Fated Folly (24 page)

By the time he got back to the Manor, his anger had cooled. He could only hope that the humiliation would have a salutary effect. In all probability, it would worsen Ashendon's enmity. Rupert could bear that, as long as the fellow left off his trickery with regard to Clare.

As Ashendon had known, for he had not hesitated to take advantage of it, their relationship and the circumstances of the accident prevented Rupert from calling him to account and demanding satisfaction. Besides, he was too much the boy's senior. The rules of etiquette governing these affairs were very strict.

But, the truth was that he had to protect Clare from Ashendon's wiles, and without involving Will, he did not know how else to do it. God grant this last would do the trick. Else he could not answer for the effects if there were any further assaults on his lacerated emotions.

He was a trifle disappointed to learn that Clare had already retired. But the child had had an exhausting day. Let her rest.

Only when he went to his own room, some time later when the household was quiet, and began with Riggs' aid to ready himself for bed, did he suddenly recollect that he had not told Clare the most important thing of all. Very well for her to have pushed it aside in favour of concern over Will's accident. But he had settled that, leaving her free to turn to other matters. Who knew but that she might not, even now, be turning it over in her mind, worrying herself to death over his relationship with Biddy?

Impulsively, he dismissed his valet, and slipping on a dressing-robe over his nightgown, went over to the interconnecting door between their bedchambers.

He listened, but could hear no sound. Quietly, for the first time since his marriage, he turned the handle, expecting to find the room in darkness and the curtains drawn around the big four-poster. He opened the door and stopped, riveted.

By the basin and ewer on a stand across the room, Clare stood, stark naked, rubbing a towel over her body. In the dim light from one candelabrum on a tallboy, he could see little more than the outline of her silhouette. But reflected in the mounted mirror in the corner, her skin glowed warm over lithe limbs, soft feminine contours and, as she laid aside the towel, the two rounded globes of her firm breasts.

She reached for her chemise and began to tug it on over her head. But just as her loose, tousled hair came through the wide neck, and her eyes came clear, she turned and caught him staring.

A gasp left her lips, and her hands stilled in shock, unconsciously leaving much of her shapely form exposed to her husband's sight.

A pulse was beating in Rupert's neck, and he was aware only of the woman in her as his loins began to respond. Without volition, without thought, he began to move towards her.

She shifted then, her hands coming away, allowing the silken drapery to fall.

‘
It
is
you!' she uttered faintly. ‘I thought I was dreaming again.'

Rupert did not reply. All he could think of was the vision that had just been veiled again.

He reached her. Clare stared up at him, mesmerised. This could not be happening. But his hands came up and took her by the shoulders, turning her gently to face the mirror. He drew her against him so that she felt the warmth of his body the length of her back. Clare swallowed as the tingling began.

His eyes on the glass, Rupert began slowly to draw her chemise up, so that the light fell on her slim legs, and then the swell of her thighs, and the rounded hips above them. One of Rupert's hands ran lightly over her thigh and her breath began to rasp in her throat. His fingers moved, slithering up, stroking her hip, and then running across to touch the pale tuft of hair.

His other arm was about her, holding the cloth of her chemise, but now the hand moved, drawing it higher, gathering the slack into his fingers. As the slim grace of her waist came into the light, his other hand caressed it, travelling after the revealing silk until it closed over the mound of her breast, and she gasped out, shifting helplessly in his arms as a wash of heat flooded her body.

Rupert's hold tightened, and he dragged her hard against him, so that she felt the strong, muscular limbs against her own. One hand still kneaded gently at her breast, but the other stealthily crept down.

A cry left Clare's lips and her body arched uncontrollably, her head falling back against his shoulder. His lips touched her skin, and he was turning her into his embrace, his breath as harsh as hers. His mouth reached hers and the kiss was frenzied and rabid. She clung, lost in the grip of sensations she had not known existed. Her response was instinctive, out of time, answering a primeval need that took no count of age, or sense, or thought.

Her legs were jelly, and the effort to remain standing brought sense back into play. And thought. And words.

‘
How I have waited for this! Oh, Rupert, at last…'

Her words had the strangest effect. He pulled away, his utterance harsh.

‘
I didn't come in here for this. Oh, my God, Clare, what have you done to me?'

He was going! Desperate, Clare reached out to him.

‘
Rupert, don't leave me now!'

‘
You're playing with fire—things you don't understand. Let me go!'

He was turning, making for the door. Clare made one last agonised plea.

‘
Rupert, I am your
wife
!'

He stopped dead, his back rigid. Slowly, he turned. She looked forlorn and vulnerable, the flickering candlelight playing over her where she stood clutching the chemise against her. She was lovely, seductive, and unutterably desirable. He could fight it no longer.

Rupert hardly realised he was moving, his gaze mesmerised by the naked want in Clare's eyes. Reaching her, he swung her up into his arms, and carried her to the bed.

***

 

Clare woke to a clear, bright day, and the certainty that something had changed. It was a minute or two, as the mists of sleep receded from her brain and she blinked upon the knowing smile of her maid, before she remembered.

‘
Your chocolate, my lady,' said Olive.

Clare moved to sit up and became aware of the protest of her body. She fell back, shifting her limbs warily. Then memory hit, and she flushed as her mind filled with the threshing, tangled thrustings of the dark night.

Rupert! A wash of warmth engulfed her, and the surge of passion rose again. She did not for an instant wonder if her dreams had deceived her, for the manifestations of their shared love had left that part of her, now wholly and irrevocably his, deliciously tender.

Exulting in her conquest—for she felt it as his surrender, despite that she had of necessity followed where he led—Clare hoisted up in the bed, tugging up the covers to conceal her nudity, and took the cup Olive was still holding with a word of thanks. Heavens, it must be so obvious. Her gaze wandered across the rumpled bed with its tangled sheets, and the pillow where the imprint of Rupert's head still dented it.

She did not care if the whole world knew that Rupert was now, in truth, her husband. She had won. And what a victory!

Memory crept back, little detailed instants of the night. He had taken her so very gently, showing her when she cried out, in her eagerness, that she did not know what to do. She knew she had whispered her love for him, and Rupert had gathered her close and told her he loved her too.

He had told her something more, afterwards when she was lying in his arms, a thing so precious Clare could still only marvel at the wonder of it.

‘
This is why there was Biddy Arksey,' she'd said, in a flash of insight, understanding at last what he had meant when he had told her a man had appetites and could not be alone.

‘
Yes,' Rupert said, and his hold tightened about her. ‘But there is no more Biddy Arksey.'

‘
Because of this?'

Rupert kissed her with a tenderness that melted her heart. ‘No, Clare. It was what I came in here to tell you—' laughing a little as he added ‘—only you seduced it out of my head. It is finished.'

A slow warmth began as a spread of gratification tingled through her veins. He had given Biddy up for her. Clare thanked him with a soft pressure of her lips, and they lay looking into each other's eyes—as well as the gloomy half-light afforded by the candelabrum on the tallboy would allow—with a freedom unknown before. It seemed to Clare as if there was nothing now that need be hidden, no barrier that could stand.

‘
She loves you, Rupert. You can see it in the sketch.'

‘
She did then,' he admitted.

‘
And now?'

‘
I think not.'

Clare's fingers reached up to caress his face, but he did not move, and the dreamy expression did not leave his eyes.

‘
And—Meriel?' she ventured, holding her breath.

She thought he shifted slightly, but his gaze stayed on her.

‘
We married too young.'

‘
That is why you were against Pippa and Justin,' Clare guessed.

‘
Yes. It was all over between us. Long before I was made a widower.'

But not for you, Clare thought, knowing instinctively that he had been hurt. She wanted very much to tell him of her own love, to assure him it was not the childish thing he thought it, that it would not, like Meriel's, die. But she did not know how. And she did not dare. Not now. Not to spoil this precious time.

As if he read her thought, Rupert said softly, ‘And now I have you.'

He had taken her again then, with a passionate intensity that contained all the power and vitality of the man with whom she'd fallen in love.

She giggled as the memories flooded in. Oh, Rupert,
dear
ogre. How naive she had been that day. She had come away, her heart already pierced by Cupid's dart, and told her brother that Sir Rupert Wolverley was an enchanting man. Enchanting? He was a mighty wizard. And he loved her!

The need to see him spurred her into activity. Yet, womanlike, now she had proof of his passion, she took especial care with her appearance, choosing a sprigged muslin gown that he had complimented in the past, and having Olive dress her hair in a knot of ringlets with the front curls creeping in tendrils about her face. She was quite unconscious that the style, and the gown, which was modestly high but drawn in tight under the bosom, its folds falling demurely about her slim form, emphasised her extreme youth. She only thought of pleasing her beloved, and did not know that the very sparkle in her eye, the fresh bloom in her cheek, would crown him with thorns.

She could not guess how Rupert had woken to the light filtering in from an early dawn, to find himself in an alien bed with an alien body in his arms.

Resting beside him was Clare's flaxen head, her sweet, innocent features relaxed in a deep and peaceful sleep.

Rupert had gazed at that face, and his guts had gone solid on him. Last night's deceptive candles, now burned out, had shown him a woman. The harsh daylight had exposed the fraud. By his side lay the child he had married.

***

 

The mischief was in Claire's face as she peeped around the library door, a quip hovering on her tongue, and discovered Rupert at his desk, his forehead buried in his hands.

Clare had been going to greet him with some reference to his “ogreish” activities, but the instant impact of the heavy charge of gloom in the atmosphere froze her tongue. She stood in the doorway, her fingers stiffening, welding to the handle, all her present happiness vanished at a stroke.

Her heart began to thud in her breast as he became aware of her presence and glanced up, for she knew that look. It was the one he had worn after he first kissed her. Only ten times—no a thousand times—worse.

‘
Oh no,' she uttered involuntarily. Her lip trembled. ‘Oh, Rupert,
why
?'

Her instant comprehension fairly pierced his inner agony, making him bleed. Unable to bear the sight of her distress, Rupert wrenched up from his seat at the desk, and flung away to the windows.

Misery swept over Clare in a wave. She had no room at this moment for his suffering. Her own was too acute. Last night had been a Phyrric victory, if all there was today was this welter of pain. Her pain. His pain. Oh, that she had never married him!

As if he was still in tune with her as he had been in the wild night hours, he echoed her thought aloud, his voice clipped and hard over the turmoil within.

‘
I have made a terrible mistake, Clare, subjecting you to this empty marriage.'

But it was not empty, her heart cried out, in violent protest. It was full—too full—of everything they could ever want or need. But for his obsession. Her tongue would not say the words, however. She could neither reproach, nor accuse him. Whatever it was that held him prisoner, that locked her out, it was beyond his control. But a bleak truth escaped her.

‘
It is too late now.'

He turned then, and the torture in his eyes blotted, for the present, Clare's own anguish. She moved from the door which she had closed without knowing she did so, and came as far as the desk, trying, pathetically, to smile.