In Rivers’s experience, there was no better place for composing an apology than on the back of a horse, preferably alone and by moonlight, or so he told himself that night as he made his way home from the Four Chimneys, an inn not far from the Lodge. Which was just as well, considering that he once again owed Lucia an apology, and he hadn’t the faintest notion of how to begin.
It was late, very late, or perhaps very early, as he finally turned his horse through the stone gates to the Lodge. When he had met Squire Ralston while riding earlier in the day (or was that now yesterday?), he had politely declined the squire’s enthusiastic invitation to join the Breconridge Hunt for a turtle feast at Four Chimneys. While he often rode with them (he was always welcome, considering how the hunt had borrowed its name from his family) when he was in residence at the Lodge, he’d no desire to spend a long evening in a low, smoky room watching country gentlemen consume more turtle soup and strong drink than was good for any mortal.
But that had been before he’d met with Lucia—or rather, Mrs. Willow—in the parlor. Not that renaming her had made any difference in how he’d behaved, the way he’d convinced himself it would.
It was entirely his own fault, of course, every bit of it. Lucia had done everything he’d asked of her and done it splendidly, too. She hadn’t once tried to entice him or beguile him, the way her cousin most certainly would have done. Instead she’d made it clear as could be that her only purpose in being here was to become the actress he’d promised. When he’d made that wager, he’d thought that was his only purpose, too, believing everything would be businesslike between them. How could it not, given what a plain and untempting little thing she was?
Yet the more time he’d spent in her company, the less plain and untempting she’d become. He couldn’t fathom it. He’d concede that she could amuse him; she was surprisingly clever with words, and her inventive storytelling last night had kept him so enthralled that he’d regretted their journey’s end.
But she still dressed like a drab lower servant with her hair scraped back beneath that dreadful white cap. Her eyes were still too big for her face, and her body too slight for her clothes. She still scurried rather than walked, and this afternoon she’d devoured his entire tea.
Yet that last time when she’d walked across the carpet toward him she’d been so delicately graceful that all he’d been able to do was stare, as if she were some sort of ethereal sprite dropped into his green parlor. Her dark eyes were like magic, drawing him in, and when she’d sunk into a curtsey at his feet, he’d nearly gulped aloud at the grace and vulnerability of the pale nape of her neck.
Her neck. Damnation, what kind of fool was he?
He swore crossly at himself, remembering exactly what kind of fool he had been. He’d told her how to make herself irresistible to audiences, and she’d listened, and done it. He simply hadn’t expected it to work on him the same way.
As a result, he’d blustered and stammered and then fled to the dubious blandishments of the Hunt’s turtle feast, abruptly leaving her in a confusion that she hadn’t deserved.
Now he half-expected to learn that she’d disappeared, too, gone back to London instead of being trapped here with him. He could hardly blame her if she had.
Glumly he left his horse at the stable with a sleepy groom, and headed into the house, where he was greeted by an equally sleepy footman. Only the night lantern was lit in the front hall, casting angular shadows across the old portraits that were gloomy enough by daylight. In their stiff ruffs and pointed beards, the portraits were never good company, but as Rivers climbed the stairs, he decided they were likely no better than he deserved.
Perhaps in the morning he’d know what to say to Lucia.
Perhaps with a good night’s sleep, the right words would come to him, and they could begin afresh.
The hall to his bedchamber was even more murky and shadowed, lit only by the moonlight through the diamond-paned windows. He should have stopped for a candlestick, but hadn’t bothered, and now he’d have to rely on his familiarity with the old place to find his way. He smiled, remembering how as a boy he’d been convinced the Lodge was haunted by those old Elizabethans in their fussy ruffs.
He heard a door open behind him, and turned swiftly at the sound. A figure in white with long trailing hair raced toward him through the shadows, and instinctively he drew back, too startled to reply.
“Lord Rivers!” Lucia called breathlessly as she hurried toward him. “At last you are returned, my lord. I’ve been waiting and waiting to speak with you, and I’m so glad you’re finally here.”
Candlelight from her open bedroom door sliced into the hall, and by it he could see that she wore only her shift, with the coverlet from the bed wrapped haphazardly around her shoulders. Her hair was combed out, falling like a dark cloak nearly to her waist, and if he’d thought her eyes seemed too large for her face by daylight, now in the near-darkness they truly belonged to another world.
“It’s very late, Mrs. Willow,” he said, striving to regain some semblance of propriety. “Whatever you wish to discuss can surely wait until the morning.”
“Forgive me, my lord, but it cannot,” she said with dramatic conviction. “There are things that I must say to you, things that cannot wait.”
Damnation, here it was. Of course she wanted to speak to him after he’d left her with such awkward haste. He couldn’t avoid it, or her, any longer. He was going to have to apologize now whether his apology was composed or not.
“Very well, then,” he said reluctantly, pushing the door to his rooms open. “This way.”
Gathering her coverlet-shawl more tightly about her shoulders, she swept ahead of him, her bare feet making no sound on the floorboards and her dark hair streaming behind her. The first of his rooms was a small chamber where he often took his breakfast and read his mail, and there close to the banked fire sat his manservant, Rooke, asleep and slumped to one side in a chair, his mouth open and his wig askew.
“Rooke!” he said sharply, more irritated at himself for forgetting Rooke would be here waiting to help him undress. “Rooke, wake yourself.”
The manservant jolted awake and rose immediately, unperturbed as he straightened his wig.
“My lord,” he murmured, his glance flicking past Rivers to Lucia. So much for discretion, thought Rivers with dismay; the rest of the household would know by morning that Mrs. Willow had been in his rooms in a state of undress in the middle of the night.
“You may retire for the night, Rooke,” Rivers said. “I’ll look after myself.”
The servant bowed and backed from the room, closing the door quietly after himself. At the same time, Rivers hurried to close the other door, the one to his adjoining bedchamber. The last thing he needed now for a difficult conversation with a young woman was to have his bedstead looming in view as an unwelcome intruder.
But then, he had to recall that was what Lucia was: a young woman of a dubious foreign family with equally dubious morals. She wasn’t a lady, which was why she thought nothing of coming alone to the country with him, and standing here in his room wrapped in a bedcover, and why, too, she hadn’t seemed distressed by having Rooke see her. When she’d complained about her reception by Mrs. Barber, her reason had been because the cook hadn’t liked her, not because the woman had believed Lucia to be his mistress. If she didn’t care, then he shouldn’t, either. Her virtue didn’t need protecting by him, if her virtue even still existed—a possibility that he realized he’d never considered until this moment.
It was also a possibility that his conscience now heard in his father’s voice. Father would understand none of this. Of course it would come as a warning, sternly admonishing Rivers to take care not to put himself in a difficult situation with a vulgar creature like this, to stop squandering his time on cunning playhouse doxies and instead consider a suitable young lady as a wife.
Irritated more than was reasonable, Rivers jabbed at the banked fire with the poker to bring the coals back to life, and lit one of the candles from the flame. He was twenty-six years old. He could do as he damned well pleased. He set the candlestick on the table between a pair of chairs, and motioned for Lucia to sit.
“No thank you, my lord,” she said, shaking her head for extra emphasis. She seemed to be vibrating with inexplicable energy, unable to keep still. “I needn’t sit, not for this. I don’t believe I could sit now anyway, I’m that on edge and turned about.”
“Then it’s up to me to begin,” he said, not sitting, either. If she insisted on standing, then he would, too. It was already disconcerting enough standing here in the middle of the night, still in his riding boots and spurs, while she had clearly tumbled directly from her bed. If he weren’t feeling so guilty about disappearing this afternoon, he would never have agreed to anything as inappropriate as having her here at this hour.
“I can only imagine what you must think of me, Mrs. Willow,” he continued, “after my, ah, hasty departure earlier this afternoon. It was an, ah, a very low thing of me to do.”
“Oh, but it wasn’t!” she exclaimed breathlessly. “That is, at first I thought so, and I felt sure you’d left because you were angry with me for having eaten your tea.”
“Not at all,” he said, surprised. “You could have consumed every last crumb in Mrs. Barber’s larder and I wouldn’t have objected. You’re my guest here, and I do not wish you to be hungry.”
“Thank you, my lord,” she said, and he could tell by the slight tremor in her voice that at last she’d blushed; strange how he’d already learned that of her. “I waited for you for a bit in the parlor, hoping you’d return, and when you didn’t I went upstairs to pack my trunk, because I thought you’d send word that you wanted me gone.”
How could she be so mistaken? “I would never do that,” he said. “We had—have—an agreement, and I gave you my word.”
She smiled wistfully, making it obvious without words that she believed a gentleman’s word to be an untrustworthy thing where she was concerned.
“It doesn’t matter now, my lord,” she said, so swiftly that it clearly wasn’t of any consequence to her. “Because now I understand. I understand everything.”
“Do you?” he said, taken aback. Again he had to remind himself that she wasn’t a lady, but a young woman whose life had been spent in the tiring room of a theater. She might well understand more than he did himself.
She nodded, taking a step closer to him in her excitement. “While I was packing my trunk, one of the footmen brought me your book with the Hamlet play, as you wished. And I read it, my lord, I read it all the way through and I did not stop until I was done. And, oh, my lord, it was glorious, just as you said it was!”
“Ahh,” he said with guilty relief. “You mean you understood the play.”
“Yes, my lord, yes, yes,” she said. She reached up to tuck her hair behind one ear, the coverlet slipping to reveal her bare collarbone and the slightest swell of her breast. By the candlelight her skin was like polished ivory, and with effort he made himself look once again to her face. “It’s perfect and sad and tragic and filled with swords and knives and death, and the crowd will love it.”
“They already do,” he said. “It was written over a century and a half ago, and it’s been vastly popular ever since.”
“It should be, my lord,” she said eagerly. “And now that I’ve read it all, I understand why you left as you did, and what you wanted me to learn.”
He frowned, again not following her. He’d always considered himself a clever man, but she could make him feel like the most ignorant fool. Fortunately in her excitement, she continued, so he didn’t have to admit it.
“Oh, yes, my lord, I can see exactly why you did it,” she said, nodding sagely. “It was wicked clever of you, too. First you made me act like a fine noble lady, such as Ophelia was, and then you scorned me, same as the prince did to her, so I’d feel like her.”
He stared, stunned. He’d inappropriately lusted after her, fled in cowardly fashion without any explanation, and this was how she’d interpreted it? That he’d intended it all along as another acting lesson?
“O-FEEL-i-ah,” he said, correcting her pronunciation to avoid confessing why he’d truly left. “That’s how you say it. Not Opp-HEL-yay. O-FEEL-i-ah.”
“O-FEEL-i-ah,” she repeated carefully, and nodded with satisfaction. “It’s a peculiar name, one I’ve not heard before. Ophelia. But now I understand, my lord. I understand her, and what that passage you gave me to learn means.”
“What does it mean, Lucia?” he said, intrigued, and forgetting to use the name he’d concocted for her. “What do the words say to you?”
She tipped her head to one side, unconsciously making her eyes glow in the flickering light as her hair rippled over one shoulder. He couldn’t fathom how he’d once judged her to be plain, not after he saw her like this.
“It’s what the words mean to Lady Ophelia, my lord,” she said firmly. “She’s so in love with the prince that she can’t believe he’d be this hateful to her. Instead she thinks he’s lost his wits. She loves him so much that it makes her sad for him, and breaks her heart to see.”
He nodded. She had, in fact, deciphered the meaning of the passage on her own, without any assistance from him. He was proud of her cleverness, very proud, though a small part of him regretted that there’d be no chance for him to be her attentive tutor—at least not for this.
“You’re entirely right,” he said. “Not even Garrick himself could explain Ophelia’s lines here any more clearly.”
She grinned shyly, and the last of those harsh cautionary thoughts in his father’s voice vanished. How could they possibly survive in the face of a smile like hers?
“I can speak it much better now, too, my lord,” she said. “I can recite it for you here, if you please.”
Without waiting for his consent, she turned her back to him, all shining dark hair and lumpy coverlet. He wondered where she’d acquired this habit of turning away to compose herself, like a conjurer who didn’t wish to reveal the secret behind a trick.
Except that she was the conjurer, and the trick was how she’d transformed herself so completely. When she turned around again to face him, she’d become the image of Ophelia’s heartfelt sorrow: her shoulders were hunched by the weight of her distress, her features pinched by it, and her eyes seemed filled with the horror of what she’d just witnessed.
O, what a noble mind is here o’erthrown!
The Courtier’s, soldier’s, scholar’s, eye, tongue, sword,
Th’ expectancy and rose of the fair state,
The glass of fashion and the mould of form,
Th’ observ’d of all observers, quite, quite down!
And I, of ladies most deject and wretched,
That suck’d the honey of his music vows,
Now see that noble and most sovereign reason
Like sweet bells jangled out of tune and harsh,
That unmatch’d form and feature of blown youth
Blasted with ecstasy. O, woe is me
T’have seen what I have seen, see what I see.
She buried her face in her hands, a fitting close to the passage, and stayed that way. She wore no fancy costume, and her cheeks were free of stage paint, and yet by the light of the single candle and the embers in the hearth, she’d managed to create a more convincing show of loss and suffering than he’d ever seen on the stage. He was amazed, and proud, and pleased as well, to think she’d taken his advice yesterday so thoroughly to heart.
But most of all, he was touched by the raw emotion that she’d dared to display, here, just for him. It was something he’d never forget. When he’d begun this experiment, all he’d considered was the wager. Now he realized that Fortune had granted him something much richer. This wasn’t a game any longer. Lucia di Rossi possessed all the natural gifts to become a true leading actress, and he felt privileged to have just seen her, in twelve lines, become Ophelia.
He raised his hands and slowly began to clap, giving her the applause she so richly deserved. Her head jerked up, and instead of the elegant curtsey of acknowledgment that he expected, her infectious grin returned, accompanied by a joyful little hop that reminded him of just how inexperienced she truly was.
“It was better, wasn’t it, my lord?” she asked proudly. “I had to read the rest of the play to learn why Lady Ophelia was so upset, and then it made sense how I was to speak her lines.”
That made sense to him—too much sense, really.
“Why do you say that?” he asked. “About how you needed to know the character before you could recite her part.”
“You told me to do so, my lord,” she said promptly. “In the green parlor. You said I should act the way Mr. Garrick advises, and forget Madame Adelaide.”
“That’s very flattering, but I’m not so sure it’s the truth,” he said, walking back and forth before her. “You’ve already proved you learn quickly, and I trust that I am an adept tutor, but for you to make such progress in a single day would be prodigious indeed.”
“Ahh,” she said, a single syllable of wariness. “Is it good to be prodigious, my lord?”
“Oh, yes,” he said evenly. “Very good. Remarkable. Extraordinary. All of which your performance was. But I don’t believe I can claim it was all my teaching. Rather, I think you’ve had a bit more experience to make you so…so prodigious.”
In three quick steps she was standing directly before him, blocking his path.
“But how could that be, my lord?” she demanded defensively, her hands bunched into two knots beneath the coverlet. “You know my family’s company as well as I. The Di Rossis are dancers.”
He shook his head, unconvinced. “That tale you spun for me last night in the carriage,” he said. “The part about how the famous Mrs. Willow began her career standing on the back of a wagon, reciting poetry to make the women weep. That wasn’t an invention, was it?”
“But there’s never been a Mr. Willow, my lord, because I’ve never had a husband, not then nor now,” she said with a frantic edge to her voice that hinted at a half truth. “I vow I wasn’t lying, my lord, not to you. I’ll swear to it, whatever way you wish of me!”
Oh, hell, he hadn’t even considered some ne’er-do-well playhouse-husband lurking in the shadows of her past. He hoped she was telling the truth about that much.
But a blasted husband. No, he didn’t want to imagine her with a husband, or any other man, either.
“Hush, Lucia, please,” he said, striving to sound more calm and measured than he actually felt. “I never accused you of lying. All I wish to know is this: have you ever before given a performance before a crowd?”
She went very still, so quiet that the pop and hiss of the fire was the only sound between them.
“Lucia,” he said softly. “The truth.”
“You will not be angry, my lord?” she asked in a small voice. “You will not claim I have spoiled your wager, and turn me away?”
“How in blazes could you spoil the wager?” he asked, his misgivings increasing by the moment.
“If I were not the inexperienced actress that Sir Edward believed me to be when he chose me,” she said. “If that no longer made your wager fair.”
“What, because Everett unwittingly gave me an advantage?” he said, relieved, and hoping against hope that this was all. “He chose you, not I, and if I benefit from his choice, so much the better. I intend to win this wager, and I require your presence to do so. So I have guessed correctly?”
She sighed forlornly. “Yes, my lord, in a way,” she said. “One summer I did do what I said. When I was younger, I did travel about with a circus company, speaking pieces from a wagon while the hat was passed. And I did wear a pink silk gown, too, and though it wasn’t new, it was the best I’ve ever worn.”
“You weren’t alone, were you?” he said, picturing all the dangers to a young girl in such a situation. “Who was passing that hat?”
“Not Mr. Willow,” she said with a sad attempt at a smile. “It was my papa.”
“Your father,” Rivers repeated carefully. He was relieved more than he should have been that it wasn’t the phantom husband, but a father—an irate, outraged father…who could raise an entirely different set of problems. “You’ve never mentioned him before. Does he know you’re here at the Lodge?”
“He’s dead,” she said, the words brittle with old sorrow. “He died three years ago December. My mother died so long ago that I can only just remember her. I’m all that’s left.”
“I’m sorry, Lucia,” Rivers said. No wonder she’d seemed so vulnerable to him. She was. He’d always been surrounded and protected by his brothers, his father, and the rest of his extended family of cousins and wives and their children, and at first he’d assumed that she’d enjoyed the same security in that den of Di Rossis. But she’d let enough slip about how little they regarded her, he now realized that parting with them had been a relief, even if it meant she was every bit as solitary as she appeared now: a small, brave figure who was achingly alone in the world.
“Thank you, my lord,” she said, her voice reduced to little more than a whisper. “It was consumption that took him in the end, but it was strong drink that broke him. That summer when we were with the circus, after he’d quarreled with Uncle Antonio, he’d sworn he’d stop drinking, and he nearly did. He’d do comic dances between the acrobats’ tricks while I said my pieces before the show, and the circus folk were kind to us. It was the best time of my life, doing that with him. But then the cold weather came and the circus stopped, and Papa took to drinking again, and that—that was all.”
She raised her hands and let them drop, as final a gesture as Rivers had ever seen. But now he understood why she’d refused to drink with him in the carriage, and inwardly he winced to recall how he’d unwittingly tried to tease her from it, even when she’d claimed then that liquor only brought “trouble and sorrow.” For her that was undeniably true, and for her sake he resolved not to drink in her company as long as she was here with him at the Lodge.
“I am sorry,” he said again, painfully aware of the inadequacy of the words.
“You needn’t be, my lord,” she said, a quick refusal of his sympathy. “None of it was your fault or concern. When Papa died, I wasn’t left to fend for myself like most orphans would’ve been. I’d a place and lodgings with the company.”
“I should think so, given that they are your family,” he said. He had been very young when his own mother had died, but he recalled how as bereft as his father had been, he had done his best to ease the grief and suffering for Rivers and his brothers. They had all supported one another, as a family was supposed to do. “Whether you’re part of the same dancing company or not is inconsequential. You’re related by blood, and it was their duty to look after you.”
“Yes, my lord,” she said, hedging. “But it would have been a much easier duty for my uncle if I hadn’t been so—so disappointing to him.”
“An inability to dance should hardly qualify as a disappointment,” Rivers insisted, unable to imagine how anyone could feel this way about her. She didn’t deserve it, not one bit. “I cannot begin to understand why your uncle and Magdalena don’t show you more kindness.”
“I understand completely, my lord,” she said with a resignation that chilled him. “Ballet must be perfect. Each dancer, each step must be in harmony, or the whole is destroyed. My uncle danced for kings and queens. He was such a great dancer that on the night of his last benefit, the House of Lords canceled their debates so that the lords could attend.”
“But that has nothing to do with you!”
“It has everything to do with me, my lord,” she said firmly, bunching the coverlet around her shoulders like woolen armor against her fate. “Uncle Lorenzo was perfect, and he expects perfection from everyone in the company. I could not give it to him. I was like the one broken wheel that keeps the entire clockwork from working, and he could not help but loathe me for it.”
He fought the almost irresistible urge to wrap his arms around her, to hold her and tell her how that damnable uncle was an ignorant bully without the brains to appreciate her. It would be easy enough, natural enough, and she was less than an arm’s length away from him. But it would not be right, even if he’d never wanted to do anything more in his life. Instead he simply stood, his arms folded across his chest in order to keep them where they belonged.
“But your father never felt that way, did he?” he asked, striving to say only what he should. “He looked after you while he lived, didn’t he?”
“As much as he could, my lord,” she said sadly. “Santo cielo, the fights he had with my uncle over me! Of course it grieved Papa that I could not dance like either him or Mama, but he never faulted me for it. Instead he believed that one day I’d be a great actress.”
“A wise man,” Rivers said. “It’s a pity he didn’t live to see you make your debut as Ophelia.”
She smiled wistfully, her eyes luminous as she looked up at him.
“He would have liked that,” she said softly. “He was the only one who ever believed I’d the talent to act. The only one, my lord, until you.”
He could think of nothing to say to that, and any words that could be formed into a sensible reply had fled his brain. She had never seemed so achingly alone, and he longed to prove to her that he did, in fact, believe in her, as she’d just said. He just wasn’t sure how to do it, because jumbled together with that was the distinct and ungentlemanly awareness of how, at this moment, she was also achingly desirable. He’d always thought himself to be a rational man, a man ruled by his head and not his passions, yet there was nothing rational about what he was feeling right now as she gazed up at him.
And so with a little grunt of capitulation, he stopped trying, and did what he’d been working so hard not to do. He took the last step that remained between them and cupped her face in his hands, turning it up toward his.
“I do believe in you, Lucia,” he said, lightly stroking the underside of her jaw with his thumbs. “Have no doubt of that.”
She didn’t smile, or answer, her eyes wide and searching. She was holding her breath, and he didn’t know why. Surely he’d said enough to reassure her, hadn’t he?
Impulsively he leaned down and kissed her forehead, the slightest brush of his lips over her skin. He’d meant it as a gesture of fondness, of regard, nothing more. But instead of stopping there, that innocent kiss pushed his gallant resolve clear from his brain, and in the next instant his mouth was kissing hers, exactly as he’d been wanting to do.
But until their lips touched, he hadn’t realized how much he’d been holding back. If he was honest, he’d wanted to kiss her when she’d appeared at his doorstep with her belongings in her arms, her face filled with such eagerness and life that he’d been instantly drawn to her. That was when he’d first (and belatedly) realized that it was her spirit that made her beautiful to him, and desirable as well.
It was no wonder, really, that now he kissed her hungrily, possessively, as if she’d some special secret that he wanted to taste. He thrust his fingers into her hair, the heavy waves falling over his wrists like a silken caress. He slanted his mouth over hers, coaxing her lips to part so he could deepen the kiss. She swayed toward him, as delicate as an angel, and with one hand he cradled the small of her back to draw her closer.
He was acutely aware of how warm and soft her uncorseted body was beneath the coverlet, of how yielding she would be in his arms, in his bed. The bed that was beckoning in the next room, only a few steps away. It seemed like such an old story, the stuff of bad novels and plays. How many other young women had been swept off to similar convenient havens by other gentlemen—young women who, like Lucia, were of such inconsequential stations in life that their virtue, or lack thereof, wasn’t really an issue?
And yet she wasn’t like them, not at all. In her kiss he tasted not wantonness, but eager inexperience, the same eagerness with which she’d greeted every other challenge he’d set before her. She had courage. That was Lucia, and what separated her from all the other dancers and milliner’s apprentices and lady’s maids in London, and it only made him desire her more.
She made a small, shuddering gasp of surprise when his tongue pushed into her mouth, and he took his time to let her grow accustomed to the heady new sensations. He wanted her to want him as well, and not be frightened. While she didn’t fight him or try to break free, she’d let the coverlet slip forgotten from her shoulders to a woolen puddle around her feet, leaving her clad only in the rough white linen shift she slept in. With her hands slightly raised at her sides, the full sleeves hung around her arms like wings, and her fingers fluttered uncertainly beneath the drawstring cuffs like little birds.
He tried to keep his eyes closed and his conscience at bay, and focus instead on the endless pleasure of kissing her. But he couldn’t quite forget those little fluttering hands, nor those last words she’d said about how he was the only one besides her father who believed in her.
Because she trusted him.
With a muttered oath aimed at himself, he tore his mouth away from hers and stepped back from her, dropping his arms to his sides.
“Forgive me, Mrs. Willow,” he said, his voice harsh from the exertion of breaking away from her, and staying away when all he wanted to do was haul her back into his arms. “I regret that I have, ah—”
“No, my lord, do not say it!” she cried. He wasn’t sure how he’d expected her to behave after he’d taken such patent advantage of her—a tear or two of calculated shame, perhaps, or a bowed head to hide a mortified blush—but the fire he now saw in her dark eyes wasn’t it. Her cheeks were flushed, her lips ruddy and full from kissing, and her hair was tangled around her face. She snatched the fallen coverlet back over her shoulders, and those fluttering hands were now clasped around the edges in determined fists.
“You were going to say you regretted kissing me, my lord,” she continued with fierce indignation. “I know you were, because you apologize about everything, and—and I won’t hear it!”
“You’ll hear it if I say it,” he said, taking another step back from her. “I shouldn’t have kissed you, and I regret it.”
“Why, my lord?” Her small chin rose defensively, and she shook her hair back from her face. “If you will not speak the truth, then I shall. Am I too common for the son of a duke to kiss? Am I too plain, too small, too slight in my figure?”
“Lucia, I have never once so much as thought any of those things of you.” He was determined to control his temper; of course, as was always the case when he tried to employ reason over passion, he failed. “Damnation, not once. I regretted kissing you only because you trusted me to behave as an honorable gentleman should, and instead I behaved like a selfish, arrogant boor, and if I wish to apologize to you for that, then I will.”
She studied him with guarded eyes, unwilling to give up her assumption.
“You’re a gentleman, my lord,” she said warily. “You needn’t be honorable with me, because I’m not a lady.”
“Your station has nothing to do with this, Lucia,” he said. “You deserved better from me, just as you deserve my apology, if only you’d be agreeable enough to accept it.”
Abruptly her face lost its wariness and softened, and her eyes glowed too brightly. She tried to smile, and instead her mouth trembled and crumpled. He knew what that meant. Blast, he’d made her cry.
“Here now, Lucia,” he said gruffly. “No tears, or I’ll have to apologize all over again.”
She lowered her gaze and shook her head, and then, before he quite knew what was happening, she threw herself at him. Small she might be, but she hurled herself forward with such force that he staggered back, catching her around the waist to steady them both before they crashed to the floor.
Not that she cared. She was kissing him, kissing him with the same fervor (if not the same experience) that he’d employed whilst kissing her earlier. She’d once again lost the coverlet that had given her a semblance of modesty, and with it she seemed to have lost her reluctance to touch him. Those once-fluttering hands were now firmly locked around his shoulders and her body was pressed so close against his that he felt the curve of her breasts through his coat and waistcoat and shirt.
She kissed him eagerly, ardently, and as soon as the shock had worn off—a quick process—he realized that, because it had been so unexpected, being kissed by her was perhaps even better than when he’d been the one kissing her.
Finally she slipped free and retreated, her gaze never leaving his as she caught up the coverlet and wrapped it tightly about her body.
“I—we—should not have done that, my lord,” she said breathlessly, shoving her hair back from her forehead with one hand. “It wasn’t right, not for either of us, and—and I must go.”
“You can’t go now.” He reached for her, but she slipped away.
“I must, my lord,” she said, hurrying toward the door. “Good night, my lord.”
He stared at the closed door after she’d left, perplexed. He hadn’t meant to kiss her, but he had, and she hadn’t meant to kiss him, but she had, too.
Yet she was perfectly correct about none of it being right. It wasn’t because of the usual reasons against falling into bed with a particular woman: she wasn’t a lady, or the sister of a close friend. Being a Di Rossi and also clearly of a passionate nature would have been reason enough. But she was beneath his roof for the sake of the wager, not for a dalliance. What the devil would they say to each other tomorrow morning? Could they return to Hamlet as if this hadn’t just happened between them?
He ran his hand along his jaw, thinking of all she’d told him this night, of her father and her aspirations of becoming an actress, and of how much she’d endured from her wretched family. He’d never have guessed any of that, and yet still she’d said he was the only one to believe in her, the only chance she had to make her dreams become real.
To him this was only a frivolous wager with a friend; to her it was her life. He sighed, thinking of how she’d felt pressed against his chest, and how warm and wet and sweet her mouth had been when they’d kissed. He couldn’t simply forget that, nor was he entirely sure he wanted to.
And he’d still five and a half weeks with her to figure it out.