In some ways it seemed wrong that he lived here now, in this solitary place. At least part of the time he ought to be walking into ballrooms and strolling into gardens in his superbly tailored black evening clothes, making feminine heartbeats triple. With a wan inner smile at her attempted impartiality, Elizabeth told herself men like Ian Thornton probably performed a great service to society-he gave them something to stare at and admire and even fear. Without men like him, ladies would have nothing to dream about. And much less to regret, she reminded herself.
Ian had not so much as turned to glance her way, and so it was little wonder that she jumped in surprise when he said without looking at her, “It’s a lovely evening, Elizabeth. If you can spare the time from your letter, would you like to go for a walk?”
“Walk?” she repeated, stunned by the discovery that he was evidently as aware of what she was doing as she had been aware of him, sitting at the table. “It’s dark out,” she said mindlessly, searching his impassive features as he arose and walked over to her chair. He stood there, towering over her, and there was nothing about the expression on his handsome face to indicate he had any real desire to go anywhere with her. She cast a hesitant glance at the vicar, who seconded Ian’s suggestion. “A walk is just the thing,” Duncan said, standing up. “It aids the digestion, you know.”
Elizabeth capitulated, smiling at the gray-haired man. “I’ll just get a wrap from upstairs. Shall I bring something for you, sir?”
“Not for me,” he said, wrinkling his nose. “I don’t like tramping about at night.” Belatedly realizing he was openly abdicating his duties as chaperon, Duncan added quickly, “Besides, my eyesight is not as good as it once was.” Then he spoiled that excuse by picking up the book he’d been reading earlier, and-without any apparent need for spectacles-he sat down in a chair and began reading by the light of the candles.
I suppose we ought to go back,” she said when several minutes had passed, and his silence became unsettling.
In answer Ian tipped his head back and closed his eyes, looking like a man in the throes of some deep, internal battle. “Why?” he said, still in that odd posture.
“Because there’s nowhere else to walk,” she answered, stating the obvious.
“We did not come out tonight to walk,” he said flatly.
Elizabeth’s sense of security began to disintegrate. “We didn’t?”
“You know we didn’t.”
“Then-then why are we here?” she asked.
“Because we wanted to be alone together.”
Horrified at the possibility that he’d somehow known what thoughts had been running through her mind at supper, she said uneasily, “Why should you think I want to be alone with you?”
He turned his head toward her, and his relentless gaze locked with hers. “Come here and I’ll show you why.”
Her entire body began to vibrate with a mixture of shock, desire, and fear, but somehow her mind remained in control. It was one thing to want to be kissed by him at the cottage where the vicar was nearby, but here, with absolute privacy and nothing to prevent him from taking all sorts of liberties, it was another matter entirely. Far more dangerous. More frightening. And based on her behavior in England, she couldn’t even blame him for thinking she’d be willing now. Struggling desperately to ignore the sensual pull he was exerting on her, Elizabeth drew a long, shaky breath. “Mr. Thornton,” she began quietly.
“My name is Ian,” he interrupted. “Considering our long acquaintance-not to mention what has transpired between us-don’t you think it’s a little ridiculous to call me Mr. Thornton?”
Ignoring his tone, Elizabeth tried to keep hers nonjudgmental and continue her explanation. “I used to blame you entirely for what happened that weekend we were together,” she began softly. “But I’ve come to see things more clearly.” She paused in that valiant speech to swallow and then plunged in again. “The truth is that my actions that first night, when we met in the garden and I asked you to dance with me, were foolish-no, shameless.” Elizabeth stopped, knowing that she could partly exonerate herself by explaining to him that she’d only done all that so her friends wouldn’t lose their wagers, but he would undoubtedly find that degrading and insulting, and she wanted very much to soothe matters between them, not make them much, much worse. And so she said haltingly, “Every other time we were alone together after that I behaved like a shameless wanton. I can’t completely blame you for thinking that’s exactly what I was.”
His voice was heavy with irony. “Is that what I thought, Elizabeth?”
His deep voice saying her name in the darkness made her senses jolt almost as much as the odd way he was looking at her across the distance that separated them. “Wh-what else could you have thought?”
Shoving his hands into his pockets, he turned fully toward her. “I thought,” he gritted, “you were not only beautiful but intoxicatingly innocent. If I’d believed when we were standing in the garden that you realized what the hell you were asking for when you flirted with a man of my years and reputation, I’d have taken you up on your offer, and we’d both have missed the dancing.”
Elizabeth gaped at him. “I don’t believe you.”
“What don’t you believe-that I wanted to drag you behind the hedges then and there and make you melt in my arms? Or that I had scruples enough to ignore that ignoble impulse?
Well, what happened to your scruples in the woodcutter’s cottage? You knew I thought you’d already left when I went inside.”
“Why did you stay,” he countered smoothly, “when you realized I was still there?”
In confused distress Elizabeth raked her hair off her forehead. “I knew I shouldn’t do it,” she admitted. “I don’t know why I remained.”
“You stayed for the same reason I did,” he informed her bluntly. “We wanted each other.”
“I was wrong,” she protested a little wildly. “Dangerous and-foolish!”
“Foolish or not,” he said grimly, “I wanted you. I want you now.” Elizabeth made the mistake of looking at him, and his amber eyes captured hers against her will, holding them imprisoned. The shawl she’d been clutching as if it was a lifeline to safety slid from her nerveless hand and dangled at her side, but Elizabeth didn’t notice.
“Neither of us has anything to gain by continuing this pretense that the weekend in England is over and forgotten,” he said bluntly. “Yesterday proved that it wasn’t over, if it proved nothing else, and it’s never been forgotten-I’ve remembered you all this time, and I know damn well you’ve remembered me.”
Elizabeth wanted to deny it; she sensed that if she did, he’d be so disgusted with her deceit that he’d turn on his heel and leave her. She lifted her chin, unable to tear her gaze from his, but she was too affected by the things he’d just admitted to her to lie to him. “All right,” she said shakily, “you win. I’ve never forgotten you or that weekend. How could I?” she added defensively.
He smiled at her angry retort, and his voice gentled to the timbre of rough velvet. “Come here, Elizabeth.”
“Why?” she whispered shakily.
“So that we can finish what we began that weekend.”
Elizabeth stared at him in paralyzed terror mixed with violet excitement and shook her head in a jerky refusal.
“I’ll not force you,” he said quietly, “nor will I force you to do anything you don’t want to do once you’re in my arms. Think carefully about that,” he warned, “because if you come to me now, you won’t be able to tell yourself in the morning that I made you do this against your will-or that you didn’t know what was going to happen. Yesterday neither of us knew what was going to happen. Now we do.”
Some small, insidious voice in her mind urged her to obey, reminded her that after the public punishment she’d taken for the last time they were together she was entitled to some stolen passionate kisses, if she wanted them. Another voice warned her not to break the rules again. “I-I can’t,” she said in a soft cry.
“There are four steps separating us and a year and a half of wanting drawing us together,” he said.
Elizabeth swallowed. “Couldn’t you meet me halfway?”
The sweetness of the question was almost Ian’s undoing, but he managed to shake his head. “Not this time. I want you, but I’ll not have you looking at me like a monster in the morning. If you want me, all you have to do is walk into my arms.”
“I don’t know what I want,” Elizabeth cried, looking a little wildly at the valley below, as if she were thinking of leaping off the path.
“Come here,” he invited huskily, “and I’ll show you.”
It was his tone, not his words, that conquered her. As if drawn by a will stronger than her own, Elizabeth walked forward and straight into his arms that closed around her with stunning force. “I didn’t think you were going to do it,” he whispered gruffly against her hair.
Don’t worry,” he said flippantly, taking her arm and starting to walk back toward the house. “I’m not going to make the ritualistic proposal that followed our last encounters. Marriage is out of the question. Among other things, I’m fresh out of large rubies and expensive furs this season.”
Despite his joking tone, Elizabeth felt ill at how ugly those words sounded now, even though her reasons for saying them at the time had nothing to do with a desire for jewels or furs. You had to give him credit, she decided miserably, because he obviously took no offense at it. Evidently, in sophisticated flirtations, the rule was that no one took anything seriously.
“Who’s the leading contender these days?” he asked in that same light tone as the cottage came into view. “There must be more than Belhaven and Marchman.”
Elizabeth struggled valiantly to make the same transition from heated passion to flippancy that he seemed to find so easy. She wasn’t quite so successful, however, and her light tone was threaded with confusion. “In my uncle’s eyes, the leading contender is whoever has the most important title, followed by the most money.”
“Of course,” he said dryly. “In which case it sounds as if Marchman may be the lucky man.”
His utter lack of caring made Elizabeth’s heart squeeze in an awful, inexplicable way. Her chin lifted in self-defense. “Actually, I’m not in the market for a husband,” she informed him, trying to sound as indifferent and as amused as he. “I may have to marry someone if I can’t continue to outmaneuver my uncle, but I’ve come to the conclusion that I’d like to marry a much older man than I.”
“Preferably a blind one,” he said sardonically, “who’ll not notice a little affair now and then?”
“I meant,” she informed him with a dark glance, “that I want my freedom. Independence. And that is something a young husband isn’t likely to give me, while an elderly one might.”
“Independence is all an old man will be able to give you,” Ian said blntly.
“That’s quite enough,” she said. “I’m excessively tired of being forever pushed about by the men in my life. I’d like to care for Havenhurst and do as I wish to do.”
“Marry an old man,” Ian interjected smoothly, “and you may be the last of the Camerons.”
She looked at him blankly.
“He won’t be able to give you children.”
“Oh, that,” Elizabeth said, feeling a little defeated and nonplussed. “I haven’t been able to work that out yet.”
“Let me know when you do,” Ian replied with biting sarcasm. “There’s a fortune to be made from a discovery like that one.
I trust you had a pleasant walk, Ian,” he said when her door closed upstairs.
Ian stiffened slightly in the act of pouring some leftover coffee into a mug and glanced over his shoulder. One look at his uncle’s expression told him that the older man was well aware that desire, not a need for fresh air, had caused Ian to take Elizabeth for a walk. “What do you think?” he asked irritably.
“I think you’ve upset her repeatedly and deliberately, which is not your ordinary behavior with women.”
“There is nothing ordinary about Elizabeth Cameron.”
“I completely agree,” said the vicar with a smile in his voice. Closing his book, he put it aside. “I also think she is strongly attracted to you, and you are to her. That much is perfectly obvious.”
“Then it should be equally obvious to a man of your discernment,” Ian said in a low, implacable voice, “that we are completely ill-suited to each other. It’s a moot issue in any case; I’m marrying someone else.”
Duncan opened his mouth to comment on that, saw the expression on Ian’s face, and gave up.
Lucinda and Mr. Wiley were returning at last, and she ran to Lucinda, hastily stepping around the black horse, who laid his ears back evilly in warning. “Lucy!” she burst out while Lucinda waited calmly for Mr. Wiley to help her down. “Lucy! Disaster has struck.”
“A moment, if you please, Elizabeth,” said the unflappable woman. “Whatever it is, it will surely wait until we’re inside and can be comfortable. I declare, I feel as if I were born atop this horse. You cannot imagine the time we had finding suitable servants…”
Elizabeth scarcely heard the rest of what she was saying. In a torment of frantic helplessness she had to wait while Lucinda dismounted, limped into the house, and sat down upon the sofa. “Now then,” said Lucinda, flicking a speck of dust off her skirts, “what has happened?”
Oblivious to the vicar, who was standing by the fireplace looking mystified and alarmed on her behalf, Elizabeth handed Lucinda the note. “Read this. It-it sounds as if he’s already accepted him.”
As she read the brief missive Lucinda’s face turned an awful gray with two bright splotches of angry color standing out on her hollow cheeks. “He’d accept an offer from the devil,” Lucinda gritted wrathfully, “so long as he had a noble title and money. This shouldn’t come as a surprise.”
“I was so certain I’d persuaded Belhaven that we couldn’t possibly suit!” Elizabeth almost wailed, twisting her blue skirt in her hands in her agitation. “I did everything, Lucy, everything I told you about, and more.” Agitation drove Elizabeth to her feet. “If we make haste, we can be home by the allotted time, and perhaps I can find a way to dissuade Uncle Julius.”
Lucinda did not leap to her feet as Elizabeth did; she did not race for the stairs, dash into her room, and vent her helpless rage by slamming a door, as Elizabeth did. Her body rigid, Lucinda stood up very slowly and turned to the vicar. “Where is he?” she snapped.
“Ian?” the vicar said distractedly, alarmed by her pallid color. “He’s gone hunting.”
Deprived of her real prey, Lucinda unleashed her fury upon the hapless vicar instead. When she finished her tirade she hurled the crumpled note into the cold fireplace and said in a voice that shook with wrath, “When that spawn of Lucifer returns, you tell him that if he ever crosses my path, he’d better be wearing a suit of armor!” So saying, she marched upstairs.
It was dusk when Ian returned, and the house seemed unnaturally quiet. His uncle was sitting near the fire, watching him with an odd expression on his face that was half anger, half speculation. Against his will Ian glanced about the room, expecting to see Elizabeth’s shiny golden hair and entrancing face. When he didn’t, he put his gun back on the rack above the fireplace and casually asked, “Where is everyone?”
“If you mean Jake,” the vicar said, angered yet more by the way Ian deliberately avoided asking about Elizabeth, “he took a bottle of ale with him to the stable and said he was planning to drink it until the last two days were washed from his memory.”
“They’re back, then?”
“Jake is back,” the vicar corrected as Ian walked over to the table and poured some Madeira into a glass. “The servingwomen will arrive in the morn. Elizabeth and Miss Throckmorton-Jones are gone, however.”
Thinking Duncan meant they’d gone for a walk, Ian flicked a glance toward the front door. “Where have they gone at this hour?”
“Back to England.”
The glass in Ian’s hand froze halfway to his lips. “Why?” he snapped.
“Because Miss Cameron’s uncle has accepted an offer for her hand.”
The vicar watched in angry satisfaction as Ian tossed down half the contents of his glass as if he wanted to wash away the bitterness of the news. When he spoke his voice was laced with cold sarcasm. “Who’s the lucky bridegroom?”
“Sir Francis Belhaven, I believe.”
Ian’s lips twisted with excruciating distaste.
“You don’t admire him, I gather?”
Ian shrugged. “Belhaven is an old lecher whose sexual tastes reportedly run to the bizarre. He’s also three times her age.”
“That’s a pity,” the vicar said, trying unsuccessfully to keep his voice blank as he leaned back in his chair and propped his long legs upon the footstool in front of him. “Because that beautiful, innocent child will have no choice but to wed that old…lecher. If she doesn’t, her uncle will withdraw his financial support, and she’ll lose that home she loves so much. He’s perfectly satisfied with Belhaven, since he possesses the prerequisites of title and wealth, which I gather are his only prerequisites. That lovely girl will have to wed that old man; she has no way to avoid it.”
“That’s absurd,” Ian snapped, draining his glass. “Elizabeth Cameron was considered the biggest success of her season two years ago. It was pubic knowledge she’d had more than a dozen offers. If that’s all he cares about, he can choose from dozens of others.”
Duncan’s voice was laced with uncharacteristic sarcasm. “That was before she encountered you at some party or other. Since then it’s been public knowledge that she’s used goods.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“You tell me, Ian,” the vicar bit out. “I only have the story in two parts from Miss Throckmorton-Jones. The first time she spoke she was under the influence of laudanum. Today she was under the influence of what I can only describe as the most formidable temper I’ve ever seen. However, while I may not have the complete story, I certainly have the gist of it, and if half what I’ve heard is true, then it’s obvious that you are completely without either a heart or a conscience! My own heart breaks when I imagine Elizabeth enduring what she has for nearly two years. When I think of how forgiving of you she has been-“
“What did the woman tell you?” Ian interrupted shortly, turning and walking over to the window.
I only have the story in two parts from Miss Throckmorton-Jones. The first time she spoke she was under the influence of laudanum. Today she was under the influence of what I can only describe as the most formidable temper I’ve ever seen. However, while I may not have the complete story, I certainly have the gist of it, and if half what I’ve heard is true, then it’s obvious that you are completely without either a heart or a conscience! My own heart breaks when I imagine Elizabeth enduring what she has for nearly two years. When I think of how forgiving of you she has been-“
“What did the woman tell you?” Ian interrupted shortly, turning and walking over to the window.
His apparent lack of concern so enraged the vicar that he surged to his feet and stalked over to Ian’s side, glowering at his profile. “She told me you ruined Elizabeth Cameron’s reputation beyond recall,” he snapped bitterly. “She told me that you convinced that innocent girl-who’d never been away from her country home until a few weeks before meeting you-that she should meet you in a secluded cottage, and later in a greenhouse. She told me that the scene was witnessed by individuals who made great haste to spread the gossip, and that it was all over the city in a matter of days. She told me Elizabeth’s fiancé heard of it and withdrew his offer because of you. When he did that, society assumed Elizabeth’s character must indeed be of the blackest nature, and she was summarily dropped by the ton. She told me that a few days later Elizabeth’s brother fled England to escape their creditors, who would have been paid off when Elizabeth made an advantageous marriage, and that he’s never returned.” With grim satisfaction the vicar observed the muscle that was beginning to twitch in Ian’s rigid jaw. “She told me the reason for Elizabeth’s going to London in the first place had been the necessity for making such a marriage-and that you destroyed any chance of that ever happening. Which is why that child will now have to marry a man you describe as a lecher three times her age!” Satisfied that his verbal shots were finding their mark, he fired his final, most killing around. “As a result of everything you have done, that brave, beautiful girl has been living in shamed seclusion for nearly two years. Her house, of which she spoke with such love, has been stripped of its valuables by creditors. I congratulate you, Ian. You have made an innocent girl into an impoverished leper! And all because she fell in love with you on sight. Knowing what I now know of you, I can only wonder what she saw in you!
Ever since he’d set eyes on Elizabeth Cameron he’d been blind-no, he corrected himself with furious self-disgust, in England he’d recognized instinctively what she was-gentle and proud, brave and innocent and…rare. He’d known damned well she wasn’t a promiscuous little flirt, yet he’d later convinced himself she was, and then he’d treated her like one here-and she had endured it the entire time she’d been here! She had let him say those things to her and then tried to excuse his behavior by blaming herself for behaving like “a shameless wanton” in England!
Bile rose up in his throat, suffocating him, and he closed his eyes. She was so damned sweet, and so forgiving, that she even did that for him.
Duncan hadn’t moved; in taut silence he watched his nephew standing at the window, his eyes clenched shut, his stance like that of a man who was being stretched on the rack.
Finally Ian spoke, and his voice was rough with emotion, as if the words were being gouged out of him: “Did the woman say that, or was that your own opinion?”
“About what?”
Drawing a ragged breath, he asked, “Did she tell you that Elizabeth was in love with me two years ago, or was that your opinion?”
The answer to that obviously meant so much to Ian that Duncan almost smiled. At the moment, however, the vicar was more concerned with the two things he wanted above all else: He wanted Ian to wed Elizabeth and rectify the damage he’d done to her, and he wanted Ian to reconcile with his grandfather. In order to do the former, Ian would have to do the latter, for Elizabeth’s uncle was evidently determined that her husband should have a title if possible. So badly did Duncan want those two things to happen that he almost lied to help the cause, but the precepts of his conscience forbade it. “It was Miss Throckmorton-Jones’s opinion when she was under the influence of laudanum. It is also my opinion, based on everything I saw in Elizabeth’s character and behavior to you.”
He waited through another long moment of awful suspense, knowing exactly where Ian’s thoughts would have to turn next, and then he plunged in, ready to press home his advantage with hard, systematic logic. “You have no choice except to rescue her from that repugnant marriage.
That miserable son of a bitch!” he bit out between clenched teeth. “After eleven years he’s going to have it his way. And all because I couldn’t keep my hands off her.”
The vicar could scarcely conceal his joyous relief. “There are worse things than having to marry a wonderful young woman who also had the excellent judgment to fall in love with you,” he pointed out.
Ian almost, but not quite, smiled at that. The impulse passed in an instant, however, as reality crushed down on him, infuriating and complicated. “Whatever she felt for me, it was a long time ago. All she wants now is independence.”
The vicar’s brows shot up, and he chuckled with surprise. “Independence? Really? What an odd notion for a female. I’m sure you’ll be able to disabuse her of such fanciful ideas.”
“Don’t count on it.”
“Independence is vastly overrated. Give it to her and she’ll hate it,” he suggested.
Ian scarcely heard him; the fury at having to capitulate to his grandfather was building inside him again with terrible force. “Damn him!” he said in a murderous underbreath. “I’d have let him rot in hell, and his title with him.”
Duncan’s smile didn’t fade as he said with asperity, “It’s possible that it’s fear of ‘rotting in hell,’ as you so picturesquely phrased it, that has made him so desperate to affirm you now as his heir.
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