He spoke first. “At first glance, the garden looks strictly pure and innocent, fresh and white.”
“Only at first?” Compelled to see it from his viewpoint, she turned slightly. Her arm brushed his.
He inhaled sharply as if the simple gesture caused him pain. Then he shifted, moving slowly, drawing his left arm behind her and settling his hand into the bow of her lower back. He stayed still for a moment, as if testing her reaction or waiting for her disapproval.
She pressed her teeth down into the soft flesh at the corner of her mouth, refusing to make a sound or move an inch apart from him.
His right hand lingered on the painting as he lowered his head as if to study it more closely. “Just look at those hydrangeas, how lush and full they are. You can almost see them stirring in the breeze,” he said, his voice lower now, almost hoarse, his breath stirring the wisps of hair near the shell of her ear.
Tingles trailed over her flesh as if he were touching her and not the painting. Gently, he brushed over every stone, sliding his fingertip toward a bank of jasmine in full bloom on either side of the path. There wasn’t a cool enough breeze coming in through the open window to diminish the heat rising from each pulse point in her body and spreading like warm honey through her veins.
Mutely, she nodded. The heat from his hand at her back caused her chemise to cling to her skin in a way that made her feel as if she wore nothing at all. As if sensing this, he moved his hand. His fingers splayed against her, drawing in a quick shock of cool air before it heated again.
His thumb swept over the curve of her hip while the heel of his hand pressed lower, against the supple flesh of her derriere. “See how they spill onto the walk here and here?”
A strangled sound climbed up her throat. She tried to disguise it as a murmur of assent by nodding. His lips grazed her temple, moving lower, following the curve of her ear to her lobe where he gently nipped her. A sigh escaped her. Ever so slightly, she tilted her head back and angled her body toward him.
Now, the warm honey transformed into tingles that started at the soles of her feet and traveled upward. She pressed her knees together to stop their progress, trying to regain her composure.
“Then, of course, there’s the jasmine,” he said against the pulse of her throat. He abandoned his study of the painting now, placing both of his hands on her. One, he kept at her lower back, even lower still. The other traced the curve of her waist upward to the sash tied beneath her breasts. “When you see the jasmine all clustered together, it’s almost as if they’re hiding something.”
She waited for his hand to steel up past her sash to cup her flesh. But he held back, tormenting her with the slow sweep of his thumb, teasing the underside until she was forced to close her eyes.
In that moment, she imagined stepping into the painting with him. Overhead, the clouds seemed to gather, forcing them to look for shelter. He drew her down the path, their pace matching the quick beat of her pulse.
She could feel herself moving against him as her mind took her beyond the hydrangeas and pruned topiaries to the thick bank of jasmine.
Were
they hiding something?
Only everything she felt and all the words she’d never spoken.
Rathburn growled, the sound both feral and frustrated. He lifted his head. His breath rushed hard and fast across her lips. “And when you look further back, toward the climbing roses beneath the shadowed arbor, you catch a glimpse of pink petals in their first bloom,” he said, pressing his lips to her temple. “This garden has secrets, Emma. Wanton secrets.”
He lifted a hand to brush an errant lock of hair behind her ear, leaving her shaken. His fingers strayed to trace the curve of her jaw, following the line of her throat to her collarbone. Even though he didn’t say a word, the question was in his gaze. Perhaps the answer as well.
At the touch of his fingertips, she swayed toward him. She’d worried about showing him the painting, knowing it would remove his grandmother’s approval. Then something else entirely had happened. Now, she stood bare before him, allowing him to see what she kept hidden from everyone else.
“There’s no one at all like you.” His gaze dipped to her mouth with the promise of a kiss.
Her lips tingled in response and she lifted her face, a blatant invitation.
Wanton secrets
. . . Yes, she had those, too.
Yet, before he could lean in, a sharp knock sounded at the front door down the hall.
He closed his eyes and lowered his forehead to hers again. “Why is it that whenever we’re kissing, there’s a knock at the door?”
She released a sigh, not bothering to hide her regret. “We weren’t kissing. Not exactly.”
“Not exactly,” he said with a chuckle. “Believe me, Emma, in some part of my mind we are
always
kissing.”
As romantic as his statement was, it probably wasn’t the best thing to say right before her brother barged through the door.
R
athburn turned just in time to see Rafe Danvers storm in.
There was no time to exchange a greeting or explain himself before a fist connected with his jaw, propelling him backward.
He might have stumbled into Emma, had it not been for his friend holding onto his lapels, preparing to punch him again. “I thought I could trust you.”
He’d never heard a more lethal hiss. Blocking the second blow with his forearm, he pushed Danvers backward. There was no reason Emma should see this. “It isn’t what you think.”
“I wrote to you, Rafe,” Emma said, coming up beside them. “I explained everything.”
“That’s why I came back as soon as I received your letter,” Danvers said through clenched teeth, taking hold of him and leaning menacingly close. “Yet, when I do, I see my friend—someone I’d considered a brother—taking advantage of my absence. Taking advantage of my parents’ gullibility. Taking advantage of my sister.”
Rathburn locked his hands around Danvers’s wrists. “Let me explain.” They were evenly matched in build, but his friend had the advantage of rage.
“Rafael Linden Danvers, release him at once,” Emma ordered, pulling on her brother’s arm to no effect. “He is your friend, and you’re making a complete fool of yourself. If you think for a moment that Rathburn was compromising me in any way, you have it wrong. He isn’t interested in me in that way. As I stated in the letter, this is merely a pretense.”
Brave, though she was, this wasn’t her fight. And her brother had a better grasp of the true situation than she did. “Emma, return to the party. Please. Your brother and I have much to discuss.”
“I won’t leave this room,” she huffed. “Not until Rafe comes to his senses.”
Her brother’s gaze hardened. “Then you’d better make yourself comfortable.”
“Better yet,” Rathburn said with a shove toward the open door, forcing Danvers to back up. Hearing Emma misconstrue his true intentions—
still!
— and ignore everything he’d said to her, made his own anger rise. It gave him the extra adrenaline he needed. “Why don’t we adjourn to my study for a private chat since our discussion isn’t suitable for your sister?”
He didn’t give his friend a chance to refute. Once in the hall, Danvers released his hold and went willingly. “You can’t charm your way out of this one.”
Rathburn closed the study door behind them and locked it for good measure. He didn’t want Emma barging in. So much had changed in him in the past two weeks that he hardly knew where to begin.
“It isn’t what you think.”
“Oh, well, that’s a relief,” Danvers mocked, shoving a hand through his hair and pacing in front of the desk. “I was under the assumption that you’d asked my parents for permission to engage in a mock courtship with my sister and that somehow you’d managed to talk
her
into it. I’m glad I have that wrong. I’m glad my sister’s letter, stating the stipulations of your agreement, was all a figment of her imagination.” He stopped and glared at Rathburn, pressing his fists to the top of the desk. His nostrils flared in barely restrained fury. “It is peculiar though, how she stated that your reason for this sham courtship was to gain your inheritance. Since I know how you’d be willing to do anything to get it, I’m relieved to learn that this whole thing
isn’t what I think
. Because believe me, if it was what I think, then you’d be a dead man.”
“Everything you said is true,” Rathburn said, ashamed. “At least, that’s how it was in the beginning.”
“Then name your seconds.”
“Wait.” He held up a hand. “You can challenge me, and I will appear at dawn, but know that if you do, you’ll be harming Emma’s reputation more than saving it. You’ll also be murdering a friend who has no intention of firing a single shot in your direction. I’d never risk robbing Emma of a beloved brother. She’s too precious to me now.”
“Are you daring to pretend to be the man I know you’re not?”
“I know how it appears.” Rathburn slowly exhaled. He’d known Rafe Danvers since they were at Eton. Their close friendship was one that didn’t allow for any secrets. Because of that, he knew Danvers’s rage wasn’t solely directed at him, but also sparked from a reminder of the woman who’d once jilted him at the altar. “I know that you are completely aware of my nature. But tell me, have I ever done anything to harm your sister? I had ample opportunity last year, being her escort in your stead.”
“She gave me reports of her social schedule and how you’d behaved like a veritable bodyguard. Even worse,
she claimed
, than my behavior her first Season.”
“A blatant truth”—he lifted his palms in surrender—“although, I never bothered to question my own motives until they were pointed out to me. I don’t blame you for not seeing it either.”
Danvers pushed away from the desk and walked to the far end of the room as if he needed the space to think, or perhaps space to keep himself from leaping across the desk and strangling him. Either way, there was a palpable shift in the energy.
“You’re saying this betrothal is real for you and that your affection for my sister began last year?”
“Honestly, I don’t know when it began. I feel like an idiot for not knowing, because I believe it was there all the time.” A self-derisive laugh escaped. “But if I can’t convince Emma that things have changed, I highly doubt I’ll be able to persuade you.”
“She doesn’t know?”
Again, he felt like an idiot. Yet, he thought he’d made himself clear on several occasions. “I was planning to discuss it with her after the picnic.”
“So, she believes you have no intention of going through with the actual ceremony?” Danvers took a few steps forward.
He nodded. “I wanted to tell her that I still wanted to marry her.”
“Still?”
“My grandmother settled my inheritance. Without condition.”
“You’re free to do whatever you choose . . . and you
want
to marry my sister?” Danvers laughed and shook his head as if the idea were preposterous.
Rathburn straightened. “If you think to insult her in my presence then I will gladly rescind my refusal to shoot in your direction at dawn tomorrow. As you well know, I’m a far better shot.”
A devilish grin spread over Danvers’s face. “So, I am to have a brother after all.”
“If she will have me,” he said through clenched teeth.
“Yet, if you continue with your planned discussion, how will you know if she will have you, or if it is your fortune that gains her hand?”
The accusation flew off target, but stung all the same. “Emma isn’t like that.”
“True,” Danvers mused, then lifted his brows. “However, she isn’t one to risk her reputation. She might marry you simply to avoid scandal and the unwanted attention that will fall on her once you break the betrothal.”
What a friend he was to point that out. This accusation hit the mark, soundly. Even though he thought he’d noticed a change in her feelings toward him as well, there was only one way to be certain. “Our altercation today gives her a viable excuse to make a clean break without risking her reputation,” he said more to himself than to Danvers.
His friend’s expression turned curious. “Then you’re leaving the choice in her hands?”
What else could he do? He had to know.
E
mma stood in the doorway of the library, listening for sounds of distress from down the hall. She’d heard a few raised voices, but nothing clear enough for her to decipher. Then shortly after Oliver and Rafe entered the study, she’d stopped hearing anything at all.
She thought about sending a footman to retrieve her parents and put a stop to whatever absurdity was happening in the study. Then she thought about how her parents would handle the situation. Each time she played the scenario out in her mind, it didn’t end well. Her parents would inevitably reveal the truth of her bargain with Rathburn in front of the dowager, and Rathburn would lose his inheritance.
No. She could not involve her parents, or any of her friends for that matter. The dowager was too sharp to let anyone slip past her without questioning their reasons.
That thought brought to mind the painting lying in full view. Quickly, she tucked it back into the case and placed it on the floor, resting it against the far side of the desk.
When that was settled, she peered down the hall, worrying the corner of her mouth. What were they doing in there?
Just when she was about to rush into the library to ensure they weren’t up to something idiotic like naming their seconds for a duel at dawn—her brother occasionally allowed his temper to rule his actions, after all—they emerged.
Much to her relief, they looked no worse than when they’d left . . . aside from Rathburn’s reddened jaw, crumpled cravat, and wrinkled lapels.
Her brother grinned at her, making her highly suspicious. With Rathburn following, Rafe settled her arm in the crook of his and walked down the hall as if they were at their leisure. “You’ll be glad to know it’s all settled. Rathburn explained everything.”
She’d already explained everything in her letter, but she didn’t point it out. “I was afraid you were selecting dueling pistols.”