Now she could run. Running toward felt different from running away.
“Neal!” The shout tore from her. And he heard. Within the moment, he’d reappeared on the balcony and then he was clambering down, dropping the last few feet to the ground. She reached him, threw her arms around his neck, and pulled his head down close to hers. She needed to see him, to know that he was really there.
Tousled hair. Bumpy nose. Fringed brown eyes, the pair she saw every night when she shut hers to sleep.
He lay a finger on her cheek, the gesture releasing something deep inside her. She sagged with the sweetness of it.
“Are you all right?” He spoke steadily, to steady her. She realized it as she took in his expression. He was far from calm. There was murder in his eyes. “Did Cranbrook—”
“He’s dead.” Her own voice shook but didn’t break. “An attack, I think. I found him in the study.” She swallowed. “You came to find me.”
He didn’t speak. He simply gathered her to him, leaning into the shadow of the house, into the trellis itself, cool vines curling around them. For a long moment, she burrowed into his shoulder, savoring his solidity, breathing in his heathery scent, which reminded her of everything wild and free.
When she stepped out of his arms, it would break, the circle of protection. She’d have to face the world as it was.
She drew back, hands folded on her stomach, which clenched instantly. She looked up at Harcott House and felt dizzied, the edges of her vision going black.
“I can’t go back in there.” She aimed for a calm tone, but her voice shrilled. She drew a deep breath.
“Not yet,” she amended. The coming days would be tense and hectic. Cranbrook’s adult sons and daughters would gather, as would his friends and hangers-on. All of the people who’d attended the ill-fated wedding would congregate gleefully for the funeral.
Perhaps word would leak out, about her flight, her involuntary return. Speculations would circulate regarding the circumstances of Cranbrook’s death. A new round of rumors, albeit different from the one she’d anticipated. Everything was different.
She couldn’t imagine what it all would mean.
“Not yet,” she repeated, and turned to Neal. He nodded and extended his hand. “Come along, then.”
Their fingers intertwined. She sucked in her breath. She’d missed the feel of his warm, broad hand. His calluses had been roughened by his recent climb.
“You’re lucky that trellis was well-anchored.” She gave him a weak smile. “Or you might have broken your neck.”
“I knew the trellis was stout. But I am glad we planted ivy.” His smile strengthened hers. “It would have been a brutal climb if we’d planted rose.”
She looked her question.
“Varnham designed the original gardens,” he said. “And we’ve handled the major plantings and renovations since.”
He was guiding her toward the privets.
“The south wall is all wisteria. Blooming. That was a treat.”
She looked toward the back of the garden, enclosed by a high wall bunched with pale purple flowers. “You climbed the wall?”
“Didn’t expect I’d receive much welcome at the front door.”
She shook her head. “But how did you know to come here in the first place?”
“The duchess.” Neal turned them down one green lane, then another. Lavinia didn’t speak.
“Of Weston.” He hesitated. “You are also a duchess.”
“A dowager.” Hysterical laughter bubbled up. She was widowed. Good God. Dizzy, she pressed closer to his side. “Where is she?”
“We split up. She did try the front door.”
They must have missed each other, barely. Lavinia closed her eyes, then opened them wide. The bushes that enclosed them seemed tame after the blooming chaos of those rock-filled Cornish hedges. Nonetheless, it felt familiar. Walking with him amid so much green.
Familiar and strange.
He wore town clothes, dark jacket and trousers, well fitted to his muscular form. Any woman would notice the attractions of his figure, his bluntly handsome face.
He wasn’t her discovery, her humble Cornish gardener. He was a man with wealth and social ease. A man who moved between town and country. A man with choices.
He’d chosen Muriel Pendrake.
She’d best not lose sight of that essential fact.
“Did she tell you I was once engaged to her husband?” She forced herself to pull away, to drop his arm. “That I was rich and spoiled and intolerable and that the money I took for granted was, by and large, robbed from his family? That the papa I loved wasn’t who I thought he was?”
Lavinia hadn’t realized she’d accelerated. She had to stop, wait for him to catch up. He came prowling toward her, slow and thoughtful.
“She said you were her friend.” His steady gaze arrested her. Then his mouth tightened. “She said your husband was a beast. And a few other things.”
Her breath whooshed out. “I’ll tell you, then. I was born Lavinia Yardley. My father lives at Holloway Prison. My mother and I live . . .”
Where? What came next? She felt a flicker of panic and laughed again. And still he looked at her steadily.
“Tomas mentioned my father. Do you remember? The thieving architect? All true, by the way. The stories. Sometimes the rumormongers get it right.” She curtseyed. “That’s me. So wonderful to meet you.”
His hands had slid into his pockets. He shook his head, a troubled line between his brows.
“I won’t bow. Forgive my lack of courtesy. But we’re already acquainted.” His eyes hooded. “Well acquainted.”
Her heart caught in her chest. She made herself smile.
“We are, and we aren’t. In my native habitat, I’m a beribboned, befeathered little creature. The belle of the ball. Made in the same mold as your Elizabeth Davenport.” Ridiculous, to hazard a guess, at this juncture, as to the identity of his former fiancée, but she couldn’t help herself.
He acknowledged her attempt with a small movement, less than a shrug.
“I would never win over your mother.” Hush. She knew better than this. Self-flagellation was but the flipside of self-indulgence. He’d said it, and she agreed. “But then again, I never impressed my own.” She winced. So much for heeding him, or her inner voice. No stopping now.
“She wanted me to marry Cranbrook, and I did it. For her sake, and my father’s.” Shame bowed her head. “And because I didn’t know what else to do. I was frightened by our poverty. I thought, in some ways, the marriage might be agreeable.”
No one had forced her to make those vows. She could have been courageous. Legendary. Spit in Cranbrook’s eye. Dared to pursue a journalistic career.
I won’t be your duchess. I’m off to work for The Queen.
“You faced an impossible choice.”
That one sentence unbalanced her. She looked up. Understanding, not judgment. That was what he offered.
“Your father’s crimes aren’t yours,” he said, and she gave her head a disbelieving shake.
“I benefited from them.”
“You paid for them, too.” His eyes held hers. Funny, to feel cradled by someone’s eyes. She’d always felt safer when she was with him. She realized she felt braver, too, worthier, even now that she’d stopped dissembling.
He knew everything. Or, nearly everything.
“The man I described to you, who I said betrayed me—it wasn’t Cranbrook.”
“No,” he murmured. Of course he’d put certain things together. “I presume . . .” He didn’t want to hurt her. That was why he spoke so delicately. “It was the Duke of Weston.”
He made the obvious mistake. A cloud dimmed the light, darkened his eyes, blued the green hedges. She sighed.
“He would have been. He was the elder son.”
She’d said enough to set up the tragedy. Neal’s face turned grim.
“We did go to France together.” She watched a shadow move over the grass. “But we hadn’t eloped. We’d connived a rendezvous. And he didn’t change. After I . . . After we became lovers, he continued . . .” She folded her arms over her chest. The awkwardness. “He continued philandering. And then he drowned.”
An abrupt end, to his life. To her tale. She delivered it with odd brightness. She looked back at Neal.
“He drowned in the Thames, with a female companion. He’d stolen a yacht. I’m sure you read about it. You couldn’t get away from it if you tried.”
“Lavinia.” He stepped toward her, his voice soft. She lifted her hand, palm out, to stop him, but he took her wrist in his fingers, brushed her palm with his lips. Sensation prickled through her.
“Cranbrook touched me as though he owned me,” she whispered. “Even before I was his wife.”
He leaned forward and pressed his lips to her forehead.
She breathed against his neck. “Today, when I went to his study, to denounce him, I thought, for the first time . . .” Another breath. “If George had lived, this is what he would have become.”
Not a prince, in the end. An old goat.
George had taken pleasure wherever he found it. He’d never checked his appetites.
She’d hoped, ignored, made excuses.
A young, handsome marquess will be a young, handsome marquess.
But if he’d grown old and ugly? How would his behavior have struck her then?
It took Cranbrook to see George properly.
And it took Neal as well. Took a different kind of love for her to realize how thin and brittle that glamour had been.
His lips against her forehead felt so good, so right.
She found her resolve.
She could be generous, too. Like Lucy. Despite having lost everything.
She took both of Neal’s hands.
“You’re going to be happy,” she said. “As happy as you deserve to be. I’m sorry for every snide remark I ever made about your mother, and fossils, and Cornwall.” Holding his hands meant she couldn’t dash away her tears, so she smiled through them. “You and Muriel are meant for each other.”
Oh dear, her voice wobbled desperately. “I wish you joy.” She turned, far too quickly, but really, what etiquette pertained after such a speech, in such a situation? “Well then. I have a husband to bury.”
In her mind’s eye, she processed past him. Measured. Solemn. Yet . . . she could hear her feet thudding on the path. She was most certainly running. Running away. Again. The hedges opened and closed around her in a mystifying pattern. She put her hand on the stitch in her side and slowed. Stepped out from the green corridor into a large enclosure awash with color.
Long, narrow flower beds framed a marble basin. Not a fountain, a planter. Its vivid, ruffled surface was all red and purple blossoms. In the center, a statue of a nymph lifted a vase from which yet more flowers bloomed.
She’d reached the heart of the maze.
At the sound of Neal’s footfall behind her, she caught her breath to speak. “I took a wrong turn.” She looked over her shoulder.
Another wrong turn.
Devastating. He stood in the gap of the hedges, eyes bright as sun, but darker. Scorched light. The sight of him made her heart cramp.
He strode forward. “Muriel and I—”
She interrupted, smiling so fiercely she thought her lips might bleed.
“Congratulations!” Of course. They were already engaged. No surprise there. She’d seen them holding hands in the lecture hall. Her cheeks ached. “I couldn’t be more pleased for you. If you’ll excuse me . . .”
He was going to ruin it, her largesse. She’d break if he uttered one detestable detail. She tried to slip around him, and he hooked her waist with his arm, moved her gently until they stood face-to-face.
She didn’t let him speak.
“I want to be pleased for you,” she gritted out. “Let me be my best self, I beg you. Another moment and I can’t vouch for what I do or say. I’m not very good by nature at sharing, or losing, or being kind for no purpose, even about small things, and now I’m behaving commendably about the biggest loss I can possibly imagine, and so don’t spoil it by detaining me or I will scream.”
Her chest heaved. For a tense moment, they regarded each other. Then he grinned, eyes crinkling. The grin that made her whole body flush.
“Your best self?” He gave a one-shouldered shrug. “I enjoy all of your selves.” Slowly, he bent his arm, drew her closer. “I am enchanted by them.” His voice dropped. It was almost a growl. “I am maddened by them. Made sleepless by them. You are the most fascinating, unforgettable, impossible series of women I have ever met in my life.”
She gaped, unsure if she’d heard him correctly. Her blood was crashing in her ears.
“In that case . . .” She swallowed hard. “I hate that you’re marrying Muriel Pendrake. I don’t care how much you have to say to each other about Darwin. I wish Darwin had never been born.” She gripped his thick wrist and squeezed, the pressure almost vicious. “And I’d rather slice off my fingers than let you go. There. That’s not even my worst self.”
Laughter rumbled in his chest.
“I am not marrying Muriel Pendrake.” His hands cupped her face. “Muriel and I are planning an expedition to China, for Varnham. I won’t go myself, of course. She’ll lead it.”
“For three years!” The exultation in her voice embarrassed her.
And amused him.
He cocked a brow. “Mmm,” he said. “Yes, that’s the standard contract.”
She inhaled, and now as his spiced green scent billowed through her, nothing hurt. She felt bigger and bigger.
Oh, the wonder of it, Muriel would be back among her woody shrubs on the other side of the world, and Neal . . .
Where would he be? Truro? Penzance? Never far from Cornish flora, or from his family.
She’d reached it, the sharp edge of her happiness.
She was a series of women. But not one of them—of her—truly met his specifications. What he felt couldn’t survive long. Reality would wither his esteem, a little bit each day. When his mother loathed her. When his sisters found her ignorant. When his cousins learned she was a liar. When he wearied of her chatter. Of course, his goodness meant he wouldn’t treat her ill. He wouldn’t even put her aside. He’d marry her, and it wouldn’t be the marriage he wanted, a marriage in which both parties agreed on bryophytes. She should protect him from himself. But not even her best self had the strength.
She was staring at him, memorizing the craggy planes of his face.
“You’ve been released from your contract.” He stroked his hand down her throat. His calloused fingers lay on her pulse. She closed her eyes.
“Legally.” She inhaled a shuddering breath. “Not socially.”
The black behind her eyes was the black of mourning veils and hearses.
“What does Miss Laliberté care for social mores?”
Her eyes flew open. He’d arched a humorous brow.
“It remains to be seen,” she said, a trifle stiffly. Bad enough that he’d discussed her with Lucy. What had Mr. De’Ath reported?
She sighed. “Many things remain to be seen.”
“We know you can keep all your fingers.” He teased her. That playful tone, its presumption of a bond of affection, of mutual understanding—it set off tiny bursts of delight inside her.
He stooped low, suddenly, and rose with a new expression.
“Would you keep this?” With quick, precise motions, he twisted the thin stem of a daisy around her ring finger, the bloom resting just below her first knuckle.
Her eyes felt too big for her face, too hot, too full.
He cleared his throat. This rough-hewn, forthright, confident man—for a split second, he looked almost shy. “Just until I replace it with a gold one.”
“It is gold.” Her voice was hoarse. She lifted her hand, put her nose to the brilliant disc, haloed by white florets.
And sneezed.
Oh Lord.
She blinked at him. “Was that a bad sign?”
“No worse than any other sign we’ve gotten. Better than most.” He was grinning, such a gorgeous, giddy-making grin. “You and I will have to make our own luck.”
Fine with her. Fate hadn’t been her friend.
Until now. Come to think of it, she’d made a few new friends.
Words failed and so she hitched up her skirt and hopped, kicking her feet. Neal clapped his hands and laughed, but his gaze held more than gaiety. It had sharpened.
He devoured her with his eyes.
She felt a hot thrill. She commanded this look, this desire. She smiled and let her skirt swish back around her ankles.
“I practiced,” she confessed. She had, on nights anxieties drove her from her bed in Weston Hall. She’d jigged, to exhaust herself, and to remember how it felt, to dance with him.
“No barrel.” He tipped his head. “Pity. Formal gardens do have their drawbacks. Certain activities prove impossible.”
She watched his chest move with his quickened breath. Her chest moved just as quickly.
“But others suggest themselves.” The curve of his mouth beckoned.
She stepped into him before she was aware of what she did. She fit like magic into the lee of his chest. His heavy arms wrapped her. She was surrounded. Everywhere, his solidity, a strength that, even if it hurt, would never harm. When he kissed her—hard—bending her back, the force of it was just what she craved. With a jerk, he lifted her up, swept an arm beneath her knees, and began to walk. She strained upward to kiss the softness beneath his chin. So much of his flesh was dense, unyieldingly hard. She felt a weird frisson of power when she touched this vulnerable spot.
Here was a form of trust, his exposure of his most tender points. Her exposure of hers.
She kissed down his neck, twisting in his arms.
He knelt to settle her on the marble basin, parting her knees, wedging between them. She helped him shove her skirts around her waist, their hands fumbling together in the silk and lace.
“That cotton frock was easier,” he murmured.
“It’s like comparing apples to oysters.” She sniffed. Neal was a marvel, but he offended against fashion. He laughed as he rolled down her stockings. When he touched her bare legs, his laughter quieted. He drew in his breath and glanced up at her, eyes shining between those long black lashes.
He banished the shadows, this man. The sunniness of his passion turned her to gold. Made everything radiant.
He pulled the stockings over her toes, catching her foot and nuzzling her instep. He raised her leg higher and she had to catch the edge of the basin or she’d have tumbled back into the flowers.
“Stop or I’ll fall over.” It came out half gasp, half giggle. “I’ll crush the flowers.”
He raised his brows, patently unconcerned. “I’ll have to send someone out to replant them.”
He rested her heel on his thigh and leaned forward, putting his palm on her sternum, just above the neckline of her gown. He pushed. Pushed her until she lay on her back, petals soft on her neck, her arms. He slid forward then, covering her. His broad, heavy torso mashed her breasts; the cradle of his hips dug into her belly. She exhaled, shuddering. Felt the jut of his erection, the rigid muscles of his legs. His weight drove her down, filled the air with the bruised honey of the flowers. He stroked her lips with his tongue, stroked inside her mouth. Then he was climbing down her body and over the side of the basin.
She heard herself make a strange humming sound as his rough fingers traveled up her inner thighs. She slitted her eyes, lifted herself on one elbow, and peered, but the froth of skirt and petticoat at her waist obscured her view. He had ducked between her legs. She could see only the bulk of his shoulders, the curve of his haunches, as he crouched.
This time, at the first intimate touch, she felt nothing akin to shame. She felt only eagerness—wild, wanton, shocking in its intensity. She dropped back into the flowers and rolled her hips up to meet his mouth.
The softness of her flesh and his suckling lips, the pulling, clutching pulse that throbbed there, where they merged. Dear God. The sensation. It gathered, more than physical. Elemental. She fanned her arms through sun-warmed blossoms, dug her elbows into the cool dirt, moaning as his teeth pressed into her, isolating the spot where his tongue now circled slowly, now flicked an agonizing rhythm. She spread her legs wider, opening to him. He could see, feel, taste every bit of her. She hid nothing. She gave all. And she took.
Pleasure shivered her legs. Harder darts shooting into her belly. The tension carried her beyond herself, made her call his name as knowing dissolved in a flash, a burst star sending heat streaming into her core. She arched with it, belly twitching, crying out again and again. His arm slid beneath her, and he twisted so he was under her and she straddled him, kneecaps grinding on the marble. He heard her cry of pain and levered them backward into the flower bed. The tickle of blossoms, leaves, stems, on her knees and shins made her laugh.
He wasn’t laughing.
His face was hard with need, lips swollen. That look alone plucked the taut ribbon of her own need, a need she’d thought sated. Her hands shook as she unbuttoned his jacket. He shucked it hurriedly, and she scrabbled at his cravat, popped a button on his shirt, then gave up, sliding her hand into the gap. His skin was smooth, stretched tight over the densely knitted muscles of his chest. Her arm made a weird angle as she scratched down the rippled musculature of his abdomen.
He worked his own hand down the front of her dress.
They had no more subtlety, no more finesse. His fingers mauled her breast, rolled her nipple roughly so that a groan tore from her throat.
She felt the brush of his knuckle through the slit in her drawers as he freed himself from his trousers. Their eyes met. She held her breath, rose on her knees as his cock nudged her slick, beating center. She watched him as she sank down, watched the sweep of his silken lashes, the gape of his mouth.
It excited her, to stoke this need, to cause this wildness to build in him.
Their mouths fused, his hands closing on her hips. He filled her, stretched her, grounded her. He rooted inside her, and she bloomed all over him, twining her arms around his neck.
She surged upward until she was nearly emptied, then bore down, gasping with the thick, shuddering impact. His own gasps threatened to separate their mouths, so she gripped his jaw. She wanted her tongue inside him, to fill him as he filled her. His hands squeezed her hips tighter, moved her in a faster rhythm. He thrust up, twisting, striking something higher and deeper within her, and she clamped with her thighs, the sweetness of the friction nothing compared to this sudden clutching at the center of her being.
She tossed her head back and screamed. He folded her in his arms, kissed her so that she swallowed his words.
I love you.
It tasted like sunlight.
He began to buck beneath her, then he stiffened, jamming his hands in her armpits, lifting her up. With a groan, he rolled and spent himself. She held on to his shoulder as he jerked and settled.
Laughing, he flopped onto his back in the flowers, dragging her onto him, her skirts a hopeless tangle.
She pressed her ear to his chest, listened to his pounding heart. His fingers toyed through her hair. She was still warm and loose, with sunshine in her mouth, sunshine flickering through her limbs, and the sun above, weighting her down.
“You said you wouldn’t let me go.” He stroked down her spine.
She nodded, rubbing her cheek on the exposed wedge of his chest.
“I won’t,” she said, and felt a shudder of exquisitely delayed pleasure. She gripped a fistful of his shirt, brought the other hand to her lips, and kissed the daisy on her finger. The florets were mussed but intact.
She’d kept it. Would keep it.
In a moment, she’d rise and reenter the maze, slip back into Harcott House.
But not yet.