Part 2 (1/2)
He laughed, took her face in his hands, and stroked his thumbs along the line of her jaw. ”Deeply and completely. What fools we have been, eh? Each of us secretly pining after the other. We must name our first child after Hartwell for hatching the scheme that finally brought us together.”
She smiled at the implication of his words, and was tilting her mouth up for another kiss when a shriek from the shrubbery interrupted them.
”Lydia! What on earth are you about?”
Dear G.o.d, it was her mother. She looked anxiously at Geoffrey, who kissed her hand and rose from the bench.
”Not to worry, Mrs Bettridge. Miss Lydia and I have come to an understanding. I trust you will forgive us for behaving improperly, but we were too excited and happy to resist a kiss or two.”
”Well.” Her mother frowned, but she did not fool Lydia. She was surely thrilled beyond measure. ”I suppose one must forgive high spirits at such a time. You will, naturally, call upon Mr Bettridge tomorrow.”
”You may tell him to expect me.”
”Good. In the meantime, Lydia, come with me. You must not been seen coming out of the garden with Mr Danforth, regardless of his intentions. People will talk, you know. Come along now.”
Her mother linked arms with her and walked towards the house. Lydia cast one last, longing look at Geoffrey before following her mother out of the garden and up the terrace steps.
”Well, my dear.” Her mother gave her arm a fond squeeze. ”What an interesting evening you have had. Aren't you glad Philip Hartwell didn't show up for that first set?”
”I have never been so glad of anything in all my life.”
And she would thank him for it for staying inside on a rainy day, for explaining the male psyche, for concocting a most excellent plan and for giving up his role in it. But mostly, for helping her to achieve her heart's desire. At long last.
Upon a Midnight Clear.
Anna Campbell.
North Yorks.h.i.+re December 1826.
The crash of shattering wood and the terrified screams of horses sliced through the frosty night like a knife.
Sebastian Sinclair, Earl of Kinvarra, swore, brought his restive mount under control, then spurred the nervous animal around the turn in the snowy road. With cold clarity, the full moon shone on the white landscape, and starkly revealed the disaster before him.
A flashy black curricle lay on its side in a ditch, the hood up against the weather. One horse had broken free and wandered along the roadway, its harness dragging. The other plunged in the traces, struggling to escape.
Swiftly Kinvarra dismounted knowing his mare would await his signal and dashed to free the distressed horse. As he slid down the icy ditch, a hatless man scrambled out of the smashed curricle.
”Are you hurt?” Kinvarra asked, casting a quick eye over him.
”No, I thank you, sir.” The effete blond fellow turned to the carriage. ”Come, darling. Let me a.s.sist you.”
A graceful black-gloved hand extended from inside and a cloaked woman emerged with more aplomb than Kinvarra would have thought possible in the circ.u.mstances. Indications were that neither traveller was injured, so he concentrated on the trapped horse. When he spoke soothingly to the animal, the terrified beast quieted to panting stillness, exhausted from its thras.h.i.+ng. While Kinvarra checked the horse, murmuring calm a.s.surances throughout, the stranger helped the lady up to the roadside.
With a shrill whinny, the horse shook itself and jumped up to trot along the road towards its partner. Neither beast seemed to suffer worse than fright, a miracle considering that the curricle was beyond repair.
”Madam, are you injured?” Kinvarra asked as he climbed up the ditch. He stuck his riding crop under his arm and brushed his gloved hands together to knock the clinging snow from them. It was a h.e.l.lishly cold night.
The woman kept her head down. From shock? From shyness? For the sake of propriety? Perhaps he'd stumbled on some elopement or clandestine meeting.
”Madam?” he asked again, more sharply.
”Sweeting?” The yellow-haired fop bent to peer into the shadows cast by the hood. ”Are you sure you're unharmed? Speak, my dove. Your silence strikes a chill to my soul.”
While Kinvarra digested the man's outlandish phrasing, the woman stiffened and drew away. ”For heaven's sake, Harold, you're not giving a recitation at a musicale.” With an unmistakably impatient gesture, she flung back the hood and glared straight at Kinvarra.
Even though he'd identified her the moment she spoke, he found himself staring dumbstruck into her face a piquant, vivid, pointed face under an untidy tumble of luxuriant gold hair.
He wheeled on the pale fellow. ”What the devil are you doing with my wife?”
Alicia Sinclair, Countess of Kinvarra, was bruised and angry and uncomfortable and horribly embarra.s.sed. And not long past the choking terror she had felt when the carriage toppled.
Even so, her heart launched into the wayward dance it always performed at the merest sight of Sebastian.
She'd been married for eleven long years. She disliked her husband more than any other man in the world. But nothing prevented her gaze from clinging helplessly to every line of that narrow, intense face with its high cheekbones, long, arrogant nose and sharply angled jaw.
d.a.m.n him to Hades, he was still the most magnificent creature she'd ever beheld.
Such a pity his soul was as black as his glittering eyes.
”After all this time, I'm flattered you still recognize me, My Lord,” she said silkily.
”Lord Kinvarra, this is a surprise,” Harold stammered. ”You must wonder what I'm doing here with the lady . . .”
Oh, Harold, act the man, even if the hero is beyond your reach. Kinvarra doesn't care enough about me to kill you, however threatening he seems now.
Although even the most indifferent husband took it ill when his wife chose a lover. Kinvarra wouldn't mistake what Alicia was doing out here. She stifled a rogue pang of guilt. Curse Kinvarra, she had absolutely nothing to feel guilty about.
”I've recalled your existence every quarter these past ten years, my love,” her husband said equally smoothly, ignoring Harold's appalled interjection. The faint trace of Scottish brogue in his deep voice indicated his temper. His breath formed white clouds on the frigid air. ”I'm perforce reminded when I pay your allowance, only to receive sinfully little return.”
”That warms the c.o.c.kles of my heart,” she sniped, not backing down.
She refused to cower like a wet hen before his banked anger. He sounded reasonable, calm, controlled, but she had no trouble reading fury in the tension across his broad shoulders or in the way his powerful hands opened and closed at his sides.
”Creatures of ice have no use for a heart. Does this paltry fellow know he risks frostbite in your company?”
She steeled herself against the taunting remark. Kinvarra couldn't hurt her now. He hadn't been able to hurt her since she'd left him. Any twinge she experienced was just because she was vulnerable after the accident. That was all. It wasn't because this man could still needle her emotions.
”My Lord, I protest,” Harold said, shocked, and fortunately sounding less like a frightened sheep than before. ”The lady is your wife. Surely she merits your chivalry.”
Harold had never seen her with her husband, and some reluctant and completely misplaced loyalty to Kinvarra meant she'd never explained why she and the earl lived apart. The fiction was that the earl and his countess were polite strangers who, by design, rarely met.
Poor Harold, he was about to discover the truth was that the earl and his countess loathed each other.
”Like h.e.l.l she does,” Kinvarra muttered, casting her an incendiary glance from under long dark eyelashes.
Alicia was human enough to wish the bright moonlight didn't reveal quite so much of her husband's seething rage. But the fate that proved cruel enough to fling them together, tonight of all nights, wasn't likely to heed her pleas.