Barbara Metzger (24 page)

“I have an entire library of them, but I would build you another if that is what you want.”

“And charities. I have always wanted to do more for the needy.”

“I support schools and orphanages and homes for veterans that you can manage to your heart’s content. Doro and Carswell are going to visit the orphanage this afternoon, and you can go with them to see how it can be improved. No, better not go with them or you will be refereeing all afternoon. I’ll take you myself.”

“I would like that, but—”

“But it will not change your mind about marrying me. Dash it, I am not such a bad bargain. Young ladies are constantly spraining their ankles outside my door, or swooning into my arms in overheated ballrooms. Everyone has always said I could have any woman I want.”

“But you do not want me.”

Now he leaned over and brought his lips to hers. He raised his hand to gently cup her cheek and kissed her softly, warmly, tasting the sweetness of her mouth. She responded as eagerly as he could have hoped, pressing closer, making tiny mews of pleasure.

“I want you,” he said, when he needed to breathe.

Athena could not speak. Her lips were too tingled to talk, and her mind was muzzy with shock. Heavens, of course his lordship—Ian—could have any woman he wanted. One kiss and they would fall at his feet like flies in a frost storm. Athena was glad she was sitting, or she would have collapsed to the floor. No, she would have thrown herself into the earl’s arms, like all those other betwattled belles.

Ian took a steadying breath, stunned by the desire that had blossomed with so little urging, like a wild-flower springing up after a shower. Lud, if one kiss could bloom like that, he could barely imagine the bouquet of delights marriage would bring.

“I promise we will be happy together,” he told her.

“Can you promise to love me forever?”

He sat back, letting go of the hand he still held. “No one can promise that. I do believe that love will grow in time, especially with such a promising start.”

“What about Lady Paige?”

“She is nothing. Gone, forgotten. Never to be a problem again, I promise.”

Athena’s hand felt cold now, without his fingers’ touch. “What about others like her?” she asked. “Would you promise to be faithful, forevermore? Honestly?”

Ian picked up the ring again, looking for answers in the diamond’s depths. “I would try. I have every intention of honoring my wedding vows.”

“That is not good enough. What if I merely said I would try to remain true to our marriage?”

Good grief, he’d have to kill her lover, despite his vow never to fight a duel again. “It is not the same.”

“It is to me.”

“No, Attie, think of the children that could come from such an affair. I would have to claim them as mine, even if one of your sons turned out to be my heir. That is intolerable. Every other wife understands and accepts this.”

“Perhaps they do not care if their husbands stray. I would. Perhaps they do not care for their husbands at all, having made a convenient match without their affections being involved. I would care. It is no secret that I…admire you. Think then how I would feel, knowing that you were sharing your attentions with another woman, perhaps many other women, women who were not your wife, not me. I am horrified at the notion now, so imagine what I would feel once we were, ah, intimate. I think I would rather starve in the gutter than suffer that.”

“So you would refuse me for crimes that I might commit in the future?”

“And for your past. You do not want to wed now, and you only asked me because it is the right thing to do, so why should you hold true to coerced vows?”

“Some men do.” Not many that he knew of, but some, he was sure.

“When they love their wives.”

There was that word again. Ian had been hoping Athena was too levelheaded to want flowers and poetry and all the folderol—like love—that went with courtship. “Love can grow, deuce take it.”

“And it can die from neglect.”

“Again, you are borrowing trouble. You cannot know what will happen in the future. No one can. I have seen marriages founded on nothing but love that go sour after a month. I have seen arranged matches turn into joyous unions. I have seen couples who swear they love each other, as long as they do not have to live together. I do not think anyone knows what makes a good marriage, any more than you know how you will feel in ten years.” He reached for her hand again and pressed the ring into her palm, closing her fingers around it. “I do know that you were meant to wed, to have babies, not to live alone for the rest of your life as a disgraced spinster.”

Athena let her hand stay closed, in his much larger hand, around his treasured heirloom. Everything he said made so much sense that she was swayed to consider his offer, to gamble that he might love her one day, to hope that, if she worked very hard at it, he might be content enough to be faithful. She was tempted by his words and his reasoning, and his wanting to convince her.

“You really wish to marry me?”

“I cannot be happy otherwise,” Ian said, and meant it. He could never be at peace with himself if he let her go off alone. He would have ruined two lives then, not just the boy’s.

“And you honestly think we will be happy together?”

“Why not? I like you, and you said you like me. You liked the kiss we shared, didn’t you?”

If she’d liked it any better, Athena would have begged Ian to marry her, or take her on as a replacement for Lady Paige, or make love to her right here, sharing kisses amid the kippers, and caresses over the coffee cups. Now
that
would have been a disgrace! “Did you like it?”

He laughed. “I cannot tell you how much. In fact, I enjoyed that kiss enough to want more, and often. Let me show you.”

This time the kiss was longer, deeper, more intense without being frightening, unless one counted being frightened of the butler’s return. Athena forgot even that, transported by a heated excitement she had never known before. If this was why sinners roasted in hell, she was already burnt. She was alive and hungry and wanting more.

Ian opened his mouth on hers and urged her lips to part. His tongue met hers, tentatively at first, it seemed to her, giving her the chance to savor yet another new experience. When she did not pull away—or bite his tongue, she supposed—he brushed it against her teeth, her lips, while his hand—Good grief, he could do two things at once, when Athena could not even breathe and kiss at the same time, much less think. His hand was stroking her back, her arm, her neck, as if he wanted to touch every part of her. Her every part was straining forward, eager to join the celebration that was Ian’s kiss.

Then his tongue pressed forward and back in a stirring rhythm recognizable to even the most innocent of misses, and his fingers touched her breast, where no man had ever dared. Athena grasped his head to pull him closer still. She needed more.

He needed a napkin to blot the blood on his cheek from the ring that had still been in her hand.

“Oh, I am so sorry!” she cried, dipping her handkerchief in the hot water not yet made into tea.

“I am not,” Ian said, while he dabbed at his cheek. “Not in the least. You see, we do suit, in everything that matters. If I were not a gentleman, I would show you how much I enjoy kissing you and holding you and—Well, I am a gentleman, so that will wait until after the wedding.”

Athena was sorely tempted, but not entirely lost to reason. She could not kiss his wound to make it better. She could not comb her fingers through his hair to set it to rights. She could not rub against him like a cat. She could not wed a man who was such a proficient seducer.

She set the ring back on the table and rose to leave the room before she was truly ruined, with her own cooperation. “I will consider your magnificent ring, your self-sacrificing offer, and all your promises, as well as the promises you could not make. But I will not decide until my uncle returns and I get to speak to him. He might have other plans for my future. Is that all right?”

“That is absurd, to think your seafaring uncle might have a better offer for you, one you never heard of. I cannot think you would wed a stranger over a man you already know, but I can accept the wait, if I must. Except for one thing,” Ian added as Athena opened the breakfast room door. “You are wrong. Marriage to you would be no sacrifice.”

Chapter Eighteen

Marriage is making love to the same woman for the rest of your life.

—Anonymous

Marriage is loving the same man for the rest of your life.

—Mrs. Anonymous

Ian stayed in the breakfast parlor for a while, not because he was still hungry, but because he was wondering what had just happened. He’d kissed Attie Renslow, twice. Good grief, he’d come close to tupping the mother of his future children between the toast and the teapot! If she had not held that ring, those scions might have arrived before he’d convinced the deuced woman to put the deuced diamond on her deuced finger. Damnation! The turquoise-eyed female had turned him into a rutting stag—something no other woman had accomplished since he’d turned eighteen. He did not like it. And he could not wait for it to happen again.

The butler came in with a fresh pot of coffee, saw the ring on the table, shook his head and left, taking the pot with him. Breakfast was over.

Ian tucked Athena’s lace-edged handkerchief into his inside pocket, next to his heart. Then he took it out. The blasted thing was wet and blood-specked, and he was no moonstruck swain. He’d see that the scrap of linen was laundered and returned to Miss Renslow…tomorrow or the next day, when it no longer smelled of her.

He put the ring back in its box in his pocket before leaving the breakfast room. On his way up the stairs, he considered if he should find a different ring for his next proposal. Athena liked pearls. He’d have to see what else was in the vault. Or maybe he should buy a new one, with no history to it, for a fresh start.

His valet, affixing a sticking plaster to the cut on the earl’s cheek, clucked his tongue, but he straightened his master’s neckcloth with a smile. He had not sent the earl off this morning smelling of flowers. Now his lordship smelled of April and May.

It was Lord Marden’s mother, though, who had the unkindest cut of all. Out of bed hours early, she was eager for news. Warned by her dresser, who had it from the upstairs maid, who heard from a footman, who had been in the kitchens when Cook started throwing pots and pans on the floor, she knew her son had broken his fast with Miss Renslow. Now he had broken skin.

“What did you do, frighten the girl into defending herself with a fork? I knew you would make a mull out of it, you chowderheaded clunch. Your father made a very pretty speech when he proposed, on his knees, of course. He did not attack me like a barbarian claiming his bride.”

“I did not attack Miss Renslow. This”—he raised his hand to his cheek—“was an accident. A shaving accident.”

“That is still bleeding hours later? Hah! Besides, I heard you were in perfect form this morning. The household thought you would do.”

“Well, I did not. Miss Renslow turned me down.”

“What? Are her attics to let, too? I thought the gal had something in her brainbox besides feathers and fluff, but perhaps she is not suitable to be your countess, after all. I should not want grandchildren who do not know their arses from their elbows. Pardon my language, but I am grievously disappointed in the chit. What could she be thinking, to refuse a rich man with a fine title?”

Ian did not tell his mother that Athena had been thinking of Lady Paige.

His mother had not really expected an answer, anyway. “Now that I think of it, you are better out of the match. Of course we shall have to find you a more suitable bride in a hurry, to still the wagging tongues. It is a good thing I am already in town to begin asking my friends for likely candidates.”

Ian hurried to say, “Miss Renslow has agreed to consider my suit.”

The countess sniffed. “I suppose that is something in her favor. Perhaps she is simply playing coy. Some chits do, you know, thinking they should not accept the first offer a man makes, lest he think they are too easy to please. Makes a man more eager, they feel.”

Ian was as eager as a confirmed bachelor could be. “Miss Renslow is not coy, nor putting on airs. She wishes to consult her uncle.”

“A man she has not seen in years? No, you went about it wrong, that’s all. I knew you should have let me handle it. Woman to woman, we could have had the matter settled in minutes. I always said marriages were better left to lawyers and in-laws. Who knows better than older, wiser heads?”

“Who, indeed?” Ian echoed. “The prospective bride and groom cannot be expected to know what is best for themselves, can they?”

“Do not be sarcastic, Ian. It is not becoming. Besides, it is not as if this is a love match. The girl needs a husband, you need a wife. What could be simpler?”

Aristotle’s metaphysics, for one.

*

Troy did not look at Athena’s face. He looked at her hands, searching for a ring. When he did not see one, his welcoming smile faded, and he went back to his Latin translations. A fellow could learn a lot from the love poems of Catullus. Maybe he could give Lord Marden a few hints.

*

“I suppose I am to wish you congratulations.” Lady Dorothy kissed Athena’s cheek when they passed in the hall. “I cannot be more happy in my brother’s choice of bride and am delighted to welcome you to the family.”

“But…but I have not accepted your brother’s noble offer.”

“Gads, you really turned him down?” Lady Dorothy had to sit down on one of the chairs against the wall, despite her long list of errands. She was out and about early this morning, headed for the shops. She thought she might purchase a new bonnet for her ride in the afternoon with her brother’s friend Carswell. He was such a handsome buck, elegant to a fault, that she felt dowdy next to him. They might merely be going to visit the orphanage, but she would not want such a fashionable gentleman to be ashamed of his passenger if they drove through the park to get there. Bad enough her skin was so marked; she could at least dress in style. Perhaps she would find a new parasol to match her favorite lilac gown she wore, or a Kashmir shawl.