Dangerous to Love (14 page)

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Authors: Rexanne Becnel

Tags: #Fiction, #Romance, #Historical, #General, #Regency

BOOK: Dangerous to Love
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Meanwhile, Ivan Thornton would go on his merry way, the only one unaffected by this whole mess. A spurt of righteous anger fired her blood. It always came back to Ivan Thornton.
Tomorrow morning she would have to remind Lady Westcott about that. Her grandson’s disdain of his grandmother was at the root of the old woman’s scheming. If the dowager countess wanted to obtain her goals, whatever they might be, she would have to begin thinking of Lucy, not as a tool to be manipulated, but as an ally.
Lucy didn’t have a clue, however, of how she was to convince the old woman of that.
 
L
ucy awoke before dawn. This was becoming an unfortunate habit, she fretted as she tossed about, fluffing up her pillow in an attempt to get comfortable. She wanted to go back to sleep, for she’d gone to bed very late, mere hours ago.
She turned to her other side, then winced when her plait caught beneath her shoulder. That didn’t help the nagging headache that had plagued her last evening and had not dissipated at all while she’d slept.
She let out a frustrated sigh and stared up at the pleated satin lining of the tall canopied bed. Why was she awake? There had been no ring of carriage wheels on the pavement outside. Ivan Thornton was not bidding some tart farewell at the front door.
She grimaced.
Be fair, Lucy
. Even he would not bring a common tart into his home. Still, the sort of loose woman he’d had here that other night was not much better than a common tart, only better dressed.
“Blast,” she swore, punching the innocent down-filled pillow. The troublesome Ivan Thornton might not have awakened her with his nighttime escapades, but he was, nevertheless, the cause of her sleeplessness.
Why had he kissed her?
Why had she become so undone by that kiss?
And why,
why
had she returned his kiss so passionately?
As if that disaster were not enough for one evening, she’d then careened right into another one. Whatever had she been thinking, to challenge Lady Westcott that way? And in front of Valerie, no less?
She groaned and pulled the pillow over her head. For someone anxious to remain in London, she certainly was going out of her way to ensure she would be sent packing, right back to the boring environs of Houghton Manor.
Somewhere she heard a cock crow—not a sound she would have expected in London. Flinging the pillow aside, she stared again at the precisely gathered fabric that lined the bed overhang above her head. She might as well rise. Perhaps a turn in the garden would ease her aching head and calm her rattled nerves. Besides, she needed to be at her sharpest when she met with Lady Westcott this morning. If she were to undo the damage she’d done last night, she would have to engage the wily old woman’s imagination.
She dressed quickly, in an everyday dress, plain slippers, and a knitted shawl wound around her shoulders. Then, sans gloves and with her hair still in its untidy nighttime coiffure, she slipped into the silent hall, made her way down the back stairs, and let herself out the service entrance.
The breeze carried a light chill, with the faint fragrance of coal smoke in the air. My, but Londoners were extravagant, she decided. Heating their houses on so mild a night. At home Graham would turn out the servant who dared to light a fire on such a night.
She strolled across the gravel drive toward the box garden that extended between the two back wings of the house. On one side the library flanked it. On the other the morning room. A pair of silvered garden benches sat opposite one another with a sundial positioned between them. The benches were too damp to sit on, however. So instead of sitting, Lucy meandered through the shadowy garden, fingering an unfurling fern frond, gathering dew from the cupped petals of a rose.
She breathed deeply, and exhaled, then loosened her hair from its confining plait. Massaging the back of her neck, she tried to banish the nagging ache buried deep in her head. She luxuriated in the dim quiet of the garden, the moist feel of the spring dawn against her skin and the fragrant peace of its stillness surrounding her. But she could not entirely control her churning thoughts.
What was she to do about Lady Westcott? How was she to dissuade the dowager countess from packing her off to Somerset?
Then a hinge creaked, Lucy looked up, and the morning peace was shattered.
“You’re up early. Or is it late?”
Lucy wasn’t certain whether her heart sank at the sight of Ivan or soared. There was no arguing, however, that its pace increased tenfold.
Why was he here? And why now?
“I woke early,” she answered at last, watching his tall, broad-shouldered silhouette approach. “Why are you up and about at such an hour?”
He stopped on the opposite side of the sundial, near enough that she could begin to make out his features. He had a half-smile on his face. “I was having dreams. Erotic dreams. What’s your excuse?”
“Certainly not that!” she answered without thinking. But an unpleasantly honest voice in her head said otherwise. Perhaps her thoughts had not been erotic in the fullest sense of the word, but that was only because she was not experienced enough to imagine anything completely erotic. But she
had
been thinking of Ivan, and of their kiss and the way it had made her feel.
“You wound me terribly, Lucy, for I was certain our—”
“Don’t call me Lucy! I haven’t given you leave to be so familiar.”
“Your enthusiastic participation in our kiss seemed rather familiar to me. Or were you simply toying with my affections?” he added, giving her that charming half grin of his.
Lucy’s heart pounded so violently that her chest began to hurt. “You are deliberately misconstruing everything and you know it.”
He moved to his left, following the path around toward her. At once Lucy moved left-too, trying to keep the ornate sundial between them. “If you have come here to irritate me, then I shall be forced to leave,” she warned.
“Does that mean you will stay if my goal is
not
to irritate you? For I assure you, Lucy, that irritating you is the very
last
thing on my mind.”
“You see? You see? You’re doing it again! You’re saying these … these suggestive things. You’re calling me Lucy when I’ve told you not to. And you’re stalking me like some great beast of prey!”
He let out a noisy sigh and shook his head as if dismayed. But at least he stopped the stalking. Only then did she notice how casually he was dressed, with neither coat nor vest to cover his shirt. Nor did he wear a neckcloth. His collarless shirt was open at the throat and even in the first light of the shadowy dawn she could see the dark curls revealed by the deeply cut neckline.
With his long hair in as much disarray as his clothing, and that damnable diamond in his left ear, he looked every bit the Gypsy he’d been born, a dark and dangerous man who set every one of her senses aflame.
But she must take charge of those wayward senses of hers, she reminded herself. And the best way to do that was not to let him control the situation.
“Did you find the McClendons’ soiree enjoyable?” she asked, deciding to keep the conversation strictly superficial.
You should go inside and end this conversation entirely
, a voice in her head scolded. But the rebellious part of her soul chose to ignore that voice.
“Enjoyable? ‘Entertaining’ might be a more accurate word.”
“Well, at least you took some pleasure of the evening.”
“Pleasure indeed,” he replied. His eyes moved over her, taking in the wild abundance of her loosened hair, her bare arms, and her casually clad form.
Was he remembering their kiss? Had he taken as much pleasure from it, after all, as had she?
Lucy pulled her shawl tighter. But that did nothing to counter the riot of emotions his murmured words and vivid gaze roused within her. It was not working, these feeble efforts to control her reaction to him. Her very skin seemed to tighten in his presence and become incredibly sensitive when he turned his attention on her.
“I believe I shall return to my chambers,” she murmured, hugging her arms close about her as she backed away from him.
“Are you cold?” Before she could react he came around the sundial and its encircling bed of moss roses.
Lucy wanted to turn tail and run. She wanted to rush into his arms and have him take her in a bruising embrace. Thankfully the one sane part left of her brain prevented her from reacting in either of those disastrous fashions.
But simply standing there, waiting for his approach, seemed equally disastrous.
He stopped just before her, then reached out to her.
Lucy caught her breath. She swayed toward him and very nearly closed her eyes in anticipation of his kiss.
But he didn’t kiss her. He pulled the folds of her shawl up closer to her neck and tugged it up to better cover her chest. Then his hands fell away from her. He remained standing in the same place though, closer than was proper, but not so close as to be entirely improper either.
But propriety was more than a matter of proximity, as his next words so rudely proved. “I know a much better way to keep warm than with an uninspiring shawl.”
She was already warm, but she would never reveal that to him. “I’m sure you do, my lord. However … However, I find this shawl perfectly adequate to my needs.”
“And what needs are those, Lucy? You are approaching thirty, an age which will brand you forever a spinster, the dried-up maiden aunt to your brother’s children. Are you telling me you have no needs as yet unmet?”
“I really do not wish to continue this conversation. If you will excuse me?” She pushed past him on the path and marched for the servants’ entrance she’d used before. Only ten more steps, she told herself. Nine more. Eight. Seven.
He caught her just three paces from the door. He snatched up the end of her shawl and gave it a sharp tug, and she, most unwisely, turned and tried to pull it out of his hold.
“Let go,” she demanded, refusing to cower before him.
“And if I don’t?” He grinned the devil’s own grin.
“I am not about to be drawn into this silly game you play, Lord Westcott.”
“Call me Ivan.”
“Perhaps I should call you John,” she said, suddenly remembering how the English version of his name had angered him when his grandmother had used it. But if it angered him now, he hid it well.
“Ivan, John. My love,” he suggested in a mocking tone. “So long as you breathe the word warmly in my ear, I don’t care which name you use.” He leaned nearer as he spoke, slowly gathering her poor shawl in his hands.
Lucy couldn’t help it; she panicked. She didn’t mean to. Indeed, showing him how he so thoroughly unnerved her was the very
last
thing she wished to do. But she couldn’t stop herself.
With a cry of dismay, she let go of the shawl—the thin wool triangle she’d crocheted when she was fourteen—and did what she should have done when she’d first seen him in the garden. What she should have done the very first time she’d laid eyes on him and his Gypsy’s power of seduction. She turned and she ran.
 
Antonia watched Miss Drysdale’s hasty exit from the garden with considerable interest. Ivan didn’t follow her, to Antonia’s vast disappointment. But that disappointment faded as she continued to observe him. For he stared a long while at the door the girl had disappeared through. Then he drew the shawl up to his face and held it there.
Breathing in the scent of her, Antonia would wager. A satisfied grin broke across her face. He wanted the outspoken chit. Her plan was working.
She let the heavy drape fall back in place and crossed to the door. Ivan wanted Lucy Drysdale. But did Miss Drysdale want him?
Time to find out.
When she heard the muffled sound of hasty footsteps in the hall she pushed open her door.
“Why, Miss Drysdale,” she said, feigning surprise. “What are you doing up so early? I thought it was only the aged who rose at this ungodly hour.” Then she let her gaze run over the startled girl, and she forced herself to frown. “Have you been out somewhere? Is something afoot? Something I would not approve of?”
“No. No, it’s … it’s nothing like that. I … I couldn’t sleep and so I thought … I thought a turn in the garden might help.”
“It’s chilly outside. You ought to have brought a shawl to keep you warm.”
“Yes. Yes, I … I ought to have,” the girl stammered. “I’m sorry if I disturbed you, my lady. If you’ll excuse me?”
Antonia waved her hand in dismissal. “Don’t forget. My sitting room. Ten o’clock.”
Miss Drysdale nodded then without further word slipped into her room and softly shut the door.
Well, well, and very well, Antonia thought as she let herself back into her own room. She crossed to the window and looked down at the garden again, but Ivan was gone. So was the shawl, however, and that brought a chuckle to her lips:
Really, but she hadn’t enjoyed a season in town this much since her own season, when she’d fallen so desperately in love with Gerald Thornton. It had been wonderful and terrible and exhilarating, as she recalled. Wonderful to discover such intense feelings inside her. Terrible to think they might not be reciprocated. Exhilarating to learn they were.
Which phase of those feelings was Miss Drysdale experiencing now? The terrible part, she suspected. And Ivan?

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