Amanda Scott (35 page)

Without looking right at him, hoping she sounded sultry rather than angry, she murmured, “Have you really,
Nicky?”

“Yes, by God. Now—Melissa! Why the devil are you pretending to be—?”

She lowered her mask. “Pretending to be whom, Nicholas?”

“Never mind that. What in the name of all that’s holy are you doing here?”

“I wanted to come.”

“That’s beside the point. I told you to stay home.” When she glanced at an interested bystander, he added, “Come with me. I’ve a number of things to say to you.”

“I know you came to meet Lady Hawthorne,” Melissa said as he grabbed her hand and pulled her out of the thickest part of the crowd, “so you needn’t pretend that I’m the only one who did anything wrong, Nicholas.”

“I did not come to meet Lady Hawthorne,” he muttered in an angry undertone, urging her back the way she had come.

“Yes, you did. I know you did. W-we don’t need to discuss that, however.”

He bent nearer and said with menace in his voice, “Oh, we will discuss it, but you won’t say another word, little wife, until we are out of earshot of this crowd, or you will regret it. I don’t intend to make everyone here a gift of my private affairs.”

She shivered at his tone, but although she felt stimulated rather than terrified, she held her tongue. They walked past the intersection leading back to the fountain, and Nicholas guided her toward a less-populated, darker section of the gardens. When they came to the end of the broad walk, he turned to enter a walkway guarded by a looming, shadowed statue of a seated man. The path ahead disappeared in blackness.

Melissa stopped and dug in her heels. “Nicholas, no, wait!”

N
ICK’S ANGER VANISHED. HE
caught Melissa’s shoulders in a strong grip, keeping his voice calm when he said, “You are safe with me, I promise. I told you before, I won’t ever hurt you. We are only going to talk, and I don’t know another place in this garden where we can have the smallest degree of privacy. I’d take you home at once, but I came with your stepfather and I seem to have mislaid him. I won’t deny that we intended to meet Clara, but it was not for the reason you think.”

“I’m not afraid of you,” she said quietly. “When you’re angry, at least I know what you are thinking.” With a crooked smile, she added, “You won’t deny that you
are
angry with me.”

“No, I won’t deny that. I’d like to shake you till your teeth rattle. What the devil do you mean by coming here alone? Or are you alone? By God, if I discover—”

“What’s that statue?” she asked, staring at a point behind him.

He glanced impatiently over his shoulder at the large lead figure that guarded the entrance to the Dark Walk, and said, “Milton, supposedly listening to music. Never mind that. Did you hear what I said to you?”

“Yes, you’d like to shake me. I can understand that, but I hope you won’t. This place does give me the jitters, Nicholas. Couldn’t we please go into the light again?”

“Yes, very well. I suppose we ought to look for your stepfather. I can’t think where he’s got to.” They began walking back toward the Chinese entrance.

She wrinkled her nose thoughtfully, then said, “If you came with Penthorpe, and you were not meeting Lady Hawthorne yourself, he must have been the one meeting her. Charley said he was setting up a flirt, but I told her she was wrong.”

“She
was
wrong. Clara beguiled Penthorpe into believing she can introduce him to a magistrate who can make everything tidy for your mother with the law. He hasn’t told Susan about it, because he doesn’t want to get her hopes up until he’s arranged the whole business, or so he says. It’s just as likely, of course, that he simply hasn’t got round to explaining it to her yet.”

“But Mama thinks—That is, Charley said that Mama suspects—”

“Your cousin is a great deal too busy, if you ask me,” Nick said roundly. “She probably carried those tales to your mother in the first place.”

“She wouldn’t!”

“Well, I don’t know that I agree with that, but we are not going to argue about Charley. I’m still waiting for an explanation of how you got here, and with whom.”

“Th-there’s Lord Yarborne,” Melissa said.

“Don’t change the subject,” Nick said sternly, nodding to the older man, who walked past them unmasked and unaccompanied. With a flicker of amusement, Nick saw Melissa raise her mask, then lower it again. He said, “Would you like me to carry that for you? I’d just as lief let everyone know that I’m here with my wife.”

“Would you?” She looked up at him as if the answer were important to her.

“Certainly. Why not?” He took the mask, and dangled it by its stick as he walked. “You continue to evade the subject, sweetheart. How did you get here? I seem to recall making it clear that you were never to leave the house alone.”

“I didn’t.”

“Then where is your escort?”

She seemed reluctant to reply, so he stopped her and turned her to face him, ignoring the people passing them on both sides. Putting a hand under her chin, he made her look up at him, so he could watch her expression. “I want to know, Melissa.”

“I know you do, but in fact, I have no escort now. I did have one, but I insisted upon entering the gardens alone. I-I had my reasons, Nicholas, truly I did.”

“Yes, I know your reasons,” he said, releasing her chin.

She seemed surprised. “You do?”

“Of course. You haven’t made much of a secret of the fact that you came looking for me in a belief that I’d arranged an assignation with Lady Hawthorne.”

“Oh.” She paused, evidently trying to think what to say next.

“I have never thought well of jealous women,” Nick said, still watching her.

“You … you haven’t?”

“No.”

She looked away. “I never seem to be much like the ladies you prefer.”

He wanted to tell her that he liked her just fine, that despite his general distaste for jealous women, her jealousy stimulated him. In some odd, unfamiliar way it made him feel different from the way any of the others had made him feel, but he didn’t know how to say that to her without sounding either odiously arrogant about his conquests or ridiculously maudlin. He was not a man who spoke easily of his emotions, and just the thought of trying to put his rapidly changing feelings for her into stark, ordinary words made him uncomfortable.

He said, “I can’t think where the devil your stepfather’s got to. We were looking for Clara, right enough, so she could introduce him to her magistrate, but Penthorpe said he would keep returning to the Chinese Walk so we wouldn’t lose each other. I haven’t seen him once since we parted company. Nor, I might add, have I seen Clara.”

Melissa looked self-conscious, but she didn’t say anything.

Believing that she felt remorseful for having wrongly accused him of arranging an assignation—as well she should, he thought virtuously—he held out his arm to her and said matter-of-factly, “We’ll stroll back and forth until he finds us again.”

She tucked her hand in his arm, but said nothing, and as they walked, she seemed to be considering some weighty matter. He realized he still had not received an answer to his question about how she had got there, and wondered if she was dreaming up something acceptable to tell him. Deciding she would speak in her own good time, he did not press her, and was rewarded a few moments later.

Looking up at him, she said, “There’s something I ought to tell you.”

“I thought so.”

“It’s about Lady Hawthorne. Most likely she will tell you herself, but I’d prefer to make a clean breast of it even if she does not.”

She had his attention now. They had reached an intersection with the walk leading to the fireworks tower, and a crowd surged around them in anticipation of the midnight display. Finding a relatively private space near one of the tall hedges that separated the areas of the garden, Nick put Melissa between himself and the hedge, sheltering her from the others with his body. “What is it?” he said. “Tell me.”

She hesitated, then squared her shoulders, looked up at him, and said, “You are going to be furious, I know, and indeed, I don’t know what overcame me at the time. I just did it without thinking, because she made me angry.”

“Clara?”

“Yes. She called you Nicky, for one thing.”

He remembered then that earlier, in the brief few seconds when he had mistaken her identity, Melissa had addressed him in Clara’s usual manner, a fact that he had not recalled until that moment. “Then you met her here! Whereabouts?”

“N-near the big fountain. Oh, Nicholas, I’m most terribly sorry, but I’m afraid I pushed her in!”

He stared at her. “You did what?”

“I pushed her. It was awful. No one even saw me do it. It happened very fast, so even though there were people all around us, they were all looking elsewhere, I suppose, and we both had pink dominoes on, and we were standing quite close, so it would have been difficult for anyone not looking right at us to tell what—”

“Whoa,” he said, “pull up there, sweetheart.”

“You sound like Charley,” she said with a wan smile. “She always talks as if people were horses.”

“Melissa.”

She bit her lower lip, then, said, “It’s a dreadful thing to have done, I know, and I daresay you will demand that I apologize to her, but indeed, sir, I don’t know if I can.”

He couldn’t help it. The laughter that had been threatening to burst from him ever since she mentioned pushing Clara into Vauxhall’s famous fountain could not be contained any longer. “I don’t believe it,” he gasped when he could speak again.

She gaped at him in disbelief. “You aren’t angry?”

He chuckled, the vision of the haughty Clara sprawled in the fountain as clear to him as if he had seen her himself. “Don’t make a habit of it, sweetheart, but if I know Clara, she deserved it. I can imagine her tumbling into the water. I just can’t picture my sweet, gentle Melissa pushing her. Oh, Lord!”

Her cheeks grew pink. She said, “Must we keep looking for my step-papa?”

He grinned. “I think I’d rather enjoy the fireworks with my wife. Besides, if he found Clara soaking wet, it probably never occurred to him to come find me before taking her home. Have you seen the Cave of Fingal yet, or the Chinese ballet?” When she shook her head, he said, “There is also a wonderful mechanical theater and something called a Cosmorama. Before we go a-wandering, however, we must watch the fireworks. They say an intrepid American gentleman is to make an ascent on a rope to the top of the Moorish tower. I’m sure you will enjoy seeing that.”

They watched the American’s ascent, which climaxed amid leaping flames of blue light and a volley of rockets, augmenting the constant din of fireworks and cheers. After the last blue light flickered out, Nick took Melissa to look inside the Rotunda, and then to the mirror-lined supper room and the picture room. Afterward they wandered along the South Walk, listening to the orchestra. When they reached the far end of the Dark Walk, near Fingal’s Cave, and he drew her into the darkness again, she did not protest. He pulled her into his arms. Then, taking advantage of the fact that the crowd had thinned and the walk was temporarily deserted, he kissed her.

She responded instantly and enthusiastically.

A moment later, Nick murmured, “I think I’d like to go home now.”

“Yes.”

She snuggled against him in the wherry, and in the hack he hired at Westminster, when she rested her head in the hollow of his shoulder, he felt at peace with her, and comfortable. Despite what she had admitted doing to Clara—the thought of which brought another smile to his lips—his Melissa remained a gentle soul, a dove among the more predatory birds of the
beau monde.
Inhaling her lavender scent, recalling the way she had faced him, the way she had trusted him not to hurt her despite his anger, he recognized what he was feeling as an overwhelming desire to protect her from harm.

Inside the house, she did not protest when he picked her up and carried her to his bedchamber. Not a murmur about sending for Lucy, or warning Lisset. The latter had left a lamp burning low on the dressing table, and the bed turned down. Nick put Melissa down, untied the pink ribbon at her throat, and pushed the domino to the floor.

“Goodness me, I forgot!” Her hand clamped against something at her side, and for a moment he thought he had hurt her.

“What’s wrong?”

“Oh—Oh, nothing, really,” she said. “I-I forgot I had my reticule, that’s all. I tied it inside my domino so I wouldn’t attract a cut-purse. I needed it because of the admission cost, you know, and … and to get home again, if necessary.”

He did not think she was being completely frank with him, but at that moment, he did not care a whit. “You’ve tied it to your sash. Shall I help you untie it?”

“Oh, no, I can manage.” She untied it at once, and set it casually on a side table.

He thought she looked reluctant to leave it there, but she turned to him while the thought was still half-formed in his mind, and tilted her face up, silently inviting him to kiss her. He did. His fingers made quick work of the rest of her clothing, and his own. To his delight, she responded as she never had before, relaxing, allowing him to explore her body with his hands and lips, then following his guidance without the slightest sign that she was not fully enjoying herself, until they both were exhausted.

They lay for some moments in silence. At last he said in a teasing tone, “Don’t think I’ve forgotten that you never revealed the name of your companion tonight, sweetheart. If you tell me it was Oliver who escorted you to Vauxhall and then left you at the gate, I swear I’ll throttle him.”

“Then I certainly won’t tell you it was Oliver,” she murmured sleepily.

When Melissa awoke the following day, she was astonished to learn from the clock on Nicholas’s dressing table that she had slept into the afternoon. She was alone. Not only had Lisset not disturbed her, no one had. Wondering where her husband was, she glanced uneasily at the reticule sitting where she had put it the night before. It looked as if it had not been moved, and she did not think Nicholas had looked inside. Surely, he would have wakened her and demanded to know what she thought she was doing, carrying a hundred pounds to the Vauxhall opening.