The Seduction (37 page)

"Against your better judgment!" The
water in the fountain soared and wept behind him.

"Do you
want
flattery and lies? Of
course, it was against my better judgment! In the past Ι have chosen only
equal relationships, with ladies who offer themselves as cynically as Ι
do. Ι don't fall in love. Ι don't involve hearts. And never before
have Ι offered marriage!"

She
glanced back at the dark yews with their poisonous branches. "What on
earth could you know of love? It would be impossible for you to imagine."

"Ι loved my brother," he said
starkly.

"If we are talking of proof, prove
that!"

His brow contracted. "How the devil can
Ι? Lud, Juliet – do you want me to tell you that Ι love you as Ι
loved Gregory, my brother? Ι won't. It's not true."

The pain burned beneath her ribs. Perhaps she was
already hollow inside, just a blackened empty shell? "If Ι am to know
that you would cherish and protect me as your wife, you must prove your
capacity for devotion and caring." Juliet looked directly at the man she
hated and desired, at all his treacherous glamour and strength. "Tell me
about Gregory's death!"

Alden stopped pacing. Bright color burned again
in each cheek, in startling contrast to his chalky skin. This time it wasn't
fever. It was distress.

"Ι don't-" He turned back and
stared out across the garden, where the fountain leaped and played,
never-ending. "The news reached me in Florence."

She made herself push. Let him break, like a
sugar fantasy smashed with a hammer! "What did you do when you received
it?"

He gripped the parapet with both hands.
"Ι paid the messenger."

"And then?"

"Ι
went without hesitation to my new mistress of the moment."

Pain spiraled in ever-deeper waves. "You
went to a
mistress?
"

He slammed one fist onto the unforgiving stone.
"What will it prove if Ι don't tell you the truth? Maria was dead.
Ι had a new mistress. She lived out in the country. Ι rode fast to
her house and we burned away the night in a haze of lasciviousness. Only later,
riding home in the dying moonlight, did Ι realize Ι was numb."
His voice shivered with pain. "Numb as if Ι had been beaten with sticks."

Memories flooded her heart, stopping it dead in
her breast.
Ι am sorry, ma'am. They are both drowned, the countess and
Lord Kittering.

"Go on," she said.

His face was rigid, as if he had to force each
word, as if he were being tortured.

"In that same unfeeling daze Ι rode
along roads stark with shadows, losing my way, riding along track after track
until dawn began to break. Ι remember it clearly: the new light flooded
the landscape with peach, green and silver, made smoke out of trees, cast
bottle-green fingers over the harsh Italian soil. The most beautiful dawn
Ι have ever seen. My tired horse stumbled and almost fell."

They should never have tried to
 
cross the ford, ma'am, in such a storm - what
with the water being so high! The horses couldn't keep their footing. Couldn't
the little boy swim?

His rings sparked in the sunshine, sending out
piercing flashes of white light, as his fingers burned into the parapet.
"I remember dismounting and tying the nag to a tree. Ι walked through
a grove until the trunks thinned and the blue sky blazed openly above my head.
It was hot, very different from England-"

He stopped.

"You must tell me," Juliet insisted.

"Tell you what?" He spun about to face
her, his expression ravaged, ferocious. "That that's when the pain began?
Ι lay full length on the unforgiving ground. Ι was racked with grief,
torn apart as if devoured by wolves. Ι heard noises - grotesque noises
like a wounded animal -gouging my tongue, filling my mouth with
bitterness."

Her nails bit into her palms. "Why?"

"Why?"
He began to pace again. "Ι loved him
and he was dead. What more will you bleed from me?"

"So you left Italy-"

"Ι had to. Ι was the new heir.
Ι arrived at Gracechurch Abbey to find my father had dropped dead of an
apoplexy after gaming away the estate. But Gregory died first. He had fought a
duel over some matter of family honor - I don't know exactly what. My brother
was not a very good swordsman. He bled to death."

ALDEN FELT NAKED AND BRUISED.
NUMB AS IF HE
HAD BEEN
 
beaten with sticks.
Juliet must understand.
She, too, had lost a brother. Perhaps that was
why he had felt he could, indeed, tell her when she asked. He had never told
anyone else. Who else could he trust with the truth?

Yet
now he stood entirely unprotected, vulnerab1e, as if he had peeled away his
skin to expose his soul. He raised his head as she stood up. Juliet wa1ked away
a few paces, her neck fragile, her shoulders lovely.

"And you call that love?" she asked.
"To be in a foreign country when your brother died, doing something you
could have done better? To let him die alone, without you, while you lived as a
servile puppy to an Italian man's wife? God save me, Lord Gracechurch, from
your idea of love!"

Something shattered, explosively, sending shards
of pain into every limb. For a moment he thought he had been struck down by
summer lightning, striking hard and fast from the blazing sky. Alden glanced
down at his cuffs and at his elegant heeled shoes. All there. He still stood
upright. His body was still knitted together.

Nothing in the garden had changed. Yet agony
bored through his chest.

"It is true," he said at 1ast. "Do
you think I'm not aware of it?"

Juliet stood rigid and said nothing.

He took a deep breath. "If you wished to
wound me, ma'am, you have indeed succeeded."

Alden spun on his heel and began to walk away.

"Yes," she cried suddenly. Her skirts
swished as she spun about. "Yes, Ι want to hurt you!"

He stopped, keeping his back to her, fury and
pain knotted together in his stomach.

"Did you really think you and Ι could
make a future?" she shouted. "Suffer together through my divorce and
win any kind of peace afterward? You are mad!"

"Perhaps. For, if indeed Ι harbored any
such fantasy, you have successfully rid me of it. Ι knew you were wounded.
Ι did not know you were so bloody crue1."

"Cruel? Ι hope so, Lord
Gracechurch!"

Alden glanced back at her. Tears streamed down
her face.

"Yes, Ι pretended to be someone Ι
was not. Ι pretended not to want your bright games and your knowing body.
Ι, too, was dishonest. But it will take more than my desire to make me
stay with you, more than you can offer or could ever offer."

Helplessly he stepped toward her.

Α searing, terrible self-knowledge saturated
her gaze. "For where was Ι," she asked, "when my little
brother and mother drowned in a ford? Living in lust with my father's secretary-"

He knew what he must do. It had moved past words
into the simple human need to comfort, to hold. Perhaps he could never win her.
Perhaps he would never make love to her again. But he could still offer her the
warmth of human contact, a shoulder to cry on.

He took one more step.

"If you try to touch me now," she said.
"I swear Ι will laugh out loud."

As if an icy wind blew into his soul, all feeling
froze and died. He stopped and bowed, with an elegant flourish, the gesture as
insultingly careless as he could make it.

"Nothing could persuade me ever to touch you
again, ma'am," he said.

His heels clicked as he strode along the length
of the terrace. Sun blinded. His coat skirts flew out behind him. The steps at
the far end plunged into the shadow of the yew hedge. Just as he reached the
top step, something moved. Senses instantly alert, Alden stopped. Α waver
of mist and darkness took form in the shade. For a moment he thought he was
seeing ghosts.

But a stranger emerged from the darkness to block
Alden's path.

The fellow was tall, well-built, with cleanly
carved features. Α young man, fit and strong, though his green coat fit
loosely, like a merchant's or a gentleman's down on his luck. Black eyebrows
and olive skin betrayed that his hair would be naturally dark beneath his wig -
as dark as his frown.

"You are Lord Gracechurch?" the man asked.

"If you have estate business," Alden
said with deliberate hauteur, "pray address yourself to my steward."

The stranger glanced down at the naked blade in
his right hand.

"No, my lord," he said. "My
business is with you."

Alden had automatically reached for the sword at
his hip. His hand had come away empty. He did not usually wear a smallsword
when strolling about on his own grounds.

He lifted both brows. "Ι assume Ι
have the pleasure to make the acquaintance of Mr. George Hardcastle?"

George advanced steadily. Light glanced off the
cold length of metal as he held his sword before him. He pressed the tip
against Alden's chest.

"You may not think it such a pleasure, my
lord, when we become better acquainted."

Alden backed up a step. There was nothing to hand
he could use for a weapon.

"Faith, sir, since Ι always choose only
those companions who please me, Ι foresee a sadly short
acquaintance."

George Hardcastle laughed. "How short would
you like it to be, my lord?"

The back of Alden's waist bumped into the
parapet. He crossed one ankle over the other and rested his hands on the harsh
stone behind him. He gazed at Juliet's husband quite steadily, the way he might
study a dog he intended to buy.

"As short as possible, sir. You have
something with which to reproach me? Ι trust it won't take long. Ι am
a busy man."

Α button fell away, sliced from his coat, to
roll off among the moss between the flagstones.

"Ι came here to kill you," George
said. "It will take hardly a moment to press home this blade."

The sharp metal cut easily through brocade, lace
and linen. Alden shrugged, feeling a slight cut to the skin on his chest.

"Go ahead," he said. "It will make
deuced little difference to the state of my heart."

George stared at him. "You have stolen my
wife's affections-"

"Really? Why don't you ask her?"

From the corner of his eye, he saw Juliet. She
had marched resolutely across the flagstones to stand within ten feet of the
two men. As long as Alden did not know her husband's mood concerning her, he
could not vault over the parapet to escape the blade. He resigned himself to
another bloodletting.

"Yes, George," she said. "Pray,
ask me."

The blade shook. "Lud, Julie, I'm deuced
sorry! Ι never meant your little house to be destroyed like that. But Lord
Edward told me such things-"

"They were all true," Juliet said.
"Ι believed you were dead."

"I’ll make it up to you," George said.
"I’ve found the nicest little place in London. We can start all over
again. Ι didn't mean any of those things Ι said in Manston Mingate. I'd
been drinking. You know how a little drink goes to my head."

I’ll make it up to you!
Was that what every man promised her? "It
doesn't matter," she replied.

"Ι had some reverses in business,"
George went on. "But I've just been offered a new chance to rebuild."

"Good," Juliet said. "Then we may
live together in a modicum of comfort."

The sword dropped, slicing open waistcoat and
shirt to score a thin red path down Alden's chest, as George turned to face his
wife.

"You mean you’ll come back with me?"

"Of course," Juliet said, chin high.
She looked like a queen: the red queen, sun shining copper and chestnut in her
hair. "You're my husband."

"Yet honor demands-" George began.

"Lord Gracechurch would not be worth your
time to meet in a duel, Mr. Hardcastle," Juliet said.

"Faith, ma'am!" Alden glanced down at
his naked chest. The cut welled tiny beads of blood. "Let your husband
offer any insult he likes, even this amateur bloodletting, Ι refuse to
meet him."

George looked back at him. "But Ι came
here-"

Juliet shrugged. "If you mean to dispatch
him, it will have to be now, in cold blood. Ι should stand here and
applaud, but the law may not look upon His Lordship's murder as kindly as
Ι would. "

"As
you see, sir, Ι have hardly
stolen her affections," Alden said. "Allow me to call for your
carriage, Mr. Hardcastle. I'm sure you and your wife would prefer to leave
right away?"

"Yes." George sheathed his sword. He
looked stunned.

"Lud, sir!" Alden said. "Do not
look quite so disappointed. To bring a lawsuit against me for my sins might
have added a little to your wealth, but of course you cannot subject your wife
to the scandal of such a thing, if you are to remain in business in London."