“Only with my life if you cry off.”
“No, that is foolishness.” But memory of the chestnut burr halted her. “It makes no sense.”
He pivoted away, covering his eyes with his palm again, then turned back around to face her.
“My life is in danger, Octavia. If you do not marry me yours may be as well. Perhaps even your family.”
“How on earth—”
“I don’t know!” His eyes were wild. “I don’t, God help me.” His voice weakened. “But you must marry me and it must be soon. Three weeks by the banns, or sooner if I can find a bishop that will sell me a special license.”
“You cannot threaten me into marrying you.” She fisted her shaking hands. “I will not do it.”
He gripped her shoulders. “You must. You will. You will make it well.” His fraught gaze bored into her, losing focus quickly as though the images behind his eyes were more powerful. Abruptly he released her and strode across the chamber, knocking against a table as he went. The door slammed behind him.
Knees like aspic, Tavy sank onto a chair and pressed her frigid hands between her thighs. She tried to breathe evenly, but the thickness in her throat and prickling behind her eyes would not abate. Through the darkened window, lightning flickered distantly. A tear slid down her cheek. Thunder rumbled, low and slow.
She stood, passed her palm across her damp face, and moved to the door. Sniffing hard, she pulled the panel open.
Precisely the person she expected to see stood in the corridor. In a house full of servants, this particular footman, the one she had seen first at Ben’s London house, seemed to be nearly everywhere she went. His ubiquity reminded her of Abha.
“Pardon me.” She cleared her throat.
“Miss?”
“Can you tell me where I might find your master now?”
“I believe my lord is without, miss. At the lake, if I’m not wrong.”
She turned back into the parlor toward the terrace doors.
“May I fetch your wrap, miss?”
“No, thank you.” She was hot enough already. Foolish and heedless of her better judgment as well. But her hands felt numb and tears still wobbled in the back of her throat.
She walked quickly, straight to the lake. Thunder rolled closer now, but the moonlight-dappled path still shone bright. A modest Greek folly graced the lake’s bank, its Doric columns and limestone pediment austere above the silvery expanse. Ben stood at its edge, silhouetted by the glittering water.
He turned to her.
She did not break stride. If she slowed, her legs might not carry her the distance. He remained still as she ascended the shallow steps, heavy rumbles cascading over the treetops.
“I told Marcus I suspected him of dishonest business dealings and that I could not marry him.” Her voice sounded hollow between stone and water. “He said I must, that his life depended upon it and possibly mine and my family’s. He was foxed, but I believe he was quite serious.” She dashed fresh tears from her cheek. This was not how it was supposed to be. This was all wrong, horridly so.
Lightning flickered. Ben moved to her and surrounded the side of her face with his hand. He tilted her chin up and scanned her features.
“Did he hurt you?” His voice was harsh. His warm skin against hers and the worry in his eyes slipped through her like spring water, washing away fear.
She shook her head.
“Then why are you crying?”
“I don’t know. I suppose I do not like being threatened.”
He released her but did not move away. “I have learned something. It concerns a ship and cargo. Illegal, as you guessed. But I haven’t enough information yet. I must pursue another avenue first.”
“I don’t see how you have any time for that.”
His brow furrowed. The moonlight, skittish now behind clouds, cast his features into carved relief. He was beautiful, and Tavy drank in the vision of him so close, like on that other night so many full moons ago.
“Well,” she took a deep breath, “it seems to me that you spend a great deal of your time—” She bit her lip. “—otherwise engaged.”
He stared at her mouth. “I would certainly like to.”
Her heartbeat tripped. She lifted her chin. “I saw you with Lady Nathans last night. At her bedchamber door.”
His gaze swept up to hers.
“So, you see,” she continued, the crackle in her voice matching a sizzle of lightning close by, “I am somewhat skeptical of your dedication to this project.”
“Lady Nathans was how I learned of the ship.”
Tavy’s mouth dropped open. “You—You were with her to—to . . . ?”
He held her gaze steadily.
“And she—she—”
“Enjoyed a brief sojourn into the exotic.”
Tavy stared. And abruptly understood. Her heart turned over.
He looked, of all things, resigned. But beneath the surface in his eyes shone a hint of something quite different. Something she had seen there for an instant seven years earlier when Aunt Imene said those horrible words. Something of despair.
“Did— Does she know why?” she finally managed.
“Not entirely.”
“Still, you must be quite an actor.” She schooled her tone to nonchalance, her heart racing. “But I suppose she is very beautiful. It could not have been all that difficult for you to maintain the pretense. Or perhaps it was not pretense on your part. Not all, at least, despite your avowal of a surfeit of such women.”
The slightest dent appeared in his cheek, but his eyes remained shadowed.
“Thoroughly direct, as always,” he murmured. “The only pretense of that sort that I have engaged in lately is in making you believe I do not want you.”
The breath whooshed out of her.
“Oh. Is that all?” she uttered.
“What more do you want?”
“A great deal more, I should say.” She did not halt the words that rushed to her tongue. She could not. “I want what you gave Lady Nathans.”
“Miss Pierce,” he said as though he hadn’t heard her, “it may be to your advantage now to go back to the house and lock yourself in your chamber.”
She blinked, her breaths coming fast, the breeze stirring about them chill but her body hot as lit coals.
“Lock?”
“Octavia, go now,” he said huskily. “Or you are going to get a great deal more than I gave her.”
She recognized that husky quality in his voice. She craved it.
“Why do you keep telling me to go?”
“Because I find I cannot bring myself to.”
“I want to stay.”
“I don’t think you know what you want. But I know what I want, and it is not what you are looking for.”
She trembled from her lips to her toes. “Will you marry Lady Constance someday?”
His brow lowered again beneath satiny hair.
“Will you?” she repeated more firmly.
“No.”
“Does she wish to?”
His eyes looked so strange, intense and somewhat confused. Then, abruptly, fierce.
“No,” he growled, and dragged her to him. He covered her mouth and there was no holding back and no reason to now—not Marcus or Constance—nothing but her fear of falling.
She cast the fear aside, sinking beneath the onslaught of his lips, his hands tangling in her hair, his hard body grazing hers as she twisted his waistcoat between her fingers to hold him close. She couldn’t get close enough. She wanted him inside her, his heat. Needed him. But she could not lie to him. He kissed her as though he would not cease, but he had before. The memory of his cold words beneath the trellis pricked her.