Swept Away By a Kiss (32 page)

“They found the Yule log, Valerie,” Cassandra announced with spirit. “We are on our way there now. Didn’t you hear the horn blow? None of us realized you wandered off.”

Even intoxicated, Valerie could tell that Cassandra and the rest of her friends were in a similar state. Everyone except the Earl of Alverston, it seemed. As Valerie linked arms with Cassandra, her brother caught her eye and frowned.

Valerie snapped her gaze away, pulling her hood over the curls escaping her chignon with trembling fingers. She gripped Cassandra’s arm and tried to walk steadily. She feared nothing would ever be steady now that Steven Ashford had kissed her again.

Valerie peered at her elegant reflection in the mirror. She was no longer foxed. In fact, no trace of the muddle-headed, jittery-nerved, tangle-bellied ninnyhammer from the woods appeared to remain.

“You are like a princess, mum,” Mabel breathed in awed tones over her shoulder. “Better than a princess, for all I’ve heard of them.”

Valerie turned from the glass. She might look her best in the silver-shot gown of sapphire silk, but her insides still swirled in a mass of confusion.

“If I appear well, Mabel, it is due to your magic. I feel absolutely dreadful.” Valerie lifted her train and accepted a silver-embroidered shawl and a fan of midnight lace sewn with sequins.

“ ’Tis just the drink complaining. I’ve a bit of the megrim myself tonight.”

Valerie wished she had the heart to grin, but she knew full well the after-effects of brandy did not cause her heart’s erratic beat. Her gown whispered against her legs as she moved toward the door, and she crossed the corridor to Valentine and Anna’s chambers.

“Ah, here she is, my dear,” Valentine said pleasantly as the door closed behind her. “Never more beautiful than when she has done something indiscreet.” He stood at the mantel, dressed with impeccable elegance, twisting the delicate stem of a wineglass between his fingers. Anna sat at the dressing table gowned in rose satin. A knowing smile curved her lips.

“Oh, Valentine,” Valerie scoffed, “you sound more like the earl each day.” She squeezed Anna’s hand. “How do you bear this old curmudgeon?”

The countess’s warm eyes twinkled. “It’s not always so difficult.”

“I will have you recall, young miss,” Valentine said as he set his glass upon the mantel, “I am the earl now.”

“Valerie, you are a Diamond,” Anna said. “Is there a reason for the particular brilliance of your toilette tonight, darling?”

Feeling pathetically transparent, Valerie looked from Anna’s interested smile to her brother’s lowered brow.

“Valentine—”

He raised a palm. “I will not pry into your affairs, sister dear, or even chastise you. I am not our father, and I will not behave as he did, as I have informed you many times. You are a woman, and you have spent too much time away doing God-knows-what for me to question your behavior now.” He paused, adding, “Despite the fact that it may be construed wrongly by others.”

“Oh, Valentine, it was not as you think,” Valerie said uneasily. “And Lord Bramfield—”

“Bramfield, indeed.” The earl moved toward his wife. “Timothy, I am glad to say, seemed to find nothing amiss with discovering you alone in the woods with Ashford.” He picked up Anna’s shawl and draped it over her shoulders. “Tim’s intentions are not what concern me, though. I hope you will take care with gentlemen about whom we know very little. Do you know anything of Ashford’s character?”

“Valentine,” Anna said, her perceptive gaze still upon Valerie, “Lord Ashford is the soul of graciousness, and clearly endeared to Lord and Lady March.”

“That speaks well of him.” Valentine conceded, offering his arm to Anna and extending his other for Valerie.

She tucked her hand into her brother’s elbow.

His look gentled. “Do you wish me to learn something of him? Give me the word, and I will see to it. I would do it without asking, but I’m afraid that if I displease you, you will disappear into America for another two years and refuse to write again.”

Valerie smiled, tears pricking at her eyes.

“Thank you, but not at this time,” she said thickly. She would never take him up on the offer. All of Anna’s and Valentine’s love and support could not help her this time. She must face this challenge alone.

The moment she entered the drawing room and her gaze met his, Steven saw that her anger still simmered. He smiled, making her a small bow. She turned her back to him.

He should not have kissed her. But it felt so extraordinarily good to do something without thinking it through first. He hadn’t done that in years, and he could not regret it.

He wanted to be with her, and his control was disintegrating. It didn’t matter how he tried to justify it to himself, or to her. He should not touch her, seek her out, need her like breath. Yet he’d done so since he arrived at the castle, drawn to her like tide to the moon, impelled into her sea-storm gaze, waking him up to dreaming at last. He had kissed her again, held her in his arms, made her siren’s body sing with pleasure, and he craved more. He ached to caress her satin skin and take her to the edge of insanity, just as she did to him by merely walking into a chamber.

He was not free to do so, however, when that chamber also contained Clifford Hannsley.

Hannsley’s hooded gaze rested upon Valerie now. Steven couldn’t blame him. Half the men in the room were staring at her. Her shimmering gown clung lovingly to shapely curves Steven’s hands burned to know again, silken tendrils of dark hair caressing her ivory neck.

He drew in a long breath. His fashionable unmentionables and cut-away coat were not exactly suited for his body’s response to her beauty. He searched for distraction. Alistair slumped in a corner removed from the conversation.

Steven suspected what his solicitor in London would tell him about Alistair’s debts. Still, he must make certain of his old friend’s betrayal. Jeremiah had brought assurances that the marquess carried with him the documents Steven needed. Steven could not prove Hannsley’s guilt without those. Short of breaking into his private chambers, there seemed to be no solution. The man’s valet was a bloodhound, on duty at all hours and armed, according to Amelia Brown, who had subtly investigated Castlemarch’s upstairs denizens. Steven could subdue such a fellow. But he’d sworn not to do anything that would implicate his godmother and godfather in illegal dealings, or anyone else at the castle, including servants. He must manage this some other way.

Now Alistair claimed to be upon the verge of acquiring the documents. Steven had a great many reasons to feel unease. But a single glance at the woman across the chamber undid that all.

The butler announced dinner. Valerie turned to her brother and Lady Alverston. A warm smile curved her lips and a glimmer lit her eyes as she took the countess’s arm. Lady Alverston bent her head to Valerie’s, and the two women laughed.

She seemed happy with her family. At ease. She had what she longed for now, a home and acceptance among the people she loved and who cherished her as she deserved.

Steven’s chest tightened. For a moment he allowed himself to imagine what it would be like to dance with her. The gentry from miles around would attend the ball tonight, and he would do his duty among the maidens and matrons. But he would only have eyes for Valerie. To dance with her, to hold her without secrets or censure, for anyone to see, just an ordinary man dancing with a beautiful woman, that would be like nothing he had ever experienced.

He dropped his gaze and stared into his untouched glass. In the candlelight, the wine looked like blood.

“Lord Hannsley is watching you,” Anna whispered.

Valerie shrugged, pretending not to care. It was not the first time. He’d been casting her admiring looks since her first night at the castle. But now with what Valerie knew about him and Flemming and Steven’s work, the Marquess of Hannsley’s stares rested upon her skin differently. They felt like oil, dangerous yet full of opportunity if one struck the correct match.

“Have you promised a set to him?” Anna asked.

“Yes.”

“Ah, then he is anxious for it to begin. What about Lord Bramfield?”

Valerie nodded. She had promised dances to practically every other man in the hall too.

“And Lord Ashford?”

Valerie’s belly clenched. She shook her head. Anna turned a look of consternation upon her, but did not speak.

“He has not asked, and please don’t say another thing about it.” Valerie looked around, flicking open her fan to hide her search. Steven stood among a group of gentlemen. He stepped away from his companions to a young lady from the neighborhood sitting with her mother. He bowed and extended his hand. She dimpled and nodded, and he led her into the set forming.

Valerie’s stomach felt like twisted caramel. Her dance partner appeared and she struggled to paste a smile onto her lips, glad to be away from Anna’s knowing looks.

Quadrilles and minuets and contredanses of interminable length and excruciating monotony passed. Valerie stood up with apparently every gentleman in the district. An agreeable interlude with a cheerful Lord Bramfield left her dumbfounded as to whether he had actually seen her alone in the woods with Steven. She was standing at the edge of the floor waiting for her latest partner to return with a glass of champagne when Steven’s voice came quiet and assured at her shoulder.

“Good evening,
mademoiselle
.”

A warm shiver of pleasure rippled up her spine.

“Quite a festive gathering, isn’t it?” He clasped his hands behind his back, looking out at the array of dancers forming the next set. Valerie’s insides turned to jelly. Evening finery suited him extraordinarily well. She let her regard linger upon his etched profile, welcoming the tingling awareness coiling through her.

She dragged her gaze away. She did not want to feel this tangled weakness for him. She wanted to feel strong, in control of something, even if only her willful heart. She swallowed down the ache in her throat.

“Good evening,
my lord
.”

“You delight in emphasizing the title, don’t you?” he said lightly. “It seems you have not yet relinquished the conviction that I lack nobility.”

She turned to face him. “Are you here merely to tease me, or have you come to ask me to dance?”

His slow smile curled around Valerie’s senses like sweet fire.

“I do not care to dance this evening. I wish to talk.”

“Yet it seems you have asked every other lady in the hall to partner you upon the floor.”

“I haven’t.” His eyes glimmered. “I have not asked Lady Agnes or Lady Dorsey.”

“Lady Agnes is eighty years old and Lady Dorsey uses a cane.”

“I might still have asked them.”

Valerie wanted to laugh, and cry. She could not bear the way he made her feel, full of amusement and warmth and longing and frustration all at once. It hurt in the very pit of her stomach. In her soul.

“Why don’t you wish to dance with me?”

The gold flecks in his eyes glittered. He bent his head, and his voice came low and intimate beneath the shimmering music.

“Because, Valerie, to touch you and yet not hold you would be beyond my ability at this time.”

Heat flooded her from brow to toe. “A simple dance?” she said shakily.

“A dance in this society is merely a pretense of making love, and not a very satisfying one at that.”

Valerie’s knees went watery. This was exactly what she had wanted to hear from him, and now her tongue would not seem to untwist.

“You are mistaken,” she managed. “It is a mild entertainment, or perhaps a gesture of admiration. At most it is an indication of courtship.”

“All the more reason that I should not ask it of you.”

Valerie stepped back, her stomach heaving. She felt like screaming. She couldn’t believe she had let herself fall into the silken grip of his game playing again, or that he was still doing this to her, after everything. But it seemed he simply could not give without taking away again.

Pressing down upon her pain, she sucked in a breath, words catching in her throat. Steven’s golden eyes shadowed with disquiet.

“Valerie, I do not wish to—”

“Tell me what you are doing here at Castlemarch,” she blurted out. “If nothing else, you owe me that.”