Taming Beauty (18 page)

Lilith on the moors, her skirts wrinkled and grass-stained, her chin lifted as she silently watched him stalk nearer, resignedly waiting for a tongue-lashing of a different sort altogether than the one he’d offered with his kisses.

Lilith in the moonlit garden, her slender form little more than a silhouette in the darkness, demanding, nay begging, him to return to the house, to the path he’d foolishly chosen.

Lilith straddling him on the edge of the bed, slowly loving him with eyes wide open as if to capture his image, to lock it away, a cherished memory she might bring forth long after their single stolen night came to an end.

Lilith standing before him amidst the remnants of a bacchanal, the very picture of fearless determination but for the catch in her voice, the unruly curls cascading over her shoulders and the trembling of her hand as she waved that damn fan before her pale, perspiring face.

There is a vast difference between one night of risk and a lifetime of ruin.

Only there’d been no difference, not for Lilith. She’d risked one night of honest, unbridled passion and paid for the pleasure with the ruin of her life.

He’d been too furious, too damn proud and stubborn to recognize the sacrifice, all of the sacrifices she’d offered up from the moment she’d stepped foot on his land. For her silly, spoiled sister. For her sorry excuse for a father. 

For a merciless, vengeful beast without enough sense to realize the curse of loneliness and isolation he’d brought down upon himself had been lifted. Charmed away by his love of this irreverent, passionate, contrary, complicated woman.

“Lilith.”

For a moment, an incremental snippet of time, Lilith fancied the gruff, almost soundless whisper to be nothing more than a breeze ruffling the curtains.

Except the curtains—heavy velvet drapes unlikely to be ruffled by anything less than a typhoon—had been packed away with nearly everything else in the house.

Even as her brain latched onto the logical thought as a drowning person might grasp the end of a fraying rope, Lilith’s heart began to race.

Slowly, she turned her head, her gaze sweeping across the straw-littered floor to find a pair of mud-spattered boots planted just inside the library. There was nothing for it but to follow the boots up to the buff breeches tucked into them, to the dusty black coat hanging open over a gray waistcoat and wrinkled, unravelling cravat, to the jaw shadowed with whiskers noticeably lighter and redder than the auburn locks curling over broad shoulders.

Lilith’s gaze stalled just there, on the ninth Baron Malleville’s chin, on the firm slash of his lips and the muscle ticking beneath the scruff on his jaw. She might have blamed the inability to lift her gaze higher on a fascination with the fiery whiskers which looked soft and silky, though likely they were prickly and rough. In truth, she was frightened by what she would see if she allowed herself to look higher, to meet the gray eyes that had haunted dreams.

Nerves jangling, Lilith lifted a shaking hand to her neck, instinctively reaching for a wayward curl with which to fiddle. Only her curls had gone the way of her heart, hacked away and trampled beneath her feet in penance for her transgressions.

“Lilith, my love.” Jasper’s lips formed the words, though she couldn’t hear them over the queer din in her ears, rather like the rush of the river after a thunderstorm.

Still, the silent words jarred her, simultaneously unnerved and invigorated her.

“Holy mother and all her minions.” Lilith scrambled to her feet, her skirts tangling around her and nearly tripping her. “What in blazes are you doing here?”

Jasper strode across the room, his boot heels clicking on the warped old wood. Stopping near enough she might have touched him, had she a mind to do something so utterly absurd, he held out a creased and folded piece of parchment.

Lilith stared at the deed to Charmed Crossing, her mind spinning in seven directions at once, until finally she reined in her chaotic thoughts enough to grasp the colossal miscalculation in her machinations. “Damn and blast. You likely passed Horace on the road in Wiltshire or Somerset.”

“Horace?” Jasper’s fingers curled around the deed, mangling the paper.

“His Grace, the Duke of Cheltenham.”

“On his way to Cornwall, I take it.”

“It needed only one day,” Lilith muttered. “One more day and I would have been gone—”

“Gone where?” Jasper barked.

Lilith shrugged, for she hadn’t any idea. “To Scotland, perhaps. Or maybe the Continent. It hardly matters where. The point is I never considered the possibility you’d make the journey to London, never even considered you might venture beyond the village. And now His Grace is likely nearing Breckenridge, Withy hot on his trail, and you are not there.”

“Lilith.” Just that, just her name whispered on a low groan, had Lilith’s breath stalling in her chest, her pulse running rampant.

“You’ll simply have to turn around and return to Cornwall.”

“Lilith, look at me.”

She lifted her gaze only so far as the top button of Jasper’s waistcoat. “His Grace isn’t the most patient of gentlemen, but I imagine he’ll wait a day or two for you to return. Withy will camp out on your front lawn until the cows come home and offer you an outrageous sum. But, if it’s all the same to you, would you mind terribly giving Horace a chance to outbid his brother?”

“There isn’t going to be any bidding.”

Lilith’s head snapped up, her gaze colliding with Jasper’s.

Lord have mercy, the heat in his eyes singed her senses and left her feeling as if she’d been bludgeoned about the heart.

“Charmed Crossing does not belong to me.”

Curling her fingers around his wrist, she lifted his hand and gave it a little shake. “Of course it belongs to you. You’ve the deed right here in your hand.”

No sooner had the words tripped off her lips, than Jasper released his grip on the parchment. The deed fluttered to the floor between them and he took hold of her hand, his work-roughened fingers clasping tight.

Instinctively, Lilith attempted to tug free of his hold, to no avail. “You can toss it away, burn it or throw it in the river, but it won’t change the fact the property belongs to you. And two men with deep pockets and little sense are en route to Breckenridge fully prepared to pay you an obscene sum to purchase it.”

“I will not sell your dowry.”

Lost in his pewter gaze, in the feel of his warm hand around hers, in the notion he might never release his hold on her, it took Lilith a moment to grasp his words, and when she did her breath left her on a strangled laugh. “Dowry? How in Hades did you come by the preposterous idea this rickety old house was my dowry?”

“Your father told me as much the day your reinforcements arrived,” Jasper replied, his voice a low rumble. “Not ten seconds after he offered you up as an alternate bride.”

“Dun offered…that lying…scheming…” Lilith spluttered in exasperation. “Why is it I’m surprised? He has proven himself a deceitful, manipulative rogue time and again and still I am surprised by his treachery.”

“Treachery or not, Dunaway made the offer and gave over the deed, so I am honor-bound to marry you.”

“Honestly, haven’t your cockeyed notions of honor gotten you into enough trouble?” Lilith yanked her hand free and stepped away from the temptation his words evoked. “Honor-bound to marry me, indeed.”

“It isn’t only my honor at stake.” Jasper raked a hand through his hair, mussing the already tangled curls.

“Your honor is not at stake, as Charmed Crossing was never my dowry and Dun had no right to dangle it, or me for that matter, before you.”

“And yet, he did more than dangle the lure,” Jasper retorted. “He left the deed in my study for me to find and collect upon.”

Exasperation giving way to aggravation, Lilith flung her hands in the air and stomped her foot. “For pity sake, I left the deed!”

Jasper blinked in obvious surprise and took a single step toward Lilith.

“I wagered Dun for it, bested him and left it for you.” Crikey, when would she learn not to let her temper get the better of her? Ah well, there was nothing for it but to brazen it out as if her life depended upon it. Or, better yet, Jasper’s life. “And before you get your smallclothes in a wad, it wasn’t a noble sacrifice by any stretch of the imagination. Dun would only have lost it again the next time he sat down at a card table.”

“Good God, was that what all that folderol on the terrace was about?” Jasper asked on a snarl of laughter. “You wagered Dunaway you could scare me off with nothing more than a few lecherous fairy tales?”

“With the truth,” Lilith replied with a snarl of her own. “I wagered I could convince you to surrender Dunaway’s debt and bid the lot of us a hasty return to London, using only the unvarnished truth as a weapon.”

“And instead, I surrendered you.” Jasper’s hands came up to wrap around her arms. “And you surrendered your home.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Lilith exclaimed. “Charmed Crossing is not my home. It is nothing more than a ramshackle old house on a plot of land worthless to anyone beyond the two men currently racing to Cornwall. Which, I might add, is precisely what you ought to be doing just now.”

“I won’t sell your home out from under you.”

“Are you not listening to a word I say?”

“Your home, your house, your dowry. Call it what you will,” Jasper replied, his fingers flexing as if he might shake her. “The fact is, Charmed Crossing belongs to you and you cannot simply give it to me.”

“Can you truly be so obtuse?” Lilith demanded. “I did not give you Charmed Crossing. I gave you a choice! A choice about your future, your estate, your family. Most importantly, a choice in whom you take as your wife.”

“If the choice is mine, I choose you.”

“You cannot choose me,” Lilith protested, what little remained of her composure slowly slipping its mooring. “I will not allow you to take the choice I’ve given you and throw it back in my face in the name of honor or duty or whatever other notions you’ve got rattling around in that thick head of yours.”

“Damn it, Lilith,” he growled, and when the shake came it was nothing more than a gentle jostling. “You must know how I feel—”

“Do not say it.” Lilith wriggled against the manacle of his hands wrapped around her arms, panicked by the direction the conversation had taken, by the path he seemed determined to travel, never mind the road was lined with thorns and bogs and all manner of danger. “Go home, my lord. Auction off Charmed Crossing on your front lawn and don’t settle for a penny under thirty thousand pounds. Reclaim Northridge, restore your family name, marry a sweet, innocent Cornish miss and fill your nursery with sticky-fingered, chattering, carrot-topped children.”

Jasper made no reply, simply looked at her from beneath lowered brows, studying her as one might an insect under a magnifying glass. A grasshopper, perhaps.

“Oh for mercy sake,” Lilith cried, irritated and aggravated and enraged beyond all measure. “Listen to me, you blundering buffoon! Gwendolyn sold my virginity to the highest bidder and all of London knows it. You would have known it had you not exiled yourself to Cornwall for the sake of your bloody lost honor, which wasn’t lost so much as stolen by Lord Morrissey. The very same man I took to my bed in a mad scheme to preserve an elderly duke’s pride when my mother suggested selling my blasted maidenhead a second time. Good God, it’s too damned ludicrous for words, but such is my life!”

Jasper let loose a gruff chuckle. “Christ, you’ve a mouth on you when in a temper.”

Lilith was thrown off-course by his sudden amusement, her fury falling away to leave her breathless and befuddled. “I’ve a mouth on me even at the best of times.”

“That you do,” he agreed, his gaze falling to her lips.

“Don’t do it.”

“Don’t do what?”

“I’m afraid I used up my meager allotment of bravery and benevolence on your terrace at Breckenridge,” she whispered even as she lifted up to her toes, almost aligning their mouths. “Please don’t make it all have been for naught.”

“Ah, Lilith, my contrary beauty, it was all for naught the moment you crossed into Cornwall,” Jasper murmured, his breath mingling with hers, the intimacy of it shaking the foundations of her resistance. “My entire life will be for naught if you are not there to share it. I love you, Lilith Aberdeen.”

Lilith blinked furiously against the sudden moisture gathering in her eyes. “Why must you always turn up stubborn when I am attempting to exercise a modicum of prudence?”

“Throw prudence to the wind.” Jasper wrapped his arms around her and pulled her against his big chest, nearly lifting her feet off the floor. “Marry me.”

“You truly are a beast,” Lilith replied on a watery laugh. “And perhaps a bit mad to tempt me so when you know I was not raised to resist temptation.”

“Then don’t resist, love.”

“The scandal would be of biblical proportions.” The warning was as much for her sake as his, for she could feel the last vestiges of resistance crumbling.

“No more than a slightly soiled bedsheet to add to the line of dirty linens waving about,” he assured her. “Both yours and mine.”

“I have noticed gossip is no match for a stiff, Cornish breeze.” Gracious, that sounded remarkably as if she meant to accept his daft proposal.

Jasper must have thought so as well. His big body went still, his eyes shining with something both soft and fierce. “Is that a yes?”

“I suppose you’ll want that nursery full of boisterous little red-haired urchins, forever under foot and up to mischief?” Lilith twined her arms up over his shoulders and sifted her fingers through his hair.

“I thought you’d taken a liking to the little creatures,” he replied with a frown, though not quite the pout she adored. “But if you’d rather not bear my children, I’ll do my best to prevent it, if you’ll only say yes.”

“And I imagine we’ll live out the rest of our days in that wild wasteland you call home?” Truly, if she possessed so much as a smidgeon of compassion, she’d put the poor man out of his misery. “Foregoing all but the occasional visit to London?”

Jasper’s frown dipped into a scowl. “We’ll make the journey twice yearly, if you will but say yes, woman.”

“If I know you, you’ll insist upon a reading of the banns and a wedding in the quaint little church surrounded by dancing daffodils, with the entire village there to bear witness to the misalliance of the decade.”

“Damn it all, we can elope to Scotland today. Just say yes.” Lovely, simply lovely, his gray eyes shooting sparks as he attempted to hang on to his temper. 

“I’ll be reduced to wearing ready-made gowns stripped right off the mannequin in the funny little shop. What was it you called it?”

“The mercantile, and you needn’t purchase ready-made gowns, seeing as we’ll be journeying to Town twice yearly if you would but say yes already.”