The Rake of Hollowhurst Castle (12 page)

‘I find your company tedious this afternoon, Sir Charles, and would prefer your room to your company, if you please,' she said, in an attempt to appeal to his innate good manners and make sure he did neither.

‘I came to make a formal offer for your hand, Roxanne, and intend to do so whether you like it or not.'

‘Well, I don't.'

‘Nevertheless,' he replied through gritted teeth, ‘I insist upon offering you the protection of my hand in marriage, Miss Courland, and beg you will think a little for once before you refuse me. I can offer you the role in life you were born to play as my wife. You will run my household, assist in managing my estates and stand at my side in every way as my equal. Can you put your hand on your heart, Roxanne, and say you're content living at Mulberry House as a lady of independent means with nothing much to do?'

Seeing that she opened her mouth to argue as soon as he gave her a chance, then shut it again as the lie wouldn't form, he shook his head to confirm what they both knew.

‘Of course not, for you'd be perjuring yourself. Here you are, politely bored in my cousin's very good company, but you're still bored. At Hollowhurst, I can offer you everything that should have been yours by birthright and a husband who honours you, along with the promise of children of our own into the bargain.'

‘No,' was all she could manage in reply and even she knew it was inadequate.

‘Why, Roxanne, what else do you want of me, woman? What else could you want?'

‘Love,' she finally admitted, acknowledging to herself that foolish young Rosie, who'd mourned his leaving that Christmas long ago as if her young heart had gone with him and she couldn't quite function without it, still couldn't face a marriage of pure sense and sensuality with this man.

That silly child, the one who'd languished and dreamt and been coldly disillusioned on her come out, wasn't dead, after all. No, the little idiot had just been sleeping, and here, at last, Roxanne held the answer to her questions as well as his. She'd never properly stopped loving him, and his arrival at Hollowhurst to usurp her had hurt so much because he'd not wanted to marry her for it first. Which didn't mean she had to accept the half-loaf he was offering, as if he couldn't understand why she wasn't snatching it out of his hand and thanking her lucky stars when she was four and twenty and obviously not destined to be offered such splendours again.

The silence in her once-comfortable drawing room grew until she'd filled it with all the answers to that one last, disastrous demand he might wish to agree to, but wouldn't be cruel enough to speak such a lie. Finally, feeling as if she really was at the end of her composure, she raised her hand in an inarticulate denial that she wanted an answer and turned to leave the room.

‘Stop!' he demanded and she halted, but refused to turn, for what was the point when all she would see was horror at her words and perhaps even relief in his eyes that she knew it was impossible? ‘If I
could
love anyone, it would be you,' he promised, and his voice was husky and his eyes, when she felt compelled to turn and meet
them after all, were ardent with such sincerity she had to stay and listen, despite the fact that part of her was hurt almost unbearably.

‘Truth to tell, I don't know if I have it in me to love. I remembered you so often, Rosie, the girl with the ardent eyes and the passionate mouth, despite her tender years and the fact that I already knew far more than you would ever dream of and didn't deserve you. That Christmas I told myself I'd found a girl worth waiting for, that you'd stay safe with your family until I could sweep you off your feet and take you with me the instant you were ready to marry me and sail the seven seas at my side.'

Since it was the dream she'd dreamt herself, she blinked determinedly and reminded herself it hadn't come true. He hadn't bothered to come back to Hollowhurst until the day he appeared out of the dusky gloom as if he was the ghost of all her stupid dreams made manifest, but too late to fulfil her childish fantasies, if not a full decade too late then by at least seven or eight years. ‘Then why didn't you come back for me?' she demanded huskily.

‘Because I saw too much, knew too much by then to besmirch your ardent young innocence,' he explained and ran his hand through his wildly disarrayed golden hair, as if struggling to find the words that usually sprang so glibly on to his tongue. ‘I'm damaged goods, Roxanne. The moment I rode away from here that first time, I began to doubt I was good enough for you, but at the end of another few years at sea I knew very well that I wasn't. Did you think I didn't know you were there that night in London? I saw you and made sure that you had to watch me flirt and rake and gamble the night away
and then leave that damned ball with a noble harlot on my arm.'

‘Because you didn't care,' she said flatly, only to see him shake his head passionately, as if the emotions he denied being capable of wouldn't let her speak such blasphemy.

‘No, because you'd grown up so hopeful, so rich with promise of the extraordinary woman you were about to become, and I couldn't let myself have you and spoil it all.'

‘Well, I suppose I was a virgin, after all,' she informed him with such off-balance defensiveness she wasn't really surprised when the whip of her inferred meaning made him frown with disbelief, then look at her as if she was some new and not very pleasant species.

‘Marriage or nothing, then and now,' he grated implacably.

‘I can't recall being offered that choice when I was silly enough to accept eagerly, or we might have been miserably unhappy together for years by now,' she sniped back and groaned aloud as she realised she'd admitted that she would have accepted him eagerly then in her defensive fury.

‘I knew it, I knew I couldn't want you like this unless you wanted me back,' he said clumsily and she wondered fleetingly if they were fated to flounder about trampling all over each other's finer feelings for the whole of this interminable day.

‘I do feel something—a strong desire for you to go away and not trouble me with your feeble excuses and false promises ever again, Sir Charles.'

‘No, you don't.'

‘Allow me to know what I want better than you do, sir,'

‘No, for you haven't the experience to know what you're feeling.' He held up his hand when she would have spoken, as if commanding his ship once more by force of will and the smallest gesture, and she shot him a dagger look. ‘You ventured a little too deep into the sensual world of lovers for your own good today, Roxanne, but you're too much a lady to let yourself feel how deeply your body and mine worship each other now you're out of my arms. I swear that I never felt such a potent connection to any other woman before, so this is new ground even for me.'

‘So apparently you desire me, but you don't love me. And, once upon a time, you would have offered for me if you only had had the courage to do so, but you didn't. Then you expect me to believe that now you've decided you can't live without me after all, and insist that a mere kiss that your grandmother kindly overlooked seeing must bind us together for ever?'

‘Well, not quite for ever,' he was foolish enough to quip back.

‘Not at all for ever, not even for a little bit of it, sir. I won't marry you, and, if you'd like me to do so, I'm quite prepared to have a notice inserted in the relevant papers to that effect.'

‘Of course I wouldn't, don't be ridiculous.'

‘Then oblige me by going away.'

‘I might just as well, since you're going to argue that black's white any moment now, but I'll ask you again, Miss Roxanne Courland, and again and again until you see sense and say yes.'

‘I already have, it's you who insists on being a bull-headed idiot.'

‘A failing I've possessed since birth, or at least according to my grandmother,' he agreed, with a return to his usual light indifference that she somehow hated, although she'd been silently wishing he would stop being intense and so worryingly persistent for the last ten minutes.

‘Good day, Sir Charles,' she replied repressively and stood back from his quickest path to the door in the hope he'd take it.

‘On the whole I'd have to agree, it's been a
very
good one,' he informed her with silky menace as he obliged her by strolling toward the doorway as if he hadn't a care in the world, only to pause in front of her to inspect her with wolfish thoroughness. ‘Indeed, the more memorable moments were truly exceptional, my Roxanne,' he added as his head lowered to hers, and the force of his gaze fascinated her, even as his mouth met hers with instant fire, complete desire flaming up between them as if they'd left off that long, sensuous embrace just seconds ago.

Her lips parted even as their eyes stayed open and aware, very aware. His were startlingly blue and wanting as he compelled her with his kiss, binding them into lovers as his mouth teased hers open under his and he plunged his tongue into the shameless welcome waiting for him. Before she could give herself away and let her hands reach up round his neck and pull him closer, even deeper into this undeniable need, he lifted his head and gave her a rather boyish smile that all but disarmed her.

‘At least promise you'll remember this while I'm
away, Roxanne? I'm not sure I can live without you, and whatever I feel for you now, I promise you I never felt for another woman.'

Her turn to raise an eyebrow in sceptical cynicism, but he looked so pained by what he'd just told her she believed him and doubted she'd forget the thrill and heat while he was gone however much she wanted to.

‘I'll remember,' she said carefully, unwilling to say anything he could misinterpret as agreeing to a marriage she couldn't endure on his terms.

‘Until next week then, Miss Courland,' he said by way of farewell and made her an elegant bow before striding off with one last hungry look.

Listening to him joke with Simkins while he collected his hat and cane as if he hadn't a care in the world, Roxanne wondered if she'd dreamt the last minutes. At least it argued he suffered her own restless frustration for him to walk here in the first place, and a large part of her wished she was walking back to the Castle at his side, ready to share his life as his wife. Except he'd always keep part of himself back, and she couldn't bear such a marriage with him of all people.

For now it mightn't matter, could even add to her fascination with him and the delights he showed her when his wicked mouth, inventive hands and hard, very masculine body centred entirely on her pleasure for the breath-stealing moments when it didn't seem to matter if he loved her or even trusted her. One day, though, it would part them as surely as if he were still at sea and a thousand leagues away from her. It troubled her that she must find out his real reason for giving her such a disgust of him all those years ago in London before she
dare trust him with her future, and she didn't think he'd ever willingly tell her.

No, it was her very self she must know was safe with him before she could be his wife, and love on one side couldn't sustain a good marriage without complete trust to bind them together. A bad marriage with Charles Afforde would be worse than staying at Mulberry House for the rest of her life. She'd long ago realised that fairytales were just that, but if he thought she'd settle for a lukewarm arranged marriage, he was mistaken. She touched her lips, exploring what he'd taught her, and felt tingles of heat shiver through her as she relived the memory of his passionate seduction. They were sensually compatible, but what use was that if he didn't want
her,
the real Roxanne?

Trying not to wonder how she'd endure the rest of her life without such delights, now she knew them and that more could follow, Roxanne left her drawing room with most of her flags flying and launched into a whirlwind inspection of her already immaculate house that set the servants' hall humming like a kettle about to let off a lot of steam.

‘Y
ou're very poor company tonight, Charles. I might as well have stayed in town, for all it's so deadly dull this time of year,' Lady Samphire told her grandson over dinner at Hollowhurst Castle that night.

‘You couldn't bring yourself to stay away an instant longer,' he replied.

‘Of course I could, but I admit I do have to amuse myself however I can at my age, especially now you've immured yourself in the country.'

‘Admit it, you're a nosy old woman,' Charles said with a grin as he nodded dismissal to Mereson and the hovering footmen; he was never sure what his grandmother might say next and it seemed as well to limit the damage.

‘I'm not nosy, I'm perceptive and wise,' she argued.

‘And nosy.'

‘If being concerned for your happiness makes me nosy then, yes, I'm guilty as charged. More dutiful
grandsons would be grateful for the interest of their elders and betters and treat them with proper respect.'

‘And you'd cut me out of your life for good if I ever showed the slightest signs of becoming such a spineless want-wit.'

‘True, half an hour with that mealy-mouthed gaggle of females your father saddled himself with when he wed Euphemia Crawley always makes me wonder why I ain't been allowed to poison their soup as a service to humanity. Louis should've known better than to make up to a widow with five daughters. Bound to end in trouble,' Lady Samphire said brusquely.

Her notoriously crushing pronouncements were one reason why Mereson and his acolytes were probably listening at the door at this very moment, Charles decided ruefully, hoping they hadn't caught her gruff speech. He'd not been fully accepted as the master of Hollowhurst yet and didn't want them deciding the Afforde family were homicidal maniacs.

‘I take it you're out of temper because I promised to attend my stepsister Charis's engagement party before you descended on me without warning?' he asked laconically.

‘No fun if I'm expected,' she admitted and surprised him into a smile that reached his eyes for the first time that evening. ‘That's better, no need to pretend you're a heartless rake and care for nobody with me, m'boy. You've done your best for that woman
and
those die-away girls while your father hides in his study writing second-rate poetry and drinking cherry brandy. Pretend to be hard-hearted as a stone statue with the rest of the world if you like, but I know you better, m'boy, I brought you up.'

‘How could I forget, even if I wanted to?' he asked ruefully.

‘Did your best to these last twenty years, you reprobate, but I'm glad you're settled at last, Charles. High time you found something to do with your life other than kill Frenchmen, and that girl suits you. She's got character.'

‘That she has, too much to be easily persuaded to marry me.'

‘Didn't seem to be fighting you off when I came across you both behaving disgracefully this morning,' she observed with a sidelong glance to see how he might react to such a reminder.

Luckily he'd known her a very long time and managed a bland smile, despite his urge to keep his relations with Roxanne fiercely private, even from his grandmother. ‘And if only that were enough to convince her we'd suit,' he muttered, half to himself.

‘If all you're worried about is her “suiting”, no wonder she ain't convinced. You used to have a surer touch with women.'

‘Roxanne Courland isn't just any woman,' he said shortly, unable to keep the words back, even as he knew she'd seize on them with glee.

‘No, because she's
the
woman, isn't she?' she obliged happily.

‘Certainly she's the woman I wish to make my wife,' he answered carefully, but obviously not carefully enough.

‘And you think I'm fool enough to believe that's all there is to it? I wasn't born yesterday or even the day before that. You love her, boy, and it's high time you learnt it won't crack the world in two if you let her see
who you really are under that rakehell reputation you've fostered so carefully.'

‘I don't love her, I value her. Very highly indeed, but love is for boys.'

‘And girls?'

‘They wrap up their true need to feel friendship and trust towards the man they marry with soft words and rosy ideals. Luckily, Roxanne is a woman now and will soon realise that what we'll have if she weds me is better than a fleeting passion bound to fly out of the window at the first setback.'

‘Had this argument about women and marriage with your friend Rob Besford lately, have you?' she said slyly.

‘Hah! He's a traitor to the cause if ever I came across one. He made every error a husband could, before, during and after marrying Caro, and still ended up totally besotted with his wife and she with him.'

‘My point exactly,' his grandmother said with satisfaction.

‘I'm not about to follow his ridiculous example, so you can take that smug look off your face and set your mind to plotting how I can get Miss Courland to accept my suit some time before we're both old and grey. It's you who's always demanding I supply you with yet more great-grandchildren, after all, and at this rate we'll both be too decrepit to enjoy them.'

‘I'm not decrepit,' she replied shortly, ‘nor am I fool enough to persuade that girl to accept such a bad bargain as you'll make her if you don't feel more than lust and liking for her.'

‘I'm not going to offer her a lie. I think too much of
her for that,' he said in a hard voice she rarely heard from him.

She sighed and said seriously, ‘I love you, Charles, probably too much for my own good, but there are times when I could cheerfully push you into the nearest lake, you infuriate me so much. No, don't shrug me off, this is far too important for that,' she warned with a militant look. ‘Just because your father made a figure of himself with his infatuations and his silly affairs when you were a boy, there's no need to think love's a figment of the imagination. Exact opposite, if you ask me, considering the idiot provides you with an excellent example of what love
isn't.
Must have dropped him on his head when he was a baby,' she ended, looking pained and deeply frustrated as she spoke of her third son.

‘I dare say, or maybe he's a changeling,' he joked, hating to see her unhappy as she usually was when discussing his father.

‘Then how come he looks so like your grand father?'

‘Speaking of whom, I don't see how you can insist I make a love match when you didn't yourself,' he pointed out cunningly, then instantly regretted it as her eyes clouded with memories and what he could have sworn was a haze of tears.

‘That's exactly why. Samphire may not have made a love match, but I did. Not even for you could I sit by twiddling my thumbs while you put that girl through what I had to bear myself, Charles, it hurt too much for me to do that.'

‘I'll be faithful to her until our respective dying days,' he protested half-heartedly.

He recalled the casual affection with which his
grandfather had treated his extraordinary wife, as if she were a particularly fine spaniel he'd taught a surprising variety of tricks, but still a favourite pet rather than an equal, and wondered anew at just how much pain his light-hearted grandfather had caused her over the years. She'd stayed at Verebourne Park, managing his house and estates and raising their five sons and then himself, while his grandfather lived more or less as he pleased.

Practical and down to earth as his own father had never been, the last Lord Samphire had been largely insensitive to his wife's feelings and needs and had lived an essentially separate life from her and his boys once he'd done his duty to the succession and sired them. He'd taken his seat in the Lords, done his duty and run his estates and then entertained his friends more like a single man than a husband and father. Although Charles had shared a fond relationship with the old reprobate, he'd often thought his grandmother as lonely within marriage as many spinsters were without one.

‘I didn't mind his mistresses, I even rather liked that fierce Spanish opera singer he never quite dared leave in case she came after him with a dagger,' Lady Samphire told him with rare seriousness. ‘It was the absence of so much of him when we
were
together that hurt so much. I can't find words to say how it felt to be unimportant to the man I loved, Charles; all I can tell you is I wouldn't put a female I liked as instantly as I did that girl of yours through a week, let alone a lifetime, of such a marriage if I could prevent it.'

‘But she's not unimportant to me, and I'd never treat her as Grandfather did you, love. Do you think I learnt nothing from you all?'

For once his smile only won him a brooding look
and he shifted under it and decided he'd rather face the enemy again than see her unhappy.

‘No, I think you learnt too much,' she argued sadly. ‘Your father is a selfish lightweight who spent most of your boyhood falling in love with whatever bosomy blonde was his muse that week, while your grandfather found amusements outside marriage. You grew up watching me try not to be a fool over a man who set me on the same level as his favourite hunter, so it's little wonder you decided to hold aloof from such emotions.'

‘It's not that,' he said impulsively, unable to bear the sight of her castigating herself for his own lack of romantic illusions.

‘Then whatever is it?'

‘Private,' he said sternly, for he refused to bare his soul even to her, but she'd given him a great deal to think about and at least a week spent with his father and stepfamily would give him plenty of time to do it in.

He was relieved when his grandmother shrugged, as if she'd done all she could to make him see reason, and put her formidable dowager mask back on before regally informing him she liked port and brandy and had no intention of being banished to the drawing room while he enjoyed his.

Yet had he let his father's and grandfather's poor examples colour his thinking? He frowned into his brandy glass and contemplated the idea of being so influenced with considerable dismay. He'd loved them both once upon a time, but nowadays Louis Afforde resented the son he'd rejected for being wealthy and successful when he was neither, and there was nothing he could do about that even if he wanted to.

He loved Lady Samphire, though; she'd filled the lonely places in his heart and given him the steadfast, but not uncritical, affection he'd needed to enjoy a carefree boyhood once he left his father's so-called care. So she was wrong in thinking he wouldn't love anyone. What he wouldn't do was fall for the myth of romantic love between a man and a woman. It was a comfortable enough illusion, he supposed, so long as said man and woman stayed away from high tragedy, of course. He'd never fancied himself a Romeo and the very thought made him smile sardonically into his fine cognac.

No, he'd an affection for Roxanne Courland that had already lasted far longer than any imaginary romance ever would, and he desired her with an unrelenting passion beyond anything he'd felt in the past for other women, but he refused to call it ‘love' when love died and left the object of it alone and dissatisfied. His future with Roxanne was too important for that, and if they were to have a lifetime of affection and commitment with each other, he'd no intention of risking it all for the fancy façade of a gimcrack romance that might please everyone but him, until the gilt wore off.

 

‘That colour suits you wonderfully well, Roxanne,' Stella told her as they let Mereson's acolytes take their warm cloaks and then spent a few moments brushing out the few creases the short journey from Mulberry House had put in their gowns.

‘And I like midnight-blue velvet a good deal more than the black one you wanted, even if Lady Samphire will tell you she can't see much difference by candlelight, Stella,' Roxanne said as she controlled the slight
shaking of her hand as she fussed with imaginary lint on her amber velvet skirts.

It was ten days since Sir Charles Afforde had proposed to her last and nothing short of wild horses would persuade her to admit that she'd missed him. Or that she felt ridiculously nervous of meeting him in public now he'd returned home and was probably still waiting for her to change her mind.

‘Great-Aunt Augusta mourns the unwieldy panniers and acres of brocade I can just recall seeing her in when I was in my nursery, or at least when I should have been. Charles and I used to creep downstairs while our nurses gossiped by the fire in the day nursery to watch the grown-ups entertain.'

‘I dare say you were an impossible pair,' Roxanne replied, as the very thought of Charles as a golden-haired scamp with a smile as deceptively innocent as a fair June morning threatened to melt her determination to resist his present, very adult appeal.

‘According to her ladyship we were a pair of hell-born brats, but she still saw we got the finest titbits from her parties before summarily returning us to our beds whenever we got caught.'

Roxanne laughed and thought that sounded very like the formidable old lady who she'd soon discovered concealed a heart soft as butter under her gruff and cynical manner.

‘I can tell you two haven't been pining for my company.' Sir Charles's deep voice broke into their conversation, and Roxanne thought he ought to be made to wear hobnailed boots at all times to stop him ghosting about the place, making her jump.

‘Of course not,' she allowed herself to tell him with a smug smile.

‘Whilst I, of course, have been desolate,' he told her soulfully.

‘Mountebank,' she categorised him sternly.

‘No, it's true,' he assured her, not seeming at all cast down by her unenthusiastic greeting. ‘Anyone would be desolate to be marooned in the exclusive company of my closest family. I've just endured it for over a week and not even Miss Courland's finest swallowing-vinegar face, so often pulled at the very sight of me, I mourn to say, can dull the joy of making my escape without being forced to bring at least one of my female relatives home with me so she can make my life uncomfortable at her leisure.'