A Little Bit Wild

by Victoria Dahl

  "Tess?" she asked.

  "The maid."

  She shook her head in blank denial.

  "The one you sent last night to retrieve the money. My money."

  'What a very odd thing to say!" she chirped past her smile.

  "Mrs. LeMont..." Edward said hopelessly.

  Jude was done with this. "We know you were behind the threat to Miss York, so if you care for your dignity at all, you will cease this ridiculous playacting and tell the truth. This game is over, madam."

  Her smile snapped away like a sheet popping in the wind. "Sir," she growled. "I do not know you."

  "I am Miss York's fiancé, and that is all you need to know, I'd wager. I consider your threat to her as a threat to me, so here I am to see that it goes no further."

  For a moment, her face was frozen in vicious outrage. All the color in her skin gathered in two spots of scarlet high on her checks.

  "Perhaps," Jude murmured, "We should take this up with your husband?"

  There was her weakness. Her outrage melted into stark fear over the course of several long seconds.

  The mad brightness in her eyes suddenly revealed itself as swimming tears, trapped by her lashes. "Don't," she whispered.

  "Madam," Edward said, leaning forward a bit, "You must stop this dreadful assault against my sister. I don't know what you think she's done to you—"

  "He loves her," she hissed, and Jude felt the shock of those words as if she'd just stripped him bare.

  It took more than a few heartbeats for Jude to realize that she wasn't speaking of him.

  "He has always loved her."

  Edward frowned. "Your husband?"

  "If he finds out about this, he will hate me. Please ..."

  Edward handed her a handkerchief, and Jude felt a brief moment of vertigo. All the niceties must still be observed, even if the lady was a blackmailer. Among his mother's circle, things would've been handled with a bit more honesty.

  Jude interrupted the tender scene as she dabbed at the corners of her eyes. "To put this more bluntly, madam, you dislike Marissa, so you decided to ruin the reputation of the York family and steal from them as well?"

  "No! It's not that I wanted to steal from you, but I thought the culprit would be less... identifiable if money was involved."

  "But you did mean to ruin the family? Or her, at least."

  She stiffened, and her jaw trembled with outrage. "It's not fair! He's my husband. He took me as his wife! I always suspected that he was hesitant to love me. At first I didn't know why. And then I saw them. ..."

  "What do you mean?" Aidan barked.

  She jumped and pressed the handkerchief to her mouth as she calmed herself. "At a harvest feast. I looked up at him and caught an expression on his face... yearning. Heartbreak. And when I followed his gaze... there was Miss York, strolling by with some other gentleman."

  Jude scowled. "And you blamed her for that?"

  "Who else was I to blame? My husband? I love him! And she seemed so cool, as if his love hardly affected her at all. I knew that one cruel word from her could've cut him loose, but she was always kind enough to keep him enraptured." "Still—"

  "I asked around, and I found they had been sweethearts. I saw the way she was with other men. So flirtatious and bold. I knew ... I assumed she and Charles had... and then ..." She glanced up as if jarred from a secret thought, but when her gaze fell on Jude, her eyes hardened. He knew he looked scornful, but he could not help it.

  "Don't look at me that way. I could've lived with it. I told myself it was my imagination. I let myself believe my own eyes had lied. But then he... then he whispered her name. He whispered her name in my bed!"

  Heat burned through Jude at that. Jealousy and a horrible, sudden sympathy for this woman's heart.

  "He didn't even realize it. He called me by her name, and he didn't even realize." Her soft words broke on a sob, and Edward shot Jude a glare as if he had done something awful.

  Aidan rescued him by being just as hard-hearted. "So you decided to have your revenge?"

  "I love him," she wailed. "And when I discovered my condition, I felt desperate that he should love me as well. I will be the mother of his children. How could he not love me? I hired Tess away, thinking I could at least reveal some of Miss York's secrets to him. Tear her down with idle gossip. Then when I heard the recent whispers about her, and well, it seemed to good to be true. I just wanted him to see her for what she was! I wanted him to scorn her. To hate her."

  Jude leaned back in his chair, relieved that the whole story was finally out. "Where have you spread your lies?"

  "Nowhere. Not yet."

  "Not yet?" Edward asked.

  Though the woman's hands shook with startling force, she did not look away. "I... Tess, the maid ... she told me your sister had some intimacy with Fitzwilliam Hess, but if you promise not to tell my husband, I swear to you, I'll never say anything.

  "For God's sake," Aidan roared. "Are you threatening us even now?"

  "Please!" she cried. "I'm sorry, but I love him! If you tell him what I've done, he'll never forgive me. Please, just give me that. You may cut me dead at the next ball, but please do not tell Charles." She was sobbing now, both arms wrapped around the firm bulge of her pregnant belly.

  "What you are doing is unforgivable," Edward said.

  She nodded frantically, eyes shut.

  "Christ," he bit out. "Do you swear you will never so much as imply a foul hint about my sister?"

  "I swear. On the life of my child. Just grant me this mercy."

  Jude was inclined to he done with this mess, and when he glanced at Aidan, he found that the other man had averted his eyes. Despite his had temper, Aidan had a good heart, and no taste for cruelty toward women.

  Edward, of course, had the softest heart of all three of them, and he actually started to reach toward the woman's hand before he caught himself and sat back. "All right," Edward finally said. "You will have to earn your husband's attention in some other way. I won't tell him."

  "Thank you," she sobbed, her body curling in as if she meant to protect her child. "Thank you. I'm sorry. I don't... I feel I've gone a little mad."

  Well, Jude had heard that tale about pregnant woman often enough from his mother's friends. They laughed over their moods and manic tempers later, but he did not think Mrs. LeMont would laugh over this.

  Aidan walked out, and Edward followed, but Jude hesitated for a moment.

  He almost left without saying a word, but then she looked up at him with a question on her face.

  "Your husband," he said carefully. "He danced with Miss York last night. And she told me she's never seen him happier."

  Her brow crumpled in doubt. "She did?"

  "She said he spoke of you and the babe and nothing else."

  Her face cleared, and for a heartbeat or two, she looked hopeful, so Jude left her with that. He understood what it was to love someone who could not love you. He hadn't resorted to criminal activity, but surely he'd made a fool of himself at least.

  There should’ve been some satisfaction amongst them as the men remounted their horses and turned toward home. They'd averted disaster, after all, saving the York family both their reputation and their five thousand pounds. But they were a trio of long faces as they rode down the drive of the LeMont estate.

  "Well," Aidan said. "There will be no scandal, so it seems we will not be brothers after all."

  "I'm sure you're relieved that my services will no longer be required."

  "Jude, I never meant that. I'm humbled that you agreed to marry Marissa in the first place. But now . .. she simply doesn't share your feelings."

  Jude stared out at the horizon and didn't say a word. This time, the brothers did not push him. Speaking of love was one thing, but a broken heart was another matter entirely.

  Chapter 22

  Despite the cold that turned her fingertips to ice, Marissa wandered through the garden. The roses were being pruned, and she wanted t
o supervise the gardeners, but more than that, she could not bear sitting and stitching and waiting for the news.

  Her mother's constant chatter hardly helped her nerves, so Marissa had left her to gossip away to deaf Aunt Ophelia. Harry had long since gone off for a ride.

  She could breathe out here at least, in the crisp tang of autumn, and her blue cloak tossed dramatically in the wind, satisfying some blood-born need for dramatic effect. She'd get windburn if she wasn't careful. Her pale skin couldn't take such abuse.

  She was reaching for her hood to pull it up when she noticed a man from the corner of her eye.

  Jude.

  He stood beneath the tree where they'd lain together, and he watched her with a direct stare that made no excuse for his gaze. In that instant, she felt nothing but a deep, dark satisfaction that he watched her as if he owned her. Then she realized what his presence meant. Her steps were slow as she walked toward him, and he strode out from the shade to meet her at die edge of the roses, bringing too soon an end to her reprieve.

  "Did you see her?" she asked.

  He nodded.

  "And?"

  "She was jealous of you."

  "That makes no sense. Charles married her."

  "She feels he's still in love with you."

  Marissa didn't pretend not to understand. She was sure he had still loved her, a little, when he'd said his vows. But not for a long time now, surely. "I don't think that's true, Jude. Not anymore."

  "I told her as much."

  "And ... she admitted it all?"

  "She did. On the condition that we not tell Charles."

  Marissa frowned viciously. "But he should know what kind of woman he's married to. She's deceptive and conniving and—"

  "She's in love with her husband and pregnant with his child." His brow was creased with worry. "She said at first she only meant to tell tales about you to Charles. I'm not saying I would be bosom friends with her, only that she is in pain."

  Though she was still furious with the woman, Marissa considered what it would be like. To be married to Jude and know that he loved another. It wasn't hard to imagine going mad with frustration and aching. "You're certain she was sincere?"

  "As certain as I can be. And her teal's are well-founded.

  If her husband finds out, whatever love they've built together might crumble."

  "I suppose I shall have to let it be, then."

  Jude nodded. "Fair or not, she felt as if she were living with your ghost between them."

  "Are you actually attempting to turn my anger into guilt?"

  Jude smiled and offered his arm, with a bit of the old easiness between them. Marissa took his arm with a feeling of tentative hope as they walked along the outer edge of the garden. Maybe he was not done with her.

  "Not guilt," he said, "but I admit to a sympathy for the poor woman. I was furious when I arrived, and only maudlin when I left. Do you really think he's come to love her?"

  She nodded and wondered how to broach the more difficult subject of her own feelings. This was the time, when no outside obstacles existed between them. This was the moment to set her fears aside and speak honestly.

  But her fears clawed up inside her and invaded her mind. There was no more danger. No need to marry. Jude was free, and she'd given him every reason to change his mind about this match. She needed to convince him that it was more than a farce. More than a desperate means of saving her from ruin.

  Marissa needed to tell him what she really felt.

  She'd had hours to plan a speech, but she'd hadn't used those hours wisely. She'd worried and fretted and paced and frowned. But she hadn't thought of the right words, and as she struggled with them now, Jude spoke instead, and his speech made hers impossible.

  "I'll leave in the morning." Five simple words, but they told her everything. She was too late.

  "You . .. You're leaving?"

  "We'll still carry on with the betrothal, of course, but I'm no longer needed. You are saved. I'll let you and your mother sort out the details of the break, and how it will be presented."

  Her limbs went numb and heavy with the weight of his announcement, and his arm seemed the only thing supporting her. Marissa curled her lingers tighter around his sleeve. "But..."

  "I trust you not to paint me in too dark a hue." He smiled at her then. Actually smiled, while Marissa was trying not to fall to the grass.

  "Yes," she whispered. "Of course. You've been so kind to us. We wouldn't dream of casting you as the villain."

  "Well, your mother might not be able to resist, for drama's sake, but I know you'll watch out for me." He smiled again, and she felt dizzy at the sight.

  'Jude ... I wish... That is to say—"

  "No, don't say anything, Marissa. I owe you an apology. I've behaved abominably these last few days. What I said and did ... it was inexcusable, and I hope you can forgive me."

  She spun toward him, squeezing his arm too tight. "Of course I can."

  "I'm glad." When his mouth offered that crooked half smile, she thought he might say something different. Ask for another chance at winning her hand. But he said, "Perhaps I did overstay my welcome, and the spirit of Othello infected me. Though not with murder, of course. Just madness."

  A joke. He was joking. She made herself answer his smile.

  "I've never been a jealous man, Marissa. I liked you too well for my own sanity, I think. But I've found my bearings again, so I hope that we might still be friends."

  "Of course," she breathed.

  "Perhaps we might stay in touch."

  Stay in touch? How could he say that so casually? Did he feel nothing for her anymore?

  "I'll send you my favorite novels, even, and this time you may tease me."

  "I would like that," she lied, staring up at his wide mouth and damaged nose and wicked eyebrows. What had once been vulgar was now sensual. What had seemed obtrusively brutal was now simply masculine. She had touched that wild, thick hair and found it smooth beneath her fingers. She had kissed those lips and found them more tender than any other man's.

  He could have been her husband, and now he wanted to be her friend ?Did he hate her so much? So much that in a few days' time he could go from standing naked before her, daring her to touch him, to offering a friendly farewell and the promise of a witty letter or two?

  She realized then that if the threat of scandal still hung over her head, she would never have let him free of his promise to marry her. Love or not, she would've held him to it. Given time . . .

  "I'm sorry," she blurted out, reaching to clasp his hand between hers. "I'm so sorry for what I said! Jude, please—n

  "Don't." His smile slipped finally. For just a moment, she saw his hurt, the hurt she'd done to him. His gaze slid to the ground, and when he looked up again, the pain was gone. But she'd seen it. "Don't," he repeated.

  He turned to continue their stroll, and what could she do but let go her death grip on his hand and walk beside him?

  "I'm off to Italy for my father," he offered in that pleasant voice. "There's a vineyard he admires. He may purchase it."

  "Italy? You'll leave now?" The evenness of her tone stunned her.

  "Best to sail before the winter storms set in."

  "Of course."

  "How will you occupy your time, Miss York? With stitching?"

  Marissa frowned at the grass, troubled by his teasing. Everything he said indicated that he was over his little affection for her. But she'd seen that moment of pain in his eyes. And her own eyes burned with it. "But what if..." Her throat choked on the words. If she confessed her new and tender feelings for him, he would have to say something, but she had no idea what that something might be.

  He might still like her, but not well enough to marry. He might confess that familiarity had bred contempt. He might say that he had loved her for a moment, but she had brushed it aside to dry and wither. Or he might love her still.

  The last seemed a small possibility, and her own feelings fel
l so large and vulnerable in comparison.

  He'd confessed to liking her, after all, and nothing more than that.

  His voice interrupted her painful thoughts. "I'll say my farewell."

  She looked up, startled, and found that they were standing before the conservatory door now. Their walk was done. Jude smiled down at her.

  "But you said tomorrow."

  "Today I must pack and send letters to my father and to the vineyard. Perhaps I'll invite my mother for a visit in Italy. She loves the sun there."

  "Your mother ..." Marissa latched onto the topic, desperate to keep him talking. To keep him standing there, his arm solid beneath her fingers. "Where in France does she live?"

  "She lives on a quiet little street at the outskirts of Paris."

  "Is that where you were raised?"

  "Yes." He knew what she was doing. His voice had lost its playfulness, and he glanced toward the door with a hint of impatience.

  But she couldn't give up. The moment she stopped talking would be the end. The end of his visit, yes, but more than that it would be the end of them together.

  "Does she have a ... a companion right now?"

  Jude relented and offered a slight smile. "No. She only keeps male friends on her own terms now. She's still beautiful, but she says she's too old to worry over pleasing men."

  "She sounds very wise."

  "Yes. She goes to the ..." She'd had him for a moment. But Jude caught himself midsentence

  and shook his head. "We'll speak about this some other time."

  "When?" she asked in a voice that sounded too much like pleading.

  "I'm sure I'll return soon. How could I resist?" But she read the insincerity in his words. They were meant to make her smile. There was no promise in them. He didn't mean to come back.

  "Good-bye, Marissa," he said.

  The sound of her name urged her up to her toes, and Marissa dared to press a kiss to his mouth.

  He was stone beneath her lips, rigid and cool. He did not warm to her, did not open. And Marissa blinked back tears as she settled back to the earth, her mouth burning with shame.

  He looked away from her and reached to open the door. She stood there for a moment, but Jude staled out at the gardens instead of at her. He wanted her to believe this farewell meant less than nothing to him.