Fate Is A Stranger: Regency Romance (16 page)

She must pretend to go along with everything he did. Whatever she decided had to be made without the menace of him finding out she was not on his side.

"I have believed until now that I have your complete confidence and cooperation, Vera," Souten hissed.

Vera glanced guardedly at his pale menacing eyes and winced.

Vera replaced her hesitation with a smile of compliance. Self-preservation that was innate in her came quickly to her aid and she instantly erased any look from her eyes that might convey dissention to him.

"I must say you cook up brilliant schemes, Cade, and I can only bow to the master. Of course you have my complete trust and compliance. Have you ever doubted it? I was only surprised that you had decided on action so soon and so suddenly. That is all. Just give me a few minutes to adjust to the idea."

"I like this attitude much better, my dear. And believe me when I say that your help will be rewarded far beyond what you have obtained from me up until now. I’m very good to those that have my trust."

Knowing how greed was a thing he instantly understood, Vera looked up at him with an expectant look in her eyes. "I can't wait, Cade! Monsieur Neuloff has a pink diamond with rubies necklace I much admire in his jewelry collection."

For the first time in her life, Vera pretended to hanker after jewels she hadn't the least desire to obtain. She had no wish to be paid for aiding in criminal work, but she must appear the complete opposite of what she thought.

"Keep those jewels in mind, Vera, for I will certainly reward your help in this. Believe me when I say that there isn't anything in the world I desire more than Violet. I cannot sleep, I cannot think. She has turned my life into a misery and I will not rest until she is mine."

"Yes, I believe it," said Vera with a smile that hid the shadows that now hovered fearfully in her mind. For the first time in her association with Cade she had felt stark naked fear. She had felt it when he, seeing hesitation in her, had turned and looked at her and
through
her. Never in her life had Vera feared for her life—clear through to her bones. At all costs Cade must never suspect she feared him. He would turn into
her
enemy suddenly. She was certain of it.

"And once we have convinced Violet to go after Sadie, to help her mother, how is it that you are going to be alone with her?"

"There will be two carriages," said Souten. The two carriages will become separated during the trip. Violet will be in one carriage with me and she will be spending the night with me in that carriage, a leased carriage that has not my coat of arms, as the other does. In the morning, she will be happy to become Lady Souten. All thought of rejecting me will have fled her mind in her anxiety not to harm either her mother or her father. After all, elopements happen every day and she need not disclose any details of it to anyone."

Vera glanced down the hill at Violet as she conferred with Galena. Another fear enveloped her. She had embroiled the girl into it too. Galena's father, the Earl of Maddington, would not take kindly to it.

She felt a headache coming on, yet she couldn't leave Cade, who had no friends in the crowd other than his mother.

"Lady Deckworth does not seem well this afternoon," she said to Cade. She not only wanted to divert him from further talk of his schemes but she must also find a way to be rid of him for a few minutes. He was suffocating her.

"Perhaps I should go and chat for a few minutes with Mama," said Souten. "She will be offended if I don't. After all, she did go to a lot of trouble to secure our invitations."

"Go on, Cade. I have a headache and I must lie down in my room for a while or I will not be well enough to attend the ball tonight."

"You
will
attend the ball, Vera, whether or not you are well," he said, again in that low, hissing voice.

"Of course I will attend, Cade. I wouldn't miss it," Vera quickly assured him, "But I do want to be refreshed. I believe I stayed out in this cool air far too long."

She was trembling all over and not from cold.

"I shall see you in a while," said Cade, directing his steps toward the Marchioness of Deckworth, who was sitting by a disapproving Lord Deckworth under an awning.

CHAPTER 16

"Miss Durbin, as I recall, I promised to show you some interesting ruins in the grounds."

Violet had been lost in thought, listening to Lady Bea's droning voice, and the sound of Hawkinston's voice startled her out of her reverie. She looked up in surprise. She had thought that Hawk was with his sister.

It was a pleasant picnic, with the weather complying. Sunshine fell kindly on everyone as groups here and there shifted and re-grouped.

"Yes certainly, your grace, if you will collect a small group for your tour," said Violet, "for I do not intend to go there alone with you.

"How far from here is that place?"

"We will still be within sight of all these good people, Miss Durbin, you need not glance around for a crowd of chaperones." The duke sounded annoyed.

Violet hesitated. She remembered their last encounter in the wood and she was not about to put herself in a vulnerable situation such as that one. She still cringed in remembrance.

"I assure you, Miss Durbin, there is nothing untoward about going for a stroll within sight of so many people."

"Very well, your grace, let us go," said Violet as he offered his arm and they started out over the uneven terrain.

"I will be back shortly, Lady Bea," she said.

"I am looking forward to the ball this evening, Miss Durbin, and to dancing with you," said the duke when they were out of earshot of the crowd.

"I am looking forward to the ball, too, your grace."

"But not to dancing with me?"

"I had not given it a thought."

"Perhaps what drives men wild, Miss Durbin is that you don’t think of them at all."

"It is a poor attraction that grows out of starvation,” said Violet, as she walked alongside the duke. "No lasting relationship can develop over such a false foundation."

"You believe then that if a man becomes attracted to a woman who repeatedly ignores him, that relationship, if it should come to develop, is not true?"

"I believe that a man who is attracted to what is denied him will continue to seek such stimulations throughout his life. He will be attracted to the woman who ignores him because it is a challenge, but once he attains her affection he will go on to other challenges, like a bee flitting from one flower to another, always in search of the better blossom."

"I believe you have just described me as a bee, Miss Durbin. I am sorry you think of me that way."

"I was merely trying to illustrate a point, your grace. I believe you are insistent on my company only because it is a challenge to you. Once it ceases to be a challenge your interest will wane."

"The man you describe is shallow, Miss Durbin, not a man of substance at all. Is that how you view me?"

"Please look into your heart and your past behavior, your grace. I ask that you view it with honesty and tell me if I am wrong. If I am wrong, then I shall humbly apologize."

"I prefer not to view my past too closely, Miss Durbin, lest I be jolted out of my complacency and the perfectly pleasant picture I have of myself be presented to me like a cracked looking glass with no hope of repair.

"You are probably correct in your assumptions of me and an apology would not be in order. But then, is that not true of most men? Is not a challenge more alluring that that which is at ready disposal?"

"Countless marriages have been the prize of the challenge," responded Violet. "If a man and a woman are well suited for each other, is that not rather the gage by which a partner for an entire life should be chosen, instead of the result of a conquest in which only vanity and the search for exciting pleasures comprise the only items in the list?

"You are forgetting, Miss Durbin," said the duke, "that most marriages in society are of convenience. Perhaps in the lower classes such considerations are taken into account, where there is no property to consider. Perhaps marriages in the lower classes are more honest in nature."

"I believe so," she responded, "Because men look among those who are eligible parties and among those find the woman who is the most challenging to pursue. Of course," she added, after a moment's thought, "if the challenge is among those outside the man's class, then the intention of the conquest is not a proposal of marriage, but merely the prize of conquest for the satisfaction of pleasure."

Violet realized they had drifted into a discussion of marriage, something that was not a consideration by the duke in relation to her and she blushed in embarrassment at how she had led the conversation into the very personal one that very much described his pursuit of her.

So she changed the subject, "But we drifted from our subject. We were discussing the ball, your grace. You were saying that I should think of the ball only in relation to whom I will be dancing with."

"Let me respond to your reverie, Miss Durbin, for I do believe you mentioned it in order to obtain a response from me and I shall try to provide you with one."

"It’s not necessary in the least, I was speaking generally," Violet assured him. "In fact, I would rather you did not respond to it. I really should concern myself with this pleasant outing and the ball ahead, nothing more."

"
I
believe those should be your only considerations, Miss Durbin. Balls have become of supreme importance to me since I met you. I had not given a thought to a ball in the ten years before that. Will you honor me with the first six and the last four dances?"

"Certainly not," Violet said, laughing. "Tongues would wag!"

"And you mind them wagging?"

"Yes, I do. I will not behave in any way that will make people discuss me, not consciously, at least."

"I had thought you were above such things."

"I assure you, I am not."

"This is the site. Please, take care not to trip, for this is very uneven terrain," said the duke as they arrived at a clearing.

Violet looked around in wonder.

"This place is enchanted."

"I am glad you approve," said the duke, pleased.

"Such an abundance of lilac grows here," she added. "And just see the tendrils of that ivy almost covering the side of that ruined tower. And jasmine perfumes the air.

"I would not have believed such a place existed except in fairy tales were I not looking at it with my own eyes. Flowers grow here in profusion, and such a wide variety, too, my lord. These wildflowers are from a dreamscape."

"I am glad you appreciate it, Miss Durbin. As a child I often came here to escape the world, and reality."

She looked up and into Hawk's eyes and remembered she was in love with him. She also knew she had to say good-bye.

She had to say good-bye before it became too late
.

Yet all farewells should have an embrace. And if she must say good-bye to him for all time, shouldn't she allow herself a kiss good-bye?

She walked the few paces between them and looked into his eyes.

She thrilled at the kiss in
his
eyes. His arms encircled her and his lips fell hungrily on hers.

The feel of Hawk's arms around her gave her such a feeling of bliss as to make her dreamy, floating. But as his lips seared hers she could tell he was angry, as though he sensed she was saying good-bye with her kiss.

As he kissed her throat and hair her senses reeled, so she pushed him away, for she could not weaken in her resolve.

As they went further up the hill toward the ruins of a small chapel she realized the groups of picnickers were not anymore within sight. Hawk led her into the main altar room that was remarkably secluded by shrubbery.

When Violet realized this and turned to return the way they had come the duke grabbed her wrist. She looked at her hand and then up into his eyes as he put his arm on her back and meshed her body with his in a tight embrace.

She was stunned as she always was when too near him, for she knew the danger that lay in his embrace. Up until now she had been certain that so long as she kept him at arm's length and did not look too closely into his remarkable eyes she was safe. But now that he had banished all space between them and she found herself breathlessly pressed against his chest a delicious shiver of surrender shot through her so that she felt almost without a will. She knew she was in dire peril of giving in to an explosion of sensations that were all over her like sensual tendrils on naked skin.

Hawk sat her on the soft grass and like a sleepwalker she complied. He then unlaced her bodice, exposing her porcelain breasts. The soft warm breeze skipped over her skin as his hands cupped both her breasts.

She felt his hands on her shoot down and up like a sliver of lightening. They were both lying on the ground and the scent of the grass, with the bracken and pine needles forming a bed while the warm sun's rays, bore down on them through the roofless ruins of the church amid the loud twitter of the birds that had been surprised by their entrance.

Hawk's mouth roved over her breasts so that Violet felt she had yearned without voicing it a repeat of their last encounter. She sighed breathlessly as he kissed one breast and then the other. He raised the skirt of her dress and separated her legs. Violet gasped as his hand seared her skin.

"I love you," he said, and kissed her. She returned his kiss, losing herself in him.

Then she remembered her own words: men chased after a challenge only until they conquered it.

She was being conquered at this moment.

Violet sat up and then she quickly stood up, pushing Hawk aside as she re-laced her bodice with trembling hands. She brushed the leaves and bracken from her skirt in silence as Hawk looked at her, a stunned look in his eyes at her rejection.

She looked straight into his eyes and said in a low voice, "I have come to my senses, your grace, and for the second time, which is a sad reminder of the way of the flesh. It will never happen again, you have my word," she walked away from him and headed down the hill toward the groups of people, leaving him to think whatever he wanted to think.

She would not be trapped into her mother's kind of life, not by the duke, not by anyone.

And least of all by her senses.

"Miss Durbin, do slow down," said the duke, catching up to her. "If you don’t want our actions to be suspected by anyone your conduct at this moment is making it easy for them to do so. You appear to be fleeing from me."

Violet slowed down and the duke caught up to her.

"So, Miss Durbin is again ruled by her head," he said as they walked back side by side. Then he added with his enigmatic smile, "But for how long?"

"I will not do anything that discredits my father's name."

"Very commendable, but do consider, for some things that may seem in some way may not really be so. It is an accepted fact of society that being the mistress of a duke is just as good as being the wife of a baronet."

"Our opinions are opposite then, for I would rather be the wife of the vicar's assistant than mistress of the king."

"You have an unyielding mind."

"I am very comfortable with my mind, your grace, are you comfortable with yours?"

"I don't believe I have ever asked myself that question, Miss Durbin, now that I think about it. But you have?"

"Yes. Introspection is something I have indulged in from a very early age. Mama gave me an education, for Calvin and I were all she lived for. I am very grateful to her for that, although at one time I only saw it as the glass through which I was able to see my own tragic situation."

She glanced up at him and said quickly. "Please disregard my words, your grace; I am not often so candid."

"Surely there is nothing to regret in honesty," responded the duke with a shrug.

"I’m afraid my mind ran away with me and I slipped to a painful past. Let us talk of more cheerful matters. Certainly the Lord has given me many blessings that ease in my mind the memories of my unfortunate past."

"On the contrary, Miss Durbin, I'm glad that you felt comfortable enough in my company to be able to confide. I am extremely grateful for the trust such disclosures reveal."

Hawk also felt extremely uncomfortable by the revelation. It became to him the mirror through which he saw his own motives and it wasn't a pretty sight. Yet no matter how he turned the matter in his mind, marriage to Violet Durbin was completely out of the question.

He had always felt that his own father had dishonored the family name. He would not do it himself. He may have strayed from the righteous path with his many faults but there was one thing he would never do and that was to marry the daughter of a strumpet. And one who had been one herself, however briefly.

Unaware of the duke's tortured thoughts, Violet lost herself in her own thoughts as they walked back in silence.

She agreed with his assessment that only trust would have allowed her to speak thus. And yet, why should she trust this man? It was a mistake to trust him. He was a mirage, insubstantial, for he may seem the trustworthy man of her dreams but he meant to eventually, or so he seemed to believe, turn her into his mistress. Such a man could not be real to her for she could never consider him thus.