“Did you pick a fabric for the chairs?” he interrupted.
“What?” she said, blinking in confusion.
“The chairs.” He threw his hand in the air. “The dining room chairs that you wanted to reupholster in green but the fabric wasn’t available. Did you ever select another color?”
Staring at him as if he’d suddenly sprouted a second head, she nodded slowly. “Yes, as a matter of fact, I decided on the eggplant. I didn’t realize you were actually listening to me.”
Neither had Weston, but he’d needed something to stop Brynne from going on about his engagement plans, and dining room chairs in need of reupholstering was the first thing that came to mind.
He hadn’t any idea why discussing Lady Martha Smethwick in front of Evie was so innately repulsive to him. He only knew that it felt…wrong, somehow. Like discussing his wife in front of his mistress. Not that Evie was–or ever would be–his mistress. For even if he was inclined to make her his (which he definitely wanted to, but also absolutely did not), she deserved more than some clandestine affair in a house tucked away on a side street that he visited in the dead of night.
Evie was far too proud for such an arrangement, and he’d never demean her by asking her to place herself in a situation where she was less than. Even if it meant having those luscious curves available to him whenever he desired. Kissing her for as long as he wanted. Loving her until the sun went down and then rose again, painting the sky in an endless streak of pink and gold as they finally collapsed beside each other in a slick, tangled heap of limbs.
Swallowing hard, he shifted his weight onto his heels and cast his attention into the foaling stall where the filly, still unnamed, slept soundly. “Brynne, I’d like a word with Miss Thorncroft. In private.”
“Anything you have to say to me can be said in front of Lady Brynne.”
He turned his head to stare at Evie, and were such things possible the heat blazing in his eyes would have ignited the pile of hay behind her. “No. I cannot.”
“There’s…there’s a sitting arrangement I really must tend to,” said Brynne, her gaze darting between them. “Have a lovely chat.”
Off she dashed, leaving Weston and Evie alone save for the horses…and the tension simmering between them. Straw rustled as the broodmares moved around in their stalls. From somewhere out in the yard came the sound of a rake scraping across gravel. At the other end of the barn, Bold let out a shrill whinny.
Evie wet her lips. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
“Like what?” he said roughly.
“Like you want to ravish me.”
“What if I did?”
“Want to ravish me?”
He gave a clipped nod.
“But at the tavern you said–”
“To hell with what I said.” Three steps, and he was in front of her. Four, and she was in his arms. He grabbed her waist. Yanked her against him. Relished the quiver he felt go through her entire body. Craved the taste of her mouth like a man half-starved.
She tilted her head back. Her sooty lashes spilled across the tops of her cheeks, and then lifted to reveal blue eyes dark with smoke and sensuality. “Ravish away, my lord.”
Chapter Ten
Weston did not need another invitation.
On a muffled groan, he crushed his mouth to Evie’s and kissed her with the wild, wicked abandon of a man who was biting his thumb at the devil…and didn’t give a damn about what consequences might come.
To hell with his vow.
To hell with yesterday and tomorrow.
To hell with anything that might keep him from this moment. From this woman. From this madness.
For that’s what it was. Sheer madness, to want someone as badly as he wanted Evie. But he didn’t care.
Tonight, he would. Tonight, he’d curse himself for his recklessness. Tonight, he’d drink, and brood, and make another vow. A better vow. A stronger vow. One that could resist this tumultuous storm raging inside of him.
But for now…for now, he was going to run straight into the rain.
Power and passion surged through him in equal measure when he backed Evie up against the barn wall, his arms braced on either side of her head as they devoured each other in a kiss that was raw, and primitive, and desperate.
He wanted, and so he took. She desired, and so she gave.
Their tongues tangled. Their teeth clicked. Their noses bumped.
It was messy and imperfect.
It was mania and impatience.
Combined, it was a tempest neither of them were able to control.
Evie’s hands streaked greedily across his torso, nails scraping against his flesh as she found the edge of his shirt.
Weston palmed her breasts, then rolled her nipples between his thumb and finger until she arched her spine off the wood, her soft belly pressing against his hard arousal.
He could have taken her there. Against the barn, or in the hay. It didn’t matter. He just wanted to thrust his throbbing staff into all that wet, clenching silk. And it wasn’t until he held her skirts in his fists that he fully comprehended what he was about to do. What he would have done, if his common sense hadn’t come rushing back with all the subtlety of a train clattering down at the tracks at full speed.
“Jesus.” He dropped her dress before he staggered away, his breath whistling between his lips in a shocked exhalation of self-disgust. He’d been seconds away from taking Evie in a horse stable. On the bloody ground. Like a…like a rutting boar. No. Worse than a boar. The flea that fucked on the boar. That’s what he was. A flea. And Evie, bright, beautiful, brilliant Evie, was…
Crying, he realized with a painful jolt.
She was crying.
And he was flea dirt.
“Miss Thorncroft–” Awkwardly he reached out, but she shoved his hand away.
“Don’t,” she choked before she fled past him out of the barn.
Stunned, he remained in the barn for less than five minutes before he went after her. After a quick search of the main house, he found Brynne in the dining room directing a small army of servants, but his twin had seen no sign of Evie.
“Losing a cravat is acceptable, Weston,” she chided. “Not a guest. What did you do now?”
His chest heaving, he scowled and said, “Why do you presume I did something wrong?
“Because you’re a man,” she answered simply. “You’ve always done something wrong. And if you haven’t done it yet, you’re about to. Have you tried the stone garden? I showed it to Miss Thorncroft earlier, and she seemed taken with it.”
The stone garden.
Without bothering to bid his sister farewell, Weston stormed out of the dining room with its eggplant chairs–the most hideously ugly color he’d ever seen–and veered left, using a delivery entrance to access a narrow, rarely used path that wound around the edge of the glass solarium and through a grove of silver birch before leading to a green labyrinth comprised of round boxwoods and tall hedges. Thin cut slices of granite rock, set directly into the ground, made a trail of stepping stones that eventually led to the middle of the maze where a statue in the likeness of the late Marchioness of Dorchester had been erected after her death, thus giving the garden its name.
When Weston and Brynne were children, they’d made a game of losing themselves in the labyrinth. With its many twists and turns, it wasn’t difficult to do. But Weston was in no mood for frivolity, and he cut through the hedges with the ruthlessness of a scythe slicing through wheat.
He found Evie at the center, sitting on a bench beside the statue of his mother.
To see them together, one in stone and the other in flesh and blood, halted him in his tracks. He’d known these two women for such brief periods of time. His mother, less than an hour. Evie, less than a week. And yet they’d both had such a strong impact on him.
The Marchioness of Dorchester had given him life.
And Evelyn Thorncroft…Evelyn Thorncroft had made him feel it.
The anger. The passion. The frustration. The pleasure.
For so long, all of those emotions, all of those feelings, had been lying dormant inside of him. Shielded behind an impenetrable wall of ice. Until Evie strolled in with her chisel in hand and went to work.
The wall remained standing, but she’d managed to chip off enough pieces to create a deep crack that ran the length of his heart. And through the crack had slipped the tiniest amount of warmth…just enough to begin thawing the edges of all that cold.
“Miss Thorncroft.”
She lifted her head at the sound her name, and he was relieved to see that her eyes were dry. But for the hint of red underneath, and the linen handkerchief crumpled in her right hand, she might have never been crying at all.
“Go away,” she said frostily. “In case it was not clear, when someone retreats to the middle of a hidden garden, they wish to be left alone.”
“It’s called the stone garden, actually. That is my mother, there.” He nodded at the statue. Set on a marble pedestal, it depicted Lady Dorchester in a standing position with her hands linked behind her back and her head raised to the sky. The folds of her gown were simple, as were the lines of her countenance. But the sculptor had skillfully captured her gentle grace and that, more than her face or dress, had been her defining characteristic.
Occasionally, Weston was given to wonder how his upbringing might have been different if his mother had lived. Would it have meant a childhood spent at dinner tables and family gatherings instead of his room, a place made even more isolating by the knowledge that no parent waited for him downstairs? Would it have meant praise for a job well done, and kind encouragement for when he could do better? Would it have meant an eagerness to return to Hawkridge Manor after being away at school, instead of the quiet dread that had grown louder and louder with every turn of the carriage wheel?
“Your sister told me who the statute was when we came here earlier.” As Evie rose from the bench, the stern brackets around her mouth softened. “She was beautiful. Your mother. It must have been very hard to have never known her.”
As his gaze shifted from the statue to Evie, it occurred to him, somewhat belatedly, that they had both lost a parent at a very young age. And it was because of that communal loss that they were standing here, together.
If Weston’s mother had not died in childbirth, his father would have never fallen in love with an American debutante. For despite all of his flaws (which were numerous), the Marquess of Dorchester was a loyal man who would not have stepped out on his wife. And if he never had an affair with Anne Thorncroft, they never would have conceived a child, thus unraveling the thread that bound Weston and Evie together.
The marquess never would have given his wife’s ring away.
Weston never would have had reason to go searching for it.
And Evie never would have come to London to get it back.
With all the people in the world, and an ocean between them, the odds of their paths ever crossing was so miniscule it was all but incalculable.
To have never known Evie…the shape of her smile, the light in her eyes, the smell of her perfume, the taste of her lips…it would be like looking to the heavens every night and never seeing a shooting star.
When his stomach twisted unpleasantly, as it sometimes did when he ate or drank to excess, Weston swiped a hand across his face. He needed to get ahold of himself. Any more melancholic thoughts like those and he’d begin spouting poetry or some other such nonsense.
Not meeting Evie would have been a bloody blessing, not a tragedy.
Any ideas to the contrary were just further proof that he was losing his mind.
Or maybe he’d already lost it.
Either way, she was to blame.
This tempting minx who’d set his world on fire…and they were both burning with it.
“By all accounts, my mother’s beauty was what first drew my father to her.” Taking the seat Evie had vacated, he stretched his legs out in front of him and his arms along the back of the bench. “That, and the knowledge they’d make a splendid match. Which they did, until she passed within hours of my sister and me being born.”
“I am sorry for your loss,” Evie said softly. “And even sorrier that you never had the chance to meet her. Every child should have their mother, even if just for a little while.”
“Do you remember your mother?” he asked. “I understand she died when you were very young, as well.”
“Yes, she did. When I try to recall her face…the details of it…” An ebony tendril, loosened from their tryst in the barn, slid free of Evie’s coiffure and tumbled across her cheek as she shook her head. “But I remember the scent of her perfume. Lilacs. She smelled like lilacs. And I remember the sound of her voice. When she was first stricken with fever, my sisters and I would all sit beside her in bed. She’d read to us for hours. Until her voice gave out. Or she grew too tired to speak. I think…” Evie’s voice cracked, and Weston’s heart ached in response.
He wanted to get up and gather her in his arms, but he didn’t trust himself. How could he, after they way he’d nearly lost all control? Thus he remained sitting, his expression carefully stoic, and allowed her to finish without interruption.
“I think she was…” As Evie paused to take a breath, she cast her gaze heavenward, and her mouth curved. “I think she was trying to fit an entire lifetime of reading into that last month she had with us. I shall never open the pages of Oliver Twist without thinking of her.”
“She sounds as if she were a wonderful mother,” he said gruffly.
“She was. Patient, and kind, and loving. I realize you may have a different perspective, given the…the unique relationship between her and your father, but–”
“No.” At that, Weston could not remain seated any longer. Rising from the bench, he went to Evie and gently took hold of her wrists, his fingers easily encircling the tiny bones as his thumbs came to rest on the fluttering points of her pulse. “I will admit that when I first learned of the affair, I was angry. Furious, even.”
“You?” she said, blue eyes widening in exaggerated surprise. “Furious? Surely not.”
He squeezed her hands. “Since I’ve had time to contemplate, I realize that the source of my fury stemmed not from the affair itself, but rather from learning twenty years after the fact that I have a half-sister my father never bothered to mention. I may have…misplaced some of that anger on you and Joanna. Given the timing of your arrival, I thought that you were here for the purpose of monetary gain through blackmail, or some other nefarious means. I can see now that I was…I was wrong.”
It was the closest Weston had ever come to an outright apology. The closest he would come, banning some unforeseen natural disaster or a horrific form of torture. As a prideful man, and an arrogant one besides, it was difficult for him to admit that he’d jumped to a conclusion too hastily.
But not impossible.
He owed Evie this much, if not more, for suspecting the worst of her without taking the opportunity to get to know her first. She may have been many things. High-spirited. Argumentative. Stubborn to a bloody fault. But she wasn’t a liar or a schemer, out to steal his family’s fortune. The past few days in her company had taught him that, if nothing else.
There was a flicker in Evie’s gaze. An undecipherable flash, there and gone again, like the blink of a firefly on a humid summer night. Then she smiled. Smirked, really. “You’re right. You were wrong. We only came here to retrieve our mother’s ring. And to find out the identity of Joanna’s birth father. It was never our intent to make any demands of you or your family. We also didn’t plan to create such a stir at the countess’ ball.”
“Two Americans set loose on the ton, one the illegitimate granddaughter of a duke and the other a raven-haired goddess, and you didn’t think you’d cause a stir?” he said drolly.
A pleased blush enveloped her cheeks. “Is that how you think of me? As a raven-haired goddess? It has a n
ice ring, doesn’t it?”
He quirked a brow. “What makes you believe I think about you at all?”
“That kiss in the stables, for one.”
As he was reminded of their passionate embrace, and her response to it, Weston sobered. His behavior in the barn had been abominable from start to finish, and judging her too harshly before they’d even met wasn’t the only thing he needed to apologize for.
“Miss Thorncroft, I–”
“If you are about to mention my tears, I’d prefer you didn’t.”
He frowned. “But–”
“No, thank you.”
“I–”
“On very rare occasions, Lord Hawkridge, I succumb to…emotional distress. It was nothing you did,” she said before he could speak. “I was just…overwhelmed by the moment we found ourselves in. I’d like to forget it happened, if it’s all the same to you.”
“The kissing or the crying?”
“Both, I presume, as one wouldn’t have happened without the other.” Her expression grew serious. “I am not a plaything, my lord. To be picked up and cast aside whenever the whim strikes you.”
His grip on her wrists tightened imperceptibly, and then fell away as he took a step back and ran his fingers through his hair. “I know that,” he said defensively.
“Do you?” she asked. “Because what occurred in the barn implied otherwise. Not to say I wasn’t a party to it. Or that I did not enjoy myself. But I…I should like to know where I stand with you, Lord Hawkridge.”
“Where you stand,” he repeated, and even though they were out in the open with the grass beneath their feet and the sky stretching above their heads, he could have sworn he felt the walls closing in.
“Yes. What are your intentions in regards to our relationship?”
“Relationship.”
A line of annoyance formed between her brows. “If you keep parroting back what I’ve just told you, I’m going to feed you a cracker.”
“We…we do not have a relationship, Miss Thorncroft. You are…you are my guest. And, I suppose, in a distant sort of way, we may even consider ourselves family. Of a sort. Fifth cousins, thrice removed.” He shoved his hands into the pockets sewn onto the rear of his breeches. “My lapses in judgment notwithstanding, that is where we stand.”
Entranced by the Earl Page 13
