Tall, Dark and Royal

by Vanessa Kelly

  He took her arm and steered her toward the door. “That’s true, but I’d much rather spend time with you.”

  She eyed him uncertainly. “Really?”

  “Yes, really.”

  “Well, if you’re sure.”

  He halted them before the door. “My dear friend,” he said, sounding rather exasperated, “never doubt that I want to be with you. I’ve spent years missing you, and I’m not about to take for granted the opportunity we have to make up for lost time.”

  She peered at him, almost afraid to believe him. Dominic was a master at hiding his emotions, but right now he gazed at her with open warmth and affection. She wanted so much to respond, but she knew how dangerous it was to let down her guard and make herself vulnerable to countless risks. Like Dominic, she’d become skilled at repressing her feelings. The destruction of her world and the loss of everything she’d ever loved had only become tolerable after she’d walled away her emotions.

  But that wall, the thing that had enabled her to function, was crumbling now that Dominic and Griffin were part of her life. And even though she was overjoyed at her reunion with them, the sense that she stood on the brink of losing control terrified her.

  When Dominic lifted an eyebrow in challenge, Chloe felt her lips waver up in a reluctant smile. As treacherous as their renewed friendship could be to her guarded heart, she had no choice but to accept his return to her life and see it as a blessing and a second chance. She owed him that, at the very least.

  “I should like that,” she said.

  “Good,” he replied in a gruff voice.

  He opened the door and took her hand, leading her toward the back of the house. She yielded to him and to the moment, enjoying the feel of her hand engulfed in his calloused palm. Dominic had wonderful hands—large, long-fingered, strong, and competent. Despite her best intentions, she’d wondered more than once over the last few weeks how those hands would feel upon her body.

  Her naked body.

  He glanced down at her. “Are you all right? You’re looking rather flushed.”

  Mortified by her thoughts, she almost choked. “I’m perfectly fine. Why do you ask?”

  He looked slightly puzzled. “As I said, you’re flushed.”

  Chloe stifled a groan. Close proximity to Dominic obviously had a deleterious effect on her brain. “Sorry, my wits have clearly gone begging today. It must be all the excitement.”

  “And the fact that you were knocked on the head this morning.”

  Actually, she’d forgotten all about that, though it seemed as good an excuse as any. “Then a walk in the fresh air will be just the thing.”

  When Chloe started for the door, Dominic held on to her. “Not so fast, love. You need to put on a cloak.”

  “But it’s a beautiful day,” she protested, hiding a shiver at his casually delivered endearment. “And I’m still wearing my carriage dress.”

  “I’m not taking any chances with your health, Chloe, so don’t argue with me.” He snagged a woolen cloak from a hook by the door.

  She heaved a dramatic sigh that brought a smile to his lips. Then she stood like an obedient child as he draped the cloak over her shoulders and drew it close around her neck.

  “May I go out and play now, sir?” she asked.

  He tipped her chin up and brushed a quick kiss on her forehead. Chloe felt the shock of that simple touch through every part of her body.

  “No impertinence from you, Miss Steele,” he said with mock reprimand.

  She laughed as he steered her outside. No one had called her Miss Steele in a very long time. When her uncle had convinced her to go along with his mad scheme to declare her dead—and wasn’t that a decision she regretted—she’d adopted Piper, her mother’s maiden name, consigning Steele to a fictional grave. Hearing Dominic call her by her proper name rolled back the years, making her feel almost young again.

  He quickly led her through the kitchen garden, with its neatly laid out rows, guiding her to a gravel path that wandered along the back of the house. It led down into an old-fashioned, quaintly styled garden. Lilacs and other flowering bushes were starting to bloom, and daffodils and hyacinths danced in the late afternoon sun in a cheerful riot of color.

  At first glance, parts of the garden appeared to be running wild, but then she noticed that the lawns and hedges had been carefully clipped. The grounds lacked the formal beauty of the current classical style but had a sweet, welcoming air. It was the kind of garden where children could romp, and young lovers could steal kisses under an arbor laced with blossoming vines.

  They strolled along the path, engaging in idle chat about the domestic details of their lives. Though she would have expected him to be bored, he listened attentively, as if talking about her beloved rosebushes and her home-brewed recipes for morning sickness and colic were the most fascinating subjects in the world. It reminded her of their youth, when Dominic had focused so much of his attention on her. Despite his seemingly privileged position in the royal household, he’d in truth been nothing more than a lonely boy starved for affection.

  Chloe had been lonely too. Her widowed father had been the kindest of men, but he’d been consumed by his duties as a royal tutor and his scholarly pursuits. Their busy housekeeper had done her best to play mother to Chloe, but it hadn’t really been enough. Not until she met Dominic, the day after her ninth birthday, had Chloe found her first true friend. For the next five years, they’d spent every free moment together. They’d read books in her father’s study, roamed the gardens behind Kew Palace, and lived in a world of their own making.

  Those innocent days had been the happiest of her life.

  Dominic steered her to a wooden bench under a trellis covered with purple clematis. He remained standing, one booted foot on the seat and a forearm braced on his powerful thigh. He stared out over the garden, his expression brooding and almost grim.

  “What are you thinking about?” she finally asked.

  His gaze shifted slowly back to her as if returning from a great distance. “Do you ever wonder what life might have been like if we’d managed to run away and board that boat to America?”

  She repressed a sigh, disinclined to bridge that painful topic. Looking back on those dreadful first days of her pregnancy still made her sick with shame and an incoherent sort of anger. Some days, she couldn’t even sort out who her anger was directed at—herself, or almost every person she’d known as a child.

  Chloe tried to make light of it. “I imagine I would have spent a good deal of time emptying my stomach all over you and anyone else nearby. I was dreadfully sick, if you recall.”

  A faint smile teased the corners of his stern mouth. “I wouldn’t have minded. Not for you.”

  Returning his smile, she shook her head. Knowing Dominic, he probably wouldn’t have minded if he’d spent the entire passage to America covered with the contents of her stomach.

  They’d been so young and foolish to ever think they could run away, fleeing their troubles and everyone they’d known. But Chloe’s father had planned to send her to Yorkshire to live with her uncle during and even after her pregnancy. The prospect of that separation had driven her and Dominic to desperate measures.

  With a determination and competence beyond his years, Dominic had put their plan in motion by arranging for their journey by public coach to Southampton where they would catch a ship to start a new life. But Chloe had suffered a bout of morning sickness so severe that they’d been forced to take a room at a small inn along the way. It was there that Dominic’s future guardian, Sir Anthony Tait, caught up with them and convinced them to return to Kew.

  “I remember you telling me that,” she said. Her heart ached at the memory. “But I wasn’t strong enough for a sea voyage, Dominic. Not in my condition.”

  “I would have taken care of you,” he said with a quiet conviction.

  She stared at him, shocked that he believed their foolish plan could have worked. “Of course you would have tried,
but you were only fourteen, Dominic. And neither of us had ever been farther from home than London. How could we have managed both a difficult journey and life in a country where we had no friends or means of support?”

  He removed his booted foot from the bench and sat next to her. Even sitting he loomed over her, and Chloe could feel the pulses fluttering in her body.

  “I’m not saying it would have been easy. I’m simply telling you I would have taken care of you and the baby. I would not have allowed anything or anyone to hurt you.”

  For the second time that day, tears swam across her vision. She forced them away, just like she forced away the impulse to give in to his fantasy—to believe that he could, in fact, keep all the bad things away from her.

  “I know you would have tried to protect me until the last breath was squeezed from your body,” she said.

  The pain etched on his features tightened her chest. For one raw moment, she saw all the old sorrow in his gaze, all the heart-rending grief he’d felt over their separation. Dominic had cried that last day together, just like she had. The knowledge that she’d caused him so much pain was a burden she’d carried for a long time.

  Chloe groped for his hand. “I’m sorry I was weak, Dominic. I wish more than anything that I’d been strong enough to stay with you, but I was so sick and so afraid.”

  His fingers closed over hers, holding her hand against his thigh.

  “It wasn’t your fault,” he said, shaking his head. “It was mine. I should have found a better way. I should have been strong enough for both of us. Instead, I failed you when you most needed me.”

  She’d been staring at their interlaced fingers, trying to breathe through the pain, but his words brought her head up. “You were only a boy. There was nothing more you could have done, Dominic.”

  His gaze narrowed and he opened his mouth to argue with her.

  “No,” she said emphatically. “I forbid you to carry guilt for that wretched incident a moment longer. We were children, Dominic, and we had neither the means nor the maturity to properly deal with the situation. We should never have run away in the first place. I knew it was wrong and foolish of us.”

  His hand tightened briefly on hers, then he let go. She could sense how little he liked her answer.

  “Besides,” she added, “Sir Anthony would never have allowed us to keep going. There was no other choice but to return home to Kew.”

  He cut her an enigmatic glance, his face once more set in stone. “If you knew it was wrong to run, why did you agree to go?”

  She clamped down on the impulse to fire up at him for making her dredge up all the old pain. Dominic was never cruel, especially to her. She might have been separated from him for twenty-eight years, but she knew that essential part of him had not changed. He obviously needed something from this discussion, and from her.

  She clasped her hands together and propped them under her chin as she struggled to compose an answer. Dominic waited, so still and silent he might have been carved from the same marble as the bench. But an odd disturbance seemed to seethe in the air around him. She could imagine it lifting the hair from her neck and swirling her skirt around her legs.

  “I did it for you. For us,” she finally said.

  His gaze held hers with implacable intensity. “Then why did you give up so easily, Chloe? Why did you give up on us?”

  She struggled to find the words that might satisfy him. “Because of my father. He already felt so betrayed by my loss of virtue. How could I inflict yet more pain on him by leaving the country, never to see him again?”

  Dominic’s eyes blazed with emerald fire. “You didn’t betray your father. Cumberland seduced you, not the other way around. You were an innocent.”

  “I’m not disputing that.” Her mild response seemed to throw him back a bit. “I’m simply trying to explain my reasons.”

  He gave a tight, grudging nod.

  “Papa was shattered when he found out I was pregnant,” she continued. “His initial disappointment in me—and in himself for failing me—was so intense that I couldn’t bear it. It made me think it might be better if I just disappeared from his life.” She shook her head, still amazed at her youthful naïveté. “But running away just made everything worse for him. It brought on one of his attacks, and he never truly recovered.”

  In fact, her father had died only a few months later after Chloe was exiled to Yorkshire.

  “It sounds as if you’ve been blaming yourself for your father’s death for all these years,” Dominic said.

  She frowned at his tone. “Well, I don’t know who else is to blame if not me.”

  He rested his forehead on his palm and muttered a curse under his breath.

  Chloe’s temper began to stir. “Yes, I know I’ve been a disappointment to you. Well, that’s nothing new. I was a disappointment to my father and almost everyone else in my life. Believe me, Dominic, I’ve been told that more times than I can count. I don’t need a reminder from you.”

  Dominic jerked his head up. “My only true disappointment, Chloe, is that you didn’t trust me enough to reach out to me when you finally could. Christ! How could you think that I wouldn’t want to see you again? You mean the world to me—you always have.”

  His anger and sorrow, bleached to a pale, bitter poison by time, crawled through her veins. She didn’t blame him, but how could she ever explain her reasons?

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “You must think me an utter coward.”

  “I think nothing of the sort, and you know it. I only wish to understand why you would turn your back on the people who love you.”

  Frustration pulled her throat tight. “I don’t think I’m able to explain it in a way that would make sense to you. I’m sorry.” The truth was, some days she barely understood it herself.

  He leaned into her then, his gaze hot with a need that almost stopped her heart.

  “Try me,” he gritted out.

  She truly wanted to, but the weight of past failures bore down on her like the descending arc of an executioner’s blade.

  “I can’t,” she blurted out. “I’m sorry.”

  Chloe pushed him away and stumbled to her feet. Hurrying along the gravel path, she forced herself not to look back. If she did, she would surely see the evidence writ large on Dominic’s face that she’d failed him once again.

  Chapter Four

  Dominic braced a hand on the mantel and stared down at the fire, trying to ignore the generous brandy Cates had poured out for him. As much as he’d like to get royally drunk, he wouldn’t give in to temptation. Not until the threat to Chloe and Jane had passed, at any rate. Besides, getting cup-shot would hardly fix his problems with the lovely Mrs. Piper. Their stroll in the garden had started out promisingly but then turned into a debacle of his making. He knew how reticent she was about her past, and for the last month he’d respected her privacy, refraining from asking for details about her life. He’d told himself that he had no business resenting any of her decisions, either now or in the years gone by. And he’d even convinced himself that was true.

  Until today. That was when all his submerged resentments had come roaring to the surface, surprising him with their force. When he thought of how he’d snapped at her, giving in to anger, he almost cringed with shame.

  He scrubbed a weary hand over his face, wincing at the image of her distraught expression as she backed away from him, convinced she’d disappointed him again. She hadn’t, of course. Frustrate, yes. Even infuriate. But given the person she’d become in the face of such adversity, he could only admire her. His disappointment was all with himself—for not understanding her and for failing to give her the time she needed to absorb the realities of her new life.

  But even worse than his disgust with his own behavior was the heartache he felt at the knowledge that Chloe blamed herself for the fate she’d been dealt. Besides guilt over her pregnancy, she obviously felt responsible for her father’s premature death, though no one who
truly knew the situation would believe that. Unfortunately, his clumsy handling of the situation today had only driven her away. She hadn’t even joined him for dinner, preferring instead to have a tray upstairs with Jane. For the immediate future, it seemed, his plans to use this trip as an opportunity to finally seduce the woman he loved into his bed—and into his life—must be placed on temporary hiatus.

  Sighing, he picked up his untouched brandy and headed toward his desk. His collection of books held no interest for him tonight, nor would they help him get to sleep. Given that he had no chance of seeing Chloe before tomorrow, he might as well work.

  Halfway through a report from one of his agents, he heard a murmur of quiet voices in the hall and then the door to the library opening. Frowning, he glanced up only to feel his mouth drop open when Chloe entered the room carrying a tea tray.

  “Thank you, Cates,” she said to the butler, holding the door. “I’ll ring if we need you.”

  Dominic rose as she crossed the room, straight-backed and graceful as she carried the heavy tea service to his desk. Chloe sometimes gave an impression of fragility despite her taller-than-average height, but her slim body had a wiry strength born of years of hard work.

  “Good evening, my dear.” He relieved her of the tray and put it on his desk. “I would have thought you already in bed by now.”

  “I generally keep country hours, but it’s barely nine o’clock,” she said with a shy smile. “I thought you might like some tea.”

  Even though she looked utterly composed, he sensed her nervousness. “You’re right,” he said, studying the delicate wash of pink on her cheeks. “But you were busy with Jane, and you must be exhausted.”

  Her mouth pulled into a little grimace. “It’s kind of you to phrase it so delicately when we both know I was hiding from you.”

  He hesitated, caught off-guard by her blunt speech. “I’m sure you had your reasons.”

  She shook her head. “There was no excuse for my dreadful behavior this afternoon. I didn’t stand a chance of sleeping tonight unless I came down and spoke with you.”