My Only Love (11 page)

He
nodded.

"Mr.
Warwick!"

"I
can hear you, dammit!"

"Is
Bryan all right?"

"Faring
better than I," he muttered. "At least he's dry."

After
much manipulation, Miles managed to extricate the boy by first standing the lad
on his shoulders, then gripping his ankles and hefting him up far enough so
Olivia and Deets could grab his hands. There came a chorus of relieved cries
that gradually diminished into silence while Miles stood weaving on the narrow
ledge, shivered with cold, and waited his turn.

And
waited.

"Ah
.. ." He cleared his throat. "Hello!" he shouted. "What
about me? Hello, is anyone there?"

More
silence while there came a splashing in the muck below him.

At
last, Deets stuck his head over the ledge and called out, "Right then.
Would ya like a hand, sir?"

With
great difficulty, Miles managed to locate sufficient toeholds amid the jagged
rocks to claw his way far enough up to grab Deets's outstretched hand. Flung
out on the frozen ground, Miles momentarily stared at the sky while the wind
drove through him as piercingly as an icicle.

Removing
his coat, Deets tossed it around Miles's shoulders and helped him to stand. Far
below, Olivia, with Bryan wrapped in Miles's cloak in her arms, was just
boarding the coach.

The
interior of the coach brought relief from the cold. As Deets whipped the horses
into a dash for Devonswick, Olivia held her son in her lap and briskly rubbed
his hands and feet; the boy slowly regained his color, and his shivering
subsided. Still, she gripped him fiercely to her, kissing his small head time
and again, her eyes only occasionally, reluctantly, drawn to Miles's.

Finally,
he said, "I suppose it's a good thing that I came along after all."

"Had
you not come along," she retorted, "this wouldn't have
happened."

His
eyebrows went up.

"As
it was," she continued in a more level voice, "you diverted my
attention—"

"I'm
sitting here freezing in clothes that are wet through and you're blaming me for
this? Look at me," he added, brandishing his scraped hands. His shirt was
raggedly torn in a half-dozen places.

Bryan
squirmed into a sitting position then looked straight at Miles, and held out
his arms.

Silence.
The coach swayed. Miles frowned.

Without
a word, Bryan slid off his mother's lap and climbed onto Miles's. With his
small, damp head pressed to Miles's chest, he proceeded to gaze up at him with
big, gray-green eyes.

"Good
God," Miles muttered, vaguely aware of an unsettling shift of something in
the vicinity of his heart.

92

Katherine
Sutcliffe

Fear,
no doubt. He'd never so much as spoken to a child, much less held one. Or
perhaps it was simply distaste. For him children had always been a necessary
nuisance, essential mainly for continuing a bloodline, an entity foreign to a
man of his dubious origins.

Olivia
said nothing, yet her body tensed. She watched him with an intensity that
bordered on panic. Yet, there was something else there too. An awakening of
sorts.

She
withdrew the child from his lap just as the coach stopped at Devonswick's front
door. Deets, having flung open the coach door and dropped the steps, assisted
Olivia and her son to the ground, then escorted them at a brisk pace into the
house. Miles took his time stepping into the cold. He told himself that he
should leave; his business, whatever that had been, was finished. And he was
wet through. Then the sound of excited voices reached him. Obviously the help
were scurrying to see to the boy's needs.

He
stepped into the foyer in time to see Emily join her sister and nephew at the
foot of the stairs. She might have just stepped off some Paris fashion plate,
adorned as she was in a pearl-colored silk gown trimmed with cerise edged with
black lace. Quite a contrast to Olivia's plain brown frock.

"What
on earth are you doing?" Emily demanded.

"Bryan
fell into some horrible pit, and—"

"You've
left mud all over the floor, Oli! Look at the mess, and Lord Willowby is due to
arrive just any minute."

Holding
Bryan in her arms, Olivia stood up to her sister. "Didn't you hear what I
said, Emily? Bryan could have been killed. Have you no sense of compassion? No
modicum of concern for this child? Dear heavens, Emily, occasionally I truly
question both your sense of morality and conscience."

With
that, Olivia swept the child up the stairs. Only then did Emily turn to
discover Miles standing inside the door. She looked shocked.

"I
don't recall having invited you in," she said, recovering herself.

"You
wouldn't," he replied indifferently, his mouth curved in a hard smile.

She
hurried toward him, stopping short and covering her nose with her hankie.
Emily's blue eyes slid down his person, noting his damp, mud-encrusted clothes
and boots. She said nothing about them; however, she lifted her gaze back to
his and hissed, "Get out of this house. Do you hear me? Get out!"

"What's
wrong, sweetheart? Afraid my being here is going to somehow upset old Lord Willowby?"
He laughed and anger glittered in her eyes. "Have you beguiled him with
your innocence? As I recall, you were quite good at that."

She
gasped. "Get out," she demanded.

"And
if I don't?"

'Then
I'll have you thrown out."

"And
what's to stop me from riding over the hill and waiting for Willowby? Perhaps
informing him that his angel-faced sweetheart has a heart-shaped mole on the
inside of her left thigh, and that she's particularly sensitive to the touch of
a tongue on her—"

"Blackmailer!"
she whispered furiously. "What will it take to make you leave here and
never come back?" She looked thoughtful, then her eyes narrowed. Moving
nearer in a suggestive manner, she forced a shaky smile.

"Don't
bother," he replied to her shocked eyes. "I'm completely uninterested."
"I hate you," Emily sneered.

He
winked and adjusted the sleeves of his soiled suit coat and decided his cloak
could wait. He'd had about enough of the Devonshire women for one day.

"Mr.
Warwick."

Looking
around, he found Olivia standing at the foot of the stairs. Again, she wore her
eyeglasses. Her hair, however, still spilled becomingly around her face.

Twirling,
Emily stomped toward her, pausing only long enough to say, "Get him out of
here, Oli, before His Lordship arrives or I'll never forgive you." Then
she fled the foyer through a nearby threshold, slamming the door behind her.

A
moment passed before Olivia turned her eyes back to Miles's. "Your
cloak," she stated evenly, and approached him, the article folded neatly
over one of her arms. The idea occurred to him that she was probably one of
those women who were fanatics about tidiness; no doubt if he was to march up
those stairs and stroll to her room he would discover that every filmy object
in her wardrobe drawers would be fastidiously neat and arranged by color. Then
again, judging by the way she dressed, she probably owned no filmy
undergarments.

"Your
cloak," she repeated as she stopped before him, her eyes holding his. He
knew in an instant that she was fully aware of what had just taken place
between him and her sister. Olivia Devonshire might have been a great number of
things, but she wasn't a fool.

He
took the cloak.

Olivia
stepped back and clasped her hands before her. "I fear I was remiss in
showing my appreciation.

You
saved Bryan's life. My only excuse for my sorry behavior was that I allowed my
fear of losing him to overcome my sense of decency."

"An
apology isn't necessary, Miss Devonshire. Neither is your gratitude. I have a
feeling you would have handled the situation equally as well without me. The
only difference is, I'm the one who fell in the hole instead of you."

A
look of amusement lit her eyes and toyed with her lips. Damn, she had fine
lips. Pleasant to look at, full and pink and soft. He wondered how many men had
kissed them as fervently as he had last night.

"Your
clothes," those lips said, then smiled. "I totally forgot about them.
If you'd care to send them back, I'll see that they're properly mended and
]aundered and your boots cleaned."

Miles
looked down his legs, to his boots, to the muddy footprints he'd left on the
floor, and shook his head. "No, thank you."

Without
another word, he turned on his heels and quit the house, stood shivering on the
porch steps (the idea of putting on his cloak never occurring to him) while his
driver brought up the coach. Once inside, he sank into the leather seat, nudged
back the maroon velvet shade with one finger, and found Olivia still standing
in the doorway, gazing off down the drive.

She
had removed her eyeglasses.

"I am now forty-one
years old," he went on. "I may

have been called a
confirmed bachelor, and I was

a confirmed bachelor. I
had never any views of myself as

a husband in my earlier
days, nor have I made any

calculation on the
subject since I have been older.

But we all change, and
my change, in this matter, came

with seeing you. I have
felt lately, more and more,

that my present way of
living is bad in every respect.

Beyond all things, 1
want you as my wife."

—Thomas Hardy,

Fur from the Madding
Crowd

CHAPTER SIX

Miles
had remained a bachelor these thirty-nine years because he'd imagined himself
waiting for a paragon. She, of course, would be. breathtakingly beautiful, as
well as highly intelligent.

How
did Olivia Devonshire fare on these counts? First, he realized Miss Devonshire
was far from unattractive. In fact with the proper clothes and arrangement of
her hair he suspected she could rival her sister.

Intelligence?

That
was probably an unfair requirement. Most women weren't particularly well
educated in anything except deceit and flirtation—Olivia Devonshire being the
exception, of course. According to her father she could probably teach his
professors at Cambridge a thing or two about economics . .. And he could
certainly use some help in that area.

Miles
lay back in his tub of tepid water and smoked his Cuban cigar. He frowned.

Certainly
his wife would have to possess a wonderful sense of humor. Olivia Devonshire
didn't have one iota of humor in her entire stiff-as-a-poker little body. No
doubt the woman's face would crack if she attempted to laugh ...

Then
again, he supposed that she really didn't have a great deal to laugh about.
Someone needed to teach her not to take life so seriously ... which could prove
to be an interesting and pleasant task ...

Any
woman he would even consider marrying would come from a well-respected family.
Her impeccable reputation and position in Society would afford him the respect
and ultimate success that had slipped through his fingers all of his life, due
to his own sorry heritage. Certainly, that in itself was the problem. No woman
of such stature would afford him a minute of her time, much less her dowry.

And
there was the little matter of love .. .

He
believed in the institution of marriage. And while he could prattle all day to
Olivia Devonshire about the many marriages that were loveless, he had always
imagined himself loving the woman with whom he would spend the rest of his
life. He'd never been able to envisage himself being forced to share the
routine of living with a companion who displeased him. For that reason, his
love affairs had been a series of short, unemotional dalliances.

Undoubtedly
he was more like his mother than he cared to admit. Although Alyson Kemball had
taken many lovers, and had had the opportunity to marry numerous times, she had
loved only one man, and that had been Joseph Warwick. Because she could not
have Joseph she had opted for no marriage at all.

Which
brought his mind back to Olivia Devonshire. And her son.

He
glanced at the pile of discarded and ruined clothes on the floor and recalled
the discomfort he'd experienced under the lad's intense scrutiny during the
ride to Margrave Bluff. Might have been watching a moment from his own past—a
fatherless boy sitting at his mother's side and wondering about the man sitting
across from him. Was he his father? Would he be his father in the future? Just
where the blazes was his father?

Poor
lad. Deserved better. Seemed bright enough. Handsome little tyke. Certainly
affectionate—not to mention brave. He'd held up as well, if not better, than
Miles as they waited for help in the bottom of that pit. An admirable quality,
that. His father should feel proud.