Almost Heaven Part 18

"What don't you believe-that I wanted to drag you behind the hedges then and there and make you melt in my arms? Or that I had scruples enough to ignore that ign.o.ble impulse?"

A treacherous warmth was slowly beginning to seep up Elizabeth's arms and down her legs, and she fought the weakness with all her might. "Well, what happened to your scruples in the woodcutter's cottage? You knew I thought you'd already left when I went inside."

"Why did you stay," he countered smoothly, "when you realized I was still there?"

In confused distress Elizabeth raked her hair off her forehead. "I knew I shouldn't do it," she admitted. "I don't know why I remained."

"You stayed for the same reason I did," he informed her bluntly. "We wanted each other."

"It was wrong," she protested a little wildly. "Dangerous and-foolish!"

"Foolish or not," he said grimly, "I wanted you. I want you now." Elizabeth made the mistake of looking at him, and his amber eyes captured hers against her will, holding them imprisoned. The shawl she'd been clutching as if it was a lifeline to safety slid from her nerveless hand and dangled at her side, but Elizabeth didn't notice.

"Neither of us has anything to gain by continuing this pretense that the weekend in England is over and forgotten," he said bluntly. "Yesterday proved that it wasn't over, if it proved nothing else, and it's never been forgotten-I've remembered you all this time, and I know d.a.m.n well you've remembered me."

Elizabeth wanted to deny it; she sensed that if she did, he'd be so disgusted with her deceit that he'd turn on his' heel and leave her. She lifted her chin, unable to tear her gaze from his, but she was too affected by the things he'd just admitted to her to lie to him. "All right," she said shakily, "you win. I've never forgotten you or that weekend. "How could I?" she added defensively.

He smiled at her angry retort, and his voice gentled to the timbre of rough velvet. "Come here, Elizabeth."

"Why?" she whispered shakily.

"So that we can finish what we began that weekend." Elizabeth stared at him in paralyzed terror mixed with violent excitement and shook her head in a jerky refusal. "I'll not force you," he said quietly, "nor will I force you to do anything you don't want to do once you're in my arms. Think carefully about that," he warned, "because if you, come to me now, you won't be able to tell yourself in the morning that I made you do this against your will-or that I you didn't know what was going to happen. Yesterday neither of us knew what was going to happen. Now we do."

Some small, insidious voice in her mind urged her to obey, reminded her that after the public punishment she'd taken for the last time they were together she was ent.i.tled to some stolen pa.s.sionate kisses, if she wanted them. Another voice warned her not to break the rules again. "I-I can't," she said in a soft cry.

"There are four steps separating us and a year and a half of wanting drawing us together," he said Elizabeth swallowed. "Couldn't you meet me halfway?" The sweetness of the question was almost Ian's undoing, but he managed to shake his head. "Not this time. I want you, but I'll not have you looking at me like a monster in the morning. If you want me, all you have to do is walk into my arms."

"I don't know what I want," Elizabeth cried, looking a little wildly at the valley below, as if she were thinking of leaping off the path.

"Come here," he invited huskily, "and I'll show you." It was his tone, not his words, that conquered her. As if drawn by a will stronger than her own, Elizabeth walked forward and straight into arms that closed around her with stunning force. "I didn't think you were going to do it," he whispered against her hair.

There was praise for her courage in his voice, and Elizabeth clung to that as she raised her bead and looked up at him. His smoldering gaze dropped to her lips, riveting there, and Elizabeth felt her body ignite at the same instant his mouth swooped down, capturing hers in a kiss of demanding bunger. His hands bit into her back, molding her pliant body to the rigid contours of his, and Elizabeth fed his hunger. With a silent moan of desperation she slipped her hands up his chest, her fingers sliding into the soft hair at his nape, her body arching to his. A shudder shook his powerful frame as she fitted herself to him, and his lips crushed down on hers, parting them, his tongue driving into her mouth with hungry urgency, and their dormant pa.s.sion exploded. Heedless of what he was doing, Ian forced her to give him back the sensual urgency he was offering her, driving his tongue into her mouth until Elizabeth began to match the pagan kiss. Lost in the heated magic, she touched her tongue to his lips and felt the gasp of his breath against her mouth, then she hesitated, not certain. . . . His mouth moved more urgently against hers. "Yes." he whispered hoa.r.s.ely, and when she did it again he groaned with pleasure.

Ian kissed her again and again until her nails were digging into his back and her breaths were coming in ragged gasps, mingling with his, and still he couldn't stop. The same uncontrollable compulsion to have her that had seized him two years ago had overtaken him again, and he kissed her until she was moaning and writhing in his arms and desire was pouring through him in hot tidal waves. Tearing his mouth from hers, he slid his lips across her cheek, his tongue seeking the inner crevice of her ear while his hand sought her breast. She jumped in dazed surprise at the intimate caress, and the innocent reaction wrung a choked laugh from him at the same time it sent a fresh surge of pure l.u.s.t through him that almost sent him to his knees. Out of sheer self-preservation he forced his hands to stop the pleasurable torture of caressing her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, but his mouth sought hers again, sliding back and forth against her parted lips, but softer this time, gentling her. Gentling him. . . and then it all began again.

An eternity later he lifted his head, his blood pounding in his ears, his heart thundering, his breathing labored. Elizabeth stayed in his arms, her hot cheek against his chest, her voluptuous body pressed to his, trembling in the aftermath of the most explosive, inexplicable pa.s.sion Ian had ever experienced.

Until now he had managed to convince himself that his memory of the pa.s.sion that erupted between them in England was faulty, exaggerated. But tonight had surpa.s.sed even his imaginings. It surpa.s.sed anything he'd ever felt. He stared into the darkness above her head, trying to ignore the way she felt in his arms.

Against her ear Elizabeth felt his heart slow to normal, his breathing even out, and the sounds of the night began penetrating her drugged senses. Wind rifled through the long gra.s.s, whispering in the trees; his hand stroked soothingly up and down her spine; tears of pure confusion stung her eyes, and she rubbed her cheek against his hard chest, brushing them away in what felt to Ian like a poignantly tender caress. Drawing a shattered breath, she tried to ask him why this was happening to her. "Why?" she whispered against his chest.

Ian heard the shattered sound in her voice, and he understood her question; it was the same one he'd been asking himself. Why did this explosion of pa.s.sion happen every time he touched her; why could this one English girl make him lose his mind? "I don't know," he said, and his voice sounded curt and unnatural to his own ears. "Sometimes it just happens"-to the wrong people at the wrong time, he added silently. In England he'd been so blindly besotted that he'd brought up marriage twice in two days. He remembered her reply word for word. Moments after she'd melted in his arms and kissed him with desperate pa.s.sion, exactly as she'd done tonight, he'd said, "Your father may have some objections to our marriage even after he understands that I'll be able to provide for your future."

Elizabeth had leaned back in his arms and smiled with amus.e.m.e.nt. "And what will you provide sir? Will you promise me a ruby large enough to cover my palm as Viscount Mondevale did? Sables to cover my shoulders as Lord Seabury did?"

"Is that what you want?" he'd asked, unable to believe she was so mercenary that she'd decide whom to marry based on who gave her the most expensive jewels or the most lavish furs.

"Of course," she'd replied. "Isn't that what all females want and all gentlemen promise?"

You had to give her credit, Ian thought to himself, fighting down a surge of disgust-at least she was honest about what mattered to her. In retrospect, he rather admired her courage, if not her standards.

He glanced down at Elizabeth and saw her watching him, her apprehensive green eyes soft and deceptively innocent. "Don't worry," he said flippantly, taking her arm and starting to walk back toward the house. "I'm not going to make the ritualistic proposal that followed our last encounters. Marriage is out of the question. Among other things, I'm fresh out of large rubies and expensive furs this season."

Despite his joking tone, Elizabeth felt ill at how ugly those words sounded now, even though her reasons for saying them at the time had nothing to do with a desire for jewels or furs. You had to give him credit, she decided miserably, because he obviously took no offense at it. Evidently, in sophisticated flirtations, the rule was -that no one took anything seriously.

"Who's the leading contender these days?" he asked in that same light tone as the cottage came into view. "There must be more than Belhaven and Marchman."

Elizabeth struggled valiantly to make the same transition from heated pa.s.sion to flippancy that he seemed to find so easy. She wasn't quite so successful, however, and her light tone was threaded with confusion. "In my uncle's eyes, the leading contender is whoever has the most important t.i.tle, followed by the most money."

"Of course," he said dryly. "In which case it sounds as if Marchman may be the lucky man."

His utter lack of caring made Elizabeth's heart squeeze in an awful, inexplicable way. Her chin lifted in self-defense. "Actually, I'm not in the market for a husband," she informed him, trying to sound as indifferent and as amused as he. "I may have to marry someone if I can't continue to outmaneuver my uncle, but I've come to the conclusion that I'd like to marry a much older man than I."

"Preferably a blind one," he said sardonically, "who'll not notice a little affair now and then?"

"I meant," she informed him with a dark glance, "that I want my freedom. Independence. And that is something a young husband isn't likely to give me, while an elderly one might."

"Independence is all an old man will be able to give you," Ian said bluntly.

"That's quite enough," she said. "I'm excessively tired of being forever pushed about by the men in my life. I'd like to care for Havenhurst and do as I wish to do."

"Marry an old man," Ian interjected smoothly, "and you may be the last of the Camerons."

She looked at him blankly.

"He won't be able to give you children."

"Oh, that," Elizabeth said, feeling a little defeated and nonplussed. "I haven't been able to work that out yet."

"Let me know when you do," Ian replied with biting sarcasm, no longer able to find her either amusing or admirable. "There's a fortune to be made from a discovery like that one."

Elizabeth ignored him. She hadn't worked it out yet because she'd only made that outrageous decision after being held tenderly in Ian Thornton's arms one moment and then, for no comprehensible reason, treated at first like an amusing diversion and now as if she were contemptible. It was all too bewildering, too painful, too baffling. She'd had little enough experience with the opposite s.e.x, and she was finding them a completely unpredictable, unreliable group. From her father to her brother to Viscount Mondevale, who'd wanted to marry her, to Ian Thornton, who didn't. The only one she could depend upon to act in the same reliable way was her uncle. He at least was unfailingly heartless and cold.

In her eagerness to escape to the privacy of her bedchamber, Elizabeth bade Ian a cool good night the instant she stepped over the threshold of the cottage, and then she walked past the high, wing-backed chair without ever noticing that the vicar was seated in it and watching her with an expression of bafflement and concern. "I trust you had a pleasant walk, Ian," he said when her door closed upstairs.

Ian stiffened slightly in the act of pouring some leftover coffee into a mug and glanced over his shoulder. One look at his uncle's expression told him that the older man was well aware that desire, not a need for fresh air, had caused Ian to take Elizabeth for a walk. "What do you think?" he asked irritably.

"I think you've upset her, repeatedly and deliberately, which is not your ordinary behavior with women."

"There is nothing ordinary about Elizabeth Cameron." "I completely agree," said the vicar with a smile in his voice. Closing his book, he put it aside. "I also think she is strongly attracted to you and you are to her. That much is perfectly obvious."

Then it should be equally obvious to a man of your discernment," Ian said in a low, implacable voice, "that we are completely ill-suited to each other. It's a moot issue in any case; I'm marrying someone else."

Duncan opened his mouth to comment on that, saw the expression on Ian's face, and gave up.

Chapter 17.

Ian left at first light the next morning to go hunting, and Duncan took advantage of his absence to try to glean from Elizabeth some answers to the problems that worried him. Repeatedly and without success he tried to question her about her original meeting with Ian in England, what sort of life she led there, and so on. By the time breakfast was over, however, he had received only the most offhand and superficial sort of replies-replies he sensed were designed to mislead him into believing her life was perfectly frivolous and very agreeable. Finally, she tried to divert him by asking about Ian's sketches.

In the hope that she would confide in him if she understood Ian better, Duncan went so far as to explain how Ian had dealt with his grief after his family's death and why he had banished the retriever. The ploy failed; although she exhibited sympathy and shock at the story, she was no more inclined to reveal anything about herself than she had been before.

For Elizabeth's part, she could scarcely wait for the meal to end so she could escape his steady gaze and probing questions. For all his kindness and Scots bluntness, he was also, she suspected, an extremely perceptive man who did not give up easily when he set his mind to get at the bottom of something. As soon as the dishes were put away she went to her work in the garden, only to have him appear at her side a few minutes later, a worried expression on his face. "Your coachman is here," he said. "He's brought an urgent message from your uncle."

A feeling of dread swept through Elizabeth as she stood up, and she rushed into the house where Aaron was waiting.

"Aaron?" she said. "What's wrong? How on earth did you get the coach up here?"

In answer to the first question he handed her a folded message. In answer to the second he said gruffly, "Your uncle was so anxious to have you start home that he told us to rent whatever we needed, just so's we'd get you back posthaste. There's a pair o' horses out there for you and Miss Throckmorton-Jones, and a carriage down at the road we can use to get back to the inn where yer coach is waitin' to take ye home."

Elizabeth nodded absently, opened the message, and stared at it in dawning horror.

"Elizabeth," her uncle had written, "Come home at once. Belhaven has offered for you. There's no reason to waste time in Scotland. Belhaven would have been my choice over Thornton, as you know." Obviously antic.i.p.ating that she would try some tactic to stall, he'd added, "If you return within a sennight, you may partic.i.p.ate in the betrothal negotiations. Otherwise I shall proceed without you, which, as your guardian, I have every right to do."

Elizabeth crumpled the note in her hand, staring at her fist while her heart began to thud in helpless misery. A disturbance in the front yard beyond the open door of the cottage made her look up. Lucinda and Mr. Wiley were returning at last, and she ran to Lucinda, hastily stepping around the black horse, who laid his ears back evilly in warning. "Lucy!" she burst out while Lucinda waited calmly for Mr. Wiley to help her down. "Lucy! Disaster has struck."

"A moment, if you please, Elizabeth," said the woman. "Whatever it is, it will surely wait until we're inside and can be comfortable. I declare, I feel as if I were born atop this horse. You cannot imagine the time we had finding suitable servants. . . ."

Elizabeth scarcely heard the rest of what she was saying. In a torment of frantic helplessness she had to wait while Lucinda dismounted, limped into the house, and sat down upon the sofa. "Now then," said Lucinda, flicking a speck of dust off her skirts, "what has happened?"

Oblivious to the vicar, who was standing by the fireplace looking mystified and alarmed on her behalf, Elizabeth handed Lucinda the note. "Read this. It-it sounds as if he's already accepted him."

As she read the brief missive Lucinda's face turned an awful gray with two bright splotches of angry color standing out on her hollow cheeks. "He'd accept an offer from the devil," Lucinda gritted wrathfully, "so long as he had a n.o.ble t.i.tle and money. This shouldn't come as a surprise."

"I was so certain I'd persuaded Belhaven that we couldn't possibly suit!" Elizabeth almost wailed, twisting her blue skirt in her hands in her agitation. "I did everything, Lucy, everything I told you about, and more." Agitation drove Elizabeth to her feet. "If we make haste, we can be home by the allotted time, and perhaps I can find a way to dissuade Uncle Julius."

Lucinda did not leap to her feet as Elizabeth did; she did not race for the stairs, dash into her room, and vent her helpless rage by slamming a door, as Elizabeth did. Her body rigid, Lucinda stood up very slowly and turned to the vicar. "Where is he?" she snapped.

"Ian?" the vicar said distractedly, alarmed by her pallid color. "He's gone hunting."

Deprived of her real prey, Lucinda unleashed her fury upon the hapless vicar instead. When she finished her tirade she hurled the crumpled note into the cold fireplace and said in a voice that shook with wrath, "When that sp.a.w.n of Lucifer returns, you tell him that if he ever crosses my path, he'd better be wearing a suit of armor!" So saying, she marched upstairs.

It was dusk when Ian returned, and the house seemed unnaturally quiet. His uncle was sitting near the fire, watching him with an odd expression on his face that was half anger, half speculation. Against his will Ian glanced about the room, expecting to see Elizabeth's shiny golden hair and entrancing face. When he didn't, he put his gun back on the rack above the fireplace and casually asked, "Where is everyone?"

"If you mean Jake," the vicar said, angered yet more by the way Ian deliberately avoided asking about Elizabeth, "he took a bottle of ale with him to the stable and said he was planning to drink it until the last two days were washed from his memory."

"They're back, then?"

"Jake is back," the vicar corrected as Ian walked over to the table and poured some Madeira into a gla.s.s. "The serving women will arrive in the mom. Elizabeth and Miss Throckmorton-Jones are gone, however."

Thinking Duncan meant they'd gone for a walk, Ian flicked a glance toward the front door. "Where have they gone at this hour?"

"Back to England."

The gla.s.s Ian's hand froze halfway to his lips. "Why?" he snapped.

"Because Miss Cameron's uncle has accepted an offer for her hand."

The vicar watched in angry satisfaction as Ian tossed down half the contents of his gla.s.s as if he wanted to wash away the bitterness of the news. When he spoke his voice was laced with cold sarcasm. "Who's the lucky bridegroom?"

"Sir Francis Belhaven, I believe."

Ian's lips twisted with excruciating distaste. "You don't admire him, I gather?"

Ian shrugged. "Belhaven is an old lecher whose s.e.xual tastes reportedly run to the bizarre. He's also three times her age."

"That's a pity," the vicar said, trying unsuccessfully to keep his voice blank as he leaned back in his chair and propped his long legs upon the footstool in front of him. "Because that beautiful, innocent child will have no choice but to wed the old. . . lecher. If she doesn't, her uncle will withdraw his financial support, and she'll lose that home she loves so much. He's perfectly satisfied with Belhaven, since he possesses the prerequisites of t.i.tle and wealth, which I gather are his only prerequisites. That lovely girl will have to wed that old man; she has no way to avoid it."

"That's absurd," Ian snapped, draining his gla.s.s. "Elizabeth Cameron was considered the biggest success of her season two years ago. It was public knowledge she'd had more than a dozen offers. If that's all he cares about, he can choose from dozens of others."

Duncan's voice was laced with uncharacteristic sarcasm. "That was before she encountered you at some party or other. Since then it's been public knowledge that she's used goods."

"What the h.e.l.l is that supposed to mean?" "You tell me, Ian," the vicar bit out. "I only have the story in two parts from Miss Throckmorton-Jones. The first time she spoke she was under the influence of laudanum. Today she was under the influence of what I can only describe as the most formidable temper I've ever seen. However, while I may not have the complete story, I certainly have the gist of it, and if half what I've heard is true, then it's obvious that you are completely without either a heart or a conscience! My own heart breaks when I imagine Elizabeth enduring what she has for nearly two years. And when I think of how forgiving of you she has been-"

"What did the woman tell you?" Ian interrupted shortly, turning and walking over to the window.

His apparent lack of concern so enraged the vicar that he surged to his feet and stalked over to Ian's side, glowering at his profile. "She told me you ruined Elizabeth Cameron's reputation beyond recall," he snapped bitterly. "She told me that you convinced that innocent girl-who'd never been away from her country home until a few weeks before meeting you-that she should meet you in a secluded cottage, and later in a greenhouse. She told me that the scene was witnessed by individuals who made great haste to spread the gossip, and that it was all over the city in a matter of days. She told me Elizabeth's fiance heard of it and withdrew his offer because of you. When he did that, society a.s.sumed Elizabeth's character must indeed be of the blackest nature, and she was summarily dropped by the ton. She told me that a few days later Elizabeth's brother fled England to escape their creditors, who would have been paid off when Elizabeth made an advantageous marriage, and that he's never returned." With grim satisfaction the vicar observed the muscle that was beginning to twitch in Ian's rigid jaw. "She told me the reason for Elizabeth's going to London in the first place had been the necessity for making such a marriage-and that you destroyed any chance of that ever happening. Which is why that child will now have to marry a man you describe as a lecher three times her age!" Satisfied that his verbal shots were finding their mark, he fired his final, most killing round. "As a result of everything you have done, that brave, beautiful girl has been living in shamed seclusion for nearly two years. Her house, of which she spoke with such love, has been stripped of its valuables by creditors. I congratulate you, Ian. You have made an innocent girl into an impoverished leper! And all because she fell in love with you on sight. Knowing what I now know of you, I can only wonder what she saw in you!"

A muscle moved spasmodically in Ian's throat, but he made no effort to defend himself to his enraged uncle. Bracing his hands on either side of the window, he stared out into the darkness, his uncle's revelations pounding in his brain like a thousand hammers, combining with the torment of his own cruelty to Elizabeth the past few days.

He saw her as she'd been in England, courageous and lovely and filled with innocent pa.s.sion in his arms, and he heard her words from yesterday: "You told my brother it was nothing but a meaningless dalliance"; he saw her shooting at the target with jaunty skill while he mocked at her suitors. He saw her kneeling in the gra.s.s, looking at his sketches of his dead family. "I'm so sorry," she'd whispered, her glorious eyes filled with soft compa.s.sion. He remembered her crying in his arms because her friends had betrayed her, too.

With a fresh surge of remorse he recalled her incredible sweetness and unselfish pa.s.sion in his arms last night. She had driven him mad with desire, and afterward he had said, "I'll spare us both the ritualistic proposal. Marriage is out of the question-I'm fresh out of large rubies and expensive furs."

He remembered other things he'd said before that. "Why the h.e.l.l would your uncle think I have any desire to wed you?" "Lady Cameron is a very wealthy young lady, Duncan." "No doubt all the rooms at Havenhurst are covered with furs and filled with jewels."

And she'd been too proud to let him think anything else. Scolding rage at his own blindness and stupidity poured through Ian. He should have known-the minute she started talking about bargaining for price with tradesmen, he d.a.m.ned well should have known! Ever since he'd set eyes on Elizabeth Cameron he'd been blind-no, he corrected himself with furious self-disgust, in England he'd recognized instinctively what she was-gentle and proud, brave and innocent and. . . rare. He'd known d.a.m.ned well she wasn't a promiscuous little flirt, yet he'd later convinced himself she was, and then he'd treated her like one here-and she had endured it the entire time she'd been here! She had let him say those things to her and then tried to excuse his behavior by blaming herself for behaving like "a shameless wanton" in England!

Bile rose up in his throat, suffocating him, and he closed his eyes. She was so d.a.m.ned sweet, and so forgiving, that she even did that for him.

Duncan hadn't moved; in taut silence he watched his nephew standing at the window, his eyes clenched shut, his stance like that of a man who was being stretched on the rack.

Finally Ian spoke, and his voice was rough with emotion, as if the words were being gouged out of him: "Did the woman say that, or was that your own opinion?"

"About what?" Drawing a ragged breath, he asked, "Did she tell you that Elizabeth was in love with me two years ago, or was that your opinion?"

The answer to that obviously meant so much to Ian that Duncan almost smiled. At the moment, however, the vicar was more concerned with the two things he wanted above all else: He wanted Ian to wed Elizabeth and rectify the damage he'd done to her, and he wanted Ian to reconcile with his grandfather. In order to do the former, Ian would have to do the latter, for Elizabeth's uncle was evidently determined that her husband should have a t.i.tle if possible. So badly did Duncan want those two things to happen that he almost lied to help his cause, but the precepts of his conscience forbade it. "It was Miss Throckmorton-Jones's opinion when she was under the influence of laudanum. It is also my opinion, based on everything I saw in Elizabeth's character and behavior to you."

He waited through another long moment of awful suspense, knowing exactly where Ian's thoughts would have to turn next, and then he plunged in, ready to press home his advantage with hard, systematic logic. "You have no choice except to rescue her from that repugnant marriage."

Taking Ian's silence as a.s.sent, he continued with more force. "In order to do it, you'll have to dissuade her uncle from giving her to this man. I know from what Miss Throckmorton-Jones told me, and from what I saw with my own eyes in that note over there, that the uncle wants a t.i.tle for her and will favor the man who has it. I also know that's not uncommon among the n.o.bility, so you've no hope of persuading the man he's being unreasonable, if that's what you're thinking of trying to do." Duncan watched his words. .h.i.t home with enough force to make Ian's skin whiten, and he made his final push: "That t.i.tle is within your power, Ian. I realize how deep your hatred for your grandfather goes, but it no longer signifies. Either you let Elizabeth wed this despicable man Belhaven, or you reconcile with the Duke of Stanhope. It's one or the other, and you know it."

Ian tensed, his mind locked in furious combat against the idea of reconciling with his grandfather. Duncan watched him, knowing the battle raging inside him, and he waited in an agony of suspense for Ian to make his decision. He saw Ian bend his dark head, saw him clench his hands into fists. When at last he spoke, his infuriated curse was aimed at his grandfather: "That miserable son of a b.i.t.c.h!" he bit out between clenched teeth. "After eleven years he's going to have it his way. And all because I couldn't keep my hands off her."