Almost Heaven (52 page)

“I would like to see you cheat,” Elizabeth said impulsively, smiling at him.

His hands stilled, his eyes intent on her face. “I beg your pardon?”

“What I meant,” she hastily explained as he continued to idly shuffle the cards, watching her, “is that night in the card room at Charise’s there was mention of someone being able to deal a card from the bottom of the deck, and I’ve always wondered if you could, if
it
could . . .” She trailed off, belatedly realizing she was insulting him and that his narrowed, speculative gaze proved that she’d made it sound as if she believed him to be dishonest at cards. “I beg your pardon,” she said quietly. “That was truly awful of me.”

Ian accepted her apology with a curt nod, and when Alex hastily interjected, “Why don’t we use the chips for a shilling each,” he wordlessly and immediately dealt the cards.

Too embarrassed even to look at him, Elizabeth bit her lip and picked up her hand.

In it there were four kings.

Her gaze flew to Ian, but he was lounging back in his chair, studying his own cards.

She won three shillings and was pleased as could be. He passed the deck to her, but Elizabeth shook her bead. “I don’t like to deal. I always drop the cards, which Celton says is very irritating. Would you mind dealing for me?”

“Not at all.” Ian said dispassionately, and Elizabeth realized with a sinking heart that he was still annoyed with her.

“Who is Celton?” Jordan inquired.

“Celton is a groom with whom I play cards,” Elizabeth explained unhappily, picking up her hand.

In it there were four aces. She knew it then, and laughter and relief trembled on her lips as she lifted her face and stared at her betrothed. There was not a sign, not so much as a hint anywhere on his perfectly composed features that anything unusual had been happening.

Lounging indolently in his chair, he quirked an indifferent brow and said, “Do you want to discard and draw more cards, Elizabeth?”
 

“Yes,” she replied, swallowing her mirth, “I would like one more ace to go with the ones I have.”

“There are only four,” be explained mildly, and with such convincing blandness that Elizabeth whooped with laughter and dropped her cards. “You are a complete charlatan!” she gasped when she could finally speak, but her face was aglow with admiration.

“Thank you, darling,” he replied tenderly. “I’m happy to know your opinion of me is already improving.”

The laughter froze in Elizabeth’s chest, replaced by warmth that quaked through her from head to foot. Gentlemen did not speak such tender endearments in front of other people, if at all. “
I’m a Scot
,” he’d whispered huskily to her long ago.
“We do.”
The Townsendes had launched into swift, laughing conversation after a moment of stunned silence following his words, and it was just as well, because Elizabeth could not tear her gaze from Ian, could not seem to move. And in that endless moment when their gazes held, Elizabeth had an almost overwhelming desire to fling herself into his arms. He saw it, too, and the answering expression in his eyes made her feel she was melting.

“It occurs to me, Ian,” Jordan joked a moment later, gently breaking their spell, “that we are wasting our time with honest pursuits.”

Ian’s gaze shifted reluctantly from Elizabeth’s face, and then he smiled inquisitively at Jordan. “What did you have in mind?” he asked, shoving the deck toward Jordan while Elizabeth put back her unjustly won chips.

“With your skill at dealing whatever hand you want, we could gull half of London. If any of our victims had the temerity to object, Alex could run him through with her rapier, and Elizabeth could shoot him before he hit the ground.”

Ian chuckled. “Not a bad idea. What would your role be?”

“Breaking us out of Newgate!” Elizabeth laughed.

“Exactly.”

After Ian left for the Greenleaf Inn, where he planned to stop for the night before continuing the trip to his own home, Elizabeth stayed downstairs to put out the candles and tidy up the drawing room. In one of the guest chambers above, Jordan glanced at his wife’s faint, preoccupied smile and suppressed a knowing grin. “Now what do you think of the Marquess of Kensington?” he asked.

Her eyes were shining as she lifted them to his. “I think,” she softly said, “that unless he does something dreadful, I’m prepared to believe he could truly be your cousin.”

“Thank you, darling,” Jordan replied tenderly, paraphrasing Ian’s words. “I’m happy to see your opinion of him is already improving.”

CHAPTER 26

Elizabeth was undeniably eager to see Ian again, and more than a little curious about the sort of house he lived in. He’d told her he had purchased Montmayne last year with his own money, and, after being with him in Scotland, she rather imagined a ruggedly built manor house would suit him. On the one hand it seemed a foolish waste not to live at Havenhurst, which would offer them every convenience, but she understood that Ian’s pride would suffer if he had to live with her in her home.

She’d left Lucinda behind at the inn where they’d spent the night, and the coach had been traveling for more than two hours when Aaron finally turned off the road and pulled to a smart stop at a pair of massive iron gates that blocked their entry. Elizabeth glanced nervously out the window, saw the imposing entry, and reached the obvious conclusion that either they were in the wrong place or Aaron had pulled into the drive to ask directions. A gatekeeper emerged from the ornate little house beside the gates, and Elizabeth waited to hear what Aaron said.

“The Countess of Havenhurst,” Aaron was informing the gatekeeper.

In
 
shock, Elizabeth watched through the open window of the coach as the gatekeeper nodded and then walked over to the gates. The massive iron portals opened soundlessly on well-oiled hinges, and Aaron drove through as the gatekeeper was swinging them closed. Twisting her gloves in her hands, Elizabeth gazed out the window as the coach made its way along an endless, curving drive that wound through manicured parkland, offering a scenic view of an estate that surpassed anything Elizabeth had ever seen. Rolling hills dotted with lush trees bounded the estate on three sides, and a beautiful stream bubbled merrily beneath a stone bridge as the horses clattered across it.

Ahead of her the house came into view, and Elizabeth could not stop her exclamation at the exquisite beauty she beheld spread out before her. A majestic three-story house with two wings angled forward on the sides stretched out before her. Sunlight glinted on the large panes of glass that marched across its front; wide flights of shallow, terraced brick steps led from the drive to the massive front door, with stone urns containing clipped shrubs on both sides of every four steps. Swans drifted lazily on the mirror surface of a lake on the far end of the lawn, and beside the lake was a Grecian-style gazebo with white columns that was so immense a quarter of her own home could have fit inside it The sheer magnitude of the grounds, combined with the precise positioning of every single scenic attribute, made it all seem both overwhelming and utterly breathtaking.

The coach finally drew up before the terraced steps, and four footmen descended, garbed in burgundy and gold. They helped a dazed Elizabeth to alight, and, positioning themselves on either side of her like an honor guard, they escorted her to the house.

A butler opened a massive front door and bowed to her and Elizabeth stepped into a magnificent marble entryway with a glass ceiling three stories above. Entranced, she looked about her, trying to assimilate what was happening.

“My lord is in his study with guests who arrived unexpectedly,” the butler said, drawing Elizabeth’s gaze from the graceful, curving Palladian staircases that swept upward on both sides of the great hall. “He asked that you be escorted to him the moment you arrived.”

Elizabeth smiled uncertainly and followed him down a marble hallway, where he paused before a pair of polished double doors with ornate brass handles and knocked. Without waiting for an answer he opened the door. Elizabeth automatically started forward three steps, then halted, mesmerized. An acre of thick Aubusson carpet stretched across the book-lined room, and at the far end of it, seated behind a massive baronial desk with his shirtsleeves folded up on tanned forearms, was the man who had lived in the little cottage in Scotland and shot at a tree limb with her.

Oblivious to the other three men in the room who were politely coming to their feet, Elizabeth watched Ian arise with that same natural grace that seemed so much a part of him. With a growing sense of unreality she heard him excuse himself to his visitors, saw him move away from behind his desk, and watched him start toward her with long, purposeful strides. He grew larger as he neared, his broad shoulders blocking her view of the room, his amber eyes searching her face, his smile one of amusement and uncertainty. “Elizabeth?” he said.

Her eyes wide with embarrassed admiration, Elizabeth allowed him to lift her hand to his lips before she said softly, “I could kill you.”

He grinned at the contrast between her words and her voice. “I know.”

“You might have told me.”

“I hoped to surprise you.” More correctly, he had hoped she didn’t know, and now he had his proof.  Just as he had thought, Elizabeth had agreed to marry him without knowing anything of his personal wealth. That expression of dazed disbelief on her face had been real. He’d needed to see it for himself, which was why he’d instructed his butler to bring her to him as soon as she arrived. Ian had his proof, and with it came the knowledge that no matter how much she refused to admit it to him or to herself, she loved him.

She could insist for now and all time that all she wanted from marriage was independence, and now Ian could endure it with equanimity. Because she loved him.

Elizabeth watched the expressions play across his face. Thinking he was waiting for her to say more about his splendid house, she gave him a jaunty smile and teasingly said, “‘Twill be a sacrifice, to be sure, but I shall contrive to endure the hardship of living in such a place as this, How many rooms are there?” she asked.

His brows rose in mockery. “One hundred and eighty-two.”

“A small place of modest proportions,” she countered lightly. “I suppose we’ll just have to make do.”

Ian thought they were going to do very well.

He finished his meeting a few minutes later and almost rudely ejected his business acquaintances from his library, then he went in search of Elizabeth.

“She is out in the gardens, my lord,” his butler informed him. A short while later Ian strolled out the French doors and started down the balcony steps to join her. She was bending down and snapping a withered rosebud from its stem. “It only hurts for a moment,” she told the bush, “and it’s for your own good. You’ll see.” With an embarrassed , little smile she looked up at him. “It’s a habit,” she explained.  

“It obviously works,” he said with a tender smile, looking at the way the flowers bloomed about her skirts.

“How can you tell?”

“Because,” he said quietly as she stood up, “until you walked into it, this was an ordinary garden.”

Puzzled, Elizabeth tipped her head. “What is it now?”

“Heaven.”

Elizabeth’s breath caught in her chest at the husky timbre of his voice and the desire in his eyes. He held out his hand to her, and, without realizing what she was doing, she lifted her hand and gave it to him, then she walked straight into his arms. For one breathless moment his smoldering eyes studied her face feature by feature while the pressure of his arms slowly increased, and then he bent his head. His sensual mouth claimed hers in a kiss of violent tenderness and tormenting desire while his hands slid over the sides of her breasts, and Elizabeth felt all her resistance, all her will, begin to crumble and disintegrate, and she kissed him back with her whole heart.

All the love that had been accumulating through the lonely years of her childhood was in that kiss – Ian felt it in the soft lips parting willingly for his searching tongue, the delicate hands sliding through the hair at his nape. With unselfish ardor she offered it all to him, and Ian took it hungrily, feeling it moving from her to him, then flowing through his veins and mingling with his until the joy of it was shattering. She was everything he’d ever dreamed she could be and more.

With an effort that was almost painful he dragged his mouth from hers, his hand still cupping the rumpled satin of her hair, his other hand holding her pressed to his rigid body, and Elizabeth stayed in his arms, seeming neither frightened nor offended by his rigid erection. “I love you,” he whispered, rubbing his jaw against her temple. “And you love me. I can feel it when you’re in my arms.” He felt her stiffen slightly and draw a shaky breath, but she either couldn’t or wouldn’t speak. She hadn’t thrown the words back in his face, however, so Ian continued talking to her, his hand roving over her back. “I can feel it, Elizabeth, but if you don’t admit it pretty soon, you’re going to drive me out of my mind. I can’t work. I can’t think. I make decisions and then I change my mind. And,” he teased, trying to lighten the mood by using the one topic sure to distract her, “that’s nothing to the money I squander whenever I’m under this sort of violent stress. It wasn’t just the gowns I bought, or the house on Promenade . . .”