Dangerous to Love (38 page)

When he made love to her, she didn’t look like a lady. She was loose-limbed and wanton, and everything a man could wish for in his woman. His smile faded as the need rose in him, not to pleasure her, not to take his pleasure of her, but to be intimate with her in the fullest sense of that word. He did not think he would ever be able to get close enough to her.

Shutting the door, he moved to join her at the sideboard.

“Does this mean that you have changed your mind?”

At the sound of his voice, she swung round, then gasped when she saw his face. He had removed his mask, and bruises and scrapes stood out grotesquely against the tanned skin. She was startled into a giggle.

“You look as though you had walked into a stone wall.
Did .  .  . did you receive those injuries on my behalf, Julian?”

He answered her easily. “Not entirely. Didn’t Flynn tell you? No matter, you’ll hear soon enough. I was surprised by a jealous husband when I was climbing into bed with his wife. He let fly with a blunderbuss. Naturally, I took off as though a rocket had been lit under me. Unfortunately, I fell headlong as I sprinted out the front door.”

The emotions that chased across her face at these blunt words tickled his fancy. She looked as though she wanted to hit him. “Of course,” he said, “it was all a misunderstanding.”

“Oh, with you, it always is,” she retorted, and slapped some fishy concoction onto her plate before moving to the next server.

“No, really. Flynn will tell you. I was highly inebriated and entered the wrong house, the one next door to be exact. I wasn’t there above a minute or two. It was an innocent mistake, but you may be sure the tattle-mongers are already embellishing the story. They always do.”

She subjected him to a searching stare. “Why are you telling me this?”

He answered her seriously. “You said something at Ranelagh about my reputation with women. I wanted you to know that it has been highly exaggerated.”

“But not entirely without foundation?”

His eyes bored into hers. “Not entirely.”

Flustered by that look, she quickly made her selections and crossed to the table at the hearth. Julian held her chair as she seated herself and carefully adjusted her hooped skirts.

Taking the other chair, which was set at right angles to hers, he pulled a rolled-up parchment from his pocket and tossed it into her lap. “Our marriage certificate,” he said.
“Shall we eat first, and decide afterward how best to bring the thing to a satisfactory conclusion?”

She nodded absently, her eyes downcast as she unrolled the parchment. “Do you know, it was when I read the names on this document that my memory came back to me, that day at Twickenham?”

He poured out some wine and cajoled her into drinking some of it. “Did you really suffer from a concussion? I was never sure after .  .  . later, I was never sure later.”

Edging forward, she stared at him with huge, appealing eyes. “Julian, you cannot believe that I had anything to do with your abduction? The only thing I wanted was to escape from you. If I had known you were going to be set upon, why would I have run from you?”

He set down his knife and fork. “Why did you run from me, Serena? Was marriage to a gamester so horrifying to you?”

A slow flush crept across her cheekbones, but she kept her eyes level with his. “If I said something to offend you, I’m sorry for it. But Julian, you must admit, the profession of gamester is not an entirely respectable one.”

“Oh? What do you think of when you think of gamesters?”

The words came to her automatically. “Wild. Dangerous. Reckless. That sort of thing.”

“Good God! Those are the words that come to mind when I think of you! But I digress. Tell me why you ran from me that night of the storm.”

She did not know how to take him in this humor. Rubbing at her puckered brow with one finger, she cast her mind back to the time in question. “I don’t know what I thought,” she said. “I was so confused. It seemed to me that there must have been some sinister reason that you duped me into marriage, something to do with the escape route.”

“You thought I was a government agent?”

“I wasn’t sure. But later, when Flynn told me that you really had helped to smuggle the real Lord Alistair out of England, I knew that could not be true.”

“I was never an agent. My reasons for marrying you were entirely honorable. I had taken your innocence. Naturally I wanted to give you the protection of my name. It was you who made things difficult, Serena.”

She flared up at this. “And did you suppose that I would tamely accept a husband whose only reason for marrying me was his conscience? You didn’t want me as your wife. Nor,” she hastened to add, “did I want you as my husband.”

He grinned. “Because I was a gamester and libertine?”

“Yes! And later, when you disappeared without a word, and eventually turned up in America, it seemed to me that you had seduced me and abandoned me.”

“In the manner of a true libertine?”

“Yes.”

He studied her as the silence lengthened. Finally, he said softly, “How can someone as beautiful and as clever as you have so little confidence in her power to hold a man? A real man is what I mean.”

For a moment, she thought that he was taunting her, but the light in his eyes was so tender, so compassionate, that the sting in his words was instantly disarmed.

His smile was dazzling. “Drink your wine, Victoria,” he said, and diverted her train of thought by inviting her, on the next breath, to tell him about her future plans.

She had to search her mind for something to say. Aside from marrying Mr. Hadley so that she would no longer be a financial burden to her brother, she had no clear idea of what her future would be like. Ashamed at this entirely mercenary view of her suitor, a gentleman who was worthy
of her utmost esteem and respect, she launched into a catalogue of his virtues. One thing led to another, and before long she was telling Julian about all her former beaux, and was surprised to find herself relating the tale of Captain Allardyce in a humorous vein, as though it had made no impression on her, and not blighted her young life.

He was an excellent listener, leading her gently when she faltered. For some reason, she found herself telling him about her mother and all that she had been made to suffer by a husband’s indifference.

“And even knowing this,” said Julian gently, “not long after your mother’s death, you were willing to trust yourself to Allardyce, a man who must have seemed to you to be made in the image of your father?”

“He swore that he had reformed. But, of course, he lied. They always do.”

His voice was very low, very grave. “There have been no women in my life since before I left Charles Town, and after you, certainly no one of any significance.”

Tingles shivered along her spine, and her throat went parchment-dry. To her great distress, all the discomfort of her former arousal came back to plague her. She reached for her wine glass and took a long, fortifying gulp.

“Enough of me,” she said. “I want to hear about your life in America. Are you really a farmer, Julian? Somehow, I just can’t see it.”

He laughed, and said yes, he really was a farmer, and went on to enthrall her with his description of his plantation and life in the colonies.

“The house is fine for a bachelor,” he said, “but when I have a wife, I shall want something grander, as befits a family man.”

A family man? Julian?

His smile conveyed his complete knowledge of her
doubts. “I suppose someone like myself, who was raised with all the benefits of a happy childhood, will want the same for his own children. But I told you this before, in Twickenham, don’t you remember?”

She did, but what she remembered most vividly was his harrowing description of life in the workhouse and his boyhood years in the brothels of Manchester.

Perhaps it was the wine, perhaps it was the intimacy of the moment, but for whatever reason she reached out impulsively and clasped both his hands in hers, bringing them to her breast. Tears blurred her vision. “I’m sorry, Julian,” she whispered, “so sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry.”

He moved closer, and disengaging one of his hands, stretched his arm along the back of her chair. “Are you, my love? What are you sorry for?”

“For
everything”
she said comprehensively. For all that he had lost as a young boy, for the caprice of an awful fate that had savaged his life twice over, for not being the right woman for him, for the children they would never share. She had a fleeting impression of Julian surrounded by a brood of gray-eyed, dark-haired infants, and she wanted to cry her eyes out.

He kissed her tears away, but there was nothing comforting in those openmouthed kisses.

And most of all, she was sorry that he was a rake and she was what she was, and practically promised to another gentleman. She drew away gently and offered a teary smile. Looking regretfully at the parchment in her lap she picked it up and passed it to him. “We have dined,” she said. “It’s time to bring everything to that satisfactory conclusion you promised.”

“So it is.” He gazed at that parchment for an inordinate length of time. “I suppose,” he said, “that the best thing
to do is to put the candle to it, then throw it in the grate when it catches fire?”

That seemed reasonable. She nodded.

“Fine. You don’t mind if I close my eyes while you do the deed? I don’t think I can bear to watch.” And so saying, he curled her ringers around the parchment and thereupon covered his own eyes with his cupped hands. “Tell me when to open my eyes,” he said.

Serena looked at the parchment in her hand, then up at Julian. Her mouth worked.

“Is it done?” he asked. “Have you finished?”

When she was silent, he opened his eyes to see the parchment still clutched tightly in her hand. Tisking, he said, “Didn’t you understand? Here is the candle,” and he indicated the candelabra which was set to one side of the table, “and here is our certificate of marriage; and here is the empty grate. All you need do is this,” and as if she were a half-wit, he pantomimed the motions of putting the flame to the parchment and throwing it in the grate.

This time, when he covered his eyes, Serena said, “Julian, surely it is your place to burn the evidence of our marriage? You are the male.”

“Now that doesn’t sound like the Serena I know,” he said.

It didn’t sound like the Serena she knew either. Steeling herself, she leaned across the table and put the parchment to the flame of one candle. As the parchment heated, and a brown scorch mark curled one corner, she gave a little cry and quickly withdrew her hand before the thing could catch fire.

“Serena, this will never do,” said Julian.

“Please, Julian, won’t you do it?” she pleaded.

He did not take the proffered parchment. “No,” he said, “I won’t do it because I want our marriage to stand. I shall give you one more chance. But understand this,
Serena. You either burn that certificate or you make up your mind to become my wife in every sense of that word. No. I don’t want an argument. Burn the parchment, Serena, or face the consequences. This time, the choice is yours.”

S
he lurched to her feet, throwing the parchment on the table.

He rose at a more leisurely pace. “Why won’t you destroy our marriage certificate, Serena?”

“Why? Because of religious scruples, because it goes against everything my mother ever taught me, because it is distasteful to me. But you can have no such objections. It’s your duty to burn it.”

He was holding out the parchment, and she had flung back as if he were offering her a snake.

“That’s not the reason,” he said, and his eyes gleamed brilliantly. “Look at you! I’ve never seen you rigged out in such finery! And that beauty patch! Rouge, too, Serena? You have taken a great many pains with your appearance tonight, have you not? You wanted to seduce me, and by God you have succeeded.”

Her teeth were grinding together. “You conceited oaf! No such thought ever crossed my mind.”

“Didn’t it, Serena?
Didn’t
it?”

She glared at him.

He lifted the hand which held the parchment, bringing it closer to her. “Last chance, Serena. Destroy our marriage certificate, or make up your mind to what this means.”

She stuck her nose in the air and folded her arms across her breasts. “I don’t know what game you are playing, Julian Raynor, but you don’t frighten me.”

He laughed recklessly, and with a flick of his wrist sent
the parchment flying in an arc to the top ledge of one of the bookcases.

Serena raised her brows. “That changes nothing.”

He threw his arms wide. “Come here, little wife, and I’ll show you what it changes.”

When he lunged for her, she retreated quickly to the other side of a plum-colored sofa. “I was right about you,” she said, baring her teeth at him. “Wild. Reckless. Dangerous. I thought so from the moment I clapped eyes on you.”

He grinned and shook his head. “If you could only see yourself, Victoria.”

“Don’t call me that.”

“Why not? It’s how I think of you. With you it must always be a battle, and you must be the one who carries off the victory.”