His smile wobbled. ‘We made a good team, you and I.’
‘We were never a team, Gideon.’ Cordelia placed Iain’s arm back around her waist and held it there. He was looking at her strangely. There was no time to worry about that now, she had to deal with Gideon first.
‘If it’s your father you’re worried about,’ he was saying, ‘I’m sure that my connections would weigh heavier than any trade.’
Cordelia managed to laugh. ‘I rather think you’re behind the times. Besides, my father has nothing to do with my betrothal to Iain.’
‘I heard he was the one who introduced you. You’ve known each other barely a few days.’
‘You’re wrong. Our—our relationship is of much longer standing.’
‘Relationship? What do you mean, relationship? I had you first, Cordelia, what can be more important than that?’
Power. It was surging in her veins. And revenge. She hadn’t even been aware that she had thirsted for it, but she had. ‘I had no other man to compare you with, Gideon. Now I have,’ she said, turning to Iain. Standing on her tiptoes, she put her arms around his neck. ‘Believe me, there is simply no comparison.’
It was a kiss performed for an audience, and Iain played his part, bending her back theatrically in his arms, his mouth clinging to hers, until they heard the muttered exclamation and the slam of the book-room door.
* * *
Cordelia refused to return to her father’s party, and Iain, silently brooding, was happy to take her back to Milvert’s, commandeering the town coach waiting at the steps of Cavendish Square rather than wait for the one he had hired.
‘That certainly turned out rather differently from what any of us planned.’ Cordelia threw her cloak over a chair in her sitting-room and began to wrestle with the buttons on her evening gloves. ‘So much for the small family gathering. I hope my father is pleased with himself. You know, I always thought Bella hated me, but I got the distinct impression tonight that it was my father she couldn’t bear. She said they lived separate lives. Not that they were ever very much together, for he rarely came to Killellan. Though they did manage to produce five children, so they must have— Actually, I don’t much like to think of that.’
She was nervous, that much was certain, Iain thought. Avoiding the issue. Or waiting on him raising it. She threw her gloves down on top of her cloak, and continued with her inane chatter. ‘I’m to call on her tomorrow. Bella promised me he wouldn’t be there, that I shall see the children. James is more of a young man than a child. He looks very like my father, don’t you think? I would have recognised him anywhere, though he looked rather askance at me. I should not be surprised he did not recognise me, really. He was eight years old the last time he saw me, and the only portrait of me at Killellan was done when I was about the same age. I was so nervous about meeting them all, and as it turns out that was the least of my worries.’
She was stirring ineffectively at the fire now. Iain took the poker from her. Cordelia jumped and retired several feet away. Iain added some coals. ‘The main thing is, our betrothal has been announced,’ he said.
‘I suppose you’re sorry for it.’
He studied her carefully. ‘Are you?’
She paled, but stood her ground. ‘I should have told you the full story.’
‘You lied to me. I’m still not sure what the full story is. Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘I didn’t lie. You assumed— I thought it was none of your business.’
‘D’Amery made it my business.’
‘Tonight! I had no idea he would be there tonight. If I had known, of course I would have told you.’
She was glaring at him, that mixture of defiance and shame that resonated horribly with him. ‘How long were you with him as his mistress?’ he asked.
She looked as if she would not answer him, but then gave a little shrug. ‘About two years. I learnt very quickly that I did not love him any more than he loved me but we were—compatible.’ Cordelia ran her fingers through her coiffure, dislodging a pin. ‘We travelled. As you’ll have gathered, Gideon was a gamester. It was he who taught me to gamble, and in the end it was my winnings which kept us going. So you see, I was never a kept woman. He never paid for my—I gave myself freely, not by way of recompense.’
Again that mixture of defiance laced with shame. Iain frowned, trying to recall their previous conversation, her exact words, his own questions. ‘You lied to me.’
‘I did not!’ she said indignantly. ‘I might not have told you the whole truth, but I never lied. I told you I wasn’t miserable. I told you he didn’t seduce me. What difference does it make, Iain, how long I stayed with him, whether it was one week, one month, one year or two? I didn’t tell you because I knew you would judge me, just as Aunt Sophia does and probably Bella and certainly my father and—and Cressie and Caro would too, if they knew.’
‘They don’t?’ He couldn’t keep the surprise from his voice.
‘Not all of it.’ She wouldn’t meet his eyes now, was concentrating on twisting her hairpin round her finger. ‘I don’t think they’d understand. Caro and Cressie, they have not exactly been conventionally courted, but their husbands—well, they love them. They’re happy with them. Will be happy with them always, if they are to be believed. While I— It’s different for me, can’t you see that? I have no husband to redeem me, and nor do I want one.’
There was pain shadowing her eyes which surprised him and a shade of insecurity too, that touched him. She had told him what she had not told her sisters. But—two years? It shouldn’t matter, but it did, and he disliked himself for that fact. Iain took the hairpin from her and threw it on to the hearth.
‘I was right not to tell you,’ Cordelia said. ‘You are judging me.’
‘I’m trying not to.’
‘I do not object to you having had other lovers,’ Cordelia said.
‘I’ve never introduced you to any of them at a party,’ Iain snapped.
‘That was unfair.’
He held his hands up. ‘It was, and I’m sorry. Look, I know fine that the way I’m feeling isn’t right. If you knew—’ He broke off, closing his eyes briefly. He would not compare Cordelia to his mother. ‘It’s one thing to know about him, another to meet him. If I could eradicate that man from your past, I would.’
‘If I had not run off with Gideon, I would not have met you,’ Cordelia said. ‘He helped make me the person I am, and I like that person, Iain.’
Iain was forced to smile. ‘I like her too. I doubt your father will be saying the same, mind, after the way I behaved in his drawing-room.’
Cordelia chuckled. ‘I confess I was rather thrilled. It is a shocking thing to admit, but you see no one has ever fought for me before. You looked like one of those wild Highlanders in a painting.’
‘You mean I looked like a savage?’ Somehow, his arm seemed to have wound round her waist. She didn’t try to remove it.
‘I mean, it was romantic. Even though I was perfectly capable of handling the situation myself, and even though we are not really betrothed. That is, if we are still betrothed?’
‘You need to learn that I don’t go back on my word. We are betrothed.’ He had an excellent view of her delightful cleavage. He dragged his gaze back to her face and twined one of her ringlets around his finger. The atmosphere between them had thickened. Somewhere along the way, his anger and hurt had given way to the hunger which lurked just below the surface whenever they were together.
‘I haven’t thanked you for rushing to my defence.’
Iain let the ringlet unravel. ‘I don’t need thanks, Cordelia, and as you pointed out at the time, you didn’t really need defending.’
‘Not thanks then, but—this should be our night, Iain. Our victory. We have what we wanted.’
He remembered what she’d s
aid, just before he pretended to kiss her in her father’s book room. Believe me, there is no comparison. She’d sounded as if she meant it. It would be so easy to kiss her. So easy to lose himself in her. He wanted her so much. Wanted her more than he’d ever wanted any other woman. No comparison. He was the one she was with now, the one she wanted, his fevered brain reminded him, and he surrendered to the inevitable.
He kissed her hungrily. Passion raged, fierce, sudden and unstoppable. Cordelia kissed him back with an equal fervour. Tongues touched, retreated, touched. His hands roamed over her back, her bottom, her flanks, everywhere frustrated by the sheer volume of her clothing.
Believe me, there is no comparison. But his mind kept returning to the first man she had given herself to. He dragged his mouth away. ‘Did you love him?’ he asked.
‘No. Yes. I thought I did. It was nine years ago. It doesn’t matter now.’ She was panting. She tugged at his coat. It dropped to the ground. She began on the buttons of his waistcoat. It landed on the fender.
More kissing. She tasted lush. Her kisses were heady. He burrowed his face in the swell of her breasts, breathing in the scent of her. She reached behind her and began to perform the kind of contortionist’s dance required to unbutton her gown, cursing under her breath. He turned her round to help, kissing her neck, her shoulders, easing the lacing wide enough to expose her breasts straining against her corsets, turning her back again to kiss his way over the tender flesh. Her breath was coming fast and shallow. She wriggled. He tugged. Her nipples sprang free, and he caught one between his lips, drawing a harsh cry from her.
‘You don’t regret it then?’ he asked, his own breathing ragged.
‘Regret what?’
‘Refusing him tonight.’
‘No.’
‘You don’t think you could love him again?’
‘Iain! No!’
He kissed her again. She tugged his shirt free from his trousers. Her hands were warm, smoothing over his muscles, making him clench beneath her touch. He tugged at her lacings, and her gown finally fell open. She stepped out of it. He picked her up. She wrapped her legs around his waist. He carried her through to the bedchamber and laid her on the bed. He pushed her petticoats up, and helped her wriggle free of her pantaloons.
Dear God, but she was gorgeous. He kissed her mouth, her breasts. He sucked on her nipples. ‘But still,’ he said, unable to stop himself, ‘it must have been strange, seeing him after all this time.’
Cordelia sat up, propping herself up on her elbows. ‘Iain, can we please forget about Gideon?’
He wanted to. He desperately wanted to. He rolled on to the bed beside her and slid his hand between her legs. She was hot and wet. She moaned. He began to stroke her, trying to concentrate on what he was doing. He shouldn’t have to concentrate.
I rode her first...
Save that tempestuous nature of yours...
I have rather more finesse than that...
It was one thing to have the tale of a lover told, another to be confronted with said lover, flesh and blood and bloody handsome into the bargain. A gentleman. But Cordelia didn’t want D’Amery. Cordelia wanted him. Why else would she be lying here beside him, almost naked, wet with longing?
Except she wasn’t as wet as she had been. And she could be lying here because she wanted to make sure he kept to their bargain. Iain kissed her desperately. It seemed to him that she kissed him back with equal desperation. She fumbled for his trousers, and found, at the same time as he, that there was decidedly less to fumble for than there had been a few moments before.
‘Iain? What’s wrong?’
It was the worst thing she could have said. ‘Nothing.’
He kissed her again. He slid his fingers inside her and began to work her feverishly, but she was now almost as dry as he was limp. If only she hadn’t said anything. If only she hadn’t noticed. Mortified, furious at himself, but angrier at her, for it was her lover who had thrust himself between them, Iain rolled away and got up from the bed, tucking his shirt into his trousers.
‘Iain?’
‘You’re obviously not interested.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about. I know what I’m doing, and it was perfectly obvious you weren’t enjoying it.’
With an exclamation that might have been disgust or frustration or annoyance, Cordelia jumped up and grabbed her robe from the chair, tying it tightly around her waist, her eyes flashing. ‘You are not the only one who knows what they are doing. It was perfectly obvious to me that you were supremely uninterested.’
‘Because you were not.’
‘And is it any wonder! How could I possibly concentrate when you kept on and on and on about Gideon?’
‘You should not need to concentrate,’ he threw at her, managing to be both hypocritical and unfair, since he’d had the very same problem. He was being ridiculous. He didn’t care. This didn’t happen to him. This had never happened to him. ‘I did not go on and on about that man. I asked you some perfectly reasonable questions.’
‘Under perfectly unreasonable conditions.’
Also true, and it made him even more furious. ‘You started it.’
It was an outrageously provocative thing to say, but he couldn’t stop himself. Cordelia’s breath hissed. She looked as if she would hit him, then to her credit, she turned away, opening the bedroom door and stalking ahead of him into the other room.
He followed her and began to harvest discarded garments from the hearth, the floor, beneath the sofa, the window-seat, deliberately stoking his fury with his frustration. ‘I won’t be used, Cordelia. I don’t want you to plaster yourself all over me because you want to forget another man.’
‘That’s not what I was doing.’
‘And I don’t want to be thanked, either.’
‘I was not thanking you!’
‘You said it yourself, you liked it when I hit that— Him.’
‘So now you’re some kind of knight in shining armour and I am a grateful damsel in distress!’
Cordelia glared at him, hands on her hips. At her ears and throat, the jewellery he had given her sparkled. She looked magnificent. To his shame, Iain felt his shaft stirring. He was so confused, he had no idea what he thought, but one thing was for sure; if he remained here, whatever he said or did would be the wrong thing. He stuffed his gloves into the narrow pockets of his tailcoat.
‘You’re going?’
‘I don’t see any point in staying.’
‘You don’t think it would be better if we talked about this?’
‘No,’ Iain said, extremely decidedly, ‘I do not. I think we should forget it happened.’
‘Forget! But—we leave for Plymouth in three days. That is— Are you saying we should forget that too?’
She looked as confused as he felt. He hadn’t a clue how they had got to this point, and he had even less of a clue on how to go back. ‘If that’s what you want,’ Iain said, which was not at all what he meant, but now it was out, and sounding exactly like an ultimatum, he would not take it back, even though Cordelia, clutching at the ties of her robe, looked as if he’d stabbed her or slapped her. And now he came to think of it, he’d seen that robe before. It was the same one she’d put on that night in Glasgow. No doubt D’Amery had seen it too.
Iain picked up his hat. ‘He was serious you know, when he asked you to marry him. He’d take you now. I doubt you’ve burnt your boats with him.’
‘You think I’d take him after he made sure the entire drawing-room full of society knew we had been lovers? They would have speculated before, but they wouldn’t have known.’
Iain shrugged callously. ‘He just wanted to make it difficult for you to refuse him.’
‘So you’re advocating I a
ccept, is that it?’
Cordelia was on the brink of tears, but she was determined not to cry. He could have kicked himself. He wanted to take her back into his arms, but he knew even now, through the fog of his confusion, that D’Amery would be there between them if he did. ‘He says he loves you. You’ve a history, the pair of you.’
‘They have a saying in the Highlands. I learnt it in my travels. There’s no need of history when memories are long. An old man translated it for me, when I asked him why they hated the English so.’
It was one his mother used to cast up at him regularly. He’d only ever meant to save her the inevitable pain of rejection, but she never did abandon the hope that the next one would be the one. The man who matters is the last. No, he would not take that path. The circumstances were very different. Cordelia was not his mother. Iain caught himself, just in time, biting back the Gaelic translation of the quotation. ‘We were talking about more recent history,’ he said. ‘D’Amery is obviously in your father’s good books, with his political connections. What’s more, you’re from the same side of the fence, you and him. I’m sure if you jumped ship Armstrong would be happy enough.’
‘There speaks the shipbuilder. You mean I should jilt you.’
‘We’re not really betrothed, Cordelia.’
‘But we do have a deal, Iain. I thought we were on the same side of the fence, you and I?’
‘All I’m saying is that you’ve got options you didn’t know you had until this evening, and maybe you should think about them.’ Though the last thing he wanted to think about was Cordelia and D’Amery. The very strength of his revulsion propelled Iain towards the door. ‘Goodnight, Cordelia.’
‘Do you mean goodbye?’ she asked, looking quite forlorn.
‘I mean you need to think about it.’ He was being unfair. He didn’t want her to think about it. He wanted her to tell him he’d got it all wrong. He wanted to unsay almost every single word he’d spoken in the past half-hour. He most certainly wanted to undo the fiasco in the bedroom. Most of all, what he wanted was to get away, out of here, right now. ‘Goodnight, Cordelia,’ Iain said again, and left.
Harlequin Historical May 2014 - Bundle 2 of 2: Unwed and UnrepentantReturn of the Prodigal GilvryA Traitor's Touch Page 12
