“It’s not mad to want to marry you.”
“Yes, it is. For pity’s sake, why would you even think of such a thing?”
He frowned. “Because I love you. And I want to treat you with honor. And I’m bloody sick of sneaking around, as if I’m committing some crime by wanting you.”
She jerked free and retreated to the far wall. If she could go even further away, he knew she would. As far as Tahiti, if she could. “We’re having an affair.”
“It’s not enough.”
“It has to be.”
Feeling absurd on his knees, Eliot struggled to his feet. His grand romantic gesture had fallen flat. He hadn’t expected Verena to agree to marry him. Not at first. But he hadn’t expected this level of resistance.
He told himself that her reaction shouldn’t sting. After all, however uninhibited she was with her body, she’d always guarded her emotions behind high stone walls. “I’ve never been so happy in my life as I’ve been since we came together. Haven’t you been happy with me?”
She still had that strange, numb look on her face. Then he watched her gather herself together and straighten. Her delicate jaw set with the stubbornness he recognized. When her voice emerged, it was cold and mocking. “You’ve been…amusing.”
She’d sounded like that when they first met. She still sounded like that, when some gentleman overreached the bounds of good manners. As they occasionally did when they’d heard too much gossip about her promiscuity, without taking into consideration how selective she was when she took a lover.
Eliot hid a wince. Never had he imagined that she’d greet his declaration of love with that cutting tone. “Is that all?”
“That’s all I ask of a lover.” She twined her hands in front of her. Then, as though afraid of betraying her inner turmoil, she let her hands drop to her sides.
He squared his shoulders. He wasn’t sorry that he’d told her of his love. He wasn’t sorry that he’d asked her to marry him. But by God, he was sorry that he’d upset her. Standing there in all her finery, she looked brittle enough to shatter into a thousand tiny pieces.
During these last months, he’d been living a lie, and he wasn’t a man who thrived on deceit. That endless month in the country had given him time to think about what he wanted from life. In essence that boiled down to one thing.
Verena.
Who, it seemed, didn’t want him. At least in the until death do them part sense.
“This is all my fault.” She licked her lips again and went on in that crystalline voice he hated. “I owe you an apology.”
Every instinct warned Eliot that he wouldn’t like what was coming. “Oh?”
He wasn’t fool enough to hope that she meant to relent. Her exquisite features could be carved from ice. That wasn’t the face of a woman about to give her suitor a joyful acceptance.
“I’ve had it in mind for a while that our liaison has run its course. I should have spoken up weeks ago.”
The room went dark. Eliot felt like he staggered, although when he came back to himself, he remained standing in front of her.
“You want to finish with me?” The quaking agony in his voice made him cringe.
“Yes,” she said, as if she spoke to a stranger. “If I’d mentioned my intentions earlier, it might have saved us both this current embarrassment.”
Eliot took a grip on his rising anger, although he had less success controlling the great rivers of pain rolling through him and threatening to drown him. “But we still want each other.”
He waited for her to deny that, while he wondered how he’d been so utterly wrong about her feelings. The last time they were together, she’d been like fire in his arms. Every time they were together, she met him with a desire that matched his own. The mighty passion they shared was the stuff that shook empires.
Or so he’d believed.
Verena shrugged, as if what she said didn’t slice a great jagged rift across his heart. “You’re an excellent lover. However that is no longer the issue. I’ve enjoyed our association, but it’s over. We’ve been together more than half a year. There’s nothing new to discover.”
His eyes narrowed on her. Now that his immediate shock receded, something about her callous response didn’t ring true. “I haven’t noticed any signs of boredom. Not a single yawn, in fact.”
She looked startled, as though she hadn’t expected him to come back fighting. “Don’t make this any more difficult than it needs to be.”
Eliot was still hurt, he was still furious. But his excellent mind had started to work again, and there was more going on here, other than a lady casting off a disagreeable swain. He suddenly recalled that her immediate reaction to his proposal, before she had a chance to mask her feelings, hadn’t been distaste. It had been fear. “Perhaps I need to make this so difficult that you’ll change your mind.”
She shook her head. “You have too much pride to become a pest.”
His short laugh conveyed no genuine amusement. “You mistake me, my lady. Where you’re concerned, I have no pride at all.”
He caught another flash of emotion in her extraordinary blue eyes. More fear? Why the hell would she be frightened? They’d been intimate for six months. She must know that he’d never hit a woman.
But George Gerard had.
“I’m sorry to hear that.” Her voice lost its frozen edge, lowered to persuasion. “Think, Eliot! You’ve tried like the devil to avoid scandal. And while you say that you don’t care about your family, I know you do. If we shake hands and part now, nobody need ever know that angelic Viscount Colville strayed over into an imprudent flirtation with that hussy Verena Gerard. You can go on to a great political career, Imogen can enjoy a brilliant season, and I can select my next lover without having to check behind me to see if you’re making a nuisance of yourself. Surely that’s a better outcome than you kicking up a fuss to no purpose.”
Only one part of that vile little recital stuck in his mind. “Your next lover?”
She waved to indicate that he quibbled about trivialities. “Why not my next lover? Did you imagine you’d spoiled me for any other man? You’re good, my lord. But you’re not that good.”
Eliot sucked in a ragged breath. His temper had subsided. He was still in pain, but he’d survive. He even felt a faint twinge of hope that he prayed wasn’t just wishful thinking. Because Verena was trying too hard to make him march out in a huff. "You’ve spoiled me for any other woman.”
For a moment, the careless, disdainful façade cracked. He caught a glimpse of a devastation to match his own. Then she gathered her composure about her and returned to acting like a stern goddess spurning an unworthy acolyte.
But it was too late. He’d seen enough to know that while his plan to claim her as his might be ambitious, it wasn’t impossible. She cared about him. More than she wanted to.
Not that he underestimated Verena’s powerful will, or how she set that will against him.
Her expression turned cynical. “You’ll get over it.”
He found it in him to smile at her as if she was the sun in his sky. Why not? She was. “Never.”
Her lush lips flattened. “Then you have untold misery to look forward to.”
Eliot frowned. “Only a few minutes ago, you offered to give me a couple of extra afternoons a week. That doesn’t sit well with a request never to darken your door again.”
A hunted expression crossed Verena’s face. Any doubts that she wanted him to throw a tantrum and flounce out faded. “I felt sorry for you.”
This time, his laugh held a note of genuine humor. “Did you indeed?”
She looked startled and tried to retreat further, but she was already on the edge of the room. “Yes.”
He arched mocking eyebrows. “So that’s why you offered to spend more time with me, just before you sent me on my way forever?”
“Yes.”
He folded his arms over his chest to stop himself from grabbing her and kissing her until she saw reason
. Right now, she was in no mood to capitulate. “That makes no sense.”
“It doesn’t matter if it does or not.” When she at last stepped forward, he wasn’t surprised. Retreat wasn’t Verena’s style. It was one of the many things that he admired about her. “I owe you nothing. You don’t own me. I choose who shares my bed, and from now on, I choose to deny you a place there.”
“You have the right to do that.”
He’d caught her off guard again. The frosty mask slipped once more, as she regarded him uncertainly. “Then you accept that the affair is over?”
“I accept that the way things have been is no longer how they should continue.”
Verena frowned. She was smart enough to know that he might sound like he was cooperating, but there was a catch. “I’m glad. For a moment there, I was worried you meant to behave like a fool.”
“I’m no fool, Verena,” he responded with a rasp. “So don’t play me for one.”
“I hope we can part without bitterness.” When he didn’t reply, she ventured closer. “Now, let me go back to the ballroom.”
“Where we act like strangers?”
She stared hard at him. For the first time, he couldn’t pretend that she didn’t mean what she said when she tried to end the affair. She was frightened enough to run away from something that promised to be extraordinary. It proved how his proposal had panicked her. “I have a strong suspicion that all round, it would be better if we’d stayed strangers from the beginning, Eliot.”
He’d never believe that, no matter what agony he suffered now. Until he met Verena, he’d only been half alive. The ghastly prospect of going back to that colorless existence steeled his purpose. “Will you kiss me goodbye?”
Another flash of fear, although this time she held her ground. “No.”
“That’s not very generous.”
She responded with irritated bewilderment. “I have a dreadful feeling that you’re not taking me seriously.”
He shrugged. “Our affair is over. I understand.”
Puzzled eyes focused on him. But he hadn’t spent his adult life in politics without learning to hide his thoughts from an opponent. Right now, this woman he loved more than his life had become his opponent.
“Then let me go.”
Never.
With exaggerated politeness, he stepped aside from the door. “You’re free, Verena.”
She didn’t move to leave straightaway, which at least confirmed one of his hunches. The dread that she tried so hard to hide didn’t stem from fear of violence. She knew that he’d never hurt her. At least physically. Emotionally was another story.
Did his love threaten her emotional independence? Was that why she sent him away? Or was that just more wishful thinking?
“I am. And I intend to stay that way.” Her voice was hard, but at least she sounded like herself again and not some horrid puppet.
He bowed his head in acknowledgement. “I have no intention of curtailing your freedom.”
“Of course you don’t.” Her smile conveyed sour agreement. “You just want to marry me.”
Eliot sent her a direct look. She was so strong, yet so fragile. Her strength was like fine Venetian glass. One careless touch, and she’d fracture into jagged shards. If she truly meant to give him his marching orders, it hadn’t made her happy. She looked as if she’d snap into pieces if he spoke one harsh word.
Verena would hate that vulnerability. She accused him of being proud, but he wasn’t, not really. She however had only survived because of her pride. He tried to imagine how her late husband’s contemptuous treatment had wounded that pride.
Eliot already knew that he was paying the price for another man’s sins. That bastard George Gerard might be cold in his grave, but the harm he’d done lived on. Would it live on forever?
Eliot’s voice was low and sincere, as he studied this woman he adored. He hoped that she heard him. He hoped that she hadn’t moved so far away that he could no longer reach her. All he could do was trust in the intimacy that they’d established through half a year of breathtaking pleasure.
“You can be free when you’re with another person, Verena, if it’s the right person. You can be a prisoner all on your own, if an unhappy past holds you in its grip. My love doesn’t include a need to cage you or contain you. I love your wildness. I love your spirit. I want a woman who will challenge me and enchant me and meet me as an equal. I believe that woman is you.”
She went even paler, but to his regret, showed no sign of softening. “Then you’re mistaken,” she said in a steady voice.
“I don’t accept that.”
“You will.”
She swept forward, passing so close that he caught a trace of sensual jasmine perfume. The idea that he’d never hold her close again and breathe in that heady fragrance made him shut his eyes in anguish.
He heard the click of the door. When he opened his eyes, Verena was gone.
***
Verena’s legs were shaking, as she made her way along the corridor toward the crowded ballroom. A quadrille was in progress, and the cheerful music jangled against her screaming nerves. What she’d like more than anything was to order her carriage and go home. Then indulge in a good, long cry.
But something in her knew that if she did, it would mean Eliot scored a point against her. She couldn’t bear that, even if she felt like she’d just come through a brutal battle. A battle that she suspected she’d emerged from as the battered loser. Despite the fact that she’d finally broken with Eliot, and she was the one who had walked away and left him standing bereft.
She, on the other hand, had regained her independence. Now she was ready to start looking for her new lover. Most of the time, this was something she enjoyed. Before she made her choice and took a man to her bed, she felt such delicious anticipation. Even if the lover didn’t live up to expectations in the end, there was a thrill in imagining that he might.
To hell with Eliot Ridley. Before their affair, she’d lived a life of endless excitement, packed with novelty and adventure and the pleasing knowledge that every time a man thrust inside her, she sent a silent taunt to her dead husband.
How right she’d been to fear the harm her time with Eliot might do to that headstrong, unruly creature. She’d stayed too long with him, allowed herself to grow comfortable. Despite the breathless passion of their sexual encounters, there had been an ease between them that held almost a hint of the domestic. When domesticity was something that sparkling, wayward Verena Gerard would never again countenance.
Plague take him, Eliot had made her dull and contented and biddable, like a well-fed cow in a rich green field. She’d allowed herself to sink into an unthinking happiness that threatened everything she’d made of herself during these last hectic years. She’d sworn that no man would ever fence her in again. Yet with Eliot, she’d all but put her head into the halter and invited him to lead her into the barn.
A chill rippled through her as she recalled the last time a male had claimed any authority over her. And he’d done it with the sanction of church and society, because he bore the title of husband. Since George’s death, an occasional lover had dared to make demands. The affair had ended there and then. Verena Gerard was her own woman and took direction from no man, by God.
Not that Eliot had ever given her orders. He was too subtle for that, the weasel.
No, he’d let her come to him and offer her allegiance. Now the fool imagined that she’d make him a fine wife. If she wasn’t so upset, she’d almost laugh at the picture of notorious Verena Gerard as a political hostess. The world would certainly laugh.
She was glad that their affair was over and she’d never lie in his arms again. She was so glad, she was bloody ecstatic.
When a choked sob rose in her throat, she forced it back. She clenched her hands into fists in her dark purple skirts, as she fought the urge to dissolve into a storm of tears. Here, where any betrayal of emotion would have the ton’s gossips agog to witness th
at Lady Verena was just as vulnerable as any other weak woman.
No man would make her cry in public. That was too pathetic, and she’d never be pathetic again.
How dare Eliot propose? As if she had any intention of dwindling into a mere wife. She was spectacular Verena Gerard, who had London at her feet. Or at least the part of London that wasn’t prissy and proper and shocked that a woman should enjoy the same freedoms as a man.
How dare Eliot—
“Verena?”
The sound of her name had her blinking away tears and plastering a smile to her face. When she was married to George, she’d learned to smile through disaster. That carefree, superior smile had defended her against all the curiosity and spite.
Nobody could pity her or laugh at her or despise her when they saw that she took life as a great joke. That smile had carried her through her unbearable marriage and had helped her to become the glittering queen of a sensual realm. That smile expressed every ounce of dominion that she’d wrung from a life where she’d once been hurt and frightened and alone and helpless.
Damn it, she hadn’t felt helpless since George died. Until tonight, when Eliot had told her that he loved her.
“Are you all right? You’re looking rather on edge.” The baritone voice addressing her from the doorway to the ballroom was smooth and deep. Best of all, it didn’t belong to Eliot Ridley.
She guessed her former paramour remained in that small room, coming to terms with her rejection. What a price he’d pay, if she’d been mutton-headed enough to say yes. He’d lose everything that he’d worked for. In return for what? A woman derided as a trollop. A woman who had already proven a miserable failure at married life.
Eliot didn’t love her, not really. How could he? That heartfelt declaration was just more lunacy.
“Not at all.” She kept her smile in place as she strolled toward Shelburn. “I just needed a little air.”
She tried to sound like her insouciant self. Shelburn’s frown told her that she might be failing at that. “It’s our dance. Or would you rather sit this one out?”
She had a reputation for glittering at social events. By all that was holy, she’d glitter at this one. Or she might as well give up and admit that George was right when he’d called her a tedious little creature, of interest to nobody who possessed a scrap of discernment.
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