Falling Stars (7 page)

He was vexed—not by the diamond but by the circumstances. Waltzing was very much like making love to music, but not enough like.

He wished her low voice didn’t beckon so irresistibly. He wished he didn’t find her combative retorts so adorable. Above all he wished that he hadn’t found the woman of twenty-eight so very much more exciting and desirable than the girl of eighteen.

He drew her closer.

“I thought we were supposed to keep twelve inches apart,” she said breathlessly.

“I’m too old and set in my ways to start following such stupid rules now,” he said, also painfully short of breath. But then, waltzing wasn’t the mildest of exercises.

She, too, was growing overheated. Her face was flushed, and there were traces of moisture at her temples. A strand of silky hair was coming loose near her left ear. It was making him desperate.

He drew her into another turn, steering her to a doorway, then through it, to the dimly lit hall that led to the backstairs.

“I think we’d better talk,” he said. He let go of her waist and, taking her by the hand, led her into the shadows. He was aware of her body tensing in resistance, though she didn’t try to break away.

“I suppose, because I asked you to dance, you’ve leapt to certain conclusions,” she said, a shade of belligerence in her voice.

“Yes,” he said.

“I suppose as well that you think my gown constitutes a deliberate provocation.”

“Oh, yes.”

“I don’t see why I must dress like a dowd or obey every persnickety rule of behavior to please you,” she said.

He bit back a smile. “But you aren’t trying to please me,” he said.

“Certainly not.”

“You’re trying to drive me distracted.”

“I’m not trying to do anything.”

“And you’ve succeeded.” He brushed the way-ward strand of hair back with his thumb. She trembled.

“I suppose you think I’m going to kiss you now,” he said. “I suppose you think you’re irresistible.”

“I suppose you think you are,” she said.

“I must be. You couldn’t keep away.”

“I did not drag you into a dark hallway.”

“I didn’t drag you.”

“You said you wanted to talk.”

“Must you always have the last word?” he asked impatiently. “Will you not give one inch?”

After a moment’s consideration, she let out a sigh. “Very well,” she said. “Kiss me if you must. You might as well get it out of your system.”

“Very well,” he said. “If you insist.”

Still holding her hand, he bent toward her. Her head tilted back ever so slightly, ever so reluctantly. Her fingers tightened on his and that small pressure vibrated through him... a pulsing current, irresistible.

He bent closer. A breath away from her lips he paused, his heart hammering. He remembered vividly the aching loss, the grief and rage... weeks, months of it. But he also remembered the sweetness and tender yielding of the kisses he had stolen long ago.

His lips touched hers and there was a shock, sharp and sweet at once, and softness, too, so familiar... and the piercing ache of yearning. It was the yearning that made his arms slip round her to gather her close, and kiss her long and deeply... as he’d never dared to do all those years ago.

But it was different now. Christina was no longer a naive young girl, easily frightened by desire. Her mouth parted to his coaxing tongue and she melted against him, answering his erotic summons with a woman’s tender passion.

She was as warm in his arms as homecoming, warm as love and belonging. Yet this was no safe hearth, either, he speedily discovered, for her warmth fueled his need, and the fire built swiftly.

Her firm breasts pressed against the wool of his coat, but it wasn’t enough. His hands moved over her back, pressing her nearer, but still not close enough, for this was gloves on silk, and he wanted flesh on flesh. His hands moved to the base of her spine, to the sweet curve of her hips. She was near enough to be aware of his aching arousal. He wanted her closer still, wanted to crush her to him, but that would only make matters worse. He was already losing control.

He released her mouth. He meant to release her altogether, but the instant she began to pull away, his hands fastened on her waist.

“You can’t go back now,” he said thickly. “You’re all... mussed.” Delectably mussed. Her neat coiffure was tumbling undone, her gown was tantalizingly rumpled, and her breath was coming in quick gasps. He thought about how much more tousled and heated he might make her, and his own breathing grew more labored. He tugged her closer. She stiffened, resisting.

“Don’t tease, Christina,” he said. “I only want another kiss.”

“No,” she said. “I gave you the inch you wanted, and you took ten miles. Then you have the audacity to tell me I’m mussed—as though I did it myself— on purpose to vex you, I suppose.”

“I plead guilty to the charge of mussing,” he said. “But you did cooperate.”

“You seem to have a certain skill in eliciting cooperation,” she said. “But then, you had it ten years ago. Evidently, my powers of resistance remain some years behind your powers of persuasion.”

“You never even tried to resist, then or now,” he said, bridling. “On the contrary, you deliberately sought me out, both times, and led me on.”

“Very well, I led you on,” she said. “You’re a helpless victim of my irresistible wiles once again, though you’re a successful, powerful man of four- and-thirty. And because I don’t care to be seduced on your brother’s back stairs—just as I didn’t care to run off with you and be ruined—I’m a heartless tease.” She glanced down at his hands. “Perhaps it’s time I released you from my wicked clutches.”

For one furious instant, he wanted to hurl her aside, out of his sight, out of his thoughts, out of existence.

He caught his breath and looked down at his rigid hands... then at her. As he searched her hurt, angry eyes, his own rage washed away, leaving him chilled.

“Dear God, is that what you thought?” he asked. “That I only wanted to seduce you?”

He took his hands away. She didn’t move.

“I wanted to marry you, Christina,” he said. “I told you so, again and again.”

“You told me a great many things,” she said tightly. “All lies.”

He felt a surge of anger, instantly swamped by a flood of grief. Old grief. He drew a shaky breath. “You’re wrong,” he said softly. “I think we need to talk, but not here.” He held out his hand.

He wouldn’t have blamed her if she hadn’t taken it, but she did—and that was a start, he thought, a proper beginning. He wasn’t sure he could make a proper finish, but something, obviously, must be done. They must lay the ghosts to rest, regardless how painful the process might be. Otherwise, the past would taint everything he and she felt for and wanted from each other.

He led her down the back stairs, down another hall, and into a small, quiet parlor at the rear of the house.

He closed the door, firmly shutting out the rest of the world. She slid her hand from his and moved to the window.

“It’s started to snow,” she said.

He joined her, and looked out into the darkness at the fat snowflakes lazily drifting down. “I did love you,” he said. “I did want to marry you. Did you believe nothing I told you?”

“I believed everything you told me,” she said. “Every word you said to make me fall in love with you, then, every word you wrote later, showing me what a fool I’d been. You wrote that I needn’t worry that you’d trouble me again. You thanked me for making an otherwise dull fortnight tolerably amusing.” Bitterness edged her voice. “You said I mustn’t mind my lack of sophistication, because I was pretty, and the world requires no more in a female. According to you, my future husband would be content merely to look at me. My heart untouched by any base human emotion, I should provide him the same tranquil pleasure a lovely painting or statue offers. There was more, all put very cleverly. You described everything that was wrong with me in words I might take for flattery— if I were the empty-headed miss you thought I was.”

His face burned with shame. “It was a childish letter. I was... very angry.”

“You had spent two whole weeks weakening my mind and morals. But in the end, I wouldn’t run away with you and be ruined. Certainly you were angry. You had gone to so much trouble for nothing.”

“You’ve got it all wrong,” he said. “That may be what everyone else would believe, but not you. You understood me, trusted me, I thought.”

“I loved you,” she said. She spoke quietly, not trying to convince, merely stating a simple fact. He believed her.

“In other words,” he said, “I had your love—then killed it with my letter.”

She nodded.

He had been a fool. A proud, hotheaded fool.

“The letter was all lies,” he said. “It was—” He searched his heart for the truth. “I was unacceptable,” he said. “I knew that. All the world knew it. You saw how the chaperons watched me. You, like the rest of the young misses, must have been warned to keep away from me.”

“Yes, I was warned,” she said.

“I was warned as well. Before you came, Julius told me about your strict parents and about Arthur Travers and his spotless reputation and his forty thousand a year. Julius asked me not to flirt with you, because if your parents heard of it, they’d have you sent home, and Penny would be heartbroken. I promised both Julius and myself that I’d have nothing to do with you. Then I spent two weeks pretending, sneaking about, snatching stolen moments—and hating myself and all the world because I couldn’t court you openly.”

“My conscience wasn’t easy, either,” she said softly.

“And all the while, time was ticking away,” he went on. “I knew your parents would arrive the day of the wedding—and that would be the end, because they’d take you away and I’d never be allowed within twenty miles of you. I knew—perhaps you did, too—that I hadn’t a prayer of winning their approval. Ever.”

“I... knew.”

“I was terrified of losing you, Christina. That’s why I plagued you to elope with me. That night before Julius’s wedding was our last and only chance. I was so sure you’d meet me, as you promised, at the gatehouse. Everything was ready. The carriage was packed, waiting. I waited, hours, and you didn’t come. And when at last I gave up and returned to the house, I found your note in my room, and I... I just wrote out all my rage and hurt in a letter I should have burnt, not sent.”

She turned to him. “I couldn’t do it, Marcus. I couldn’t break my parents’ hearts. I couldn’t subject Arthur to public humiliation.”

“I know,” he said. And he did, at last. He understood now what he’d been too heartsick to recognize then. “If you had, you would have been the flighty, unfeeling creature I claimed you were in that letter.” He turned his gaze back to the night. “The whole situation was hopeless, wasn’t it? I should have faced it and accepted it, like a man. Instead I lashed out at you, like a spiteful child. That was... unforgivable.”

She shook her head. “I think now that it was better you wrote as you did. Otherwise, I might have grieved for what might have been for—well, a long time. Instead, I was able to pick up the pieces of my broken heart, telling myself I’d had a lucky escape, and go back to Arthur, and be a good wife to him.”

Arthur’s wife, when she should have been his, Marcus thought bleakly. Arthur’s children, when they should have been his. She had gone back to Arthur, while Marcus had gone on, heartsick, for... oh, months only, though it had felt like years. But he’d picked up his broken bits of heart, too, and gone on to build his empire. He’d been too busy to be lonely. And there had been other women. He had fallen in and out of love half a dozen times at least.

But never so deeply. Never again had he loved, body and soul, as he had loved one eighteen-year-old girl. He had taken many risks since then, but never fully, with all his heart. Never had he been tempted to do so. Until now.

His gaze slid back to her. He hadn’t even wanted to like her again, but he couldn’t help it. She’d grown not only more beautiful and desirable but cleverer, bolder, infinitely more... exciting. If he let himself fall in love again, he had no doubt he’d fall harder. And then...

How would it end—if he let it begin—this time?

“It sounds as though we forgive each other,” he said cautiously.

Smiling, she moved away from the window. “Yes. How mature we’ve managed to be, despite an unpromising beginning. Perhaps we might even manage to stop bickering.”

“I don’t mind bickering with you. It’s—”

“Stimulating.” She pushed a lock of hair away from her face. “However, I’d rather not return to the company looking quite so stimulated. I had better go to my room and put myself to rights.” She headed toward the door. “If you’re in a mood to be chivalrous, perhaps you’ll explain to Julius and Penny that you accidentally stepped on the hem of my gown and tore it. That may, just barely, explain my overlong disappearance.”

She hurried through the door before he could answer.

***

She would have to leave Greymarch, Christina told herself several hours later while she lay awake, staring at the ceiling. She had finally put her life together as she wanted it and was at last becoming the woman she wanted to be. She couldn’t let Marcus Greyson turn everything upside down again. She’d spent only two days under the same roof with him, and already the world was tilting dangerously askew.

He had played havoc with her morals ten years ago. He said tonight that his intentions had been honorable, and she believed him. Then, however, wasn’t now. This night, the instant he’d taken her into his arms, her morals had disintegrated completely.

He hadn’t taken any outrageous liberties. His hands hadn’t wandered where they shouldn’t. He hadn’t unfastened a single fastening. Nonetheless, in a few simmering minutes, without so much as taking off his gloves, Marcus Greyson had done to her what her adoring husband had never come close to doing in seven years of conjugal intimacy.

She was all too hotly aware of what Marcus might do to her if he took off his gloves.

She had thought the tension between them was because of the past, and even the physical attraction must somehow be part of it, because it was too feverishly intense. He was an attractive man, admittedly. All the same, he shouldn’t make her feel so... desperate.