Wedding of the Season (13 page)

D
uring the next few days, Beatrix took great pains to avoid Will, hoping to put that awful sunrise encounter out of her mind, but it wasn’t easy. She went for long, quiet walks with Aidan, or rode in the motorcar with Julia to do a bit of shopping in Torquay. Or she spent time with Emma, talking about the other woman’s three children—Ethan, Robert, and little Ruthie—and dreaming of the days ahead when she’d have children of her own. All these were successful distractions that enabled her to avoid Will.

In the evenings, however, avoiding him was much more difficult. Thankfully, her place at dinner was near the other end of the long dining table, but afterward, when the children were in bed and everyone else was gathered together in the drawing room, there was no escape. On the third evening of the house party, when Lord Weston suggested auction bridge, that newfangled version of whist, she was happy to participate. Auction bridge was a complicated enough game to occupy her mind and keep her from thinking about the man across the room and how he looked without his shirt.

Cutting for partners, she found herself paired with Aidan against Lord and Lady Weston. Cards were dealt, and play began, but she managed to hold out for only a few rounds before her gaze inevitably strayed across the room to where Will sat with Julia at the piano. They were playing duets, and Lord Marlowe’s sister Phoebe stood by his shoulder, turning the pages for them.

Like all the men in the room, he was wearing a black evening suit, but the image of him a few mornings ago was still vivid in her mind. Nothing untoward had happened, she kept reminding herself, but every time she looked at Will, the image of his smooth, bronzed skin and sculpted muscles came into her mind, and every time it did, she felt a searing flood of heat and a wretched pang of guilt.

It had been wrong of her, very wrong, to stand by as a man undressed in front of her, and every time she thought of it, Beatrix berated herself for having allowed it to happen. The moment she perceived his presence, she should have gathered her things and departed. The fact that she had not done so, that she had not turned her back on him and walked away immediately, was something she could not excuse.

Not that she blamed only herself. Will was even more at fault for subjecting a lady to such an unthinkable display. It had been deliberate, she knew, and provocative, meant to unsettle her in just this way, but knowing that didn’t help Beatrix ease her own conscience.

“Beatrix?”

“Hmm?” She returned her attention to the table and realized Aidan had said something to her. “I beg your pardon?”

“It’s your bid.”

“Right. Sorry.” She rubbed her fingers across her forehead with a laugh as she invented an excuse for her absentmindedness. “I’m accustomed to whist. This auction bridge is still a bit new to me. Umm . . . three hearts.”

The bidding moved on to Lord Weston on her left, then to Aidan, then to Lucy, Lady Weston, on her right. It went around one more time, trump was decided, and play commenced. Beatrix tried to concentrate on the game, but despite her hopes, her attention began to wander again after only a few minutes of play, and it was all she could do to keep it away from the man across the room.

On a pair of settees nearby, her aunt was seated with Lady Debenham; Marlowe’s mother, Louisa; and his grandmother, Antonia. They were gossiping, no doubt. Standing near them was Marlowe’s other sister, Vivian, fitting one of her newly designed gowns for
Vivienne
onto a form. Emma, Lady Marlowe, was sitting near her, mending something pink and lacy. Probably one of little Ruthie’s dresses.

As if in tandem with Beatrix’s own thoughts, Vivian spoke up. “I can’t believe how big Ruthie’s grown,” she said, nodding to the garment in Emma’s hands. “And starting to walk now? When Beatrix and I saw her take those steps earlier today, we couldn’t believe it. Could we, Trix?” she added, glancing over her shoulder at the card table.

“No,” she agreed. “It was beautiful to see, though.” She smiled, remembering the scene she and Vivian had witnessed that afternoon—Emma in the grass with her arms outstretched and her hands clasping Ruthie’s fingers as the baby had wobbled forward on chubby legs for three full steps before falling down on her bum in the grass. She felt a wave of longing at the memory, longing for the day when she’d be kneeling in the grass, encouraging her own son or daughter to take those first steps. Children were something she’d dreamed of as far back as she could remember, as far back as when she’d still played with dolls in the nursery and believed Will Mallory would marry her someday. Her smile faded. Like pixies, it had never been real.

“Ruthie is looking quite bonny, Emma, by the way,” Julia commented from her place at the piano. “She’s got that gorgeous chestnut hair of yours, I’ve noticed. And Harry’s blue eyes. She’ll be a beauty, mark my words. Her papa had best keep a close watch on her.”

Marlowe, who was playing auction bridge with Geoff, Paul, and Sir George at a nearby table, looked up from his cards long enough to comment. “I intend to. She isn’t leaving the house once she turns thirteen.”

“Harry!” Emma admonished, laughing.

“What do you intend to do, Marlowe?” Julia asked, her fingers tapping piano keys in an aimless tune. “Lock her in the attic to keep her from all the dishonorable young men?”

“Absolutely,” Marlowe answered with fervor and returned his attention to his cards.

Beatrix glanced at Will, and as she studied his strong, wide shoulders above the piano, she thought perhaps Marlowe had the right idea. Could she lock herself in an attic until Will went back to Egypt?

He was studying the pages of sheet music with Julia, discussing what they were to play next, but he suddenly looked up and caught her watching him.

He smiled his pirate smile, and it hit her like a shaft through the heart. She inhaled sharply and looked away.

Across the table, Aidan was shuffling in preparation for the next deal, but his attention was not on his task. Instead, his face was turned toward the pair at the piano. In contrast to the busy movement of his hands, his handsome profile was impassive, revealing nothing, but as if he felt her gaze alight on him, he turned his attention to her, and suddenly she felt as if she had a big scarlet A emblazoned on her chest.

When he began to deal the cards, she breathed a sigh of relief, and she willed herself to keep every scrap of concentration on the game. She did not look across the room again during the entire round, but she still found it almost impossible to keep track of the cards being played, a crucial component of bridge, and because of that, Weston and his wife won the round.

“And that’s it,” Weston said, as his wife pulled in the final trick. “Game and rubber. Excellent play, Lucy,” he complimented as Aidan began to tally the scores.

“Oh, let’s play this one next,” Julia exclaimed, her lively voice ringing through the room. “ ‘The Maple Leaf Rag.’ ”

Beatrix watched Aidan lift his gaze heavenward as if praying for patience. It was plain he didn’t care for the music Julia was choosing, but he did not say so, of course, or ask her to make a different choice. That would have been rude, and Aidan was never rude.

“ . . . and two, and three, and four,” Will was counting, and then he and Julia began to play, but they had completed only about four bars before Julia burst out laughing.

“Wait, Will, wait,” she cried. “You’re going too fast! I can’t keep up.”

Wait, Will. I want to go, too.

Over the frenetic sound of the piano and the eddying conversations all around her, Beatrix’s own voice echoed to her from many years ago, stirring a vague memory of herself as a little girl, sitting on a stone wall and watching the lane at Danbury, waiting for Will to return from a horseback ride with Paul.

Waiting for Will, the story of her life.

Beatrix glanced sideways at the laughing pair across the room, watching them play the already lively tune at an even more frantic pace. They managed several more bars before they muffed it utterly, the song ended in a jangle of discordant notes, and they fell back against the wall behind them at the same time, laughing together.

It hurt, somehow, watching them, but she couldn’t look away.

“Oh heavens!” Julia exhaled a heavy sigh, resting her cheek on Will’s shoulder. “Next time we play that tune, I’m bringing out the metronome to keep you in line.”

“Stuff,” Will told her. “Metronomes are for sissies.”

Julia lifted her head, shaking back wisps of her black hair. “Still, can we give my fingers a rest and play the next song at a slower pace?”

“Hear, hear,” Aidan muttered, and then, as Beatrix looked at him, he once again turned his attention away from the couple at the piano and looked down at the card table, his mouth tightening as if he felt ashamed of himself for making such a comment.

“Why don’t you sing something, Julia?” Phoebe suggested from her place near Will’s shoulder. “You have a lovely voice.”

“Mmm, do,” Vivian added around a mouthful of pins. She pulled them out to add, “It’s so much fun hearing all the modern songs.”

“All right, what about this one?” Without the aid of sheet music, Julia began to play another ragtime melody. When she began to sing in a deep, bawdy alto about someone named Bill Bailey who wouldn’t come home, Aidan stood up and turned to Beatrix, a hint of desperation on his face. “Would you care to take a stroll on the terrace, Beatrix?” he asked her. “It’s a lovely night.”

She froze, staring up at him, the guilt that had been gnawing at her giving way to dismay. She couldn’t do it. She simply couldn’t take a stroll along the terrace with Aidan as if nothing was wrong while those damnable images of Will’s bare chest went through her mind.

“No,” she answered with a glance at the clock on the wall. “I think I shall go to bed. It’s quarter past twelve, and besides, I—” She broke off, not wanting to admit she hadn’t been able to sleep the past few nights. “I have a bit of a headache,” she improvised.

He nodded, but she could feel him studying her face, and such careful scrutiny made her feel even worse. “If you have a headache,” he said, “rest is perhaps the best treatment.”

“Yes.” She forced herself to smile. “I’m sure I shall be right as rain tomorrow.”

She rose, bidding a quick good night to everyone, but when she started out of the drawing room, Aidan followed her. “I shall walk with you to the stairs,” he said, falling in step beside her along the corridor. “I intend to take a stroll in the front gardens,” he added, as if feeling the need to explain.

At the foot of the stairs, they paused. Neither of them spoke, and the silence between them, instead of being the companionable sort of silence she was used to with Aidan, seemed painfully awkward.

“Beatrix—” he began, but she cut him off, fearful of what he might say, the questions he might ask.

“It is such a lovely, fine night,” she said. “I regret that I’m not up to taking that stroll with you. Another night, perhaps—”

“Beatrix.” His voice was firm, and as he took her hands in his, her dismay deepened into a sick dread. “We have been engaged for nearly nine months now, but I have only kissed you once.”

She blinked in surprise. Of all the things she might have expected him to say, that wasn’t one of them. “True,” she murmured, wondering why he was choosing this moment to bring up that particular point.

“I have held back from physical displays of affection because that is the gentlemanly thing to do. But perhaps—” He stopped and drew a deep breath, glancing down the corridor toward the drawing room, then back at her. “Perhaps I have made a mistake there.”

Oh God
, she thought, growing desperate.
Aidan was going to kiss her.
Her guilt deepened into dread.

He released her hands suddenly and cupped her face. “It’s a mistake I should like to remedy.” Before she could even fashion a reply, he bent his head and pressed his lips to hers.

She waited for something to happen, hoped in desperation for passion to stir, but though the contact of his lips against hers brought warmth, it was the same sort of feeling she might gain from a hot water bottle at her feet or a nice cup of tea in her hands, agreeable and comfortable, but not precisely earth-shattering.

She opened her eyes. Aidan’s eyes were closed, and she stared at his brown lashes fanned across his cheekbones with the same objectivity with which she might have studied . . . well . . . blades of grass. They were nice lashes, she thought, straight but thick and dark brown, very attractive.

But surely, she thought in bewilderment, surely the previous time he’d kissed her, the night she’d accepted his proposal of marriage, she hadn’t been staring at his
lashes
, had she? That kiss couldn’t have been like this one, could it? Warm and pleasant and nothing more? There must have been some spark of feeling in it. There must have been.

When his lips moved to part hers, deepening the kiss, she allowed it. When his arms came up around her to pull her closer, she strove to remember the night nine months ago when she had accepted his proposal and the kiss they had shared.

She got as far as remembering that it had been nothing like Will’s kiss before Aidan pulled back, and as she watched his eyes begin to open, she hastily closed hers. She waited until she felt his arms slide away, and then she opened her eyes. His face, so gravely handsome, looked much as always, so steady and sensible, and yet she could sense desire in him. Physical desire.