Because You're Mine

  “That's what I wanted in the past,” he said, and waited until she glanced at him. His blue eyes were piratical as he added, “Now I'm not so certain.”

  Unnerved, Madeline stood and went to the door. “I'll consult with the chef about luncheon.”

  “You can do that later.”

  “Would you care for some soup, or some fresh vegetables and a slice of ham—”

  “I don't want to talk about food. I want to know why you've stayed so long to take care of me.”

  She remained at the doorway, keeping a safe distance between them. “There was no one else to do it.”

  “I have an entire staff of servants who could have managed quite well.”

  Madeline took a deep breath. “I'm sorry if you would have preferred that.”

  “Regardless of what I would have preferred, you've been under no obligation to take care of me.” His hand moved in a gesture for her to come to him. “I'd like to hear your reasons for staying. God knows it hasn't been easy for you.”

  Madeline covered her discomfort with a wry smile. “I don't know how this all happened. I started out trying to seduce you, and instead you nearly expired in my arms.”

  “Did you stay out of pity, then?” he asked, his blue eyes locked on hers. “Or do you still harbor hopes of seducing me?”

  “No,” she said immediately, flushing. “I wouldn't…I don't want that anymore.”

  “I should probably feel relieved,” he reflected out loud, although his tone held a distinct shadow of regret. His gaze continued to pin her in place. “I never understood why you were so determined to climb into bed with me.”

  Madeline shrugged and cast a desperate glance over her shoulder, longing to flee to the empty hallway behind her. She couldn't begin to think of how to answer him.

  Her distress hardly failed to escape his notice. He stared at her contemplatively, while the silence simmered around them. “At times,” he said slowly, “women have approached me that way because they consider bedding a well-known actor a sort of…trophy. A conquest they could boast to their friends about.”

  “Yes,” Madeline said, seizing on the excuse, though nothing could have been further from the truth. “That's why I wanted you.”

  Logan regarded her with a puzzled frown. When he spoke, his voice was softer and more tender than she had ever heard him before. “Little one…don't you know you're worth more than that?”

  She dropped her gaze, unable to look at him anymore. If she didn't leave him now, she would weep and howl, and throw herself at him in a way that would embarrass them both. “But we didn't have an affair,” she said faintly. “There was nothing for either of us to be ashamed of. That's all that matters.”

  Before he could reply, Madeline walked away quickly, pressing a hand to her hot cheek. She knew it was far too late for any kind of intimacy between them. She loved him too much to use him that way.

  The only thing left to do now was go back to her former life and assume her position as the Honourable Madeline Matthews. Honourable, she reflected with shame, and sighed. She had failed everyone by embarking on this escapade. Worse, all she wanted was to stay with Logan forever and live as a fallen woman. She was certain that her sisters would never have entertained such wicked thoughts. On the other hand, they had probably never met a man like Logan Scott.

  Through bullying persistence, Logan finally had his sickroom fare changed back to his usual fine cuisine. Furthermore, he insisted that Madeline share the evening meal in his suite. It was the first night that he felt well enough to keep his usual hours, instead of falling asleep early as he had done the previous two weeks. Madeline agreed reluctantly, deciding that sometime during the private dinner, she would bring herself to tell him that she was going to leave his estate the next day.

  She dressed in her blue cashmere gown, the twilled fabric clinging to her body and making her skin look translucent. Her hair was pulled into a simple knot at the back of her neck, with loose strands curling at her cheeks and nape.

  At eight o'clock Madeline entered Logan's bedroom. He waited for her beside a table laden with candles and silver dishes. Wearing another of his luxurious collection of robes and a pair of fawn-colored trousers, he seemed like a lion at rest in his den. The air was filled with a silken mixture of aromas: soup swirling with leeks and pepper, salmon simmered in wine, poultry dressed with herbs, truffles, and champagne.

  Logan's attentive gaze swept over her as she stood in the pool of candlelight. “I hope you're hungry,” he said, seating her expertly.

  The French dishes prepared by Logan's private chef were vastly different from the plain English fare Madeline had eaten all her life. She indulged in one heady flavor after another as the staff served them á la russe. In spite of Logan's amused warnings, Madeline overate during the first two courses, filling herself with the delicious offerings until she was unable to take more than a bite of the salads and desserts that came later in the meal.

  “Slowly,” he advised her, his eyes twinkling as he watched her drink thirstily from a glass of French wine. “A hedonist would savor every drop.”

  “Hedonist?” Madeline repeated curiously.

  “A person devoted entirely to self-indulgence,” Logan said, refilling her glass. “Someone who regards pleasure as a way of life.”

  “Is that what you are?” Madeline asked.

  “I try to be.”

  “But you work so much of the time.”

  “For me that's a pleasure as well.”

  Her brow wrinkled. “It seems an odd idea, life being centered around pleasure.”

  “What is life supposed to be, then?”

  “It's about duty, and sacrificing for others. And if we've been good, our pleasure comes later when we're rewarded in the hereafter.”

  “I'll take my rewards now.”

  “That's sacrilegious,” Madeline replied, frowning at him.

  “Hedonists don't hold stock in religion. Suffering, self-sacrifice, humility…none of those things would have helped me in my career.”

  She remained silent and puzzled, unable to find the flaw in his logic.

  “Maddy,” he said softly, and an irresistible laugh was pulled from him as he stared at her. “You're so damned young.”

  “You're laughing at me,” she chided.

  “I'm not. It's just that you're a pleasant change from the crowd of degenerates I usually associate with. All your ideals are intact.”

  “So are yours.”

  “I never had ideals to begin with, sweet. I've never believed in pure honesty and kindness—I'd never seen it in anyone. Until you.”

  Sickening guilt made Madeline's stomach turn over. She hadn't been honest in her dealings with him, and her every act of kindness had sprung from ulterior motives, until the moment she had recognized that she had fallen in love with him. And even then she would have carried out her original plans, except that she was afraid of hurting him and making him even more cynical than he already was.

  “What is it?” Logan asked, staring at her keenly, and she realized that her misery was easy for him to read.

  “I'm not a kind person, or a good one,” she said in a low voice. “It would be wrong of me to allow you to think otherwise.”

  “I have my own opinions on the matter,” he replied, his gaze caressing.

  Dessert was brought in, a dish of pears poached in a sauce of red wine and topped with English cream. In between spoonfuls of the sweet, tart confection, Madeline drank from a tiny glass of liqueur. Feeling drowsy from the alcohol, she blinked as she stared at Logan through the veil of candlelight.

  “It's late,” Logan said. “Would you like to retire now?”

  Madeline shook her head. She was filled with the bittersweet awareness that this was their last night together.

  “What do you want, then?” There was a teasing edge to Logan's voice. He was relaxed and handsome with the golden light playing over his dark hair, bringing out the rich glints of fire.

&nb
sp; “Perhaps you could read to me,” Madeline suggested. They shared a love of literature and philosophy, having previously discussed subjects as diverse as the superiority of Keats over Shelley, and the theories of Plato. To Madeline's delight, she had discovered many rare and unique books in the mansion's library, many of them acquired at private auction or presented as gifts from powerful friends.

  Logan helped Madeline from her chair and rang for the servants to clear the dishes. He led her to an adjoining room, a private area filled with amber cushions, works of Chinese porcelain, and paintings and bronze moldings on the walls. Sitting before the marble fireplace, Madeline shivered from the pleasant warmth of the blaze. Logan lounged on the floor beside her, leaning an elbow on a velvet pillow as he read from Henry the Fifth, his voice a quiet rumble. Mesmerized, Madeline only half-heard the words.

  She tried to fill her mind with every detail of his face: the shadows of his lashes as he looked down at the volume in his hand, the elegant planes of his cheeks, the shape of his wide mouth. At times he quoted from memory rather than reading, reciting the romantic passages in which Henry wooed Katharine, the daughter of the French king. The words were wry, tender, touched with ironic humor. Suddenly Madeline felt as if she couldn't stand another moment, listening to entreaties that made her heart ache. The setting was too intimate, the words too close to her own longings.

  “Please, no more,” she said breathlessly, just as he reached the line “You have witchcraft in your lips, Kate…”

  Logan set down the book. “Why not?”

  Madeline shook her head, beginning to rise from the cushions, but he reached out and caught her. He drew her down beside him, running a hand along her stiff body. “Don't go,” he murmured.

  Madeline gasped as Logan pressed her against him. They were matched length to length, and he was so large and solid, his shoulders looming over her. She couldn't see his face, but she felt the brush of his lips as he whispered close to her ear.

  “Sleep in my arms tonight, Maddy.”

  The words she had worked for, waited for. Madeline nearly choked on a sudden rush of tears. “I can't,” she managed to say.

  “You told me this was what you wanted the first time we met.”

  “It was…but nothing's turned out the way I thought it would.”

  “What a puzzle you are,” Logan said, wiping the wet corners of her eyes with his thumbs. “Tell me what you want, then.”

  He was so gentle, so tender, that for a wild moment Madeline thought of confessing everything to him. But if he knew the truth, he would hate her for it, for lying to him and planning to use him, and making him the unwitting target of her ridiculous scheme. She had no choice but to leave him and hope that he would never guess what she had tried to do.

  “Logan,” she said, her voice blotted against his silk robe, “I can't stay with you any longer. I'm leaving tomorrow.”

  Easing her head away from his chest, he stared at her with penetrating blue eyes. “Why?”

  “The past two weeks have been like something from a dream. I've been very happy here…with you…but I have another life to return to. It's time I went home.”

  His hand moved over her back in a slow, repeated stroke. “Where is home, Maddy?”

  “Another world away,” she said, thinking bleakly of the remote country estate where she would spend the rest of her life as Lord Clifton's wife, giving birth to his children and striving to please him.

  “Is there another man?” he asked, as if he could read her thoughts.

  The image of Lord Clifton's smug face rose before her, and she closed her eyes while tears squeezed from beneath her lashes. “Yes.”

  Logan showed no surprise at her answer, but Madeline sensed a powerful emotion…anger?…jealousy?…stirring beneath the stillness.

  “Tell me who he is. I'll take care of everything.”

  She became alarmed at the steely purpose in his voice. “No, you can't—”

  “You're going to stay here, Maddy.” He pulled the pins from her hair and smoothed the rippling locks over his arm. “I've needed someone like you for a long time. Now that I have you, no one is going to take you from me.”

  “I'm not at all what you want,” Madeline said, rubbing the heels of her hands over her wet eyes. “We're as different as two people can possibly be.”

  Logan smiled in wry agreement. “I doubt we're anyone's idea of a perfect match, but I don't give a damn. I'd forgotten how it felt to want someone this badly. After the last time, I swore never to go through it again.”

  “You mean when you fell in love with Olivia,” she said.

  His smile vanished, and he stared at her quizzically. “How did you know her name?”

  “You called out to her during the fever. You were angry…you called her things I never…” Madeline stopped and turned scarlet, remembering the words he had used.

  “Yes,” he said wryly. “That was because Olivia slept with Andrew while she was engaged to me.”

  “Lord Drake? Your friend…but why would she do that?”

  “Olivia was impressed with his titles and social position, far above anything I'll ever aspire to. I was a fool for thinking I loved her—but she was beautiful and sophisticated, the kind of woman I thought I would never have.” He paused, his expression becoming remote. “I don't know what you've heard about my past. It's not exactly an illustrious one.”

  Madeline was silent and curious, waiting for him to continue.

  “My father is a tenant on Lord Rochester's estate. Andrew is Rochester's only heir. I grew up with Andrew, and for a while I was allowed to take lessons with him, until I became so unruly that Rochester deemed me a bad influence.”

  “I don't believe that.”

  Logan smiled wryly. “You didn't know me then. I was a petty thief, a vandal…I prided myself on being the village bully.”

  “Why?”

  “Youthful rebellion…anger. I resented the fact that there was never enough to eat, that we lived in a hovel…mostly I was angry that no matter what I did, my lot in life was already determined.”

  “Yes,” Maddy said softly. “I've felt that way too.”

  He gave her a penetrating glance. “I believe you have.”

  “How did you become an actor?” Maddy asked, uncomfortable at his scrutiny.

  “When I was sixteen, I left home and became an apprentice to a wine merchant in London. I did well enough in that trade and might have continued in it, except that I saw a play at Drury Lane on the night of my eighteenth birthday. That changed everything. I joined a group of traveling players, taking bit parts and learning the rudiments of the craft. Two years later I returned to London to start the Capital. I met Olivia around the same time.” He smiled bitterly. “I thought that marrying her would make up for all the things I'd been deprived of.”

  “I see.” Jealousy stung her, and she lowered her eyes to keep it from showing.

  “While I was occupied in assembling the theater company,” Logan continued, “I made the mistake of introducing Olivia to Andrew. Evidently she decided that Andrew's title and inheritance were preferable to the uncertain future I offered her. She set her cap for him, not knowing that Andrew had no intention of marrying anyone.”

  “How did you find out that they were…” Madeline stopped in consternation, trying to find an appropriate word.

  “I found them in bed together.”

  “How wicked of them,” she exclaimed, coloring with embarrassment and indignation.

  “I thought so too,” he said dryly.

  “I don't understand how you could have forgiven them.”

  Logan shrugged. “As time passed, I realized that Andrew had done me a favor by showing me what kind of woman Olivia really was. And ultimately I couldn't blame Olivia for wanting more than what I could offer her.”

  “She should have been proud and grateful to have won your heart—”

  “She saw me for what I was,” he said flatly. “My fortune has been built on
entertaining people…exhibiting myself like a trained monkey, as Rochester says. An actor is the servant of everyone who pays for a ticket to see him, wastrels and merchants and nobility alike. Olivia understood that, and she didn't like it.”

  He lifted his large hand from her hair and held it before her. “No matter how often I play kings and princes on stage, I'll always be a Jennings. I have the hands and feet of a laborer. A back meant for hauling and ploughing. For that matter, even my face—”

  “No,” Madeline said swiftly, her fingers going to his mouth, temporarily silencing him.

  He caught at her hand, pressing a kiss into her palm before pulling it away. “You deserve someone better than me. Someone young and idealistic…someone who can experience things for the first time along with you. I'm not always kind, and I have more faults than I'd care to name. All I can promise is that I'll want you until my last breath.”

  She realized what Logan was doing, laying bare his soul with a reckless honesty that broke her heart. He wanted her to understand who he was, so that she would have no illusions about him. But none of it mattered to her, not his past and certainly not his profession. He was an extraordinary man who deserved to be loved for himself. So few people had been given that chance. Miserably she thought that it was going to be the hardest thing she had ever done to walk away from him. “Olivia was a fool,” she sobbed. “But not half as much as I am.”

  Gently he kissed away the tears on her cheeks. “I don't care who you are or what you've done. Just tell me why you want to leave. Are you in love with this other man?”

  “Oh, no,” she said at once, wanting to laugh hysterically at the idea. “It's not that, it's…I promised God that I would go back home if you got well again.”

  She felt him smile against her shoulder. “That's not my idea of a good bargain, sweet. Besides, I wasn't consulted.” He lifted his face, and his smile faded as he stared at her. There was an intensity, a hunger in his eyes that made her stiffen. It seemed that the situation had finally slipped from her control. He wanted her, intended to have her, and to her despair, she wanted him so badly that nothing else seemed to matter.