The Secret to Seduction (46 page)

“Rhys,” she said softly.

She saw his back tense as he straightened. And then he carefully settled his fishing pole on the pier before he very slowly turned around. As though he didn’t want to be disappointed if he’d only imagined her voice.

When he saw her, she’d never seen a man rise to his feet so quickly.

His shirt had more open buttons than was gentlemanly, his sleeves were rolled up. His hair was much too long now, she noted, past his collar, and the wind lifted it up out of his eyes. Several days’ growth of beard darkened his jaw. Shadows a darker blue than his eyes curved beneath them. She’d never seen him look such a mess.

Dear God, he was beautiful.

He seemed somehow larger, now, framed against all that blue. Or maybe it was just that he would always seem the most important thing on any horizon for her.

He took three swift steps toward her, then stopped. Watched her, those pale eyes rivaling the sky for brilliance. Unguarded now.

So she came the rest of the way to him, slowly. And when she was close enough, she tipped her forehead against his chest. Just to touch him, to breathe him in again.

She heard him exhale a soft laugh. His arms went around her loosely, almost tentatively. Then more decisively, when she didn’t pull away from him, he pulled her into his body, wrapping her tightly with his arms.

They held each other for a time, her cheek rising and falling against his chest with his breathing. Almost as though they were too uncertain to look at each other directly, at first.

And then he loosened his arms from her, took her face in his hands. He lowered his head for a kiss, but before he kissed her, he whispered it against her lips:

“I love you.”

She wanted to always remember the expression in his eyes when he’d said it. But he kissed her before she could tell him she loved him, too.

Softly, so softly, his mouth against hers. She closed her eyes, and she felt the tears coming again.

“Oh, now…,” he murmured. “Tears?”

She laughed a little, then pressed her damp cheek against his chest and rested it there.

“Why did you stand in the courtroom, Sabrina?”

She lifted her head to look at him.

“You saw me stand?”

“I saw almost nothing else but you,” he said simply.

She paused. “No matter what Morley said…I think I was about to tell the world what manner of man you are. I was so angry that anyone would think they had the right to print things about you. I wanted to tell them why you had done the things he accused you of. Before someone else could say it.”

She stopped, and slowly tugged what seemed like miles of his linen shirt from his trousers just so she could press her hands against the warmth of his skin, against the firm muscles of his back. Feel them rise and fall with his breath, and revel in the fact that he was alive, that he was hers.

This was heaven.

“You and your animal nature,” he murmured in mock complaint as her hands wandered. He pulled her closer, and then closer still.

“It’s your fault,” she murmured. “You and your secret to seduction.”

A quiet passed, and then he spoke, very softly. And she could feel the words rumbling in his chest, against her cheek, as he spoke.

“No, it was you, Sabrina, who possessed the secret all along.”

She remembered to say it then. She tilted her head back to find him looking down at her: “I love you, Rhys.”

He was quiet for a moment. “And that’s the secret,” he said simply.

EPILOGUE

October 1821

R
ICHARD RHYS WILLIAM James Gillray, heir to the Earl of Rawden, was baptized in the early fall. But not at the church in Buckstead Heath, as one would have supposed. It was at the church in Gorringe, where three windows glowed the words “Faith, Hope, and Charity” onto their small congregation. It was how Sabrina wanted it, when she’d learned the story of the windows. In a way, the three Holt sisters felt closer to their father by being there, their brave, clever, whimsical father who had made it possible from the grave for all of them to be together again.

The little baby, who bellowed quite as manfully as his father could when his own father was in a mood, was named for three brave men: his father, Rhys, his grandfather Richard, and the man who had risked his life to take in the Holt girls and save their mother one cold winter night in 1803. James Makepeace.

And he was given his own name, William, because Rhys and Sabrina rather liked it.

Susannah and Sylvie of course made much of how Sabrina had been the last to marry but had contrived to be the first to have a baby. But since she was married to The Libertine, of all people, everyone said it was to be expected. She didn’t even blush anymore when people said things like that.

The pews were full. Sylvie and Tom and little Jamie Shaughnessy, who kept wanting to touch the baby, his cousin. Kit and Susannah. The General and Daisy Jones. Lady Mary Capstraw and the beaming Paul. Wyndham had even come, grousing cheerfully about the need to leave London for the
country.
But as he was going to be Godfather to a future earl, it was the least he could do.

And besides, it was just about the only way he’d see Rhys these days, because Rhys was all but a country squire.

Anna Holt sat in the last pew of the church and gazed at those windows. Unlike Sabrina, Sylvie, and Susannah, she didn’t feel Richard in this little church, truly. She and Richard…well, spending time in churches wasn’t, frankly, how the two of them had managed to have three beautiful, passionate girls one right after the other. Anna smiled to herself, remembering just how they’d managed that.
That
was how she wanted to remember Richard.

She wished, however—she allowed herself one brief indulgent wish, because she found wishing, on the whole, unproductive—he could have seen this very moment, a rare enough moment, where her family was suspended in happiness. Happiness was so transitory, she knew. It had an ebb and flow, and anything could shatter it, alter it, or turn it into something deeper and richer. It helped to have a few purely happy memories to rifle through on long, dark nights.

And yet, in a way, even though he wasn’t here today, Richard had all but ensured his girls would find these extraordinary men by leaving a legacy of challenge and intrigue for them to overcome.

Anna closed her eyes for a moment and pictured him and let the warmth coming in through the windows touch her eyelids.
I miss you,
she told Richard in her mind.

When she opened them again, a man was sitting next to her, regarding her with a sort of gently amused interest. She met his gaze for a moment, strangely not startled.

She had the oddest sensation that this man was a gift from Richard.

He looked very much like Kit Whitelaw, only considerably older and—she felt a bit disloyal to think it, but still—considerably more handsome. A mane of gray hair, thick brows, eyes not quite so blue as Kit’s. Lines where lines ought to be in the face of a man his age. An elegant face.

Their eyes met for a time, and in moments Anna felt a sweet bemusement she hadn’t known in nearly two decades, a curl of anticipation deeper than mere attraction.

She extended her hand finally, remembering that one of them ought to do something, and he very nearly gave a start. He bowed over it. “The Earl of Westphall,” he told her.

Ah, naturally. This was Kit’s father. The immensely important Earl of Westphall had come to Gorringe to attend the christening of her first grandchild.

And so it seemed she had a weakness for politicians.

“Anna Holt,” she told him.

And Anna thought:
Perhaps something of interest can be found in churches, after all.