A Taste of Desire (38 page)

“The who?”

“Lord Clayborough. ‘E is ‘ere. Out there.” Her hand gestured wildly at the window.

“But—” Amelia broke off. Lord Clayborough was at Stoneridge Hall? Good Lord, why? Then she recalled one of the last things she said to him when she was in town.
Next time don’t require a written invitation. You know where I am.
Well, this was a fine time for him to start listening to her.

Lord, that time felt like eons ago, the events happening to a different woman at another time in her unhappy life. She wasn’t that woman any longer, and she hadn’t wanted to marry the baron for some time now. Blast, she should have written him the moment she’d realized. Now he was here—at Thomas’s home. A wave of terror swept over her. Good
Lord, if Thomas were to discover … With ruthless calculation, she squashed further such thoughts. She had to think. She needed to find a way out of this miserable situation.

“And you saw him where?”

“I-I, um, well, Johns was showing me the grounds before it got too dark, and ‘e saw us near the groundskeeper’s house. ‘E’s zare now.” A blush painted Hélène’s face red as she lowered her gaze.

Another time Amelia would have found her maid’s discomfiture at having to explain her tryst with one of the footmen amusing, but now wasn’t that time.

Think, Amelia, think.
Dare she risk meeting with him now? Or worse yet, dare she not? She thought of Thomas and knew her future happiness hinged on what she did now.

Everyone had turned in for the evening, and ten or fifteen minutes was all the time she needed to send Lord Clayborough on his way. No doubt, he would be disappointed, but it was not as though they were a love match.

“I’ll need my cloak.” The decision made, Amelia wanted nothing more than an expeditious ending to the entire affair with Lord Clayborough.

Thomas couldn’t sleep, which came as no great surprise to him. After the kiss in the library, it was a small miracle he could walk upright. He’d existed in a state of semi-arousal for the remainder of the evening.

Supper had been an exercise in self-control. Food was necessary and food could be pleasurable, but never had he imagined it could be sensual as well. But then he’d never watched Amelia joyously consume a dish while imagining what it would be like to have her lips wrapped around him. The sight of her savoring the chocolate-dipped strawberry had made him harder than a poker iron. A veritable feast for the palate indeed.

They’d parted company at her bedchamber door, his
control too tenuous for even a chaste kiss on the cheek. To touch her would have been the height of foolishness, given his noble intention not to forsake his mother and sisters and screw her blind.

An hour later, however, as he lay in his bed nursing an unflagging erection, his bed linens in disarray, he was having second, third, and fourth thoughts about the hindrance that was his moral code, which was keeping him from her bed. After all, he was going to marry her. Theirs wasn’t some torrid, illicit love affair. And, of course, they would be discreet. His mother and sisters would never know, for they occupied bedchambers in a different wing.

Decision reached and conscience sufficiently appeased, Thomas bolted from his bed. He snatched up his dressing robe from the footboard and exited the room.

Ten minutes later, Thomas paused at the library window to adjust his bearings. The anticipation that had coiled his insides to knots, now unfurled like tentacles of concern. Where was she? He’d gone to her room and found it empty. He’d then searched the study and library, morning and dining rooms, his worry increasing by the half minute. Even the billiards room—a space she’d rarely ever ventured into—received a thorough inspection. But again, that effort too proved fruitless.

He’d returned to the library on the off chance he’d crossed paths with her somewhere. She loved reading in the window seat overlooking the back. As he stared out that same window, his mind racing, his thoughts occupied, a movement outside caught his peripheral vision. A moment later, a figure emerged from a copse of dogwood to the left of the groundskeeper’s lodgings.

From the light of the full moon Thomas could make out the form.
Amelia.
Air rushed from his lungs in relief. He’d recognize her dressed in burlap from a mile away. Since the groundskeeper’s house was set back not far from the main
house, his current position gave him an eagle’s view of the area in play.

As quickly as relief had soothed his mounting concern, another figure—this one definitely male—joined her. The man’s head was bent down close to hers, their conversation intimate. These certainly weren’t two people exchanging polite pleasantries.

Thomas saw the kiss occur as if wrapped in a dream. None of it seemed real. The man moved in closer until his lips touched hers. One, two seconds passed before she jerked her head back, glanced hurriedly around, and then grabbed him by the sleeve and pulled him back behind the shelter of the dogwood.

“Sir.”

Thomas turned with a start at his butler’s voice, observing him through a mist of red-hot anger and the green tint of jealousy. Alfred stood tall and straight at the library threshold, his expression graver than usual.

“A problem, Alfred?” Thomas was frankly surprised by his calm tone when a voice inside him was raging out of control.

“Sir, one of the servants has discovered an empty carriage on the property. It is behind the trees near the pond. How would you like me to proceed? Should I alert the constable?”

Thomas processed the butler’s words like a drowning man taking in mouthfuls of water, flailing about only now realizing he didn’t know how to swim. But while his eyes might deny the scene he’d just witnessed, his mind couldn’t deny the facts pointing to Amelia’s obvious betrayal. The only question now was, who was he this time?
Treacherous, lying, witch.

“The horses?”

“Yes, still there, sir, both tied to a tree.”

Thomas nodded slowly. “I will deal with it.”

His normally stoic butler appraised him with raised
brows and wide eyes. His look of bafflement was gone a moment later. “As you wish, sir.” Alfred pivoted on his heel to go, then paused and turned back to him. “Sir, would you like the lamps lit?”

Both figuratively and literally, Thomas stood shrouded in darkness. He’d been too impatient to light the lamps when he’d thrown open the doors to find the room empty and silent.

“No, I’m on my way out,” he said but didn’t move except to stare out the window again.

Alfred exited as quietly as he’d appeared. She was planning to leave him. Tonight. There could be no other explanation for the scene he’d just witnessed, no other explanation for the presence of the coach on his property.

While the future he’d envisaged with Amelia crashed down around him in fitting apocalyptic fashion given their introduction the prior year, she emerged from behind the bush and began hurrying up the path leading to the servants’ door at the back.

Thomas turned and strode from the room, intent on being there to greet her.

The doorknob gave way beneath Amelia’s grasp as the door opened with an abruptness that left her struggling to retain her balance. Her gloved hands found the frame of the door.

Her gaze flew to the opening. Thomas stood framed in the doorway, his eyes a Siberian winter and granite hard.

Amelia gasped. “Thomas.” His name was all she could manage with her throat constricted and her mouth suddenly dry.

“Rather late to be out in the cold.” His tone held no particular inflection, but his eyes could cut glass.

Amelia shivered, from both an icy gust of wind and his steady, deliberate regard. He, on the other hand, appeared impervious to the outside elements, his stance wide-legged and his hands at his side.

“Who is it this time? Someone new or are you reverting back to your old favorites, Cromwell or Clayborough?” He spoke as if they were exchanging pedestrian pleasantries.

Amelia opened her mouth, but nothing resembling speech emerged. The air prickled the flesh beneath her coat. Nervously, she stepped forward, half expecting him to bar her, but he moved aside to permit her entrance. Once in the drafty, dimly lit alcove, she pulled the door closed behind her.

“Who was it?” he asked again softer.

“I—it’s not what you—”

“I saw you, so please don’t insult my intelligence.” A faint growl now threaded the accusation in his tone. “Or if you’d prefer, I can have one of my men stop him before he makes it off the premises. I believe trespassing is a crime.”

Tell him the truth,
a strident voice inside her commanded.
Please understand. Please understand.
“It was Lord Clayborough.” She gulped. “But I sent him away,” she hastened to add. “He still believed that we—well, that we would be married.”

At the baron’s name, Thomas remained motionless, his expression impenetrable. “And why would he believe such a thing?”

Because I was too stupid and too giddy in love with you to give him a second thought, much less write and inform him of my change of feelings. “We haven’t corresponded since Lady Forsham’s ball. He assumed nothing had changed.”

“So you’re telling me he snuck onto my grounds against your wishes and without an invitation?”

Tell him the truth,
the voice continued to chant. Like an idiot, she blindly, desperately followed its directive. “Not precisely. What I—”

“Did you or did you not give him leave to trespass on these premises?”

One tiny little lie would settle the issue. But the last thing she wanted was to lie to him. “I may have done so, but not in the manner as it appears. I—”

Again, he didn’t give her an opportunity to finish, a chance to mount her defense. “I’ll expect you to be packed and gone by tomorrow.”

It took a moment for Amelia to comprehend what he had said, what she had heard, before a crippling pain seared her heart, nearly sending her to her knees. “Thomas, please allow me to explain,” she implored. Reaching out, she touched the sleeve of his dressing robe.

He jerked his arm from her as if he could scarcely bear her touch. “Tomorrow.”

The single word sentenced her to a bleak and empty future. A life without him.

Her gaze slid helplessly over him, taking in his strong, tall frame, tousled golden hair, and shadowed jaw. Silently, she cursed Lord Clayborough for his less-than-impeccable timing, Thomas for his hard-nosed stubbornness, but mostly herself for thinking she could deal with the issue without involving Thomas.

“I don’t love him. I never did. Since the ball, I knew I could not marry him. I want to be with you. Please don’t make me leave,” she said, sounding pitiable and dejected. What she yearned to say was,
I love you,
but the words were still too foreign to her tongue.

He didn’t respond immediately. Instead, he perused her from her boot-shod feet up to her wind-rumpled coiffure. “You let him kiss you.” His words were a searing accusation, brimming with checked vehemence.

“He did so against my wishes.” And no one had been more surprised at his impassioned gesture than her. She’d put a halt to the kiss as soon as she’d gathered her scattered wits.

“Tomorrow I want you gone.” His tone was unyielding.

“Thomas, you can’t mean to—”

“Very well, then stay.” Without further ado, he turned and walked away.

It was only as he rounded the corner to the main corridor that Amelia was wrenched from her state of dazed confusion. Had he in fact acquiesced?

Instinctively, she made a move to follow him but halted after the first step. She watched him disappear from sight. Tonight nothing she said could penetrate his anger. Even a verbal declaration of her love would be ill received.

Clutching her coat around her shivering form, she made her way up the servants’ staircase directly ahead and
finished the circuitous route to her bedchamber without hearing or seeing a soul.

Thomas would be of a calmer mindset tomorrow. And if not by tomorrow, the day after. Certainly by then he’d be willing to listen to her. It was that fervent prayer that finally lulled her into a fitful sleep.

Amelia found only the viscountess in the breakfast room the following morning. She sat at the head of the table, sipping from a porcelain cup. At her entrance, Lady Armstrong lowered the cup and set it on the table.

“Good morning, Lady Armstrong.” Amelia greeted her politely. Too politely given their past closeness.

The viscountess watched her intently, a faint line marring her forehead. “Thomas has returned to London.”

Amelia shuddered to a stop while everything shattered about her like glass hitting a marble floor. Her eyes began to burn and breathing became a chore.

“He’s gone?” she choked, sounding like a half-wit lost in the maze of the Royal Gardens.

Lady Armstrong rose quickly from her chair and came to her side, her expression a mixture of pity and concern. “Did something occur between the two of you last evening?”

Amelia was too stupefied to respond. She had anticipated many things from him—silence, coldness, anger, and perhaps even scorn—but not this. Never this.

Because she had refused to leave, he had. Just like that. Without a hint of forewarning. She had convinced herself that his,
Very well, then stay,
had meant he would eventually give her a chance to explain. But now he was gone. He had finished with her not long after she’d discovered she couldn’t imagine her life without him. The irony made her stomach roil.

“I no longer have an appetite. If you’ll excuse me, Lady
Armstrong, I think I’ll return to my chamber,” Amelia whispered hoarsely.

The viscountess placed a restraining hand on her arm. “My dear, are you sure you don’t want to tell me—”

Amelia pulled her arm away and shook her head vigorously and then violently. “No, no, I just need to lie down. If you’ll excuse me.” She then hurried from the room and back up to her bedchamber where she could mourn her loss, dry-eyed and in private.

Three days after Thomas left, and on the third day of Amelia’s self-imposed imprisonment in her bedchamber, the viscountess personally informed her she had a caller awaiting her in the drawing room. She revealed nothing of the man’s identity, telling Amelia the gentleman in question wanted it so.