scolding Caro for last night’s behavior gave her a practical task.
“What can you have been thinking of?” she demanded. “Going alone to the summerhouse with Robert Townsend was a terrible indiscretion.”
“Don’t be a stuffy old thing, Eleanor,” Caro said with a pout. “I want to talk about the ball. Wasn’t it wonderful?” She clambered up onto the bed and bounced on her knees in an ecstasy of delight. Just the reaction a young girl should have after her first ball. She looked innocent and fragile and Eleanor’s heart swelled with a fierce protective love.
The Second Seduction of a Lady Page 5
