The Lady Most Willing . . . (19 page)

Chapter 20

Very early the next morning

T
he sky was still a deep cobalt paling to orchid on the horizons when Robin began prowling
Finovair’s long-abandoned portrait gallery. The storm had passed, and Finovair stood
cloaked in heavy white robes, her turrets and tumbled curtain wall shimmering with
ice. It was as pretty now as ever it would be or, in all likelihood, ever had been.
But Robin barely noted its beauty. His imagination was fixed on quite a different
kind of beauty.

Who would have guessed that Lady Cecily Tarleton would prove to be the most dangerous
woman in Great Britain? Oh, not to the world at large, but to a very small population
of one, she most decidedly was that.

“Were it not so amusing, it would be pathetic,” he murmured, his breath turning to
a cloud in the unheated corridor’s frigid air, glad to find his humor restored.

It had gone mostly missing since he’d first seen her, standing before Bretton’s carriage
in a pool of torchlight. Snow caught in her lashes, spangled her rich, dark hair like
the diadems in fairy queen’s veil, and melted on her rosy cheeks. Subtle bemusement
had flickered over the cameo smoothness of her face, a sense of wonder growing in
her amber-colored eyes as she looked around for all the world as if abduction were
a regular occurrence, and she needed merely to enjoy the interim between theft and
rescue.

Having been thrown at birth on the mercy of Fate and Fortune—and having discovered
therefore that amused acceptance was the best ally against despair—Robin appreciated
the same attitude in another. Especially such a lovely “other.”

When Byron had taken her hand, Robin had realized
he
had wanted to be the one taking her hand, and since Robin rarely denied himself anything
he wanted, especially as he
always
made certain his wants were well within his means, he had fairly shoved Oakley aside
and presented himself. As expected of a rake, he’d made some slightly outré comment
and grinned wickedly, anticipating her gasp—de rigueur in such situations—or, possibly,
if she was a rompish miss, a snicker.

She hadn’t done either.

She’d looked up at him. A strange, heart-stealing expression of recognition had arisen
in her honeyed eyes, and her ripe, luscious lips had parted but not a word escaped
them, and he had been stunned by the force of a yearning so unexpected it had nearly
brought him to his knees. And it was at that precise instance he’d realized how very,
very dangerous Lady Cecily was. Because against all reason, when he should have been
proof against such nonsense, he had done the unthinkable and fallen in love.

And love at first sight, at that.

Robin had never been in love before, which is precisely how he recognized the sensation
with such absolute certainty. Shortly thereafter, he had fled—and no, he would not
appease his vanity by calling it anything else—from the more habitable portions of
Finovair to those parts falling to ruin, which, he thought ruefully, looking around,
was most of it. Because while Robin might be in love, he was not insane, and it would
be insanity indeed to pursue that which he had no possibility of attaining.

He had learned that lesson early in life when he’d arrived in London as a young man.
Society’s mamas wasted no time in cautioning their daughters against the son of an
impecunious French count. And their papas had been just as quick to take Robin aside—accompanied
by their more brawny retainers—to make
very
sure he understood the warning.

Thereafter, Robin had kept his liaisons strictly to the ranks of ladies who did not
require marriage as a prerequisite to bed sport. And while his conquests were not
nearly so legion as Byron assumed—and Robin let him assume—they were plentiful enough
to keep a fellow from deploring his lot in life.

And why should he deplore his lot? he asked himself, stopping to stare sightlessly
at the snowy courtyard below. He had health, good friends, a few acres of vines he
still managed to keep a working concern, and—he cast a jaundiced eye down a hall of
fallen plaster rubble and pockmarked walls—someday would inherit a Scottish castle.
What more could he want?

Her
.

He scowled at the betraying thought.

Irritably, he pivoted to leave, and as he did so, he heard the unmistakable if faint
sound of a female cursing. Relieved by the distraction, he smiled, wondering if along
with all the rest of the unwelcome bequests with which Taran—damn his unfruitful loins—intended
to saddle him, he would also inherit a ghost. Though he thought even ghosts had more
sense than to haunt so inhospitable a place.

He looked down the hall toward where the sound had come just as a pile of russet-colored
rags topped by a head emerged from a doorway.

A particularly dark and lovely head.

Lady Cecily.

It appeared he was to be haunted, after all.

Chapter 21

F
or a second, Robin considered pretending he hadn’t seen her—again—and bolt down the
adjacent corridor. By avoiding her thus far, he had avoided sampling what he could
never wholly have.

True, manners had demanded that he make an appearance at dinner the first night, but
he’d seated himself at the opposite end of the table from her and escaped as soon
as Marilla had commenced her campaign to win Bretton’s . . . Well, if she won anything
of Bretton’s, it certainly wasn’t ever going to be his heart. But, then, any fool
watching her manhandle the duke would soon realize that Bretton’s heart was never
her objective.

But now Robin found he could not resist the opportunity to spend some time alone with
Lady Cecily before her rescuers came thundering through the passes. When they arrived,
he would be gone. He had no intention of standing by while Marilla Chisholm convinced
her father that events had occurred that could only be satisfied with a wedding. Particularly
if it was his own.

Besides, perhaps if he spent some time with Lady Cecily, he would discover that she
was not what every fiber in his heart declared her to be but simply a young lady whose
lovely visage and pretty manners summed up the total of what she was or aspired to
become. At least, he thought as he strode toward her, he could hope.

“Lady Cecily,” Robin hailed her, his amusement growing with each step.

She’d exchanged yesterday’s antique morning weeds for an even older ball gown, dating
from an era when women would have had to turn sideways to enter through a door. But
without the support of the underlying panniers that would have once jutted out from
her hips, the heavy skirts dragged along the ground on either side of her like two
broken wings.

The once rich ruby red silk had turned a dull rusty color, and the heavy application
of silver thread embroidering the sleeves and hem had become green with age. Huge
silk cabbage roses, once white but now dingy and yellowed, hung disconsolately from
her elbows, waist, and hips.

Even during the height of George VII’s reign, when low-cut dresses were in vogue,
the décolletage would have been indecent, but on Lady Cecily’s slight frame it hung
so loosely that she’d been forced to wrap some sort of velvet shawl around her neck
like a muffler before stuffing the ends down the bodice to preserve her modesty. The
effort had apparently caused her hair to fall from its neat knot, and it, too, lay
tucked beneath the velvet wrapping.

An image of how she’d look had she not been so enterprising with that damned shawl
beset his imagination; her hair rippling over her naked shoulders, loose curls playing
at her cleavage. Heated desire quickened his body. Ruthlessly, he vanquished the taunting
vision.

“Heavens, Comte, whatever are you doing here?” Lady Cecily asked.

Avoiding you, my love
. “Taking my morning constitutional. My doctor prescribes clambering over rubble in
frigid temperatures at least thrice daily,” he said, and she gratified him by laughing
at his absurdity. “Might I inquire the same?”

She glanced down at her bedraggled skirts and gave an unexpectedly gamine grin. “One
can only wear a gown twice before retiring it. Surely you know that, Comte? I found
this in the trunk Mr. Hamish brought to the room and as for this . . .” She grimaced,
plucking at the shawl.

His eyes widened. By God, it wasn’t a shawl she’d wrapped around her shoulders, but
an old velvet bed curtain. He recognized it as coming from a room he’d once occupied
as a child! Apparently, she’d ripped it from its moorings.

“I will, of course, make restitution,” she added.

“My dear,” he said, shaking his head mournfully, “I hardly know what to say. One doesn’t
find relics like that just lying about, you know.”

“No,” she answered. “One finds them
hanging
about.”

He stifled a chuckle, trying to look stern. “What is even more distressing than your
pillaging my uncle’s home is that having torn the family tapestry from its rods to
decorate yourself, you are now on the hunt for more things to loot.”

“Terrible, I know,” she admitted, her gaze unsettlingly direct. “I am afraid that
when I find something I want, I will fight to the end for it.”

He looked at her with renewed appreciation. Those had hardly been the words of a model
of propriety. And her gaze was too direct and her expression filled with delight and
naughtiness. Indeed, her ripe lips trembled with ill-suppressed merriment.

Damn it.

“How rapacious of you,” he said, realizing he’d been staring. “But then, how can I
find fault with that? Especially as I have been accused of similar failings.”

“Oh. Is it a failing?” she asked innocently, glancing at him out of the corner of
her remarkable eyes. With each word and glance, she delighted him more.

This was far worse—and so much better—than he’d expected. The conversations he’d had
with young ladies during his first season had been unremarkable exchanges: bland pleasantries,
light chat about the latest play, the weather, the most recent exhibitions. There’d
been no repartee, no subtext, no—God help him—flirtation.

He must leave Finovair before lunch.

“Besides,” she said, “your cousin claims that you are the very model of restraint.”

Once more, she’d caught him off-guard. He burst out laughing. “Either you are twitting
me, Lady Cecily, or you have discovered a cousin who is entirely unknown to me and
who, obviously, knows just as little about me in return.”

“He seemed quite confident. But then, you never know with men, do you?” she said.
“They always appear to be certain of everything. It must be exhausting. Is it?”

“As I am not certain of anything, particularly this conversation, I dare not answer.”

“Oh, I believe you think yourself very certain of who and what you are, Comte.”

There was amusement in her voice and he didn’t quite know what to make of that. He
smiled to cover his discomfort and said, “Please, the title is less than a courtesy.
You must call me Robin, especially as Marilla has announced that we are all on first-name
terms.”

Some of the light faded in her extraordinary eyes. “I should have liked to call you
Robin at your own behest, not someone else’s.”

“It
is
my request. I should like you to call me Robin.” He heard the slight imploring note
in his voice, but could do nothing to prevent it. He wanted to hear her say his name
in every mood: shouted in glee, whispered in intimacy, spoken with easy familiarity.

“Only if you will call me Cecily.”

“Your father would hardly approve.” The words slipped out unintended. When had he
turned into such a pedant? But she really shouldn’t be giving the use of her Christian
name to a rake.

“But he is not here, and I would never presume to know of what he would approve or
disapprove,” she said with feigned haughtiness. “I find it rather audacious that you
do.”

Her sophistry delighted him almost as much as her mental adroitness. Besides, what
harm if they played at friendship . . . or even something more, for a few short hours?

“I see I have no choice but to cede to your greater knowledge, La— Cecily. Until I
have been told otherwise by the gentleman himself, I will be ruled by your superior
understanding. Now, whatever are you doing in these inhospitable climes so early in
the morning?”

“As I told you, I am looking for something to wear. Something that fits better than
this,” she said, tugging at the sagging skirts. “The hunt has led me here.”

“I’m afraid you’ll be disappointed,” Robin said. “This part of the castle has been
uninhabited for generations. Anything worth keeping was removed long ago.”

“Drat.”

He grinned at this small imprecation. “Exactly. I’m sorry.”

“No matter. I’ll just look elsewhere. There must be something somewhere.”

He doubted it, but why dampen her spirits when she was so obviously enjoying her treasure
hunt?

“Did you have in mind somewhere particular to look?” he asked.

“Not really. I’ve already been in every room in this corridor.”

“Then perhaps you’d allow me to escort you back to a more likely hunting ground? Finovair
might not be very large but it can be confusing. Purposely so.”

“Why is that?”

“It’s all part of our national heritage. All those Jacobites and Hanoverians littering
the countryside, plotting and counterplotting, ferreting out secrets and squirreling
others away. Small wonder Scottish castles tend to be warrens of secret passages and
blind ends, priest bolts and lovers’ cupboards. And the Fergusons were the worst of
the lot. As such it only stands to reason their stronghold would be one of the most
abstruse. Yes. You really had best let me accompany you—”

She held up her hand, laughing. “Have done, Robin! I am convinced.”

Had he sounded so eager? He must indeed be bewitched. His sangfroid was legendary.

“And by all means, I accept,” she went on. “I should hate to end up lost in these
walls for eternity. Take me where you will. I am yours!”

His heart lurched at her words and he glanced at her to see if she understood what
she’d offered, but not a bit of caution clouded her face. She smiled sunnily up at
him, sovereign in her consequence. No one would dare assail her. After all, she was
an earl’s daughter.

Foolish girl, she was far too lovely to make such assumptions. After all, she’d been
abducted, hadn’t she? Kidnapped and dragged through a storm to a heathenish, frozen
castle for the express purpose of becoming its heir’s bride.

His
bride.

The thought hovered with tantalizing effect in the foreground of his imagination.
What if he stayed and wooed her? Seduced her? Used all his much-vaunted skill to try
to win her for his own? Would she succumb?

Would
he
?

She tucked her hand into the crook of his arm, unaware of the profligate impulses
shivering through him.

“I admit,” she said, “the idea of being lost here does conjure an amusing image: my
poor spirit moaning dolefully through the walls at your descendants, only to have
them shout back that I deserve my fate for not accepting your escort. ” She peeked
up at him through sooty lashes. “At least I assume that any descendants of yours would
have scant pity for fools who don’t know enough to take what was offered.”

He checked, startled by an interpretation of her words that she could not possibly
have meant. She gazed at him, all innocence and trust. He swallowed. “You think you
know me well enough to predict my unborn descendants’ dispositions?” he asked, discovering
that he
liked
the idea that she knew him; he even liked the idea that she thought she knew him.
Though, of course she couldn’t. His lovers had often complained that his laughter
and wit deflected any hope of achieving any intimacy that didn’t involve the flesh.

But here, at this moment, with this girl in her oversized dress and bed-hanging shawl,
looking like a child who had raided her grandmother’s wardrobe to play dress-up, walking
along a hall where frost rimed the windows and crept like silvery lichen along the
ceiling as their breath made little shrouds in the air, in this strange fairy-tale
land of predawn glitter and soft, frosted sheen, Cecily’s assumption of familiarity
felt warm and companionable and . . .
right
.

Perhaps he needn’t avoid her after all. Perhaps they really could just be friends . . .

But then he glanced at her, just a glance, and noted the way the angled light limned
her full lower lip, the elegant line of her nose, the glossy sheen of her rich dark
locks, and the small shadowed vale just visible above where she’d tucked the velvet
material into her bodice and realized, no, they could not just be friends.

“Am I presumptuous?” she asked, not looking the least abashed. “I’m sorry.”

“Not at all,” he said easily. “I am just appalled that my predictability is so blatant
you can foretell what traits my descendants will inherit.”

“You are kind, Robin,” she said, studying him.

Her words made him uneasy. He was a rake and a ne’er-do-well. And a pauper. She must
know that.

He drew her back to his side and they proceeded at a leisurely pace, as if they were
strolling in St. James Park during the height of the season, not a frozen corridor
in a ruined castle in the dead of winter.

“You might well be correct about my presumed offspring,” he said. “
If
future Comtes de Rocheforte were to be found lounging about the castle. But I doubt
they will be.”

“How so?” she asked. “The older gentleman gave me to understand that you will inherit
Finovair.”

“The older gentleman? Oh. You mean Taran. Hardly a gentleman, though definitely older.
And yes, my mother having been so shortsighted as to have given birth to me prematurely,
and thus two weeks before Byron’s mother bore him, Taran has deemed me next in line
to have this great pile foisted upon.”

He spoke with a great show of amused indifference. “But even I at my most persuasive—and
I can be most persuasive”—he angled an amused glance at her, and was rewarded with
a faint blush—“even I would be hard-pressed to talk any lady into living here, let
alone raising her children in such a place.”

“Why?” She stopped and looked up at him, by all appearances sincerely confused.

Why?
His gaze swept down the length of ruined gallery. A vine had crept through a crack
in one of the windows and hung bare and twisted as a witch’s finger from the ceiling,
pointing accusingly at a broken chair tipping woozily against a water-stained wall.
She was being disingenuous. She had to be.

“The latest fashions,” he said with supreme insouciance, “eschew blue lips. Or so
I am told. And I refuse to have an unfashionable wife.”

She burst into laughter and he could not help but notice that her lips were, indeed,
touched with a violet hue. Wordlessly, he shrugged out of his jacket and, without
asking permission, draped it over her shoulders.