Promise Me Forever (22 page)

It would have been easier if she’d never gone to him that first night, easier still if she’d never come to his estate, if they hadn’t renewed their acquaintance to the great extent that they had. She couldn’t imagine a day or a night without him in it. Didn’t know how she would survive when they were no longer together.

And so she hoarded all the moments, all the little details of their time together.

The way his unruly hair would fall across his brow. At some point in his life he must have reconciled himself to the fact that it couldn’t be controlled because he never swept it back. So she took to doing it for him. Often, simply for the plea sure it gave her to touch him, and in public, it seemed such an innocent touching. Yet intimate as well, because his dark eyes would darken further and she would know that he was remembering when she brushed it back after they made love.

The way he buttoned his shirt, from the bottom up. The way he unbuttoned it, loosening just enough buttons so he could pull it off over his head, as though that got him out of his clothes more quickly and into bed with her.

His impatience at getting her out of her clothes. His patience with her once he had. The way he held her as he slept, always touching her, until it was time to return her to her bedchamber.

The way she would wake up to find him standing at the window, staring out at the night sky. The way he would grin and come back to bed once he realized she was awake.

Their whispers in the dark, their murmurings in the moonlight. The many smiles, the abundant laughter, the joy, the absolute joy that had been absent from her life for so long, that she’d despaired ever again finding…

She found it long before she left for Texas.

And she wondered how she would survive when he was no longer sharing her days and nights.

Their time at Sachse Hall was coming to a close, and as they all sat at a round table on the veranda, enjoying afternoon tea and nibbling on cucumber sandwiches, Lauren couldn’t help but wish that they had one more day, one more night, away from London. But then tomorrow she would wish for the same thing yet again. And the day after.

It was strange that in the last few days, she’d not once thought of Texas or longed for it. She’d been content simply to be with Tom. To watch him at work and at play. To enjoy the evening and the days and the nights.

“So tomorrow we leave this idyllic sanctuary and return to the reality of the Season,” Rhys said.

“You’re going to make me start to feel guilty for subjecting you to the rigors of the Season,” Lydia said.

He took her hand, pressed a kiss to her knuckles, and smiled. “As long as I’m with you, I can endure anything.”

The way he looked at her, Lauren didn’t think he was enduring much at all. Had Lydia been right? Was Lauren’s unhappiness a result of the fact that her heart had never been in England? Was it possible that now it was?

“I suppose we shall have to leave early in the morning so we’ll have plenty of time to ready ourselves for Aunt Elizabeth’s ball,” Lydia said.

“Mama always gets so nervous,” Lauren confessed.

“You wouldn’t know it by looking at her.”

“Do we ever know what anyone truly thinks simply by looking at them?”

“I suspect we shall know what Whithaven thinks,” Lydia said.

“I’ll take care of Whithaven,” Tom said.

“Have it all planned out, do you?” Rhys asked.

“Down to the smallest detail.”

“What are you going to do?” Lauren asked.

Tom winked. “Trust me. I seriously doubt it’s something my father would have done.”

I
t was all madness and mayhem when Lauren arrived home. After she said good-bye to Tom with a promise of the first dance, and the servants had carted her trunks upstairs, she went in search of her mother and found her in the ballroom, overseeing the arrangements of flowers.

Yellow roses. So many yellow roses.

She gave her mother a tight hug before glancing all around. “What ever possessed you to choose yellow roses?”

“Tom made arrangements for their delivery before you left for the country.”

She looked at her mother. “All of them?”

Her mother nodded. “He thought you might
need a little bit of Texas upon your return. How was your time away?”

“Confusing.” Lauren walked to a table and pulled a long-stemmed rose from a vase, sniffed the delicate fragrance. “When Ravenleigh asked you to leave Texas, did you have no doubts that you were making the right decision?”

“Of course I had doubts.”

She faced her mother. “When you come to a fork in the road, how do you know which path leads to happiness?”

“You don’t. You simply make the best decision you can make and hope for the best. And sometimes you make very bad decisions, and you live with them.”

Lauren nodded, sniffed the rose again. “I learned a lot about Tom while I was away. A lot about myself as well.”

“And what conclusions did you come to?”

“I don’t know yet.”

Standing in the night shadows of a giant tree where the glow from the gaslight didn’t hit him, Tom wished he had a bottle of whiskey to place between his lips instead of an unlit cigar.

He cursed Lauren for accurately predicting he would face a moment like this, a moment that would require he gather up his courage.

Tom had arrived in a carriage, one of what seemed like a hundred passing along the cobbled
drive, stopping in front of Ravenleigh’s house, before meandering on to park elsewhere. The procession was still going strong.

Tom observed the people in their fancy clothes alighting from their coaches and carriages. He heard their relaxed laughter. He watched as no one hesitated to walk up the sweeping steps and enter through the doors into what, for him, he was certain was going to be hell.

Music began to drift out onto the air, and he knew he couldn’t put off the inevitable much longer.

He withdrew his cigar from his mouth, held it toward the light, and stared at it. He’d almost bitten through the thing, made it too nasty to return to his jacket pocket. With regret for the loss of an expensive cigar, he tossed it into the hedges behind him.

He thought about the first time he’d faced a stampede, the way he’d trembled in his boots, because he hadn’t known what to do. In the end, he’d let his gut instincts guide him. He figured he just had to do the same at the ball.

He took as deep a breath as he could—which wasn’t much considering the snug fit of his clothes. Lauren was on the other side of those doors. He was doing this as much for her as for himself.

The last time he’d attended a ball, he’d acted like a cowboy. This time he intended to act like the nobleman he was.

Lauren was beginning to think that Tom wasn’t going to come, and she could hardly blame him. She knew what it was to attend a ball where she would be the object of gossip, and while Tom might have done something this afternoon to make things right with Whithaven, he had no guarantees that anyone else would hear of his apology.

She was standing beside her mother and stepfather at the foot of the sweeping stairs that led down to the glittering ballroom. The ballroom was packed. It had been a while since anyone had arrived and walked down the stairs.

“Well, I suppose we can begin to mingle,” her mother said.

“I know Tom was going to come,” Lauren said.

“I’m sure he’ll find us once he arrives.”

Then Lauren noticed a quieting, a hush falling over the room, the music ceasing to play, people turning. She looked toward the stairs, and there he was standing at the top: proud, bold, regal. His gaze never wavering. He allowed enough time for everyone to notice him before he began his slow descent of the stairs.

When he arrived at the bottom, he bowed to her stepfather, then took her mother’s hand and pressed a kiss to the back of her gloved hand. “I appreciate the welcome into your home.”

“I’m certain I won’t regret it.”

A corner of his mouth hitched up. “If you do, I’ll hand you the horse whip.”

He stepped over to Lauren, kissed her hand as well.

“Tom, if I’d known that you planned to stand up there alone—”

“I’m not finished yet, darlin’.” He winked. “Save a dance for me.”

No one had yet to move although Lauren heard the first hint of whispering when Tom turned away from her. People parted in silence as he made his way through the crowd, straight toward the tallest and gangliest lord among them. She halfway expected Whithaven to turn on his heel and run. But he didn’t. To her surprise, he stood his ground, although looking a bit nervous, and at that moment, she thought she might have gained a bit more respect for him. These men lived a much less harsh life than the men she’d known in Texas, and it was often easy to overlook the fact that they had steel in their backbones. She thought she could even detect a bit of admiration for the earl mirrored in Tom’s expression as he came to a halt before him. The poor man’s nose was slightly swollen, and the bruising around his eyes had faded to a ghastly yellow.

“Whithaven,” Tom said, his deep baritone throwing his voice out for all to hear. “I owe you an apology.”

“I daresay you do.”

“I had no call to punch you, but that’s the way we do it in Texas. Cowboys are men of action more than words, and we don’t take well to having our ladies insulted.”

“Well, I meant no insult, of course; I was simply trying to spare you…I didn’t realize that you considered her…well…already your lady,” he stammered to a stop. “My apologies as well.”

Tom held out his hand. “Accepted.”

Looking somewhat like a startled raccoon with the flesh around his eyes still discolored, Whithaven took Tom’s hand. “Jolly good.”

There was a general murmuring as Whithaven turned and walked away, a smug smile on his face as though he’d somehow managed to win. Music started playing and with tears in her eyes, Lauren didn’t wait for Tom to return to her side. She strolled through the crowd until she reached him, this man who had felt he had something to prove and had just proven it. She studied him, scrutinizing the face that she knew so well, the man she’d thought she’d known, who’d held her, kissed her passionately, made love to her…

She couldn’t have held any more admiration for him.

“May I have the honor of this dance, my lord?”

He grinned. “Darlin’, you can have as many as you want.”

“Considering you shall be the object of specula
tion and gossip this evening, I might consent to give you more than two.”

Laughing, he took her into his arms.

“You handled that remarkably well, Tom.”

“The one thing I’ve always been is honest in my dealings with other men. These men here deserve no less.”

“I heard your words. Am I your lady?”

“How could you doubt it, Lauren? For as long as you’re here.”

Then what, she wondered. Would she ever again be anyone’s lady?

They danced a scandalous four dances in a row. Tom didn’t care about rules. He didn’t care what others thought. She would be leaving soon, and as he told her repeatedly, he was saving up for the time when she was gone.

She grew tired of arguing with him.

“At least dance with Mama and my sisters,” Lauren said. “I’m going to take a few moments to see to my toilette.”

“Don’t be gone long.”

“I won’t be.” She wanted to reach up and kiss his cheek to reassure him. Instead, she simply patted his arm.

She walked up the stairs to the main salon, greeted ladies in passing as she strolled down the hallway to the main entry. There she took the grand sweeping stairs that led up to the next level.
Her dance card remained unmarked, but she wasn’t bothered by that. She suspected all her dances would be with Tom and as much as she was scolding him, she really didn’t mind. Like him, she wanted to hoard their moments together for after she had left.

She reached the next landing and smiled at the woman who’d spotted her and had waited for her arrival before starting her descent.

“Hello, Lady Blythe.”

“It’s not fair,” Lady Blythe said in a mean-spirited whisper.

“What’s not?” Lauren asked, leaning in.

“You stole Kimburton from me. I’ve loved him forever, and now he won’t even come to London for the Season. Sachse shows the least bit of interest in me, and you snatch him away as well.”

“His interest—”

“Was on me. He repeatedly called me darling.”

“He calls all ladies darlin’. It doesn’t mean anything.”

“It means
everything
. You think his apology to Whithaven makes everything all right. But how will you feel when all of London knows that you have stayed in his residence through the night?”

Staring at her, Lauren shook her head. “You can’t—”

“Know? I do know. I was watching from my carriage after Harrington’s ball. Then you went off to the country with him—”

“You’ve been spying on him?”

“Spying on him is innocent compared with what you’ve been doing.”

“You have no idea what I’ve been doing, and it’s none of your business anyway.”

She started to walk by, and Lady Blythe grabbed her arm. “I’ll ruin you. I’ll make it so no gentleman will dare to consider marrying you. Not even Sachse. You had your chance with Kimburton. Sachse belongs to me.”

“You want him only because of the coins in his pockets and the titles that he wears. I want him because I love—” Lauren stopped. Dear God, but she did love him. All the plans she’d been making hadn’t been to return to Texas, but to return to Tom. She’d simply refused to recognize it, to acknowledge it, because for a time she’d thought he’d abandoned her. But he hadn’t. In a way, by not trusting him, she’d abandoned him.

She had to tell him, tell him what she felt. She wasn’t going to go back to Texas. She wanted to stay in England.

She turned for the stairs. She had to find him. Immediately.

“No, you can’t have him!”

She heard the shrill cry, felt the shove at her back, lost her balance, screamed as she tumbled down the hard marble steps, as pain ricocheted through her head and blackness descended.