A Kiss to Remember (32 page)

Laura toyed with the ribbon at the throat of her nightdress. “Well, if you think it will make your task less burdensome …”

“Oh, I think it will make both of our tasks less burdensome. Why don’t I show you?”

Her eyes widened as he slipped back out of his dressing gown and back into her bed.

Sterling Harlow might have the face of an angel, but by night he was a devil, stealing Laura’s soul even as he scorned her heart. Although he had professed a fondness for the niceties, the things he did to Laura’s eager young body when he slipped between her sheets each night weren’t nice at all but deliciously naughty. Some of them were even downright wicked.

Laura took to languishing in bed every morning until ten or eleven, trying to put off the moment when she would have to face the remote stranger who bore no resemblance to the hot-blooded man who had coaxed her to shuddering delight only a few hours before. The more heated their couplings, the more cool and distant he became, until even his cousin grew frustrated with his aloof manner and noncommittal murmurs.

After he had excused himself from dinner one night to barricade himself back in the study, Diana tossed her napkin into her plate. “What was he like?” she demanded, turning her fierce gaze on Laura.

Laura froze, a forkful of curried salmon halfway to her mouth. “Who?”

“This Nicholas of yours. What was he like? What manner of man was he?”

Laura lowered her fork, her lips softening in a wistful smile. “He was kind and tender with a rather dry wit. He was a little suspicious in nature. But I suppose I can’t really blame him for that,” she admitted, dabbing at her lips with her napkin. “He had a bit of a temper as well. You should have seen him when he found out I’d
arranged for him to be the new rector of the parish without consulting him first. He couldn’t even speak for the longest time. He just kept shaking his head at me and running his hand through his hair, all the while turning redder and redder until I thought he was going to explode.”

Diana abandoned her chair and slid into the one next to Laura. “Oh, do tell. Did he throw a proper tantrum? I always wished he would when my father was caning him, but he was far too proud. He would take the beating and I would cry.”

For a minute, Laura thought she was going to. But instead she found herself reaching for Diana’s hand and gently squeezing it. “If you wanted to see a proper tantrum, you should have been there the first time he met my little sister. Lottie let her kittens loose in his bed and he thought they were rats.”

“That doesn’t surprise me one bit. I’ve had my Snowball shut up in the north wing ever since he returned. Sterling never has been able to abide cats. He’s just like my father in that respect.”

“Ha! You should ask him about the kitten that used to follow him all over the farm. I actually caught him kissing its little pink nose and tucking it into the pocket of his coat one morning when he thought no one was looking. And you should have seen the two of them all curled up asleep in the …” Realizing that the under-footman standing at attention by the sideboard was craning his neck to hear their conversation, Laura leaned over to whisper in Diana’s ear, eliciting a throaty burst of laughter.

The endless columns of numbers that had been copied in Diana’s tidy hand were beginning to blur
before Sterling’s exhausted eyes when he heard a sound he’d never before heard within the thick stone walls of Devonbrooke Hall—musical peals of feminine laughter. He slowly stood, letting the ledger fall shut.

The sound was as irresistible as a siren’s song. He followed it all the way back to the door of the dining room. His wife and his cousin were sitting with their heads together, laughing and whispering as if they’d been friends for years.

As his gaze traced Laura’s lovely profile, he felt a peculiar ache low in his chest. He hadn’t heard her laugh like that since they had stood on the steps of St. Michael’s that sun-drenched morning an eternity ago.

He might have stood there watching her forever if the underfootman standing by the sideboard hadn’t pointedly cleared his throat. Laura and Diana whipped their heads around, their smiles fading and their eyes growing wary.

“Forgive me for interrupting,” he said stiffly. “I left the
Times.”
He tucked the newspaper beneath his arm and strode back to the study, feeling more like an intruder in his own house than ever before.

A few days later on a chill and rainy afternoon, Sterling was headed for the study to spend more interminable hours reviewing his apparently infinite number of properties when he heard a most curious sound behind him.

Dead silence.

He halted, cocking his head to the side. There was no panting, no toenails clicking on the marble, no jostling for position.

He slowly turned.

No dogs.

Caliban and Cerberus had been his constant companions ever since he’d returned from Arden. They even napped patiently outside of Laura’s door each night until their master emerged in the wee hours of the morning, flushed and sated. They were the only ones who knew that he never returned to his own cold, empty bed but spent what was left of the night smoking in the solarium, waiting for the sun to come up.

Sterling tucked two fingers in his mouth and let out the low-pitched whistle that never failed to bring the mastiffs trotting to his side. His only answer was a hollow echo.

He frowned. Perhaps Addison had simply neglected to tell him that he’d ordered one of the underfootmen to take them for a walk in the park.

As he neared the library, he noted that the door was half-ajar. He leaned against the doorjamb, rendered speechless by the sight that greeted him.

Laura sat on the hearth rug with Cerberus stretched out beside her. Caliban lay with his head in her lap, his big brown eyes pools of slavish devotion. She was absently fondling his ears, not the least bit concerned that he was drooling all over the pale blue silk of her skirt. Sterling could only imagine what his old enemies the French would say if they could see his devil dogs brought to heel by nothing more than a woman’s touch. But he knew only too well the power of those hands against his own flesh.

He shook his head ruefully. First his cousin, now his dogs. Was she to leave him nothing?

He was about to turn away, but her melancholy sigh rooted his feet to the floor. Although an open book was propped on her knee, she was gazing into the fire, her expression pensive. Sterling studied her, noticing changes that had eluded him in the velvety shadows of her bed. The sun-kissed bloom was fading from her cheeks. Her rich brown eyes no longer sparkled but were shadowed by loneliness.

She had risked everything, including her heart, to keep her home and her family intact. Yet he’d torn her away from the both of them, not allowing her so much as a backward glance.

Sterling’s uncle had ordered all manner of exotic blooms for the solarium, but they rarely flourished because they needed warmth and sunlight, two things the cold, drafty hall could never provide. In the end the blooms had always died, leaving only Sterling to mourn them.

He must have made some small sound, for Cerberus lifted his head to give him a quizzical look. Touching a finger to his lips, Sterling slowly backed out of the room.

He strode to the study, infused with a genuine sense of purpose for the first time in days. After he’d finished penning a rather lengthy note, he rang for Addison.

The manservant seemed to materialize out of thin air, just as he always did. “You rang, Your Grace?”

Sterling handed him the missive. “I need you to see that the marquess of Gillingham receives this message right away.”

“Very well, Your Grace. Will there be anything else?”

Sterling settled back in his chair, smiling in spite of
himself. “You might want to give the servants a generous bonus. I’m afraid they’re about to earn it.”

By the end of her second week at Devonbrooke Hall, Laura was so desperate for company that she found herself wandering the portrait gallery in the west wing, searching the faces of Sterling’s dead relations for any hint of a resemblance. She amused herself by naming the more colorful of them and making up stories about their lives. She’d decided that the smirking fellow in the doublet and pleated ruff was Percival the Pert, beloved confidant of the very first duchess of Devonbrooke. The ruddy-faced, red-bearded warrior draped in chain mail was none other than Sir Boris the Bloody, defender of the wrongfully condemned. And the buxom vixen with the defiant glare? Why, she must be Mad Mary Harlow, who had murdered her unfeeling husband after she caught him in bed with his married mistress, an acid-tongued wench who just happened to be named Elizabeth.

Laura sighed and made another circuit of the gallery. Even the portrait of old Granville Harlow had lost its power to terrorize. She would almost rather encounter the ghost of the former duke than the present one.

She leaned closer to the wall to examine a small portrait she’d nearly overlooked. It was a stiff, unsmiling likeness of a fair-haired boy, no more than eleven or twelve. His back was ramrod straight and his eyes gazed out upon the world with a guarded cynicism jarring in one so young.

Laura touched her fingertip to his cheek, but could find no hint of the dimple she loved. There was no need
to employ her imagination. She already knew his story. He had been abandoned by those he loved the most. He had been given into the clutches of a despotic old man determined to mold him in his likeness. And he had been betrayed by the woman he had trusted with his heart. Laura slowly lowered her hand. Could she blame him for not believing in happy endings?

She was turning away from the portrait, head bowed, when a savage barking shattered the silence. The sound was accompanied by raised voices, a blistering stream of profanity delivered in a Cockney accent so thick as to be mercifully indecipherable, and a shrill shrieking.

Laura jerked her head up. Thinking that she must surely be losing her mind, she snatched up the hem of her skirts and took off at a dead run.

She’d almost reached the top of the main staircase when Diana emerged from the north wing, her usually impeccably styled hair dressed on only one side. “What on earth is that dreadful cacophony? It sounds as if someone was torturing a cat!”

Instead of answering, Laura flew past her and down the stairs. She didn’t wait for the startled footman to sweep open the front door but wrenched the knob from his grasp and flung it open herself.

“Laura!”

While Addison struggled to restrain the lunging mastiffs, his face going purple from the effort, a golden-haired moppet launched herself into Laura’s arms. The gingham-draped basket hooked over her arm might have looked totally innocent were it not for the number of colorful, swishing tails hanging over the sides and the frenzied reaction of the dogs.

“Lottie! Oh, Lottie, is it really you?” While Addison handed the dogs off to two burly footmen, Laura buried her face in her sister’s curls, breathing deeply of their baby-fresh scent.

“Of course it’s her,” said someone just behind Lottie. “Do you know anyone else who would make such a god-awful racket just because one of those nice doggies mistook her basket of kittens for a picnic lunch?”

Laura lifted her head to discover her brother lounging against the door of the handsome carriage parked in front of the hall, his cravat tied in a flawless knot. “Why, George Fairleigh,” she exclaimed, “I do believe you’ve grown an inch just since I last saw you!”

“Half an inch,” he admitted. Although he squirmed and rolled his eyes, he still allowed her to throw her arms around him and give him a hearty kiss. “Mind the whiskers,” he warned her. “I may have only two, but they’re quite bristly.”

“If you ask me, which no one ever does,” someone growled, “I still think we should hie our arses back to Arden. Your sister is a lady now—far too fine for the likes of us.”

Laura whirled around to find Dower standing behind her, his brow furrowed in a mock scowl. “Come here, you crusty old curmudgeon,” she said, “and give this fine lady a kiss.” While he pecked her on the cheek, she squeezed his gnarled hands, pleased to see that his bruises had nearly faded.

Cookie was just being handed down from the carriage by none other than the marquess of Gillingham himself. The ostrich plumes adorning her new bonnet waved majestically in the breeze. As Laura buried her face in Cookie’s ample shoulder, her throat closed,
squeezing off any words of welcome she might have offered.

“There now, lamb,” Cookie crooned, stroking her hair. “Cookie’s here now. Everything’ll be all right.”

Even though Laura knew they weren’t true, Cookie’s words still gave her the courage to swallow the lump in her throat. She surveyed the circle of their beaming faces. “I don’t understand. Why aren’t you all in Arden? What are you doing here in London?”

Cookie simpered up at the marquess. “Why, your husband sent this handsome young gent here to fetch us, he did.”

Thane brought her hand to his lips. “It was my pleasure. It’s not every day I get to travel with a woman who can wring a chicken’s neck with her bare hands.”

Cookie tittered and gave his cheek a pinch. “If I was a few years younger, you’d find out that’s not all I can do with them.”

Dower rolled his eyes. “Don’t mind ’er. She’s a shameless flirt.”

“So is he,” Diana murmured, earning a loaded look from Thane.

Laura was still reeling with shock. “Sterling sent for you? But why on earth didn’t he tell me?”

“Because he wanted it to be a surprise.” As her husband’s rich voice poured over her, Laura turned to find him leaning against one of the portico columns. “And judging from your expression, I’d say he was successful.”

It was all Laura could do to keep from flinging herself into
his
arms. But they remained folded over his chest, a formidable barrier to anything but the most reserved expressions of gratitude.

“Thank you, Your Grace,” she said softly. “There are really no words to express my appreciation for your kindness.”

There might be no words. But there were feather-soft caresses and deep, soul-stirring kisses. And it was those she promised him with her ardent gaze.