The Sins of Lord Easterbrook (25 page)

He brooded over something while he watched the low flames that fought the spring night's chill. The golden light made him dangerously attractive, and his eyes deeply mysterious.

He noticed her but displayed no surprise. His gaze drifted over her in a line much like the sinuous, seductive lock that fell on his temple.

Trembling thrills followed similar serpentine paths inside her. He knew how she reacted when he looked at her like this. She did not doubt that. He had named her desire from the start and used it shamelessly.

She had been very stupid. She should have assumed he would join her here. In her fear after the attack on Mr. Miller, she had not been very clever, or nearly skeptical enough. Now it entered her mind that the intrusion into her house had suited Easterbrook's purposes all too well.

“I did not realize that you would be visiting the country too,” she said.

“Did I neglect to mention that? I suppose that I did. You cannot be too surprised, however.”

No, not too surprised. Nor had he schemed to trap her here deliberately, where they would be alone together for heavens knew how long. He had merely taken advantage of the emergency that brought him to her house two nights ago, and of his resolve to tuck her away somewhere safe.

Her certainty about his motives surprised her. She had no proof he had not been the one to send men stealing
into her house to begin with. He might have decided to frighten her so badly that she would allow him to pack her off to where she could ask no more questions.

She did not think he would have allowed Mr. Miller to be harmed, but that detail was not the real reason that she believed he had not schemed so ignobly.

The truth was that her heart trusted him even if her mind still weighed and wondered.

She admitted that to herself. She squarely faced what it implied. As she absorbed the significance, a wall of protection that she clung to crumbled, leaving her grasping at nothing. Vulnerability flooded her, and love flowed on its currents.

The poignant emotion did not totally bedazzle her. Another truth whispered too, and she could not deny its voice. Even while she allowed her heart to freely feel what it had yearned to experience for years, she saw the future.

Isabella was not the only woman whose heart would inevitably break.

L
eona sat in the other chair near the low fire. “Is Mr. Miller better?”

“Mr. Miller should be mended enough to leave his bed in a day or two. I spoke with him about Isabella, by the way,” Easterbrook said.

“So you are certain that he entered that library for an assignation?”

“Very certain.”

“Did you warn him off?”

“It is not for me to do so. I did explain that his amorous pursuits must not interfere with his duty.”

She could taste Isabella's eventual disappointment now, because it also would be her own. “He was only there several times. They could have spent very little time together, and yet.… I think that she has lost her heart to him.”

“I am sure that she has. If it helps at all, I am also certain that he thinks of her affectionately, which is unusual for Mr. Miller.”

“It does ease my worry now, but it will not help in
the end. No matter what his affection, she cannot stay here with him. She does not belong in his world.”

“I doubt Mr. Miller had thought about that yet.”

“No, but she has. Women always do.”

They looked into the fire, neither seeking the other's eyes. The mood grew too pregnant with unspoken words. She sought a way to dispel the heavy air.

“Once more you express complete certainty about your view of people's hearts, Easterbrook,” she teased. “I am beginning to think it is not just normal arrogance on your part.”

“I am not certain at all about you, Leona. If you were any other woman, I would know if you are glad that I followed you here. With you I either have to ask, or use pleasure to ensure that you are glad enough by morning.” He smiled. “I don't even know which of those choices you would prefer I take.”

Rather suddenly they were down to very frank talk. Normally she preferred that, but tonight, with her heart fluttering so badly and a girlish excitement threatening to block all sense, she could not think clearly enough to spar with him.

“Nor do I know which I would prefer. I am confused about everything concerning you.”

Terribly confused now, sitting within an arm's reach of him. It was wonderful to want him and love him but also distressing to know that it would be a mistake to be glad he had followed her.

They sat like two friends passing an hour. He did nothing to begin a seduction, and yet a low stimulation already hummed in her, flushed now by affection that warmed the arousal in perilous ways.

She was beyond dissembling or being clever. Per haps in a few hours she would reclaim that part of herself, but here, now, in the dark and silence, basking in his sensual, masculine presence, she could not defeat the way her heart urged her to rashness.

“What would make you less confused, Leona?”

What would make her less confused? The question begged for more analysis than she could muster.

“Answers,” she said. “Answers to many questions about you, and about the past and now, and about your mind and your heart.”

“I am not accustomed to answering questions, let alone many of them.”

“Yes. Of course. You did ask your own question, however. Do not blame me if you do not care for my attempt to answer it.”

He smiled at the rebuke. “Do you think we could start with a mere one question tonight? There must be some that confuse you more than others.”

“That is true. One in particular should be asked before this night gets much older.”

“Then let us start with that.”

It required a few moments to work up the courage to put it into words. The answer might be devastating.

“What do you want with me?”

“That is really two questions, depending on how it is interpreted.”

She felt her face warm at the boldness of the second meaning he inferred. She had intended to ask why he was bothering with
her.
He had heard another, specific question that emphasized the “what” and all its possible answers.

He turned very serious. She could see no humor in him now. No lightness.

“I never forgot you, Leona. Not your vivid spirit or quick temper or expressive eyes. I always knew we would meet again. If my pursuit has been too insistent, it is because despite all the changes the years brought, some things did not change at all. I had waited too long to experience them again.” He reached for her hand and held it in the gap between their chairs. “You asked your question as if any woman would do, as if I trouble myself with you for no purpose. To me, you are unique. You knew me, and understood what you knew, better than anyone. I think that you do now as well.”

It touched her that he spoke so openly. It was more of a declaration than she ever expected. But it saddened her that this man who was so contained and confident believed that her incomplete understanding was the best the world had ever offered him.

“Now, as to the other question,
what
do I want with you, I dare not answer with complete honesty because you might run away like you used to.” His eyes turned a little devilish. “In bed, I want whatever you will allow. I want you for as long as I can convince you to stay. Would you prefer it if I wanted more?”

The question, asked so casually, stunned her.

“I know that I was the first with you,” he said. “I am supposed to offer marriage. I have considered it, but there are reasons why such a match would be ill-advised. However, if you want a proposal—”

“No. I am not expecting anything. Least of all that. I know why it is.…impossible. Certainly for you. For me as well. I could never abandon my brother like
that.” She had never allowed herself to consider such a thing. A silent litany of reasons why it could never be shouted and drowned out the mere thought even now.

“Not impossible. Just.…”

“Ill-advised. I understand. Truly.”

“No, you do not. Truly. Perhaps I will try to explain sometime.” His hand held hers more firmly. “Are you less confused now?”

“Somewhat.”

“Then since I have summoned my better nature this long, I will stay on the honorable path. I will ask instead of act. Are you glad that I followed you here?”

She rather wished he had chosen to be dishonorable. Now the decision was hers. This conversation had done little to encourage a sound one.

“I am still settling that question,” she said.

He took it very well. He stood. That brought him closer to her, so close that her heart rose and flipped. He looked down and she sensed that dark power surrounding her. It was a very brief attempt at invasion, but it left her mesmerized and helpless.

He still held her hand. “I will allow you to ponder the question on your own. I will set aside my inclination to tip the argument in my favor the only way I know how.”

“That is good of you.”

“I doubt that I will be so noble for more than a day. If you conclude I must be warned off, you had better settle in that direction quickly.”

He began to let go of her. She tightened her own fingers so he could not.

“It truly is good of you, Christian. Very kind, really.
I have more than proven how weak I am with you already.”

“And I have been ruthless as a result. I succumbed to a bad family trait, to make sure I got what I wanted.” He kissed her hand, and released it. “Unless I want to succumb again, I must leave you now.”

He was an idiot. A fool.

He slammed his fist against the sill of the window where he stood looking out at nothing.

No, not nothing. Above him, out of sight, another window emitted the faintest light. It fell like a faerie glow on the garden. The evidence that Leona was still awake made his jaw clench.

So much for the great conundrum. Hell, when she tallied up the good and the bad, the pleasure and the cost, then added in the potential misery and scandal of an affair with the half-mad marquess, her shrewd mind would settle the question in the way he least wanted.

He had almost killed himself riding cross-country to get here tonight. Even his dislike of this house could not diminish his impatience. It was a miracle that he had not slung her over his shoulder and taken her to bed as soon as he saw her.

Instead, in a fit of sentimentality that came from God knew where, he had all but told her to throw him over. As if she wasn't going to do that soon enough anyway, without his leading her to it.

She had appeared stunned at his reference to marriage. Appalled. If the notion had ever entered her head she had discarded it long ago.

Just as well. Doing the right thing often resulted in living the wrong thing forever. All the luxury in the world would not make that life any easier. That was one calculation on Leona's part that pleasure had not obscured.

He glanced to the valise on the floor, still sitting where he had dropped it upon arriving. The servant who had trailed him upstairs to play valet almost fainted when a snarl greeted his attempts to unpack it. Inside was that damned leather notebook.

The notebook was one excellent reason why a proposal would be ill-advised. If she learned its contents, or if she found her answers some other way, she would be certain he had gone to Macao to betray her father.

There were plenty of other reasons too. Leona had compiled a long list of her own should he want it.

She thought him willful, peculiar, rude, conceited, and arrogant—and those were the opinions she had actually voiced. One could only imagine the ones she politely kept to herself. She did not treat him carefully, as if he were half mad, but she considered his habits unbearable.

I will not join you in that isolation.

The night suddenly got darker. The low light leaking from the window above disappeared. Desire carved through him with a vengeance, mocking the stupid hope that light had given him.

He opened the window to the chilled air. He stripped off his clothes and stood there naked. The cool breeze did not help. He burned from the inside. The fire in his blood and head would not go away.

He strode to the bed, feeling more inner chaos than
he had since he had left Macao. Anger at what he was, fury at his impotence to change it, alarm at how fate had played a cruel joke that would never end—it swept him as he lay beneath the sheet and faced a sleepless night.

With the dark emotions came the insidious craving to escape into paradise. That was what opium seemed to offer, and still did at moments like this. He was in hell but heaven was in the pipe, waiting to provide so lace. For a brief time, while in opium's haze, the world was simple and perfect and he was normal and full of potential.

He rarely experienced this craving now. Normally he could seek the dark center and find peace, but that would not work tonight. All the same he controlled his breathing the way Tong Wei had taught him.

It sustained him through the peak of the wave that the hunger formed, through that instant of unbearable physical madness when a man will sell his soul for relief. Then, also as Tong Wei had promised, the worst was over even as it happened. The crest of the craving signaled its retreat.