Mischief by Moonlight (13 page)

It had been only a week since the news of Nick's death, and already Colin had been drawn back into the rhythm of life. The needs of his estates and his staff couldn't be neglected. There'd been a fire that had spread to several of the buildings at his estate in Yorkshire, and he'd needed to consider the best way to rebuild. And then the board of governors for the soldiers' hospital he and Hal were establishing had had to meet to make necessary decisions.

Too, his body had recovered its drives for food and activity, though he cared nothing for what he put in it to make it function. Even though he'd known Nick was in constant danger as a soldier at war, somehow he hadn't expected anything to happen to him. Nick had been canny and agile and strong, a golden boy who always came out on top with a grin. It hadn't seemed possible all that might be extinguished.

He thought of his friend all the time. The way they'd always teased each other, their middle of the night philosophical debates at university, the months of travel together in their early twenties. Nick had been the brother Colin never had, though he'd never told his friend as much.

As he sat at his library desk in the early evening, forcing his mind to focus on St. Bede's
Ecclesiastical
History
of
the
English
People
, a knock sounded at the door. His butler entered with a note from Maria.

It said that she and Edwina were worried about Josie. Her spirits were very low, she wasn't eating, and she was refusing to leave her bedchamber. They thought a visit from him might help her.

He put the note down, the news of her anguish twisting his gut. She was obviously terribly depressed about Nick's death, and no one could understand that better than he could.

He didn't want to go. He'd broken with her. And he didn't think he could bear to see her now, with both of them so raw with pain. He needed to stay in his house, detached and apart. Solitude had always been his answer to the storms of life. He craved nothingness and detachment.

But for once it was eluding him, and what he had was sorrow and bitter regret. They would be his companions whether he was in his study alone or out in the world. Seeing Josie would only turn the knife of remorse and pain in him, but he couldn't refuse to help her if she needed him.

He pulled on the coat hanging on the back of his chair, uncaring that it was a shabby old brown one he kept for poking through dusty volumes, and left.

Edwina met him at the door to Maria's town house with an anxious expression. Her eyebrows drew together slightly at the sight of his dusty coat and early evening stubble, but she made no comment.

“Ivorwood, I'm so glad you've come. We just now managed to get Josie to leave her chamber, and I think it was only because she knew you might be coming. Perhaps if you could convince her to take a walk, it would bring her back to herself a little.”

Edwina took him to Maria's small but elegant sitting room, where Josie sat in a gilt chair by the marble fireplace. She was wearing black, which only emphasized the unhealthy paleness of her face. Her playful, short coiffure had grown out, and the curls sagged loosely against cheekbones grown too prominent. Deep smudges under her eyes contributed to her hollowed-out look.

“Josie,” he said softly as he came into the room, not wanting to startle her. She was staring at the empty hearth and didn't look at him as he moved closer. He'd spoken so bluntly to her weeks ago, when he'd insisted they could no longer be friends. But the reason for that—her engagement to Nick—had been removed, and now he didn't know what they had.

The sight of her struck at the rawness in him and prodded that barely quieted need for her life. He wished violently that he could do something for her, anything to relieve the pain that must be crushing her.

“I've come to see if you'd like to take a walk. It's quite nice out just now, with the early evening cool settling in, and we ought not to forget how we need a little fresh air every day.”

He sounded like an idiot. But seeing her like this, he knew Edwina and Maria were right to be worried.

She didn't respond to his words or even seem to care that he was there. As awkward moments passed, he thought he must go and leave her in peace, no matter how it pained him that he could be no comfort to her. But then, without looking at him, she spoke.

“Will you please take me for a carriage ride, Colin? Just the two of us?”

He glanced at Maria. It would be improper, but he was a very respectable earl, and Josie was struggling with a terrible blow. No one could think anything untoward would occur at such a moment.

“Yes, why don't you?” Maria said. “Some fresh air would be just the thing.”

Colin handed Josie into his carriage and sat across from her. The heat of the summer day had broken and the orange sun was already sinking below the housetops of Mayfair. He told the driver to take them toward the outskirts of town, thinking the peace of a quieter setting might cheer her after the weeks in London.

They sat in silence for some time while the carriage bore them along. A lovely three-quarter moon was rising, and he tracked its progress through the window on his side. He lifted a hand and gestured at it, hoping the heavenly sight would comfort her somehow. But she only turned her face to the view for a moment and let her eyes slide away.

He had a sudden memory of walking through the Cardworthys' back garden that night he'd done his unexpected howling at the moon. What a long time ago that now seemed, before Nick had been lost and so much had passed between Colin and Josie.

He thought perhaps the two of them wouldn't speak at all now, and that was probably for the best. Her wordless presence comforted him, though, as nothing had in the last week.

But then she surprised him by speaking. “Thank you for coming.” Her voice was hoarse, as if from disuse. “Though perhaps you did not want to.”

He knew his need to end their friendship, however necessary, had hurt her. “I wanted to come. I…have never stopped caring.”

She closed her eyes, as though absorbing his words. “You're the only one who understands.”

“Anyone would understand. The man who was to be your husband is gone.”

When she opened her eyes, he was struck with the flatness in them, which matched the dullness in her voice. He felt a spurt of anger that death had done this to her.

“But you
knew
him,” she said.

“Yes.” He looked away. She was twisting him up inside, making him feel awful. Nick had been a fine man, but he'd been no saint. In some ways, Josie hadn't really known him very well—how could she have, after only six weeks?

Certainly, as a woman she'd known him in ways Colin never could have. But she didn't know about that French spy, for one thing, and how he'd been tempted by her. Josie loved Nick, loved his memory, and she could never know that, under the terrible pressure of war, Nick might have strayed.

He was startled when she reached across the carriage and took his hand. He felt he would do anything to relieve the bleakness in her eyes.

The carriage hit a rut and jerked them, but her urgent grip didn't slacken.

“I am so angry,” she said in a ragged voice and squeezed his hand hard. “What is wrong with me that I have lost my fiancé and I feel so angry? I can't even feel sadness.”

“You are overwhelmed. It's too much that you are feeling, not a lack of feeling. Really, anger ought to be the most natural reaction to death, our deep cry to the universe that demands to know why the hell this has to happen at all.”

He'd meant to shock her a bit with the rough language, because for all she said she was angry, the frozen way she looked was scaring him, and he'd thought to startle her out of it. But she seemed not to have noticed.

“There is no excusing it.” She hung her head. “I'm a terrible person.”

“Stop this!” he said forcefully, giving her arm a shake. Their hands fell apart. “Stop being so hard on yourself. You are grieving, and grief is wild, it is its own beast. When you care about someone who dies, that love pulls you a little way across the divide between life and death. Grief turns everything you know upside down.”

She absorbed his words but then closed her eyes and pushed a hand roughly through her hair, unconsciously giving herself a wild look as the curls stuck out here and there. Even in her sorrow, she was beautiful.

“But that's just it,” she said in a bitter voice. “I had serious doubts. I don't even know if I really loved him! I don't
know
!”

Colin stared as her words penetrated his mind. Had she not been in love with Nick after all? Could it be?

No.
This was not the time for such thoughts. Surely, with the memory of Nick between them, it never would be.

But he couldn't bear to see her in despair. Before he realized what he was doing, he'd reached across the carriage and taken her hand back, and he held it lightly. It was fairly dark in the carriage now, with only the moon to light them, and perhaps that made it easier to touch her, as though right now they weren't part of the everyday world. He wanted her not to feel she was alone.

“Josie, you two were apart for more than a year. Anyone would have had doubts.” He forced himself to say what was right. “It's a shame you didn't have more time together before he had to leave.”

“But he deserved better from me.”

He'd deserved better from Colin, too, than a best friend who'd wanted to take his fiancée into his arms. But things were more complicated than Josie knew.

“Who's to say he didn't have doubts as well?” he said. “We are all only human.”

His words seemed to have some profound effect on her. She gazed at him and slowly lifted her hand, taking his with it, and pressed the back of his hand to her cheek. She inhaled a shuddering breath. A tear seeped onto his forefinger.

Her anguish pierced him, and he turned his hand and cupped her cheek, wiping her tears with the pad of his thumb.

“Oh, Colin,” she said in a ragged voice. “I need you so.”

With those four little words, a barrier within him suffered a crack.

She
needed
him
.

He allowed himself to consider—to truly entertain for the first time—that she might have come to care for him. That the kiss at the ball and what he'd read in her eyes at the garden meant something after all. Did he dare hope?

Stop
this!
How could he even be thinking such thoughts, and at such a time? What she needed from him right now was comfort, and that was all. He could offer her the comfort that a brother would share. Human comfort.

He moved across the space between the facing seats and sat next to her, and it felt like the most natural thing in the world to pull her into his arms in an embrace meant to share her burden of grief.

She wrapped her arms around his torso and squeezed him tightly, burying her face against his neck. His heart pounding, he kissed her forehead lightly in what he told himself was brotherly affection, though he knew he was treading on shaky ground.

She tipped her head back and sought his lips.

The crack in the wall of his restraint split into a deep fissure. Her soft lips rubbed against his as they had once before, at the ball. But now everything was different.

He gave in to his need for her and took over the kiss, licking along the seam of her mouth. She let him in.

And then things went a little wild. They fell on one another as though each was the only rock for miles in a savage sea. He pulled her so she sat sideways across his thighs. Devouring mouths, pulling at necklines, grabbing the tops of shoulders, their hands scrabbled over each other, shaping arms, shooting up along backs.

But this was the wrong moment for what was between them, and their touching was too fast, too wild. The tenderness and awe he felt for her were being pushed aside by desperate urges. And she was like a wild thing, undone by grief, surely, even if it was mingled with desire.

She ripped at his cravat, her hands tugging it and working inefficiently until she finally loosened it and pushed it aside and buried her face in the crook of his neck. A sob broke from her and forced him to full acknowledgment of what they were doing in a carriage rolling through London.

“Josie,” he said hoarsely, trying gently to pull away.

“No!” she said in an urgent, hoarse whisper, and her hands clenched his lapels. “Don't you dare stop.”

He should put a stop to what they were doing, of course he should. She was clearly in a desperate state, and he was not much better. Right, yes, he would stop—in a minute. It was just that she seemed to so want what they were doing, and wanting didn't even begin to explain his need to touch her more.

But after all the months of yearning just to be able to touch her sleeve, never mind her actual skin, he wanted to savor what they were doing, while she seemed to be in a tremendous rush.

She shifted so the side of her sweet rump came against his nearly painful erection, and he groaned. “Josie, slow down.”

“I know,” she said, her words like wisps. Arresting the urgency of her motion, she lifted a trembling hand and slowly feathered her fingertips across his jaw and trailed them over his lips.

This would be enough, he told himself. Just having her touch him like this, with affection and desire, was more than he ever thought he'd have.

She lingered on his mouth, tracing over the shape of his lips, and his heart whispered a wordless prayer of gratitude. He kissed her fingertips, and she leaned forward and replaced them with her mouth. Curious, daring, sweet Josie—she could have no idea how violently she was fanning the lust that had been boiling in him for so long.

This
would be enough, this kiss—in a minute he would gently break their embrace and they would go back to sitting appropriately and return to Maria's as soon as possible.