“A ball followed by entertainment. Do you want to join us?” Rachel licked her lips with cautious hope.
“Absolutely not. The most illogical convention known to mankind.”
“Sometimes it is good to be illogical,” she chastised him. “Lady Imogene Brougham is going to sing. They say she is a sensation.”
“Her singing presents the same sensation as barnacles scraped off the bottom of a ship, except the hull of the ship remains safe and sound. The damage to your ears is catastrophic.”
“So you’ll come?” Rachel reached up and smoothed his hair back, jolted him. He tamped down his reaction, told himself her touch was the same given to her brother.
She smiled then, the kind of smile that started the phase transition of ice to water to evaporation. All day long he had watched her as she moved about his lab, imagining the incredibly long legs under her skirts. Even the way she consumed those wretched cream puffs drove him mad, entering between her full lips, licking the cream from the side of her mouth with the right amount of seductiveness. It was best she left with Aunt Margaret to tea. At least he’d be able to breathe again.
When they were gone, he stared at the back of the door and a hushed void filled the laboratory. He sat in her vacated chair with nothing but silent air and the lavender and lemon scent from her body. Like long sharp needles, roots of loneliness crept through his insides. Anthony looked out the window, across the row of newly planted arborvitae and where a splattering of snow lay over a field of brown grasses. A frigid mist skirted the dark, grey woods. Ice covered gorse surrounded a lake’s edge, adding to the surrealness of the landscape and all at once, a flash of memory assailed him…
“I’m going out riding.” Celeste slapped her gloves across her hands with a youthful pout.
“Again? You are gone every day.” She was so young, seventeen summers and had hounded him with her peach-colored skin and bright violet eyes, and hair, the red-gold of amber.
Celeste trilled. “My Lord, you are busy in your lab and will not miss me. Besides, I love to ride.” She leaned up on her tiptoes and gave him a sisterly peck on the cheek. The only intimacy she allowed.
“Do you want me to go with you?”
She pursed her lips. “And take you away from your experiments? Wouldn’t think of it.”
Anthony shook his head sharply, straining to wipe away the unsettling memories. God, would it constantly be like this? Four long years had eclipsed, and still he was tormented by his inadequacy into looking after her, the past entombing him beneath a shadowy shroud.
Would he ever be free of Celeste? Would he have loved her if given more time? Was he capable of love? To experience a love like his mother and father who adored each other…a grab for the farthest reaches of the universe?
Hadn’t Celeste pursued him, treating Anthony with golden deference and worshipping everything he said? Smiles and warm charm, she had everyone convinced of her value. His mother had died in childbirth and Celeste had charmed the Duke from his melancholies.
“A good match…you are well past the time to marry, Anthony…”
If only he’d not been driven by his father into the fatal words, “I do.” To experience a new Celeste, remote and distant, faultfinding and disdaining while keeping up a public persona that said otherwise.
Independent of his father, Anthony had accrued a huge estate from his patents and investments. When Celeste discovered his assets, she spent huge amounts on her wardrobe, demonstrating a self-absorbed nature that Anthony credited to her immaturity. Since he was busy with his scientific pursuits, he allowed her childish behavior until she adjusted to married life.
Since Anthony’s father was a powerful duke and cousin to the King, she enjoyed and took full advantage of the prestige that gained her access to the best of England’s families. At first, Anthony attributed her insistence to attend every social occasion without him as part of her youthful zeal to experience life. Now as he thought back to that time, he had the distinct feeling, Celeste didn’t desire to be encumbered by a husband, she considered boring.
Whatever Anthony’s feelings were toward Celeste he did not live up to the principles ingrained in him since birth—to protect those for whom he was responsible. His shameful neglect left him flawed and undeserving. If only he’d been insistent on accompanying Celeste. He could have prevented her death, and been less likely to endure disconnect from his family and the rest of society.
* * *
Anthony stalked through the heated press of guests dressed in pretentious silks and satins, jewels dripping from their necks. His mind directed on one objective, his icy gaze parted the crowd. If Rachel was to find a suitable husband, then by God he would make sure her prospects were the finest. Even if it meant his presence at a social entertainment he loathed. Aunt Margaret sat with two old harridans, chatting up a storm. “Where is she?”
His aunt drew herself up, then lifted that dratted ear horn in his face. He repeated his question, and then realized his aunt was going to launch a monologue dating back to the eleventh century’s William the Conqueror.
The orchestra stopped for a recess. Anthony wrinkled his nose from the overheated bodies and shrill laughter. A feverish murmur swept through the ballroom. He pivoted and followed their gazes to findhermoving through the crowd.
The first time he laid eyes on Rachel in his laboratory, Anthony could barely get over her beauty. But this—this was beyond perfection. Both hypnotizing and enchanting, her refinement challenged ordinary souls. Didn’t the insinuation of defiance in her unflinching eyes afford her to be that much more bewitching?
The rich, auburn of her hair had been swept up in a gentle swirl, anchored by tiny diamonds. A mass of curls escaped, accentuating her shining blue eyes and arched sable brows. Her willowy figure well-served by a tight-waisted gown, the bodice boasting a row of diamante, plunging low to enhance the deep valley of her swelling breasts. Her pale throat was adorned with a string of diamonds that his father had lent her from the Rutland collection to add sparkle to the deep emerald green of her satin gown.
The sight of her arrested him as well as every hot-blooded man in the room. Delivered to his aunt’s side by Sir Martin, Rachel was quickly surrounded by a knot of men. His blood rose in temperature. Two hundred and twelve degrees Fahrenheit, the exact temperature of boiling liquids.
From her clamoring legion of admirers, an older man and his son leaned into her, garnering her attentionoverlongin deep conversation that Anthony doubted had any intellectual acuity. She lifted her chin, and her smile brightened. Anthony viewed the scene through a red haze, and watched as she turned her attentions from one male to another, always smiling and nodding.
She caught sight of him and waved, a daring and refreshing vision of nature and empirical science. She moved to him then, and like a parting of the sea, her demanding admirers, protested the loss of their queen as she left them behind.
“Do you like my new dress?” she whispered.
