Teaching the Earl (17 page)

This was only the beginning of the evening. They still had the rout, and the ball. He hoped he could make it through the night with his willpower still holding.

He had renewed his promise to himself - to Sophia - to be true to her memory and not touch Elizabeth that way again. Yet this was only the first evening of this vow, of a series of evenings that stretched endlessly ahead. If he was to stay by her side for days, or even the weeks and months he knew she needed to be familiar with every person of the ton, to know whether each was to be trusted or not, he would never survive with honor intact.

Sanity told him he must eventually surrender that
honor. It was inevitable. And truly, when he looked at her, when he remembered how it had felt to slide into the ecstasy of her soft body, honor seemed an empty, hollow thing.

_____

He was very quiet. He seemed preoccupied, which was not unusual for him, of course, yet he was not sad. He watched her very closely. Was he afraid she would embarrass him? But he did not seem apprehensive
either. Instead he was charged with some sort of vitality, so he almost vibrated with tension.

The rout had been a huge success, as such things were judged. Tomorrow during morning calls her hostesses would say it was a dreadful squeeze, where one was barely able to move, and she would nod and agree. Routs were her least
favorite social event. If only she could avoid them all. Yet if she was to be part of fashionable London, she must take part, must be seen in the right places.

But balls? Oh, who did not love a ball?

The Hastings' ballroom was decorated with great swathes of fabric hanging from the ceiling, swooping out to the walls. It was meant to imitate a circus tent, encircling the whirling dancers.

She squeezed Christopher's upper arm, pressed it to her chest and said, "Isn't the effect interesting?
So evocative."

He looked dazed for a moment, then blinked and gave her a vague smile. "Have you ever been to the circus?"

"Every year, when it comes to Covent Gardens"

"Would you like some champagne?"

"Actually what I want is to dance. Just think, we may stand up together as often as we please, without making everyone condemn us."

"Relief indeed."

"I know you're teasing me. I see your smile. Very well. You needn't dance with me at all. I'm sure I can attract plenty of partners."

"I shall start you off, certainly." He bowed very gallantly, as if he had not just held her arm all the way in. Then he took her hand and they went to join the sets in the
center of the chalked floor. It was a country jig, one she knew well. Delightful.

It was a peculiar thing to dance with him. To meet his gaze and hold it, and wonder what he was thinking. To not make polite conversation
as one must when dancing with a stranger, but connect and part and connect again, in silence, eyes locked, until it seemed every touch was hugely significant. Where was friendship in this? How was she to joke and laugh and distract him when he looked at her that way and she felt breathless and spinning? Oh, what was he thinking? His expression reminded her of those long minutes alone with him on a stranger's bed. She was overheated, and not only from the dance.

When the piece ended and a waltz immediately began, he did not let go of her but simply changed his hold and swept her out to the middle of the dance floor. His hand clasped her waist and the warmth of his touch pulsated through her body. He was so tall and broad compared to her, so masculine, she felt delicately feminine next to him.

"I don't know what to say to you,” she said, and heard how breathy her voice sounded. “When you hold me this close, I am so distracted I can barely talk. I didn't intend to be boring."

"You may be certain you don't bore me."

"When I think of all the lessons I received about proper topics of conversation with a man, it's very lowering to think I must be silent because nothing comes to mind. I can't complain to you about this wet weather we've had, because if I do I will remember you standing in a cold, boggy field with mud to your waist and rain hammering down. Too ridiculous then to make a fuss over these paltry London showers."

"I see what you mean."

"And I've spoken about the crowd and the decorations already. I suppose I could go on about the supper but I haven't eaten it yet so it would all be speculation. And then I look up at you and-Oh, see. So quickly I forget what I was going to say. Perhaps it is your eyes. They are such a pretty color, it's hard to look at them and think straight."

"Is that what does it? Then I will say yours are a very pretty
color too."

Did he mean he found her eyes distracting? She was not brave enough to ask. "I know so little about you. Of your life before we met. Tell me what it was like."

His eyebrows went up, but he answered easily enough. "Nothing very exciting. I studied law at Oxford, practiced as a barrister, and was active in politics. I intended to eventually run as a Member of Parliament in the House of Commons."

"So, a life of public service?"

"That was the plan."

"Why politics?
Do you like power?"

"Not unduly.
Only as a means to an end. There's much to be done in this country. Reform is sluggish. I planned to put my shoulder behind that and push it forward as much as I could."

"But your plans have changed."

He looked away, over the heads of the other dancers. "It is not so much that they have changed. More that-It is hard to believe in the rightness of my choices when-One of the reasons I refused to give up the title for Sophia was because as a member of the House of Lords I already have what it would have taken years, if not decades, to achieve. With a seat in parliament I have a voice, a chance to make change. I weighed up the good I could do against a life with her, and she lost. Lost more than I realized. I did not know the strength of her feelings for me."

"So you must give up politics now, as expiation?"

"It's not quite that. Doing so is meaningless. It's more that the unrelenting pursuit of it seems so wrong in the face of her death."

"I thought it was concern for the estate that made you give her up. So you could be free to marry for advantage." She said it steadily, and pretended it did not hurt.

"That also. Two perfectly compelling reasons, I thought."

"I don't think they would have been, if you truly loved her."

He closed his eyes and breathed hard through flared nostrils, and she instantly regretted saying it aloud. Her wretched tongue! Why did she poke and prod at him like this, when she had meant to be only kind and gentle?

"I'm so
rry. I should not have said-"

"I begin to think you are right. I'm not sure I really understood love. Yet when I hear the words the shame-It almost unmans me. I could wish t
he earldom had never come to me - that I was still the man I once was. Then I stood on solid ground."

She heard what he did not say: that then he would not be married to her. She ducked her head. "And Sophia would still be alive."

"Yes. I promised her I would not speak of her to you. So far I have done an appalling job of keeping my word."

"I think you blame yourself too much. I wish you wouldn't. Is it such a crime to be happy?"

"It feels that way."

She squeezed his hand, where it held hers. "You could be kinder to yourself. Nothing is served by your suffering. And it hurts me to watch it."

"Does it?"

"Yes."

"Such an unfortunate time you've had."

"Pretend, just for a few
hours, that we've met and made friends, that there is nothing more for us to think about than our own enjoyment. Pretend you are happy. Just a few hours. Please."

He looked down at her, his face still, and she waited, breath suspended.
Then one corner of his mouth quirked up in a reluctant half smile. "Very well. A few hours. If you'll consider it a poor sort of apology for all I've done to you."

"Oh," she laughed up at him, "for that you'll need to be happy for days. But we can start with this. So tell me what is your very
favorite thing to do, and why."

So she teased and cajoled him, and now he had given himself permission, it was as if a weight had gone from his shoulders. He smiled, talked, even laughed twice. She fancied when he looked at her he saw her without the screen of guilt he had named, because for once he truly listened to her. He drew her out in turn, and they chatted, their waltz long finished, on a settee in a corner of the ballroom, their heads bent together,
voices low.

As she leaned in
, her shoulder almost touched his, and she was aware of the proximity down to the soles of her tingling feet. His sleeve brushed her upper arm and a quiver went through her, so her neck lengthened and flexed in a subtle stretch. So close.

She thought she could smell him, over the scent of beeswax candles, perfumes and pomade. She liked the smell of him. It was more than just the sandalwood and cloves, something else difficult to describe, not like anything she knew, but it beckoned her in so she wanted to put his arms around her shoulders, snuggle in and wear him like a coat.
So masculine. So delicious.

He talked to her softly of trout fishing - of all things - and his voice was deep and gentle, and when his hands lifted to describe in gesture the flick of a rod, she looked at them and hungered to have them on her skin. It was easy to slip into a daze of imagination, just sitting here and listening to him talk, so compelling. Yes, he would be a great politician. He spoke well, and he was so charismatic.

It had been hard to see, really. Oh, he had always impressed her. But now she suddenly had some sense of the man he truly was, behind the grief. There was an energy he had subdued, as if he tried to snuff life out of himself. She wanted to hold him tight and pull him back from that edge, to say no, he must not deny life.

Why?

Because she needed that man. She needed for that to be her husband. Not the half-alive, stoic laborer. Not the martyr. She must have the vital, living, thinking man, whole and present. It was instinct that told her it was so. Instinct that said he was essential to her, and the strong sense of it was confusing.

Had she not just said to him her marriage was a mistake, and should never have happened - would not, if he had only told her the truth of his circumstances?

How could her heart then lurch and bound, and her whole being tingle with yearning, when all he did was smile and talk to her?

Was this all in her head?

She put her gloved hand on his, where it lay on the settee between them, and he paused and glanced down, then met her gaze. His pupils were very dark, the green only a slender rim around them.

She should say something. She should rationalize the contact, or speak of something else, to break the tension. But for once she had no words,
nothing to say. Only this desire to connect with this man, this Chris, who she had never truly met, never known, who might be gone tomorrow, once again victim to self-denial, but who sat and confided in her now like her friend. Like her husband.

His nostrils f
lared. His eyelids lowered halfway. "You should not look at me like that. Not here."

"Then take me somewhere else where I can look at you like that."

"It is not wise."

"Sometimes being wise is very foolish. Come." She took his hand in a firmer grip, stood and tugged him
up. He came without resistance and stood over her, so close she had to tilt her head back to meet his gaze.

He shook his head slightly. "Not wise at all," he murmured, more to himself than to her. Then his face set in resolve, and it was she who was pulled through the crowded room.

The other guests were a blur, and their hostess a meaningless, smiling face as they made their farewells. Then they were away. The sharp night air slapped her cheeks and she huddled into the wrap Chris had fastened at her throat with fingers that fumbled a little.

There had been no time to summon the carriage to the door, so she skipped along at his side as he strode down the pavement, the edge of every paving slab harsh
against the thin material of her slippers. Her hand was in his, hot even through their gloves.

There was fear there, too, of what would come, of pain. But even that was not worse than if he returned to his cold distance. Anything was better than that.

He was not cold now. No, he was urgent, and it excited her. He was her compelling stranger.

Here was their carriage, and he wrested the door open. The startled coachman jolted from his hunched doze under a rug, and peered down at them.

Chris commanded, "Home, Harris. And don't spare the horses."

"Right you are, my lord," said Harris, and as the door snapped shut behind them and they were enclosed in the cool, leather-scented darkness, the brougham lurched into motion. The whip cracked over the horses' heads and now they clattered over the cobbles, the brougham rocking so Chris braced himself against the wall and dragged her into the circle of his arms for protection.