Forbidden (Scandalous Sirens) (5 page)

“Oh, but the pleasure I could give you.” His voice was so low she barely heard it, but she saw his lips mouth the words as he lowered his head towards her.

“No, Vaughn, you cannot. Please, I beg you.”

His mouth hovered over hers.

She added hastily, “I am to be your stepmother.”

Vaughn hesitated and she felt her feet touch the floor once more as he lowered her. She put her hand against his shoulder, intending to push him away, but the hot flesh beneath the shirt sent a weakening wave of longing through her. Such strength and size poised above her, with the potential to explode with energy and drive…

He lifted his chin. “You truly intend to marry him, Elisa?”

“Yes,” she said, as steadily as she could, thinking of Raymond and the reason she was willing to live her life out in this place. “Yes, I do,” she said levelly, looking him in the eye. “Let me go, Vaughn. You and I both know you could force this issue—you are much stronger than I. But I will do nothing to stop you except to ask that you do not.”

“And at the same time raise that odious pending marriage as a shield.” His tone was dry.

“Thank you,” she said quietly, trying to calm herself and ignore the sizzle of unfulfilled desire in her nerves.

He had not moved, but his eyes had narrowed again. It was not lust that hooded their gleam, but quick thought. “Come riding with me tomorrow.”

“What? No, no…that would not be respectable.”

He shook his head, silencing her. “A simple ride, Elisa. I am offering you what no one else in this echoing mausoleum has bothered to think of offering you since you arrived here. A day of doing what you like. A day of riding.”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“By the morrow you’ll have your hair up and your boots on, and there will be no moonlight and silence to beguile me. I will be completely trustworthy…like a proper soon-to-be stepson.” The last was added with a sour note she could not fail to miss.

She swallowed. A whole day of riding. And Vaughn had given her the key for keeping him at arms length. Any mention of her marriage to Rufus soured any yearnings he might have.

It was a simple matter. She had to agree to a day of innocent pleasure and he would let her go. Then she could run back to the safety of her room.

“Say yes, Elisa,” he growled, bringing his mouth towards hers.

“Yes!” she said breathlessly.

She was released with such alacrity she staggered and reached out to the window frame for support.

He straightened. “If you know anything of men at all, Elisa and I know you do, then you will go back to bed now.”

She did know about men. Regardless, a response came readily to her lips, but she bit it back and turned without a word. She hurried towards the door, her heart trip-hammering at the closeness of her escape.

“Elisa?”

A single, soft hail and she found herself halted halfway across the room as effectively as if he had physically anchored her to the spot. She didn’t want to risk looking back at him, but she did anyway.

He was standing by the window, his arms crossed over his chest. With his back to the light, his eyes were shadowed and all she could see were the sharp planes of his cheeks, the strong jaw and the powerful neck. Her heart hammered within her chest.

“Don’t wear your corset tomorrow,” he instructed.

The low words raised the hairs on her skin. Wordlessly, she turned and hurried from the library, back down the wide gallery to the cold marble floor of the foyer. By the time she reached the spiral stairway, she was running and gasping with the release of belated fear and relief at her close escape.

She reached her bed and burrowed beneath the covers, trembling.

She would not go riding on the morrow.
I will not go riding with Vaughn tomorrow.
 
It is unthinkable.

Chapter
Three

Vaughn had been up for hours when Elisa finally made her way downstairs.

He spent the time brooding and kicking himself over his behavior in the library the night before. What on earth had possessed him? He’d been sitting there, having decided that the sane thing would be to go back to London and fight with his father over Kirkaldy via lawyers, until she walked in—and it was as if he’d made no such decision at all. He’d acted without thought, without sense.

Even this horse ride was madness. A moth did not hover around the flame once he’d discovered it had the power to pull him in and burn him. So why was he, Vaughn, hovering around Elisa?

He did know the answer to that one. In the moment he had offered to take her riding, there had been a softening in her face that had stopped his heart. He would not depart for London now and take that pleasure from her.

One short ride, then he should leave and never come back. The forbidden flame was far too perilous.
 
Rufus was extraordinarily skilled at exacting retribution. He was a fool to even consider staying here and risk being overtaken by the madness that had possessed him last night.

As he wandered about the shining marble floor, Maud, the oldest maid in the hall came through from the kitchen carrying a heavy silver tray laid with breakfast dishes, her old, deformed fingers clenched around the handles as she hunched over the load. She had not changed from what Vaughn remembered of her. It seemed she had always been old. He took the tray from her despite her protests and carried it to the door of his father’s suite after asking her who it was intended for. At the door Vaughn paused and waited for her to catch up with him and open the door. Before she took the tray back she reached up to pat his cheek. She smiled fondly.

“You used to open doors for me, too, young master.”

“I did?”

“Whenever your father couldn’t see you do it. It’s good to have you home, Master Vaughn.”

He descended the stairs back down to the ground floor, thoughtful. Who else in the hall thought he was here to stay? That this was home for him? He rested against the newel post at the bottom of the stairs, frowning. He was here to retrieve Kirkaldy and that was all.

Then Elisa came down the stairs and he straightened, abruptly and foolishly glad to see her. Dressed in a demure riding habit of dark blue velvet that made her eyes sparkle, she was not quite the temptation she had been last night when her golden curls had swung loose and brushed her waist.

Personally, he preferred women in riding habits. They couldn’t wear so many petticoats and disguise the true line of their legs. He had noticed last night that Elisa had long legs and today he could enjoy their length yet again, as they were not disguised by flounces.

Obviously she was not going to make excuses as to why she could not ride, as he’d expected her to do. Unwillingly, he felt a touch of admiration for her courage. She was going to abide by their agreement, regardless of the duress she’d been under when she’d made it.

However, she managed to avoid looking at him as she slid on her leather gloves and put on a wide-brimmed bonnet.

“Good morning, Elisa,” he bid her. “Have you eaten?”

“I ate in my room, thank you,” she said softly.

“Then there’s no reason not to start out immediately,” he said. “I’ll have the horses brought around.”

“I’d rather go to the stables,” Elisa returned, a touch too quickly.

Vaughn studied her anew. Did she want to be away from the house? He noticed the hint of dark circles beneath her eyes, the high color in her cheeks. Then he understood; she wanted to get this over and done with as swiftly as possible. She wasn’t about to wait idly with him for the horses to be brought to her. She wanted to go to the horses instead.

He suppressed a smile. Did she really think she was safer walking through a garden than standing here in the foyer?

“Very well,” he agreed and offered his arm. When she did not take it, but instead stepped around him and marched to the tall French doors at the back of the foyer, he let himself smile fully. Oh yes, indeed, she was avoiding him.

The doors led out onto the large formal garden at the rear of the manor. It was a tamed, regimented and manicured area filled with straight paths and symmetrical borders of flowers and plants.

Elisa walked swiftly down the path. It led directly to the stables at the foot of the garden. Vaughn quickened his pace a little and easily caught up with her.

“Are you wearing your corset?” he asked.

“A lady always wears a corset. That is not a question you have a right to ask me, either.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“It is all the answer you will get from me.”

He grinned. He would see about that. Deliberately, he stepped a little sideways, and brought his foot down upon her train. Elisa was jerked backwards. Immediately, Vaughn took his foot off the train and she was thrown forward by the sudden cessation of force from behind.

Swiftly, Vaughn stepped around to catch her before she could measure her length on the path and she fell neatly into his arms, her own outstretched to save her.

He gripped her by the waist and put her neatly back on her feet. He kept his hands around her incredibly small waist, feeling the warmth of her beneath the soft velvet.

He could also feel the unyielding wall of corsetry.

“Elisa, you disappoint me,” he murmured, although he was not at all unhappy. He may have been a little dissatisfied if she had given in so easily.

Her chin jerked up. “Vaughn, you expect far too much of me. I am your father’s fiancée and propriety demands—”

“Sod propriety!” He tightened his grip on her waist. “Propriety, morals…they’re just words, Elisa. You know the difference—I know you do. Just as I do.”

She was studying him. Listening. Weighing. It was a trait he’d never seen in a woman before—to have his words considered with such care, to be so taken to heart.

“What do you want, Vaughn?”

Yes, what did he want? What was he doing, standing here in the middle of the rose garden, holding her by the waist for all to see? To what end? He’d already decided to go back to London. He shrugged. “To go riding.”

“No, Vaughn. What is it you really want?”

“What I want I cannot have,” he answered truthfully.

“You must take your hands from my waist. People might see us from the house.” She was staring at him steadily with her intense blue eyes, made brilliant by the color of her gown. There was not an inch of retreat in them.

Let go of this delicate, gorgeous creature? Suddenly, he found it almost impossible to lift his hands away, even though he knew she was right—there might well be servants observing them from the windows. There was no danger Rufus would see them. The old sot was most likely still snoring off last evening’s claret.

“Vaughn, please…whatever you think of me personally, you do me an injustice by risking my public reputation in this way.”

Never had he expected to find anything innocent about her—not a woman of her sordid past—but there she stood, wisps of golden hair escaping her bonnet, framing her delicate features. Her big blue eyes were entreating him to do the gentlemanly thing and turn her loose.

And then there had been the moment of pure joy in her eyes when he’d offered to take her riding last night. Its appearance made him wonder how mournful the rest of her life was, if such a simple offer could bring such delight.

Elisa, he realized, was a complicated woman. The assumptions he’d made about her were not an exact fit. It intrigued him.

He let go of her waist and stepped back a little. “If I can’t have what I want, then I would accept friendship, instead,” he said and was mildly astonished to realize he was sincere.

“Friendship?” she repeated, her voice tinged with disbelief.

“Yes, friendship. Or is that too much to ask?”

She watched him for a few moments, as though she expected him to say he wasn’t serious. Then a slight smile came to her lips. “Of course it is not too much to ask. I would like your friendship very much. Yes, very much indeed.”

The way she said the words made him think that perhaps she was trying to convince herself.

“Then let’s not waste this beautiful day.”

She nodded and walked beside him toward the stables, her shoulders erect, her chin high, her cheeks flushed a flattering shade of pink.

As the stable master readied their mounts, Vaughn watched her fidget with her gloves. She was going out of her way to look at anything but him. He took a step closer and she glanced up, her breath leaving her in a rush.

“I make you uneasy,” he said, not bothering to state it as a question.

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “You don’t.”

“Then why are you so on edge?”

Her gaze shifted to something beyond his shoulder. Then relief flooded her face. “Look, our horses are ready.”

She brushed past him and hurried over to the gray the stable master was holding for her. It had been readied with a sidesaddle. As she settled herself into the saddle and arranged her skirts properly, he smiled a little, forming an image of what she must have looked like in those years when she rode astride like a man, defying society, convention and death all at once. This properly stiff-backed lady who controlled her horse with a gentle, deft touch was nothing like that image.