Terri Brisbin (24 page)

“Oh, Ross, what you ask,” she murmured, trying to think straight while he was doing everything in his power to make her not think at all. Higher, higher, his hand had crept, kneading her, wooing her trust, until he found a place between her legs that she’d never realized existed. When he touched her there, stroking her gently, she shuddered and opened herself to his touch, desperate for more.

“Stay with me tonight,” he said again, the words burning a heated path along the side of her throat. “Please. Don’t leave.”

If she stayed, she would be everything that her father had accused her of being, a rich lord’s plaything. She would be doomed to repeat her mother’s folly, a common, low actress who’d squandered her talents on the stage for what she could earn instead on her back. She would be what every respectable person thought an actress was, and they’d be right.

But because it was Ross, her Ross, none of the rest mattered. He was offering her tonight, and tonight would be enough.

“Yes,” she whimpered, nipping at the saltiness of his bare shoulder. “Oh, Ross, yes!”

He growled rather than answered, a deep, possessive sound that was so purely male that Cordelia’s own desire burned hotter in response. He was making the tiniest circles with his fingertips—how could so slight a caress cause such delicious havoc in her whole body?—and she arched against him, her breath coming in quick little catches that echoed her need.

He eased her backward until she felt the leather top of his desk beneath her, kissing her still as he lowered himself over her. Suddenly his teasing fingers were replaced by something larger, thicker, blunter, pushing into her and shattering the pleasure like broken glass.

“Oh, Ross, please, wait!” She tried to wriggle free, desperate to ease the sense of invasion. “It—this cannot be right!”

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, his own breathing coming in ragged gulps. “I’m—I’m sorry, but it will get better.”

She swallowed hard. “You are certain?”

“I am,” he said, holding her, kissing her, even as he kept himself still to let her body grow accustomed to the new sensation of his. “I—I promise.”

“That—that is good.” She closed her eyes, the pain lessening. It was better, better in a way that, for once, she had no words to describe. He was moving slowly against her again, and to her surprise his slow, steady strokes were beginning to bring the pleasure back, coiling the tension in her body even more tightly than before.

Instinctively she curled her legs over his hips and he groaned, driving more deeply, and just as she felt sure she’d couldn’t bear it, her release came in a glorious rush, with Ross following close behind.

He pushed his weight up on his elbows to look at her, his smile so warm she wanted to weep. Too late she realized that this would make it harder, not easier, to leave him.

“Sweet lass,” he said, his voice a hoarse whisper as he brushed a damp lock of her hair back from her forehead. “My own dear, sweet Cordelia. Ah, I wish I knew the perfect words to say to you now, the words you deserve.”

She tried to smile. He already knew the perfect words, and so did she, carved forever into her heart:

“Was there ever such a pair of star-crossed lovers?”

T
he dawn’s mist was still low on the grass when Cordelia let herself into the gatehouse. She had never expected a night to pass so swiftly, or with such passion, and she could not keep the giddy smile from her lips as she thought of Ross, and all the wonderful, wicked explorations and experiments they’d made together in his library.

She eased the door shut after her, taking off her damp slippers before she began up the stairs. She expected the rest of the company to still be abed at such an hour, with Alfred snoring the loudest of all. But to her surprise he and Gwen and several others were gathered around Ralph’s bed, the guttering candles from night still lit along the windowsill. Their bodies blocked Cordelia’s view of the actor, and with a sharp stab of dread, her conscience raced to the worst conclusion.

“Why, look who the milkmaid brought with the morning cream.” With his black cloak wrapped around his shoulders, Alfred looked up but didn’t smile. “I trust you passed an enjoyable night away from your own bed?”

Cordelia flushed but didn’t apologize as she unwrapped her shawl. “Yes, I did. How is Ralph?”

“Why, how kind of you to ask,” Alfred said. “I believe you
were given the responsibility of looking after him last evening, weren’t you?”

“He was better when I left,” she said quickly, her fear for Ralph mushrooming. “He was sleeping, just as the apothecary ordered, and I knew you’d all be returning soon, and I—”

“I
am
better, Cordelia,” croaked Ralph from behind the others. “Better, aye?”

“Ralph!” Cordelia pushed her way past Gwen to kneel on the floor beside his bed. “Oh, I’m so glad you’re feeling more like yourself!”

He smiled wanly, unable to say more. No matter what Ralph claimed, the actor was still far from well, his face sheened with the fever’s sweat, and though they’d propped him higher on his pillows, Cordelia doubted he’d the strength to sit upright without such support.

“Fortunate for you that he is, Cordelia.” Alfred clapped his hand on Ralph’s shoulder. “And fortunate for us, as well. Why, with another round of his physic, he should be right as rain for our performance at the hall tonight.”

“Oh, Father, look at him!” she cried. “How can you believe he’ll be fit for tonight?”

Alfred glowered, folding his cloaked arms over his chest like wings. “The Lyon Company has never canceled a performance due to weakness, Cordelia.”

“And we won’t now.” She scrambled back to her feet, trying not to think of how creased and wrinkled her gown must look. “I’ve found someone to take Ralph’s place tonight.”

“Where, pray?” Alfred demanded. “In the hedgerow?”

“At the hall.” Without thinking, she folded her arms across her chest, echoing her father’s defiance as she faced him. “His Lordship himself has offered to take the role, Father.”

Alfred laughed derisively, and the others followed. “An earl playing at being a player? Even as besotted as you are, Cordelia, you must see the folly in such a reckless choice!”

“What I see is a kind and generous gentleman who does not wish to disappoint his sister,” she said, trying hard to keep her temper. “What I see is a man who knows all the lines from watching our rehearsals, better than Ralph himself.
And
what I see with the greatest clarity of all is us standing before the local magistrate, charged with breach of contract for failing to provide a wedding play as promised.”

“But the earl is the rankest of amateurs!” Alfred protested, his voice rumbling with indignity. “Consider what his presence will do to cheapen the art of our company!”

“Then consider this, Father,” she said, choosing her words with the greatest care and only the slightest tremble of emotion. “If you do not accept His Lordship as your leading man tonight, then you will not have a leading lady, either.”

She had made her choice. Now Alfred and the others would, too, and with her head held as high as the queens she played, Cordelia turned away from them and left.

In the little tiring-closet off the ballroom that was serving tonight as a makeshift dressing room, Ross read his lines yet again, whispering them over and over to himself as he unfurled the white scroll with his part written out in Cordelia’s tidy hand. But his hands were sweating so much that he was blurring the ink, his heart racing at such a clip that he couldn’t make his eyes focus on the words. He had lectured before the learned members of the Royal Society, discussed his findings with His Majesty, and addressed the entire ship’s company on the deck of the
Perseverance,
but through all that he’d never felt even a fraction as nervous as he did now.

He went to rub his handkerchief across his forehead, and at the last instant remembered he couldn’t, not without smearing his paint. Gwen had first deadened his face to a ghost’s white, then drawn bright red patches on each cheek and more red on his lips, and finally had ringed his eyes with
thick black lines. The paint was hot and sticky on his skin, one more reason to feel damned uncomfortable, and he wondered how the devil women could put up with such nonsense.

“Oh, Ross, look at you!” Cordelia circled around him, patting at his gaudy peacock’s coat and waistcoat with approval. “How vastly fine a figure you will cut on the stage!”

“What I look like is some deuced circus clown,” he said, so forlornly that she laughed, her teeth too white in her bright red lips. Her lovely face was painted every bit as garishly as his, and topped by a fantastic high wig with golden yellow curls and huge paste jewels hanging from her ears.

“And I say you will have every lady in the audience sighing of love for you.” She glanced down at the wilting scroll in his hand. “Are you sure of your lines? Do you wish to practice again?”

He shook his head with glum resignation. “If I do not know them now, I won’t know them in a quarter hour.”

“You shall be quite fine, I am sure,” she said, the stiff gold curls bouncing with more conviction than she felt. “Just go slowly and calmly, and speak as you usually do, without trying to force the rhymes. And if you forget anything, simply look to me, and I shall cover it.”

“Of course you’ll be calm,” he said. “You’ve done this your entire life.”

“Well, yes, but what is that compared to all the useful scholarly things you know?” She reached up to smooth the silver braid on his collar. “Your work saves people from drowning and such. Mine merely amuses them.”

“I like how you amuse me,” he said, taking her hand and raising it to his lips. “I can’t imagine any better work than that.”

“Oh, my poor Ross.” Her gaze softened as she looked up at him. “I know how difficult this must be for you, and I pray you realize how grateful I am that you’re doing it at all.”

“For you,” he said gruffly. “For Emma, too, but mostly for you, and if—”

“Hush, hush, the play’s begun!” she whispered, putting her hand over his mouth to silence him. “I can hear Father’s prologue. Hurry, we must take our places for our entrance!”

She took his hand to lead him to the ballroom where Alfred Lyon was already speaking, his rich, deep voice likely being heard clear in the next county. There was no proper stage or curtain, but lanterns had been set in a line to light the actors, with the fiddler sitting to one side to provide suitable music. In the front row of chairs Ross could make out Emma and Weldon, his sister glowing with happiness to see her play finally beginning.

Well, let her glow away now, Ross thought with grim resignation. Once he was out there, Emma might not feel as cheery.

“Four more lines, then Father’s done, and we are on,” whispered Cordelia, blowing him a quick kiss that would spare their paint. “Now take a deep breath to relax, and recall your first words. And good luck, my own love!”

My own love
. She’d never called him that before, or ever once spoken of love at all. Did she love him, then? Did he love her?

“Come along, Ross, now, now!” She was pulling him forward, in front of her father and into the ring of bright candlelight. Applause washed over him, and he stared out past the lanterns to the ghostly faces in the audience, row after row of them, as far as he could see. He’d never imagined he’d so many guests in his house. Who the devil were they, anyway, these scores of eyes staring at him?

The applause died away, and still he stared, as stunned as a deer caught in a hunter’s sights. Someday he should write a paper on the nature of common stage fright, its effects on the general constitution and the nervous system in particular.

“Fire when ready, Ross!” his cousin James called from somewhere in the haze of faces. “We can’t wait all the night long!”

Nervous laughter rippled through the audience, and Cordelia took his hand again, forcing him to look at her instead.

“‘When first I rose this day with the sun,’” she began, speaking his lines as if they were her own. “‘How would I guess to find my love before ’twas done?’”

“‘A lady fair I’d known from birth,’” he said, the words suddenly there for him. “‘But only now aware of her worth.’”

Cordelia’s smile of relief was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. “‘And I, my dearest squire, how could I see / That together our fates were destined to be?’”

The words came easily now, ready when he needed them, and so were the prompts to take Cordelia’s hand, or kneel before her, or turn with her as if they were dancing. He knew compared to the others—especially to Cordelia—that he was stiff and awkward, and he couldn’t make himself break the singsong recitation. But before he’d realized it, the first act was done, and she was hurrying him off to change his coat for the next scene.

“Cordelia, one moment,” he said, catching her by the arm. “You said something before we began, something that I need to ask—”

“Not now, Ross, there’s no time,” she said, pinning a wreath of holly branches to the top of her head to signify Christmas. “Ask me whatever you please afterward. Now where’s your cloak with the false snow on the shoulders? Quickly, quickly!”

He found the cloak and remembered his lines, and soon the second act was done, too, with only the third remaining. For this act Cordelia chose no fancy costume, but the same simple muslin gown she’d worn the night they’d made waves. With the end of the play in sight and only the wedding and blessing remaining, she seemed even more at ease on the stage, every gesture full of charm and grace and her eyes lighting from within each time she caught Ross’s gaze. He’d heard the rest of the company discussing their plans to leave early in the morning, off to their next engagement, and he
couldn’t believe that Cordelia would be gone, as well. He couldn’t even imagine his life then, without her in it.

She skipped lightly across the stage before him, the sparkling scarf she’d worn in the orchard drifting from her hands. She almost seemed to be performing for him alone, as if the rest of the audience didn’t matter or even exist, and as he watched her, he forgot them, too.

“‘My heart knows only joy when you are here,’” she said, turning in a little pirouette before him. “‘To leave you ever would bring naught but tears.’”

“Then don’t,” he said, not written lines, but his own words. “Stay here with me, and make last night go on forever.”

He saw the startled look flash across her eyes before instinctively she improvised to cover for him.

“What happened in one breathless night,” she said quickly, “should not be enough to cloud wrong from right.”

“What we have is right,” he said, taking her by the hand. “You know it, too, else you wouldn’t have called me your love.”

Her eyes widened, and she swallowed hard. “What is said in haste or passion isn’t always—isn’t always—”

“Isn’t always in the fashion?” He grinned at her. “I love you, Cordelia, and the only thing that has to rhyme with is that you love me in return.”

She gasped, a tear sliding over the black painted line surrounding her eye. “I do love you, Ross, oh, so very much! But what future can that love have when we—”

“A future together,” he said, drawing her against his chest with his arm around her waist. “Marry me, Cordelia. Marry me, and be my wife, and we’ll make that happiness last forever.”

“You are sure?” Her heart was thumping so hard he could feel it, too. “You are an earl, while I am—”

“The woman I love,” he said, leaving no doubts. “I’ve never been more sure in my life.”

Another tear slipped down her painted cheek, then an
other, tears of joy, not regret. “Then yes, Ross, I do love you, and I will marry you. Yes, yes, yes!”

She flung her arms around his shoulders and kissed him, and as he kissed her back, he heard the applause. He looked over Cordelia’s shoulder, past the row of lanterns and into the ballroom, and saw his friends and family and other guests all on their feet, cheering and laughing and whistling and calling their names, as pleased as an audience could be.

“Oh, Ross.” Cordelia smiled up at him through her tears. “I suppose we must take our bows.”

“In a moment.” He smiled in return and kissed her again, marveling at how impossibly dear she’d become to him. “Even if Emma’s going to want my head for stealing her thunder, and her wedding play.”

Cordelia grinned. “If she does, you’ve only to remind her that the title of this play is
The Triumph of Love
.”

“Then triumph away, my love,” he said, laughing. “Triumph away, and never stop.”

They were wed a month later on a midsummer’s night, a date that Alfred Lyon pronounced most auspicious for a happy marriage. This time the ceremony was held not in the hall’s chapel, but in the garden under the stars, with the sliver of a new moon rising above them.

The bride told everyone that her gown had been inspired by her groom’s love of astronomy—a dark blue silk gauze dotted with crystals that twinkled like a thousand stars—but the guests all agreed that it was the earl’s love for Miss Lyon that now ruled his life. The wedding ring Ross gave Cordelia proved it, too: a gold-and-diamond band of hearts and stars.

Alfred Lyon had offered to stage a wedding play for them, just as had been done for Lady Emma and Sir Weldon Dodd. But in the end, Ross and Cordelia had politely declined, and not just because of the prodigious display of dancing fairies
and elves that Alfred had promised as part of the spectacle, either. Yet how could any play, even one staged by the Lyon Company, ever hope to top the conclusion that Ross and Cordelia themselves had improvised for
The Triumph of Love
?