Unhesitatingly she kissed him back and he tasted more tears. But stronger than sadness, he tasted urgency. He thrust his tongue into her mouth and felt her shiver with arousal. Her shaking hands formed claws in his coat, drawing him roughly down to her. Everything vanished except explosive heat. He’d never known its like. He’d never know its like again.
“Oh, Lydia, I’ve missed you so much,” he muttered in despair, lashing his arms around her and crushing her to him. How could she marry Berwick when they created such magic?
“Simon, darling Simon…” she whispered, pulling away to place a hundred glancing, agitated kisses across his jaw. She clung so tightly that he felt the supple body beneath her silk dress.
He caught her face between his hands, holding her still. His mouth found hers again, submerging her wildness in the wildness of another kiss. She arched toward him, linking her hands around his neck, bringing him closer.
“Good God!”
The harsh exclamation seemed to spring from another universe. Simon’s hold tightened around Lydia’s waist. Until angry hands seized him and wrenched him away, sending him staggering against the balustrade.
“Grenville…” Lydia breathed in horror, rushing into the light toward her sputtering betrothed. The man jerked away as if she carried contamination.
Damn it all, this was like a grotesque repeat of that day ten years ago when Simon’s life had gone all to hell. The change from delight to danger was too abrupt for him to make immediate sense of what happened. He shook his head to clear it and lurched upright, reaching for Lydia. She brushed past him as if he didn’t exist.
Berwick didn’t glance at Lydia as she wrapped her arms around herself in a gesture that screamed shame. As she stood unspeaking beside her betrothed, she was visibly trembling. Simon hated to witness her humiliation. He hated that yet again he was the cause of her misery.
“You unmitigated swine!” Berwick drew back his fist and struck Simon hard on the chin, exploding his sense of unreality into a blaze of agony. Simon went down clumsily onto the paving.
“Simon!” Lydia cried.
Through the haze before his eyes, he watched Lydia make a convulsive movement toward him, then stop with a frightened glance at Berwick. Simon wanted her to be proud of what she felt for him, but she cringed as though their kisses had been a crime against nature.
“No damage.” Simon wiped his hand over his stinging mouth and felt blood well against his palm.
“I’m gratified to hear that,” Berwick said coldly. “In that case, you’re fit to meet me on the field of honor on the morrow. Name your seconds.”
“No! Don’t!” Lydia threw herself toward Berwick and clutche
d his arm with fingers that turned into talons. “It’s my fault, not his. Blame me. Hurt me.”
“Madam, I pray you, some decorum.” Berwick addressed Lydia with a disdain that made Simon’s gut sour with hatred. “You forget yourself.”
“Lydia, please—” Simon struggled to his feet. But what could he say to comfort her when this disaster was all of his creation?
“Although I’m the injured party, I will accept your choice of weapon, Metcalf,” Berwick said implacably, as if the woman he meant to marry the day after tomorrow didn’t tug at his arm.
“Don’t be a fool, man.” Cam burst through the French doors in time to hear the challenge. Behind him, Simon was appalled to see that the brawl had drawn a curious audience into the supper room. The soprano was no longer singing.
Cam slammed the door behind him and cast a quelling look at the onlookers. Ducal authority might keep them temporarily at bay, but Simon was sickly aware that Lady Lydia Rothermere’s public fall from grace would be the talk of the town tomorrow.
Futile guilt twisted his belly. He was such a deuced fool. He’d bleated to Lydia about how much better he was for her than Berwick. Yet now he’d ruined her in society’s eyes.
“I have been insulted, sir,” Berwick told Cam, sounding as pompous as Simon had ever heard him. “There is no other remedy.”
“Use your brain, Grenville.” Gently Cam untangled Lydia’s fingers from Berwick’s sleeve and drew her under his arm.
Lydia hardly seemed to notice. Instead her great dark eyes focused on Berwick as though he offered her only hope of salvation. Simon knew he had no right to the stirring jealousy that added a poisonous tinge to his remorse and anger.
Cam went on. “A duel will destroy your political career, not to mention tarnish my sister’s name irreparably.”
“My honor has been slighted, Your Grace. This man has besmirched the woman I intend to marry and will pay the price.” Berwick’s jaw was set like stone and his hands opened and closed at his sides as if he barely controlled himself from punching Simon once more. Simon would almost welcome the chance to take on his rival, until he remembered that Lydia’s reputation hung by a thread.
“Grenville, I’m… I’m so sorry,” Lydia said, in that same muffled tone Simon had heard her use to her father in the hayshed. He’d never forgotten it; it still made his skin crawl. Even in the torchlight, he could see that her skin had turned so pale, it seemed transparent. Around the fragile stem of her neck, the rubies glinted malevolently, as though they sucked her life to feed their bright color. “Please forgive me.”
With extreme difficulty, Simon bit back the urge to smash his fist into something hard. Not, unfortunately, Berwick’sface. The pity of it was that the man was justly aggrieved. Even through rage and misery, Simon recognized that he should never have mauled Berwick’s betrothed at a society event where anyone could discover them.
“Lydia, come with me. I’ll fetch the carriage around and we’ll go home,” Cam said quietly, although Simon heard the suppressed anger in his voice.