Slightly Tempted (18 page)

But Lady Morgan Bedwyn, he had discovered, despite her extreme youth, had character. It was not up to him either to give her hope or to withhold it. All he could offer her were the facts.

Neither Sir Charles's embassy staff nor he had been able to discover any trace of her brother's whereabouts. And yet there was a small piece of news. The letter Lord Alleyne Bedwyn had carried to the Duke of Wellington had indeed been delivered into his hands.

CHAPTER IX

IT WAS STRANGE HOW THE HEART CLUNG TO HOPEeven when there was no reasonable basis for it, Morgan found. And how life went on.

She was strolling in the Parc de Bruxelles with the Earl of Rosthorn. They were watching the swans glide gracefully across the lake, leaving a gently rippling series of V's behind them on the blue water. It was a lovely area in the heart of the city and a beautiful summer's day. She could feel some of the tension of hours of tending the wounded seep from her bones in the warmth of the sun.

They had not talked about Alleyne. Not really. When one of the ladies had called her to the door at Mrs. Clark's and she had seen who her visitor was, she had seen too the answers to all her questions in his eyes.

"Nothing?" was all she had asked.

He had shaken his head gravely. "Nothing."

It was perhaps absurd that they had said no more on the subject. But what more was there to say? He had suggested that she take a break for an hour or so and walk to the park with him. Mrs. Clark, who had just risen from her bed after snatching a few hours of sleep, had agreed that Morgan needed some fresh air and relaxation and excused her from her duties. It was a measure of their preoccupation, perhaps, that neither she nor Morgan had thought about the desirability of a maid's accompanying her so that the proprieties would be observed. But then, there was no maid to spare.

Besides, the whole idea of strict propriety and etiquette seemed irrelevant under present conditions.

Alleyne was dead, Morgan supposed. But her mind could not grasp that harsh reality. Not yet.

"I wish Wulfric were here," she said suddenly, breaking a lengthy silence.

"Do you,chérie ?" He looked down at her in that way he had of making her feel that she had his undivided and sympathetic attention.

She thought then that perhaps her words might seem insulting.

"You have been wonderfully kind," she said. "But I cannot expect you to keep on giving your time to me and my concerns."

"I can think of nothing and no one to whom I would prefer to give it," he said, his voice low and very French.

Just a week or two ago she would have interpreted both his words and his tone as provocatively flirtatious. She would, perhaps, have answered him in kind. Now she was prepared to take his words at their face value, as the expression of the strange, unexpected friendship that seemed to have blossomed between them.

"Wulfric would know what to do," she said. "He would know what to decide." He would know when reality could no longer be avoided.

He would know when to pronounce Alleyne dead.

"If it is your wish," Lord Rosthorn said, "I will take you to him,chérie ."

"He is inEngland, " she said, looking up at him, startled.

"I will take you there if you wish."

She stared mutely at him, the lake, the swans, the beauty of the park forgotten. Had it really come to this, then? Was she going to have to go home to tell Wulf-and Aidan and Rannulf and Freyja? Was that to beher task, her role? She tried to imagine herself saying the appalling words.

Alleyne is dead.

"I will wait a few days longer," she said. "Perhaps he will come even now. Perhaps there is an explanation. Perhaps . . ." She could not think of any more possibilities with which to complete the thought.

"Let us sit down for a few minutes," he suggested, pointing to a seat beneath the shade of a tree.

She slid her hand free of his arm as she sat. She rested her hands in her lap, palm up, and looked down at them.

"You are feeling betrayed,chérie ?" the earl asked her.

"By Lady Caddick?" She clasped her hands. "I have not thought of her all day. I will miss Rosamond."

"I meant by your young officer," he said gently. "Captain Lord Gordon."

"He is notmy officer," she said, pressing her hands more tightly together. "He never was."

"Buthe thought he was," he pointed out, "and you expected perhaps that you could rely upon his love. Do not be too harsh on him. He was quite badly wounded two days ago, and he was in obvious pain this morning."

"I have seen a great deal of wounds and pain in the last two days, Lord Rosthorn," she said. "And I have seen a great deal of nobility. I have seen a man die without uttering a sound even though he must have been suffering agonies-merely because, he told me, he did not want to distress the other men. I have seen desperately wounded men direct us to others more in need of our attentions than they. I have heard men apologize to us for being so much trouble. I heard a man tell Mrs. James to go and rest because she was almost asleep on her feet even though his dressing needed changing and he must have been very uncomfortable. I have heard men praise their comrades and other regiments and battalions than their own. I have heard no one praise himself."

Except Captain Lord Gordon.

"He is very young,chérie, " Lord Rosthorn said.

"Two of the men at Mrs. Clark's," she said, "are fourteen and fifteen years of age. There are no two men braver though one of them may yet die from his wounds."

"You are determined to be hard on young Gordon, then?" he asked her, patting one of her hands.

Without thinking she turned her hand and curled her fingers about his.

"He had a fanciful notion about fighting the French for me," she said. "He pictured himself as something akin to a medieval knight fighting for his lady's honor, I believe. And yet this morning, when he could have fought for me in a much more practical way, he could think only of his own comfort on the journey home. I am glad I was never silly enough to fall in love with him."

"I believe,chérie, " he said, "you would find it impossible to be silly. But I am glad there is no lingering regret for a young man who was never worthy of you. He is merely a peacock, a popinjay, a featherbrain."

She laughed despite herself.

He moved their clasped hands from her lap to rest on his thigh. It did not occur to her to be shocked even though she felt the smooth, tautly stretched fabric of his riding breeches and the hard-muscled warmth of his flesh beneath. She let her shoulder sway against his arm and felt comforted.

"He never loved me," she said. "It is a common failing of men. They see someone they consider beautiful and desirable and eligible, and they imagine that they love her. In fact, though, they love themselves reflected in her eyes. They have no interest in discoveringwho she is."

"Ah,chérie, " he asked her softly, "is that true only of men? Do not many women do the same thing?"

She drew breath to deny it. But she had always tried to be honest with herself. Was it true?Did women do that too-project their love of themselves onto a handsome man in whose eyes they could admire their own image? Hadshe ever done it? Had she not at first been delighted with Captain Lord Gordon's attentions? Had she not accepted Rosamond's friendship and courted the invitation to come here to Brussels because he admired her and she approved of his good taste? If it was true-and she was honest enough to admit that it was at leastpartly so-it was lowering in the extreme.

"I suppose we do," she admitted. "When we admire a man we are far more interested, at least at first, in our own feelings, in what he says and does to make us feel good about ourselves. But love is so much more. It is knowledge-knowing and being known."

"And whois Lady Morgan Bedwyn?" he asked her.

She smiled ruefully and looked up into his face. It was very close to her own. His lazy eyes smiled back at her and she remembered suddenly that he had kissed her on the lips again last night after she had woken up with her head on his shoulder. But she repressed the memory. She did not want to think of him in sexual terms-not now when she needed him as a friend. And when she liked him as a person.

"There is no question more certain to tongue-tie me," she said. "How can I explain who I am, Lord Rosthorn? Sometimes I do not even know the answer myself. I knew that I was strong-minded-my old governess would have used the wordheadstrong -and stubborn, but I would not have thought I could defy a chaperon to whom Wulfric had entrusted me and dare to remain in a foreign city alone, without even a maid. I knew I was not missish or squeamish, but I did not know I could tend horribly wounded men without flinching or watch a man die without breaking all to pieces. I did not want a come-out Season because I objected strongly to becoming a commodity on the great marriage mart. And yet I did enjoy my presentation and some of the social events surrounding it. I did not think of myself as a romantic, but I was enchanted by the sight of officers in scarlet uniforms and would have begged and pleaded with Wulfric to be allowed to come here if begging and pleading ever had any effect upon him. I have always been opposed to war, and yet at least half my reason for wanting to come here-no, more than half-was a fascination with the historic battle that was brewing right upon England's doorstep. I would have thought myself immune to the blatant flirtations of a practiced rake, and yet not only did I not stop yours when I met you, I also encouraged and responded to them. I would have thought it impossible to develop a friendship with such a man. And yet now, at this moment, it seems to me that you are the dearest friend I have ever known. I really do not know myself at all, you see. How can I tell you, then, who I am?" She laughed.

He chuckled too. "You are very young," he said. "You must not be hard on yourself. You have scarcely begun the voyage into discovery that is adulthood. But I doubt any of us ever know ourselves completely. How dull life would be if we did. There would be no room for growth. We would never take ourselves by surprise."

"All I do know for certain," she told him, "is that I am not just a lady. I am a woman-and a person too."

"I have never doubted it,chérie, " he said.

And here she was, doing exactly what she had just deplored in others. She was so wrapped up in herself that she was virtually ignoring the man next to her. She looked up at him again.

"And who areyou, Lord Rosthorn?" she asked.

He chuckled again. He really was very handsome when he smiled, she thought-and even when he did not, for that matter. But there were laughter lines at the corners of his eyes and about his mouth when he laughed, suggesting that he was normally a good-humored man. He would age well, she thought, even when the lines became etched into his face.

"You would not want to know me,chérie, " he said. "I have lived the life of a wastrel."

"Both before and after your banishment to the Continent?" she asked him. "Did you learn nothing from the events that caused that catastrophe, then?"

"Apparently not."

He looked down into her face, his eyes lazy and laughing. Their lips were only inches apart. And yet she did not feel in any danger from him. She felt perfectly relaxed with him. Despite his reputation and the undeniable fact that his father had banished him from England nine years ago, she could not believe that he was a wastrel.

"But even if I knew all the sordid details of your life," she said, "they would still not tell mewho you are. You have not answered my question."

"Perhaps there is nothing to tell," he said. "Perhaps I am a man without any depth of character at all."

"I very much doubt that," she said, "though I might have believed it a week or so ago. Why have you taken me under your wing, Lord Rosthorn?"

"Like a mother bird?" He chuckled again. "Perhaps because you are the most beautiful woman I have ever seen,chérie, and I admire beauty."

She had lost him. He had retreated behind the facade of mocking amusement he had displayed during their first few meetings, including the picnic in the Forest of Soignés.

But whyhad he befriended her? There was no real reason why he should have, was there? She could only conclude that it was kindness itself. There-she did knowsomething about him after all.

But did he think of her as a friend or only as a responsibility? She was not the latter. She must be the former, then. She was his friend as surely as he was hers.

"A wastrel," she said, smiling at him. "What a bouncer, Lord Rosthorn." She withdrew her hand and patted the back of his. "I must go back. I am to sleep this evening and take the night shift."

He stood immediately and drew her arm through his.

"I will come and see you each day if I may," he said as they walked, "and bring any news there is. If at any time you decide that you wish to return to England, I will make arrangements. If you need me for any other reason, you know where to find me, or at least where to leave a message for me."

"The Rue de Brabant," she said. "Where is it?"

"I'll take you past there on our way to Mrs. Clark's," he said. "It is not much out of our way. I'll show you the house."