Scandal of the Year (15 page)

Julia began to play, and the beautiful notes of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata poured from her instrument in a delicate stream. Aidan managed to last about fifteen seconds before looking up again, and when he did, he lost all hope of keeping track of where little Sally McGill might have put her frog.

Julia’s head was tilted slightly in a pensive pose, and the dreamy, faraway look on her face riveted him. He wondered if she was even reading the notes, or if she was playing the entire piece from memory. When she closed her eyes, he had his answer.

Her lips parted and her head fell back, exposing fully the bare, luscious column of her throat, and it was so enticing, so erotic, that the arousal he’d been trying to keep at bay all evening flared up inside him at once, as quick and hot as the flare of a match.

Some things were just too much for any man, and Aidan gave up the fight. That night at Covent Garden a few weeks ago, he’d striven to remember the details of what had happened in Cornwall, but now, he didn’t even try. Instead, he imagined it, recreating in the space of a few heartbeats what might have been, conjuring luscious images that spread the arousal through his body like wildfire.

He had to keep it contained lest what he felt became evident to the girl opposite him, who had done nothing to deserve his wayward thoughts and lack of attention. He jerked in his seat, took a hefty swallow of port, and forced his gaze back to his companion.

“And what,” Miss McGill was saying, “do you think happened next?”

“I can’t imagine,” he answered truthfully.

“The clock struck five!”

Aidan stared at her blankly, and she was forced to explain. “That’s where she’d hidden the frog! It popped out of the clock along with the cuckoo, and landed with a splat right on top of the vicar’s head!” Miss McGill laughed at the memory evoked by her own story, laughed so hard, in fact, that she began snorting through her nose.

Aidan laughed, too, forcing a polite chuckle, which was all he could manage in the circumstances. “Charming,” he said, and took another swallow of port. “Absolutely charming.”

With the snorting laughter of Miss McGill still echoing in his ears and lust for Julia flooding through his body, Aidan realized this house party was going to be a very long fortnight. If he managed to get through it with his honor intact, he wouldn’t just be cured of Julia. He’d be a candidate for sainthood.

Breakfast at large country house parties usually consisted of warming dishes on the sideboard from eight o’clock until eleven, and the Danbury household kept to this custom. Julia wasn’t in the dining room when Aidan came down at nine, and since he’d spent most of the night engaged in erotic dreams about her, he was rather glad of her absence from the table.

Miss McGill was there, however, and when she gave him a big, beaming smile, Aidan made short work of his bacon and kidneys, gulped down his tea, and beat a quick retreat to the outdoors, thinking a walk in the cool morning air would do him good.

He skirted the edge of the long south lawn where some of the guests were playing croquet, passed the tennis courts where a footman was chalking the lines for later in the day, and strolled through the rose garden. When he reached the millpond at the edge of the woods, he started to turn around and go back, but then he saw Julia, and he stopped.

She was walking along the edge of the pond, Spike at her side, and when she circled the water, she saw him and also came to a halt.

He took a step toward her, and she turned as if she hadn’t seen him, veering off the main path, away from the pond. A moment later, she ducked into a thicket of rhododendrons, and disappeared.

She was avoiding him, he realized in surprise. But why?

Perhaps she’d spent a restless night, too. Perhaps she’d had some erotic dreams about him. Perhaps she’d tossed and turned and felt the same hot, desperate need he’d spent the night feeling. It was unlikely, he knew. Julia always seemed cool and polished, always ready with a witty remark, always in complete command of herself. He couldn’t imagine her hot and desperate.

Looking back, he realized it had always been that way. Unavailable to him from the very first, she had always been the forbidden fruit he craved, and though he had always tried to deny it or suppress it, it had always been there, ever since that day on the footbridge. She knew that, she’d always known. And even now, after she’d used that knowledge for her own purposes, he still burned for her, while she still remained aloof, cool, and polished. Even without a husband, she seemed curiously unobtainable and untouchable, almost as if there was a wall of glass around her. But what was beneath that polished surface?

He thought about that day in Cornwall, of how brazenly seductive she’d been. What had she felt that day? Had she wanted him at all? When he’d woken up and seen Yardley standing in the doorway, when he’d realized how thoroughly he’d been used, he’d concluded that all the seduction was an act by a woman with a cold heart and a ruthless purpose, but the woman in the library had not seemed cold and ruthless at all. She’d looked soft, and warm, and vulnerable. And then she’d shoved Phoebe Marlowe in his face. And then Eileen McGill. And now she was avoiding him.

Aidan stared at the break in the rhododendrons where she’d pushed through them to get away, and he took a step forward, but then he stopped.

He ought to let her go. He ought to go back to the house, join the others on the lawn, challenge Paul to a chess game—anything but go after her. And yet the idea that she might have spent the night feeling some of what he felt, that underneath her cool veneer she might want him as much as he wanted her, was too irresistible to ignore.

He retreated back amid the trees and came around from another path, one that intersected with the one she was now walking. This was a chance to get closer to the truth, to see again the soft, vulnerable woman he’d seen in the library, and he wasn’t going to waste it.

Spike, however, appeared to have different ideas about the matter. As Aidan approached where they had stopped by a fountain, his footsteps on the gravel alerted the animal, who looked up from the clump of thyme he was sniffing and gave a low growl of warning.

Julia turned as well, and the moment she saw him, she gave a glance around as if seeking a means of escape or a diversion. Finding none, she returned her attention to him with a charming smile, but he saw the artificial quality of it. She did not seem glad to see him, but he was undeterred.

Spike growled again, and Julia’s hand tightened on the leash in her gloved fingers. “Spike,” she admonished, and the animal quieted.

“Good morning,” Aidan greeted her, coming closer, keeping a wary eye on the animal. “You really should do something about that dog,” he said, halting in front of her. “He’s a menace.”

“You only say that because you don’t like him,” she said, reaching down to pat Spike’s flank before turning to continue down the path.

“I’m not the one who growls every time we meet, Julia,” Aidan pointed out as he fell in step beside her. “Still, one of these days, I shall be forced to show your dog that I am not only bigger than he is, but also far more ferocious when I choose to be.”

“Are you?” She shot a sideways glance at him. “I’ve never seen your ferocious side.”

“If that animal growls at me again, you will.”

Today, however, Spike deigned to be gracious. He allowed this interloper to walk with them, although he did keep his short, stout body firmly planted between Aidan and his mistress.

“Have you been out walking long this morning?” she asked as they merged into the thickly planted grove of beech trees.

“I only came down about twenty minutes ago.”

“How terribly indolent of you, Aidan, to stay abed so long.”

He didn’t tell her his indolence was the result of a very restless night.

“I’ve been down for over an hour,” she added.

“You have?” He shot her a dubious look that made her laugh. “You, up and about at eight o’clock in the morning?”

“I am capable of it, you know,” she assured him with a smile.

“Well, you can’t really blame me for having doubts. I seem to recall that at Pixy Cove, you were nearly always the last one down to the beach.”

“Are you saying I’m lazy?” she demanded, but the humor in her voice told him she wasn’t insulted. “Pixy Cove’s different. When I’m there, I’m on holiday. Here, I have things to do and no time to laze the day away. I’ve been hard at work on your behalf, I’ll have you know.”

“My behalf?”

“Yes. I’ve been through all the new invitations your secretary forwarded. What with helping Aunt Gennie prepare for the house party, this morning’s the first chance I’ve had to set to, and there are some definite possibilities. Shall we discuss them after dinner?”

Somehow, he couldn’t muster much enthusiasm, but he nodded.

“Also there are several young ladies who live nearby with whom you should become acquainted. We may want to involve Aunt Gennie in that. She knows the local gentry hereabouts far better than I do.”

“Eugenia?” He groaned. “No. Her matchmaking efforts I can well do without. She ushered me over to Miss McGill last night with so much eagerness, you’d have thought the girl was her own daughter.”

She made a choked sound, but when she spoke, her voice was bland. “Yes, so I saw.”

“It was not amusing, Julia.”

“Yes, it was. Just not to you.” She gestured to another path. “As to Aunt Gennie,” Julia went on as they turned in that direction, “you can’t really blame her. She feels some responsibility for you still being a bachelor. She was chaperoning Beatrix at Pixy Cove, you know, and to her mind, if she’d been a more diligent chaperone, you never would have caught Trix and Will in a compromising situation. And she finds it reassuring to know that you are considering matrimony again, proving that her negligence caused no permanent damage.”

“I can understand that. Just don’t let her labor under any misapprehensions that I harbor a romantic interest in Miss McGill.”

“What, you didn’t like Eileen?” Julia asked, actually sounding surprised. But as they stopped to let Spike investigate an intriguing smell amid the rhododendrons along the path, Aidan shot a sideways glance at her and saw that upward curve at the edges of her lips. “But I don’t understand. She’s a very sweet girl.”

“Yes, she is,” he agreed, “and I’m not the least bit interested in her. But I suspect you knew I wouldn’t be.”

Her smile faded, and suddenly, she seemed just as interested in the flowers bordering the path as Spike was. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said, leaning forward to pluck off a few spent blossoms.

“Don’t you? Hmm . . . amazing that someone who was so perceptive about what I would think of Felicia Vale should be so obtuse when it comes to Eileen McGill.”

She still didn’t look at him. “Attraction is sometimes an inexplicable thing, and Eileen is a remarkably pretty girl. How was I to know she wouldn’t attract you?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Perhaps the fact that she snorts when she laughs might have been a clue?”

“What does that have to do with anything? Really, Aidan, it’s a bit shallow of you, isn’t it, to judge a woman by her laugh? For all I knew, you might have been captivated enough to overlook it, or perhaps even find it endearing. You might have decided on the spot you want to spend your life with her.”

He thought of a life of upside-down drawers and frogs popping out of clocks, and he shuddered. “While I’m sure Miss McGill will make some man an excellent wife, I can safely say I will never be that man.”

She shrugged. “All right, then. You don’t want Eileen. Now I know.”

“I think you knew it all along.” He leaned sideways, easing closer to her while allowing Spike to remain between them. He studied her profile, appreciating with pure masculine pleasure the luminous flush of pink that spread across her cheek, liking the finely molded line of her chin and the delicate shape of her ear. He imagined the velvety softness of her earlobe against his mouth and the satiny texture of her inky black hair sliding through his fingers. “I think you were perfectly aware of Miss McGill’s fondness for practical jokes, and you knew what my reaction to that sort of woman would be. So you engineered a little practical joke of your own.”

She made a smothered sound, trying for all she was worth not to laugh and give the show away. “Why on earth would I do such a thing?”

“To bedevil me, perhaps? You seem quite fond of that particular sport.” He paused, and as he studied her, he thought again of how she’d looked in the library, and a deeper revelation occurred to him, one that was even more intriguing and dangerous than the desire he thought he’d seen in her face. “But bedeviling me isn’t really the reason you had Eugenia shove Miss McGill in my direction, is it?” he added softly.

Her amusement vanished. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Don’t you? Eileen McGill was the first unmarried girl you could use to block my path.” He moved closer. “My path to you.”

“You hired me to introduce you to potential brides.”

“Not precisely. I hired you to assist me with forming a wider circle of acquaintance.”

“With a view to matrimony. And anyway,” she added, her voice rising a notch in obvious agitation, “I didn’t shove Eileen at you!” With a tug on Spike’s leash, she continued down the path.