Читать книгу The Complete Regency Season Collection - Кэрол Мортимер, Кэрол Мортимер - Страница 51
ОглавлениеDarian shifted slightly so that his arms were beneath Mariah’s thighs and shoulders as he lifted her up and against his chest before striding across to sit down on one of the ledges along the outside of the temple. He settled Mariah comfortably on his thighs, her head, for the moment, resting against his shoulder.
Darian held on to her tightly. ‘I believe it would be better if you now tell me all, Mariah, when you have already come so far.’
She gave a shake of her head. ‘And I do not care to talk, or think, any more about those horrible memories.’
‘The memories of when Carlisle raped you. What he did was the rape of an innocent, Mariah, nothing more, nothing less,’ Darian insisted grimly as she stiffened in his arms.
‘I am well aware of what it was.’
‘After which, he then forced you into years of suffering an unhappy marriage with him, because of your daughter.’ Darian could barely contain the violence he felt at learning of Carlisle’s brutish behaviour. An impotent violence, in view of the fact that Carlisle was no longer alive to feel the lash of his tongue or the flash of his blade. Carlisle might have been an excellent swordsman, but Darian knew he was better.
‘I may not have wanted the marriage, or Carlisle, but I have loved Christina since the day she was born,’ Mariah instantly defended. ‘She has always been the one shining light in my life.’
Darian nodded, only too well aware of the protectiveness she felt towards her daughter.
As he was also now aware of her reason for objecting so vehemently to the idea of Lady Christina marrying anyone at the age of only seventeen years. The same age as Mariah had been when she was forced to marry Carlisle.
‘But there was no heir?’ Darian prompted slowly.
‘Carlisle did not— He had no interest in my producing his heir. He had a younger cousin he was perfectly happy should inherit the title. His only reason for marrying me was to attain a portion of my father’s considerable fortune.’
‘I have noted that marriage has a way of producing children, whether they are wanted or not,’ Darian drawled ruefully.
‘And I have already told you that Carlisle was completely indifferent to me as his wife.’
Darian looked down at Mariah with incredulous eyes. ‘Are you saying— You cannot possibly mean—’
‘What, Darian?’ Mariah lifted her head to look up at him, her eyes dark and shadowed in the pallor of her face. ‘I cannot possibly mean that my husband’s uninterest in me was such that he did not share my bed, even once, after we were married?’ Her smile was completely lacking in humour as she gave a shake of her head. ‘Why can I not mean that, Darian, when it is the truth?’
A truth that Darian could not even begin to comprehend, when his own desire for Mariah was such that he found it difficult to sleep at night, to stop thinking about her day and night, of the ways in which he wished to make love with her. She had been Carlisle’s wife for twelve years. Surely the other man could not have—
Mariah took advantage of his distraction to pull herself abruptly out of his arms before standing up and turning the paleness of her face away in profile, a shutter seeming to have come down over her emotions—no doubt because she deeply regretted having revealed them in the first place.
‘Why should Carlisle have need of the attentions of his very young and very inexperienced wife,’ she continued drily, ‘when his mistress of over twenty years was the housekeeper of our London home?’
‘Carlisle kept his mistress in your home after you were married?’ Darian stood up slowly.
It was well known that many gentlemen of the ton kept a mistress after they were married. But never, ever, in the same house as their wife. It was not done. It simply was not done. And yet, it appeared that that was exactly what Carlisle had done.
‘In truth, I was grateful for Mrs Smith’s existence.’ Mariah shrugged dismissively as she briskly pulled her glove back on to the hand she had earlier dipped into the heated pool. ‘And I was not made uncomfortable by the arrangement, visiting London rarely during the first ten years of our marriage. I much preferred to remain in the country with Christina.’
Darian breathed deeply. ‘But something happened to change that? Did you and Carlisle perhaps reconcile?’
‘There was nothing to reconcile.’ She turned to frown at him. ‘How could there be, when we had never been husband and wife in the true sense of the word?’
‘But something did change.’
Mariah knew she had said too much already, revealed too much—more than she had ever told anyone else about the past and the reason for her marriage to Martin. The only thing she had not shared with Darian was Martin’s treasonous behaviour. And the lie that was the rumour of her numerous affairs...
She had never confided as much to anyone about the past as she now had to Darian Hunter. Knew she had only been lulled into doing so this time because her emotions had already been disturbed by what she had seen and done in the temple. From her imaginings as to what it would be like to engage in those acts with Darian. Imaginings that had deepened, flourished, during the kiss that had followed.
And that momentary weakness had now cost her dearly.
Damn it, she had told him of Carlisle’s brutality. Her forced marriage. She had cried in Wolfingham’s arms. She, who never cried, preferring never to show any sign of weakness. To anyone.
And she did not intend to continue to do so now where Wolfingham was concerned, either. Had made a vow to herself long ago not to allow anyone, apart from Christina, to come so close to her, to know her so well, they were capable of hurting her. ‘Do you still wish to continue with our walk, or has all this ridiculous emotion dampened not only your shirt but your enthusiasm for walking?’ she prompted coolly.
That astute green gaze remained narrowed on her as Wolfingham stepped closer. ‘There was nothing in the least ridiculous about your upset just now, Mariah.’
‘And I believe it to have been an utterly ridiculous waste of time,’ she insisted coldly, ‘when the past, talking about it, changes nothing.’
‘And what of the future, Mariah?’ He stepped so close to her now that she could feel the warmth of his breath against her brow. ‘What of your future?’
She gave a dismissive shrug. ‘Once this weekend is over, I do not believe that to be any of your business.’ Mariah clasped her hands together so that Darian could not see they were trembling still, evidence that her emotions were not as back under her control as she would have wished them to be. Her complete lack of control, just minutes ago, now made her feel vulnerable, in a way she found most disturbing.
Wolfingham raised his hands to cup both her cheeks before he tilted her face up so that he might look directly into her eyes. ‘And what if I wish to make it my business?’
Wolfingham’s gentleness was unbearable, before and again now, when Mariah knew her emotions, despite her denials to the contrary, remained ragged and torn. When her defence against Darian’s gentleness remained ragged and torn.
‘I am sure I am not the first woman to have been trapped into an unhappy marriage,’ she said drily. ‘Nor will I be the last. And as you say, I did become a countess because of it.’
‘Do not attempt to make light of it, Mariah!’ Wolfingham rasped harshly.
‘How do you wish me to behave, Darian?’ Her eyes flashed darkly as she looked up at him defiantly. ‘I have wailed and railed, and now I wish to forget it. As I have forgotten it these past seventeen years.’
‘Did you forget, Mariah?’ He looked down at her searchingly. ‘Did you ever really forget what that man did to you?’
Of course Mariah had never forgotten. She had not wanted to forget, was the woman she was today because of it.
Her chin rose. ‘Enough so that I do not require, or need, your own or anyone’s pity because of it.’
‘Does this feel like pity to you?’ Wolfingham had grasped one of her hands and placed it over the noticeable bulge in his pantaloons. ‘Does it?’ He pushed for an answer, his eyes glittering down at her darkly.
‘And how long will that desire last, Wolfingham?’ Mariah fell back on derision as her defence as she deliberately removed her hand at the same time as she returned his gaze mockingly. ‘Until you have sated your lust between my thighs and then wish to move on to some other conquest? Possibly to a woman who is younger and less complicated!’
He gave a slow shake of his head. ‘I find your complications intriguing and your age of four and thirty is unimportant to me.’ A nerve pulsed in the tightness of his jaw. ‘And I resent your assumption that my desire for you is a fleeting thing.’
‘Perhaps I presume as much because it has been my experience that a man will say anything, promise anything, when he wishes to bed a certain woman.’ She eyed him scornfully.
Darian frowned his frustration. He did not give a damn what Mariah’s previous lovers had told her, or promised her, when he was the man now standing before her, telling her, physically showing her, how much he desired her. How much he desired to be with her.
A desire of such intensity that Darian had no doubt it would not abate for some time. If ever.
More than anything he wished to take Mariah to his bed. To gently kiss her, caress her, to taste her, to worship every satiny inch of her, and show her the depth of his desire for her. And then he wished to start all over again. And again. And then again. Again, and again, and again, until Mariah was left in absolutely no doubt as to the depth of his desire for her.
At the same time as he knew that this place, Eton Park, with its peepholes into the bedchambers and a temple worthy of the debauchery of the Roman Empire at the height of its power, and the guests to match, plus the Nicholses’ intrigues, was not where he wished to lie with Mariah the first time. Not where he wished to make love with her, to worship her and her body, as she so deserved to be worshipped.
His hands fell back to his sides as he stepped back. ‘Very well, we will continue with our walk for now. But we will talk on this subject again once we are back in London,’ he added softly.
She arched a taunting brow. ‘Not if I do not wish to do so.’
Darian’s mouth quirked into an equally mocking smile. ‘A word of advice, Mariah. I am not like any of your previous lovers. When you know me better, which you most assuredly will, I believe you will find that I am a man who always means what he says as well as always keeps his promises!’
Mariah masked her uneasiness as she fell into step beside him as he began to walk back in the direction of the lake, very much afraid that Darian Hunter was indeed a man who always meant what he said as well as kept all of his promises.
Afraid?
Oh, yes, Mariah was very much afraid, in spite of everything that had happened between them since they first met, that she desired Darian Hunter as much as he now claimed to desire her.
That she desired to know Darian in a way she had never desired any other man.
* * *
‘Do try to smile, Darian, rather than scowl and glower in that dark and disapproving way,’ Mariah advised lightly later that afternoon, viewing his reflection in the mirror after he had entered her bedchamber through the door adjoining their two rooms, after only the briefest of knocks. His appearance was elegantly foreboding in a black superfine, grey waistcoat and pantaloons. ‘Else, once we arrive downstairs for tea, the other guests will think that the two of us have argued.’ She looked at her own reflection in the mirror to give her already perfectly styled hair another pat, rather than continue to look at Darian’s more disturbing reflection.
Everything about this man disturbed her.
The way he looked.
Her undeniable response to his touch.
The desire she was finding it more and more difficult to deny or control.
And the fact that she had confided so much of her past to him earlier today.
That breach in the barrier she had kept so firmly about her emotions for so many years disturbed Mariah most of all, so much so that she had spent the past four hours, since they parted downstairs after returning from their walk, attempting to shore up or replace that barrier.
Only to have taken but a single glance at Darian’s reflection in the mirror as he strode forcefully into her bedchamber just now to know that those efforts, determined as they might have been, had been a complete waste of her time.
What was it about this man in particular that affected her so? Oh, he was handsome enough. Forceful enough. But he was far from the first handsome or forceful man to have expressed a desire to bed her. Desire she had found absolutely no difficulty in rejecting in the past.
No doubt because she had not felt a return of that desire for any of those other men.
The same desire that had so shaken and disturbed her earlier, to a degree that she had confided more of her past to this man than she had ever wished anyone to know.
The very same desire that made her feel so vulnerable whenever she was in his presence.
‘I have absolutely no interest in what they do or do not think,’ Darian answered her impatiently now, the scowl still dark upon his brow as he stepped further into the room.
Mariah turned slowly, a slight frown creasing her own brow now. ‘Has something happened?’
Darian stared at her incredulously.
Had something happened?
As far as Darian’s life was concerned, Mariah Beecham had happened.
So much so that just one look at her, when he entered her bedchamber just seconds ago and saw how beautiful she looked in an afternoon gown of the palest turquoise, her breasts a creamy and tempting swell, the very low and curved neckline of that gown revealing the tops of her nipples as being a deep rose, and he was forced to endure a hard and painful throb inside his pantaloons yet again.
At the same time he felt a ridiculous desire to cover up those beautiful breasts, so that no other man could look at or see any part of them. Or become aroused and tempted by looking at them, as he undoubtedly was.
A ridiculous reaction, when Mariah’s coolness towards him this morning, once they had left the temple, and then completed their walk about the lake together in complete silence, had spoken only too clearly not only of her need to put a physical distance between them, but also of a return of that emotional one.
Darian had lingered in the hallway to have that promised word with Benson while Mariah went up the stairs alone. By the time he arrived up the stairs, the door to Mariah’s bedchamber, and the door adjoining their two rooms, had both been firmly closed. He had known instinctively that Mariah meant them as a barrier between the two of them. One he crossed at his peril.
Because she had revealed too much about herself to him this morning? Because he now knew things about her life, her marriage to Carlisle, that perhaps no one else did?
Darian did not believe that Mariah was the type of woman who would confide her deepest, darkest secrets easily. To anyone. And he knew from personal experience that Mariah’s role as an agent for the Crown would also make it difficult for her to have close friends, male or female, for fear they might discover her secret.
The murderous rage Darian had felt earlier today, towards Martin Beecham, had not abated in the slightest in the hours that had passed since Darian and Mariah had parted so stiffly. Her husband had been an out-and-out bastard who had raped and terrified a young and inexperienced girl for the sole purpose of forcing his child and marriage on her, trampling all of the young girl’s romantic dreams into the dust beneath his own greedy need for the bride’s portion of her father’s money.
Not only that, but Carlisle had doubly insulted Mariah by having his mistress in residence as housekeeper in one of the homes Mariah herself had necessarily to visit on occasion.
How did any woman survive that? But especially one as young and innocent as Mariah had been then?
Darian knew it would be difficult for a woman of any age to have survived such base and selfish cruelty.
Yet here Mariah stood before him, a lady in every sense of the word. So graciously beautiful, as well as being the most desirable woman he had ever known.
Nor was it any wonder, after all that she had suffered at Beecham’s hands, that Mariah had turned to the comforting arms and desire of other men, both during and after her marriage.
Had any of those other men made love to her? Darian wondered as he continued to admire her beauty and poise. Truly made love to her? Showering Mariah with the gentleness, the care and consideration that was her due?
Or had they all without fail, as she had so scathingly scorned earlier, treated her as just another conquest in their bed? So that they might afterwards claim, to their male friends and associates, to have bedded the beautiful Countess of Carlisle?
‘Darian?’ Mariah prompted again, her expression having become wary at his continued silence.
Darian had spent most of the past four hours pacing his bedchamber and thinking of Mariah. Of all that she had told him of her past, at the same time as he now knew it was that past that had made her the woman she was today: cool, poised and determined to remain totally removed from emotional entanglements with any man.
It had brought Darian to the question that concerned him the most: how the two of them were to now proceed—or if Mariah would allow them to proceed at all.
For he had promised himself he would not use any type of force upon Mariah. That he might perhaps allow himself to cajole, tease and seduce her, but he would not, could not, ever use coercion or force of any kind.
‘Nothing has happened.’ He drew in a ragged breath. ‘I want— I need— No, I ask—’ He broke off abruptly, only now appreciating how difficult it was going to be to keep the promise he had made to himself earlier, when just to look at Mariah again made his blood burn in his veins and his erection throb.
Mariah was now truly alarmed by Darian’s behaviour. Of what might possibly have happened to put the arrogantly assured Duke of Wolfingham in such an obvious state of uncertainty. ‘Yes?’ she prompted tensely.
He straightened his shoulders, emerald gaze fixed intently upon her as he spoke abruptly. ‘I would ask if you will allow me to kiss you before we go downstairs?’
Darian Hunter was a man Mariah had every reason to know was always and completely assured as to the rightness of his own actions.
As he had believed he was in the right two weeks ago, when he had warned her not to encourage his younger brother in his attentions to her.
As he had believed her friendship with Aubrey Maystone must be one based on intimacy.
As he believed her to be a woman who had indulged in many affairs, both during and after her marriage.
Wolfingham had believed he was in the right in all of those things.
Admittedly, he had already been proven wrong in two of those things, but the latter? Darian still believed in that legion of lovers Mariah was reputed to have had these past seven years, no doubt believed them to have been her comfort for the coldness of her marriage.
And yet he now asked if he might kiss her?
To say Mariah was flustered by Darian’s request would be putting it mildly. Especially when she had every reason to know that the arrogantly self-assured Duke of Wolfingham never ‘asked’ permission to do anything, let alone asked permission to kiss her. The notorious and scandalous Mariah Beecham, Countess of Carlisle...
She attempted a sophisticated and dismissive laugh, hoping Wolfingham did not recognise it, as she certainly did, as sounding more nervous than assured. ‘I thought we had agreed not to continue with that conversation until after we have returned to London.’ She gave a pointed glance to where her shawls and handkerchiefs were once again draped over those peepholes into her bedchamber, in order to preserve her privacy, both while she’d bathed and changed her clothes earlier.
A nerve pulsed in his tightly clenched jaw. ‘I find that my desire to at least touch you again cannot wait that long.’
His desire to touch her again!
It was Wolfingham’s touch that had been her undoing from the beginning. Not just once, but so many times. On the terrace of her own home. In the guest bedchamber of her home, where he had necessarily to stay in order to recover after his collapse. In the gallery of Lady Stockton’s home. And here. Here at Eton Park she had allowed Darian to touch her more intimately than any other man had ever done before.
Mariah now feared her response to his touch.
Not because she thought Darian would ever physically hurt her—she was already sure he would never use force upon any woman. She had come to know him these past two weeks, knew he was not a man who showed his strength or power through physical dominance over others, but by the sheer force of his indomitable will.
No, she did not fear Darian would physically hurt her, as Carlisle had hurt and humiliated her, to such an extent she had never cared to repeat the experience.
Darian Hunter was capable of hurting her in a much different way.
She was not only aroused by him, felt desire for him, she also liked and admired him. His strength. His honesty. His family loyalty. His devotion to his country. He was, as she had learnt these past weeks, in all things an honourable man.
A man she might love.
And Mariah did not wish to love any man, even one as handsome and honourable as she now knew Darian Hunter, the Duke of Wolfingham, to be.
The independence of nature she so enjoyed now had been hard won, after years of living only half a life, hidden away in the country, and for the most part ignored by the husband she hated and despised. For the past seven years, since revealing Martin’s treasonous behaviour to Aubrey Maystone, she had no longer had reason to fear Martin, or anything he might try to do to her. Aubrey Maystone had taken care of that.
For the first time in her life Mariah had done exactly as she pleased, her worthwhile work for the Crown enabling her to become a woman she could not only respect, but also like.
For her to fall in love, with any man, would, she believed, be to put all of that at risk.
To fall in love with Darian Hunter, the much respected and admired Duke of Wolfingham, would most certainly lead to heartbreak on the day he cast her aside and left her for another female who had caught his fancy.
Wolfingham might have a reputation in society as being severe and very proper, nor had there ever been any gossip as to his ever having taken a permanent mistress. But that did not mean there had not been other rumours, of his liaisons with several ladies of the ton, and the gaming hells and the houses of the demi-monde he had visited on the evenings he spent with the other Dangerous Dukes.
Dangerous.
Yes, where Mariah was concerned Darian Hunter more than lived up to his reputation as being dangerous. To her independence. To her untutored body. To her untouched heart.
And that she could not, dare not, allow.
‘Goodness, Wolfingham, where on earth has all this politeness and solicitude come from?’ she taunted him mockingly. ‘If it is because of our conversation earlier today, then let me assure you that it is of no consequence.’
‘No consequence?’
‘Absolutely none,’ she dismissed coolly in the face of his vehemence. ‘It was too many years ago to be of any significance to the here and now. Nor, as I assured you earlier, do I have need of anyone’s pity. Least of all your own,’ she added with deliberate scorn.
‘Least of all mine?’ Wolfingham’s eyes were steely now as he looked at her through narrowed lids.
‘But of course.’ Mariah returned that hard gaze with a challenging one of her own. ‘You really are arrogance personified if you believed otherwise. In the circumstances I described to you earlier, a woman can either grow stronger from the experience or allow herself to be beaten down by it. I am certain that by now you know me well enough to have realised which one of those women I have become?’ She arched haughty brows.
Oh, yes, Darian knew full well which one of those women best described Mariah. Her fortitude was only one of the reasons he admired and liked her so much. Desired her so much. A desire she was now at pains to inform him she wanted no part of.
To a degree she would not even give permission for him to so much as kiss or touch her again.
Was that avoidance not telling in itself?
Or was he simply grasping at straws, because he so much wished for Mariah to return his desire?
It was a question Darian intended to explore with all thoroughness once they were well away from Eton Park.
He nodded. ‘As it is almost five o’clock, might I suggest that we join the other guests downstairs for tea?’
A surprised blink of Mariah’s long dark lashes was her only outward sign that she was surprised at his ease in accepting her refusal. ‘But of course.’ She nodded graciously as she collected up her fan before sweeping past him and preceding him out of the bedchamber.
Darian smiled grimly as he followed her out into the hallway before offering her his arm to escort her down the stairs.
Mariah might believe him to have been routed by her set-down, but if she had come to know him half as well as he now knew her, then she would very soon realise that his patience, in achieving his goals, was infinite.
And his most pressing goal, desire, was to make love with Mariah.
