Beguiling the Beauty (16 page)

Venetia exhaled.

“But we are among friends here, aren’t we?” said the girl conspiratorially. “What say you, sir, that you tell us who the lady is. And my friends and I,
we
will find out
exactly how culpable—or not, as it may be—the lady was in her husband’s early passing.”

“Gloria!” protested her grandmother. “Your Grace, allow me to apologize for the child’s impudence.”

Christian inclined his head, accepting the apology. Now he turned his gaze on Miss Vanderwoude. Her cheeky grin faded. She began to look left and right, as if hoping someone might shield her from his attention. When no one said or did anything, she tried to meet his eye, with a sheepish smile that died awkwardly.

The nearby diners held their collective breath, waiting. They all believed he would mete out some terrible denunciation. But what if he did not find the idea lacking in merit, Venetia thought wildly. What if he only objected to the public nature of Miss Vanderwoude’s overture?

“No,” he said. “That is not a good idea.”

Venetia’s heart managed a weak beat. The occupants of the table exhaled at the propriety and restraint of his rebuke. Miss Vanderwoude’s lips quivered before she smiled tentatively. “I do believe you are right, sir.”

Indicating that nothing more was to be said on the subject, he turned toward Venetia, “You don’t seem to have touched your prawns, baroness.”

It was a little joke meant for her, as she never ate anything while she had on her veil. “I shall presently remedy this oversight,” she said, through numb lips.

Mrs. Vanderwoude wanted his opinion on something. Venetia leaned in Mr. Cameron’s direction.

“Miss Vanderwoude, is she headed to London?”

“No, to the Continent, like myself. We disembark at Hamburg, head for Paris, and from there, for points east and south.”

“And is she in any way serious about pursuing the identity of the lady she mentioned?”

Mr. Cameron laughed softly. “I’d be surprised if by tomorrow morning she even remembers she’d ever had the idea. She is as impulsive and forgetful as a grasshopper, that one.”

All the same, Venetia’s evening was ruined. The incursion of reality had been too strong. If Miss Vanderwoude, who had never attended the lecture, now knew of the scandalous story the duke had related, there might be others who would hear of it and would not need a detective to realize of whom he’d been speaking.

On the other hand, what if he were to learn that Venetia—not the baroness, but Mrs. Easterbrook—had not only been in America, but had been in Cambridge, Massachusetts, at the exact same time as his Harvard lecture?

One could only juggle sticks of dynamite for so long before they exploded one by one.

I
’m sorry, darling,” said Christian, as soon as he and the baroness were inside his rooms.

She glanced back at him, the paillettes on her veil catching light like so many tiny mirrors. But the sparkle had gone from her voice. “Why do you apologize to me?”

“I have upset you.”

He’d upset himself—Miss Vanderwoude’s impertinence had been a grave reminder that his mistake had compounded far beyond its original dimensions. But the baroness’s distress was, if possible, more acute than his own. Afterward, though she’d gamely kept up a constant stream of friendly banter with Mr. Cameron, he’d barely tasted anything, knowing he’d sunken far in her esteem.

She sat down on the chaise, the set of her shoulders both tense and weary. And something in the way her fingers clung to one another spoke more than just disappointment: She was afraid.

“Please say something.”

She tilted her head back, as if looking heavenward for help. “Miss Vanderwoude was willing to devote her own time and funds to muck about the private affairs of someone she’d never met and only heard of secondhand. It astounds me what you must have said to arouse such unseemly interest.”

Her dispirited words were nails pounded into his heart. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have.”

“Indeed you shouldn’t. Your comments caused someone to be spoken of as undiluted evil.”

He sat down next to her and took her hand in his. “I did not do it out of malice, if that is what concerns you. I relayed my anecdote less as an objective lesson for my audience than as a reminder to myself.”

“I don’t understand.”

He would have to explain, to expose himself as he never had. But he cared little for his mortification. The only thing that mattered was that she must not turn away from him.

“The woman I used as an example at Harvard—she was my elsewhere.”

She yanked her hand from his. He gripped her arm before she could leap away. “Please, listen.”

“My God,” she said, looking everywhere but at him. “My God.”

If he could only pull out his heart to show her. But he had only words, slow, laborious, useless words. “The lady in question is bewitchingly beautiful. And for a decade, I was fixated by her beauty. I wrote an entire article on the evolutionary
significance of beauty as a rebuke to myself, that I, who understood the concepts so well, nevertheless could not escape the magnetic pull of one particular woman’s beauty.”

Her veil rippled with her agitated breathing. “And that was not enough, the article? You had to speak of it in public?”

“My obsession was mindless. I had to stay away from places she frequented. If I saw her, it wouldn’t have mattered whether she hastened her husband’s journey to the grave. I’d have willingly married her just to possess her.”

In her lap, her hands shook visibly. He, too, shook—but inside, where fear and regret threatened to drown the hopes that had been leaping and frolicking like pods of dolphins alongside the
Rhodesia
.

“I’ve long been ashamed of this fixation, but it clung to me like a leech. And this time, I wouldn’t be able to stay away from her—she is a fixture at the London Season. I was troubled that I might give in and approach her, propriety and pride notwithstanding.” The dream, damn the dream. “Believe me, I’d never intended such a catastrophic lapse of judgment.”

She yanked free her arm, rose, and walked away.

V
enetia felt blown to pieces, all the dynamite sticks she’d been juggling having detonated at once.

She hadn’t been a random example, something casually plucked out of all his accumulated experiences to illustrate a passing point. Rather, she had been the bane of his existence.

She could not grasp it. The reach of her mind had been diminished by her shock. She could only gape at the idea, as if it were a tentacled sea monster come to sink the
Rhodesia
.

He said he’d been nineteen. She would have also been nineteen—very much still married, but with her erstwhile romantic illusions already dashed upon the hard rock of Tony’s indestructible self-love.

One of the Harrow players couldn’t stop staring at you. If someone had handed him a fork he’d have devoured you in one sitting.

He’d been that Harrow player. She’d been his despised obsession. And she was also his salvation—from
herself
.

Panic swept in like a cyclone.

Until now, it was possible to imagine her ruse being forgiven. Not anymore, not after he had exposed his Achilles’ heel to the last person he’d willingly give that knowledge.

For that, he would not forgive her. Ever.

He rose to his feet. “Please say something.”

But she couldn’t speak. All she understood was a rising desperation: Their affair must end now, before things could get any worse.

S
he turned her back to him. Her hands, braced apart, gripped the edge of the writing desk, as if she couldn’t quite support her own weight. He couldn’t breathe—to have caused pain to the woman who’d only ever brought him warmth and joy.

He turned off the lamp, approached her, and removed her veil.

She inhaled unsteadily. He set his hands on either side of hers and kissed her hair, holding the pristine, sweet scent of her deep in his lungs.

“I love you.” The words had arrived on their own, like butterflies emerging from cocoons when their time had
come. He, too, felt transformed, from a boy who mistook compulsion for love to a man who at last understood his own heart.

She shuddered.

“You are the one I’ve been waiting for all my life.”

She spun around and covered his mouth with her hand.

He moved her hand aside. “From the beginning—do you not remember the lift? You overtook my entire—”

She kissed him, a rampage of lips and tongue. Relief flooded him—she would still have him. And such ardor, as if she could not bear the least distance between them. Her fever burned in him. He lifted her bottom onto the desk and pushed up her skirts. She tugged impatiently at her drawers. He would have gone down on his knees to worship her, but she refused to let their lips part.

Instead, she unfastened his trousers and, without further preliminaries, took him inside her. He was unspeakably aroused—the feel of her, the rain-clean taste of her, the urgency of her. She panted and trembled with her need, ravishing him, urging him to ravish her in return.

No more words were needed. She was the only thing that mattered.
They
were the only thing that mattered. The avalanche of pleasure to come would meld them into one seamless union.

There were no secrets left.

Nothing separated them now.

C
hristian awakened to an eerie stillness, as if the
Rhodesia
’s heart had stopped beating. It took him a disoriented second to realize that the engines had stopped humming.

The liner had dropped anchor in Queenstown.

Instinctively he reached for her, but she was not in his bed, to which they’d repaired for more lovemaking, forging ever greater pleasure and closeness for the better part of the night. He called to her, thinking perhaps she was in the parlor or the water closet. Silence answered him.

Alarm prickled his spine—she’d never left without a word. He grabbed his pocket watch from the nightstand. Five minutes to nine—quite late for him. Maybe she had not wished to disturb his slumber. He pulled on some clothes, dashed off a note explaining his possible late arrival for their walk, and rang for the suite steward to take it to her.

The suite steward returned as he was applying shaving soap to his face. “Sir, the baroness’s room steward told me that she has disembarked.”

Christian turned around. “For a tour?”

Ocean liners replenished their supplies at Queenstown. It was not uncommon for passengers to use the time for an excursion into the Irish countryside.

“No, sir. She asked for her luggage to be sent ashore.”

She was leaving. And last night, which he’d believed to herald a new era for them, had been but a long, wordless good-bye for her. She did not believe in his love. She did not trust that he’d left his former obsession behind. And she could not imagine any likely future for them.

All the possibilities that had come to life with her presence began to shatter, and his heart with them.

“She might still be in the disembarkation queue, sir,” said the steward. “Shall I go down for a look?”

The disembarkation queue. Of course, the
Rhodesia
had not docked. She was somewhere in the harbor.
Passengers and their luggage must wait to be ferried in tenders.

Christian washed the soap from his face, threw on a day coat, grabbed his hat, and rushed down to the main deck. The sky was gray. The Atlantic was gray. Even Ireland, otherwise green and beautiful, was an unremitting spread of dreariness.

He pushed through the crowd, frantically searching for her familiar silhouette. The entire population of the ship seemed to have congregated near the tenders. Old ladies tottered about in pairs. Children were held aloft to see over the rails. Young Americans chattered about Buckingham Palace and Shakespeare’s cottage, while waving at a tender rowing toward the
Rhodesia
.

At last he spotted her standing at the rail. Relief swallowed him whole. As if sensing his urgency, the crowd parted, and those near her scooted away to make room for him. But she did not acknowledge his presence as he came to stand beside her. Her face remained bent to the waves that lapped at the riveted steel plates of the ship’s hull.

“Why? Why are you leaving?”

“I’ve reached my destination.”

“Is it because you think I still love Mrs. Elsewhere?”

“It is not that.”

“Look at me when you say that.”

Her face turned toward him. Her hand tightened on the railing, as if she were surprised by his appearance. He’d been perspiring earlier. But standing on the open deck without his overcoat—the cold was sudden and intense.

“It is not that,” she repeated. “You’ve always said that I could leave anytime. I am leaving now. I don’t need another reason.”