* * *
Their wives, who had gathered in the blue salon to discuss the situation, were of a like opinion.
Whitney slumped back in her chair, staring dully at her hands, then she glanced around at her coconspirators, including the dowager duchess. “It was a mistake,” she told her mother-in-law, who’d watched the “show” from the window of her bedchamber.
“I felt like crying when he ignored her gesture,” Alexandra said with an ache in her voice. “Sheridan was so brave about it, so open, and so terribly vulnerable.” She looked over her shoulder to politely include Miss Charity in the conversation, but the elderly lady had nothing to say. She sat on the window seat, her brow furrowed in concentration, looking straight ahead, giving the impression that she was either listening intently or not listening at all.
“We still have another full day and evening,” Stephen’s mother said. “He might soften by then.”
Whitney shook her head. “He won’t. I was counting on proximity to make him listen, but even if he listened, he wouldn’t change his mind. I realize that now. For one thing, I discovered earlier that he knows she went to Nicki the day she left his house, and you know how he feels about Nicki.”
Miss Charity turned her head sharply at that, her frown deepening with intense concentration.
“The thing is that Stephen wouldn’t believe anything Sherry says without proof. Her actions spoke so loudly that nothing else matters. Someone would have to present him with some other viable reason for her to have run away—” She broke off as Miss Charity stood up and walked silently out of the room. “I don’t think Miss Charity is holding up very well under the added stress of all this.”
“She told me she finds it all very exciting,” the dowager announced with an irritated sigh.
* * *
From Sheridan’s perspective as she stood at the window of her room and watched Stephen laugh at something Monica said to him, the situation looked even more bleak. She couldn’t get him off alone to try to talk to him because he clearly wouldn’t cooperate with anything she wanted, and she couldn’t talk to him in front of the others because she’d tried to communicate with him when she gave him her “favor,” and that had been a disaster.
53
Stephen’s decision to ignore her existence became harder and harder to adhere to as evening drifted into night, and he saw her hovering on the edge of the torchlit area where the tables had been set up for supper. The shock of seeing her had fortified him for the first few hours, but now he no longer had the advantage of that barrier. Standing off to one side, behind the other guests, his shoulders propped against an oak tree, he could watch her without being observed, while the memories he couldn’t seem to stifle paraded across his mind.
He saw her standing outside his study doors, talking to the under-butler. “Good morning, Hodgkin. You’re looking especially fine today. Is that a new suit?”
“Yes, miss. Thank you, miss.”
“I have a new gown,” she’d confided, doing a pirouette for the under-butler’s inspection. ‘Isn’t it lovely?”
A few minutes later, when Stephen had stalled for time before he told her he wanted her to look for another husband, he’d asked why she hadn’t read the magazines he’d ordered for her.
“Did you actually look at any of them?” she’d asked, making him grin even before she embarked on her description. “There was one called The Ladies Monthly Museum, or Polite Repository of Amusement and Instruction: being an Assemblage of what can Tend to please the Fancy, Instruct the Mind or Exalt the Character of the British Fair,” she’d explained. “The article in it was about how to rouge one’s cheeks! It was absolutely riveting,” she’d lied with an irrepressible smile. “Do you suppose such an article falls under the heading of ‘Instructing the Mind’ or of ‘Exalting the Character’?”
But most of all, he remembered how she felt when she melted in his arms, the sweet generosity of that romantic mouth of hers. She was a natural temptress, Stephen decided. What she lacked in expertise she more than made up for with willing passion.
A few minutes ago, she’d gone into the house to get the Skeffington boys, who were evidently going to sing for the amusement of the guests, and when she emerged, he could see she was carrying some sort of an instrument. He had to drag his gaze from her and force himself to stare at the brandy glass he held, so that he wouldn’t meet her gaze and wouldn’t start wanting her.
Wouldn’t start wanting her? he thought with bitter disgust. He had started wanting her the moment she opened her eyes in his bed in London, and he wanted her no less badly now, within hours of seeing her again. Clad in that plain gown with her hair scraped back off her forehead and twisted into a stern coil at her nape, she made his body harden with lust.
He glanced at Monica and Georgette who were talking to his mother. They were both beautiful women—beautifully gowned, one in yellow and the other in rose, beautifully coiffed, and beautifully behaved. Neither one of them would have considered dressing like a groom and galloping about on that damned horse.
But then, neither one of them would have looked so glorious had they tried.
Neither one of them would have offered him a grain sack with a beguiling smile and pretended she was bestowing a “favor” upon him.
But then, neither one of them would have been brazen enough to gaze into his eyes, inviting him to pull her into his arms, daring him to do it.
In the past, he’d thought of Sheridan Bromleigh as a sorceress, and as the first strains of music began to throb from the instrument she was playing, the thought hit him again. She mesmerized everyone, especially him. Conversations among the guests had broken off completely, and even the servants were pausing to look at her, to listen in awe. Stephen glowered at the brandy in his glass, trying not to look at her, but he could actually feel her gaze on him. She’d looked at him often enough tonight to make that likely. The glances were always soft, always inviting, sometimes pleading. They infuriated Monica and Georgette, who were confused and disdainful of how forward she was, but then Stephen hadn’t had his hands all over either of their bodies. Sheridan alone knew exactly what she could make him want . . . and make him remember.
Furious with his weakening resolve, Stephen shoved away from the tree and put his glass down on the nearest table, then he bade the guests good night and headed for his room, intending to drink himself into a private stupor if that’s what it would take to keep him from going to her.
54
Her head reeling from the tension of the day, Sheridan opened the door to the small bedchamber across from the playroom. Moving cautiously in the dark, unfamiliar room, she found the bureau and felt for the tinder to light the candles in the holder on her bureau. She was in the process of lighting the fourth candle when a deep masculine voice made her choke back a startled scream as it said, “I don’t think we’re going to need much light.”
She spun around, her hand falling away from her mouth, her heart beginning to beat in deep, fierce thuds of pure joy. Stephen Westmoreland was sitting in the room’s only chair, the image of relaxed elegance with his white shirt open at the throat and one booted foot propped casually atop the opposite knee. Even his expression was casual. Too casual. Somewhere in her whirling thoughts she registered that he was treating this momentous meeting with a cool nonchalance that didn’t seem at all appropriate, but she was so happy to see him, so achingly thrilled to have him this close, and so much in love with him that nothing mattered. Nothing.
“As I recall,” he said in the lazy, sensual drawl that always made her heart melt, “the last time I waited for you we were planning a wedding.”
“I know and I can explain,” she said. “I—”
“I didn’t come up here for conversation,” he interrupted. “Downstairs, I had the distinct impression you were offering me a great deal more than talk. Or did I mistake the matter?”
“No,” she whispered.
Stephen looked at her in impassive silence,
noting with the eye of a connoisseur, not the besotted fool that he’d been, that she was every bit as enticing and exotic as he’d recalled . . . except for the severe style of her hair. He didn’t like that look, especially not when he was letting lust and revenge drive him to consort with this scheming, ambitious slut who looked more like a prim virgin at the moment. “Take the pins out of your hair,” he instructed with curt impatience.
Startled by the request and his tone of command, Sheridan obeyed, reaching up and pulling out the dozen or so pins it took to hold the heavy mass securely in its coil. She turned to drop them on the bureau, and when she turned back, he was standing, slowly unbuttoning his shirt.
“What are you doing?” she gasped.
What was he doing? Stephen wondered savagely. What the hell was he doing up here, invited or otherwise, dallying with the same woman who’d left him without a word on their wedding day? In answer to her question, he reached for his neckcloth. “What I am doing is leaving,” he clipped, already stalking the three steps to the door.
“No!” The word burst out of her. “Don’t leave!”
Stephen turned, intending to give her the scathing reply she deserved, but she flung herself against his chest, all soft, entreating woman, drugging his senses with the sudden familiar scent and feel of her. “Please don’t go.” She was crying, her nails biting into his shoulders, and still he kept his hands at his sides, but he was losing the battle, and he knew it. “Just let me explain . . . I love you . . .”
He grabbed her face between his hands to silence her, his eyes already on her parted lips. “Understand this. There is nothing you could say that I would believe. Nothing!”
“Then I’ll show you,” Sheridan said fiercely, clutching his neck as she crushed herself against him and kissed him with that strange combination of naive inexpertise and instinctive sensuality that used to drive him wild.
And still did. Shoving his hands hard into the soft hair at her nape, Stephen kissed her back, forcing her to show him the sensual desire she was making him feel. With the last thread of rationality he possessed, he lifted his mouth an inch from hers, and gave her one last chance to call a halt. “Are you sure?”
“I know what I’m doing.”
He took what she was offering, took what he had wanted from the first moment he’d touched her. He took it mindlessly, driven by a violent compulsion to have her; he took with a determination and urgency and hunger that stunned and aroused him. A wild, primitive mating for him and yet one he wanted—needed—to know was as exciting for her. Pride drove him to make certain she wanted him with a desperation that matched his, and he used all his sexual experience to battle down the defenses of an inexperienced girl who hadn’t any idea how to withstand it. He shoved his finger deep into her wet warmth, drawing hard on her taut nipple until she was arching and crying and clutching him tightly. Then and only then did he take her, parting her thighs with both hands and driving into her with just enough restraint to keep from shoving her into the headboard, and he felt her body jerk with pain and her nails bite into his back, heard her muffled cry of shock and pain, and he froze. “I know what I’m doing.”
With dread and confusion he forced his eyes open. Hers were damp with tears, devoid of either accusation or triumph for having gotten him to do this for whatever reason she could have had. Her choked, whispered words reinforced the drugging expression in her eyes as she curved her hands over his taut shoulders. “Hold me,” she whispered magically. A gentle benediction. “Please . . .”
Stephen complied, letting the mindless pleasure overtake him again. Wrapping his arms around her, he took her mouth in a stormy demanding kiss and felt her hands shifting softly over his shoulders, gentling him at the same time her melting body was welcoming him, sheathing him, offering them both release . . . offering and offering and offering . . .
Every nerve in his body was screaming for release and still he held himself back, driving deeply into her, while the muscles in his arms strained with the rest of his body, refusing to deprive her of the same pleasure she was going to give him any second now. She was whimpering, eyes closed tightly, desperate for something she didn’t understand, afraid to have it. Afraid not to. Sobbing with desire, needing reassurance. He gave it to her in a hoarse whisper. “ . . . Any second now . . .”
She went up in flames before he finished the sentence, her body clenching his, and Stephen heard himself groan with the extravagant splendor she was somehow making him feel. And then he gave himself over to it, driving toward it . . . and then past it, climaxing, his body jerking as he poured himself into her.
Whatever thoughts of revenge and wounded pride had driven him to bed her, they were forgotten as he wrapped his arms around her back and hips and pulled her with him onto his side. She was too magnificent to be used for vengeance, too exquisitely soft in his arms to be anywhere else. From the first moment his mouth touched hers, he’d known they were an oddly combustible combination, but what had just passed had been the most wildly erotic, satisfying sexual encounter of his life. Lying there while she slept in his arms, he marvelled at the heady, primitive sensuality of her. Whatever she’d felt during their coupling had been real—that was one of the few things about her he did not doubt. That at least was real and uncontrived. No woman on earth could have feigned those responses, not without a great deal of practice, and as he now knew, she’d had no practice at all.
Sheridan awoke alone in her bed, which seemed normal enough and yet . . . not. Her eyes snapped open, she saw him sitting in the chair beside the bed, and sweet relief flooded through her. He was dressed already, his shirt open at the front, his handsome face unreadable. Self-consciously, she drew the sheets up to her breasts and sat up against the pillows, wondering a little desperately how he could look so utterly casual after the things they had just done. Somewhere at the edges of her mind, she was beginning to realize they were shameful things, but she shut the thought out. His eyes dipped to the sheet she was clutching to her breasts, then slowly lifted to her face, telling her as clearly as if he had spoken that he was amused by her modesty. Sheridan couldn’t blame him for that, but she wished he didn’t look quite so nonchalant or quite so amused or quite so distant . . . not when she was struggling to look even a little normal in the aftermath of the things they had done with each other. On the other hand, she realized, he no longer looked cold or cynical or angry, and that struck her as a wondrous change. Tucking the sheet tightly under her arms, she drew up her knees and linked her fingers around them. “Can we talk now?” she began.
“Why don’t you let me begin?” Stephen suggested blandly.
Not that eager to bring up the matter of Charise Lancaster when things seemed almost cozy, Sheridan nodded.
“I have an offer to make to you.” He saw her eyes kindle with happiness at the word “offer” and could not believe she thought him stupid enough to actually suggest marriage. “A business proposition,” he emphasized. “Once you’ve had time to consider it, I think you’ll find it sensible for both of us. Certainly, you’ll find it preferable to working for the Skeffingtons.”
Uneasiness doused Sheridan’s momentary happiness at his mention of an offer. “What sort of proposition?”
“It’s obvious that despite our many differences, we are extremely compatible, sexually.”
She couldn’t believe he could sit there and describe the stormy intimacies they had just shared with such clinical calm. “What is your proposition?” she asked shakily.
“You share my bed when I’m wishful of your body. In return for that, you will have a home of your own, servants, gowns, a coach, and the freedom to do as you please so long as no other man is given the use of what I’m already paying for.”
“You’re suggesting I become your mistress,” she said dully.
“Why not? You’re ambitious and clever, and it’s a hell of a lot better than what you’re doing now.” When she didn’t respond, Stephen said in a bored drawl, “Please tell me you di
dn’t expect me to offer to marry you because of what just happened. Tell me you aren’t that naive or that stupid.”
Flinching from the sting of his tone, Sherry looked at his hard, handsome face, at the cynicism she hadn’t recognized in his eyes before. Swallowing convulsively, she shook her head and answered him honestly. “I did not know what to expect, of anything we did, but I did not expect it would make you ask me to marry you.”
“Good. There’s been enough deceit and misunderstanding between us before. I wouldn’t like to think you misled yourself.”
He thought he saw the sheen of disappointed tears in her wide gray eyes and stood up, pressing a perfunctory kiss on her forehead. “At least you are wise enough not to indulge in a fit of ire over my offer. Think about it,” he said.
Sherry stared at him in mute misery as he added with a chilling bite in his voice, “Before you decide, there’s a warning I feel obliged to give you. If you ever lie to me about anything, ever—just one time—I will throw you out on the street.” He reached for the door as he added over his shoulder, “There’s one more thing—Don’t ever say ‘I love you’ to me. I never want to hear those words from you again.”
Without another word or a backward glance, he walked out. Sherry laid her forehead on her knees and let the tears slide, but she was crying for her own lack of character and restraint when he took her in his arms, and for actually being tempted, for just a few moments, to accept his indecent, coldhearted proposal.
55
The full realization of what she had done last night had set in long before Sheridan dragged herself out of bed and got dressed the next morning. In the bright light of full day, there was no way to deny the awful truth: she had sacrificed her virtue, her principles, and her morals, and now she would have to live with the shame of that until the end of her life.