Temptations of a Wallflower (30 page)

“You've stolen my heart, ma'am,” Jacob said. “I find myself unable to exist without you.” He stood, gathering his clothing. “Run away with me . . .”

The Highwayman's Seduction

J
eremy woke suddenly, coming to full consciousness in an instant, as though plunged in a polar sea. He sat upright. Shadows swathed the room around him, painting the chamber in shades of indigo and black. The fire lay silent and dark in the fireplace, its coals barely smoldering. A chill turned the air thin and breakable.

Had he been dreaming? Had a nightmare roused him from his sleep? A cloud enveloped his mind. But a deep, profound sense of
wrongness
pervaded him.

His hand slid across the covers as he reached for Sarah, seeking her warmth, her softness.

But his hand continued to move across the bed finding . . . nothing.

She was gone.

“Sarah?” He peered into the darkness, searching for her. Perhaps, unable to sleep, she'd seated herself
beside the now-cold fire. Maybe she dozed in one of the wingback chairs. “Sarah?” he called again.

No answer. She wasn't in the room.

He bolted, naked, from the bed, fear immediately chilling him down to his marrow. Ever since she'd had tea with Lady Marwood and Lady Ashford, she'd been even more withdrawn, more silent and remote, as though her body remained but her spirit was distant.

Jeremy quickly threw on a pair of breeches and a shirt, and stuffed his feet into a pair of shoes. Half-dressed, he lit a candle, then stepped out into the corridor.

Waking the house was a possibility he did not entertain. He didn't want his parents involved. There wasn't time for explanations, and he'd no desire to give any. He needed to find his missing wife.

If he raced hither and yon, without any strategy or structure, he'd go mad. Drawing a breath to steady himself, he decided to start at the bottom of the house and systematically work his way upward.

He began with the library. But all hopes for finding her curled up with a book died quickly when he discovered the chamber lay empty. Each parlor and drawing room yielded the same results. Room by room, he went through the house, urgently whispering her name while praying feverishly to find her safe and well.

He refused to think about any other possibility.

The other floors, however, proved just as empty. Hope began to perish, little by little, curling at the edges like burned paper as he found himself yet again in another unoccupied room.

She wasn't in the old nursery, or his other childhood
rooms. Unless she was in the kitchen or the servants' quarters, Sarah had left the house.

The kitchen glowed with a banked fire, where a boy slept in front of the spit. The lad stirred a little when Jeremy looked inside the kitchen, but he didn't awaken. Jeremy considered rousing the boy to ask if he'd seen Sarah, but he didn't want to raise the house alarm. Not yet.

But there seemed no alternative. He was about to pound on his father's door, then wake the entire household to look for Sarah, when he remembered one final place in the immense house. He raced up the stairs, hardly bothering to muffle his frantic footfalls as he climbed higher and higher, staircase after staircase. Until he reached the very top of Hutton House, and its cupola.

One of Jeremy's stargazing ancestors had built the small chamber half a century ago as a way to feed a love of astronomy, when the study of it was nascent and all the rage for the fashionable elite. It was a compact, round room, surrounded on all sides by windows that could be unbolted to accommodate a large Galilean telescope, which continued to stand proudly in the cupola.

Jeremy skidded to a stop at the top of the staircase opening onto the observatory. His heart also slammed to a halt.

Sarah stood in the cupola, trying to work the telescope. She resembled a wraith in her long white night rail, her hair down around her shoulders. But she wasn't a ghost. She was real, and relief poured through him so aggressively that he nearly staggered with it.

His wife glanced up at his entrance. A look of sur
prise crossed her face, as if she little expected to find him here. The feeling was mutual.

“Jesus,” he swore, not caring that he took the Lord's name in vain. He rubbed his knuckles in the center of his chest, trying to calm his thundering heart. “You scared the hell out of me.”

“I didn't want to wake you,” she said quietly.

“Better that than have me tearing through the house like a Bedlamite.” He took a tentative step toward her, as though she might take flight through one of the open windows. The chamber was bitterly cold, yet Sarah didn't seem to notice. “I thought . . . I don't want to say what I thought.”

“I'm sorry.” She didn't move toward him but kept space between them. A protective barrier. She glanced out at the dark sky. “I've been trying to look at the stars. Sky's too smoky to see anything.”

He reached a hand out toward her. “It's fit to freeze Hades in here. Come back to bed.”

But she didn't move. She only looked at his hand. The murky light traced the familiar lines of her face, suspending her in an aquatic half-illumination. It was too dark to see much, but he knew her so well that he barely needed any light to know that the expression she wore was one of profound sadness.

His heart pitched. What could he do to heal any wounds she suffered?

“Before we do,” she said, her voice soft with sorrow, “I need . . . to tell you something.”

“We can talk in bed.” He wanted her away from this cold height, where it seemed as though the fathomless universe would swallow her whole.

She shook her head. “I'm uncertain if we'll share a bed again.”

Fresh panic shook him. “You don't know that.”

“No, but I realize that after I speak, things will change. They'll never be the same again.” She sounded bleak but resigned.

“Just tell me,” he urged.

She stared at him, then looked away at the hazy night sky. “The sky's so different from the sky in Rosemead. Here it's choked with smoke and dull with the lights of the city.” She exhaled. “Heaven seems very far away in London.”

“Sarah . . .” he said warningly. “Promise me. Swear to me you'll do nothing foolish.”

She let out a sad laugh. “Define
foolish
.”

“It's a sin to hurt yourself.” He hated even saying the words, but he forced them out.

Her eyes widened. “No. Oh, no. I would never . . . I couldn't . . . Oh, Jeremy.” She took a small step toward him. “I'm so sorry if I ever led you to believe that I'd done something like that. Please. No.”

Thank God. A small thread of relief wove along his spine. But he couldn't feel easy. Not yet. “Say what it is you have to say. And then we'll go to bed. I swear we'll share a bed again.”

“That's something you cannot know.” She exhaled once more. “Jeremy. My love. That will never change. I will love you . . . forever.”

“So why do you make this sound like a good-bye?” he demanded, cold with fear.

“Because it might be. Because . . .” She looked down at her slippered feet, then back up again. “Neither of us
is happy. There's a pall of misery hanging over us, and no amount of theatrical performances, botanical gardens, or tea shops can ever change that. You've tried. I know you've tried so hard. But there's only one solution. One way to make this right.”

He kept silent, but his pulse drummed in his ears.

“I have to write,” she said with finality. “I have to be the Lady of Dubious Quality again. She's who I am. I cannot refute that any longer. I can't deny who I am. Not for anyone. Not even,” she added mournfully, “for you.”

He shook with the force of her words. It resounded in his flesh, his muscles. His ears rang. Everything quaked.

No words came to him. He opened his mouth to speak, but silence reigned.

She'd made her choice. And her choice wasn't him.

Sarah spoke quickly, filling that void. “If you desire, we'll live apart. To protect you from scandal. I don't want to endanger you in any way.”

“Is that what you want?” he asked hoarsely.

“I want everything,” she answered. “I want to write. I want you. But I know . . .” She gulped back tears. “I know I cannot have everything. Only a lucky few get their every wish. In time, maybe, I'll look at this decision and curse myself. But I can't go on this way. I can't be who other people want me to be.”

“You were yourself with me.”

She shook her head. “Never fully. There was that secret between us, and I hoped to be the good, devoted wife. I wanted to be what
you
wanted.”

“I always wanted you,” he said hoarsely.

“You didn't,” she answered. “Not when I revealed that I was the Lady of Dubious Quality.”

“Because you didn't trust me with the truth.”

“And if I had from the beginning, would you have accepted me?”

“We'll never know.”

“You're right, she acknowledged, “and for that I'm sorry. But perhaps it
was
her you cared for,” she wondered aloud. “Because she is me. All those aspects are part of who I am—the lady, the writer, the woman. You
know me,
deeper than anyone does. You've always known who I truly am.”

He scrubbed his hands over his face, then dragged his fingers through his hair. Grounding himself with his touch. Realizing that everything he'd ever learned, his every experience and scrap of knowledge, all the philosophy he'd read and bit of wisdom and guidance he'd ever dispensed—it all led to this moment. This defining time.

He stared at her. She had her arms wrapped around herself. Either from the cold, or to protect herself from what she surely thought would be his wrath and disappointment. But she didn't look afraid. She looked, finally, resolute. As sure of herself as he'd ever seen her before.

She'd made her choice. That choice wasn't him. Yet he knew that it was the right one. She needed to be herself, entirely. Not to pretend or cut off a limb just to prove something to him or to assuage his pride. This was the woman he'd come to care about so deeply. The one with conviction. Who knew what she wanted and took it.

“Thank God,” he said finally. “This is the right choice.”

“What do you mean?” she demanded.

His voice was thick, rusty. “I mean . . . that I've always wanted to be with you. The complete woman you are. Lady. Writer.” He stepped closer to her. “I've known, I think for a long time, the truth of you. That secret self.” He continued resolutely, “That night, at that private masquerade.”

She went cold all over. Had someone spied for him? How could he know she'd been there?

“You kissed a stranger,” he went on, relentless. “The kiss made your heart speed and your blood heat.” He stepped closer still, a sharp, intense look upon his face.

“I—” What could she say? It had happened during their early days, but still she felt the dark sting of her infidelity. How could he forgive her?

“I know all this, because I felt it, too.” He gazed intently at her. “That man in the blue mask—that man was me.”

She gaped at him. “
You?
” The stranger had had dark hair, but that could easily have been changed. He'd had the same height as Jeremy, the same rangy physique.

He nodded. “I was looking for the Lady of Dubious Quality, and I found her. I found you.”

“Oh, God.” She didn't know whether to be appalled or overjoyed. Both emotions crashed against each other, leaving her dizzy. Her anonymous lover was actually her husband.

“It felt right,” he pressed. “We both knew it. But, not knowing the truth, we both believed we were betraying the other.” He spread his hands. “On every level, we are
exactly right for each other. The vicar and the duke's daughter. The man in the blue mask and the Golden Woman. The libertine and the Lady of Dubious Quality. They're
us
.” He blazed. “To hell with what Society dictates—we can be all of those things.”

She couldn't catch her breath, and her mind raced. “I must be able to write.”

“And I want you to. God, Sarah—when I think how I stood by, doing nothing, dumbly accepting it when you gave up the thing you needed and loved most in all the world . . . I've been in touch with McKinnon,” he continued. “Your newest book is amazingly successful. Women and men both purchase it. That's . . . extraordinary.” He clenched his fists. “I didn't fight hard enough for you to keep writing. I hope you'll forgive me.”

“We each have need of forgiveness,” she said softly.

“We'll find it,” he answered with conviction. “If anyone can weather the tempests of life, it's you and I.” He swallowed hard. “Write anything and everything. Write of sex. Of love. Of whatever you want. Only,” he reached for her, “never leave my side. Never be apart from me.” He opened his arms to her.

“Jeremy.” Would he truly stand beside her through all the twists and turns?

“Don't make me wait a second longer, love.”

She crossed the distance between them. Wrapped her arms around him, feeling his solid body, the body she loved beyond all reasoning, and the man himself. Relief tore through her so hard that tears streamed down her face. “Jeremy.”

“My Sarah.” He kissed the top of her head as he cradled her close.

She sniffled a little. “But . . . your parish. Your status as a vicar.”

He was silent. But then, “I'll think of something. Some way for us both to have what we need.”

“We'll think of it together,” she insisted.

“Together.” He cupped her face with his broad hands and stared deeply into her eyes. “I love you, Sarah.”

Though the night was dark and hazy, she could still see the love and passion in his gaze, warming her from the inside out. Her heart brimmed, and everything within her aligned, becoming exactly right. “I love you, Jeremy.”