Dark Angel / Lord Carew's Bride (13 page)

Now, forced into company with him again, she felt almost relief. Perhaps if she took his arm and walked up to the terrace with him and drank a glass of lemonade with him, the dreadful memory of the Chisley ball would be dispelled and the terrible unwilling … attraction would be over. There. She had never used that word before. But it was true, she thought with some dread. She was attracted to the Earl of Thornhill.

“Thank you,” she said as coolly as she was able, taking his arm. “A glass of lemonade would be welcome, my lord.”

Touching him again, standing close beside him again brought a vivid memory of that night and a rather frightening physical awareness with which she was so unfamiliar that she did not know quite what to do with it.

She would walk and converse, she decided. It was broad daylight. There were lawns and trees and flowers to be admired and a clear blue sky to gaze up at. It was only as she walked that she realized she had not looked back for one last sight of Lionel. He had looked so splendidly handsome and virile rowing her on the river. She concentrated her mind on her love for him.

“Do I owe you an apology?” the Earl of Thornhill asked.

“An apology?” She looked up at him, startled. His dark eyes were looking very directly back into hers.

“For kissing you,” he said. “Don’t tell me that it was a thing of such insignificance that you have forgotten about it.” He smiled.

She could feel herself flushing. And could not for the life of her think of anything to say.

“I have not forgotten it,” he said, “or forgiven myself for giving it. I could use the quietness of the garden and the moonlight for an excuse, but I had taken you down there and should have realized the danger and guarded against it. I am deeply sorry for the distress I must have caused you.”

She had not been mistaken in him, then. Whatever he had been in the past, he was no longer a man without honor and conscience. He was a kind gentleman. She was glad. She had been saddened by her disillusionment. And yet she was disappointed too. She had the uncomfortable feeling that she would be altogether safer if he really were the unprincipled rake that kiss had made him appear to be. She could guard herself more easily against a rake.

“Thank you,” she said. “It did cause me some distress. I am betrothed and only my intended husband has the right to—to—”

“Yes.” He touched the fingers of his free hand lightly to the back of her hand. “If my apology has been accepted, let us change the subject, shall we? Tell me what you think of Pope’s poetry.”

“I admire it,” she said. “It is written with great polish and elegance.”

He chuckled. “If I were Pope listening to you now,” he said, “I would go out and shoot myself.”

She looked at him and laughed and twirled her parasol. “I meant precisely what I said,” she told him. “I feel
no great emotional response to his poetry as I do to Mr. Wordsworth’s, for example. But I feel an intellectual response. That does not mean I like it less. Merely differently.”

“Have you read ‘The Rape of the Lock’?” he asked.

“I loved it,” she said. “It was so amusing and clever and so … ridiculous.”

“It makes one feel uncomfortable at every frivolity society has ever led one into, does it not?” he said. “Do you enjoy humor and satire in literature?”

“She Stoops to Conquer
for humor and
Gulliver’s Travels
for satire,” she said. “Yes, I enjoy both. And emotion and sentimentality too, I must confess, though gentlemen immediately look very superior and politely scornful when a woman admits as much.”

The Earl of Thornhill threw back his head and laughed. “I dare do no such thing now, then,” he said. “Your tone made it sound as if you were throwing down the gauntlet and daring me to take up the challenge. Besides, I have been known to shed a surreptitious tear or two over
Romeo and Juliet
. Not that I would ever admit as much even if I were being stretched on the rack.”

“But you just did.” She laughed.

They spoke about literature during the rest of the stroll up the long lawns to the terrace and about dogs while they drank blessedly cool lemonade. Jennifer did not know how they had got onto the latter subject, but she found herself telling the earl about her collie who loved to eat the cakes she smuggled to him and who sensed when he was about to be taken for a walk and
tore around in circles and yipped and otherwise demonstrated wild and undignified enthusiasm until his expectations were met.

“I miss him,” she ended rather lamely. “But life in town would not suit him. He is unaccustomed to being walked on a leash.”

“Come,” he said, taking her empty glass from her hand and offering his arm again after setting the glass on the table, “let us stroll into the orchard. There will be no fruit to see at this time of year and we are too late for the blossoms, but there will be relief from the heat of the sun for a while until tea is served.”

Jennifer had no idea how much time had elapsed since they had left the riverbank. It could have been ten minutes or it could have been an hour. But for the first time in however long it had been she looked about her with awareness and noted that there were a few other people, in couples or small groups, on the terrace and others in larger numbers strolling on the lawns. One group was playing croquet while others watched. Lionel and Samantha were nowhere in sight. They had not yet come up from the river. They must be still out in the boat or else standing on the bank as part of the group with whom they had all gone down there.

She should be down there too, she thought, feeling disoriented for a moment, realizing how absorbed she had been in her conversation with the earl. She should be with Lionel. She wanted to be with him. She had looked forward to this afternoon, especially when she
had woken up and seen how lovely the weather was. Perhaps there would be the chance to wander alone with him, she had thought, as she was wandering with the Earl of Thornhill now. It had seemed like a wonderful opportunity. Lionel was escorting both her and Samantha at the garden party. Aunt Agatha was otherwise engaged, as was the Countess of Rushford.

“Perhaps,” she said, “you should escort me back to the river, my lord. I believe my cousin and Lord Kersey must still be there.”

“If you wish.” He smiled. “Though the thought of shade and quietness for a few minutes is definitely appealing, is it not?”

It was. And—treacherously—the lure of his company for a few minutes longer. Being with Lionel was not nearly as comfortable at present. There were too many tensions surrounding the facts of their betrothal and its announcement and their impending marriage. In time they would be this comfortable together. But not yet.

“Wonderfully so,” she said, smiling conspiratorially at him. “Parasols are made to look pretty, my lord, but accomplish very little else.”

“I had always suspected as much.” He grinned at her. “But heaven forbid that women should ever admit it and become practical beings. How ghastly to think that the time may ever come.”

She took his arm and allowed him to lead her toward the orchard. “Do you believe that women should be only ornaments to brighten a man’s life, then?” she asked. “Nothing else?”

“I would have to take exception to the word
only,”
he said. “All men—and women too—like to be surrounded by lovely ornaments. They make life more pleasant and more elegant. But life would be unbearably dull and lonely if there was nothing but the ornaments. They would soon lose their appeal and be fit for nothing else but to be hurled for the relief of frustration. A woman would quickly lose her appeal, no matter how lovely and ornamental she was, if she had nothing else to offer.”

“Oh,” she said. “Fit only to be hurled in a fit of temper.”

He chuckled. “It is the reason for the failure of so many marriages,” he said. “So many couples are trapped into a lifetime of boredom and even active misery. Had you noticed? And very often it is because they once thought that what pleased the eye would satisfy the emotions and the mind for the rest of their lives.”

“You do not look for beauty in a prospective bride, then?” she asked.

He laughed again. “I do not yet know what I look for,” he said. “I am not yet in search of a bride. But you are twisting my words. Lovely ornaments are important to life. There must be aesthetic pleasure to make it complete. But there has to be more too. Much more, I believe.”

The wife the Earl of Thornhill would choose eventually would be a fortunate woman, Jennifer thought. She would also have to be a special person.

It was indeed blessedly cool among the trees of the orchard. The branches overhead did not block the sun but
muted its rays and gave a strange air of seclusion, though the lawns and the garden party guests were close by. It was almost like being back in the country, Jennifer thought and closed her eyes briefly against an unexpected stabbing of nostalgia.

“And what about you?” the Earl of Thornhill asked. “Your impending marriage is an arranged one. Did you have any hand in the choice?”

“No,” she said. “Papa and the Earl of Rushford are friends and decided years ago that a match between their children was a desirable thing.”

“And you did not fight against their decision tooth and nail?” he asked, smiling.

“No,” she said. “Why should I? I trust Papa’s wisdom and I approved his choice.”

“And still do?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Because he is beautiful?” he asked. “He will certainly be a wonderful ornament for you to look at for the rest of your life.”

She felt that she should be offended that he had somehow insulted Lionel. But there was a teasing gleam in his eye when she looked up at him. She thought of his belief that there had to be more than beauty to attract if a marriage was to have a hope of bringing a lifelong companionship and happiness. Yes, Lionel was beautiful and it was his beauty that had caused her to fall headlong in love with him. But there was more. There was his cool courtesy and sense of propriety. There was—oh, there was a whole character to be discovered over the next
weeks and months. They were going to be wonderfully happy. She had waited five long years for the happiness they were soon to know.

“Do you love him?” he asked quietly.

But the conversation had become far too personal. She had not yet told Lionel that she loved him. He had not told her that he loved her. She was certainly not going to discuss her feelings with a stranger.

“I think,” she said, “we should talk about poetry again.”

He chuckled and patted her hand. “Yes,” he said. “It was a dreadfully impertinent question. Forgive me. In a very short acquaintance I have come to think of you as a friend. Friends talk to each other on the most intimate of topics. But friends are usually of the same gender. When they are not, there must always be some barrier to total friendship, I suppose, unless they share a relationship that is intimate in all ways. I am unaccustomed to having a woman as a friend.”

Were they friends? She scarcely knew him. And yet she found it remarkably easy to talk with him. But she ought not even to be with him. Lionel did not like it and Aunt Agatha had warned her quite severely against him. He was not quite respectable. And there was something about him that stopped her from being quite at her ease with him. Some … attraction. There was that word again.

“I have never had a gentleman as a friend,” she said. “And I do not believe it is a possibility, my lord. I mean between you and me.” She was surprised to feel a certain
sadness. And surprised too and a little uncomfortable to find that they had stopped walking and that somehow she had come to be standing with her back against a tree while he stood before her, one hand resting against the trunk above and to one side of her head. “I am going to be married soon.”

“Yes.” He smiled down at her. “It was a foolish and impulsive notion, was it not, that we could be friends. But it is true for this afternoon, nevertheless. You feel it too, do you not? We are friends. Am I wrong?”

She shook her head. And then wondered if she should have nodded. And was not at all sure with which of his questions she had agreed.

“And so,” he said, “I am forgiven for my indiscretion of the other night?”

She nodded. “It was as much my fault as yours,” she said almost in a whisper.

She wondered, gazing at his smiling face and friendly eyes, why she had ever agreed with Samantha’s comparison of him to the devil. Or had she been the one to suggest it? She could no longer remember. But it was only his very dark coloring in comparison with Lionel’s blondness that had made her think so. Now that she knew him a little, she found that he was a man she liked. She regretted that there could be no real friendship between them.

“No,” he said. “I am more experienced in these matters than you. I should have known better, Jennifer.”

It took her a moment to understand why she felt suddenly as if something intimate had passed between
them—almost like the kiss they had shared in the Chisleys’ garden. And then she realized that he had used her given name, as Lionel had still not done. She opened her mouth to reprimand him and then closed it again. He was her friend—for today anyway.

“Ah,” he said. “Another indiscretion. Pardon me. Yes, I was quite right. It is impossible for two people of opposite gender to be true friends. There are other feelings that interfere with those of pure friendship. Alas. I could never be your friend, Jennifer Winwood. Not under present circumstances.”

She saw her hand, as if it belonged to someone else, lift to his face and both saw and felt her fingers touch his cheek. And then she lowered it more hastily to lay it flat against the bark at her side, and bit her lip.

Tension rippled between them. But though her mind knew it and knew where it was likely to lead, the rest of her being seemed powerless to break free of it. Or perhaps did not really want to do so. She wanted—she needed—to feel his mouth against hers again. She wanted to feel his arms about her, his body against hers. Her head knew quite clearly that she wanted no such thing, but her body and her emotions were ignoring that knowledge.

“You have just forgiven me,” he said softly, his mouth only a few inches from her own, “for a sin I am sorely tempted to repeat. And for one I knew would tempt me again if I had you alone and unobserved once more. No, there is not the smallest possibility of a friendship between you and me. And none of any other relationship.
You are betrothed—to a man you love. I found you five years too late, Jennifer Winwood. Had I not, I would have fought him for you—every inch of the way. Perhaps I might even have won.” He took a step back and removed his hand from the trunk of the tree.