Dark Angel / Lord Carew's Bride (12 page)

All night Samantha had not known what to make of the encounter. Except that he did not love Jenny and regretted the promise that had led him into the betrothal that was so soon to be announced. She did not know what his feelings were for her or even if he had any at all.

All night she had been tortured by guilt. She had allowed herself to be kissed—twice—by Jenny’s betrothed. Worse than that—he was the man Jenny loved to distraction and had loved for five years. And Jenny, as well as being her cousin, was her very dearest friend.

Perhaps the kiss had meant nothing to him. Undoubtedly it had not.

Samantha wished the same could be said of her. If it had meant nothing, if she could shrug it off, perhaps she could feel simple anger and simple sorrow over the fact that Jenny’s betrothed did not love her.

But the kisses had meant something. She had lain awake all night, and cried through much of it, fearing that she was in love with Lord Kersey—with Lionel. That perhaps she always had been and had protected herself from what had seemed so very undesirable and improper a passion by looking for faults in him.

But perhaps she was not, either. Perhaps she was merely reacting in a thoroughly silly and predictable way, falling in love with the first man to kiss her. As if kisses and love were synonymous terms. Yes, that was it, of course. She did not love him or even like him. She was angry with the way he had behaved to her last night. What he had done was unpardonable.

“Lionel,” she whispered, closing her eyes and hugging the damp pillow to her bosom. “Lionel.” Oh, dear Lord, how she hated him.

T
HE
E
ARL OF
T
HORNHILL
rather wished over the coming days that he had not conversed with Miss Jennifer Winwood at the Chisley ball. She was a beautiful and a very desirable woman. He wanted to know only those facts about her—the only sort of facts one needed to know about any woman. He had never felt in any way guilty about any of the women he had hired for casual sexual encounters or about any he had employed for longer periods of time as mistresses. When a woman was only a beautiful sexual object one did not have to have feelings for her beyond the physical.

He had no intention of even trying to make Miss Winwood his mistress, of course. He was not quite that base even if he had allowed the desire for revenge rather to obsess him. But he did intend to lead her astray, to compromise her, to cause her to break off her betrothal or, failing that, to cause Kersey to end it. Either way the resulting scandal and humiliation to Kersey would be marginally satisfying to himself.

It would have been far better to have seen to it that she remained to him just the luscious long-legged redhead whom he had dreamed of bedding from the first moment he had seen her—long before he had known of her connection to Kersey. And to have concentrated his mind on the numerous attractions of her person between that red hair and those long legs.

It had been foolish to allow her to become a person to him. She saw her life as one of privilege. She felt that she owed something in return. She felt that she had some responsibility to her father’s dependents and would have
to her husband’s after she was married. She preferred the country to town. She felt that was where real life was lived. She did not often envy other people. She considered herself a happy person.

Damnation! He did not want to know any of those things.

Except that he could use them to soothe his conscience, he supposed. He could convince himself that he was about to do her a favor. She deserved better than Kersey. But perhaps after the scandal of a broken engagement she would be able to get no one else.

He had been surprised at her reaction to his kiss—though it could scarcely be called that when he had merely touched his lips to hers for a few seconds and had kept both his hands and the rest of his body deliberately away from hers. Even so he had been surprised that she had neither drawn away nor scolded afterward nor burst into tears. She had accepted the kiss, even pushing her lips back against his own for those brief seconds. And afterward she had behaved as if nothing untoward had happened between them at all.

It was gratifying. It had all been very easy so far.

He just wished that in order to soften her up, to make her comfortable with him and susceptible to his advances he had not had to converse with her. He just wished that he did not know she had taken that book of Pope’s poetry to read just because she did not want to be narrow in her reading tastes.

He saw her the evening after the Chisley ball at the theater and bowed to her from his own box when he
caught her eye. He had the impression that she had known for a long time that he was there but had deliberately kept her eyes averted. He did not make any attempt to call at Rushford’s box, where she was seated with her party.

He saw her again the following afternoon in the park, where she was driving in a landau with Kersey, Miss Newman, and Henry Chisley, and touched his hat to her without either stopping to pay his respects or looking at any of the four of them except her. And he saw her the same evening at Mrs. Hobbs’s concert. He sat on the opposite side of the room from her and Kersey and the Earl and Countess of Rushford and watched her for much of the evening though he did not approach her at any of the times when there was a break in the recitals and the other guests were generally milling about.

But at Richmond the next afternoon, at old Lady Bromley’s garden party, he decided that he had left her alone for long enough. He was fortunate, he supposed, to have been invited to such a select gathering, but Lady Bromley was Catherine’s grandmother and knew that he was not the father of Catherine’s child—though clearly she did not know who was, or Kersey would doubtless not be among her guests.

Lady Bromley took his arm and strolled with him down by the river, which she was fortunate enough to have as one boundary of her garden. She walked very slowly, but he was quite content to match his pace to hers. The sun was shining, there was not a cloud in the sky, and somehow he intended before the afternoon was
over to get Miss Jennifer Winwood alone again. To move one step closer to achieving his revenge—to winning the game, as Kersey termed it.

“I had a letter from Catherine just yesterday,” Lady Bromley said. “The child is well and she is well. The climate seems to agree with her. And the company. She is doing well there, Thornhill?”

“She seemed remarkably contented when I left there two months ago, ma’am,” he assured her quite truthfully. “Indeed, I would say she has found the place in this world where she best belongs.”

“In a foreign country,” she said with a click of the tongue. “It does not seem right somehow. But I am glad. She was never happy here. If you will pardon me for saying so, Thornhill, my son-in-law, the impecunious fool, should never have married her off so young to a man old enough to be her father.”

Yes, the earl thought. Catherine was four months younger than himself. She had been his father’s wife for more than six years before fleeing to the Continent with him. Yes, it had been criminal, especially given his father’s ill health even at the time of his marriage and his consequent ill humor.

“Who is the German count?” Lady Bromley asked.

“German count?” The earl raised his eyebrows.

“With an unreadable and doubtless unpronounceable name,” she said. “Mentioned twice in the course of the letter.”

“I do not believe I met him,” the earl said with a smile. “But it was only a matter of time before someone was
taken into Catherine’s favor, ma’am. She attracts a great deal of interest.”

“Hm,” she said. “Because Thornhill—your father, that is—left her a small fortune. And the child too.”

“Because she is lovely and charming,” he said.

Lady Bromley looked pleased, though she said no more. They were down by the river and three boats were out on the water, three gentlemen rowing them while their ladies sat at their ease looking picturesque. Jennifer Winwood, in a boat with Kersey, trailed one hand in the water and held a parasol in the other.

“A handsome couple,” Lady Bromley said, seeing the direction of his gaze. “Recently betrothed, so I have heard, and to be married at St. George’s before the Season is out.”

“Yes,” the earl said, “I had heard. And yes, a handsome couple indeed.”

Kersey pulled the boat in to the bank a few minutes later and handed his lady out. She looked younger than her twenty years this afternoon, the earl thought, with her delicate sprigged muslin dress and straw bonnet trimmed with blue cornflowers and the frivolous confection of a blue parasol.

“Miss Newman?” The viscount smiled at his betrothed’s cousin, the small blonde, who was standing close by in company with a few other young people. “Your turn. May I have the pleasure?”

It looked as if Miss Newman did not want the pleasure at all, the earl thought. Poor girl. But she stepped forward and set her hand in Kersey’s. At almost the same
moment Colonel and Mrs. Morris engaged Lady Bromley in conversation, and the Earl of Thornhill took advantage of the moment, perhaps the best the afternoon would provide.

“Miss Winwood,” he said before she had had a chance to move from the bank to join the group with which her cousin had been conversing. He held out his arm to her. “May I escort you up to the terrace? There are cool drinks being served there, I believe.”

The situation could not have been more perfect. There were several people observing them, including Kersey, who was powerless to do anything about it, short of making a scene. And she was powerless to refuse without seeming quite ill-mannered. She really was looking incredibly lovely—a point that had no particular relevance to anything.

She hesitated for only a moment before taking his arm. But of course she was a gently bred young lady and quite inexperienced in the ways of the world. She really had no choice at all.

“Thank you,” she said. “A glass of lemonade would be welcome, my lord.”

The Earl of Thornhill, looking down appreciatively at her, wondered with some interest if he was playing the game alone this afternoon. Had Kersey not seen him on the bank with Lady Bromley? If so, why had he not kept Miss Winwood out longer? Or failing that, why had he not relinquished the boat to someone else and kept his betrothed on his arm?

It seemed almost as if Kersey had conceded this round of the game.

Unless somehow he was a more active participant in it.

Fascinating! It truly was fascinating.

But what, he wondered,
was
the game exactly?

S
HE HAD BEEN AWARE OF HIM STANDING ON THE bank of the river and had willed him either to move away by the time Viscount Kersey had brought in the boat or else to continue talking with Lady Bromley. But she saw Colonel and Mrs. Morris move up to join them and she remembered that when Lionel had taken her out he had kindly offered to take Samantha next, though Sam had protested strangely that she was not very happy on water. She was certainly happy swimming, something she did a great deal of at home during the summer.

Jennifer knew how matters were going to develop, almost as if all their actions were part of a play she had read or seen and all the people actors in that drama. She was quite powerless to change anything. She could only keep her eyes averted from Lord Thornhill and hope to lose herself among the group of acquaintances with whom Samantha had been conversing.

But of course the arrival of the colonel and his wife gave him the chance to extricate himself from the company of their hostess and he stepped forward as Lord Kersey was handing Samantha into the boat.

“Miss Winwood,” he said, “may I escort you up to the
terrace? There are cool drinks being served there, I believe.”

She could hardly refuse without making an issue of it. His tone was civil and he was holding out an arm to her. But what alarmed her more than that fact was the realization that she did not really want to refuse. She had been very aware of him ever since the evening of the Chisley ball—and even before that—and always knew almost with a sixth sense when he was present at the same entertainment as she. She was always aware of him at every moment even though she rarely looked at him and even then did so unwillingly.

She did not want to be aware of him. She disliked him and even hated him. She wanted everything within her to concentrate on Lionel and these longed-for weeks with him before their wedding. It was not an easy time. Although they were spending more and more time in each other’s company, they were not yet relaxed enough with each other to talk freely. It was because they were betrothed and everyone knew it but there had not yet been an official announcement, she told herself. After the Earl of Rushford’s dinner next week all would change and everything would be as wonderful as she had imagined.

She did not need or want the distraction of the Earl of Thornhill. And she deeply, deeply resented the fact that he had kissed her while Lionel had not. And yet he was like a magnet to her eyes and her senses. Even when she could not see him, she thought about him almost constantly.