Mischief by Moonlight (26 page)

He finally turned to her then, and she saw that his eyes had softened a little, and the sight lifted her heart. “You weren't wrong to want what you knew, Edwina. I shouldn't have pushed you.”

She shook her head. “I was foolish and weak. I wanted a safe harbor.” She never would have thought she'd be inspired by her mother, but Mama had left her own safe harbor and was beginning to create a new vision for herself, and Edwina wanted that too.

“I wanted a man whose adoration would make me feel proud, instead of a man I would feel proud to deserve. And I see now that is the only kind of man who could ever make me a good husband.”

“Edwina”—his voice was husky—“I don't know that I deserve such generosity. I could hardly
not
pursue you. You were like a fascinating puzzle set before me, a woman wrapped up tightly inside a shell. And you've borne everything so bravely.” His brows drew together as he looked at what must have been an enormous grin spreading over her face. “What?”

“I love that you didn't say I'm beautiful.”

He laughed softly and reached up to cup her cheek. “Of course you are. You're beautiful when you're tormenting me, you're lovely when you're scheming, you're a sight when you're being kind to penniless strangers. It's
you
that's beautiful,
you
that makes your face the most exquisite one I've ever seen.”

He dropped his hand between them, palm side up.

“There will be complications,” he said in a grimly serious voice. “People will gossip. They'll say you've come down to my level.”

She laid her hand in his, in full view of anyone who cared to see. “There's no
down
about it. Just you and me together.”

His eyes looked into hers, their ice melted to the soft blue of a summer sky.

“Edwina Cardworthy, will you do me the very great honor of becoming my wife?”

She threw her arms around him and squeezed tight. “Yes, Jack, yes! A thousand times yes!” He laughed, and she loved the sound of it.

She hadn't noticed that her family had gathered in the doorway at a respectful distance, but now she saw them and motioned them over. She and Jack got down from the cart and shared their good news.

Josie was smiling as though she couldn't have been happier, and when she drew close she whispered to Edwina, “Well done.”

“It is the most wonderful thing in the world,” Mama said, leaning a little against the cart but able still to take Edwina and Jack by the hands and press them together. “A love match.”

The day turned into one of those autumn glories that are like a final visit from summer, and the sun was at its warmest when Josie went into the garden late that afternoon. She sat on the bench behind the enormous oak tree at the back of the garden, a place that always felt like a secluded nook because it couldn't be seen from the house. She let her wrap fall to the bench as she basked in the soft sunshine.

Whitby had stayed for a boisterous lunch, and he was already a favorite with Josie's brothers. She supposed that, however much Papa had steered them wrong, the way he'd kept them apart from society had made them all less likely to care about society's strictures. And Mama had taken one look at the desk and declared that Whitby was an artist, and said how lucky they were to have him in the family. Josie could already imagine that her parsimonious parent would be finagling more than one piece of furniture out of her future son-in-law.

She leaned back against the tree trunk and wished for inner peace, but today—and every day of these last months—peace had been elusive. How could she be at peace when she was allowing herself to be courted by one man while she was in love with another?

There was an answer to this, one she'd been shying away from, but Colin was right. She now had nothing more than a sisterly affection for Nicholas, and it was partly out of guilt and concern for what everyone would think that she'd agreed to let him court her. But it would be wrong to marry him, and she would tell him of her change of heart.

The decision brought her a small measure of relief.

She was left with the much larger problem of Colin. He'd asked her to marry him twice, and he'd been so importunate in recent days that she suspected he would soon ask again. But she didn't want a functional marriage of two people who got along fairly well—she wanted one built on love, and on a desire for each other that was physical
and
emotional.

And he wasn't offering that.

Lost in thought, she didn't realize she was no longer alone until she heard a soft rustle and turned to see Colin stepping out from behind an overgrown juniper bush like someone emerging from a game of hide-and-seek.

Her heart leaped giddily at the sight of him, then shrank back as though it had come up against a hot coal. She felt so vulnerable right now—the last thing she wanted was to see him. “Were you
hiding
in there?”

“I needed to see you, and you haven't been very available.”

“That's because I don't want to see you.”

He came closer. “Yes you do,” he said in an annoyingly reasonable voice.

She looked away from him, summoning a bored tone. “Being an earl has gone to your head.”

He stopped at the bench. She was glad her skirts were spread out over it so that there was no room for him to sit, but he simply pushed the fabric aside and sat down anyway. “I was always arrogant—you just never noticed.”

That was true, she now knew, and she wanted to laugh, but she didn't want him to have the satisfaction of amusing her. The warmth of his body was already having an effect on her, and she slid over a few inches and examined her nails idly as though her heart weren't racing.

“I've missed you,” he said. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw his grin. “Admit it, you've missed me too.”

She abandoned her cuticles and crossed her arms. “What I miss is the way we used to be when we were friends. It was easy and carefree and now it's spoiled.”

“I don't look at it that way at all. I think what's developed between us is marvelous.”

“You just liked the kissing and the touching.”

His grin turned wicked, making her feel weak. “I did,” he said. He lifted his hand and ran a single fingertip along the skin of her forearm that was left bare by her three-quarter sleeve, making the little hairs stand up excitedly. “Your beautiful body is driving me to distraction.”

She pulled her arm away and struggled against emotions he surely wasn't feeling.

“You're just interested because of the thrill of the chase. If I agreed that it was marvelous, you'd soon find the marvelousness faded.”

“If you agreed with me,” he said, leaning until his mouth was right next to her ear, “I'd be thrilled.”

He kissed her earlobe.

“Stop that,” she said weakly.

“Agree with me. It's marvelous.”

“Oh, Colin,” she murmured, her heart in her throat, “when did you turn into the devil?”

“When I met you.”

And though she needed to keep herself apart and safeguard her heart, his nearness undid her good intentions, and, her heart twisting with bittersweet longing, she turned and met his lips with hers. She told herself this would be the very last time she'd ever kiss him.

She was simply going to have to leave Jasmine House—go to India after all, or less excitingly and more probably, ask to visit her mother's distant and unpleasant sister in Scotland. Anything so she wasn't in proximity to Colin.

Their kiss was a passionate mating. His hands were everywhere, sweeping up her back worshipfully and shaping the rise of her bosom. She let her hands run over the strong, flexed muscles of his back, and wanted to cry out with happiness when he pulled her firmly against him so that their bodies touched all along their thighs and hips.

He groaned and pushed her dress off one shoulder and began kissing the top of her bosom lavishly. The pleasure was like a drug, but sadness pierced her as she gazed at the dark head below her chin, knowing it was filled with thoughts he'd never share with her.

Colin, who hadn't looked up, moved upward to kiss her neck.

He gave a playful sigh. “I
suppose
we oughtn't to be doing this out here in the middle of the day, but”—he pressed his lips softly under her ear and chuckled—“I find no inducement to stop. I'm sure I never shall.”

The lightness in his voice did her in, pouring more salt in the wound of her love for him. Touching her was about pleasure and bodily need for him. Colin wasn't a man to surrender to the kind of emotions that were swirling inside her: yearning, remorse, hope, despair. All of them, all at once.

Her love for him would keep pushing her to behave like a fool, and he might have affection for her, but he'd never love her back, not the way she needed him to. A tear welled up and began to slip down her cheek, and she wiped it angrily. She nudged Colin away from her and jerked her bodice into place.

She stood up, needing to break the spell of his nearness. “You have to leave. Go. Clearly I can't be around you. I can't be your—your plaything.”

“Don't be absurd,” he said. He stood up too. His eyes seemed so unreadable. They were remote.
He
was remote. “I love you, and I want to marry you.”

She just stood there, blinking at his brazenness. How could he lie like this to get what he wanted?

“Marry me? Love me?” She made a scoffing sound. “You do not.”

“
What?
”

“I don't believe you.”

A dark flush spread over his cheeks. “What do you mean, you don't believe me?”

She crossed her arms tightly, willing herself to hold firm to what she knew was true. “I believe you like my company and my friendship. I believe you like to do sensual things with me. But I don't believe you love me.”

His lips tightened. “And why not?”

“You're too cool for me! You hate messy, uncontrollable emotion, and I have loads of that. If you married me, you'd just want to go off by yourself all the time.”

“I would not! So I like to spend time alone—that doesn't mean I don't also love spending time with you.”

She shrugged. What was the point in arguing about the way people were? “It doesn't matter.”

“Nothing could matter more than who you love to spend time with,” he said. “That person for me is you. And I'm fairly certain it's also me for you. You have to make the honest choice. You can't choose Nicholas if you love me.”

“I don't want to marry Nicholas.”

He blinked. “You don't?” He seemed to have trouble absorbing this, but then he began to smile. “But that's wonderful. Now you can choose me.”

“Don't talk to me about choices. We've already established that I'm impulsive. I make the worst possible choices, and I doubtless will continue to do so.”

“Josie, Josie,” he said warmly, clearly still delighted by the news that she didn't want to marry Nicholas, “you're exaggerating. So you've done a few ill-advised things—your spontaneity is actually one of the things I love best about you. Being with you pulls me into the whirl of life in a way I might never find on my own.”

That sounded so genuine. It made her lips tremble as she thought about how she loved the way he, conversely, seemed to anchor her so that she wouldn't, like a kite tossed in a storm, be carried off by her flights of fancy.

But she mustn't be weak. Words were easy. Life was hard and real. Even with the best intentions, people behaved in predictable patterns, and Colin's patterns indicated a person who would always keep to himself.

“What if all the things you've done,” he pressed, “all the impulsive things you regret, were really the right thing to do because they brought you to see what you would have overlooked?”

She rolled her eyes. “And I'm supposed to have been overlooking you.”

“Of course you overlooked me—you saw me as a friend, not a man who could be your lover. I wanted you—needed you—all along. That first night you met Nick at my ball was the night I had planned to begin courting you properly and openly. But Nick showed up, and you turned to him. I had to spend a whole year wanting you and knowing you belonged to him.”

Hearing this wasn't helping at all
.
She looked away from him, toward the tangle of forsythia fronds that leaned against the garden wall.

“You have to let this go, Colin. Let
me
go. You don't love me, not really. Not the way I'd need you to. I'm sorry to speak so bluntly,” she said in a voice that was turning husky just when she so desperately wanted to banish emotion, “but it will save unhappiness later if I speak plainly. We'd never have the kind of deep, open connection that I dream about.”

His jaw tightened. “And for that you think you'd need an outgoing man like Nicholas,” he ground out, “who's happy to talk all the time about love.”

She made herself nod, even though she'd never felt for Nick anything like the rich, overwhelming, bittersweet love she had for Colin.

“I need openness,” she said. “I could never be happy always wondering what you were thinking behind that reserved facade. And you wouldn't really want me. I'm needy! I'd poke at you and want to know what you were thinking all the time, and it would make you incredibly irritated. We'd end up with a marriage in which you'd go on ever more jaunts by yourself just to find the peace and quiet you crave, while I'd be left at home with the children and servants, feeling abandoned. And I'd hate that.”

“Because you care about me.”

“Of course I do!” she said angrily. “But I shall master it.”

He looked very stiff, yet the vulnerable light in his eyes surprised her.

“So you don't think I'm capable of impulsive behavior,” he said. “That scene in the London coach wasn't improper enough.”

“That was just lust. Any man would have taken what I was offering.”

“And it's not enough that I tell you I think you're the most fascinating woman I've ever met and I love spending time with you.”

“I'd want a devoted husband, not a satisfied companion.”

She sighed, so very worn out. She just wanted this all to be over: the conversation with Colin, and the one she was going to have to have with Nicholas. “But none of this matters because I'm not going to marry you.”

“Right,” he said. Then he grabbed her by the arm and began pulling her toward the gate in the garden wall.

“What on earth do you think you're doing?”

“Helping you make up your mind,” he said as they passed through the gate.

“I know my own mind,” she said through gritted teeth, “and I don't need any help from you. Let me go!”

But he didn't, and though she spluttered and protested as they hurtled along the path to Greenbrier, this was Colin, and he was very good at not responding when he didn't want to. Silence was his friend, and he'd never been bothered by awkward or charged pauses, never mind the angry lashings of an outraged woman. She tried to dig her heels into the grass, but her efforts had no effect on his unrelenting stride.

And then he was pulling her up the steps of the back entrance to Greenbrier. Josie had by now ceased protesting, since it was having no effect, but she was preparing a ferocious tirade to deliver the minute they stopped. They passed through the tall doorway and along the seemingly endless marble-tiled corridors of his manor, and into the two-story front hall with its beautiful double staircase. His butler appeared almost instantly.

“Ames, have Captain Hargrave called, please. Tell him his presence is required in the front hall.”

Josie gasped and tried again to reclaim her arm. Colin kept talking pleasantly, as though he weren't holding her there against her will. Only the desire not to have Ames think something was going on between her and Colin kept the polite smile fixed on her face.

“Then send a footman over to Jasmine House,” Colin continued, “to let them know Miss Cardworthy decided to stop here for a visit.”

Ames left to do his master's bidding and they were alone for a moment in the hall.

“Have you lost your wits?” Josie snarled.

He made no reply except to let go of her arm, but it was too late for escape or even her tirade, because Nicholas, apparently alerted by the commotion, was coming down the stairs.