Welbourne Manor, Summer 1820
She should not have come here.
Mary Bassington paced the length of the little faux-ancient temple and back again, her footsteps soft on the marble floor. Across the garden, Welbourne Manor shimmered in the night, all its windows lit by a welcoming golden glow. The party still carried on there, a merry game of hide-and-seek still in progress, but she had been able to bear it no longer. The walls had seemed to press in on her, suffocating her, and she’d had to flee.
Not that there was much relief to be found in the little temple. It was a place made for love, for secret meetings and murmured declarations. Little benches were tucked cosily in the shadows, where a marble Cupid laughed down from his pedestal, his arrow at the ready.
Mary glared at him. He had best not point that arrow at her—not again!
She stopped at the edge of the stone steps, wrapping her arms tightly around herself as she stared at the house. How very welcoming it had seemed when she’d first arrived, the home of her dear brother-in-law’s best friends! How warm and noisy, and full of fun. She had been reluctant to leave her home at Derrington Hall, leave her mourning for William, gone now for many months. She was sure the Fitzmanning family, renowned for their high spirits, would think her nothing but a fusty widow, old before her time at twenty-six.
That was not at all the case. They could not have been more cheerfully welcoming. Especially the youngest lady, Charlotte, who reminded Mary of her own three sisters. She had even begun to enjoy herself. Then …
Then he had arrived. Dominick, as handsome as ever. More so, even, for now his face had reached the chiselled perfection his younger visage had promised. Just as charming, too. She’d felt her heart pound inside her as she had watched him laugh with Charlotte at dinner. She’d hardly been able to keep smiling through the interminable meal, to swallow her wine and go on pretending her placid world had not been suddenly upended.
She stared at the house, but she did not really see its pale façade. She saw the past romantic, carefree girl she’d been before she’d married William. She saw a quiet veranda at a ball, the flash of her white dress behind a potted palm. Dominick’s teasing smile, the gleam of his guinea-gold hair as he bent his head to kiss her. The gentle, warm touch of his hands on her bare arms
‘No!’ Mary shook her head, trying to dislodge those memories. She had pressed them down so hard over the years, tried to forget them, and they had almost disappeared. The Bassingtons and Dominick moved in very different circles: the Bassingtons—except for Drew—with staid country families and Dominick with increasingly rakish friends and fast women. The two circles never overlapped. She’d thought her heart healed, her youthful infatuation nothing but a foolish mistake that was long over.
It was not. When she had looked out of that window and seen him today, laughing as he swung down from his horse, she had become that silly girl all over again. It had been as if the years, her respectable marriage, her son, Dominick’s scandalous wild ways, didn’t exist. All the old excitement had flooded back over her, and she’d had to clap her hand over her mouth to hold back a cry.
But the years did exist. She was the widowed Countess of Derrington, with a child and responsibilities, and he was a scandalous rake. The memory of his infamous elopement to France with Lady Newcombe, and that lady’s death in childbirth at Calais, was still fresh in Society’s mind.
Mary could not afford to be the silly girl she once was. She should leave Welbourne at once. But—but she did not want to leave! The thought of plunging back into dark mourning at Derrington Hall, after glimpsing the bright joy of life at Welbourne, filled her with dread.
She kicked out at a marble pillar, forgetting she wore satin evening slippers. ‘Ow!’ she cried, pain shooting through her foot. ‘Blast it all.’
‘You shouldn’t be out here in the dark,’ a deep, rich-rough voice said. ‘There are too many obstacles in one’s path.’
Mary’s heart pounded all over again. She spun around on her good foot to see Dominick coming up the shallow steps. He had not come from the house, but along the pathway leading from the pond, so she had not seen him. And he still moved with the silent grace of a forest cat, deceptively slow and elegant.
His dark evening clothes blended with the night, but the moonlight gleamed on his bright hair. He watched her warily, as if she might kick at him instead of the pillar.
‘Are you hurt?’ he said.
Mary had quite forgotten about her foot in the shock of seeing him again, but now the pain shot up her leg. ‘Only my dignity, I fear.’
Dominick laughed. The old carefree sound was tinged with a new harshness, as if he, like her, found little enough to laugh at in life. ‘More than your dignity, I think. You can’t even put your weight on that foot.’
‘It is quite all right.’
‘Nonsense. Here, sit down before you fall over.’
Before she knew what he was about, he took her elbow in a gentle clasp, his long fingers warm through her silk glove. That part of him—the feel of his touch—it was the same. It made her shiver with long-dormant desires.
‘You see, you’re chilled, too,’ he said, helping her sit on one of the marble benches.
Cupid still looked down at her gleefully, as if he had engineered this meeting himself. As if he had summoned Dominick to be alone with her in the night.
‘You shouldn’t have left the house,’ Dominick said, kneeling down beside her.
‘I needed some fresh air. As did you, I see,’ she said hoarsely.
‘I wanted to smoke a cigar by the pond,’ he answered. ‘And be alone for a moment.’
As had she. But now they were alone together, and his presence seemed to fill up the night, fill up every inch of her consciousness. The warmth of him, kneeling close to her leg, the clean, smoky scent of him, enveloped her senses.
‘I suppose you have no need to play hide-and-seek games,’ she said. ‘The ladies line up in the open for you.’
Oh! Why had she said that? Mary bit her lip, wishing the words back.
But Dominick just laughed again. ‘Now, why would you think that, Mary?’ The sound of her given name in his voice made her shiver again. It had been so long since she had heard it from him, so long since she had been just ‘Mary’. ‘I see no line forming here, do you?’
He gazed up at her steadily in the moonlit darkness, his eyes that unearthly blue-green she had once thought she could gaze at for ever. ‘I see only you.’
She was so captured by those eyes she didn’t even see him reach for her foot until she felt her slipper slide free. Cool night air rushed over stockinged instep, only to be quickly heated by the even more shocking touch of his hand.
‘What are you doing?’ she cried. She tried to snatch her foot away, but he held onto her.
‘I just want to make sure you didn’t break anything,’ he said gently, softly, as if he calmed a skittish horse. He’d always been so good with his horses, firm but tender; it was one of the first things she had noticed about him when she was young. She’d used to walk with her sisters in Hyde Park every day, hoping to glimpse him riding there.
‘Does this hurt?’ he asked, pressing carefully on her toe.
Mary had quite forgotten her injury in the midst of old memories, but a jolt of pain reminded her. ‘Ouch! Yes, it does. But only when careless people press on it like that.’
He smiled wryly, carefully rubbing the edge of his thumb over her other toes. The soft touch awakened very different pains inside her, calling up long-suppressed feelings of desire and need. They were feelings she had certainly thought dead—strangled by her husband’s discreet fumblings under her nightdress in the marital bed.
But, blast it all, with one soft touch on her foot Dominick had sent that need roaring back into flaming life.
‘I would say it is not broken,’ he said, gazing down at her foot. The white stocking glowed against his dark coat in the moonlight. ‘But you should put a cold compress on it soon, or you won’t be able to wear your pretty shoes tomorrow.’
‘You have much knowledge of treating injuries, I think,’ she murmured, thinking of all the rumours of his fights, his long hours boxing and fencing at Gentleman Jackson’s saloon.
‘Horses’ injuries, perhaps. Not those of fine ladies who insist on kicking innocent stone pillars.’ He let go of her foot, but still knelt beside her, leaning slightly against her skirts. He was so near she could reach out and touch his hair, trace the stark, elegant lines of his face. Touch that tiny scar just by his temple.
She tucked her hands firmly in a fold of her skirt, away from temptation.
‘It is good to see you again, Mary,’ he said. ‘You are looking very well.’
‘So are you,’ she admitted. Better than well, blast him. The years had hardly touched him, whereas she felt so very old sometimes.
‘It’s been far too long since I saw you.’
Had he thought of her, then? She longed to ask, to know what he had imagined of her over all this time. But she just laughed. ‘Well, I have lived mostly in the country since I married. I hear you cannot often tear yourself away from the pleasures of Town.’
The corner of his mouth quirked. ‘Town does offer many distractions. If I was alone too much with my thoughts, I fear I would run mad.’
What were those thoughts, then? She wanted so much to know of his scandalous Town life! A life so different from her own quiet existence. At Derrington Hall there were no distractions at all. ‘I do envy you.’
‘Do you?’ he said. ‘You certainly should not.’
For an instant she felt the lightest pressure against her skirt, against her leg, just at the vulnerable bend of her knee. She glanced down, startled, to see he had caught a fold of silk between his fingers, his golden head leaning close, as if he inhaled her perfume.
An ineffable tenderness, a sad longing, swept over her. She remembered all she had once longed for with him, all she had had to give up. She stretched out her hand to touch his cheek, only to draw back in fear.
It had hurt so much to lose him back then, when she was just a silly, romantic girl. She couldn’t afford to feel that way again, and she was very much afraid she would. He still had that power over her senses.
‘I should go back to the house,’ she said hastily. Forgetting her shoe, forgetting her hurt foot, she jumped up and dashed from the temple. She limped as fast as she could along the pathway and up the steps to the terrace, only to be brought up short by the sight of her brother-in-law.
Drew leaned against the stone balustrade, a cheroot between his fingers. For a moment she feared he had seen her with Dominick in the temple, but he said nothing and went on staring out into the night. His handsome young face looked solemn, as if he, too, carried the weight of all the Bassington troubles on his shoulders.
She thought of going to him, of sharing their problems as they had ever since William had died, but she was too tired and confused. She couldn’t tell anyone about Dominick, not even Drew, who had become like her own brother. So she just slipped into the house, avoiding the laughter in the drawing room as she hurried up to her own chamber.
Surely everything would seem much clearer in the morning, and she would feel like herself again. Like sensible, practical, cool-headed Lady Derrington. Silly, romantic, impulsive Mary Smythe was gone.
Dominick leaned against the marble pillar, watching Mary run away from him across the gardens. With her dark hair and deep purple gown she seemed a part of the night, but her pale face glowed.
Mary Smythe—no, Lady Derrington. She was here, at Welbourne Manor, surely the last place he would expect to find her. If he had known she was here, would he have refused the invitation—or would he have come much sooner?
He slammed his hand against the cold stone, but nothing could erase the image in his mind of her dark eyes, as startled and delicate as a doe’s, when he’d touched her foot. Mary, Mary. How hard he had worked to forget her! He’d thought he had forgotten her, the sweet memory of their youthful kisses buried in so many other beds, so many card games and fights. What were the innocent smiles of Mary Smythe to all that?
But now he saw he had never really forgotten at all. The reality of her presence, of the beautiful woman she had become, only sharpened those old memories. When he’d touched her, smelled the lavender perfume she still wore, such a fierce longing had swept over him. He’d wanted to lean down, to kiss her foot, caress the warm curve of her leg and make her cry out with need.
He curled his hand into a tight fist. Her parents had once thought him not good enough for her, and they had been quite right. He had been a reckless, romantic young man, full of futile dreams. How much worse would he be for her now, with scandals by the score attached to his name?
The one honourable thing he had ever done in his life was letting Mary Smythe go. He wouldn’t ruin that good deed now by pursuing Lady Derrington. No matter how much he still wanted her.