Tempting the Bride (3 page)

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Should I use the scientific names?”

And wouldn’t he enjoy doing that. But as it was her policy to never let him enjoy himself at her expense, she declared, “Mr. Martin and I are friends of long standing and nothing more.”

“You and I are friends of long standing and—”

“You and I are
acquaintances
of long standing, Hastings.”

“Fine. Your sister and I are friends of long standing and yet she has never come to spend hours in my room. Alone. After midnight.”

“I went for a slice of cake.”

He cocked his head. “I saw you go into Mr. Martin’s room at forty minutes past midnight, Miss Fitzhugh. You were still there when I left twenty minutes ago. By the way, I also witnessed the same thing happening for the past two nights. You can accuse me of many things—and you do—but you cannot charge me with drawing conclusions on insufficient evidence. Not in this case, at least.”

She stiffened. She’d underestimated him, it would seem. He’d been his usual flighty, superficial self; she wouldn’t have guessed he had the faintest inkling of her nighttime forays.

“What do you want, Hastings?”

“I want you to mend your ways, my dear Miss Fitzhugh. I understand very well that Mr. Martin should have been yours in an ideal world. I also understand that his wife has been praying for him to take a lover so she could do the same. But none of it will matter should you be found out. So you see, it is my moral obligation to leave at first light and inform your siblings, my dear, dear friends, that their beloved sister is throwing away her life.”

She rolled her eyes. “What do you
want
, Hastings?”

He sighed dramatically. “It wounds me, Miss Fitzhugh. Why do you always suspect me of ulterior motives?”

“Because you always have one. What do I have to do now for your silence?”

“That will not happen.”

“I refuse to think you cannot be bought, Hastings.”

“My, such adamant faith in my corruptibility. I almost hate to disappoint you.”

“Then don’t disappoint me. Name your price.”

His title was quite new—he was only the second Viscount Hastings after his uncle. The family coffer was full to the brim. His price would not be anything denominated in pounds sterling.

“If I say nothing,” he mused, “Fitz will be quite put out with me.”

“If you say nothing, my brother will not know anything.”

“Fitz is a clever man—except when it comes to his wife, perhaps. He will learn sooner or later, somehow.”

“But you are a man who lives in the present, aren’t you?”

He lifted a brow. “That wouldn’t be your way of saying
that I am empty-headed and incapable of thinking of the future, would it?”

She didn’t bother with an answer to that question. “It is getting late—not too long now before someone comes to lay a new fire. I don’t want you to be seen in my room.”

“At least I can marry you to salvage your reputation should that happen. Mr. Martin is in no position to do so.”

“That is quite beside the point. Tell me what you want and begone.”

He smiled, a crooked smile full of suggestions. “You know what I want.”

“Please don’t tell me you are still trying to kiss me. Have I not made my lack of interest abundantly clear on this matter?”

“I don’t want to kiss you. However,
you
will need to kiss
me
.”

She, kiss him?

“Ah, I see you were hoping to stand quiescent and think of Christian martyrs mauled by the lions of the Colosseum. But as you always tell me, I am a man of unseemly tastes. So you must be the lion, and I the martyr. I shall expect exceptional aggression, Miss Fitzhugh.”

“If I were a lion, I’d find you a piece of rotten fish, not at all to my taste and hardly edible, whereas I’ve just dined on the finest gazelle in the entire savanna. You will excuse me if I fail to summon any enthusiasm to fall upon you.”

“Quite the contrary. I cannot excuse such failure. Not in the least. You will somehow summon the enthusiasm or I shall be on the earliest train headed south.”

“And if I do manufacture enough false zeal to satisfy you?”

“Then I shall say nothing to anyone of Mr. Martin.”

“Your word?”

“
Your
word that the kiss will be more debauched than any you’ve pressed upon Mr. Martin.”

“You are a pervert, Hastings.”

He smiled again. “And you are just the sort of woman to appreciate one, Miss Fitzhugh, whether you realize it or not. Now, here is what I want you to do. You will seize me by the shoulders, push me against the wall, reach your hand under my jacket—”

“I feel my bile rising.”

“Then you are ready. Onward. I await your assault.”

She grimaced. “How I hate to spoil a perfect record of repelling you.”

“Nothing lasts forever, my dear Miss Fitzhugh. And remember, kiss me passionately. Or you’ll have to do it again.”

She might as well get it over with.

She closed the space that separated them in two big strides and gripped him by the sleeves of his dressing gown. Instead of pushing him backward as he’d instructed—as if she’d allow him to dictate the specifics of her ordeal—she yanked him toward her, fastened her mouth to his, and imagined herself a shark with hundreds of razor-sharp teeth.

Or perhaps she was a minion of the underworld, her mouth a welter of burning acid and sulfur fumes, devouring his soul, savoring all the idle immoralities he’d committed in his lifetime as a palate cleanser between courses of more substantial sins.

Or a Venus flytrap, full of delicious nectar, but woe was he who thought he could dip a proboscis inside and sample
her charms. Instead, she would digest him in place, stupid sod.

Vaguely she sensed something hard and smooth against her shoulder blades. They’d been in the middle of her room; why was she being pressed into a wall? And why, all of a sudden, was
she
the one being devoured?

The muscles of his arms were tight and hard beneath her hands. His person was as tall and solid as a castle gate. His mouth, instead of tasting like a furnace of greedy lust, was cool and delicious, as if he’d just downed a long draft of well water.

She shoved him away and wiped her lips. She was panting. She didn’t know why she ought to be.

“My,” he murmured. “As ferocious as anything I’ve ever imagined. I was right. You do want me.”

She ignored him. “Your word.”

“I will say nothing of Andrew Martin to anyone. You may depend on that.”

“Leave.”

“Gladly, now that I have what I came for.” He smirked. “Good night, my dear. You were well worth the wait.”

Six months later

A
traffic logjam had convened on Fleet Street, and Hastings’s brougham was caught in the midst. The assembly of vehicles advanced at a ponderous pace that would not have won races against his daughter’s pet tortoise. Enterprising men and boys went from carriage to carriage, hawking ginger beer and hot buns to a captive crowd.

Had the logjam happened on a different street, Hastings would have alighted and walked. But he’d chosen this particular route for a reason: a window that differed little from the two dozen others that looked out from the same building. His eyes, however, were always unerringly drawn to those particular panes of glass—their luster quite dulled this hour by the shadows of an approaching storm.

If he could rise some fifteen, twenty feet in the air, he’d be able to see Helena Fitzhugh, sitting with her back to the window. She would be wearing a white blouse tucked into
a dark skirt, her flaming hair caught up in an elegant chignon at her nape. A pot of tea was likely to be found on her desk, brought in by her conscientious secretary in the morning, and largely ignored the rest of the day.

Much could happen in six months—and much had. Hastings had done what he’d promised to do, keeping Andrew Martin’s name out of any discussions. But he had not kept her actions a secret. In fact, the morning after their confrontation, he’d left at first light, traveled to her brother’s estate, and informed her family that she’d been out and about at night when she ought not to be.

Her family had immediately understood the implications. She was half coaxed, half ordered across the ocean to America, under the pretext of an article that needed writing concerning the ladies of Radcliffe College, a women’s college associated with Harvard University.

The events that took place on the campus of Harvard University had led to one of the more intriguing scandals of the current London Season, a scandal that involved Miss Fitzhugh’s elder sister and the Duke of Lexington, resulting in an unexpected wedding.

On the heels of that, her twin brother, Fitz, at last realized that he was—and had been for years—in love with his heiress wife, a woman he’d married under the most trying of circumstances and never believed could become the love of his life.

For Hastings, however, little had changed, other than that his beloved disfavored him more than ever. Their lives went on, occasionally intersecting in a burst of sparks. But like images produced by a magic lantern, the drama and movement were but illusions going round and round. Nothing of substance happened. They’d dealt with each other
thus since they were children, and he was no closer to her heart than that pot of tea at her elbow, a fixture in her life yet utterly inconsequential.

And so he stared at her window in the light of the day, as he’d stared at her door in the dark of the night.

The window opened. She stood before it, looking out.

He knew she could not see him—could not, thanks to the carriage immediately adjacent, even make out the crest on his carriage. All the same his breath quickened, his heart constricting.

Then, after the quake of nerves, a familiar dejection. She did not even look down, but only gazed distantly toward the direction of Andrew Martin’s town residence.

Despite Hastings’s keeping to the letter—if not the spirit—of his promise, members of her family discovered on their own the identity of Miss Fitzhugh’s partner in crime. Hastings subsequently received a perhaps well-deserved punch to the face from Fitz for not having told the whole truth. Andrew Martin did not receive a just-as-well-deserved (if not more so) punch to the face, but Fitz made it clear that Martin was never to contact Miss Fitzhugh again.

She missed him. Hastings was but a shadow in the crowd, but Martin was her air, her sky.

He watched her until she closed the window and disappeared from sight. Then he got out of the brougham, instructed his coachman to head home as the logjam allowed, and walked away.

T
he window must not have latched properly, for Helena could once again hear the din of the impasse below.

She pressed a palm to the side of her head, the fingers of her other hand tapping restlessly against Andrew’s last letter to her. She’d gone over it countless times, but, inveterate reader that she was, she could not help scanning the words that had been set down before her.

It had taken her ages to gradually convince Andrew that her desires were worth something. That if she wished to lie with him in a state of near intimacy, she was old enough to make that choice with full understanding of the possible consequences.

But with one quick reminder from Fitz, Andrew’s
thinking had tipped back the other way. He’d dutifully stopped seeing her, even in her capacity as his publisher. And his letters, too, had ceased altogether. Except for one chance encounter at a rail station some time ago, she had not seen him since before she left for America in January.

Such useless conventions society clung to, valuing a marriage that was essentially a transaction of property above the truths of the heart, and judging her on her possession of a hymen rather than her actions and character. Even her own family—her brother and sister, who’d let her make her own choices most of her life—had proved unyielding on this particular point.

It
was
too late for her; couldn’t he see? It had been too late since the very first. And it wasn’t as if she hadn’t taken a good, hard look at the gentlemen available to her. But she’d yet to meet one with whom the thought of spending the rest of her life was remotely tolerable.

She would not accept that this was the end. Taking advantage of a moment of privacy—even if they were standing on a rail platform full of travelers—she’d made an im-passioned plea that reputation was not the only thing that mattered. That her happiness, too, counted for something. And that he, of all people, ought to have a care for her happiness.

His resolution had seemed to waver at the end of her entreaty. It was possible that ever since then he’d been reconsidering his decision. If only she could know the thoughts that coursed through his mind this very moment.

A stiff breeze blew and nearly made off with Andrew’s letter. She caught it, stowed it in the locked drawer where she kept all his letters, tossed out the pot of tea Miss Boyle insisted on making for her every day, and went to the window. The crowd below still hadn’t eased, hundreds of carriages crawling along like a parade of snails. The sky had become even darker. The coachmen were shrugging into their mackintoshes; the pedestrians, heads bowed, picked up their pace.