A Most Sinful Proposal (5 page)

“That find inspired my father to begin his search for the rose, a search I have since carried on. When
my father died I made a promise that I would do everything in my power to find it.”

The spark of interest was back in Marissa’s face.

“Kent is on a mission to restore the Crusader’s Rose to its rightful place at Abbey Thorne Manor,” Jasper said.

Marissa blinked. “You sound like my father when he’s on the hunt for some rare specimen,” she said with a grimace. “I’m afraid botanical missions are of no interest to me.”

And yet even as she spoke she was leaning forward to inspect the list of names, a crease between her brows.

“What do you intend to do now that you have found the names? Visit each house and search their gardens?”

“That is my plan, yes,” he said stiffly.

“Then I’m sorry to lack enthusiasm for your plan, Lord Kent, but what if the house is gone, fallen down, pulled down? What if the family moved far away and took the rose with them? What if—”

He interrupted her impatiently. “My family still lives in the same place, if not quite in the same house, and if my ancestor hadn’t destroyed the rose in a fit of pique, it would still be here. You forget, these were not men who moved in the highest circles in the land. They did not play with kings and queens; they were not powerful except in their own little patch of country. There was no reason to take their land or homes from them for being on the wrong side in a political struggle. After the Crusades they stayed put and quietly farmed their land and raised their children. There is every possibility that the rose is
still to be found, flowering away unnoticed, in some quiet corner of the county.”

Jasper gave a grunt of agreement and Marissa turned back to the list, as if she might find more arguments in the arrangement of the letters.

Despite feeling a degree of irritation with her, Valentine found himself examining the delicate nape of her neck, noting the way wisps of her dark hair curled against her pale skin. There was the glint of ebony combs amongst the thick tresses, and his fingers twitched as he imagined removing those combs and allowing the heavy mass to fall into his hands. Burying his face in her hair, in her scent.

He almost groaned aloud.

“So if the rose still exists you will find it,” she was saying, unaware of his struggle. “I wish you luck, Lord Kent. I’m sure the Crusader’s Rose will make a very nice addition to your garden.”

“You think it a waste of time,” he said coolly. “Far better if I were spending my time at race tracks and in card hells, like George. Now there’s an occupation for a gentleman.”

Her cheeks flushed and her eyes sparkled. God, she was beautiful. Far too beautiful for his brother…

Marissa fought her anger and won. She gave a little shrug. “I have been on more expeditions than you can imagine. I’ve stood in the burning sun and the driving rain. I know how it works. And I have no desire to take part in your expedition, Lord Kent!”

“Well, that is unfortunate,” Valentine drawled, “because as my houseguest I intend taking you on a little expedition tomorrow, Miss Rotherhild. I promise there will be no burning sun or driving rain, just
a civilized jaunt to a pretty nearby village and a brief ramble through a garden. My expeditions are nothing like Professor Rotherhild’s. You may even enjoy this one so much you will want to go on another.”

“What if I don’t want to go?” She wasn’t smiling.

“You can wait here for George if you wish. I’m sure he will appreciate your concern and patience in sitting quietly at the window, watching for his return. Would you like me to burn a candle in the window to show him the way home? When he’s tired of doing whatever he’s doing and remembers he has guests, that is.”

The emotions played over her face and he read them accurately. She didn’t want to be seen as patiently awaiting George’s return, she was too proud for that, and despite loyally sticking up for him she must also be angry with him for forgetting her. It was altogether too easy for Valentine to persuade her to his will.

“Oh, very well,” she said crossly. “I will come with you on your expedition. But I warn you, if it so much as drizzles I demand to be taken home. I loathe being rained upon.”

Jasper looked at Valentine, his eyes dark with laughter. “What say you to that, Kent?”

“Very well, Miss Rotherhild, I accept your conditions. And I think you are being very wise in not waiting for George’s return.”

“George would be here if he could.” She shot him a combative look. “Something must have prevented him.”

Valentine heaved a sigh. “I swear to you I don’t know where my brother is, nor have I locked him up
in the dungeons. I wish you would understand that George can look after himself very well. He always has.”

She said nothing.

“I’m sure Miss Rotherhild will be a useful addition to our party,” Jasper began mildly. “Although there is the possibility of Von Hautt…”

“Von Hautt? You mentioned that name before. You accused me of being his spy. Who is Von Hautt?” Marissa demanded, clearly requiring an answer.

“A fellow searcher for the Crusader’s Rose,” Valentine replied briefly. “He is a hot head. I do not believe him to be dangerous but he can be a nuisance.”

“I am not afraid of danger.” She spoke with scorn, lifting her chin, and once more Valentine found himself completely captivated. This was the woman he wanted at his side as he searched for the rose; it was a pity she claimed not to care for his quest.

But that didn’t mean, given a little time and effort, that he could not change her mind.

“You see, Kent, Miss Rotherhild isn’t afraid of danger,” Jasper said, with a droll look.

“I doubt we will suffer more than a few rose thorns in our fingers,” Valentine replied, forcing his gaze away from Marissa, and beginning to shuffle the papers back into a pile.

He should feel guilty. But it wasn’t as if he was going to steal Marissa from his brother—well, not unless she wanted to be stolen—and besides, George was showing a singular lack of interest in her. She was his houseguest and it was up to him to keep her entertained, that was all.

But he knew he was telling himself lies. When
Marissa smiled at him with her warm, dimpled smile he felt himself go hot all over. She was making him do things, think things, he couldn’t remember doing or thinking in years.

Truly, he was entering dangerous waters.

D
uring dinner, the expedition was discussed again, and when Jasper informed Lady Bethany of their intention of setting off the following morning for the village of Montfitchet, she said that if they were going searching for a rose then she had better come, too, to keep an eye on them all.

Jasper expressed his pleasure at her joining them and raised his glass in a toast. “To the quest!”

“To bringing the Crusader’s Rose home to Abbey Thorne Manor!” Valentine added.

“Where it belongs,” Marissa finished, before she thought to stop herself.

He smiled knowingly at her over his glass and she felt her heart give an odd, uneven thud.

He’d removed his neck cloth again, and the neck of his shirt was open. When he leaned back in his chair she could not help but notice his shoulders and the way his hair curled about the strong column of his neck.

He was very masculine.

He was the sort of man women noticed and watched and dreamed of marrying.

Marissa felt embarrassingly warm and flushed
being in his company, but she refused to accept there was anything out of the ordinary with that. Even the fact she wanted to touch him, and she wanted him to touch her, was surely not so very wicked. Marissa knew about fast women, she and her friends had discussed the subject at length, and decided that as long as one only used one’s feminine attributes on the man one loved and wanted to marry, then it was acceptable to be “fast.” The question was, did her wanting to run her hands over Valentine’s shoulders and back and wind them around his neck fall within those guidelines?

He wasn’t the man she wanted to marry. He wasn’t the man she was in love with.

Like most girls of her station Marissa was a virgin. Although she had had her share of stolen kisses, some more pleasurable than others, she’d never experienced the dark pleasures of the flesh. What happened in the marriage bed was vague, and until she met George she’d not considered it overmuch, but she was sure he would make her laugh and they would muddle through somehow.

Now she found herself thinking of Valentine instead of George and she didn’t feel like laughing one little bit.

She was shocked by her own thoughts, but she was also intrigued and unsettled.

They’d only just met!

She hadn’t wanted to be part of his search for the Crusader’s Rose, but when Valentine spoke of it the passion sparked like fire in his blue eyes. In response, something flared inside her, too. He made this adventure exciting—Valentine Kent was exciting.

How could she explain that to the Husband Hunters Club?

“Oh, by the way, I plan to marry George, but in the meanwhile I thought I might become infatuated with his brother…”

Her friends would think her flighty, but Marissa knew she’d never been that sort of girl. She was serious and cautious, more inclined to intellectual pursuits than balls and parties. For some reason Valentine Kent was having an odd and uncharacteristic effect on her.

Not that it would last. He was everything she had sworn to reject. A botanist with a quest, a man who found expeditions to find plants the highlight of his life, a man who poured over musty old books and dried specimens and whose conversation consisted of names in Latin. If she married such a man it would be as if she never left home.

George was her choice; George would give her a life completely different from the one she had. So what if he enjoyed a game of cards or a horse race? At least he would never force her to stand in a downpour armed with nothing more than a notebook and pencil while he crouched over plants exclaiming, “Magnificent. Look at this, Marissa. Have you ever seen anything more beautiful?”

Marissa gave a little shudder at the thought. The next time she turned her eyes to Valentine on the other side of the table, she found she could look at him with almost complete indifference.

After dinner, Jasper and Lady Bethany went out for a stroll in the garden before retiring. As she rose
from her chair, Marissa’s grandmother raised her thin eyebrows and gave her granddaughter a questioning look.

Marissa didn’t need her to say what was on her mind. She was wondering why Marissa had involved herself in this expedition when she usually went out of her way to avoid such tedious adventures. She would want an explanation.

Restless and unsettled, Marissa rose and went to the window, gazing out over the moat and the park beyond. There was a copse of trees, dark against the fading twilight. They looked a little sinister, especially when a cloud of rooks flew up from the boughs and began a noisy protest.

“Jasper and your grandmother seem to be getting along very well,” Valentine said from the room behind her.

“Yes.”

“Is your grandfather alive?”

“No.” She cleared her throat. “He died a long time ago, before I was born. My grandmother has been a widow longer than she was ever a wife.”

“And she never remarried?”

“No, the single life suits her. She comes from a generation when marriage had little to do with love.”

“Does it ever?” he asked in a quiet voice.

“I suppose not. It’s just that…” Marissa found her tongue growing tangled, “well, my friends would rather not marry at all if they cannot find a man they…they admire enough to…to love.”

“And what about you, Miss Rotherhild?”

He wanted her to bare her heart to him? Marissa
wondered how on earth she had strayed into this topic. But perhaps it was a chance for her to reaffirm the Husband Hunters Club and their aims. She took a breath and turned to face him, her back to the window, her fingers gripping the sill behind her.

“I admire your friends for their idealism,” he spoke first, his gaze on hers steady and unreadable, “but unfortunately the world we inhabit does not value love in the making of a marriage.”

“That may be true of some people, Lord Kent, but not all.”

He raised a cynical eyebrow. “In the world we move in marriages are made through practical considerations—wealth, land, family connections. Love matches are accidental, or else unhappy failures.”

“George says—” She bit her lip.

Valentine raised his other eyebrow. “What words of great wisdom has my dear brother spoken on the matter, Miss Rotherhild? Come, do enlighten me.”

“Only that if you are going to spend most of your life with someone then surely it is better if you are fond of that someone.”

“But then again might it not be better if one did not give one’s heart too deeply to one’s partner? Death is indiscriminate and if one’s partner were to die, the pain would be almost more than one could bear.”

He sounded bleak and suddenly Marissa remembered that Valentine had been married himself. Here she was blathering on about love and marriage and it was obvious he had loved his wife and still suffered deeply from her loss. How could she be so stupid? Nevertheless, as she opened her mouth to apologize,
it occurred to her that his argument was flawed, and really she could not let it pass.

“So you believe one should encase one’s heart in ice and avoid feeling too deeply in case one is hurt?”

“It makes sense.”

“Or bury your emotions by taking on a task so intellectually stimulating that you never miss love at all. Something like a…quest to find the Crusader’s Rose?”

His eyes narrowed, his mouth thinned.

Marissa’s fingers gripped the sill harder, waiting for his anger to wash over her.

Footsteps came hurrying toward the room and Jasper appeared, flushed, his hair standing on end, and then her grandmother arrived behind him, wide-eyed and gasping for breath.

“Kent, you’ll never believe it,” Jasper burst out. “The utter gall of the man. The sheer arrogance—”

“Jasper…”

“It defies belief, Kent. If I could have caught him I swear I would have—”

Valentine poured a glass of brandy from the decanter, handing it to his friend. “Drink this, Jasper, and then tell me, slowly, what on earth you’re talking about.”

Lady Bethany had tottered to a chair and collapsed into it. “How very…exciting,” she managed. “I don’t think I’ve attempted to run like that since the Earl of Southmoor cornered me in an arbor at Vauxhall Gardens.”

Thankfully, Jasper found his voice and interrupted her wicked reminiscences.

“He was standing outside in the park, Kent. Staring in through the window at you and Miss Rotherhild. I tell you it was him. I’d recognize him anywhere.”

“Who, Jasper? Who?” Valentine cried in frustration.

“Von Hautt.”

Valentine froze, and then strode across to the window, reaching it just as Marissa turned to also gaze out into the darkness. The soft summer breeze stirred against her cheek, bringing with it the scent of mown grass and the hum of crickets. His shoulder brushed hers and she felt his indrawn breath, and when he turned his head to meet her eyes she could see his own were full of passion and excitement.

“Are you sure you want to join me on tomorrow’s quest, Marissa?” he said softly, for her alone. “I will think no less of you if you wish to bow out.”

“But you told me Baron Von Hautt was not dangerous,” she accused.

“I lied.”

Her eyes narrowed at his unrepentant smile. “So Baron Von Hautt
is
dangerous?”

“Yes, I believe he is. I believe he will do anything in his power to beat me to the finish line.”

He expected her to turn tail and run. Marissa had no intention of being seen as a coward, and besides, she wasn’t afraid of Von Hautt. His possible presence made tomorrow’s expedition far more exciting than any botanical adventure she’d been on with her parents. “I will not be bowing out, Valentine.”

Some emotion flared in his gaze at the sound of his name on her lips, but before she could decide
what it was he was turning away, moving back into the room.

“Which way did he go, Jasper?”

“Into the trees. He probably had a horse tethered there.” Jasper was pouring himself another glass of brandy, and Lady Bethany gestured for him to pour one for her, too.

“Well, at least now we are prepared for him,” Valentine said grimly.

“As prepared as we can be,” Jasper added. “The damnable thing of it is I was just this moment telling Lady B about the theft you suspected Von Hautt of committing, and then there he stood.”

“Theft?” Marissa looked from one to the other.

“Von Hautt has been a thorn in my side for many years,” Valentine admitted, grim-faced. “Do you remember the manuscript I told you about, the one discovered in the antiquarian bookshop? It was sold to a private collector and kept in his house under lock and key, but last year it was inexplicably stolen. It just so happened that Von Hautt had been a houseguest a week before. He’d shown great interest in the manuscript while he was there, and seemed to think he could restore the illegible name with some chemicals he’d brought with him. Understandably, the owner refused to allow him to tamper with the document.”

“So he took it anyway,” Marissa murmured.

“Oh, he denied the theft, and it couldn’t be proved, but only a fool would believe him innocent. There have been times when I thought I had a clue to the rose and set off to follow it, only to find Von Hautt had arrived before me. It would not surprise me
to hear he’d paid someone to spy at Abbey Thorne Manor. That would explain how he always manages to be one step ahead of me.”

Lady Bethany finished her brandy and heaved herself out of her chair. “I believe I will retire. Marissa?”

With one final glance at Valentine, Marissa came to her side, tucking her grandmother’s arm into her own. They murmured their goodnights and left the room.

“Good Gad, I don’t know if I can stomach too much more excitement,” Lady Bethany murmured, as they climbed the stairs. “One moment we were enjoying a quiet moment in the garden and the next Jasper took off like a hound after a hare. I swear for a man his age he is very fit.”

Marissa eyed her grandmother sideways. “I hope you are not planning to seduce Lord Jasper, Grandmamma. It could make things very awkward.”

“Why? Because you have your sights set on George Kent?” Lady Bethany retorted. Her mouth twitched into a wicked smile. “Or is it Valentine Kent? I’ll grant you he is very manly, but take care, Marissa. He is a man of the world and you are barely more than a schoolroom miss.”

“I thought men of the world liked schoolroom misses,” she said airily.

“In romance novels, perhaps.”

“I am not at all interested in Valentine Kent, Grandmamma, so you needn’t worry. He is George’s brother, that is my sole consideration.”

Lady Bethany paused outside her door and took her granddaughter’s hands in hers. “That reminds
me, my dear. Jasper was speaking of Valentine’s wife. It seems she made him miserable—one of those cold, puritanical women—and he has sworn never to marry again.”

Marissa felt inexplicably low, but told herself it was empathy for Valentine’s misery, as she kissed her grandmother goodnight and retired to her bedchamber. The candlelight flickered over the beams on the ceiling and the draperies around the bed, as she settled back against the pillows.

Why did everything suddenly seem so complicated? Why couldn’t George have been waiting to greet her when she arrived? If he’d been here she wouldn’t have noticed Valentine and she wouldn’t be having these thoughts about him. Intensely physical thoughts.

There was a definite spark between them. Perhaps their expedition tomorrow would give her a chance to practice her feminine wiles on him. In preparation for her hunting of George, she hurriedly reminded herself. A rehearsal. Because, of course, George was the one she planned to marry.

Marissa closed her eyes, smiling, allowing her imagination free reign. She pictured herself touching George, kissing him, rolling naked with him across a vast bed.

She began to giggle.

That was the trouble with George, it was impossible to imagine herself being serious in his company.

She closed her eyes again and suddenly it was Valentine with her on the vast bed. She was no longer giggling, in fact she felt breathless and excited.

Shaking off the fantasy, she blew out the candle and shimmied under the covers.