Always Proper, Suddenly Scandalous (18 page)

He stiffened at the feel of her in his arms, but then the lavender and lilac scent that clung to her, blended with the fragrant aroma of the buds in bloom all around them, moved him, far headier than any spirit. His arms came up around her and he accepted her silent support. Geoffrey rested his chin atop the satiny crown of her midnight black tresses.

He didn’t care they were a stones-throw away from being discovered, alone, unchaperoned in the Duke of Somerset’s formal gardens. He craved an absolution he’d thought impossible to achieve—until he’d taken her in his arms.

“All my plans of elopement,” he said, forcing himself to tell the rest of the whole sordid story, “were of course quashed. Emma, begged me to continue on to Gretna Greene. The schemer believed I’d wed her even in the immediate aftermath of my father’s death. I, of course, refused. At which point, she revealed the truth.” A harsh, humorless laugh spilled out of his lips.

“The truth?”

“She was carrying someone else’s child.” Time hadn’t lessened the shock of that revelation. His father had been correct; Geoffrey’s judgment had been flawed, and his father had paid the ultimate price. “It didn’t even matter the identity of her nameless lover. My father was dead and I may as well have killed him by my own hand. And all because I foolishly believed I loved her.”

“Whatever happened to her?”

Geoffrey shrugged a shoulder. “Her father sent her off to his country seat in the far flung corners of Northumberland.” Geoffrey had never seen her again, nor had he ever wanted to set sight upon the woman who’d deceived him.

“Oh, Geoffrey,” she whispered.

He shrugged.

Abigail leaned back and her eyes roved a path over his face. “It is not your fault.”

Geoffrey stiffened, and set her away from him. “Of course it is my fault,” he said, his tone harsher than intended. “If I’d honored my obligations and responsibilities, my father would be alive.”

“But you loved her.”

He held her gaze, and she must have seen something dark and primitive in his eyes for she looked away. “I did not love her. I loved the illusion she presented. My responsibility was always to find and wed a proper, respectable demure English miss.”

She froze, and it occurred to him he’d inadvertently offended her.

“And that is why…”

“You want to wed Beatrice,” she finished for him.

He nodded. Or, rather, that had been true at one point. He owed it as a kind of penance for his past transgressions, and yet, he was still a helpless sinner for he no longer could commit himself to wedding the young woman—even if it was to honor his father’s expectations of him.

“Because she is a proper, respectable, demure English miss,” Abigail said, her voice peculiarly hollow.

“Yes.”

Her hands came up and she folded them about herself, as if warding off a chill. She looked up toward the night sky, inhaling deep.

His eyes, of their own volition went to the rapid fall and rise of her chest. The generous swell of her breasts tempted, beckoned him to partake in the visual feast she represented. With her lush feminity, she was more captivating than Michelangelo’s rendering of the temptress Eve.

And he was the serpent at her feet, sinful, and wicked.

“Giving up your happiness will not rid you of the guilt you carry. Only you can find forgiveness in yourself, Geoffrey.”

He jerked at the unexpectedness of her words. His desire died a swift death.

“And you presume to know what would make me happy?” he asked, coldly. In that moment, he resented Abigail Stone for having turned him into the same, weak man he’d been once before.

She looked away from the night sky and met his gaze with a bold intensity. “I know it isn’t Beatrice.”

Geoffrey closed the distance between them in two long strides. “What kind of spell have you woven over me?” he asked, the words harsh and desperate to his own ears.

Abigail leaned up and kissed him.

His body stiffened at the brazenness of her touch, and then, God help him, he was as lost as Adam had been when he’d been offered that damning piece of fruit. Geoffrey took her in his arms and slanted his mouth over hers again and again. Punishing and pleading all as one.

She moaned, and he slipped his tongue inside to reacquaint himself with the moist cavern. She kissed him back with a wanton eagerness that set his body aflame. His flesh sprang hard against her belly, and he moved his hands over the exposed skin of her arms, lower, down the curve of her hip, until he cupped her buttocks in his hands. Geoffrey groaned, and urged her closer.

Abigail’s head fell back on a moan steeped in desperation. “Please, Geoffrey,” she pleaded.

He nipped at the skin of her neck and she cried out. “Yes!”

That word echoed around his mind like the blare of a pistol’s report. He jerked upright and set her away from him.

She swayed on her feet; her thick, sooty black lashes drifted open. “Geoffrey?”

His name served as a reminder. His obligation. His sins. His failings.

She stepped so close her body’s heat warmed him. “You came out here for a reason, Geoffrey. You set aside propriety and the threat of discovery for a reason.”

For her.

Instead, he said, “I was taking my leave for the evening.”

She touched the tip of her fingers to his lips. “But you didn’t leave. You stole away into my uncle’s parlor, and allowed me to lead you outside. Do you know why that is?”

Because he’d gone mad. There was no other answer that made rationale sense.

Abigail continued. “Because you are not this cold, commanding figure you present to Society.” A gentle breeze ruffled his hair, and a strand fell across his brow. She reached up and brushed it back. “You can’t punish yourself the rest of your life. I, of course, never knew your father, but I do not believe he would want that of you.”

Her words swirled about him. All the muscles in his body tightened, until he feared the slightest night breeze would shatter him. He took a step away from Abigail, and closed his eyes. For nearly five years, he’d believed he’d known exactly what his father had wanted of him. And yet…Father had merely wanted to spare him the pain of wedding a pernicious woman. His father had set out on horseback that long ago, thunderous night to save his son, not to punish him.

It had been Geoffrey who’d felt the need to flagellate himself over the loss of his father. Geoffrey opened his eyes and stared up at the twinkling starlight above. Abigail’s words, they were the benediction he’d needed for so very long. Geoffrey’s throat worked up and down reflexively. “Thank you, Abby.”

Her brow wrinkled. “I’ve not done anything, Geoffrey.”

This woman, who’d been a mere stranger a short while ago, seemed to somehow know him better than anyone else. She’d allowed him to look inside himself and confront all the ugliest darkest things he’d done in life.

“Abigail! Whatever are you doing?”

Abigail dropped her hand like she’d been burned, and spun to face Lady Beatrice who stood at the gaping parlor doors.

All the color leeched from Abigail’s cheeks. He settled a hand on hers, a paltry attempt at calming the panicked glint in her wide eyes.

“I…”

Lady Beatrice looked disapprovingly at Geoffrey a moment, and then returned her attention to Abigail. She held out a hand. “Come along. Father is looking for you. I insisted you were abovestairs, but we must return at once, lest you’re discovered out here. Alone. With Lord Redbrooke,” she said, with a pointed frown for Geoffrey.

Abigail nodded, and with a final glance in Geoffrey’s direction, hurried off with Lady Beatrice.

Geoffrey stood stock still for so long, the muscles in his neck and back began to ache.

In the moment they’d been discovered, he should have been beset with guilt and regret that Lady Beatrice had discovered him and Abigail together. Except, all he’d felt was the searing loss of Abigail’s departure. For in the too brief time they’d stolen in the garden, gazing up at the stars, his entire world had been upended with the staggering realization—he wanted her. In spite of his duties and obligations and the promises he’d made after his father’s death, he wanted Abigail with an intensity that frightened him. He’d prided himself on having become a resilient, unrelenting gentleman; one who wouldn’t repeat the mistakes of his youth.

But he was powerless to resist it any longer.

He expected he should feel some sense of panic at throwing over the oath he’d taken five years ago, but with Abigail’s spirit and her beauty and her boldness, his world had been toppled like Boney’s troops on their winter march through Russia.

His gaze climbed up to the sky as he studied the glimmering stars of Lyra. Orpheus had braved the underworld to reclaim his Eurydice. Geoffrey’s lips twitched with mirth.

He supposed he could brave his mother’s disapproval when he shared his intentions to court and wed the American, Abigail Stone.

A gentleman should speak in calming, modulated tones when dealing with a distressed female.

4
^th
Viscount Redbrooke

~16~

“Are you mad? Utterly mad? The kind of mad to rival King George himself?”

Mother’s high-pitched screech pierced Geoffrey’s ears and he shifted in his seat. Leaning back, he studied her as she frantically paced the Aubusson carpet at the center of his office. She occasionally paused, glanced up, and then shook her head, as she continued her pacing.

“You are handling this remarkably well,” he said dryly.

She glowered at him. “You dare to make a jest of this? You, Geoffrey? You do not make jests.”

He had at one time.

He attempted to placate her. “Mother,” he began.

She held a hand up. “Not a word,” she muttered, more to herself. “Marriage to that, to that…
American
. Your sister, why she scandalized Society with…with…” She colored. “I needn’t repeat what happened. But she had the decency to capture the Earl of Waxham. This…” she slashed the air with her hand, “why, this is unpardonable. You’d wed that…that…”

“American,” he supplied sardonically.

“Exactly!” she agreed, and punched the air with her fist. Apparently her fury over Geoffrey’s aims to wed Abigail Stone prevented her from detecting his intended sarcasm.

Geoffrey sat back in his chair, and folded his arms across his chest. “That American as you refer to her, is in fact the Duke of Somerset’s niece.”

“The Duke of Somerset’s niece,” she muttered under her breath, shaking her head. She stopped in front of him and threw her arms open wide. “You had assured me of your intentions to court Lady Beatrice Dennington.”

Yes, he’d intended to wed the demure and perfectly proper Lady Beatrice. He’d believed she’d suited him.

Until Abigail.

“Things have changed, Mother,” he said patiently, as though speaking to a skittish colt.

“Things have changed? Things have changed, Geoffrey?” Her voice steadily increased in volume and pitch. “Days change, Geoffrey. Minutes on the clock change. One does not simply
change
ones selection for a marital partner.”

Geoffrey steepled his fingers and rested his chin upon them. “It was never my intention to…to…come to care for Abigail.”

She resumed her frantic pacing, muttering under her breath in a most undignified manner. “She is wholly inappropriate.”

“Her father is a wealthy shipping magnate in America.”

She cringed. “Her father is nothing more than a servant.” His mother’s scathing tone cut into his defense. “Come Geoffrey, the scandal which precipitated her mother and father’s rapid departure to America is not an old one, and it is well-known.” Mother stopped pacing. Her rapid breathing indicated the thin level of control the normally composed viscountess had on her emotions.

It occurred to him that he’d been just as pompous as Mother in his viewpoints. He shook his head. What a bloody ass he’d been.

“You’ve so admirably maintained a cool, reserved manner these past years. I had imagined,” she shook her head sadly, “or
hoped
, rather, after that scandalous woman, you’d put such heady passions aside.”

His mouth went dry as she dredged Emma’s betrayal to the surface. He looked away from her accusatory stare, too much a coward to confront the disapproval teeming in her gaze. “Abigail is not Emma,” he said the words for himself, just as much as for her benefit. In the years since his father’s death, Geoffrey had vastly more experience from the callow youth he’d been; he’d come to have a greater grasp on both his self-control and his ability to evaluate the character and worth of a person.

His mother stomped over in a most unladylike manner and stopped in front of his desk. She arched a brow. “Do we even know that for certain? After all, her mother was responsible for a great scandal. Is it unlikely that the daughter would be just as disreputable?”

Odd, he didn’t know the details surrounding Abigail’s mother’s flight from England. It had never seemed to matter.

Geoffrey frowned. His mother’s revelation mattered naught. He had little intention of altering his plans to wed Abigail.

He shoved back his chair and climbed to his feet, tired of his mother’s unfounded charges against Abigail’s reputation. “In the months she’s resided in London, Abigail’s done nothing Polite Society can find fault with.”

Mother folded her arms across her chest. “She cannot dance. Why, she trods all over her dance partners’ feet.”

His lips tightened. “I’d not be so trite as to not court a woman because she’s not skilled upon the dance floor.”

“Hmph. Very well, then, there was the matter of her speaking to you without introduction.” He started. “Oh, come, Geoffrey. Did you truly believe I wouldn’t have paid attention to you and that scandalous creature’s first meeting?”

Fury fell like a curtain across his eyes, and he blinked it back. His mother continued, either unknowing or uncaring of the volatile emotions thrumming through him. “And rumor would have it, that the Duke of Somerset allowed that American woman into his home because she is escaping some kind of scandal.” She dropped her voice to a low whisper as though she were imparting some great secret that would forever destroy the Redbrooke reputation. “We do not even know the details of her being here!”