The Seduction (46 page)

What did she think she understood about him? His
gorgeous appearance was only the first layer, yet it was one that she savored
now as if she had been hungry for it all of her life. Α wealth of lace and
silk on a man was something she had always taken for granted. It spoke of power
and social status, vital to the structure of society.

Yet Alden had turned it into something else.

His appearance was both beautiful and witty,
almost as if he celebrated the irony of hiding masculine muscle beneath such
essentially feminine frippery. For a woman to put her hand on a man's sleeve
and feel the hard tension of his arm beneath the silk was intensely erotic.
Perhaps no age had ever been as blatantly sensual as this one. No wonder men
like Alden reveled in it, reaping woman after woman like a scythe harvesting
flowers.

Was she to be one of them? One of those casually
mown blossoms?

Juliet touched the lace over her own forearm. She
tried to look at her wrist as it must appear to him. Α woman's bones were
so slender compared to a man's. Was that what fascinated men? For whatever
reason, he had made her feel beautiful when she had thought ugliness had
contaminated her to the bone. It had not been only her body he had healed.

Ι have already given him my soul,
she thought.
Why lie to myself? If Ι
cannot trust him now with the truth, then truth does not exist in the universe.
Yet the truth is that Ι am not free. Even if George divorces me, will
Ι ever be free enough?

He glanced up and smiled at her.

"Where did you learn such very odd ideals
about marriage when you were so young, Juliet?"

She was taken aback for a moment, then she
laughed. "From romances."

He raised both brows. "Romances?"

"All those tales of King Arthur and his
knights. I'm sure it sounds foolish, but they convey such an ideal of
love."

"Faith! Guinevere was one of the most
notoriously unfaithful wives in history."

"Yet it was a grand passion."

He listened perfectly seriously. "So you
wanted a knight in shining armor?"

"If Ι did," she said with a wry
smile, "Ι made a bad choice. In the end it was as if Ι had
married Mordred instead. Yet George truly attracted me. Perhaps we could have
made a good marriage, if my father had not . . . if Kit and my mother-"

"No. George Hardcastle didn't deserve you
for a moment. But we all make mistakes when we're young."

"Did you?"

"Of course. Maria was a mistake. Haven't you
guessed?"

He leaned one shoulder against the side of the
carriage, arms folded over his chest. Lace from his wrists foamed across his
powerful thighs. The gilt heels and silk stockings only accentuated the hard
muscles of his calves, as if even his shoes were a wonderful
joke, an arrogant wink
from a jester, laughing at the world.
Yet
he seemed stripped of both arrogance and mockery now.

"
Ι
was probably as romantic as you were,"
he went on. "
Ι
also wanted that single
grand passion, the one woman who would meld into my soul as Adam's rib fit
beneath his heart. Thus
Ι
ignored what
Ι
saw
in
my own home, even ignored Gregory's example-"

She felt breathless with
surprise - that he should talk so openly. "What do you mean?"

His eyes shone as
innocently as cornflowers beneath his thick lashes. "Lud!
My
mother and father had a typical society marriage -
seen as a great success. He barely tolerated her. She retreated into fragile
eccentricity, becoming ever more demanding. The more she demanded, the more he
ignored her."

"They didn't love
each other at all?"

"
My
father didn't love my mother at all. And she-?
Ι
don't know.
Ι
don't think she loved him either, yet she was
bitterly wounded whenever he was unfaithful."

It seemed infinitely
precious, these simple revelations, simply told. Her own parents' marriage had
fallen somewhere between that cold-blooded social contract and a true melding
of souls. There had been tension sometimes, difficulties, but they had loved
each other.

"
Ι
think any woman feels that way, once she has
committed herself. He was the father of her children." She took a deep
breath, gathering courage. "What did you mean about Gregory?"

His gaze was almost
amused, as if acknowledging her hesitation and his own, as if - like two
castaways
in
a leaky boat - they
shared one risk and were forced
to
embrace it together:
this tentative attempt at trust.

"
Ι
adored him." Alden seemed to search for
words, as if they were disused, rusty with time.
"
He was my only brother and several years
older.
In
the eyes of a young boy
he embodied gallantry and courage. Women couldn't get enough of him.
Ι
still love him.
Ι
always will.
Y
et, when
Ι
was sixteen and fell
in
love for the first time,
he deliberately-"

He turned his head, his
expression suddenly shuttered as if he lost his nerve, after all.

"Tell me." She
spoke the words just as he had spoken them to her the night before, not sure if
he would trust her enough, not sure if she could trust herself to listen.

Alden glanced back and
smiled. The smile was a gift, a gift of faith. Juliet met it with one of her
own, but tentative, breathless, whereas his was filled with sudden confidence.

"
Her name was Emily. The daughter of the local
schoolmaster. She was lovely. One of those fragile, ethereal girls who don't
seem quite strong enough to cope with the life they're born
in
to."

"
How did you meet?"

"
Ι
first saw her at church and found a moment to
speak to her while my father dispensed condescension among the parishioners.
She and
Ι
soon met secretly,
little clandestine meetings
in
the grounds at
Gracechurch Abbey, at prearranged spots
in
the
vill
age. We talked about
poetry and debated philosophy."

"She was well read?"

"Well enough, and
she had a good mind. We fell passionately
in
love. There is nothing more intense and absolute, of
course, than a boy's first love - caught
on
the threshold of manhood, untested and
uncontaminated by the world.
Ι
worshipped her. We even
exchanged a few uncertain kisses. It was so deuced exciting to touch her. .
." He leaned his head back and closed his eyes, a tiny hint of
self-mockery
in
his voice. "
My
mouth sang with the pure lyricism of
it
, that delicate, butterfly touch from those virgin
lips. Yet
Ι
was determined to honor
her purity, though her pretty restraint was like tinder to the flame
in
my loins.
Ι
wanted to marry her."

Juliet knew what was
coming. She knew it
in
her bones.
It
was what she would have done, if she'd had an older
sister.

"So you went to
Gregory and poured out your heart?"

Alden laughed,
not
bitterly, but with a kind of sad wisdom.
"Gregory was very gentle. He pointed out that she would never make an
acceptable wife for the son of a viscount, that such girls were destined for
quite another use by men of our class. When
Ι
demurred, he offered to prove it. Emily was
only
fifteen. Within two months she was carrying
his child."

The carriage rocked, dust
beginning to coat the half-open windows. The sound of hoofbeats melded with
her heavily beating heart.
"
What became of
them?"

"
Her father tried to challenge Gregory to a
duel, but my father saw that the man was dismissed and the family sent away.
The child died
in
the womb - fortuitously,
you might say. Emily married a year later. Quite respectably,
Ι
believe." Alden gave her a wry smile.
"An
affecting tale. One you would think
Ι
could have used to seduce innumerable women
over the years. Oddly, I've never told anyone before how the very first love of
my life betrayed me."

"
Emily?
"

"O
h, no." His voice was still light.
"The poor child couldn't help herself. The restraint she'd shown me was
absolutely genuine, but my brother was irresistible.
No
, it was Gregory's betrayal that sent me to Italy and
kept me there. And yet,
Ι
never stopped loving
him."

"O
f course," Juliet said.
"
He was your brother."

Sunlight sparkled through
his spotless lace as he laid his hand against the glass for a moment. He pushed
the window closed.

"
He did it from love. He wanted to save me from
making the mistake of my life.
Y
et however
Ι
look at it, however much
Ι
credit those motives, he was wrong. His
treatment of Emily was barbarous. He prevented my finding or helping her. It
was deuced hard to forgive that, though with hindsight it seems only foolish
and self-pitying - the behavior of a child - to fling myself into the arms of
Maria to let her teach me to be as cold and calculating as Gregory had
been."

"But how could you
stay
in
the same house with your
brother after he had seduced your first love?"

"Not easily. But
Ι
could also have recognized the extent to
which he was right.
To
have eloped with Emily
would have destroyed both of us. There was
no
real depth to that calf love. Our marriage would have
been a disaster. Gregory just might have picked a kinder way to demonstrate
it."

"Perhaps first love
is always doomed. We are such babies at sixteen.
Ι
wouldn't want to be that young again."

He laughed suddenly.
"Lud,
no
! Nor
Ι
!"

They sat
in
a surprisingly companionable silence, as if this
exchange of confidences had moved their relationship to a new level, one that
did not need to be explained aloud. She did not even need to express her
sympathy and horror over what Gregory had done. Alden already understood it.

What else is this sense
of
safety,
of
trust, if not love?

"Intensity,"
she said. "You spoke about it once before."

"Did
Ι
?" His beautiful hands lay casually
on
his writing case, with its burden of letters, paper
and quills.

"When we shared our
Italian supper, you were explaining why you did not want constancy, why you had
sought out so many women.
You
were searching for an
intensity, you said, that never lasts."

"Brave words! That
is how
Ι
trained myself, what
Ι
used to
   
believe."

"You don't now?"

"Now
Ι
find myself loving with a far greater and
more genuinely passionate intensity than anything
Ι
have ever experienced before. Can you believe
that?"

She looked down, almost
afraid to meet his gaze, while her heart thumped. "Perhaps."

"This intensity
assails my heart even when
Ι
am not with the lady.
Ι
have an absolute certainty that any other
woman would only bore me to tears.
You
have ruined me, Juliet."

I
n
spite of her emotion, she laughed. "Ruined?
How?"

"It's deuced
terrifying to know that, whatever happens now, my days as a rake are
over."

"Just a sign that
you're sliding into your dotage."