“Yes, of course,” he said, and he felt mortified that he had tried yet again to make sense of what had happened within a twenty-four-hour span over ten years before.
She had been at Vauxhall Gardens one evening, a member of a party that had included him. They had known each other for a few months by then. Although she had almost always been correctly chaperoned, they had contrived within the limits of the rules to see enough of each other and to converse enough beyond the hearing of others to have built what had seemed to be a close friendship. They had fallen deeply in love. But surrounded as they had been by the magical splendor of Vauxhall that night, their relationship had reached a peak of emotion.
They had danced together, walked together, watched the fireworks display together. And they had succeeded in losing the rest of their group for just long enough to kiss in a secluded alley—not their first kiss, but definitely their most passionate. It had almost gone too far. But that had no longer seemed to matter. They had murmured their love for each other. As they strolled afterward, they had talked about things they would do, places they would see after they were married. She had been bright and warm with happiness and love and hope. He had begun that same night to compose in his mind a suitable speech to deliver when he called upon her father.
“I have not changed,” she said now. “I never was the heedless woman you thought I was.”
The next evening when he had arrived at a ball, one of the grand squeezes of the Season, eager as he always was to see her again, he had caught sight of her across the room, her hand on Gilbert’s wrist, a small crowd gathered about them. And then he had heard the news, which had been fast spreading among the guests—the news of the betrothal of the Earl of Wanstead to the Honorable Miss Christina Spense.
She had refused to speak privately with him from that night on. She had refused to receive him when he called at her father’s house. She had returned both his letters unopened. Gilbert, to whom he had reluctantly introduced her just three weeks before the night of that ball, had sneered at him.
“Did you seriously expect Miss Spense to marryyou, Gerard?” he had asked. “When you have no title or property or fortune beyond the merest competence? When you have not evenbirthto recommend you? As a wise young lady she has chosen the Wanstead title and fortune, and Thornwood. I take it you will not expect an invitation to the wedding, cousin?”
Gilbert and Christina had been married within a month. And within a month Gerard Percy had been on his way to Canada to seek his fortune and ease for a bruised heart— both of which he had found there. He had been happy there until word of Gilbert’s death had reached him and with it the news that he was now in possession of those very things for which she had rejected him ten years before.
“No,” he said now in answer to what she had just said. “I liked the woman I thought you were, but I was deceived. I was too young and naive, I suppose, to understand that people are not always what they seem to be. Some people can amuse themselves with flirtations as if they were real love while at the same time conceiving calculating and mercenary plans for their own advancement.”
He watched her lips thin, but she said nothing.
“There will be card games in the drawing room tomorrow evening,” he said, “and most other evenings, I daresay. It is a favored amusement among members of theton, as perhaps you are aware. I suppose money will change hands—small sums. It would be in grossly bad taste to play for high stakes at a party of this nature. Did you believe that Langan was serious in what he said about a fortune? I believe I won five pounds from him two weeks ago. Does that seem dreadfully depraved to you?”
“No,” she said stiffly. “I beg your pardon, my lord. I spoke without thinking.”
“Yes, I believe you did,” he said. “Especially when you referred to this house, or the roof of it, at least, as your own. I must advise you in future to think before you speak.”
She flushed and looked down at her hands. “I beg your pardon, my lord,” she said again.
He had come in order to make that point. He had come, he supposed, to see her look thus and speak thus—totally cowed. But having won the victory, he felt unaccountably irritated. Was thatallshe had to say? No arguments? No anger? He wished she would fight him. He would like nothing better than a shouting match with Christina. He resented her docility. It weakened his victory.
“Thornwood is mine, Christina,” he said. “If I choose to make it into a gaming hell over Christmas, that would be my right. If I chose to conduct an orgy here, that too would be my right. Would you not agree?”
She looked up at him. “Oh, assuredly,” she said. “But I believe one or two of your guests would have something to say about either of those uses of Thornwood, my lord.”
“But it would be myright?”
“Yes, my lord, it would be your right.” The scorn was in her face as well as her voice now.
“You must trust me, then, as a gentleman,” he said, “not to do anything here unbecoming my position and my responsibility to the ladies and the children in my care.”
Her nostrils flared and for the first time he had the satisfaction of knowing that she was angry.
“Oh, yes,” she said, “I must trust you. Just as all my life I have had to trust the men who have had thecareof me. It is one of the great benefits of being a woman. One always has a man—agentleman—to take responsibility for one’s care. All a woman has to do is what she is told to do and she will be eternally happy. What could be easier? How gratifying it is to know that I am not to fear either a gaming hell or an orgy here over Christmas.”
“You have had choices,” he said harshly. “You are not as much a prisoner of your gender as you would like to believe when you are in this self-pitying mood. Ten years ago you had a choice between Gilbert and me—between wealth and position on the one hand and love and adventure on the other. You made your choice. Is it my fault that both Gilbert and Rodney died young and left you to my charge after all?”
“Choices!” She almost spat out the word. “You know nothing aboutchoices, my lord.”
“And you still have choices,” he told her, though the idea was new to him even as he spoke it. “You can remain here with your children as my dependent for the rest of your life, feeding your sense of martyrdom whenever I do or say anything that the sainted Gilbert would not have done or said. Or you can marry again. Have you considered that option? You are still young and beautiful—and desirable. You are probably aware that men of Luttrell’s caliber do not direct their gallantries to undesirable women.”
She stared at him, and he could see that she was white with fury. “So!” she said. “This is how you discharge your responsibilities, as you call them, my lord. You foist them upon some other man. And of course I am almost certain to be flattered into making what you wish me to believe is achoice. What woman, after all, would not melt with gratification at being described with those three words—young, beautiful, desirable? Am I really those things? But I must be if Viscount Luttrell has deigned to exchange a dozen words or so with me. Then it is truly amazing you do not desire me yourself. But perhaps you do. Perhaps this is why you have lured me alone to the library at such a late hour.Doyou desire me?”
“I do not believe, my lady,” he said coldly, “I would want you if you were the last woman left on earth.” He might at least, he thought, have found a more original way of uttering the setdown. “Why should I be aroused by a woman who can moan with desire and talk with passionate conviction of love one day and discover the next that there is someone wealthier to be hooked in exchange for similar moans? No, thank you, Christina. I find such calculating femininity distinctly unappealing.”
She was smiling—not at all pleasantly—and she spoke huskily. “But I doubt, my lord,” she said, her eyes mocking him, “I would be able to find anyone wealthier than you are now.”
And now, he thought as they stared at each other, there was nothing left for either of them to say. Now perhaps they were both satisfied. They had exchanged anger and spite and irritability, and where had it led them?
To desiring each other, that was where.
