Ben moved close again, lifted her chin with his fingertips and placed a soft, perfect kiss upon her lips. Then another, this time lingering. Perhaps a last kiss, but when he drew away his eyes were warm, gentle once more. Another of his pretenses, or truth, she had no idea.
“Now, go.” His voice was low. “Go make amends with your betrothed.”
Tavy wanted nothing else than to throw herself into his arms and beg him to never release her.
She straightened her shoulders, slid her feet into her slippers, and went to the door. No candle lit the corridor, but she did not need light to guide her way. She was lost, and no material illumination could help her now.
Ben stared at the closed door, numb to his marrow. He had done what he needed, as he always did, and he hated his dead uncle, his family, and every person across the seas that depended upon him, more than ever before.
But he had spoken the truth. He should have been more careful of her—of her virtue, then of the future. He’d told himself that a woman who welcomed a man’s touch while betrothed to another could not be a maiden. A neat, believable excuse to take what he wanted, what he had wanted since nearly the first time he set eyes upon her. Then he had lost himself in her beyond the point of safety, easily, willingly. Intentionally. Because part of him wanted to bind her to him permanently, to make her his regardless of the consequences.
If she found herself increasing, he would wed her. But then he would never know the truth.
Distress had flashed in her lovely eyes when he had spoken of caution. She tried to mask it, but in this she was a poor dissembler. But perhaps that moment simply marked a quick shift in her approach to securing a titled husband. A rapid recalculation in the face of his resistance. Her honesty in passion told him he was wrong to believe it. But a woman who sought to dissemble was not after all entirely honest. When he instructed her regarding Crispin, her eyes had shone with astonishment, but also guilt. She had not told him everything about her arrangement with the baron.
Secrets. Dissembling. At one time he had thought Octavia Pierce incapable of such things. But that time had been brief, little longer than the night that had just passed in which she had given herself to him as to no other man. The blood on the bedclothes proved it just as his experience of her body did.
But before she had, she made certain he hadn’t already chosen a bride.
He knew not what to believe, only that he wanted her more than air, more than the life he had been given. Now, with the sweetness of her hunger still upon his skin, he could no longer do what he should have done the moment she stepped out of his house in London: forget she ever existed. Whether by design or simple nature, she had ensnared him, and he was bound. It only remained for fate to play out his hand.
Ben had no delusions of winning. The riches of the world were already his, wealth and influence beyond what many kings enjoyed. That he only wanted one thing, the simplest and yet most impossible to assure for a man like him, was his own eternal folly.
Chapter 16
BREAKERS. A name given by sailors to those billows that break violently over rocks lying under the surface of the sea.—Falconer’s Dictionary of the Marine
At Sunday service in the chapel, Marcus appeared his usual self, all smiles and charm for the ladies and pleasantries for the gentlemen. But when the carriages arrived on the drive preparing to depart Fellsbourne, he came to Tavy with a sober brow. His eyes showed tiny rivulets of red and his skin seemed pale.
Tavy couldn’t throw stones. It had taken every ounce of skill at her toilette to make herself appear little better than sepulchral. Two hours of sleep and turbulent emotions haggarded a woman horridly.
“I have business to attend to as soon as I return to town, but I will call upon you after that.” Marcus took her arm as though he had the right to.
Tavy nearly snatched it away. But Ben stood nearby with the Gosworths and her family. She did not owe Ben her assistance, and she didn’t give a fig about Marcus’s troubles any longer. But his threat against her loved ones hung over her.
Tavy told herself this was the only reason she would play this farce. But she knew the truth. She could no more deny Ben than she could fly to the moon on a magic carpet. He had asked for her aid, and she would give it to him.
“This evening, then?” Marcus looked hopeful.
“Tomorrow.”
“I will take you driving.” He patted her arm.
Standing between Ben and St. John, Alethea beckoned to her with a glance. Tavy must say an appropriately grateful goodbye to their host, just as all the Marquess of Doreé’s other guests who had not spent the night making love to him.
Even as her throat went dry, hysteria wobbled in it. She went forward and made her curtsy.
“Thank you for your gracious welcome, my lord.” Every exhausted mote of her blood was alive to him.
He bowed. “The pleasure was all mine, ma’am.”
“You have a lovely home.” From Greek folly to billiards room to master bedchamber.
“I am glad you approve of it.”
“Octavia, you will ride with me.” Lady Fitzwarren bustled between them. “Doreé, you are your father’s son in the excellence of your hospitality. Your cook’s curried sole is one of the finest I have tasted.”
“I will convey to her your compliments, my lady.”
“Oh, wait.” Constance hurried over and grasped Tavy’s hands. “I will call upon you in town the moment I return. We will make a plan to go shopping, or perhaps to the museum.” Her grip was tight, her gaze peculiarly brittle.
“That would be lovely.” Tavy returned the pressure of her fingers. Perhaps Ben did not know this woman’s heart. Perhaps he was using Constance just as he was using her, with her full and enthusiastic consent.
“Come along, Octavia.” Lady Fitzwarren drew her away.
She climbed into the dowager’s carriage. Settling back upon the squabs, she lifted her fingers in parting to Alethea on the drive, and turned her gaze to the other window. The carriage pulled onto the straightaway flanked by masterful chestnuts, their fruit spilled upon the ground like loamy tears. She stared at the graceful slope of lawn toward the little Greek temple at the lake, trees nestled around its far flank. Everything sparkled after the night’s heavy rain, clean washed and fresh with fall’s golds, crimsons, and ochres on branches and carpeting the ground.
“That was a close run thing,” the dowager exclaimed upon a relieved whorl of breath. “Thank heavens.”
“Thank heavens?” Tavy’s body drooped with weariness and something more.
“Thank heavens the two of you did not fall into each other’s arms back there.”
Tavy shrugged. “Lady Constance and I have become comfortable friends very swiftly, it is true. But sometimes a friendship will begin in such a manner.”
“I was not speaking of Constance.”
The landscape dropped away toward the road and Fellsbourne disappeared beyond an autumn-dappled copse. Slowly Tavy turned from the view to the dowager.
“Are you still betrothed to Crispin, child?”
“Yes.” Marcus had showed no sign of accepting her refusal after all. And now she must renew her engagement in any case.
“I see.”
“Aunt Mellicent, I should like it if you would host a party in town. Not a particularly large gathering, but sizable enough so that everybody is not in everybody else’s pockets all evening long.”
The dowager folded her hands atop her elegantly bulging midriff. “Should you like that?”