Castles Ever After 02 Say Yes to the Marquess (26 page)

God. He hadn’t known until that moment, but this was what he’d been longing for all his life. Not to claim, but to be claimed. Irrevocably. To feel free to love and be loved, without the looming fear that a few impulsive words could end it all.

“If you want to keep prizefighting, I won’t stand in your way. But you’ll need a new name in the ring.” She gave him a fierce, determined look. “You’re Clio’s Own now. The Devil himself could come for you, and he’d have to get through me.”

It was too much. Too much. He wasn’t sure his heart could take it.

“Do you hear me, Rafe? You’re mine.”

“You’re mine.” Clio said it again. Because it felt so good, and because his needing, stricken expression couldn’t help but touch her heart. “My hero. My love. My future husband, hopefully.”

“Your future husband. Definitely.” His hands captured her by the waist. His eyes darkened. “I’m yours, then. And you’re mine, as well.”

She nodded.

“Let me hear it,” he whispered roughly. “Say the words. You’re mine.”

“I’m yours, Rafe. Always.”

It happened so fast. His lips fell on hers, and his arms gathered her in a tight embrace. Their mouths melded in a kiss so fierce, so needing, not even a whisper could have come between them.

Clio ached for his touch. She wanted to feel him everywhere. His hand claimed her breast through her gown. It wasn’t enough. She tugged at the restrictive silk, trying to coax it lower. She didn’t have any patience for buttons today.

“Don’t tear your gown.” He slid his hand under the fabric, cupping one of her breasts. When his thumb grazed her peaked nipple, she sighed with pleasure.

“It’s already ruined.” She ripped away a garden-bedraggled strip of lace just to prove the point. “It doesn’t matter. I only wanted to wear it for you.”

Something changed in him when she said those words. A wildness took over.

He kissed her neck. Mouthed her breasts. His hands were everywhere at once. And still, she wanted more. At last, here was the intensity she’d been craving. Last night’s patience gave way to pure, unfettered wanting, and she reveled in it.

His hands slid downward, hiking the layers and layers of sodden fabric to her waist. He pushed her knees wide and moved between her legs.

“I need you.” His voice was dark. His fingers found and traced her most intimate places. “Here. Now.”

“Yes.”

He thrust a hand between them, working open the closures of his trousers.

She wrapped a leg over his hips, drawing him close. She moved her pelvis, grinding against him in ways that made them both moan.

“I . . .” He cursed. “I’m not certain I can be gentle.”

“Then don’t be gentle. Just be you.”

Still, he hesitated.

“You won’t hurt me,” she lied.

Her intimate places were stretched and sore from last night, and she wasn’t fool enough to think a hard tupping on the desk would make it better.

She wanted this anyway.

Yes, this. The sweet burn of him sliding into her. The exquisite weight of his strong, muscled body anchoring hers. The desire and possessive need in his eyes.

She wanted all of this.

He leaned her all the way back onto the desk, then hooked his arms under her legs, spreading her wide. Viewing the contrast between her pale, stockinged legs and his broad, tanned shoulders excited her.

He thrust deep. “Tell me when it’s too much.”

“It won’t ever be too much.” She gripped his arms.

“I love you.” He nudged deeper. “I love you. Take that.”

Her heart swelled.

With every movement, he pushed her spine against the unyielding mahogany. The firmness of the desk gave her nowhere to hide. She was at his mercy, and she couldn’t get enough.

When her climax broke, she cried out. In pain, in pleasure. She dug her fingernails into his neck. He growled in response, holding her still as he spent inside her.

Afterward, he held her so tenderly. Right against his pounding heart.

“I was so stupid this morning,” he whispered. “If you want me to shuffle papers, I’ll shuffle papers. If you wanted me to give up fighting, I’d do that. I’d do anything to keep you, Clio. I love you. I wish I had better ways to show it. All I have is this brash, reckless heart. But it’s yours.”

She looked up at him. “Really?”

“Really.”

“Good. I hope your love for me will survive this.”

She opened the top drawer of the desk, located the dissolution papers Rafe had signed—and cast them in the fire.

“Clio, no.”

He lunged to save them, but he was too late. The papers flared and burned in the grate.

He speared his fingers through his hair. “Why did you do that?”

“Because I’m not going to let you be the villain today. I was stupid this morning, too. And when Piers came home, I realized this is happening so fast. We need a little time, each of us. You need to fight your battles. I need to fight my own. And we owe it to Piers to do this right.

“You are still brothers, despite everything. He needs someone to welcome him home, and it’s not going to be me. If we married right away, you’d never be able to mend things with him. But if I break the news and we bide our time . . . Piers will overcome any disappointment he might feel. With any luck, he’ll choose another bride.”

“He’s a man of fortune, rank, and privilege. He can take care of himself. I want to take care of you.”

She touched his shoulders. “I know. But how could I claim to love you, then ask you to choose between me and your only brother? You needn’t choose at all, if we wait.”

“I can’t ask you to wait. I know how you detest that word. You’ve waited eight years.”

“I can last a few months more.” She stroked his cheek. “It will be different now. This time, I know I’m worth waiting for.”

He weaved his hands in her hair and held her close. “You’re worth anything. You know that, don’t you? I’d swallow nails. I’d walk through fire.”

“Oh, that would be too easy. I’m asking you to do something far worse. Go spend time with your brother.”

Chapter Twenty-six

C
lio! Clio!” Daphne accosted her in the corridor, breathless and flushed. She placed her hands on Clio’s shoulders. “Did I just see Lord Granville
and
Lord Rafe mounted on their horses and riding away?”

Clio’s heart pinched at the thought of Rafe leaving. But if he must go, at least he was leaving with his brother. “You probably did,” she said. “Yes.”

“Well, what are they about? Have they gone to fetch the license?”

“No, they’ve . . .” She shrugged as they entered the drawing room, joining Sir Teddy and Phoebe. “They’ve simply gone.”

“Gone?” Daphne shook her head, laughing. “But what can you mean?”

Clio squared her shoulders and drew a deep breath. This seemed as good a time as any to announce it.

“I’ve broken the engagement,” she said.

There. The words were out, and they hadn’t even been that difficult to pronounce. If she’d managed to hold her own when informing Piers of her decision, she could certainly relay the news to her closest family.

“What?” Teddy’s boot hit the floor. “You mean you let him off the hook?”

“I wouldn’t phrase it that way, but—”

“That’s not fair, dumpling.” Her brother-in-law rose from his seat, visibly agitated. “He kept you dangling for eight years. Humiliated you. Squandered the best years of your life. Make the man come up to scratch.”

“You’re mistaken,” Clio said, trying to keep an even temper. “I am the one who broke the engagement. It was my decision. I don’t wish to marry him.”

“You, breaking off with him?” Teddy chuckled. “It’s a nice attempt to save face, but no one’s going to believe that tale.”

“It’s not a
tale.
It’s the truth.”

But when had these two ever recognized the truth, from Clio’s lips?

“Oh, Lord.” Daphne sank onto the sofa and released a slight, deflated moan. “Oh, no.”

Clio shook her head. For heaven’s sake,
Piers
had accepted the news with less melodrama than this.

He’d taken it well, actually. He’d expressed a convincing degree of disappointment, but Clio could tell his pride was taking the deepest wound. His heart wasn’t in danger. They were little more than strangers after all these years. She hoped in time they could be friends.

He was a good man. Just not the man for her.

“Can’t you try to mend things?” her sister asked. “Perhaps it’s not too late. Or . . . Or Teddy can ride after them and demand Lord Granville make good on his promises.”

Clio shook her head. “It’s over.”

“It can’t be over,” Teddy said. “After all these years, we can’t give up. You mustn’t let him escape.”

“
Escape?
” She laughed. “Should I be locking him in the dungeons?”

“Laugh all you like, but this is always your failing.” Her sister clucked her tongue. “You let this drag on far too long, when you should have stood up for yourself years ago. You’re too accommodating.”

She thought on it. “You’re right, Daphne. I am too accommodating.”

“I’m so glad you see it.”

“That’s going to change,” Clio said. “Today.”

“Oh, yes. Let’s go after him. We’ll order the carriage this moment.
Teddy.
”

Her sister snapped her fingers, and her husband roused himself from the sofa. Together they hurried into the corridor.

Clio followed. But when they approached the entrance hall, she held back.

“It’s your last chance to go first,” she told her sister, smiling sweetly. “Once I marry Piers, I will take precedence.”

Daphne smiled. “That’s the spirit.”

She waited until Daphne and Sir Teddy had walked through. And then she ducked into the nearby alcove, reached up with both arms, and pulled the lever.

With a groan and rattle of iron, the portcullis smashed shut.

“It’s been lovely having you visit,” Clio told her shocked sister and brother-in-law, waving her fingers through the barrier of the iron grate. “Please do come back at Christmas.”

“What on earth are you doing, dumpling?” Teddy asked.

“Using my castle for its intended purpose. Protection. And kindly refrain from calling me dumpling. Rafe taught me how to punch, too.”

Teddy blinked in alarm.

“First you’re letting Lord Granville slip away, and now this?” Daphne asked. “Clio, have you gone raving mad?”

“Perhaps.” She shrugged. “Daphne, you are my sister, and I love you. I know you mean well. But you can be astoundingly hurtful at times.”

Clio had Phoebe’s well-being to consider. She just couldn’t be accommodating anymore. Teddy and Daphne were one of those things best taken in small amounts. Like ground cloves. Or smallpox.

“I know that once you leave, I shall miss you,” Clio told her sister. “I’m looking forward to missing you.”

“You can’t do this!” Daphne rattled the gate. “You can’t just boot us out.”

“Actually, I can. I might still be a spinster. I might never be a lady, or even a wife. You might always be my social superior. But I am mistress of my own castle. On this property, I make the rules. And today, I’m feeling a bit medieval.”

Clio waved good-bye to her shocked sister and brother-in-law through the iron grate. “Do have a safe journey. I hope you don’t encounter much traffic on the bridge.”

That done, she turned to Phoebe. “I don’t suppose you’re interested in helping me start a brewery?”

“I’m not sure what help I’d be.” Phoebe fished a bit of string from her pocket. “But I won eighteen hundred pounds in the card room last night. I want to invest.”

“The stewards tell me these fields could be put to better use.” Rafe drew his mount to a halt on the southern border of Oakhaven. “How do you feel about barley?”

“I don’t know that I possess strong feelings about barley.”

“I don’t know that you possess strong feelings at all.”

Piers gathered his reins and set his jaw. “Actually, I do have a few. None of them especially charitable at the moment.”

Rafe walked his gelding in a tense circle. They hadn’t been back on Oakhaven land for ten minutes, and already they were back to their old, familiar boyhood conflicts. If Clio hadn’t asked him to do this . . .

“Maybe we should have it out, the two of us,” Rafe suggested. “Take off our coats, roll up our sleeves. Get it over with.”

“I’m not going to fight you. It wouldn’t be fair.”

“I suppose you’re right.” Rafe puffed his chest. “I
was
heavyweight champion of England for four years.”

“I know how to kill a man with a letter opener and make it look like an accident,” his brother said coolly. “I meant it wouldn’t be fair to you.”

Rafe rolled his eyes. “You’re so damned predictable. For as long as I could remember, I lived in your shadow. Always failing. Always envious. Fighting was the one thing I could do better than the perfect, upstanding Piers. But no. You had to go and one-up me on that score, too.”

“Of course I did. You weren’t the only one with envy.”

“Why the devil would you envy me?”

“For a hundred reasons. You did as you pleased. Said what you liked. You had more fun. With considerably more girls. You had that roguish air they all like, and your hair does that thing.”

“My hair does a thing?” Rafe made a face. “What thing?”

His brother declined to explain. “I took assignments I wouldn’t have chosen otherwise. Dangerous work. Because even though you were a continent away and the truth of what I was doing must be kept secret from everyone, I couldn’t help but feel I was still in competition with my little brother. As it turns out, we
were
in competition. In one way, at least. And there, it seems I lost.”

So, it would seem he had gathered the truth about Clio. Rafe
had
won that round, hadn’t he?

About damn time.

“I don’t feel guilty about it,” he said. “I’m far from perfect, but I am better at loving that woman than you could ever hope to be. I know her in ways you don’t. I need her in ways you’d never understand. And I’d fight to be with her, to my last breath.” He took a deep breath to calm himself. “But she doesn’t want us fighting. She wants us to be friends.”

“
Friends?
I don’t think we’ll ever be friends,” Piers said.

“You’re right. It would be stupid to try.”

Damn. Rafe was doing it again. Speaking words in reckless anger. Words he didn’t mean.

He faced down that vague, ill-formed cloud of resentment that had been roaming through his chest ever since he left Twill Castle. It was an anger born of self-loathing and all that wasted time. If only he’d been man enough eight years ago, he could have offered to marry Clio first.

But that would have been a disaster. They would have married too young. He would have had no means of supporting her. Perhaps his father would have given him some kind of living, and Rafe surely would have failed in spectacular fashion. Clio would have been isolated, pregnant by the time she turned eighteen, still suffering under the dangerous strictures her mother had placed on her.

If he had any chance of making her happy, it was only because they’d been forced to wait. In that respect, perhaps he should be grateful to his father, and to Piers.

The time was only wasted if he didn’t learn from it.

“I didn’t mean what I said just now.” Rafe faced his brother. “I’m sorry. We should try.”

“To be friends? I don’t see how—”

“Just hear me out. I’m no great speechmaker, but I do have things to say every once in a while. If my fighting career has taught me anything, it’s that friends are easy to come by. True opponents—the rivals who force you to work harder, think faster, be better than you knew you could be—those are rare. If that’s what we are to each other, why change it?”

His brother looked out over the fields. “Perhaps you’re right. So we won’t be friends. We’ll leave it at ‘resentfully affectionate lifelong adversaries.’ ”

Rafe shook his head. Whatever mysterious special duties his brother had been given, Piers was a diplomat at heart. No one else would reach for four lofty words where a simple, single one would do.

“We could call it that,” Rafe said, mounting his horse. “
Or
we could just say ‘brothers’ to save time.”

“Very well. Brothers it is.”