Sweetest Regret

  “Of course,” he added flatly, “my father would have counseled the opposite. Pride was his mainstay. And that, Georgie, is the reason I never spoke of her. You’ll know something of my parents, I think. How . . . ill-suited their marriage was considered.”

  Hesitantly she nodded. In Munich, people had spoken of Lucas’s charm, his talents and great promise, in the same breath that they had bemoaned his breeding. Such a bright star, to come from such a stew! And her father—consoling her so deceitfully, in the wake of Lucas’s departure—had laid it bare: the second son of an earl did not elope with the coachman’s daughter from motives as pure as love. Some rottenness must characterize a line that would produce such a bizarre mésalliance—and, her father had added, this same rotten streak no doubt explained why Lucas made a habit of abandoning his friends, including those who were his better in every regard.

  But he had been wrong there as well. She was no better than Lucas. For they had both made the mistake of believing her father—abandoning their faith in one another without a fight.

  Why, she wasn’t simply angry at her father. Her anger also encompassed herself.

  She swallowed down the bitterness. It had no place in this discussion. Not when Lucas was watching her so gravely. I still know him, she thought—such a seductive notion. She saw the pain hidden in his face, the anxiety so expertly concealed beneath his easy, lounging posture. But he was running his thumb across his fingertips, a seemingly idle, absentminded gesture, which she recalled being a habit of his during deeply felt discussions.

  He did not find it easy to discuss his parents’ marriage. But he would do so, for her sake, if she wished it.

  And she did. Suddenly, it seemed absurd, unimaginable, that they had not talked about this in Munich. How could she have imagined she loved him, without asking him about this wound at the heart of him? “It must have been very hard,” she said, “enduring the gossip.”

  He gave a one-shouldered shrug. “I never minded it for my own sake. But for their sake—for my mother’s—I resented it tremendously.” He took a deep breath. “I knew I was fortunate in my birth, you see. No child has ever been better cherished. Yet . . . there was never a moment, in the world outside my parents’ home, when the shadow of that scandal did not hang over me. At Eton—well, the scholarship did not cover everything. My parents had to scrimp and save so I might enjoy a perk—coal in the winter, a ticket home at the holidays. Everyone knew it. Moreover, they knew why. At Field Day, mine were the only parents not in attendance—and it did not go unnoticed. They could not afford the fare to come, the missed wages from a holiday. But even if they had managed it, they would not have been welcomed. Their very presence would have been counted a breach of etiquette; the very fact of their marriage an imposition on polite sensibilities. And so, too, with me—a gross offense, in others’ eyes, by the mere fact of my existence.”

  She shook her head in mute denial. “You had friends at Eton. You spoke of them to me. You spoke very fondly of those days.”

  “Certainly,” he said. “I have a skill for winning people over. But it’s a skill, Georgie—not some inborn talent. My parents were frank with me: I would always have to work harder than the others. Prove myself, give others no reason by which to discount me. But topping the exams, taking a first in the tripos, winning entrance to the service—that was only the start. Far more important was to ingratiate myself to those in power—not simply in the service, but even, at ten or eleven, with the classmates who might one day advance my career. That was the only way I would ever succeed. And never for a moment did I forget it. I was never allowed to forget it—that my fortunes depended on other men’s indulgence. Their gracious decision to forgive me my birth, even if I had the best parents a man ever knew.”

  A trace of bitterness colored his words—a very old bitterness, she sensed, dulled now like a disused blade. She swallowed the urge to apologize to him for the injustice of strangers, to speak words of comfort about their bigotry. For he would not want her pity. She knew that as intuitively as she knew that he was fighting a great battle to bare his soul to her like this.

  “You’ve certainly succeeded,” she said softly. “The chance at becoming secretary of legation by thirty!”

  “Yes,” he said, with a faint, fleeting smile. “I play the game better than anyone. But it hasn’t been for my own sake, you know, so much as for my parents’. They put all their hopes on me. Worked themselves to the bone to give me a chance. For their sake, I learned to charm and pander. But never for a moment have I felt easy in doing so. Nor have I taken my gains for granted. It would only take one mistake for my colleagues to say, ‘Blood tells, after all.’ Some of them are still waiting for the chance.” He paused. “Someone will always be waiting for it, Georgie. That is what success means, to a man like me—forever to be balanced at the edge of a great fall.”

  “Lucas.” Her hand was atop his. When had that happened? She was leaning forward, hurting for him. “That sounds . . . exhausting.”

  He huffed out a breath, not quite a laugh. “Coal mining, that’s exhausting. Learning to lick the right boots—it’s merely a career.”

  Frowning, she shook her head. “That is not at all how people see you.”

  “No. But at times, it was certainly how I saw myself.” He turned his hand in hers, their fingers twining; such a simple touch, but her breath caught and her pulse began to trip. He rubbed his thumb slowly over her palm. “You’ll understand, I hope, that it also wasn’t an image I wished to place in the head of the woman I hoped to marry.” He glanced up from their linked hands, his deep blue eyes meeting hers. “So I made no mention of my mother, in Munich. And when your father told me that you had only just discovered my parentage . . . well, it seemed possible. Because certainly I hadn’t told you.”

  Her mouth went dry. They were back on dangerous ground now. “I always knew.”

  “I had supposed so,” he said levelly. “But when he said otherwise—when he said you were repelled by how grossly I had deceived you—by my presumption in thinking myself worthy of your hand . . .” He sighed. “Well, it felt as though my worst nightmare were coming true. For I could not disown my parents, even for you. But I also could not deny that you were right to be mortified. This shadow world I live in is no comfortable place for me. How much less pleasant it would feel for a woman whose birth entitles her to better.”

  She jerked her hand free, stung. “It never would have mattered to me.”

  “I see that now.” He hesitated. “The woman who was comforting you, earlier . . .”

  Color rushed into her face. “That was Mrs. Nichol,” she said. “Our cook.”

  “I see.” His voice was oddly gentle. Why, could it be that he mistook her blush for embarrassment? After all, the same polite world that slighted him for his birth would also disapprove strongly of such intimacies between a mistress and her servant.

  But that was not the cause of her discomfort. She had never credited the niceties of rank. Lifting her chin, she said forcefully, “Cook is more a parent to me than my father ever was. If I blush to say that—if I am embarrassed to admit it—then I am embarrassed for his sake, not mine. Nor would I ever have asked you to disown your mother, Lucas—or felt mortified for a moment by her birth.”

  He slowly nodded. “I realize that, Georgie. And you’re right—your father should never have managed to make me doubt you.”

  “He is a very clever liar.”

  “No.” His head tipped; he studied her solemnly. “It wasn’t all his doing. My own fears blinded me to the truth. They drove me to believe his lies. I think I must take the blame, after all—even the share you might wish to grant to him.”

  But that did not strike her as fair, either. She stared into the blurring fire. “Then two of us were blinded,” she said with difficulty. “For I should have written to you, Lucas. Been braver, less careful of my pride. Asked why you left so hastily. But I confess . . . from the first moment you smiled at me in Munich, I
never quite believed that it could be true. That a man like you—a man of every distinction, a man of beauty and charm and wit and learning, who captured every eye in the room—why would a man like you choose me? When my father told me you had a habit of meaningless flirtations, I felt . . . as though I were waking from a dream. Like I’d always known it would end so. That I had aimed too high. That I’d been a fool all along to believe you could have loved a plain, ordinary girl like me.”

  She heard the breath go from him. Suddenly he was in front of her, kneeling to look into her eyes.

  “Are you mad?” He cupped her cheeks, swept her hair back from her eyes. “I could use ten thousand words to describe you—but never, even at my most disillusioned, would plain and ordinary have numbered among them. You are . . .” He shook his head as he gazed at her. “Georgie, you are a miracle. Clever without cruelty, kind without naïveté, beautiful without flaw. And I prayed nightly that you would be my miracle . . . and I felt, even at the height of my bitterness, that the outcome had only been just, after all—for your father was right. I had overreached greatly when I asked for your hand. Any man would have overreached, had you been his aim.”

  Amazement washed through her. “I don’t . . . You never . . .”

  He made some strained noise. “I never did many things,” he said roughly. He caught her elbows, pulled her to her feet. “Many things I should have done the first moment I had a chance at them.” His hands framed her face. “Like this.”

  He kissed her then, opening her mouth with his own, brooking no hesitation. His kiss was so bold—so commanding and instantaneously consuming—that it gave her brain no footing to protest.

  Nor did she wish to. Gladly, hungrily, she kissed him back. Two years—two years of sleepless nights, of a pulsing aching want that had seemed destined to go unfulfilled—this ferocity she felt was only natural; it was inevitable. She cupped his face in her hands, greedy for the hot, fine-grained texture of his skin; the slight scratch of his oncoming beard; the elegant angles of his cheekbones. She slid her hands through the thick silk of his night-dark hair, tightened her grip until it must have hurt him—but he only kissed her more fiercely yet, encouraging her with lips and tongue and teeth, his hot, clever mouth.

  He lifted her into his arms and carried her over to the table. Very gently he laid her down atop it, amidst the lingering fragrance of ginger. He came over her, worshiping her lips, her cheeks, and her throat with his mouth.

  But it wasn’t enough. She tugged at his hair, his shoulders, to pull him against her. His weight was heavy and sweet. She pushed her face into his throat and breathed deeply of him. That dark, masculine scent sank straight into her, plummeted deep into her bones and belly. It struck up a more primal hunger than she had ever known in her dreams.

  His body was what she needed—against hers, skin to skin. She slid her palms to his upper arms, squeezing, feeling the dense bunch of his contracting muscle. The full contact of his broad chest against hers—the breadth of his strong body, enfolding hers—felt more elemental even than air. He found her mouth again, and the demanding, skilled possession of his tongue was not gentlemanly in the least, nothing like the kiss he had given that masked stranger beneath the mistletoe. Because he was kissing her now. The only woman he should kiss, ever again.

  The thought exploded through her brain, bringing a brief cold moment of clarity: there was no future for them. Her father had the power to ruin his career.

  She would not be the cause of his downfall.

  Abruptly she averted her face. “Lucas,” she said raggedly. “Wait.”

  He went still, breath rasping like a bellows in her ear. His hands found her shoulders, flexed on them as though to trammel some great straining battle within him. “Georgie,” he said hoarsely against her temple. He eased off her, straightening. “Forgive me. I . . . Are you all right?”

  She sat up. His hair was mussed—her hands had done that. The knot in his necktie had unraveled—dared she hope she’d done that, too? She drank in greedily the sight of his bare, tanned throat, the glimpse of dark hair above the first button of his shirt.

  “Lucas,” she said, and the sound of her own voice startled her; the low sultry purring note in it seemed to belong to some other woman—a woman, she decided in the next breath, that she very much hoped to become.

  Why think of the future? Tonight was upon them. Her father never need know what had happened here.

  But when she reached out to pull him toward her, he stepped backward, introducing a new space between them, air that felt shockingly cold in comparison to his touch. “You’re right,” he said, very low. “This isn’t proper.”

  Proper? She almost laughed. But the rigidity in his face made her bite her tongue, take a deep breath, and gather her composure. “I’m not sure I care much for propriety.”

  His mouth softened. Very lightly, he tucked a lock of her hair behind her ear. Drew a lingering line down her jaw, smiling a little as he reached her chin.

  “A thousand times I dreamed of touching you so,” he whispered. “But the reality . . .” His glance passed briefly down her body, his mouth hardening again. When his gaze lifted, the smoldering quality of his look made her flush. “I won’t sleep tonight.”

  She swallowed.

  He took her hand, helping her slip off the table, then lifted her knuckles for a kiss. “Until tomorrow?”

  “Of course.” But the brief sweetness of that thought faded as she realized the date.

  Tomorrow was Christmas Eve.

  They had only two days remaining, to make up for two years of loss . . . unless she found some way to check her father.

  Chapter Eight

  December 24

  The crack of gunfire made Georgie clamp her hands over her ears. A flock of grouse wheeled and darted through the sky; farther down the field, two plummeted, but Lucas’s targets made a winging escape to the north.

  Applause broke out. Georgie went on her tiptoes to look over the stone wall that blocked her view. A beater had gone running out to retrieve the felled birds. “Oh, well done!” shouted Countess Obolenskaya from her own hide, some fifty yards away.

  A footman approached with a freshly loaded rifle. Lucas took it, then lifted it to sight over the wall.

  “Are you a poor shot?” Georgie asked teasingly. “Or do grouse rank higher in your affections than geese?”

  Lucas cast her a laughing, sidelong look. “Caught out,” he said.

  She swallowed a happy sigh. She could stand beside him all day. The morning had dawned bright and mild, and a playful, kicking wind flirted with the thick curls in his dark hair. The sun, not to be outdone, lit his eyes until they reflected the patches of cloudless blue sky overhead.

  Gunshot cracked again. They remained staring at each other. His gaze dipped to her mouth, and her skin seemed to tighten pleasurably. The curved wall protected them from others’ view. She could touch him, if she liked—could kiss him, even. Nobody would see.

  But kissing him would not be enough.

  She bit her cheek. She saw no way to satisfy this longing without endangering him. Not unless she found that letter.

  She cleared her throat. “I asked the staff to search belowstairs,” she said. “If the guests don’t have the letter, perhaps they left it with one of their own servants.”

  His expression hardened. He turned away from her to make a study of the stray grouse still fluttering overhead. “Forget the letter today.”

  Were there more time remaining to them, she gladly would have done. But the guests would depart on Boxing Day. If they had not found the letter by then, she would have no way to keep her father in check. “Lucas, my father—”

  “I find myself curiously indifferent to his concerns.” He sighted his rifle. The gun cracked, and a grouse dropped to the ground.

  Applause broke out again, encouragements and congratulations traveling dimly down the field. One of the beaters ran up to fetch the felled bird.

  This time,
when the footman appeared with a fresh rifle, Lucas shook his head. “Leave the ammunition,” he said.

  He knew his way with a weapon, reloading it and sighting with swift, efficient brutality. Another round of grouse exploded into flight, and his gun barked.

  Down came a bird, its body thumping audibly against the grass.

  “Crack shot!” came Obolensky’s cry. Lucas, grim-faced, reloaded his weapon. Georgie looked away from the tight line of his jaw to the dark huddled mass of the bird.

  “Poor thing,” she said softly.

  She heard Lucas sigh. He laid down the gun and turned to face her, his expression stony.

  She took a deep breath. “If we find that letter, we can use it to our advantage. We can name our own price in exchange for it. We can be . . . safe.”

  His eyes narrowed. As he studied her, she felt her color rise. It was a shameful thing to propose blackmail. But she was not above it now.

  “Safe,” he said evenly. “Safe from what, may I ask?”

  “Lucas.” She hesitated, her stomach knotting. She could not say what she feared more—that he would ignore the risk to himself, or that he would deem it too costly. “My father is not a man to tolerate being crossed. If he were to discover your . . . renewed interest in me, he might punish you for it. He could ruin your career.”

  The corner of his mouth twitched—a fleeting, humorless smile. “Yes,” he said. “No doubt he could.”

  Frustration tightened her throat. “Then don’t you understand why—”

  He seized her elbows and dragged her against him. As she goggled up at him, he said, “This is what I understand.” His mouth came down onto hers.

  The kiss was hard, furious, a branding more than a caress; his lips ground against hers as his grip tightened to the point of pain around her upper arms. Confused, a little frightened, she gasped—and his mouth abruptly gentled. His lips soothed hers, stroking once, twice, until she relaxed against him. His grip eased, his fingers flexing around her elbows as he turned his face aside. His breath warmed her temple for a long, silent moment before he spoke.