The Undoing Of A Lady

It was not just honor, he acknowledged. It was greed for the money. He had to have it. And it was lust. Having once tasted Lizzie’s tempting beauty he was tormented by her. It was not a good reason for marriage, in his opinion, but it was better than asking her to be his mistress. He wanted her here, now, against this tree, or on the grass beneath them. He had never felt like this before, had never been possessed by such single-minded desire. It still shocked him because he simply was not a man driven by his lusts. Except that he evidently was.

“No.” He caught her arm. She felt warm beneath his touch. “I know,” he said roughly. “You know. Even if there is no child, even if no one else ever found out, we two would know what happened.”

“So?” She raised her chin. “I can forget.”

Nat thought about how impossible he found it to erase the memory of how she felt in his arms. He could not forget that. There was a tumult of intense emotion within him, the desire, the need, and the longing. He slid his hands up her arms, drawing her toward him. He moved with unmistakable deliberation so that she had time to escape him if she wished, but she stood quite still, watching him with those huge, clear eyes.

“Have you forgotten this?” he asked, in the second before his mouth covered hers. “Do you want to forget it?”

Delicious. Hot. Urgent. She matched his passion effortlessly and for a moment Nat felt the world spin and he was in danger of losing control in the same way that he had done the week before. She tasted so sweet, a mixture of brandy and something that was her own essence, fiery, tempting and yet poignantly innocent. She held nothing back and that was almost his undoing. With a fierce effort he reined himself in and kissed her more gently, teasing her tongue with his, courting her response rather than demanding it. Her tongue slid against his, seeking, a little hesitant in her inexperience and all the more seductive for it. And suddenly, helplessly, they were sliding toward heated passion once again and reality splintered around him and he was aware of nothing but his driving need for her as he gathered her closer and the feelings consumed him alive.

It was Lizzie who drew back this time. She was panting for breath. For a brief moment the moonlight shimmered on some expression in her eyes that he did not recognize and could not read and then she moved away from him and the shadows fell across her face and swallowed her up.

“No,” she said. “I have not forgotten it.”

He came after her, still driven by need, and caught her hand. “Then marry me, Lizzie.”

“So that we can make love again?” Her tone was light, unrevealing. “It isn’t a good enough reason, Nat.”

In that moment it felt like the best reason in the world to him. Devoured by his lust for her, single-minded in his desire, he could think of none better. But Lizzie had freed herself. Her hand slid from his and once again she slipped away.

“I do not wish to marry you,” she said. “You know we would not be suited. Even as friends we fight like cat and dog. It would be willfully foolish to make matters worse by marrying each other.” She sighed. “This isn’t like the time I fell from my horse when we were out riding together and you carried me home, Nat. This time you cannot rescue me. We made a mistake, I provoked you and you were angry with me and it should never have happened.”

Nat could not dispute a single thing that she said, except that he knew that mistakes of that magnitude could not simply be brushed aside.

“You must marry me,” he said. “It will put matters right.”

“So now you give me a different reason,” Lizzie said. “First the possibility of a child, then lust, now reputation.” She looked at him, a mocking half smile tilting her lips. “And you have not even mentioned my money yet.”

She was so cynical, Nat thought. It was experience of life that had made Lizzie such a skeptic for she had seen from an early age the things men-and women-did for money. And the hell of it was that she was absolutely right. He had not mentioned the money because out of all of his motives it seemed the least honorable, yet to him it was becoming the most pressing need. He simply had to pay off his blackmailer before the truth of his sister’s disgrace was spilled before the world like an ugly stain.

“There are lots of reasons why we should wed,” he argued.

“I do not see it like that,” Lizzie said. “I see lots of reasons why we should not.”

She was so stubborn that Nat wanted to shake her. “Lizzie,” he said. “It will give you the protection of my name. Someone might know what happened. They might have known you were out that night…the servants…You know how they gossip. You would be ruined if it came out, even if you are not pregnant.”

She looked up. Her eyes were bright, vivid in the moonlight. Her words were an echo of his thoughts a moment before. “You are always seeking to protect me, Nat Waterhouse.”

“And never has there been greater need.”

Lizzie stood looking at him thoughtfully, head on one side as though he were a specimen for examination. Nat was not sure he liked it.

“Always you seek to care for people,” she said. “Your family, me, even the work that you do for the Home Secretary to keep the country safe…” She left a question hanging in the air. Why?

Nat knew full well what it was the drove him, but he did not want to discuss it. Once, years before, he had failed to protect those who depended on him and he had resolved that it would never happen again. Which was why he needed not only to keep Lizzie safe from the consequences of their reckless passion but also to gain her fortune so that his family and Celeste were secure, too. It was his absolute duty and he would not fail in it.

“It is what I do,” he said stubbornly.

Lizzie shook her head, disappearing between the trees, almost as though she were slipping through his fingers like water. He followed her, realizing even as he did so that it was always like this. She always ran away; he always followed. The knowledge irritated him. Was he so predictable, so reliable? It seemed so. And yet he could not simply let her go to face the consequences of their actions alone.

“Lizzie.” He caught her and held her. She did not pull away from him and yet she did not feel willing in his arms, either. It was as though she was enduring his embrace and waiting for it to pass. He wanted to force a response from her to prove that the desire had not only been on his side that night. A moment ago, when they had kissed, he had been sure that she had been as eager for him as he was for her. Yet there was nothing in her now to indicate that she wanted him. He looked down into her face, so beautifully etched in black and white in the moonlight, and felt again the need that he had for her slam through his body with each beat of his heart.

“No,” she said again. She smiled at him. “Marriage should be about the future, Nat, not just the past.” She stood up on tiptoe and pressed her lips to his. It was a wistful kiss. He could taste the brandy on her lips again and beneath its smell catch an elusive hint of Lizzie’s own scent. It went straight to his head-and his groin. “But I do thank you,” she whispered as she slipped from his arms. “You are a good man, Nat Waterhouse. You try to do the right thing.”

It sounded, Nat thought with grim amusement, like an epitaph. And it was far more than he deserved. Not all his motives were pure. Most of them were not.

He watched as she crossed the meadow toward the house. The carriage was returning from the Wheelers now and Sir Montague was being helped down by one of the footmen. He seemed too drunk to stand. Nat watched as Lizzie called for Sir Monty’s valet, Spencer, to assist them and calmly organized the removal of her half brother from the gravel sweep into the house. Of Tom Fortune there was no sign. The one brother was insensible with drink, Nat thought, and the other was probably in bed with the serving wench from the Morris Clown Inn. Of the three of them, Lizzie was by far the strongest, most courageous, and most admirable.

He wondered how he was going to persuade her to marry him. She might think that she had a choice. She might even be more mature, more sensible than he, in seeing that to marry would be to condemn them both to a life of misery. Unfortunately he could not let that weigh with him. The letter he had received that morning, reminding him of his financial obligations, threatening his sister Celeste, had helped to seal Lizzie’s fate. She would be his bride. He had no other alternative.

“DID YOU ENJOY THAT?” Tom Fortune asked. He propped himself on one elbow and trailed a lazy finger down the bare back of the woman who was lying next to him. She gave a sleepy purr of total satiation and rolled onto her side. The bed sheet lay tangled about her thighs, revealing the dark triangle of hair at the juncture of her legs, and she made absolutely no effort to cover herself. Tom liked that. He liked a woman who was shameless in her sexual needs. This woman, he thought, might hold his interest for several weeks. He suspected she knew all the whore’s tricks and would not be slow to use them.