One Whisper Away (21 page)

“Cecily, for God’s sake.”

“If you are asking if she saw you waltzing with the overtly friendly Mrs. Blackwood, I am going to say yes, she did.” His tall cousin grinned. “Your disordered life is making mine a lot more amusing, I admit.”

“Glad I can be a source of entertainment,” Jonathan muttered and strode off through the crowd.

 

She didn’t see him coming, but sensed it from the sudden glances of the people standing around her. It was a small ripple in the crowd, as if they parted naturally, and really, from the interest in her arrival, Cecily had gathered that the denizens of London’s elite circles already knew Lord Augustine had offered for her hand in marriage.

Even though he was walking up behind her and wasn’t in direct view, the looks on the faces of the women alone would have announced his arrival.

Jealousy was a new emotion and not a particularly welcome one. When she’d entered the ballroom in the wake of her grandmother and seen Jonathan on the dance floor with a very beautiful woman pressed suggestively against him, she had experienced a definite pang. Mrs. Blackwood had actually reached up and touched his face, and even from a considerable distance there had been no mistaking the flirtatious gesture. Cecily’s reaction had been a white-hot flash of resentment.

It would not do to become possessive of a man who had made it clear he had no intention of staying in England.

But when she heard his voice, the foreign inflection something she found familiar now, Cecily experienced another pang, this one of something deeper, something tumultuous and, she feared, extremely naive.

She wanted to see him. No, she
desperately
wanted to see him. The second emotion was quite different from the first.

“I’ve been waiting.”

She turned, the small group of people around her having fallen silent anyway, and summoned a smile. Jonathan bowed, his evening attire impeccable, his hair once again held back, this time, she noted as he took her hand and bent over it, with a strip of what looked like tanned leather laced through with shining black beads. Treacherously, that brought back memories of their shared kiss that afternoon and how she’d picked up that stray piece of ebony satin from the floor after he’d left, taking it upstairs to put it in her jewelry case as if it was something precious. When he straightened, without doing much than giving a cursory nod at her small group of friends, he murmured, “Dance with me.”

“Excuse us,” she barely managed to say before he tugged her away by the hand toward the marble dance floor, the clasp of his fingers firm. She said breathlessly as she caught up her skirts to keep up with his long strides, “Are we in some sort of hurry?”

He set his hand at her waist when they stopped, his smile so beautiful that it had a most peculiar effect on her stomach. “I wish I could say I was a patient man, but I’m not. We are the center of the attention of anyone who can see us in this throng, and before our engagement becomes even more public I would very much like to talk to you about our . . . arrangement. I think a waltz is about as much privacy as we are going to manage this evening. Do you mind?”

“N-no . . . of course not.”

He didn’t seem to notice the slight stammer. “We definitely need to make sure we want the same result from this engagement.”

A twinge of panic assailed her. Was he going to back out
now
? Cecily tilted her face up, doing her best not to let anything but cool composure show. “How so, my lord? Have you decided you prefer Mrs. Blackwood instead?”

“What?” He genuinely looked blank for a moment and then his dark eyes narrowed. “Oh . . . hell, Cecily, trust me, no.”

Maybe it was his signature lack of careful, polite speech, but she believed him, especially as he tugged her closer and took her hand.

The music started then, and at least she was a little more relaxed as they began to dance, for he sounded sincere, though under his skin there was a hint of a deeper color. Jonathan informed her, “That’s not even worth discussing. I want to talk about the end of our bargain.”

He waltzed quite well for someone who presumably was more at home in the forest than on a dance floor, which further dispelled some of the myths about him but didn’t really surprise her, for he had the muscled body of a true athlete. “Already? It hasn’t even officially begun yet.”

“Did your father speak with you?” He swung her into a turn with lithe grace.

“Yes.”

“And?”

The intensity in his dark eyes made her forget her pique over the forward Mrs. Blackwood, and truthfully, his dismissal of the woman had sounded genuine. She smiled. “Expect a ducal summons tomorrow. He is amenable to your proposal.”

“I’ll respond, but only if the situation is settled between us.”

What the devil did that mean? Her brow knitted. “I thought it
was
settled.”

The sinewy hand holding hers tightened. “Not quite. If you remember the first time I kissed you—and I certainly hope you do—I said I agreed to an engagement on two conditions, but I only gave you one of them. I never told you the second condition on which I accept our bargain.”

He hadn’t, true. And as if she could forget that first tender, and most enlightening, kiss. Or the second. And the third one, that afternoon, had been quite different and infinitely intriguing. “What is it?”

“I want you to marry me.”

At first she wasn’t sure she quite understood. The music and the crowd were both loud, and he’d said the words quietly. Cecily stared up at him. “What?”

“Marry me.”

Was he really proposing or was this part of the playacting they’d agreed upon? Uncertain, a little shaken, she was lucky his hold was secure and his footing sure as they moved among the throng of other dancers, for otherwise she would have stumbled.

At her silence, Jonathan clarified in a calm, decisive voice: “Become my wife in truth so we are not perpetrating a farce of an engagement on both our families, so neither of us is perjuring ourself to society—not that I care about that aspect of it for myself, but your reputation
does
matter to me—and for the sake of my sisters, I do not want to cause further whispers. Let’s be practical—if we break our engagement one of us will have to take the blame. I would shoulder it without qualms if it wasn’t for the other people it would injure. If we do this, I want it to be real.”

Truly?

Trying to define the rush of her response to that question as she registered his sincerity was difficult. Myriad emotions swept through her. Exhilaration, doubt, joy, fear, excitement, more joy, which surprised her, because . . .

No, it didn’t surprise her, she had to acknowledge, because his potent male beauty was addictive, heady, and she also liked his complete lack of affectation, his clear intelligence . . . everything. She even liked his deplorable habit of swearing in front of her.

Jonathan leaned closer to whisper, “Besides what I just said, I have another compelling, less honorable reason, my lovely English lady. I do not trust myself much longer to not seduce you.”

Her heart had started to pound. He had that unfortunate effect on her. Because she was so off balance, she said tartly, “What if I said I fully trust my ability to resist your charms, Augustine?”

“Then you’d be lying.”

“You are so sure?” She trembled just a fraction and no doubt, as close as he held her—scandalously close—he could feel it.

His smile was slow and arrogant and wicked.
Extremely
wicked. “Positive.”

Recklessly—but then, he made her reckless; he had from the moment they’d met—she whispered back, “I think you’d have to prove that to me, my lord.”

T
hey were very beautiful together as they danced, her sister and her fiancé, he so dark and male, she so blond and feminine. Though, Eleanor noted, Lord Augustine was as usual flaunting propriety by holding Cecily entirely too close, and yet again had whispered something in her ear in front of everyone. The engagement was the talk of the evening, but at least in this case his forward behavior would be excused, for he was willing to pay the ultimate price a bachelor could offer.

Marriage.

“What do you think?” Roderick’s voice was diffident, as if the question was abstract, though Eleanor knew her brother usually was fairly straightforward. He’d sought her out and actually taken a chair next to her, where she’d been doing her best to hide in a corner of the room.

“About Cecily and her unusual choice in a husband?” She pretended to need her fan, though the evening had turned cool and damp. “I am not surprised. From the moment they met there has been a flirtation with scandal, so maybe this is best. I’m glad he is willing to come up to scratch, because goodness knows he has already—”

She stopped just short of saying bluntly that she wasn’t at all sure Jonathan Bourne couldn’t steal more than just a kiss or two from their sister. Though Cecily was normally levelheaded, she hadn’t shown a lot of good judgment when it came to the earl.

“Goodness knows he has already what?” Roderick asked, stylish in his evening wear, his face drawn into a glower. “All along I wondered if I should have had a word or two with his lordship over—”

“They’re engaged,” she interrupted. “Perhaps not formally yet, but they will be.”

“It sounds to me like they
need
to be,” he muttered. “Has the bastard touched her?”

“Actually, I believe he is quite legally the earl or he wouldn’t have gained an audience with Father this afternoon.”

“Devil take it, Elle, I wasn’t being literal. You know what I meant.”

Luckily she was able to avoid commenting because of the imminent approach of a small group of young ladies, who were seemingly just chatting and laughing, but had a singular intent, and that was to catch the attention of the heir of the Duke of Eddington. She knew better than to suppose that this secluded corner held any other allure, and so did Roderick. Alarm replaced suspicion, and as far as Eleanor could tell Cecily’s coming marriage was dismissed for the greater need of self-preservation, and her older brother scrambled to his feet with a muttered excuse and fled in the direction of the smoking room.

Had she been in the mood for it, she would have found it humorous, but truly, she now wished she’d just begged off attending this evening, because even as Roderick beat a hasty retreat, Lord Drury approached in the wake of the bevy of disappointed debutantes.

No
. Sitting there, trying to hide in her corner, she thought emphatically,
no
. She’d already humiliated herself in front of the man earlier that afternoon. She did not want to discuss that, or her sister’s reputed engagement to someone else when he was undoubtedly disappointed, and maybe a little embarrassed in his own right at not quite being jilted but at least being passed over when all of London knew of his interest.

But she’d run away already once today, and doing it again . . . well, that was quite unforgivable. Besides, there was really nowhere to go.

So she stayed, her bottom planted firmly in the chair, and wished herself just about anywhere else.

“Is it true?” he asked without preamble, coming to stand next to her chair, his moody gaze on the dance floor. “With your forthright nature, I knew you would tell me.”

Well, she
had
left him adrift in the gardens, so she could hardly fault his manners in failing to offer a proper greeting. This evening he wore a fawn coat and white breeches, the pale colors suiting his fair coloring. The slight froth of lace at his sleeves was indicative of his usual elegance without being overdone, and his cravat was intricately tied. His hair was usually immaculate, but now it was slightly ruffled, as if he might have run his hand through it, no doubt in agitation over the whispers about the woman he wanted to marry choosing someone else.

It reminded Eleanor of the first time she’d seen him, last season on her debut. Love at first sight? It had certainly seemed like the way the experience was described. Because he knew Roderick, he was one of the first gentlemen introduced to her, and she’d gone home that evening with stars in her eyes because the viscount had danced with her.

Later, of course, she realized that it was a courtesy to her status as the daughter of a duke and his friend’s sister, but Lord Drury had been charming and if he’d found her awkward and nervous, he’d shown no sign of it. Neither did he avoid her later, unlike some of the men who had initially shown interest but because she wasn’t a simpering idiot in their presence changed their minds about her possible desirability as a wife. Throughout that increasingly grueling social whirl last year, Elijah Winters had continued to dutifully ask for a waltz now and again, so at least while she might have been one of the biggest failures of the debutantes, she didn’t look like a complete wallflower.

So she owed him the truth. “Yes. It’s true.”

“Ah.”

“I’m sorry,” she murmured, clasping her hands together.

“Don’t be. In a philosophical sense, I suppose this is a better course of events than if she had married me. What if she had later met Augustine and regretted her choice?” His voice held a tinge of irony. “I don’t think of myself as a man who has an overabundance of pride, but I do wish for a faithful wife.”

“Cecily would never stray.” Eleanor stood abruptly, facing him, her objection vehement, her arms stiff at her sides. Whatever her feelings about the situation, she could not tolerate criticism of her sister. Had Cecily deserved the doubts about her character, Eleanor would still defend her, but she absolutely didn’t deserve them. “You are understandably disappointed, my lord, but her loyalty is not in question.”

“Neither, apparently, is yours.” He looked down at her undoubtedly flushed face. “Don’t take offense. I wasn’t criticizing her or casting aspersions, but merely intimating that from what I just witnessed of their first public dance, her heart seems to be involved. That’s all. I’ve no choice but to concede the field.”