The Rogue and the Rival (14 page)

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Authors: Maya Rodale

BOOK: The Rogue and the Rival
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And then Angela walked into his room.
Phillip slipped the card back into the deck and shuffled again.
“I brought you breakfast,” she said in that voice of hers. No wonder he hadn’t been craving brandy, since he got to hear that voice. But unlike her voice, brandy took away the thoughts.
“Thank you,” he said with a nod. “Just set it over on the table. Please.”
“Is there anything else you want?” Phillip heard the hesitation in her voice.
“No, thank you.” He couldn’t look at her now. Not when he was trying not to lust after her or, God forbid, fall in love with her.
“You look like you could use a shave.”
He ran his hand along his jaw. She was right. “I guess.”
“Phillip . . .” Her voice trailed off, but he still knew the question she was going to ask:
Is something wrong?
He didn’t feel like answering that question, so he turned his back to her and looked out the window. And thus he stayed until he heard the door shut.
She would be angry, perhaps hurt by his sudden coldness. But she knew he was a self-absorbed scoundrel. She was trying so hard to be good, and he was wicked to the bone. He would have to go.
 
Later that afternoon, Angela was still angry. She took it out on the carrots she was chopping for supper.
Thwack thwack
thwack
. The knife sliced through them with ease and slammed into the wooden table beneath. Sometimes she hit so hard that the knife got stuck in the wood, but it was no trouble for her to yank it back out and keep slicing the poor carrots into bits.
This morning, when she brought him breakfast, he had been cold and distant. Which she might not have minded, if it hadn’t been such a stark contrast to his usual flirtatious, teasing, and sly behavior.
She had brought him the things to shave a short while later, and again, it was the same: “Thank you. Set it over there.” And then he stared out the window, refusing to look at her. When he wasn’t looking outside, he was shuffling the deck of cards, pulling out a card, staring at it for a second before slipping it back in the deck.
She knew he was remembering stories to go with each card. Phillip did not share the stories with her this time, but she could imagine them. All the wine and women that went along with them. Women who probably just threw themselves at him, who didn’t cut kisses short and flee. Who weren’t about to take vows of chastity. Women who just offered themselves up to him for the taking.
Women who weren’t her.
Thwack thwack thwack.
She had brought him lunch, and it was still the same. She reminded him that she ought to check on his wounds, and he declared it unnecessary.
And then Angela spent the afternoon thinking of things she could possibly bring him or, rather, excuses to go to him. And that was sick and deranged, because she was so clearly unwanted. And she so much wanted to be wanted, though it shamed her to admit it.
“Angela, are you all right?” asked Penelope, who was seated across the table and peeling potatoes.
“I’m fine.”
“You really are attacking those carrots,” Lady Katherine added, as she diced onions. Angela set down her knife.
“What did you say to him?” Angela demanded of the abbess.
All the others in the kitchen hushed, for no one ever challenged the abbess.
“I beg your pardon?” Lady Katherine did not seem angry at the insubordination, simply confused.
“This morning, he was . . .” She couldn’t find the words. And the ones she could find she didn’t want to say: this morning he seemed to like her. “He has been cold to me all day, since you spoke to him. So I’m wondering what you said to him,” Angela finished and returned to chopping carrots with a vengeance.
“You are speaking of Lord Invalid?” Penelope asked.
“Of course, what other ‘he’ would there be?”
“You called him Phillip yesterday. In fact, you haven’t referred to him as Lord Invalid for days now,” Penelope pointed out.
“That’s neither here nor there,” Angela said with a shrug, embarrassed that the others had noticed the change when she hadn’t. “What did you say to him?”
“Not that it is any of your business, but we spoke about his mother. He never knew her, and I did. That is all.”
“Oh.” What did that have to do with her? She bit her tongue to keep from asking. “Did he say when he was leaving?”
“No. I suggested that since he seemed to enjoy himself here, he might consider taking orders himself.”
Angela laughed.
“That was his reaction, too. Speaking of taking orders, Angela, when are you going to take yours?” the abbess asked.
That was a good question. Her own words from last night echoed in her head:
I must go. I cannot stay
. But she was so cowardly; making the leap to commit to a lifetime within these walls seemed impossibly overwhelming. She certainly had reasons to stay. But she often thought she would leave on a moment’s notice if she had a place to go. Home, of course, was not an option.
“I don’t know yet,” Angela said. She had finished chopping the carrots and started dicing the potatoes Penelope had peeled.
“Very well,” the abbess said with a patience that Angela envied. “Lord Huntley has made a remarkable recovery. He likely shan’t stay much longer.”
“I will be happy to ask him when he is leaving,” Angela said.
“I’ll miss him when he goes,” Penelope said with a little sigh.
“You’re the only one,” Angela replied. She would
not
miss him, Angela told herself firmly. She would be relieved at his departure. Things would return to normal: life would be quiet, peaceful, and secure. She would not miss bantering with him. She would not miss being tempted by a glance, a touch, a kiss, or even merely the knowledge that she desired a man and he was always nearby. Or so she told herself.
 
Angela delayed bringing his supper until a later hour than usual. She had wanted to see if he would seek her out as he had done this morning. That a man disappointed her once again did not have a pleasant effect upon her mood.
Her mood was just as black and cloudy as the night sky when she brought supper to Lord Invalid’s chamber. The giddy delight she had woken up feeling was long gone, and she missed it almost as much as the kiss itself.
“You must be hungry,” she said upon entering his room. He was in the same place as he had been earlier in the day: in the chair by the window, looking out, though she couldn’t imagine that he saw very much in the darkness. Two candles burned on the bedside table, and they did not offer much illumination.
“I am.”
“I was surprised you didn’t come find me to demand your supper.”
He shrugged. He shrugged! She wanted to slap him out of frustration, and she might have, had she not had her hands full carrying a tray with his meal. She settled for slamming it down on the table.
“Stop that! All day, you shrug when I ask you something, when I try to talk to you. You’ve been cold and distant and strange since the abbess talked to you about your mother. What does that have to do with anything? With me?”
“She told you that?”
“Yes. Women talk, Phillip. I’d think you would know that by now. How else would you have the reputation you do? How else would everyone in England know about all your ruined girls? I’m just surprised everyone doesn’t know every little detail.”
“Did you tell her that we kissed last night?” he challenged.
“No,” she muttered.
“Why not?”
“Because I might get in trouble. I might be asked to leave, and I have nowhere to go.”
“You didn’t think that I might ask you to leave with me?”
“No, actually.”
“Good,” he said, sounding relieved. That cad. She didn’t think for a second that he would ask her to go with him. That didn’t mean she didn’t want him to.
“Yes. Good for you. You get to leave another ruined woman in your wake. Too bad for you that someone already got there first.” She turned to go.
“Don’t say that,” he said sharply, and she turned around.
“What? It’s the truth. I’ve been used. I’m damaged goods.”
“Oh, Angela,” he murmured, the sadness in his voice all too clear. She was surprised when he crossed the room and took her in his arms. Even more surprised when he said firmly but quietly, “Shut the hell up about that.”
He pressed his mouth to hers, silencing her. It only lasted a second before he spoke again.
“It doesn’t really matter,” he murmured. She opened her mouth to protest, but the words got lost in another kiss.
“There is more to you than one mistake . . . if it even was a mistake.” This time, when she opened her mouth to protest, he took advantage and deepened the kiss.
Just to be in his room at this late hour made her feel as she did the night before: like a dam about to collapse under the pressure of a rising river. And he was like a relentless rainstorm, and she wasn’t sure she could stand up under the strain.
Phillip held her close, one hand cradling her head, the other caressing her back, coming to rest on her backside. She grasped the collar of his shirt, a fistful of fabric in each hand. They leaned upon each other for balance and held on so that if one fell, the other surely was going down, too. As a fallen angel, she wondered, why not tumble down from heaven once more?
There was a rumble of thunder in the distance. The threat of a storm was not worth stopping for.
Only an absolute and utter scoundrel could kiss like this, she thought. Like the devil himself. He tasted like temptation. His hands on her, caressing and exploring, were like a fire melting her resolve and annihilating all her best intentions. And when he held her, her only thought was that eternity was not long enough.
And just when she was ready to hand her soul over to the devil himself in exchange for this kiss, he pulled away. He left her breathless.
“It was my turn to stop,” he explained.
Angela stood there, too stunned to move, and attempting to gather her wits, while he calmly pulled the chair up to the bedside table, sat down, and proceeded with dinner.
“Well, are you just going to stand there, or are you going to sit down and keep me company?” he asked. He did not suggest that she leave, and she was glad, for she didn’t want to go.
“There is nowhere to sit.”
“You could sit on the bed,” he suggested. She could, she thought, but then she might never leave it. But her knees were still a little weak from that kiss, so she accepted.
“I’ll probably leave in a day or two,” he said. She was supposed to feel relieved, not this hollow ache of longing, of missing him before he was even gone. And really, it was stupid to feel that way. She had known all along he wasn’t going to stay.
“Where will you go?”
“London, I guess.”
“What will you do?”
“Probably what I do best: drink myself stupid, lose enormous sums of money and other valuables in card games. Win it all back, and blow it on brandy.”
“What about seducing scores of women and fighting duels?” Angela couldn’t resist asking.
“That, too, most likely, but I’m not so good at those things.”
“You seduced me,” she said. The words flew out of her mouth before she could stop them.
“So, my skills are improving,” he said with a half smile. “Although, you must admit, I haven’t got much competition,” he pointed out.
“Just my better judgment and a promise to God.”
“I don’t think I want to compete with that. You’ll take your orders when I leave, won’t you?”
“Probably. And for all the wrong reasons. But I don’t want to talk about that.”
“All right,” Phillip said, shrugging again. There was another rumble of thunder, louder than the first.
“What did the abbess say about your mother?”
“I don’t want to talk about that,” Phillip answered firmly.
After a long moment of silence, Angela gave up and laughed.
“What is so funny?”
“
Us
. We both refuse to speak about certain things, unless it is in the context of a card game.”
“It’s because in order to talk about those things, we have to think about them, and I think neither of us wants to do that.”
“I can’t stop thinking about those things,” Angela confessed.
“This place does demand reflection. It’s driving me crazy. And I don’t know how you do it, Angela. You’ve been here six years, I assume, just ruminating on painful subjects. It’s a miracle that you are not insane.”
“I guess the idea is that through reflection, one can come to accept the past, then learn forgiveness, and finally make peace with it all,” she said, reciting the formula that had been explained to her time and time again.

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