Along Came a Lady

by Christi Caldwell

  Until Rafe had helped her appreciate that there were and could be kind people in the country.

  And strangely, seated in the serene gardens of the duke’s Mayfair townhouse, she could almost believe she was back in the Staffordshire countryside.

  Her knees drawn to her chest, and her arms folded around them, she stared at the placid lake that had been built into these grounds, transformed as if by magic from a London landscape into a bucolic sanctuary. It was a feat only a king of a man might manage, and as a duke whose connection to that title went back to William the Conqueror, he was very nearly of that most elevated of ranks.

  And Rafe would now belong to that world, too. Nay, not would. He did belong to that world. It was what she wanted for him, too. At first, he’d only been a client . . . a means to an end. A way to achieve a success she’d fought desperately to know, teaching young ladies of the ton.

  His meeting with the duke was likely concluded, and as she’d sat there, she’d sat with her worry, too. Wanting him to not only succeed in fully immersing himself in this world, but to be happy as well.

  Along the way, however, so much had shifted and changed. He’d ceased being just another student. And instead, he’d gone from adversary to . . . friend.

  Really, the first she’d ever known.

  He had teased her, and had made her look at the smallish way in which she’d viewed country living, and demanded that she shift her thinking and immerse herself in a different world. And when she’d agreed to those terms, she’d expected him to be cold and mocking about it. She’d not anticipated that he’d sip ale beside her, confiding in her.

  Letting her into his world.

  And I want to be there . . .

  Her body went numb, the air she breathed sticking in her chest, trapped, painfully caught there.

  She didn’t mean that. Not in the way it sounded.

  She liked him. She enjoyed being with him. But it was still strictly and solely about their partnership, as fostered by the duke.

  That was all it was.

  Yes, they might be friendly toward one another. Even friends.

  So why, with these assurances she gave herself, did she still fight to breathe evenly?

  And then, as if she’d conjured him, he was there, a reflection in the water before her.

  Edwina puzzled her brow. What . . . ?

  “The princess at her moat,” he drawled.

  “Rafe,” she gasped, jumping up, her heart racing as it always did when he was near. “How was your meeting?”

  “Informative,” he said in terse, sharp tones.

  And then . . . she looked at him.

  Really looked at him.

  Oh, dear.

  This was Rafe Audley as she’d first seen him.

  Her stomach fell. “Your meeting did not go well.”

  “It went as I’d expected.”

  “You are upset,” she said, when he offered nothing more. “With the duke.” Oh, blast, and here she’d so desperately hoped that father and son would—

  “Not the duke.”

  She paused. Not the duke? Oh, well, that was promising. Except . . . “The duchess, then.” Now, that was even more unexpected.

  “Try again, Edwina.” He glared blackly at her, a piercing glint in those dark blue eyes that stabbed right through her.

  Not the duke. Not the duchess.

  Oh, dear.

  Edwina touched a hesitant hand to her breast. “Me?” she ventured.

  He clapped his hands in a slow, rhythmic beat, four times, giving sarcasm sound. “You.”

  She frowned. “Well, I cannot see what I have done—”

  “You are the reason I’m without work.”

  “Oh,” she said weakly. “That.”

  It had . . . been likely and inevitable that the matter of his role at the coalfields would have been discussed in some way with the duke. She had just thought there might be more time, and that when he did, he’d . . . What? Be so thrilled at being here, he’d overlook your interference?

  Edwina forced a smile. “I prefer to think of it as I am the reason you are here in London.”

  He remained a stoic block of unmoving granite, his lips firm and hard.

  Her heart fell.

  He was taking this a good deal . . . worse than she’d hoped.

  But should it really come as a surprise? Edwina sighed. She attempted a different approach. “I thought you had already agreed it was beneficial for Hunter to have the opportunity he now has. You saw—”

  Rafe slammed a fist into his hand. “Goddamn it, Edwina. There is a difference between seeing the benefits and being denied a choice. And yet that is what you did to me.” Had he bellowed his rage, it would have been preferable and easier and less painful than this quiet response, laced with a tangible disdain. He gave his head a disgusted shake, driving home those sentiments. “And what is worse, you lied.”

  Edwina immediately pounced. “Mm. Mm. No. I did not lie.”

  He stuck his face close to hers. “A lie by omission is still a lie.”

  She lifted her chin, holding his stare. “You were the one who assumed it was the duke because you didn’t believe that I, a woman, was capable of achieving your cooperation.” Edwina threw her arms up. “You were the one who declared war,” she cried. “You said that. You set the terms, and now of a sudden, you should be so shocked and offended that I achieved what I never hid as my ends?” Why did that argument, though accurate and factual, sound hollow to her own ears?

  His chest moved hard from that emotion within him; his eyes blazed fire.

  Because of me . . .

  Rafe hated her, and that realization left her bereft.

  She tried again to make him see reason. “I told you all along that I . . .” needed “. . . intended to secure your cooperation. I never lied to you about . . . that.”

  Rafe peeled his lip back in a sneer. “Yes, because all you care about is your business and working for some fine, fancy lord.”

  That proof of how little he thought of her struck like an arrow to the breast. “That is not what it is about.” Not really. Not in the way he thought.

  Except he didn’t hear her.

  He took her lightly by the shoulders. “You don’t just get to go manipulating people’s lives because you somehow think you know things you don’t.”

  “I was trying to help and—”

  A sound of disgust spilled from his lips, drowning out the rest of her words, and he released her quickly. “You decided it was for the best. You did. Well, you got what you wanted, and I got what you think I should want.”

  Was this really what she’d wanted, however?

  And when he put it that way . . . she understood his outrage . . . that seething, burning emotion he had directed at her.

  Unable to meet the anger in his eyes, Edwina glanced down at the lush grass under their feet, studying it a moment. “I did not think of it this way,” she conceded. She forced her gaze up from the coward’s path it had traveled, and of their volition, her fingers found a place on his sleeve. “I only sought to help.” Me. I was attempting to help myself, and just as he’d said, she’d done so without a thought of what he had been saying to her from the start.

  But if you tell him . . . if you let him know you understand on a level he doesn’t think you do—

  That idea proved short-lived.

  Rafe shrugged off her touch, and that rejection sent coldness sweeping over her. “No,” he said tiredly. “You wouldn’t think of that, would you? Because it would have required you to think of someone’s wishes and desires above your own.”

  She bit the inside of her cheek hard, and it hurt less than the accusations he now leveled at her. Coward that she was, Edwina moved, her legs carrying her away from him and this moment.

  But he wasn�
��t done with her.

  He slid into her path, barring Edwina’s retreat. “You created conflict between my brother and me,” he whispered, hurt as she had never heard him. “My brother whom I’ve never before fought with—”

  “But you said it was for the best,” she cried. “You said—”

  “You don’t understand anything.”

  She turned her palms up beseechingly. “Then help me to.”

  * * *

  • • •

  Then help me to.

  In that moment, in Edwina’s shocked indignation and confusion, he alternated between the urge to shake her until she saw reason, and a hungering to kiss her.

  And he hated himself for wanting her still. For caring as much as he did about this betrayal.

  For betrayal was what it felt like.

  Except, as she’d bluntly, if accurately pointed out—her determination had never been a surprise.

  She had expressly stated her intentions from the start.

  And it felt petty and bitter to resent her for things he’d already known.

  Because you allowed yourself to forget who she was and whom she worked for, while all the while she’d never forgotten that . . . and her efforts were for him.

  Not again. He’d not make that same error of mistaking her for anything or anyone more than she was.

  “Do you enjoy what you do?” he asked, and her brow dipped.

  “I . . .” She tipped her head, and that gesture sent the plait flopping over her shoulder.

  “Grooming young women to be presented to Polite Society,” he clarified when she still failed to respond.

  And as her reply remained stalled . . . it occurred to him: she hadn’t considered the question. There was no immediate assertion about the pleasure she found in her role, and the type of work she did. “You don’t know,” he said, with that dawning understanding.

  Edwina bristled. “Of course I do,” she said.

  “You’ve never considered it, then. Either way . . . it is fairly simple: either you do”—he lifted one palm up—“or you don’t.” Rafe turned the other so his arms formed a scale of sorts.

  A sound of frustration escaped her. “But that is it, with you. Everything exists in absolutes. I am either a terrible person or a friend. My work is either something I enjoy or don’t. But that is not how life or decisions or anything really is, Rafe.”

  “Of course it is.”

  “Once again, because to you, it is a ‘yes or no’ or a ‘black or white’ world.” She turned a question on him. “Why did you choose to be a coalfield worker?”

  He folded his arms. “Because I live in a mining field—”

  “And if you didn’t,” she interrupted. “If you were in London, what might you have done? What work might you have pursued? A stable-master. A steward. Yes, you slid into the role of foreman to a coalfield because of where you live, but even if you had been somewhere else? There would have been a different opportunity. For you.” Her voice grew impassioned as she spoke. “I never had those same luxuries of choice that you did, Rafe. Nor do most women. We are either wives or whores or servants if we can find the work. And so do I like what I do? No, I hadn’t really considered the question, because it is what enables me to survive without selling myself as”—she blanched, and he sharpened his eyes on her white-washed face—“as . . . so many other women are forced to do,” she ultimately finished, leaving the echo of her charged words dancing on the air between them.

  He’d stormed out here, anticipating the very debate, nay, fight they’d found themselves in. But he’d not expected . . . this. To be thrown off-balance by the truisms she’d leveled at him.

  He’d not expected to be . . . humbled.

  Humbled in that he’d not considered . . . what it must be like for her, a woman surviving without the benefit of a brother or a husband or a father to rely upon. He clenched and unclenched his fists, balling them at his sides. This is what she wanted. To weaken you, and make you feel guilty when she, with her deception, is the one entirely in the wrong.

  He took a step closer, and she eyed him warily.

  “You’ve won, is that what you think?” he whispered against her ear, rosewater filling his senses, like a weapon she wielded to distract.

  She didn’t back away. She didn’t retreat, and as he lowered his head, that cautiousness in her gaze gave way to desire, and he reveled in the truth that she was as hopeless as him in this desire they had for one another.

  Rafe ran a finger along the curve of her jaw, and Edwina briefly closed her eyes; his touch seemed to prompt words. “I . . . have not thought of it in those terms for some time now, Rafe,” she said softly, breathlessly, owning his name once more on her lips, as he’d requested a short while ago, and as he still foolishly craved to hear. “I-it is not about w-winning.”

  “No?” He cupped her nape, and she melted against him. But he froze, with his lips a hairsbreadth from hers, lingering there until her thick lashes drifted up, revealing the depths of her desire and confusion. “How did you think of them?”

  “As both of us getting something we need.” Edwina rested her palms against his chest, her long fingers curling in the fabric of his jacket. “We can help one another.”

  Another wave of passion assailed his senses and logic, as he tunneled in on only her words, and the double meaning there behind them.

  “I don’t need anything from you or anything you might bring,” he taunted her, his voice coming out gravelly in the quiet around them. He moved his lips near the shell of her ear, whispering harshly, “I do, however, against all reason and good judgment, want you.”

  Edwina’s breath caught on an intake, and he lowered his mouth to claim the sounds of her desire, even as she cupped his nape, leaning into him and their embrace, and kissed him with the same violent intensity with which he mated his mouth to hers.

  “Let me in,” he demanded against her mouth, leaving her to that decision, all the while knowing she was as hot for him as he for her.

  She parted her lips, allowing him entry.

  Rafe swept his tongue inside, and they made angry love with their mouths. All the while, he ran his hands over her, capturing the curves of her hips that continued to captivate him, and holding her close. He pressed his hard shaft against her soft, flat stomach.

  Edwina moaned but one single syllable, his name, infused with so much passion that his manhood pulsed; he ached to lay her down, and at last claim her. Nay, there’d be no claiming a woman such as Edwina Dalrymple; she’d lay possession of him.

  It was why, with each lash of her tongue against his, an embrace he’d intended as punishing, left him lost in an eddy of desire controlled in every way by this woman, while Rafe sank further and deeper into her snare. Lost.

  With every moment, and every minute with her, and in her arms, he found himself lost in every way with her.

  Wanting her.

  In ways that were more dangerous than mere desire.

  Rafe broke free of her hold, dragging his mouth from hers. “You thought . . . wrong. We cannot help one another, because there is nothing I want nor need your help with,” he whispered harshly against her ear. He released her, and Edwina immediately sagged.

  And with her noisy respirations echoing in his ears, he left.

  Chapter 19

  Since the volatile exchange between her and Rafe in the gardens, they had met daily, with her overseeing his and Cailin’s lessons.

  She’d been certain he would come ’round to the friendly way he’d been with her.

  She had been so very convinced that she could get them back to the place they’d found themselves, as almost-friends.

  A week later, she realized how wrong she’d been.

  And though she and Cailin had maintained a warmth and friendship between them, when it came to Edwina and Rafe, well, the role of
student and instructor was clear: and there’d never been a colder, more stubborn student than he. Oh, he met for their respective meetings during the agreed-upon time slots . . . but that was the extent of cooperation from Rafe Audley.

  With a sigh, she collected her charcoal pencil, notebooks, the folio the duke had given her containing her schedule and the scheduled events, and made her way to the dining room for Rafe and Cailin’s latest lesson.

  This should be the easiest of all her other assignments. This one, where she even had the details spelled out and planned for her by the duke. Every moment of her time with Rafe was crafted into a meticulous schedule that didn’t require her to think beyond anything but preparing Rafe for his entry into Polite Society.

  Only to find . . . it wasn’t so very easy.

  It didn’t feel easy, at all.

  Because he hated her. Even though he’d kissed her with all the passion he had during their first kiss, his resentment and disdain for her . . . of her, was so much worse.

  And it hurt so much worse, too.

  Edwina reached the dining room.

  Two bewigged footmen in navy blue and gold uniforms flanked each side of the elaborately carved doorway; yet again, those less-than-subtle reminders of wealth all around. Along with the reminder that for all the work she had done preparing ladies for their time in Town, she’d not ever worked for or with families of the immense wealth and power possessed by the Duke of Bentley. And if she did not succeed in this assignment, it was unlikely she ever would again.

  As such, taking Rafe’s disdain as personally as she had was a distraction she could not afford.

  Why, she was Miss Edwina Dalrymple, Transformer of Ladies, resolute in her work and her success. With that resolve strengthening her spine, Edwina lifted her chin, and entered the dining room to find Rafe seated, already helping himself to the meal she’d specifically had set out in preparation of his lesson, eating with one hand, while with the other, he scribbled away in that notebook he’d been using since they’d begun their lessons. And she knew she should, as an optimistic instructor, focus on that unexpected sign of his dedication. “You began without me,” she needlessly stated. Edwina looked around the room, searching for the missing member of their group. “And without your sister? You really should have waited for Miss Audley’s arrival.”