Authors: Lisa Kleypas
“I was just showing Sara to her room,” Lily protested, lowering her voice as the men returned to their game. “But I had to stop here first. I couldn’t abandon the lot of you without a word, could I?”
Letting go of Sara, Alex gathered his petite wife close and ducked her underneath the chin. “I know exactly what you’re up to,” he warned softly, in a tone the others couldn’t hear. “My beautiful, meddlesome little bully—for once couldn’t you allow others to manage their own affairs?”
Lily grinned at him cheekily. “Not when I can manage them so much better.”
Alex traced his thumb lightly over Lily’s jaw. “An opinion Craven doesn’t share, my sweet.”
Lily leaned closer to him and replied in a barely audible murmur. Sara averted her gaze as the two drew aside and engaged in a whispered exchange. She didn’t want to eavesdrop on a private conversation. Nevertheless, she caught a few revealing snatches as they talked at the same time.
“—Derek doesn’t know what’s good for him,” Lily was saying.
“—concern should be what’s good for Miss Fielding—”
“But you don’t understand how—”
“—understand all too well,” Alex finished, and they stared into each other’s eyes challengingly.
Sara felt her color rising. There was a palpable attraction between the two that made her feel like an intruder on an intimate scene.
It was clear that Lord Raiford would have liked to say more to Lily, but he let go of her reluctantly and gave her an admonishing glance.
“Behave yourself”
was the silent but unmistakable message. Lily made a face and looked around him to wave at Lansdale and Aveland. “Enjoy the game, gentlemen,” she called. They responded with agreeable murmurs. Derek Craven was silent, coldly ignoring the womens’ departure.
Dejectedly Sara followed Lily through the carpeted hallway. Craven’s icy manner had been a rude surprise. She scolded herself silently for thinking that he might actually be glad to see her. Instead it seemed likely that he would ignore her for the entire weekend.
They approached a row of guest suites in the west wing, each with its own dressing and sitting room. Sara’s room was decorated in pastel shades of lavender and yellow. The elaborate garden below was visible from a pair of windows hung with divided curtains. Wandering to the tent bed with fluted columns, Sara touched a fold of the bedhangings. They were embroidered to match the delicate floral pattern of the wallpaper.
Lily opened an armoire to reveal Sara’s clothes. In a
remarkably short time, the housemaids had unpacked her meager belongings with faultless efficiency. “I hope this room pleases you,” she said, frowning slightly as she saw Sara’s expression. “If you’d prefer another—”
“It’s lovely,” Sara assured her, and made a wry face. “It’s just that…perhaps I should leave. I don’t wish to cause trouble. Mr. Craven is annoyed by my presence here. And he is angry with you for inviting me. The way he looked at you…”
“He’d like to strangle me,” Lily admitted cheerfully. “Slowly. But the way he looked at
you
…Good God, it was priceless!” She gave a peal of laughter. “How does it feel to have the most unattainable man in England at your feet?”
Sara’s eyes widened. “Oh, he’s not—”
“At your feet,” Lily repeated. “Believe me, Derek has had this coming for years! When I think of all the times he’s infuriated me by acting superior and coldhearted, so utterly in control of himself and everything around him…” She shook her head, chuckling. “Don’t misunderstand me. I adore the big, hardheaded cockney. But it will be the best thing in the world for him if he’s taken down a peg.”
“If anyone’s going to be taken down a peg, it’s
I,
” Sara said under her breath. Lily didn’t appear to have heard.
After Lily left to attend to her guests, Sara rang for a maid to help with her toilette. A French maid a few years older than herself appeared. The woman was blond and small, with round pink cheeks and a droll smile.
“Je m’appelle Françoise,”
the maid informed her, setting a pair of curling tongs near the coals beyond the fireplace grate. Busily Françoise bustled about the
room, selecting a fresh gown from the armoire and holding it up for Sara’s approval.
“Yes, that one will be fine,” Sara said, removing her jacket and bonnet and unbuttoning the front of her wrinkled traveling gown. She sat at the small satinwood dressing table and pulled the pins from her disheveled hair.
The russet and golden-brown locks fell down her back. There was a pleased exclamation behind her.
“Comme vos cheveux sont beaux, mademoiselle!”
Reverently Françoise brushed out the heavy length of hair until it was a smooth, shining curtain.
“Do you speak any English, Françoise?” Sara asked the maid doubtfully. Françoise met her eyes in the mirror and shook her head with a smile. “I wish you did. Frenchwomen are supposed to know all about matters of the heart. I need some advice.”
Hearing the disconsolate note in her voice, Françoise said something that sounded sympathetic and encouraging.
“I shouldn’t have come here,” Sara continued. “By leaving Perry I’ve thrown away what I thought I always wanted. I hardly recognize myself, Françoise! The feelings I have for another man are so compelling…I’m afraid that I might take whatever I can have of him, no matter how fleeting the moment is. If I heard some other woman confessing to such thoughts, I would condemn her as a fool and worse. I’ve always considered myself a sensible person, guided more by reason than by passion. I can’t explain what’s come over me. All I know is that from the moment I met him—” She broke off, unable to finish the sentence. Sighing, she rubbed her aching forehead. “I don’t think time will help. It hasn’t so far.”
There was a long silence as the maid brushed her hair in soothing strokes. Françoise wore a thoughtful expression, as if she were contemplating the situation. It didn’t matter that they spoke different languages—any woman who had ever suffered heartbreak could recognize it easily. Finally the maid paused in her brushing and gestured toward Sara’s heart.
“Faire ce que le coeur vous dit, mademoiselle.”
“Follow my heart?” Sara asked in bewilderment. “Is that what you’re saying?”
“Oui, mademoiselle.”
Placidly the girl reached for a narrow blue silk ribbon and began to weave it through the loose locks of hair.
“That could be very dangerous,” Sara whispered.
Several minutes later Sara finished buttoning the high collar of her gray gown and checked her appearance in the mirror. She was pleased by the results of the maid’s efforts. Her hair had been neatly confined on top of her head in a heavy plait, while a few wisps at her temples had been curled into ringlets. Thanking Françoise, Sara left the room and wandered toward the grand staircase. Nervously she considered joining one of the ladies’ gatherings downstairs for some tea and conversation. She hoped the women would be friendly, or at least tolerant of her presence.
Pausing in the hallway to stare at a marble sculpture poised in a semi-circular niche, Sara tried to bolster her courage. She was in awe of the guests downstairs, and half-afraid of them. Lily had said the gathering included ambassadors, politicians, artists, and even a visiting colonial governor and his family. Sara was well-aware that she had nothing in common with them. No doubt they would consider her gauche and unsophisticated. Perhaps this was how Derek Craven
felt, hobnobbing with aristocrats who were disdainfully aware of his origins. Poor Mr. Craven, she thought sympathetically. Suddenly she was aware of an icy tingling on her neck, and every hair on her body stood erect. She turned around slowly.
Derek was standing behind her, looking far from deserving of anyone’s sympathy. He stared at her like a jaded sultan surveying his latest female acquisition. His dark handsomeness was matched only by his extraordinary self-possession. “Where is your fiancé?” he asked in a distinctly unfriendly tone.
Sara was unnerved by his threatening stillness. “I don’t have a…That is, h-he…We’re not going to marry.”
“He didn’t propose?”
“No…well, yes, but…” Sara stepped back instinctively. Derek moved to close the distance between them. As they talked, she continued to edge away, and he followed like a stalking cat. “Mr. Kingswood proposed a few nights after my return,” Sara said breathlessly. “I accepted. I was very happy at first…well, not precisely
happy,
but—”
“What happened?”
“There were problems. He said I had changed. I suppose he was right, although—”
“He broke the engagement?”
“I…I think a case could be made that we broke it together…” As he advanced on her, she found herself backing into a nearby room, almost stumbling over a delicate gilded chair. “Mr. Craven, I wish you would stop prowling after me this way!”
His hard stare was relentless. “You knew I would be here this weekend.”
“I didn’t!”
“You planned this with Lily.”
“I most certainly did
not
—” She broke off with a startled squeak as he reached her and clamped his hands on her shoulders.
“I can’t decide whose neck to wring first—yours or hers.”
“You’re offended that I’m here,” Sara said in a small voice.
“I’d rather stand in a bucket of coals than spend one night under the same roof with you!”
“You dislike me that much?”
Derek’s lungs began to work hard as he stared into her small, lovely face. The violent joy of being near her caused his blood to sizzle. His fingers flexed repeatedly into the softness of her shoulders, as if relishing the texture of her flesh. “No, I don’t dislike you,” he said, nearly inaudible.
“Mr. Craven, you’re hurting me.”
His grip didn’t loosen. “That night after the assembly…you didn’t understand a bloody thing I told you, did you?”
“I understood.”
“And still you came here.”
Sara stood her ground, although it took all her strength not to wilt beneath his scorching glare. “I had every right to accept Lady Raiford’s invitation,” she said stubbornly. “A-and I won’t leave, no matter what you say to me!”
“Then I will.”
“All right!” To her amazement, an urge to taunt him overcame her, and she added, “If you have so little control over yourself that you find it necessary to run away from me.”
His face was wiped clean of all expression, but she
could sense the fury that blazed within him. “They say God protects fools and children—for your sake I hope it’s true.”
“Mr. Craven, I thought you and I could at least manage to be civil to each other for one weekend—”
“Why the hell would you think that?”
“Because we managed it quite well before the assembly, and…” Sara sputtered into silence as she realized how tightly he was holding her. The tips of her breasts grazed his chest. Her skirts flowed gently around his legs.
“I can’t manage it now.” He gripped her inflexibly, until she felt the hot, leaping pressure of his arousal against her stomach. His eyes blazed like emeralds in his austere face. “I can protect you against everything except myself.”
She knew that his grasp was deliberately painful. But instead of resisting, she relaxed against his hard body. More than anything she wanted to twine herself around him and crush her mouth against the place where the white linen of his cravat met smooth brown skin. Her hands crept up his broad shoulders, and she stared at him wordlessly.
Derek feared he was a hairsbreadth away from attacking her. “Why didn’t you marry him?” he asked hoarsely.
“I don’t love him.”
He shook his head in baffled anger, and opened his mouth to deliver a scathing reply. Apparently thinking better of it, he closed his mouth abruptly, only to open it again. Were the moment not so tense, Sara would have laughed. Instead she stared up at him helplessly. “How could I have gone through with it when I don’t love him?”
“You little fool. Isn’t it enough that you’d be safe with him?”
“No. I want more than that. Or nothing at all.”
His dark head bent lower over hers. One of his hands released her shoulder, and his fingertips grazed the delicate curls at her temple. He was tight-lipped, as if enduring an exquisitely painful torture. Sara made an inarticulate sound as she felt his knuckles brush the highest edge of her cheek. The brightness of his gaze was like harsh sunlight. She felt as if she were drowning in the depths of burning green. His large hand cradled her cheek and jaw, his thumb testing the downy surface. “I’d forgotten how soft your skin was,” he murmured.
She stood there trembling against him, beyond all sense of pride and propriety. Impulsive words hovered on her lips. Suddenly she was distracted by the feel of a strange object underneath her palm, pressed flat against his chest. There was a hard lump in the inside pocket of his coat. She frowned curiously. Before Derek realized what she was doing, she reached inside the garment to investigate.
“No,” he said swiftly, his large hand gripping her wrist to stop her.
But it was too late; her fingers had already encountered the object and identified it. With a disbelieving look on her face, Sara pulled out the tiny pair of spectacles she thought she had lost at the club. “Why?” she whispered, amazed that he was carrying them in his breast pocket.
He met her gaze defiantly, his jaw set. A small muscle twitched in his cheek.
Then she understood. “Are you having problems with your sight, Mr. Craven?” she asked softly. “Or is it your heart?”
Just then they both heard the sound of distant voices down the hall. “Someone’s coming,” he muttered, and released her.
“Wait—”
He was gone in an instant, as if the hounds of hell were nipping at his heels. Still clutching the spectacles, Sara bit her lip. In her wild mixture of emotions—relief that he still wanted her, fear that he would leave—nothing was as strong as the desire to comfort him. She wished she had the power to reassure him that his love wouldn’t hurt her…that she would never ask for more than he could give.
Harrassed by a flood of minor difficulties, Lily searched for her husband and found him alone in the hunting room. He was seated at a desk with an empty cigar box in his hand. Alex smiled at the sight of her, but his expression changed to a questioning frown. “What is it, sweetheart?”