Authors: Jenna Petersen
Rage nodded. She wasn’t sure what to think of the serious expression on his face. Did he think her silly or foolish? Or perhaps wanton for allowing the kiss to go so far? Was he disappointed she had pulled away? He was impossible to read. Which had probably served him very well in the underground she knew so little about.
“Neither of us are children, Lucinda,” he said softly and she nearly shut her eyes at her name from his lips this second time. “I think we can be honest with each other, can’t we?”
She swallowed hard. She wasn’t certain what he meant by honest, nor was she certain she was ready for the kind of honesty this rough man could bring. But she found herself more curious than afraid of whatever he wanted to say to her.
“I would like to think that honesty could bring us no harm,” she said.
He smiled almost like he doubted that, but he continued nonetheless. “I want to be honest with you, though I know what I say could offend you and bring to an end the pleasant acquaintance we have shared.”
“That is ominous,” she replied, trying to keep her tone light even as her heart began to pound against her ribs.
“Indeed.” He drew in a long breath. “Lucinda, the first moment I saw you, I was taken by your beauty. When I saw you, I could not help but catch my breath. I even thought of you when you weren’t near.”
Lucinda stared at him. This she had not ever guessed he would say. “Y-You did? I had no idea.”
He nodded once. “You were another man’s wife and I never would have pursued that interest out of a respect not only for your husband and his brother, but for you. But yes, I wanted you. I want you still, Lucinda. Perhaps now more than ever.”
She could hardly breathe at this revelation. What he was saying… it was madness! She ought to be offended, as he had said he feared. She ought to turn away from his blunt admission of desire and tell him never to speak of it again.
But she didn’t. All she did was stand still as stone and drown in the roaring echo of her heartbeat as it pounded in her ears like an ocean tide.
He moved a fraction closer and that tide turned even more violent. All she could see now was him. All she could feel was him… and he wasn’t even touching her.
“But Lucinda, I would never want to be something you regret.” He shook his head. “I am going to go away for a few days. There is a bit of business for me to do in a neighboring shire. When I return, we can pretend this conversation never happened, if that is what you desire. Or…”
He trailed off and held Lucinda’s gaze evenly. She struggled to find her voice and finally squeaked out, “Or?”
“Whatever you like, Lucinda,” he whispered and then he caught her hand and drew her even closer. His lips lowered again and he kissed her a second time.
His mouth was firm against her, his lips cool and surprisingly gentle for a man who had once made his living through violence. He tasted of mint and perhaps a hint of coffee. She parted her lips and hesitated before she touched his mouth with the tip of her tongue. He let out a low, almost pained groan and then his arms tightened around her, drawing her against the hard heat of his chest as he delved into her mouth and tasted her.
She felt the tension in his body, in his shoulders and his arms. He was trying to control himself, even as he ravished his lips. She couldn’t help but wonder what would happen if that control snapped. Would he take her right here on the soft grass?
He groaned again, almost as if he could read her wicked thoughts, and then gently set her away from him.
“I must go,” he murmured. “Or I won’t be able to. Until I return…”
He turned on his heel, swung back onto the pretty filly and rode off toward the estate in the distance. Lucinda watched him go, her hands shaking. It was only when he had gone almost half a mile across the grass that she realized she wasn’t breathing and took a long, deep gasp of air.
In just a moment, everything in her world had changed. And she had no idea how to feel about it.
Chapter Four
“It seems strange that Rage would depart to Littlefield with only a note to inform us of his leaving,” Jane said as she poured tea first for her husband and then for Lucinda. “I had no idea that your business there was so urgent that it required immediate attention.”
Nicholas lifted both his eyebrows and shrugged as he took a scone and held the tray out for Lucinda.
“It wasn’t,” he insisted. “But you know Rage. He takes a notion in his head and he cannot be swayed from it. There is nothing keeping him here and he truly hates the entertainments of a country gathering, so he… ran.” There was a moment’s hesitation and then he added, “Am I to assume you do not want any cakes, Lucinda?”
Lucinda shook her head as she forced her mind, which had been traveling to thoughts of Ronan as Nicholas spoke, back to attention. “I’m sorry?”
He dangled the tray before her by its handle. “I have been offering you sandwiches and cakes for some time. Do you want any?”
Lucinda started and took the tray from her brother-in-law. She set it down with a clatter and pushed a finger sandwich onto her plate without even looking to see what flavor it was. The bread slid off to the side and she forced it back into place.
“I’m sorry. I suppose I was woolgathering. Thank you. The food is delightful.”
Jane arched a brow. “I will pass on the compliment to our cook, but I won’t share with her that you made it without even tasting your sandwich.”
Once again, Lucinda blushed, though she knew Jane was only teasing her in the friendliest of manners. Jane and Nicholas knew nothing of the confusion and turmoil in her heart at present. And she certainly couldn’t tell them. How would
that
conversation go? She could almost picture Nicholas flying off the handle if she told him she had not only kissed his best friend, but that Ronan had all but offered her an affair.
But
, perhaps she could take advantage of the situation in some other way. For instance, by finding out more about the man whose kiss had shocked and titillated her in ways that still made her shiver when she recalled them.
“You and Mr. Riley have been friends for as long as I have ever known you,” Lucinda said and prayed she did not sound overly interested.
Nicholas nodded. “Indeed. He is a good friend, the best I have had in my life.” He looked at her with a frown. “Aside from my brother, of course.”
Lucinda smiled in an attempt to show him that his statement had not hurt her. And was surprised that it did not. Her grief had once made it almost impossible for her to be in the same room as Nicholas, with his face just like Anthony’s. Even when that terrible time had passed, she still flinched whenever someone mentioned her late husband, for good or for ill. But now even that pain was beginning to fade. She wasn’t sure whether to rejoice that grief no longer overwhelmed her, or to miss that intense pain that signaled how close to Anthony she still felt.
“Rage even helped me,” Jane said with a sad smile. “And I will appreciate that for all my life.”
“What kind of a man is he?” Lucinda asked, drawn again to thoughts of Ronan.
Nicholas took a bite of his sandwich and as he chewed, he seemed to contemplate the question. “A complicated one, that is for certain. He was born into poverty in Ireland, but after his mother died he was moved to London and taken in by servants of the Duke of Nordcross.”
“Relatives?” Lucinda asked, setting her plate aside. Her hunger was for information, not food.
Nicholas shrugged. “I don’t think so. He didn’t talk about that time much and I’ve never pried.”
“Whoever they were, they must have had a good relationship with the Duke,” Jane added. “Because for a while Rage was educated in the same schoolroom as the Duke’s own children. He wasn’t sent to Eaton with them, of course, but he
was
put into another school, Greenlake. That is how he became so well-spoken and educated, at least in worldly matters, though he has never been comfortable with social ones.”
Lucinda blinked. It was odd, she had never really thought of how an underground boxer with a rough past seemed so well-versed and intelligent. That was just Ronan, a man who was part of a world she didn’t understand in the least. But in truth, he
was
an odd dichotomy of both wild and tamed.
“If he was so well educated, how in the world did he end up fighting in the underground?” she asked. “Was it a situation like your own, Nicholas? A decision to break with the world he knew?”
Nicholas shook his head. “No. I think he never was comfortable in that world of the higher class. He certainly isn’t now. He ran away from his school when he was fifteen and took to the streets for a while. Luckily he’d had to fight his way out of trouble both in the nursery at the Duke’s home and later in his school, so when Easton Hathaway saw him beating the piss out of a boy twice his size, he saw a world of potential. He took Rage in and trained him to fight.”
“Easton Hathaway,” Lucinda said. “A man from the underground?”
Nicholas nodded and she was surprised at how much softer his expression became. There was true affection there. Something that made him look all the more like his brother, who had never had the hard quality that Nicholas did.
“Yes. Hathaway arranged the fights and trained the fighters. He was the reason Rage survived and how the two of us met. Hathaway died a few years ago, but his wife Ruby still runs his pub down by the docks in London. They were hard people, living in a hard world, but there are no better folk in all creation. I’m sure Rage would agree.”
Lucinda stared at her hands, folded in her lap. She had not asked much about Nicholas’s time away from their family. She knew of the toll it had taken on her husband and his family, of course. She had even heard a few of his stories when he came to visit Anthony. But she hadn’t wanted to picture the kind of life he must have led.
Now she couldn’t help but picture Ronan, a teenaged Ronan, on the dirty, dangerous streets of the worst parts of London. How lucky he had been to find someone who would take care of him, rather than exploit him. Someone who had accepted him and molded him into the man he had become.
“Why all the questions about my friend, Lucinda?” Nicholas asked with a laugh before he drained his teacup in one gulp and reminded her that sometimes he was not as tamed as perhaps he pretended to be. “You aren’t thinking of joining up with the underground and learning to fight, are you? Perhaps have Rage teach you a thing or two?”
Lucinda froze and slowly lifted her gaze to her brother-in-law. She knew that look and the sparkle in his eyes well. He was teasing her, he had no idea of how conflicted she truly was about Ronan. But he had struck awfully close to a very raw nerve. A secret she wanted to protect, at any cost.
“Goodness, Nicholas, don’t torment her,” Jane smiled. “Rage is very handsome and perhaps she is just curious about him.”
Again, Lucinda recognized the gentle teasing of her sister-in-law, but she still found herself holding her breath as she awaited Nicholas’s response to that statement. To her surprise, he tilted his head back and let out a long, low laugh.
“I doubt Lucinda has an interest of that kind in my friend.”
She tensed. And what did that mean? That Nicholas didn’t think Ronan was good enough for her… or that she was not the kind of woman who could hold his friend’s interest? Either way, the laughter offended her more than it should.
She stared at him evenly. “It has been two years since I was widowed,” she said softly. “I would be lying if I said I didn’t wonder how you would feel were I to develop an interest in…” She trailed off and then took a coward’s route. “…a man?”
Nicholas’s laughter faded at her question and there was a sudden tension lacing the room. Something that had not hung between them since she had confronted him about his bad behavior over a year before.
He drew in a long breath. “I hope you didn’t think I was implying that you should never have an interest in a man again.”
She pursed her lips to keep herself from blurting out,
Only not in Ronan?
He continued without knowing her treacherous thoughts, “You were a good and faithful wife to my brother and he loved you with all his heart. I didn’t understand how much until I met Jane.” He reached out and briefly touched his wife’s hand.
Lucinda turned her face. Her emotions on that subject were so complicated. On any subject that had to do with the heart, it seemed.
“I know that could my brother tell us his wishes, he would tell you that he didn’t want you to spend your life alone.” He sighed. “If you were to find a man to marry, it would probably be difficult for me at first, but I would give you my blessing if you asked for it.”
Lucinda flinched. Marry again. That wasn’t exactly what Ronan had implied when he told her he wanted her. That when he returned to the shire, she could have whatever she liked if she wanted it. He had offered to be her lover, not her husband. And she doubted Nicholas would be as accepting of
that
idea, even if she had the nerve to confess it.
Before either she or Nicholas could continue on the awkward subject, the door to the parlor opened and Nicholas’s butler stepped into the room. “I beg your pardon, my lord, but there is a parcel here for you.”
“Ah, excellent,” Nicholas said as he got to his feet. “Excuse me, ladies, I have been waiting for this.”
Jane’s brow wrinkled as she looked at her husband, but she didn’t question what he had received, nor stop him as he left the room.
“That man. I shiver when I think of what he could have ordered for me this time,” Jane laughed.
Lucinda smiled. “He loves you, that is as clear as the color of his eyes or the part of his hair.”
Jane nodded. “And I love him.”
“You are lucky,” Lucinda said softly. “Appreciate every moment you have with him.”
Jane reached out and took Lucinda’s hand gently and the two women looked at each other with a gaze filled with meaning. Lucinda knew she didn’t have to tell Jane about loss. She had experienced it, herself, when her father and brother died.