The Pleasure of Your Kiss Page 31

  “Why didn’t you send word?” he asked hoarsely. “I was at sea during most of that time, but someone could have had me found … my father … my brother … someone.”

  She faced him, her gloved fingers still clutching the tree as if it were her lifeline. “What was I going to do? Demand that you come back? Force you to marry me just because I was carrying your child? Spend the rest of my life wondering if you had ever truly loved me or if you were only wedding me out of some misguided sense of duty?”

  Ash closed his eyes against a wave of remorse and regret. Of course she wouldn’t have done any of those things. She was far too proud.

  When he opened his eyes again, her gaze had returned to the snow-frosted meadow. “Papa wanted to send me away for a few months, ostensibly to visit an aunt at her isolated cottage by the sea in Yarmouth. His plan was that the child would be removed from my arms the minute it was born and shipped off to be raised by some nice family in the country, a family who would be generously compensated for their trouble … and their silence. Then I would return and resume my life as if nothing had ever happened.”

  Ash’s voice sounded like the voice of a stranger, even to his own ears. “Your father always was a lot like my brother. He believed the best solution to any problem was to write a hefty cheque.”

  “Precisely. But I was having none of it. It was going to be my child—your child—and no one was ever going to take it away from me. You know exactly how stubborn I could be then.”

  “Then?” he said before he could stop himself.

  Clarinda shot him a reproachful glance. “That’s when Maximillian stepped in.”

  “Max?” Ash was beginning to wonder if his heart could bear any more shocks. If not for the sturdy trunk of the oak beneath his shoulder, he wasn’t sure he could have remained on his feet.

  “I couldn’t very well confide in any of my friends from school, not even dear Poppy. Her father may have only been a humble country squire, but he would have never allowed his daughter to associate with a woman of weak moral character.”

  Ash started getting angry all over again.

  “Max already knew how I felt about you so it wasn’t so difficult to tell him the rest. He immediately offered to marry me and claim the child as his own.”

  “That’s my brother,” Ash said, unable to disguise the bitter note in his voice. “A hero to the core. So why aren’t you already the Countess of Dravenwood?”

  She brushed the hood of her cloak from her hair, boldly meeting his gaze. “Because I refused him. I would have done almost anything to keep that baby, but the one thing I couldn’t bring myself to do was marry your brother. Max did everything he could to sway me, but when he saw my mind was made up, he and my father came up with the idea of salvaging my reputation by marrying me off to Viscount Darby as quickly as possible. Dewey had already proposed to me at least half a dozen times. He was ever so sweet but none too bright, and Max figured it would be a simple enough matter to convince him the child had been conceived on our wedding night and born early.” She sighed. “When I look back, it seems like an impossibly cruel hoax, but we were all so very desperate. And Dewey did adore me so I convinced myself I would make reparations by being a model wife to him.” She shook her head ruefully. “The very idea of me as a model wife must make you laugh.”

  The last thing Ash felt like doing in that moment was laughing.

  “I spent that entire endless day before the wedding telling myself that it wasn’t too late. That all was not lost yet and you could still come riding up the drive to save the day.”

  Ash couldn’t believe how close he had come to doing just that. Instead he had abandoned her once again, believing she had thrown him over for another man.

  “After the sun went down, I realized I couldn’t go to Dewey’s bed and let him put his hands on me while I was dreaming of you. I decided I would rather give up all claims to my father’s fortune and society’s good will and live in a humble cottage and raise our child on my own than spend the rest of my life living a lie.”

  Ash’s heart began to beat faster at the thought there might actually be a child somewhere.

  “So I sent a footman to the inn where Dewey was staying with a note telling him I was sorry but I couldn’t marry him after all. He became so overwrought he jumped right on his horse and started out for my father’s estate, hoping to change my mind. Instead of staying on the road, he took a shortcut through the woods. It was a moonless night and unfamiliar terrain, and he wasn’t half the rider that you and Max were. He tried to take a jump he shouldn’t have and his horse balked. The fall broke his neck.” Tears welled up in her eyes as she turned to look at him, melting the snowflakes from her lashes. “I killed him. He was a decent, gentle soul and I broke his heart and then I killed him.”

  “You didn’t kill him,” Ash said grimly. “I killed him.”

  “When Max brought me the news, I was stricken with grief and guilt. I felt a terrible pain in my belly, even worse than the one in my heart. I cried out and collapsed in the entrance hall. Max carried me up the stairs, shouting for the doctor.”

  Ash would have done anything in that moment to silence her. He would have gladly snatched her up in his arms and kissed her forever, if only to stop the next words from spilling from her lips.

  “Dewey wasn’t the only one who died that night,” she said softly. “I took to my bed for weeks after that. Everyone believed I was grieving over the loss of my fiancé, and I suppose I was because I knew that he had died for nothing. Only my father, Maximillian, and a handful of loyal servants knew the whole truth. Max refused to leave my bedside. He was always there—spooning broth down my throat, wrapping me in a blanket and carrying me over to the window seat, urging me to live when all I wanted to do was die.”

  For the first time, Ash truly understood the depths of Clarinda’s devotion to his brother. That understanding was tempered by a savage surge of regret. It was just like Farouk rescuing her from the slave traders all over again. Why couldn’t he be there at the right moment? Why couldn’t it be his hands smoothing her tousled hair or drying her tears when she wept?

  He might have done just that if she hadn’t dashed the tears from her cheeks herself. “When Max carried me up those stairs, I was a girl. When I walked back down them nearly two months later, I was a woman. Max still wanted me to marry him, but with both you and the baby gone, I didn’t see any point in marrying at all. I was perfectly content being alone.”

  “The child?” Ash whispered, unable to choke another word past the raw knot in his throat.

  Clarinda knelt again, her knees cushioned by the rippling folds of her cloak. It was then that Ash realized she was kneeling in front of a small stone that hadn’t been there the last time he had visited the meadow. It was covered by a thin layer of snow.

  “My father wanted to throw the baby away like so much garbage so he could pretend it had never existed. When I wept and screamed and begged him not to take it away from me, he tried to dismiss it as the hysterical ravings of a grief-struck girl. It was Max who intervened and insisted that my wishes be honored. He offered to find a place for the child in the Burke family crypt.” A sad little smile curved her lips. “But I knew where he belonged.”

  Her gloved fingers gently brushed the snow from the simple stone to reveal the single word carved upon it.

  CHARLIE.

  Not CHARLES or CHARLES CLARENCE BURKE or even a date to mark his passing, but simply CHARLIE.

  Their son rested in the exact same spot where he had been conceived in a moment of wild, reckless passion between two young lovers who had let their hearts overrule every vestige of their good sense.

  If Charlie had lived, he might be romping through this meadow even now, whooping with delight and catching snowflakes on his tongue. Instead, he would forever sleep beneath the sheltering arms of the mighty oak, his lullabies the quicksilver voices of the changing seasons and the whisper of the wind through the tree’s swaying boughs.
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  Clarinda rose, tugging the hood of her cloak back up over her hair.

  “Before you left, I wanted you to know that if I had had a single word of encouragement from you after Charlie died—a letter, a message, some small token of your affection, anything at all—I would have waited forever.”

  Ash stood frozen in place as she brushed a kiss over his cheek, her lips as warm as a summer day, then turned and started back across the meadow.

  He waited until she had disappeared over the snow-swept rise to drop to his knees in the exact spot where she had knelt. He ran his hand gently over the small stone, his own tears melting the snow where they fell.

  Ash couldn’t have said how long he knelt there by that tiny grave, saying good-bye to the son he would never know. A son who might have had a sheaf of silvery blond hair and eyes the color of clover.

  When he finally rose, the snow had stopped. A pale sun was making a valiant attempt to peek through the low-hanging clouds, its slanting rays transforming the snow-covered vista into a glittering wonderland.

  If Ash squinted, he could almost see the fiery orb of the sun blazing down upon a sweep of golden sand; Clarinda standing in the courtyard at Farouk’s palace looking as if she’d just stepped out of one of his more torrid dreams; Clarinda reclining on a bed of crimson silk, her smile inviting and her green eyes glittering with desire.

  If today had proved anything, it was that she had already suffered enough at his hands. If he had even an ounce of decency left in him, he would accept her kiss for what it was—a final farewell—and leave this place for good.

  She had found something in his brother’s arms she would never find in his—peace, security, stability. Max had never been foolish enough to go chasing after a dream when the only woman who could ever make it come true was standing right in front of him.

  The passion between Clarinda and him had burned too bright from the beginning. If they ended up together, the future would always be fraught with danger. There would be tempers flaring, wills clashing, epic battles of wits that could only be fought in the bedroom, not the drawing room. Neither of them would ever know another moment’s peace.

  It sounded utterly glorious, Ash’s very idea of heaven.

  A grin slowly spread across his face.

  Their stubborn pride had already robbed them of so many precious years they might have spent in each other’s arms. He’d be damned if he would let it cost them so much as another second.

  He gave the small gravestone one last lingering look before he started across the meadow, hoping his son would approve of what he was about to do.

  Clarinda stood gazing at herself in the tall looking glass that sat in the corner of her bedchamber.

  Since there had been no time to visit a modiste and order a fashionable wedding gown, she had chosen to wear the bronze silk taffeta that made the green of her eyes look especially vivid. The gown was one that had always featured prominently in her fantasies about giving Ash the cut direct should he ever dare to darken her door again.

  She studied the face of the woman in the mirror as if it were the face of a stranger, but no matter how hard she searched, she couldn’t find any trace of the passionate, headstrong girl who had loved Ashton Burke with every fiber of her being.

  The creature who stood before her now with the neatly dressed hair and serene expression was the cool, composed woman that girl had become in his absence. The woman who had stepped into her mother’s slippers and hosted dozens of suppers and soirees for her father’s influential friends. The woman who had opened society’s doors so that she and Poppy might stroll through them arm in arm. The woman who had agreed to become the bride of an earl and a future duchess.

  A knock sounded on the door. “Miss?” came the timid voice of her maid. “It’s time.”

  Clarinda lifted her chin. The maid was right. The time had come to bid that other girl and her dreams farewell forever.

  Maximillian was waiting for her at the makeshift altar that had been set up before the marble hearth in the elegant drawing room of her father’s estate. Somehow it seemed that Max had always been waiting for her, as stalwart and dependable as the old oak tree in the meadow.

  His thick, dark hair was neatly trimmed so that its ends barely brushed his collar. His short, gray cutaway coat and striped waistcoat were as conservative as he was. His jaw was clean-shaven without so much as a hint of rakish stubble to mar its strong planes. As he watched her walk down the aisle toward him, the look in his fine gray eyes might have taken another bride’s breath away. It had always been easy to take his good looks for granted when distracted by Ash’s far more unconventional masculine beauty.

  A half-dozen chairs had been hastily arranged to accommodate the guests in attendance. Clarinda’s father gripped a walking stick topped with the brass head of a lion. He had wept openly upon her return, but now his ruddy face was wreathed in a beaming smile. He had always hoped his little girl would make a match with a man like Maximillian.

  Her bridegroom’s parents huddled together on the opposite side of the aisle, looking less than overjoyed by the proceedings. Clarinda strongly suspected the tears Max’s mother was weeping into her monogrammed handkerchief were not tears of joy. The duke and duchess had always hoped their beloved eldest son would marry someone equal to his station in life, not a common heiress whose father had made his fortune in trade. When the duke wasn’t giving his wife consoling pats, he kept checking the gold fob of his pocket watch, as if to make sure Luca hadn’t pilfered it.

  For a Gypsy and a former concubine, Luca and Yasmin had managed to turn themselves out quite nicely. Clarinda had been forced to give Yasmin the pick of her wardrobe just to keep her from showing up in a collection of flimsy veils and a pair of sandals. Yasmin, of course, had chosen a low-cut ball gown utterly unsuited for morning wear that was at least three sizes too small for her. She kept tugging the bodice down until Clarinda was afraid her breasts were going to come spilling out before the ceremony even began, a fear apparently shared by the staid vicar, who appeared to be teetering on the verge of an apoplexy.

  Clarinda had already caught Yasmin making eyes at her father. A faint shudder went through her as she imagined what it would be like to have the woman as a stepmother. If Yasmin’s transparent attempts to snare a wealthy husband bothered Luca, you couldn’t tell it by the wink he gave the pretty little parlor maid hovering in the corner. His shameless flirting brought a simpering blush to the girl’s freckled cheeks.

  Only one chair in the room was conspicuously empty.

  Even now Clarinda couldn’t tell if the glow in Maximillian’s eyes could be attributed to happiness that their wedding was finally taking place or relief that his wayward brother had decided to behave true to character and exit stage right before it could begin.

  Clarinda drew in a deep breath, no easy feat within the confines of her corset. Since the weather had taken such a bitter turn so early in the winter, there was no proper bouquet to be had. One of the gardeners had managed to scrounge up a nosegay of purple pansies for her to carry. She was surprised her hands were so steady. She was beginning to wonder if this was what she would feel for the rest of her life—absolutely nothing.

  She truly did love Max and was grateful for everything he had done for her. But she wasn’t in love with him. Perhaps if she had never met Ash, she wouldn’t have known the difference. She could have lived out her life in quiet contentment like so many women of her acquaintance. She couldn’t think of a single one of them who was consumed by a grand passion for her husband.

  For some reason, Poppy’s joyful face drifted through her mind, giving her heart a sharp twinge.

  Perhaps she should just embrace the numbness that had enveloped her since she had left Ash at their son’s grave. Wasn’t it preferable to the mad rush of her pulse every time he walked into a room, the desperate longing for something she had briefly tasted but could never have again? Wasn’t it better to feel nothing at all than to risk losing everyth
ing?

  She had finally reached the altar. As she took her place at Max’s side, he folded her hand in his and gave her a solemn smile.

  The vicar opened his prayer book and cleared his throat. He had just opened his mouth as well when the double doors at the back of the room came flying open and Ashton Burke came striding into the drawing room.

  Chapter Thirty-two

  As Max’s fingers convulsed around hers in a painful squeeze, Clarinda’s blissful numbness vanished in a flash. Her heart leapt in her chest, then lurched into a thundering rhythm. She pressed the hand gripping the bouquet just below her breasts, wishing she hadn’t ordered her maid to lace her corset quite so tightly just so she could squeeze into the bronze silk taffeta. Spots began to dance in front of her eyes, and for a minute she thought she might actually do something so ridiculous as swoon.

  Ash’s coat was unbuttoned and the collar of his shirt laid open to reveal the broad, tanned column of his throat. He was in desperate want of both a shave and a haircut. He couldn’t have looked any more disreputable had he just swaggered down the gangplank of a pirate ship.

  Clarinda’s father rose, brandishing his walking stick. “What in the devil is he doing here?”

  “That’s precisely what I’d like to know,” Max said evenly as Ash came to a halt in the middle of the aisle halfway to the altar.

  “I can’t blame you for being upset, sir,” Ash said, lifting a placating hand to Clarinda’s father. “After the grief I’ve caused your daughter, I’m sure you’d like nothing more than to summon your gamekeeper and have me shot. If I were you, I’d feel exactly the same way. Why, I’ll probably shoot any man who dares to lay a finger on my Charlotte before she turns five-and-twenty … no, make it five-and-thirty.”

  “Who’s Charlotte?” Luca asked, frowning in confusion.

  “My daughter,” Ash replied. “Our daughter. The daughter Clarinda and I are going to have after we’re married.”