The Rogue and the Rival (19 page)

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Authors: Maya Rodale

BOOK: The Rogue and the Rival
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They barely moved, entwined as they were. Barely breathed, as if an exhale would invite reality to intrude with its reminders of his inevitable departure and her inevitable promise to take her orders.
Angela reached up, her arms around his neck and her fingers woven in his hair. He wished he could do the same, but her hair was braided and coiled and pinned up on her head like a halo. The memory, however, of running his fingers through her long, soft locks the previous evening was shockingly vivid.
He wanted to touch her skin, her bare skin, with an intensity that made him ache. And so he pressed his lips to her bare skin just below her earlobe. It was softer than he had expected, and warm. Her head fell back, a lazy, lulled fall, so that her throat was exposed to him. He was generous with his kisses and his attentions. He was rewarded by her sigh of pleasure. Her warm breath against his skin was like a caress.
Angela was the one to press her mouth against his. She was the one to initiate the kiss and then take it further. She was the one to take one step backward, and then another, holding on to him all the while so that he had no choice but to follow. Not that he would have chosen anything else, given the option. One more step, and her back was up against the wall.
“My knees were feeling weak,” she managed to say in a rough whisper.
“I’ll hold you up,” he murmured, but the words were lost in another kiss. And then he couldn’t hold back anymore, so he let his body rest a little more heavily against hers. And then a little more, because she pressed him into her, making him groan softly. If she felt this good standing against him, fully clothed . . . He didn’t dare allow himself to imagine a feather bed instead of a wall behind her, and her naked skin against his naked skin and . . .
Oh God.
Even he, Phillip Kensington, renowned absolute scoundrel, did not take women up against the wall in a hallway. Especially when the woman in question was about to commit herself to God, and the hallway was in an abbey. And especially when it would be the first time with her and . . .
Well . . .
He thought it should be special.
So he took a step back and noted that his breathing was ragged and his heart was pounding, but not as much as other parts of him were throbbing with wanting her. He grasped her hand in his and started walking down the hall.
“I don’t know where we’re going,” he said.
“I was hoping to talk about that,” she said softly.
“Right. Before we do that, I meant that I think we are walking in the wrong direction. Isn’t this the way we came from?”
“Oh, it is. I hadn’t noticed.”
And so they turned around and walked down the corridor, hand in hand. At the end of the hall, they turned left. And encountered the abbess.
The expression on her face was one Phillip knew well, having seen it before on the faces of numerous society matrons. The eyes narrowed, while the expression remained impassive, absorbing every last detail and committing it all to memory. The eyebrow raised questioningly. The lips pursed into a thin, straight line.
Phillip kept his mouth shut, because the only thing he could think of saying was, “But we’re only holding hands!” Speaking of that, he dropped Angela’s hand, like getting rid of the evidence after a crime.
Neither he nor Angela dared to speak, so it was the abbess who broke the silence.
“Angela, might I have a word with you?”
And she knew, as well as he, that though it may have been phrased as a question, it was in truth a command. And it was not what he had expected.
“Of course, Lady Katherine,” Angela said, glancing nervously at him.
“Good night, Lord Huntley. I am sure you hope to get a good night’s sleep before you start work in the morning.”
Four hours later, Phillip lay in bed, most certainly
not
having a good night’s sleep. Angela had not come to enlighten him about her meeting with Lady Katherine. And now, here he was, literally and metaphorically in the dark.
It was very likely, he assumed, that Lady Katherine would demand a marriage. Hand-holding was not a grand offense, but it begged the question of what else had been going on . . . and what else had gone on would certainly have been grounds for marriage.
The thought of matrimony had the same effect on Phillip as it always did. It made his stomach ache. Like he was starving yet nauseated all at once. Like it was coiled into one giant knot that would never unravel, and so he would have to live with this agonizing pain forever.
Unless he ran.
But he couldn’t run now . . . literally or figuratively. He had a bum leg and no money.
And he really needn’t take such drastic action until he had heard his sentence. And so he waited for four long, agonizing hours, with this unbearable stomachache, for Angela to come to him. Except she didn’t.
Panic started to set in. What if she had fled, rather than marry him? He considered that a definite possibility. She could be out there, all alone, having no idea the dangers that awaited a woman with nothing. Not a man to protect her, or a chaperone to warn men away. No money, no connections. Nothing but a figure men would die to possess and the voice of a siren.
He got out of bed, prepared to go out into the night in search of her and save her from herself. He got as far as the door to his bedchamber when he realized he didn’t know where to begin. He couldn’t very well go knocking on every door, waking every sister in the abbey until he found her, in her room.
And if he didn’t? Was he really going to traipse around the countryside in the dark? Look how well that had turned out the last time.
Rather well, actually, but that was hardly relevant.
She was not stupid, he reminded himself. She would take her orders, instead of marrying him. And if she was going to leave, she was at least going to wait until morning. She would say good-bye to her friends—or at least Penelope. And she would explain to him that she couldn’t marry him for reasons he already knew.
The very reasons he had fled every other marriage he ought to have entered into. As he saw it, he didn’t ruin those women so much as save them from a lifetime of disappointment.
He just wasn’t worth it, and now he was even more worthless than he had ever been. He hadn’t any money. His reputation and, he suspected, his own soul were as dark and filthy as chimney soot. He was shallow and self-absorbed and in possession of a short attention span when it came to women. His own father had declared, repeatedly, that Phillip was a hopeless case—his own
father
, who was supposed to be the one person in the world that ought to love him unconditionally.
And so Phillip lay back on his bed, imagining Angela saying all these things he already knew in that bewitching voice of hers. All of them unfortunately true. And they would part ways; she would be relieved. She would take her orders and live devoted to God.
And what about him? Oh, bloody hell, did his stomach ache now, at the thought of a life without Angela. Really, the thought made him nearly sick.
And that’s when he knew. If he was going to be an utter disappointment, it would not be because he didn’t
try
to be a better man. And when he left the abbey, she was going with him.
 
“Please sit,” Lady Katherine said in a voice that did not belie what she was feeling. Though Angela would have rather been free to pace around the room, she did as told, sitting in the chair and bracing herself for whatever might come next.
Angela felt nervous. Jittery. She had an inkling that things were going to change after this conversation. How, she knew not.
“Well,” Lady Katherine said, sitting in her chair behind her desk after lighting a few tallow candles on her desk. It was still fairly light outside, though darkness was rapidly approaching. “I had hoped to speak with you tonight anyway, Angela. I wanted to ask if you had given any thought as to when you might take your orders.”
“I have,” Angela said and paused. She took a deep breath. A little voice in her head urged her to just say it allready. “And I am sorry, but I cannot do it.”
“I see,” Lady Katherine said, but Angela wasn’t sure she did understand.
“I had thought that I just needed time to get used to the idea,” Angela explained. “I’ve been here six years, always putting it off, wanting to be sure. But I think I can admit now that I never wanted to do it. I was just waiting because I was so . . . so . . . hopeless about my alternatives.”
“Am I correct in assuming that Lord Huntley has something to do with all of this?”
“It could be nothing more than timing,” Angela said. But it wasn’t that. At this point, she stood and began to pace around the room. The chamber being small, she did not have far to roam. But it was enough. She paced. And she talked.
“Or it could be that because of him I no longer see myself as just some stupid girl that got herself ruined. And if I am not that girl, then who am I? And how will I know if I stay here, where it’s safe and unchanging?” Angela paused at the window, but she already knew the view and turned to give the abbess her full attention.
“The religious life, as you know, is not easy,” Lady Katherine said calmly. “It requires sacrifice, dedication, and devotion. It is not something to be undertaken lightly. One will never attain or even appreciate its rewards if one has not undertaken this life with certainty.”
“I know. I—”
“I never thought that it was the life for you,” Lady Katherine said bluntly, to Angela’s surprise. “When you arrived here, you were running away from a bad situation. You were not running toward your fate. The abbey was for you, I think, a place where you could tend to your wounds for a while, before returning to the outside world.”
“But you let me stay anyway.”
“I could have been wrong.”
“I’m sorry,” Angela whispered.
“Don’t be sorry, Angela. There is nothing wrong with that. I think we would both be sorrier if you took your orders because you had given up on life. We do not judge here, and we welcome anyone.”
“Even scoundrels like Phillip,” Angela said with a wry smile.
“Aye, even scoundrels like him. But you were holding hands with him tonight. Might I assume that your feelings for him have changed?”
“Oh, I still think he is a scoundrel. I still hate that he has ruined all those girls. And he is still demanding. And in spite of all that, I think I might be falling in love with him.”
There, she had said it. She had woken up this morning with the thought on her mind. All day, she had kept it to herself, not because she wanted to keep it a secret, but because who could she tell? Certainly not Helena, who would just call her crazy, and Angela might have agreed. The timing hadn’t been right to tell Penelope. As for telling Phillip—she suspected she was just as terrified of telling him as he would be upon hearing it.
But now she had said it, as if that made it real.
“In love with him?” Lady Katherine echoed. Not doubtful but not encouraging, either.
“Maybe I just love the woman I am when I am with him. Or maybe I am just in love with the way he makes me
feel
.”
“How has this come about?” Lady Katherine asked gently. Angela thought about this before speaking. She walked from one end of the room to the other and back again.
“I don’t think I can pinpoint one moment where something changed. It just seemed that each minute I spent with him, it was a little harder to see him as the newspapers did, or to see him as one and the same as Lucas Frost. I suppose it became easier to see him for who he is and who he is becoming,” Angela said.
She thought of his kiss, too, but kept this to herself. She hadn’t even considered that a kiss could be so soulful, so magical, so impossible to describe. Now that she thought about it, kissing Lucas had never, ever been even close to what she had with Phillip.
And, in that exact moment, she felt nothing at the thought of Lucas. Not regret or rage, nor even a sort of fondness. Absolutely nothing—and this was wonderful. That feeling, or lack of it, was what she had come to the abbey in search of. She had found peace. And it hadn’t come from opening her heart in prayer to the divine but from opening her heart and daring to love a mortal man.
Angela gave up her pacing and returned to the chair. She looked at Lady Katherine. Her expression was serene, as it usually was, but she was also smiling sweetly.
“Angela, I think you have changed, too. You are no longer as angry as you have been these past few years. But I don’t think you are exactly happy, either.”
“I fought with Helena today,” Angela confessed. “Or rather, she fought with me. I am not certain. She, too, has noticed my change in affection for Phillip. She is sure that he will hurt me, the way I was hurt before.”
“Do you think he will hurt you?”
“He might. He could.” Angela looked down at her hands clasped tightly in her lap. She didn’t want to say what she was about to say, but she couldn’t keep the words inside. “Lady Katherine, I was with him last night. Helena discovered us. And she said she wasn’t going to tell you about it because she didn’t see the point.”

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