One Dangerous Desire (Accidental Heirs) (11 page)

Chapter Twelve

“A
FINE KNOT
, if I do say so me self.” Brooks turned the mirror, giving Rex a moment to assess the expertly tied neck cloth under his chin. The young man’s gaze strayed to the gilded invitation he’d left standing on the fireplace mantel. “Lookin’ forward to this evening’s festivities, sir?”

“Mmm.”
No, not at all, actually.
Why had May invited him? Did she enjoy torturing him? Perhaps this was to be his punishment. Enduring evenings playing the gentleman among the blue-blooded and titled while May danced along the edges, just out of reach. If he married Devenham’s sister, and she married the man himself . . . good God, what would that make them? Brother- and sister-in-law?

Bile rose in his throat. “Get me a drink, Brooks.”

“Sir?” The young man looked around helplessly, one hand balancing a bowl of shaving water and the other gripping the strop and blade to be returned to wherever valets kept the tools of their trade.

“Never mind.” Rex reached into his inner jacket pocket and slipped a narrow silver flask out. Found among his mother’s belongings after she died, it was the only heirloom he possessed from his mother’s family, no doubt pinched by his father from hers. Now that he’d adopted her surname, the “R. L.” stamped on the side matched his initials. “On your way, and send for the carriage, Brooks.”

He drew a long dram from the flask, letting the fiery Scotch whiskey burn a trail across his tongue, scorch his throat, and travel low, heating his belly. Better a return to his days without a home, sleeping in an obliging doorway with only a bit of gut rot to warm his insides, than to become May Sedgwick’s brother.

After settling into his carriage, he lifted the bottle for another swig.
Always keep your head about you, son.
His mother’s oft-repeated admonition rang in his mind, and he put the liquor aside. Then bitter laughter rumbled in his chest. Easy for his mother to urge him to keep his wits when she’d never met May Sedgwick or witnessed the effect one petite heiress had upon him.

Lord, what a fool he’d been. Upon first glimpsing May’s face, he’d stumbled and nearly upended a tray of fine crystal decanters his boss had tasked him with shelving. He never imagined the existence of a face so prettily arranged or a woman who seemed to glow from the inside out. Other women craved the spotlight like moths crave a candle flame, but May didn’t even need a bit of bloody sunlight to shine. When she’d turned one of her sunny smiles his way, he’d cursed under his breath and thumped a fist against his breastbone to stop the wild rattle of his heart.

He wasn’t sure the damned thing had truly beat before that moment. And what a blasted nuisance it had proved ever since.

In those summer-flushed months with her, he’d allowed himself to believe. In his own worth. In love. In the sort of happy future that fiction writers fashioned. The kind he’d never had the brass to imagine for himself.

May sprinkled possibility in her wake. To a girl who’d been given everything, anything was feasible. And he’d lapped up every bit of it. Relished each moment in her company, came to adore all the aspects of her nature that her mother tried to discipline away—her nervous tapping, her trilling giggle, and her tendency to gape openly at anything that caught her interest. Dreamy, enthusiastic, irrepressible passion—that was the heart of May. Not just for him, but for art and those lucky enough to be called her friends.

Caught up in thoughts of the woman he’d vowed not to think about, Rex didn’t notice the carriage had stopped until the coachman opened the door to inform him they’d drawn up outside of the Sedgwick townhouse.

Footmen stood like sentries near the front door. As he stepped past them, one moved to take his overcoat, and Rex slipped the flask of whiskey into his trouser pocket. If he had to endure another evening of sickly claret, he’d be apt to stab someone with his stiletto.

“Good evening, sir.” On the threshold of a drawing room twice the size of his own, another servant lingered, no doubt waiting to announce guests.

“Spare me a moment, Mr. Leighton?” May stood farther down the hall, peeking out of a doorway.

Entering a space alone with her led to touching, kissing. Ah, hell, who was he kidding? He’d been unable to resist touching her in a crowded roller skating rink in front of hundreds of Londoners.

When he stepped inside the dimly lit room, she didn’t close the door behind them. He swallowed down his disappointment.

“Lady Caroline insisted I invite you. She gave me a list, if you can believe it. Guests to be invited to my own party.” May still glowed when she was angry, though with more fire than sunshine.

“You capitulated without a fight?” Few would look at May—diminutive, lovely, and perfectly polite—and consider her anything but agreeable and compliant. In many ways, she was. Yet deep in her nature, perhaps tempered by that inner light, there was a vein of steel. This was the woman who’d been prepared to defy her father, her class, and everyone she knew to run off and marry a reformed-criminal orphan who, when she met him, was nothing more than a poor shop clerk.

“I cannot fight with her.” She didn’t need to say the rest. That soon she might be Lady Devenham, wed to the earl and bound to Caroline as a sister.

“Has Devenham asked you to marry him?”

“No!” She protested as vehemently as she’d once declared her love. Blowing out a long breath, she turned her back on him and moved toward a vase of flowers to begin rearranging the fat pink blooms. Peonies, he thought. She’d once mentioned her love for the flower. Peering back over her shoulder, she asked, “Have you asked Lady Caroline?”

“No.” His halfhearted tone was equal parts regret and guilt. He should have asked the lady by now. Or another one like her. He hated admitting his resistance. Hated that May might see through it and know that she was the reason. He had no wish to be a stumbling block in her path, and he had to win the duke’s damn wager.

“We should join the others,” she insisted, stepping away from the flowers.

The arrangement looked better after her tending. Would she have the same effect on him? Considering the kind of man he’d been before meeting her, perhaps she already had.

May swept past him, her brisk footsteps muffled by rustling silk and swishing skirts. He reached out and caught her around the arm, hooking his elbow with hers, linking them like puzzle pieces.

She emitted a little gasp, and then rapid puffs of breath wisped against his face. For a moment, he said nothing, simply savoring being close to her. “You mustn’t marry him if he doesn’t suit you. Certainly not for a duke’s ridiculous wager.”

“What if he loves me?” she asked, breathy and low.

“Does he?” A vise twisted his gut, tension ratcheting tighter each moment he waited for her reply.

“I have no idea.” She seemed disinterested in the answer, and that pleased Rex exceedingly. “You’re one to talk. Is it a love match with Lady Caroline?”

Flexing his arm, he pulled her near. His mouth was an inch from her cheek, his arm snugged against her bodice. “You know it’s not.”

This was right. Holding her, touching her, honesty between them and none of the pretense they put on for everyone else.

Raucous laughter echoed down the hallway. Her father’s deep belly chortle was unmistakable and usually followed the telling of one of his brag-filled stories or an off-color joke that he found far more entertaining than his audience did.

She finally faced him, eyes wide. “My father. I’d better go and save the guests from any more of his tall tales.”

“I’m sure they’ll thank you.” Rex smiled so inadvertently he didn’t realize the gesture until she mirrored it with a blinding grin of her own. “You should go first. I’ll follow in a moment.”

How could he be cool and calculating when one smile from her made him burn so hot? How could he look at Lady Caroline, or any of her ilk, and consider marriage and a future when May was in the room? In London. Anywhere that he could find her and touch her and make her smile at him again.

“B
REATHE
.” M
AY REPEATED
the word as she pushed back her shoulders and remembered Mama’s lessons in deportment.
Head up, chin out, waist in, back straight.
“And breathe.” Somehow, in addition to all of that, and after another encounter with the man who drew her like a magnet despite her vow to avoid him, she also had to remember to breathe. Preferably not in the erratic rush that kept puffing out of her now.

“Miss Sedgwick, you are a vision.” Emily’s father met her on the threshold of the drawing room and worsened the blush that still burned her cheeks, neck, and the tips of her ears.

“Thank you, Your Grace. Didn’t Emily join you this evening?”

He glanced left and his eyes widened, as if he was as surprised as May not to find his daughter beside him. “She did indeed. Perhaps she’s refilling her glass or taking a bit of fresh air.”

The night had just begun, and the room was not yet crowded with enough guests to be overly warm.

“I’ll go and see if I can find her. Thank you for coming, Your Grace.”

Emily always provided a sensible perspective. May needed that. Sensibility had abandoned May the moment she’d looked into Rex’s gilded blue eyes. And let him touch her. Again.

“May, there you are!” Lady Caroline zigzagged between two couples to reach her side. “You were nowhere to be found when Henry and I arrived.” Caroline grasped May’s hand and kissed her cheek, a warmer greeting than the earl’s sister had ever offered.

“Forgive me for failing to welcome you both properly. I need more practice as a hostess. I’m forever attending to some detail and missing the party myself.” May signaled to one of the footman, who approached with a tray of properly diminutive glasses filled with a cordial.

“Thank goodness Mother enjoys hosting balls and dealing with all the fuss.” Caroline’s blonde brows lifted and her voice grew huskier. “I imagine myself as a less conventional wife. With a much less conventional husband.”

Rex had entered the room. May sensed him, felt the energy in the air shift, without needing to turn and confirm that Caroline’s hungry gaze followed Rex’s progress across the drawing room.

“Where is Lord Devenham this evening?” He was the man who should be filling May’s mind, making her cheeks flush and her breathing ragged. Regardless of the fact that he’d never achieved it before, perhaps tonight would be the night.

Caroline blinked and pulled her gaze from Rex as if she’d awakened from a daze. “Henry? He was just speaking with your father.”

Not anymore. May’s father was cloistered in a corner, whispering with the Duke of Ashworth. May silently prayed he wouldn’t proposition the duke for a loan twenty minutes into their first dinner party of the season.

“Let me see if I can find the earl.”
And Emily. And some tiny sliver of composure.

Out in the hallway, she could finally breathe. Rex’s scent drifted up from her clothes, and she swiped gloved hands down her bodice and skirts, though it only seemed to stir up the aroma of his cologne. Fresh air would do the trick. A few gulps on the front balcony, and she’d resume her search for Emily and the absent earl. After ascending the stairs, she approached a set of French doors. Dueling voices halted her steps.

“Either you tell her, or I will.” Emily’s stern tone carried through the partially open door.

“We’re family, Em. Have a bit of loyalty. You’ll tell her nothing.” Devenham spoke in a half shout, half whisper.

“Henry, you’re in love with someone else.”

May closed her eyes, her breath pinched and painful in her chest.

Devenham huffed out a disgusted chuckle. “You always were too fond of romance, cousin. May Sedgwick will make me a millionaire. Her dowry will secure the estate for generations. I’ll leave love to fools.”

“And give yours to a parson’s daughter.”

A rustle of movement drew a gasp from Emily. May stepped closer to peer through the doorway. Devenham had gripped Em by the upper arms and pulled her near to whisper. “The parson’s daughter can never be my wife. I need an heiress. If not Sedgwick’s, then another like her.”

May pushed the door wider and took one step into the sitting room. “Perhaps you should leave my home now, Lord Devenham, and begin your search for that other heiress.”

“May!” Emily pulled away from the earl and started toward her.

May shook her head. “No, Em. I don’t require an explanation. I know how it works. The game of wealth for titles has never been a mystery to me.” She sought Devenham’s gaze, but he stared at the carpet. “I’ve only just realized I don’t wish to play.”

Spinning on her heel, she headed down the stairs, ignoring Emily, who called after her, and marched past the drawing room where she was utterly failing as a hostess. She sought the small, dark-paneled room where she’d started the evening linked arm in arm with Rex. After slipping into the parlor, she inhaled the sweet odor of fresh-cut peonies. Their powerful scent overtook any remnants of spice and bergamot in the air.

Pulling the thick drapes aside, she sank onto the edge of a settee, turning her body so she could stare up at the full moon glowing over Belgravia. Her hands trembled in her lap. Why tremble to learn what she already knew to be true?

“Silly woman.” She’d made marrying an aristocrat the object of a wager. Were Henry’s intentions any worse? He wished to marry her for money. Rather, her father’s money. No surprise there. Her dowry had always been what set her apart from every other debutante. She’d never been prettier or more accomplished than any of them. Just richer. And yet to be pursued for it, married for it, wasn’t enough. Perhaps
she
was the romantic that Lord Devenham accused Emily of being. Was it wrong to want to be loved for whatever unique qualities she might possess rather than her million-dollar dowry?

“Wishing on the moon, are you?”

The voice that usually sent shivers skittering up her spine made her shoulders sag with relief. At least he wasn’t Emily with excuses for her cousin, or Henry, tripping over an apology. Still, Rex Leighton did rank high on her list of people she didn’t wish to see when she was feeling like a fool.