“It’s beautiful out here, and so crowded inside. I wonder why no one wants a table outside,” she commented after the host seated them and lit the candle on their table before quickly hurrying away.
Thomas shrugged. “All the more moonlight for us.”
She squinted at him across the table. First flowers, then multiplying roses, now an al fresco dinner in a trendy restaurant?
“You paid them to give us the deck to ourselves,” she accused.
He blinked complacently at her across the linen-covered table and reached out a hand to cover hers. “Does that upset you?”
“No,” she answered truthfully, “it is sort of nice to have you to myself…since you’re leaving so soon. And then there’s—” she shrugged “—never mind.”
He enclosed her trembling fingers in his. “Tell me what you’re thinking,” he whispered.
She was tearing up again. “I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Damn it, Thomas, don’t you know?” She loved him, and he was leaving her. Again. And she knew she’d never care about another man the way she cared for him. Not ever.
“Would it help if I went first?”
She looked at him, taken by surprise. “I thought you’d already made your feelings about me…about us, very clear.”
“As clear as I could at the time…but not clear enough. Not for you or for myself.”
“I see.” But she didn’t, not really. “Go on,” she murmured.
He looked out across the waves gently lapping at the pillars of a nearby wharf, streaked in shafts of moonlight. His face tightened with effort for a moment, then smoothed as he found the words he needed. His thumb absently stroked the curve of her palm.
“I believed I knew myself so well I could predetermine my whole life. I would someday be the Earl of Sussex, exchanging my minor title for a more-important one when my father died. I would continue investing my inheritance to ensure I would be able to lead a life of leisure when I chose to do so. I would remain in Jacob’s employ as long as he tolerated me.” He smiled at this, and she was sure it was because he knew Jacob’s loyalty to him equaled his own to Jacob. “And I would never marry,” he finished solemnly.
Her heart fluttered, though she couldn’t have said why. “Are you saying some part of your master plan was wrong?”
“Very definitely it was wrong.”
“Are you leaving the king?” she asked.
“No,” he said. “I’m getting married.”
The sorrow in her heart was paralyzing. So that was why he’d come. To settle his paternal obligations so that he could, in good conscience, take another woman as his wife. She shattered inside. She might have been a delicate crystal vase, crushed in his huge hand. She pulled her fingertips out from beneath his and clutched her hands in her lap and couldn’t stop the tears now, no matter how hard she tried.
“Diane, don’t.”
She squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head violently. She couldn’t speak, couldn’t make herself get up out of the chair and walk back through the crowded dining room, which was the only way out of the restaurant. But she couldn’t stay here, much less eat a meal.
Why couldn’t she be as casual and civilized about their parting as he was being? Why did it matter so much—being with one man? She despised herself for being weak, yet the tears kept coming.
Diane became aware that he was kneeling beside her, and a second later his arms came around her and he was hugging her to his chest and whispering something to her she couldn’t hear above her own anguished sobs.
She couldn’t bear to listen to his parting words. She would explode if she didn’t escape within seconds! Yet somehow his voice sank through the layers of desperate grief.
“Open your eyes…open your eyes…open your eyes,” he was repeating in his wonderfully gruff baritone. “Diane, trust me…this once.”
She shook her head miserably but let her eyelids drift up, and he dropped something into her lap. Through a blur of tears she saw the black velvet box. It took nearly a full minute before its meaning registered. Even then, she didn’t dare believe.
Was he toying with her? Offering once more to give her something he knew he had no right to promise? Or maybe this was just a parting gift, something to soften the blow….
She squeezed her eyes shut once more, then opened them all the way. “A man engaged to one woman shouldn’t be giving another woman expensive presents.”
“I’m not,” he said firmly.
“I won’t open that,” she told him.
“Why?”
“If it’s a ring, it will break my heart.” As if it wasn’t already lying in shards at her feet.
“I don’t understand.”
“Because you can’t stand behind it. It doesn’t mean what it should.”
“Ask me what it means,” he said, his tone a challenge.
Diane shook her head. She wasn’t that brave.
“Ask me,” he said in a low, insistent growl and kissed the near corner of her lips still wet with her tears.
She drew a deep breath and let it out with a sense that fate had taken over the scene. How could she fight him when she felt so helpless? “All right. What does whatever’s in that jeweler’s box mean to you?”
He slid his arms down around her so that he could manipulate the hinged cover. A flash of diamonds and rubies took her breath away. If this was a parting gift, it had at least cost him a sizable chunk of his estate. She couldn’t speak. She couldn’t even breathe.
“I love you, Diane. There was no woman on this earth I’ve ever wanted to spend my life with…before you. There will never be another. If you say no, I will spend the rest of my days a lonely, bitter man.”
It took her several minutes of replaying his words through her mind to absorb them. Then tears started afresh.
“How…why…how can you say this now? It wasn’t true a month ago.”
“It was true, I just didn’t understand. I needed to sort some things out for myself. It took losing you to make me see what had been standing in front of me all of this time. I loved you from the moment Allison introduced us. You were married, with three young children—forbidden territory. I still wanted you. But I couldn’t have you.”
“But later…when you knew I was divorced…”
“Sometimes it takes a man a long time to rearrange the rules he’s lived his whole life by.” He drew her close and kissed her on the mouth, then pressed her cheek to his shoulder, and she could smell the spicy scent of him above the salt of the ocean. “I’m sorry it took me so long to come around. But please don’t turn me down because I was a fool then. I know who I am and what I want now. We need to be together. Forever.”
She was stunned and shaking too hard to trust her feelings. He pushed her gently back to look into her eyes. “I love you, Diane. Does it come too late? Have you stopped loving me?”
“I never said I did,” she said.
The light in his dark eyes faded. “I see.”
“But I do,” she said quickly. “I do love you, Thomas…with all my heart. I just wish I hadn’t been so transparent.”
He grinned, looking relieved. “You’ve never been that, only honest. Another reason why I love you.” His hands were moving now with purpose, holding the little box with one hand, slipping the ring out with the other. She watched as he slid it down over the fourth finger of her left hand. A diamond solitaire picked up color from the encircling rubies, sparkling with pale pink highlights. She’d never owned even one small diamond. She felt as if she had an entire jewelry store on her finger.
“Can you afford this?” she asked breathlessly.
He grinned and nodded. “If you don’t like it. We’ll get something else. With your dark hair…I thought the rubies…” Emotion choked off the rest. “You haven’t said yes yet.” His dark eyes waited, pleaded, hoped.
“Yes,” she whispered. “Yes, I’ll marry you, Thomas Smythe.” And she threw her arms around his big neck a
nd wept for joy and disbelief that her wildest fantasies had been exceeded ten times over.
Their wedding was, strangely enough, grander than Allison’s had been to Jacob, for that had been carried out in secret in a Manhattan lawyer’s office to avoid the press. Jacob insisted that Diane and Thomas gather up her children and fly to Europe to be married in the chapel at the castle. Her parents joined them there, along with close to 100 other guests, although Diane would have been happy with just a simple family wedding back in Nanticoke. Still, she was gratified to see that Thomas welcomed an audience for their nuptials. It was as if he wanted to prove to her that he no longer feared the vows he’d so long dodged. His “I do” boomed through the nave of the ancient church. When he took her in his arms, at the moment the priest announced them as husband and wife, he kissed her so long and hard she hardly had enough breath left to make it down the aisle and into the garden.
It seemed amazingly easy to believe that they would be together from that day forward. Diane accepted a position with the royal charities, which would be challenging but allow her ample time to have her baby and be with her older children. Thomas offered to live anywhere she liked, buying them a house roomy enough for a family of six. But Diane was of a practical mind.
“To do our jobs, we need to live in Elbia, at least for most of the year. You’ll still be with Jacob, right?”
“I would like to continue on his staff, although we’ve already spoken of ways to cut my hours to give me time for my family.” He said the words my family with glowing pride that echoed that of fathers throughout time. He had accepted her own children with such open joy she had no doubt he would always do what was best for them.
It was decided the Smythes would have a private apartment in the west wing of the castle, including Thomas’s old chambers and several additional rooms for the children. A small kitchen and extra bathrooms would be added for their convenience.
As for Gary, her ex, he wrote to Diane one more time, asking for start-up money for his business. Thomas responded with a check in exchange for Gary’s promise in writing, that he would stay out of their lives forever.
A few months later Thomas found Diane sitting in the garden, a rose lying across her lap. It was the color of those he’d added to her bouquet when he’d courted her, and he knew she was thinking of those days.
“Any regrets?” he asked.
She looked up at him as if she’d known he was there, but was surprised by his question. “No. Why do you ask?”
“You seem happy. I just wanted to be sure.”
“I’m in heaven,” she murmured, pulling him down to kiss him energetically on the lips.
He sat down beside her on the stone bench and picked up the rose, not even feeling the thorns through the thick pads of his fingers. His glance took in the fullness of her belly, and he felt warm and protective.
“You’re feeling well, aren’t you?”
She smiled up at him. “Perfect.”
“You aren’t homesick for Connecticut?”
She shook her head. “I’ll look forward to a few weeks’ vacation there, once in a while. But no, I don’t miss it. It seems more important that we’re together…wherever that may be.”
He nodded. Yes, that was how he felt, too. He could make a home anywhere with this woman. Geography had little to do with love, when it finally came.
“There is one thing I’d like,” Diane said tentatively, bringing his attention back to her.
He tightened at the subtle longing in her voice. What had he forgotten to do for her?
“Tell me,” he said, already determined to please.
“Stop treating me as if I’ll break when we make love.”
He laughed. “But the baby…!”
She smiled sweetly at him. “You won’t hurt me…or the baby.”
“You’re certain?”
She pulled his arm around her and pressed herself against him. Her full breasts warmed his chest; her beautifully expressive mouth settled urgently over his. She slipped her hands beneath his shirt and caressed him. His body responded with a rapid burst of heat.
“Even when I’m bigger than the royal stables,” she said, her eyes twinkling mischievously, “I think we can come up with ways to please each other.”
He chuckled low in his throat. “Oh, you do, do you?”
“Perhaps we should experiment now?” she suggested. “Just to be sure.”
“Perhaps we should, Lady Smythe.”
He brought her to her feet and kissed her a dozen times before they reached their chamber. And as they made love that winter afternoon, he knew that no one and nothing would ever take this joy, this woman from his arms.
ISBN: 978-1-4592-1338-8
THE EARL TAKES A BRIDE
Copyright © 2000 by Kathryn Pearce
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the editorial office, Silhouette Books, 300 East 42nd Street, New York, NY 10017 U.S.A.
All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.
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The Earl Takes A Bride (Elbia Series Book 2) Page 15
