One Naughty Night2 (16 page)

She paused when the maids came in with the tea trays. Lily’s thoughts turned.

“I can ask around, Mama, discreetly try to find out if he’s been seen in any of the usual places,” she said when they were alone again. “I could speak to him myself, but he wouldn’t tell me anything he wouldn’t tell you.”

Katherine nodded as she poured the tea. She seemed a little steadier now that she had shared her worries. “Thank you, my dear. I’m sure it’s just a phase of some sort, and soon enough he will settle into some kind of interest. But I do worry about my children. I can’t help it, even though you are all grown now.”

Over the gold rim of her cup, Lily met the steady, painted gaze of Mary St. Claire in her portrait. The image of the woman who had married a Huntington hung over the marble fireplace where she could be a reminder to the St. Claires never to trust the Huntingtons or people like them. Never to trust in love.

She thought of the often-told tale of Mary St. Claire, how she was the most beautiful woman at King Charles’s decadent court, pursued by every man, including the king. But she would have only John Huntington, the man she had loved since she was a girl, the man who swore he loved her in return. He made her his wife, his duchess, and carried her away to live in his castle.

Yet something went terribly wrong in their romantic paradise, something so dark and secret no one knew what it was. John cast Mary out, claiming she had been unfaithful, and went on to use his wealth and influence to ruin her whole family. The St. Claires went from respectable country gentry to bankrupted outcasts and eventually a motley collection of theater owners, slum landlords, and gamesters. Mary died of a broken heart, while John remarried and perpetuated his ducal line.

And no St. Claire could love a Huntington again.

“What really happened to you, Mary?” Lily whispered as she rubbed at her aching temple. Mary just smiled back, so sweet and sad.

“Are you quite all right, Lily dear?” she heard her mother ask.

“I’m fine,” Lily answered. “Just a touch of a headache. I think I’ll just go and lie down for a while before I go to the club tonight.”

“A very good idea. These late nights can’t be good for you, though I confess I had more than a few late nights myself when I was your age,” Katherine said with a laugh. Lily and her siblings always wondered how her parents had met, but they never told the story. Had it been a part of those “late nights”? “You have been working much too hard lately.”

Lily kissed her mother’s cheek and made her way up to her chamber, only to find one of the maids waiting for her there.

“This came for you while you were having tea, Mrs. Nichols,” the maid said as she laid a white box bound with red ribbons on the bed.

Lily studied it suspiciously, as if the harmless-looking cardboard might come to life and snap at her. There had been too many unpleasant surprises lately. “Delivered from who?”

“The messenger didn’t say. Will you need help dressing later, Mrs. Nichols?”

“Yes, thank you.”

As soon as the maid left, Lily carefully slid the ribbon off the box and reached for the lid. She noticed a small label emblazoned on the white and red lettering that
proclaimed it came from an exclusive French modiste. Curious, she tucked back the layers of tissue to reveal a silken, violet-scented cloud of pastel-colored underthings.

“Oh my,” Lily sighed. She lifted out pair after pair of featherlight drawers, pale pink, sky blue, butter yellow, and pure white, all with matching chemises and pairs of stockings tucked into satin bags. They were trimmed with the finest lace and gossamer ribbons, lovelier than anything she had in her wardrobe.

At the bottom of the box was a folded note, and Lily’s heart pounded as she reached for it. She already knew who had sent it, and the sight of the bold, spiky black lettering, the same writing she had seen on the notes that came with the violet bouquets, confirmed it.

With abject apologies
, the note said.
I hope these replacements are adequate for what I so carelessly destroyed. If so, come riding with me tomorrow. I promise to take you somewhere the horses can really run, no staid park pathways. Aidan.

Lily laid the note back down on the bed and stared at it as she rubbed a fold of pink silk between her fingers. Against her will, she found herself smiling.

If this was what Mary St. Claire had felt for her Huntington scoundrel so long ago, well surely the poor lady never stood a chance. And Lily feared that neither did she.

“W
hat is this place?” Lily asked. She drew in her horse at the crest of a hill and stared down at the vista that opened before her. It was beautiful, a rolling, pale green meadow that seemed to go on for miles, all empty and fresh and real under the gray sky. So different from the crowded London streets she saw every day.

She took a deep breath and let the clean, cool air fill her lungs. They had not ridden too far today, just over London Bridge and past Greenwich to where the old villages that surrounded London gave way to farms and dairies. Yet it felt like a different world.

Aidan drew his horse in beside hers and studied the land from under the shadowed brim of his hat. “I told you I would bring you someplace where you could run. Do you like it?”

“It’s beautiful. I forget there’s a world beyond the city sometimes.” Lily’s horse shifted restlessly beneath her, and she tightened her hold on the reins. “But will we be caught trespassing?”

Aidan laughed. “Not at all. This land belongs to my father, though he never comes here.”

“This is your family’s?” she said in surprise. She studied the meadow again, the way the grassy slopes rose to the crest of another hill. In the distance, she glimpsed the redbrick chimneys of a house.

“If this was mine, I would never leave,” she said. “It’s so quiet and peaceful.”

He laughed again. Aidan seemed to be in a good mood today, lighthearted, and he made Lily feel the same. “Well, we can’t have that, can we? Come, I’ll race you to the top of that hill.” He took off at a gallop, leaving Lily to chase him.

Their horses’ hooves pounded the earth as they raced, fleet-footed and light, and the wind tore at the veil of Lily’s hat. It caught her laughter and carried it away, and she felt her heart rise with the speed and movement.

It had been so long since she really got to ride! To feel the power of her horse beneath her, controlled by her light touch on the reins. To feel the wind on her skin, the sky stretched above her, and to know she was free. That nothing could hold her down.

She knew it was all an illusion, that too many things held her tied with unbreakable bonds and she couldn’t outrun them. But in that moment, racing across a country meadow with Aidan, they didn’t matter. Only the fleeting movement and the sound of his laughter mattered.

She leaned down low over her horse’s neck and urged it faster and faster until at last she pulled ahead of Aidan. They soared over a ditch and turned to thunder up the hill, almost neck and neck. Lily managed to beat him by mere inches. She threw back her head and shouted with triumph.

“I wish I could accuse you of cheating,” Aidan said,
laughter thick in his voice. “But I fear you beat me quite fairly. Where did you learn to ride like that?”

Lily twisted in her saddle to smile at him. He had lost his hat in the wild race, and his hair was tousled over his brow, gleaming in the gray light, and his blue eyes glittered.

Her stomach suddenly twisted with nervousness. He was really so outrageously good-looking. He was handsome in evening dress at the Devil’s Fancy, but here he looked like a Celtic god in the midst of the elements, so free and powerful.
Oh, I am in trouble.

She turned away from him to pat her horse’s neck. “I never even got on a horse until I was twelve, and my parents decided we should all learn to ride. I was completely terrified at first; the horse seemed so huge and unpredictable. But as soon as I sat in the saddle, it felt… right.”

“You’re a natural-born rider, then.”

“I do enjoy it. I just don’t get to ride very often, and a sedate walk in the park doesn’t count. But you must have been riding since birth.”

“Very nearly. I think my father gave us ponies for our first birthdays. But my brother is the real equestrian.”

Lily laughed. “If he’s better than you, then he must be a centaur.”

“Up to a rematch, then? I’m sure I’ll beat you this time.”

She tossed him a challenging smile. “Care to make a wager, Lord Aidan?”

“Prepare to lose, Miss St. Claire.”

They took off again, laughing, their horses flying as they leaped over fallen logs and dashed between the stands of trees. Lily suddenly realized something startling—she
was having
fun.
She never had fun, never laughed out of sheer enjoyment, never forgot her family duties, her past, her work. Right now there was only Aidan.

And it was Aidan who gave her that gift.

They drew up at a wrought-iron garden gate just as the first fat, cold raindrop hit Lily’s neck. She tilted back her head to stare up into the slate-gray sky, still laughing.

“I declare that a draw,” Aidan said.

“Only because you don’t want to admit you lost the wager.”

“Perhaps we should go discuss it inside before we get drenched,” he said.

“Dren—” Before Lily could even get the word out, the heavens opened and rain poured down on them.

Aidan caught her horse’s bridle and led her into an empty stable just beyond the trees. Once the horses were settled, he took her hand in his, and they ran laughing through the rain. They stumbled up the stone steps of the country house and through a door into an empty, echoing foyer.

Lily dragged her wet hat from her hair and dropped it to the stone floor as she stared around her. A curving staircase with an elaborately carved balustrade swept up until it vanished beyond the domed ceiling, where a fresco of a blue sky looked down at them. Open doors to either side revealed more half-empty rooms, the few pieces of furniture draped in pale canvas like ghosts.

“What is this place?” she whispered, as if she were afraid to awaken those ghosts.

“A hunting lodge,” Aidan answered. He ran his hands through his hair to slick the damp strands back from his face. His hair was almost black with rain, and without its softening frame, his face looked austere, sculpted.

“At least it used to be a hunting lodge,” he added. “I don’t think it has been used since my grandparents’ time. The woods that housed the game are mostly gone.”

Lily strolled slowly across the cold foyer to study the empty niches on the wall that had once held statues and objets d’art. Her boots clicked on the hard floor. “But you come here?”

“Sometimes,” Aidan said, a wary note in his voice. “It’s close to London but far enough away to be private. My brother sometimes comes here as well. It’s as near to town as he wants to get.”

Lily rested her hand on the curved end of the balustrade and stared into the shadows of the upper floors. Despite the deep silence of the house, the emptiness, she could sense the lingering memories of old parties and merriment. “If I had a house like this, I would never leave it.”

She heard the slow, deliberate tap of Aidan’s footsteps as he crossed the foyer to stand right behind her. The heat of his body made her shiver.

He laid his hand lightly on her waist. “Come see the rest of it,” he said.

Lily nodded, and he led her up the stairs. They passed sitting rooms and small, intimate dining rooms, window nooks enclosed with heavy draperies, small spaces made just for intimate conversation. She could see why this house had been built—for pleasure. But why had it stood empty and silent for so long? Why was it alone except for Aidan’s and his brother’s fleeting visits?

She paused to study a painting hung on the corridor wall. This seemed to be the only picture left in the house, and it was a very pretty one, a scene of a forest picnic party. Judging from the elaborate, lacy clothes and the
curled hairstyles, long on both the men and women, it was a Restoration-era party. Shadows and sunlight dappled over the gathering, illuminating their conversations and flirtations.

Lily wondered if Mary St. Claire was one of the painted figures smiling up into a swain’s eyes with no fear of what was to come. Had Mary walked through these very halls, arm in arm with her husband? Lily shivered and wrapped her arms around herself. The riding crop in her hand pressed hard to the corseted curve of her waist.

“You’re cold,” Aidan said. “Come, let’s find you something to wrap up in, and I’ll build a fire.”

“
You
can build a fire?” Lily teased, trying to push away that disquiet, the feeling that ghosts lingered in the house.

“Like you, I have hidden talents. I’ve learned many things out of necessity.” He led her into one of the bedchambers that opened off the corridor. It wasn’t a big room, but it was comfortable and cozy, with large windows looking down at the overgrown, windswept gardens. An old-fashioned four-poster bed was hung with faded red curtains and spread with an old, embroidered coverlet. It was the only furniture except for a carved clothes chest and two straight-backed chairs by the fireplace, with a pile of wood in between them.

Aidan stripped off his sodden coat and waistcoat and knelt by the grate to arrange the firewood.

Lily watched him, mesmerized. His damp shirt clung to his back and shoulders, outlining every shift of his muscles. He had a beautiful body, so elegant and yet so strong. So talented too; she couldn’t help but remember how that body felt as it moved over hers, driving her mindless with pleasure.

She turned away and laid her crop and gloves on the chest to unfasten the tiny buttons that ran down the front of her riding habit. The soft, fine wool was damp, clinging to the buttons, and her fingers were cold. That, plus the knowledge that Aidan was half dressed only a few feet from her, made her fumble with the fastenings.

“Let me help,” he said, and she spun around to find that he stood right behind her. A fire now crackled and grew in the fireplace, and he had removed his shirt to reveal the taut, glistening expanse of pale gold skin and the width of his shoulders.