Nineteen
Alix sat facing her reflection in the dressing room mirror, the darkness of the room falling like a reassuring cloak around her shoulders. After her encounter with Rafe, she’d told her mother that the crush of the ballroom had given her a headache. Madeleine, with only the slightest look of disapproval, had given her permission to return to Lady Melbourne’s. As the carriage had rolled through the darkened streets, the horses’ hooves echoing on the cobblestones, Alix had stared enviously out at the lighted windows of the houses of Mayfair. They looked so warm and inviting; she couldn’t help imaging that the people inside all enjoyed happy and uncomplicated lives.
It was a ridiculous fantasy. She knew those walls concealed their share of unhappy marriages, ailing family members, and financial insecurity. It was just that she had made such a mess of her own life, she thought unhappily, unclipping her pearl drop earrings and letting them fall carelessly into a velvet-lined jewelry box. Ginnyhad been up earlier to help her into her nightdress, but she had been unusually quiet, and when she’d complained of stomach cramps, Alix had willingly sent her off to bed.
Alix began to pull the pins from her hair, the heavy tresses snaking softly down her back. How had she ever imagined she could pretend she and Rafe had never met, or that she could behave as if they were vague acquaintances? When he’d looked at her it seemed as if his eyes saw into her very soul and when he touched her... Alix scattered the pins, she didn’t like to think about how her body betrayed her at his touch. She picked up an ivory-handled brush and, as she did so, heard the bedroom door open.
“Ginny, truly there’s no need to trouble yourself; I can get myself into bed without help.” The door closed, and she heard footsteps too heavy to be the maid’s cross her bedchamber floor.
“But I want to help you,” Rafe said in low tone, taking the hairbrush from her motionless grasp. As he had done that afternoon by the fire in Paris, he began brushing her hair in long, slow strokes. Alix sat mesmerized by the sight of him reflected in the mirror. He was still dressed in his evening clothes, black velvet and crisp white linen. His tawny hair was unpowdered and the candlelight made it look like it had been threaded with gold. His hazel eyes were cast in shadow, unreadable as they locked with hers in the mirror.
“How did you get in here?” she asked, breaking the silence.
Rafe smiled slightly, “Jervis has a way with locks and women.”
“Ginny?”
He nodded.
The thought crossed Alix’s mind that she should complain to the duchess, then vanished almost as quickly as it had come. Revealing that the Earl of Moreham was in herbedchamber would cause more trouble for her than it would for the maid.
“I could raise an alarm,” she said.
“You could,” he agreed. “What do you think we should tell the duchess and her staff? I could say I was taking a stroll and decided to pay a call on my wife.”
“What of the scandal?”
“Damn the scandal.”
Alix pulled the hairbrush out of his hand. “What do you want Rafe?”
His eyes darkened as he turned her chair to face him. “I want you to stop running and listen to me Alix. I want to finish the conversation we started this evening.” He ran his finger gently down the curve of her face. “And most of all, I want you.”
She pushed his hand away. “When you look at me like that I can’t think straight, and when you touch me, I do things I know I shouldn’t...”
“Why do you fight so hard against something that feels so right, my love?”
“Because I’m afraid that it’s all that we have between us. What happens if you no longer want me, and you begin to regret you didn’t marry the woman you had planned to make your countess?”
Rafe’s eyes swept down the curves of her body, barely hidden by her thin nightdress and he wondered if his desire for her would ever fade. “I won’t Alix.”
The words seemed to echo in the room and resonate in her soul.Don’t you understand, she wanted to scream at him, I can bear it all, the loss of my father, the loss of my home, my titles and fortune, but I cannot bear to give you everything that I am, body and soul and lose you, too.
“But you can’t promise that can you?” she said quietly.”And even if you did, how do I know that I can trust you?”
“I’ve never lied to you, Alix.”
He’d never lied to her, it was true, but she couldn’t forget all the deceptions he’d practiced. “Why didn’t you tell me when we were wed that you were an earl?”
How could he explain to Alix what he’d felt when he’d heard the revulsion in Anne Dinsmore’s voice as she talked about bedding him? That when he’d kissed her that night in Paris before they were married, somehow even then, he’d known they were meant to be together? He’d wanted to be sure that she desired him as a man and not a title.
“Would it have made a difference Alix? And why didn’t you tell me you spoke English?”
“Because I didn’t trust you...”
They sat in silence for a moment, aware of the chasm that suddenly yawned between them.
“So what doyouwant Alix?” he said finally.
