Season For Desire (20 page)

And then they settled: she atop him skin to skin on chest, breasts, belly; his arms wrapped about her. Perspiration had dampened them both, and on her back it dried cool where his touch did not shield her. “I know this can’t happen again,” he said. “I wasn’t strong enough to say no this time.”

Her thundering heart began to quiet. Yes, she had known this, too. And yet: “Why is
no
the answer that takes strength?”

His arms tightened; she welcomed the crush. “Because I wanted you so much. You—Audrina, with the bruised courage and ready laugh. Who bakes things and makes things and . . .”

Deeply, she breathed him in and let her lids flutter shut. “All I wanted to hear was that you wanted me. That’s reason enough.” A thought struck, and her eyes flew open again. “But why was that not reason enough to say yes?”

“Because I can’t have you. Between the two of us, you’re the one with more choices. You could live in the country, you could return to London. You could marry.” His embrace about her loosened, one hand stroking her back.

“If I have so many choices”—she trailed her fingers down the spring of his ribs—“then you must allow that I chose you. Today. And that that means something precious to me, just as any other choice would for a woman with so many.”

“Today, yes. But I know my own limitations. I know I’m not the sort of man you want for the rest of your life. And so the fact that we have only today is—difficult for me.” The gravel in his voice revealed the truth of these words, though his face turned away.

A small gesture, but it made her feel as though she were twisting alone in the wind. Bracing her hands on either side of him, she pushed away from his chest and slid to the sheet beside him. “You are more maudlin than I ever imagined.”

He cut his eyes toward her. “I’m good at hiding it.”

“And why should you not be the sort of man I want?” She was asking far too many questions, but she was desperate for the answers. She and Giles seemed far more naked now than when their bodies had been joined, and she drew the sheet up over them. Any little shield would help cover the terrible bareness that made each word so difficult, so essential.

Heedless Giles. His expression told her she had, at last, asked a completely ridiculous question. “Why should you not want me? Because I’m an American with no future.”

“Is that all? Your mother married one of those. Well—an American with a future different from anything she knew.”

“You would marry me? You would leave everything you know?”

She raised herself onto one elbow and studied the stern lines of his face. “Are you asking me to?”

“No, I don’t have the right.”

“But if we didn’t come from separate continents, would you ask me to?”

A deep breath made the sheet rise and fall over his chest. “And if I didn’t have to work for my living, and if my hands were healthy, and—”

“No. I did not ask you all of that. I asked you if you would want to marry me—if we could.”

His laugh was short and bitter. “Would I want to marry you? It’s something I want so much that I never even dreamed I could dream it. But I don’t get the things I want, Audrina.”

“I am not a thing.” The furious heat of a few minutes ago was cooling, leaving rawness behind.

“Marriage. Marriage is a thing. Not you. You are a marvelous person.” His forearm jerked up to cover his eyes. “If there’s one thing I’ve done right since arriving in England, it was that sentence. Saying that sentence.”

Oh. Well. “I—like that sentence.”

He lifted his forearm from his eyes, capturing her with a sapphire stare. “Do you believe it?”

“I want to.”

“And why should you not? Who decides what you’re worth?”

She shook her head to dismiss the heat prickling at the corners of her eyes. “No, Giles.
I’m
the one to ask the awkward questions.”

His gaze turned to the ceiling. “There are awkward questions enough for both of us.”

“What is your own answer to who decides what you’re worth?”

“Me, I suppose. I decide that.”

She mulled this over. “Yes, that makes sense. You are the one who has decided you cannot have the things—or the people—that you want. You are the one who has decided that because your future may be crimped, you need not bother with the present.”

“And you? You have decided to seek pleasure at the expense of the future.”

Her shoulder was beginning to ache where she had braced her arm, and she let herself sink back to the bed. “I think it is clear neither of us had the future on our minds when we came into this room.”

“Yes,” he said faintly.

“And that should be enough. A pleasure, taken and left behind.” Her throat closed. They were side by side, so terribly distant, as though an ocean already lay between them. “When the snow melts, we will go our separate ways.”

“It was always inevitable.” There was something careful about the hard angles of his voice.

After this, there was no point in staying together. No point in pretending that resting her head on his shoulder might be a comfort, or that lingering was anything but attenuated agony. No point in pretending that they weren’t both ready for him to dress and leave.

For such a quiet sound, the closing of the door reverberated through her whole body.

Because it
wasn’t
inevitable that they go their separate ways—or at least, not because of circumstance. No, nothing made it inevitable but they themselves. But if Giles could not see himself with a future, how could he treasure the present as building toward it?

For the first time, Audrina saw her own reckless wanderings not as courage, but as cowardice. If nothing was serious or permanent, then nothing could really matter. No mistake would be lasting, no hurt would strike to her heart.

But this did. This did.

She was ashamed; not because of what she had done, or with whom. She was ashamed because of
why
.

She dashed an impatient palm across her damp lashes and began to dress.

Once upon a time, Giles had told her that she did not need to change the sort of person she was. But this was wrong. He gave her credit for far more bravery than she felt, and maybe for more than she possessed.

She could love him for that alone, if she allowed herself. But they both deserved a love granted on a firmer foundation than gratitude—and fear, relieved fear, that this was the end, and that their snowbound affair could be perfect in memory without dreary reality to ruin the fantasy.

The following morning, Audrina and Kitty stood on the entry porch watching trunks being loaded into carriages. Sunlight, warm on their faces, had continued to gobble snow from the roads, and the heavy slush remaining over frozen mud was thought to be passable.

“I can hardly believe it’s been less than three days.” Kitty tugged her cloak more tightly about her rounded body. “It feels as though I’ve been gone from my Daniel forever. But if I had to be trapped with someone, my lady, I’m glad it was with your party.”

“Thank you, Kitty.” Audrina caught her elbow to help her down the steps; the Rutherfords were planning to take Kitty home before continuing their own journey. “It was a pleasure to meet you and to learn with you how one diapers a vegetable marrow. I do hope you will be well. Will you write to me when the baby comes?”

Kitty bobbed a curtsy, setting both of them to fighting for balance on the steps. “Yes, of course. What would your direction be?”

Now, that was a good question. Would she want to stay in Alleyneham House with her parents? Would she be banished to one of her father’s country estates? She could not imagine what lay at the end of this journey home, or even if there would be a home at its end.

“You’d best send the news to Lady Irving,” she decided, giving Kitty the countess’s direction in Grosvenor Square.

But Kitty wasn’t listening; she was watching a bundled figure trudge toward the inn. Every fiber of her fragile body tensed. “Is that—” Then she uncoiled in a great spring of delight. “Daniel! Daniel!”

One hand bracing the small of her back, she navigated the final step and the yards between them with surprising speed. “Daniel!” She and the bundled figure embraced one another side to side, Kitty tucking his arm about her shoulders as naturally as though they were made to fit together. A quick flutter of low explanations followed, then Kitty led her husband back to where Audrina stood. “My lady, might I present my husband, Mr. Balthasar? Daniel, this is Lady Audrina.”

Daniel Balthasar was a stocky, sturdy young man with dark hair and a deeply tanned face. He did not seem to want to let go of his wife to shake hands, so he bowed. Kitty crouched along with his bending arm, laughing.

“I am pleased to meet you, sir,” Audrina said. “I hope you were not too worried about your wife in her absence.”

“I’ve been worried about Kitty for a while, m’lady, and tha’s the truth. Fair sick when I foun’ her gone, though I know she’s a smart woman and wou’ get a safe place to stay ou’ of the weather.”

“Oh, Daniel!” Kitty looked up at him with wide eyes. “And you’ll never guess what I’ve done. Sold that puzzle box from my mother for twenty pounds!”

“You never!” The weather-beaten face of Daniel Balthasar transformed. “You’ve a magic touch, my loove. Twen’y pounds?”

“It’s true! I’ve got it in my pocket.”

Her husband planted a great smacking kiss upon her cheek. “Glad I am of it. We’ll have the bes’ doctors for you, Kitty dear, so you and baby will be well.”

A dusting of snow must have blown into Audrina’s eyes, for they would not stop watering.

The Rutherfords trudged over then, their carriage packed first. “We’ll drop the pair of you at your home,” offered Richard as he shook Daniel’s hand. The Balthasars were too wise to decline this offer, and probably too cold.

Mr. Booth tugged his forelock in farewell, and Mrs. Booth bobbed curtsies all around. “Wha’ an honor it was to have you all here for Christmas,” she said. “I never had sooch fine crackers as what you made, Lady Audrina. If you’re ever in York again, I hope you’ll stay wi’ us.”

Audrina made some noise that probably represented assent. After Giles had left her bedchamber, she had fallen into a blue-deviled fit and forgotten to return to the bread in the kitchen. There it puffed and puffed and fell, and by the time she recalled it, there was nothing to do with the dough but make ship’s biscuit and apologize.

Lady Irving arranged payment for them both, as Audrina had no money with her. The Rutherfords, too, settled their bill. And then there was just the farewell, looming like a thundercloud. No longer would they be traveling together: The Rutherfords intended to race back to London, pushing their lightly laden carriage to make the journey in three days over the terrible roads. If all went well, Lady Irving and Audrina would also arrive in three days—but just in case, Lady Irving penned a letter of introduction for Richard to take to Lady Xavier, the countess’s clever code-solving niece.

“I expect we will see you in London.” Giles stood before Audrina. His posture was stiff and over-formal, as though he were uncomfortable in his own skin.

She was, too, now that he had seen all of hers.

“I expect so.” Audrina clipped her words off tight and kept her expression still, so it would not wobble or betray her.

He looked at her for a long moment, then with a nod of farewell, he left.

She hoped against all likelihood that they would not meet in London. Everything would be different in London: the crush of society, the demands of propriety, the disappointments of her parents.

Maybe
different
was not her favorite word after all.

The world would do nothing to bring Giles and Audrina together, and neither of them could bridge the chasm between them.

As she climbed into the carriage, she overheard Richard Rutherford behind her: “You wouldn’t dislike the idea, would you, Estella? Think of me as a sleigh bell.”

“Making noise long after it has ceased to be pleasant?”

Rutherford chuckled. “Bringing cheer to the wintriest days.”

Audrina took her seat, peering out the carriage window, just in time to see Rutherford kiss Lady Irving’s hand.

She flopped back against the hard horsehair squabs. Just now, their bright stripes offended her eye. When Lady Irving and her maid Lizzie climbed in as well, Audrina pretended to be asleep, and they pretended to believe that she was.

 

 

For three long days, the carriage cut southward toward London. At every inn where they changed horses or stopped for the night, Audrina contrasted their surroundings with the Goat and Gauntlet. Whether more lavish or less, nothing caught at her quite like the thought of that blue-walled room. Or the parlor, wherein she had left her fillet tucked in the window frame. Even the room in which Llewellyn had been locked up held a charm in memory for her. For that night, she had known he could not touch her.

It was safer to confine her thoughts to architecture. To think of people was too difficult, and for most of the journey, Lady Irving had let her keep her silence. The countess seemed to be mulling over many things, too, which Audrina guessed were related to that kiss on the hand from Richard Rutherford.

On the fourth day, at last, they drew near London. For the night, Audrina would stay with Lady Irving at the countess’s Grosvenor Square house. Darkness was falling, the moon no more than a fingernail in the sky.
Waning crescent.

She wondered how Sophy was doing. And Miss Corning—was she still at Castle Parr? How badly Lord Dudley had wanted company in his great lonely house over Christmas. Giles Rutherford was not alone in not getting the things he wanted.

By the time the lamps of London began to split the evening, Lizzie had drifted into a doze. Lady Irving poked her, and when the maid did not budge, she turned to Audrina. “Look here, girl. I’ve let you keep your silence, but I’m not going to keep mine anymore. Before we settle back into London, you need to know: There’s no shame in changing one’s mind.”

“I have not changed my mind about anything, my lady,” said Audrina, caught by surprise. “Or—wait, perhaps I have. What is the right answer?”

Harrumph
. “A good try, but I’m not going to answer that for you. You’re breaking your heart over your Rutherford and you’re both too proud to say so.”

Was this a broken heart, this feeling that the world was gray and endless? Before this month, she had thought the world too small. Now it stretched huge, with spaces that could not be spanned. “Nothing kept us together except a journey neither of us wanted to take.”

“Wrong, wrong, and wrong.” The countess’s voice rose, and Lizzie stirred. Once she settled back into her slumber, Lady Irving added in a furious whisper, “Nothing
brought
you together except a journey neither of you wanted to take
at first
. By the end of it, you were glad for it, weren’t you?”

Audrina opened her mouth to reply, then thought better of it. “Um.”

“Blushing. I thought so. I can tell even in the dark.” The countess looked smug. “As to what might keep you together, that’s up to you. But you can’t blame the weather, or that stupid sot of a Llewellyn, for the fact that you left York in my carriage instead of theirs—nor for that pining look on your face. Like a child watching someone else eat an ice.”

Why she had wanted to ride with Lady Irving, she didn’t know. “We have all had more than enough ice lately, my lady. But I thank you for your kindly meant observations.”

Lady Irving harrumphed again but did not press the matter. Likely she wanted to mull over her own romantic possibilities. This was all well and good for her, a widow of independent means and infinite opinions. She could fit in anywhere, molding any circumstance to her formidable will.

Not everyone could do so. The young, the unmarried. . . the ruined. Giles’s mother had fled across an ocean.
He would probably prefer that to our staying in England besmirching his good name
, Audrina had said of her father.

Because she knew what it meant to be told to come back to London betrothed or not at all: Her father found her to be a thumb mark on the glossy surface of the family. One way or another—by marriage or by absence—she was to be buffed away. An unprofitable investment, and an unnecessary one now that Charissa’s union with the Duke of Walpole seemed ready to yield such impressive results.

When had they all got into the habit of thinking that Charissa was worth more, because she was obedient and a duke wanted to marry her? Was Giles right, that Audrina thought of people as worth more or less depending on their rank? Or how much they cleaved to proper behavior?

Lamplight slipped in stripes through the carriage window; the streets widened into the familiar groomed avenues of Mayfair. Tomorrow she would call upon Charissa and explain what had happened, because she was quite sure her parents had hidden the truth of her sudden absence. Another of those thumb marks on their varnished life.

Audrina knew her error now, and it was not slipping away from a ballroom for stolen kisses, or even surrendering her virtue. Not taking a lover or hiding her heart. No, her error had been in laying her trust on someone undeserving.

And as Charissa was worth the truth, so Audrina hoped her sister would find her to be worth forgiveness.

The sort of person you are
, Giles had told her once,
you do not need to change.
But this was too generous. Her courage had been false, testing others to make them prove how much they cared.

How much did she care, though?

She had cared enough, in the quiet of a Yorkshire inn, to ask Giles if he was willing to marry her. She cared enough for her sister to lay out the full truth. Asking for help, for forgiveness, was what allowed a problem to be solved.

Yes, she cared enough to think that both of these relationships were worth pursuing, worth setting right.

And that must mean she, at last, was deciding what she was worth, too.

“Lady Irving,” she said as the carriage rolled to a halt before the countess’s home. “You are right. I was glad for the journey.”

“Are you going to marry again?” For the first time in the four days since they began their journey back to London—four long, muddy, tiring days—Giles asked the question of his father.

It was easier to talk of Richard than of anything that might remind Giles of Audrina. Like the moon, or the puzzle boxes, or an apple tart. Bread that failed to rise. A strip of folded paper. Cuff links and hairpins. Dressing or undressing.

He knocked his head against the carriage window.

Only when Richard spoke did Giles recall that he had asked a question. “I never thought to until very recently. But yes, if I can persuade Lady Irving that I would be better company than bearish solitude, I think it would suit me well. She’s funny, isn’t she?”

“Lady Irving?” Giles lifted his brows. “Funny isn’t the word I’d use for her.”

“No, maybe not funny.” Richard rubbed at his chin. “Like a great grouchy tiger, all teeth and claws—but for all that, a cat who thrives on warm fires and coddling.”

“So she’s a bear and a tiger and a cat. Quite the menagerie you hope to set up.”

“After raising six children, I’m capable of taking on any sort of menagerie.” Richard leaned back against the forward-facing seat, sinking his chin to catch Giles with a
tell the truth
gaze he hadn’t employed in some years. “Do you mind the idea? I hope you will not. No matter what lies ahead, a remarriage would not replace or erase my life with your mother.”