Castles Ever After 02 Say Yes to the Marquess (16 page)

Just get it out, man.

“Because he was so deeply in love,” he finished.

The room was quiet.

Until Daphne dropped a two-word pin into the silence: “With Clio?”

“
Yes,
with Clio.”

Rafe rose from his chair again and began to stalk the carpet fringe. He was irritated beyond belief. What was wrong with these people? This shouldn’t be difficult for any of them to believe. Yes, his brother was reserved, but surely
they
all loved Clio. She was entirely lovable.

All
too
lovable.

He might have entered into this falsehood halfheartedly, but he was committed to it now.

Committed with everything he had.

“When we last spoke, Piers reminisced about her come-out ball,” he said. “How she wore a gown of pale blue silk with lace at the edges. Pearls studded in her hair. He recalled how lovely she looked, even though she was nervous. He took note of how she greeted every guest with genuine kindness. And he told me that he knew, right then, there was no lady in the room her equal. That he felt like the luckiest of gentlemen, knowing she was promised to be his.” He swept a glance around the room. “He loved her then. He loves her still.”

Everyone was quiet as he returned to his chair.

“Not bad,” Bruiser muttered.

Cambourne smacked his thigh with his gloved palm. “Well, that’s a comfort. Isn’t it, dumpling?”

“You’re assuming that’s a truth,” Clio said evenly. “We’ve only heard two statements from Lord Rafe. I’m still waiting on the third.”

“The third. Right.” He cleared his throat. “I sleep in a lavender nightshirt. An embroidered one.”

Bruiser sipped his brandy. “How very literal of you.”

Daphne laughed. “Really, it’s no use. None of you know how to play this game at all. Your lavender nightshirt is almost as preposterous as Clio’s brewery. Do let’s play cards after all.”

Well, that was that. He seemed to have convinced her family at least, and Rafe didn’t know how to feel about it. Relieved, triumphant, disgusted with himself . . . His emotions were some combination of all these.

But
his
feelings were irrelevant. There was only one person in the room whose emotions mattered.

And if Rafe hadn’t managed to sway her tonight, there was no hope for him now.

Chapter Sixteen

C
lio waited until midnight.

And then she waited a full hour more.

When she heard the footman pass down the corridor on his final patrol of the evening, she sat up in bed.

It was time.

She wrapped her dressing gown over her nightrail and cinched the sash tight. Then she plucked her chatelaine from the dressing table and ventured out into the corridor.

She went slowly. She had to; she hadn’t dared bring a candle. And she didn’t want to risk waking anyone with her footfalls or rattling keys.

At the end of the hall, she turned and hugged the right side of the corridor, counting the doors until she reached the fourth. After scouting the surface with her fingertips to find the keyhole, she inserted the master key from her chatelaine . . .

Held her breath . . .

And turned it in the lock.

Click.

The door swung inward, soundless on its well-oiled hinges.

She waited in the doorway for a moment, giving her eyes time to adjust. A banked fire glowed in the hearth, coaxing her forward. Clio made her way into the room, then took a stub of beeswax candle from the mantelpiece and crouched to light it with the coals. The single flame painted the room with a weak yellow glow.

She could see the room better now.

She could see
him
better now.

And good heavens. Wasn’t he magnificent.

The bed in this chamber was a large one, but the ranging sprawl of his limbs made it look like a child’s bed. All the coverlets had been cast aside. The pillows, too—save one. He slept on his back, draped by a single linen bedsheet. Beneath it, his body was a landscape of sculpted ridges and shadowed glens. With every breath, his chest rose and fell.

She watched, transfixed, until she realized she was breathing in time with him.

Clio left the candle on the mantelpiece and crept toward the side of his bed. She eased herself onto the edge of the mattress, stretching out her legs so that she lay on her side, propped up on one elbow.

With her free hand, she gingerly plucked the edge of the bedsheet and—after waiting one, two, three breaths to make certain he didn’t wake—began to tease the linen downward. She worked slowly, carefully . . . knowing the answer she sought would lie beneath.

He stirred in his sleep. Eyes still closed, he rolled onto his side, throwing an arm toward her.

His hand landed on her thigh.

Clio sucked in her breath. She held still, squeezing all her muscles tight. Her heart, however, wouldn’t be so easily reined in. It hammered in her chest, so loud she was certain the pounding would wake him.

Oh drat. Oh Lord.

She’d left her room feeling secure in the brilliance of this idea. Suddenly the idea wasn’t just an idea, but a reality—an immense, sleeping, sensual giant of a reality—and she wasn’t secure at all.

His hand was on her
thigh.

And
moving.

Even this afternoon, he hadn’t dared to touch her so boldly. His fingers stretched and flexed. His caresses widened to shameless, possessive circles of her hip.

Was it possible she’d entered his dream now?

If so, she couldn’t help but wonder what they were doing in there.

His fingers flexed, squeezing her backside. “Clio,” he groaned.

Something
good,
it would seem.

With a low moan, he snaked his arm around her waist, and a small contraction of his muscles drew her close. “Clio.”

“Yes, Rafe?”

Green eyes snapped open. “
Clio?
”

In a heartbeat, he was on the far side of the bed—as close as he could get to the edge of the mattress without falling off.

Considering the violence of his reaction, Clio tried not to feel affronted. Surely she would have noticed if her face had broken out in leprous sores since dinnertime.

No, that was the look of a man caught out in his lie. Which meant she had him right where she wanted him.

“What the devil are you doing here?” He clutched the bedsheet, holding it level with his neck.

“Isn’t it obvious?”

“I hope not.”

“I’m here to see the lavender nightshirt.”

Oh, his face. Clio wished she were better at sketching, so she might have preserved that astonished look forever.

“The lavender nightshirt,” she repeated. “The embroidered one you told us about tonight. You had better be wearing it under that bedsheet. Because I know your story about Piers was pure fabrication, from beginning to end.”

“Well, you’re wrong.” He pushed the bedsheet down to his waist. “See? No lavender nightshirt.”

No, no lavender nightshirt.

No nightshirt at all.

He was bared to the hips, every inch of his torso hard and gleaming in the firelight, like a sculpture cast in bronze. She was rocked by the impulse to reach for him, but some ingrained voice of warning held her back—not the voice that warned a girl away from dangerous men but the voice that kept her from reaching for a potato that had fallen in the coals.

He would singe her fingers.

“Then you cheated,” she managed to whisper, dragging her gaze back up to his. “You told more than one lie. You rogue. Men have been called out for less.”

“What is this? We’re dueling now? No one gets called out for parlor games.”

“No. They get called out for trifling with a gentlewoman’s virtue and ruining her chances at happiness. This is my life at stake. And you lied to me.”

The sleep was gone from his expression now. He was awake, and angry. “I said that Piers loves you. Why is that so damned hard to believe?”

“Because
my
lie was so close to the truth. He never even kissed me, Rafe. Not once in eight years of betrothal.”

He shook his head in disbelief.

She folded her hands in her lap. “It’s true. When you kissed me in the tower a few days ago . . . ? That kiss was my first.”

“Your first?” Rafe couldn’t believe it.

He sat up in bed. The linen bedsheet pooled about his waist. “That’s not possible.”

“I assure you, it’s true. It’s beyond humiliating to admit it, but it’s true.”

He stared at her, with her delicate profile and her unbound hair falling down her back in golden waves. She was so lovely, he ached. For the first time, he began to question his brother. Could Piers be one of those men who preferred his own sex?

Surely not. Rafe dismissed the idea out of hand. When they were youths, his brother was forever “borrowing” Rafe’s best French engravings from his bottom drawer, even though he pretended to know nothing about it when confronted. And there’d been stories of the usual debauched adventures in his university days. Not a lot of stories, but a few.

No, Piers liked women.

Which made Clio’s confession all the more baffling to comprehend. How could Piers resist kissing
this
woman?

Rafe had excellent reasons
not
to kiss Clio, and he’d succumbed to temptation—multiple times—despite them.

“I was truly your first?” he asked.

She nodded.

White-hot triumph forked through him like a lightning bolt. Rafe could have run a victory lap around the castle. He hadn’t felt this good since winning his first championship bout. He couldn’t even be angry with his brother now. Knowing that he was Clio’s first kiss, her first touch . . .

It made him want to be her first
everything.

Not just her first, but her last. Her best.

His hands made fists in the bedsheets. “You need to return to your own chamber.”

Instead of leaving, she eased herself farther onto the bed and tucked her crossed legs under her nightrail. Making herself right at home.

To be fair, he supposed she
was
in her own home. Very well. He could be the one to leave. Not just this room, but the castle. If he went to saddle his gelding right now, he could be in Southwark by daybreak.

He nodded at his shirt and trousers, draped over the arm of a chair—just out of reach. “Hand me my clothing, will you?”

She didn’t move, except to toy with a lock of her unbound, golden hair. When she spoke, her tone was husky. “Would you like to hear a bedtime story?”

“Not particularly, no.”

Laying a hand to his chest, she pushed him back against the mattress. “You’re going to hear one anyway.”

Holy God. There was rock-hard, there was hard-as-steel, and then there was the solidity of Rafe’s current erection—which so thoroughly surpassed all his previous experience, he suspected it might be of interest to science.

He considered closing his eyes, sticking his fingers in his ears, and chanting Broughton’s rules at the top of his voice until either she went away or morning dawned. But one look at the stubborn set of her chin, and he knew it was no use. She was determined enough to wait him out.

She was too accomplished at patience, this woman. And that was his idiot brother’s fault.

“Once upon a time,” she began, “I imagined myself to be Sleeping Beauty. Promised in my cradle to marry . . . well, not a prince, but something close. I was surrounded by well-meaning relations, showered with gifts. Wealth, good breeding, education. Even a castle.”

She hugged her knees and stared at the banked fire. “And right around my seventeenth birthday, I went to sleep. There wasn’t any spindle to prick my finger. But I fell asleep just the same, and I stayed that way for eight long years.”

Firelight played over her face, caressing her cheek with more tenderness than a brute like Rafe could ever muster.

“All around me, my friends were marrying, traveling, having children, and making their own homes. Not me. I was still asleep in that tower. Still waiting on my prince to come home and kiss me, so I could wake.

“Then one day . . . I decided to give myself a good pinch and wake up. The prince wasn’t coming for me. And maybe—just maybe—I didn’t need him, anyway. I’d been given so many gifts. An education, a fortune, a castle. Who was to say that simply because I was female, I couldn’t make something of those gifts myself?” She looked at Rafe. “Then came
you.
”

“I’m no kind of prince.”

“No, you’re not. You’re wild and rebellious and rough-mannered. But you kissed me in a tower. You brought me every flower in the hothouse. You gave me an entire roomful of cake. You swept me off my feet.” She rested her chin on her knees and regarded him. “And tonight, you remembered what I wore to my come-out ball when I was seventeen years old. Down to the pearls studded in my hair.”

Rafe’s pulse stuttered to a halt. His mouth dried. “No. That wasn’t me. I told you, that was Piers.”

“You’re such a terrible liar.” Her eyes shot him a lash-fringed accusation. “I thought you didn’t come to my debut. But you
were
there. You must have been.”

“I was there,” he admitted. “But I didn’t stay for long. I left almost as soon as I arrived.”

“Why?”

“Because I couldn’t stand to be there another moment. I’ve told you how it was. I fancied you then, and you know how I always envied Piers. That night was . . . It was torture. I hated what they’d done to you. The whole purpose of the evening was to wrap you up like the world’s shiniest birthday gift and present you to Piers for his approval.” He pushed a hand through his hair. “It made me want to hit things. So I went out and found something to hit.”

“I don’t blame you for leaving.” She touched his shoulder. “I wanted to escape, too.”

Her words set alarms ringing through his brain, but he was lost for a response. Rendered speechless by the sensation of her fingertips caressing his bare skin. He’d wanted her for so damned long. She was so beautiful. So beautiful, and so here. With him.

With
him.

The wrong man. The
worst
man.

“Clio . . .” His voice was strangled.

“Hush.” She rose onto her knees and closed the distance between them. “Just stop fighting and let something wonderful happen.”

And something wonderful did happen.

She tilted her head, leaned forward, and pressed her lips to his.

Sweet heaven.

He’d kissed her several times now, and each kiss had been better than the last. But being kissed
by
Clio? This was new, uncharted territory.

Rafe thought it just might be Paradise.

Her mouth brushed against his, her lips parting wider with each pass. Her tongue teased the corner of his lips, then made a shy sweep between them.

He moaned into her mouth, helpless to resist. Of their own accord, his arms went around her, hauling her close, helping her straddle his thighs.

But her words kept niggling at his brain.

I wanted to escape, too.

With women, Rafe knew he was usually just an escape. When they came to his bed, women were running from something. Expectations, propriety, boredom, an unhappy marriage . . . sometimes all of the above. That was why he’d cut off any liaisons well before his last fight. He’d outgrown the fun of being some kind of sexual stallion the ladies came to for a wild, reckless ride. The next time he began an
affaire
,
he’d told himself, it would be with a woman who wasn’t running
from
anything. He wanted a woman who was running
to
him.

He rolled her onto her back and broke their kiss, gazing down at her. Searching her face for reassurance. “Tell me why you’re here with me. Why are we doing this?”

She drew a breath to respond—an act that lifted her bosom.

“Never mind,” he said, hooking a finger under the lacy neckline of her shift. “Don’t answer. I don’t want to know.”

There weren’t so many buttons this time. Only five or so. He didn’t count, and he couldn’t be bothered to undo them all. As soon as he’d reached the level of her sternum, he slid his fingers underneath one panel, easing it over her shoulder and down her arm . . . exposing the pale, exquisite swell of her breast. One teasing, tempting inch at a time. Then the other.

For a long moment, he couldn’t do anything but stare.