One Good Earl Deserves a Lover (The Rules of Scoundrels 2)
She loved him.
And he was to marry another.
Because of her.
She couldn’t allow it. There had to be a better way. A solution that made them both happy. She closed her eyes, loving the feel of his warm chest against her cheek, and for one, fleeting moment, she imagined what it would be like to experience happiness with him. To be his wife. His woman. His partner.
His love.
It was no longer a myth, that mysterious emotion—no longer in doubt. It was real, and it held a power that Pippa had never imagined. One she could not deny.
He was whispering at her hairline, the words more breath than sound. “You are so remarkable. I could lie here forever, with you in my arms, the rest of the world distant. I ache for you, love . . . even now. I imagine I will ache for you forever.”
She lifted her head, meeting his pewter gaze. “You don’t have to.”
He looked away. “I do. You’re my great work, Pippa. You’re the one I can save. I can ensure your happiness. And I shall. And it shall be enough.”
She hated the words. “Enough for whom?”
Something flashed in his eyes. Pain? Regret? “Enough for us both.”
It wouldn’t be, though. Not for her. She knew that without question. “No,” she whispered. “No it shan’t.”
He stroked one hand down her bare back, sending a shiver of awareness through her. “It shall have to be.”
“You don’t have to marry her,” she said, softly, hearing the plea in the words. Loathing it.
“But I do, lovely,” he said, the words soft and firm. “You’ll be destroyed if I don’t. And I won’t have that.”
“I don’t care. You could marry me. If I am able to choose the earl whom I marry, then—”
“No.” He tried to cut her off. She pressed on.
“—I choose you,” she said, her voice breaking on the words.
He held her close, kissing at her temple, whispering her name again before saying, “No you don’t. You don’t choose me.”
Except she did. “Why not?”
“Because you choose Castleton.”
It was somehow truth and lie, all at once. “Just as you choose Knight’s daughter?”
Even as you lie here with me?
His hands stilled on her skin. “Yes.”
“But you don’t know her.”
“No.”
“You don’t love her.”
“No.”
Do you love me?
She couldn’t ask him. Couldn’t bear the answer.
But he seemed to hear the question anyway, hand coming to her jaw, lifting her to meet his gaze . . . his lips.
Yes, she imagined he meant.
He rolled her to her back on the bed, keeping them joined as he settled between her thighs and made love to her mind and soul and body with everything he had, moving in her with quiet certainty, holding her gaze with undeniable intensity. Kissing the swell of her breasts and the column of her neck and worrying the soft lobe of one ear, whispering her name in a long, lovely litany.
There was nothing brute about this. Nothing beastly.
Instead, it was slow and seductive and he moved for what seemed like hours, days, an eternity, learning her, touching and exploring, kissing and stroking. And as pleasure washed over her in lush waves, rocketing through her until she could no longer hold it, he captured her cries with his lips, finding his own release, deep and thorough and magnificent before speaking again, whispering her name again and again, until she no longer heard the word and instead heard only the meaning.
The farewell.
They lay together for long minutes, until their breath was steady again, and the world returned, unable to be refused or ignored, coming with the dawn in great red streaks across the black sky beyond the window.
He pressed a kiss to her hair. “You should sleep.”
She turned away from time and its march, curling into his heat. “I don’t want to sleep. I don’t want it to end. I don’t want you to go. Ever.”
He did not reply, instead wrapping her tight in his arms, holding her until she could no longer feel the place where she ended and he began, where he exhaled and she inhaled.
“I don’t want to sleep,” she repeated, the threat of slumber all around her. “Don’t let me go to sleep. One night isn’t enough.”
“Shh, love,” he said, stroking one wide hand down her back. “I’m here. I’ll keep you safe.”
Tell me you love me, she willed silently, knowing he wouldn’t, but desperately wishing for it anyway.
Wishing that, even if she couldn’t have him, she might have his heart.
Have his heart. As though he could pluck the organ from inside his chest and hand it to her for safekeeping.
Of course, he couldn’t.
Even if it felt as though she’d done that very thing herself.
Even as she knew it wasn’t safe with him.
It couldn’t be.
He waited a long while before he spoke again, until she was asleep. “One night is all there is.”
When she woke, he was gone.
Chapter Seventeen
There are times for experiments that make for blinding, unexpected outcomes, and there are times for those that are directed by the hand of the scientist.
Cross Jasper A great man once told me that there is no such thing as chance. Having come around to his way of thinking, I find that I am no longer willing to leave my work to chance.
Nor my life.
The Scientific Journal of Lady Philippa Marbury
April 2, 1831; three days prior to her wedding
Pippa and Trotula walked the mile to Castleton’s handsome town house on Berkeley Square two days later, as though it were an entirely ordinary occurrence for a woman to arrive on the steps of her fiancé’s home with none but a dog as a chaperone.
She ignored the curious glances cast in her direction outside the house just as she ignored the surprise on the butler’s face when he opened the door and Trotula rushed into the foyer, uninvited, even as Pippa announced herself. Within moments, she and the hound were ensconced in a lovely yellow receiving room.
Moving to the windows, Pippa looked out over the square, considering the proper façades surrounding the perfectly landscaped green, and imagining her life here as the Countess of Castleton. Every one of the houses was occupied by one of the most important members of the aristocracy—Lady Jersey lived next door, for heaven’s sake.
Pippa couldn’t imagine the patroness of Almack’s finding time or inclination to either visit her new neighbor or support Pippa’s odd interests. There was no room for anatomy or horticulture in this massive, manicured home.
Viscountess Tottenham rode by, proud as ever, head high from the thrill of being the mother of one of the most powerful men in Britain, future prime minister who was three days from marrying Olivia, the favorite of the Marbury daughters.
It occurred to Pippa that this room, bright and filled with lavish furnishings, on the most extravagant square in London, was the ideal home for Olivia, and that was lucky, as her sister would soon live this life. Happily.
But there was nothing about this place that made it the ideal home for Pippa.
Nothing about its master that made him the ideal husband for Pippa.
Nothing at all to recommend her to this place.
There was no Cross here.
No, Cross appeared to live in a cluttered office on the main floor of a gaming hell, surrounded by papers and strange turmoil, globes and abacuses and threatening oil paintings and more books than she’d ever known one man to have in a single room. There was barely room to move in Cross’s quarters, and still she somehow felt more comfortable there than here . . .
She’d happily live there with him.
; The dog sat and sighed, drawing Pippa’s attention. She stroked behind the hound’s ear and received a gentle wag for her troubles.
She imagined Trotula would live there with him, too.
Except they were not invited.
He’d disappeared from her bed on the night of Pandemonium, after claiming her body and soul and ensuring that she loved him quite desperately. For two days, she’d waited for him to return; for two nights, she’d lain in bed, starting at every noise, sure he’d scale the house once more and come to her. Sure he wouldn’t leave her.
Sure he’d change his mind.
He hadn’t.
Instead, he’d left her to think on her own future. Her own choices. Her own heart.
He’d left her to come to the clear, undeniable realization that she was not the one who required saving.
“Two lovely ladies!” Castleton’s happy utterance interrupted Pippa’s thoughts, and she turned toward her handsome, smiling fiancé as Trotula hurried to him, low to the ground, eager for stroking.
It was difficult to spend any time at all with Castleton without smiling oneself. He was a kind man, and good. Fairly handsome, very wealthy, and titled. An aristocratic mother’s dream. Indeed, there were few things more for which a young woman could ask.
Except for love.
And suddenly, that strange, elusive, indefinable word meant everything. So much more than all the rest.
How had she become such a ninny? She, who had never believed in the emotion . . . who had always thought that the ethereal was less valuable, less real than the factual . . . who had always ignored the sentiment—how was it that she stood here, now, in the receiving room of what was to have been her future home, with the man who was to have been her future husband, thinking of love?
Cross had changed her.
Without even trying.
“My lord,” she said, making her way across the room to greet him herself. “I am sorry to come without notice.”
He looked up at her from where he was crouched with Trotula. “No need for notice,” he said. “After all, in less than a week, it will be your home, and I won’t have any notice at all!” He paused. “Though, I suppose this is notice . . . betrothal!”
There it was, her cue.
She had considered any number of ways to begin this particular conversation. The gentle, the diplomatic, the evasive. But as she was Philippa Marbury, she settled for the honest.
“My lord, I cannot marry you.”
His hands did not stop as they worked their way through Trotula’s fur, and for a moment, she thought he might not have heard her. After several long seconds, he stood, and rocked back on his heels, putting his hands in the pockets of his waistcoat.
They stood like that for what seemed like an age, Pippa refusing to hide from him, this kind man who had offered for her even when he could have had better. More normal. This good man who had courted her even when she was the oddest woman in London. “I’m sorry,” she added.
“You do not think we make a good match,” he said.
“I think we would have made a very good match,” she replied. “But everything has gone pear-shaped.”
His brows rose. “Pear-shaped?”
She took a deep breath. “I thought I could . . .” She paused. “I thought I would . . .”
I thought I could simply research marriage. Investigate pleasure. I thought I would not suffer the repercussions.
“Do you require additional time? To consider it? We needn’t have the wedding so soon.”
She’d had more than a year. She’d considered Castleton from every angle. She’d planned her life with him. She’d been ready for it. And in one week . . . one day . . . one minute, it seemed . . . everything had changed.
She shook her head. “I do not require additional time.”
He nodded. “I understand.”
She was willing to wager that he didn’t understand at all.
He continued. “I think we could learn to love each other. I think I could learn to love you.”
It was a kind thing to say. He was a good man.
Before, it had been enough. He had been enough. More than. He’d been willing to be her partner, to let her live the life she desired. To give her marriage. Children. Security. All the things a young woman in 1831 required.
Before.
Before she’d decided that she required more.
She met his warm brown gaze. “Unfortunately, I cannot learn to love you.” His eyes widened, and she realized that she had hurt him with her careless words. She rushed to repair it. “No . . . I don’t mean it in such a way. It’s that . . .”
She did not know what to say. How to repair it.
She stopped, hating the feeling, the way the entire male of the species seemed to make her feel in recent days.
And she told the truth. Again. “I’m sorry, my lord,” and she was. “But the vows . . . I can’t speak them. Not to you.”
His brows rose. “The vows?”
The silly ceremony. The one that had started it all. “Obedience and servitude, honor, sickness, and health . . . all that, I feel I could do.”
Understanding flared in his brown eyes. “I’m amenable to all those.” A small smile played across his lips. “I gather it is the love bit that is the problem?”
“Forsaking all others,” she said. She could not forsake all others. She wasn’t sure she could ever forsake the only other who mattered. She took a deep breath around the tightness in her chest. “My lord, I am afraid that I have fallen in love—quite accidentally and not at all happily. With another.”
His face softened. “I see,” he said. “Well, that does change things.”
“It does,” she agreed before she changed her mind. “Except, it doesn’t, really. He . . .” She paused. He is marrying another. “. . . The feeling is not reciprocated.”
Castleton’s brow furrowed. “How is that possible?”
“You should not be so quick to defend me, you know. After all, I just ended our engagement. You’re required to dislike me immensely now.”
“But I don’t dislike you. And I shan’t. Such is the risk we take in this modern world.” He paused, stroking Trotula, who leaned against his leg. “If only marriage were still arranged at birth.”
She smiled. “We mourn the past.”
“I would have liked a medieval keep,” he said happily, “and I think you would have made an excellent lady of the castle. Surrounded by hounds. Riding out with a sword on your belt.”
She laughed at the ridiculous image. “Thank you, my lord, though I wonder if the best ladies of the castle were as blind as I.”
He waved to a nearby settee. “Would you like to sit? Shall I have something brought from the kitchens?” He paused, obviously considering what one offered one’s ex-fiancée in such a situation. “Tea? Lemonade?”
She sat. “No, thank you.”
He looked across the room to a crystal decanter. “Scotch?”
She followed his gaze. “I don’t think ladies drink scotch before eleven o’clock.”
“I shan’t tell anyone.” He hesitated. “In fact, I might join you.”
“By all means, my lord . . . I wouldn’t dream of preventing you from having a proper drink.”
He did, pouring a finger of amber liquid into a glass and coming to sit beside her. “Our mothers will be beside themselves when they hear.”
She nodded, realizing that this was the first time they’d conversed about anything serious. Anything other than dogs and weather and country estates. “Mine more than yours, I should think.”
“You’ll be ruined,” he said.
She nodded. “I had considered that.”
It had never mattered to her very much, reputation. For one who was often described as odd and strange, having little in common w
ith others her age or gender, reputation never seemed worth much. It did not buy her friends, or invitations, or respect.
So now, it was not paramount.
“Lady Philippa,” he began after a long moment of silence, “if you’ve . . . er . . . that is . . . if you have need of . . . a-hem.”
She watched him carefully, noting his reddening face as he stumbled over the words. “My lord?” she asked after it seemed as though he might not say more.
He cleared his throat. Tried again. “If you are in a difficult spot,” he blurted out, waving one hand in the general direction of her stomach.
Oh, dear. “I am not.”
She supposed she might be, but that was a bridge she would cross at a later time if necessary. Without Castleton.
He looked immensely relieved. “I am happy to hear that.” Then, after a moment during which they both resumed calm, he added, “I would marry you, anyway, you know.”
She met his gaze, surprised. “You would?”
He nodded. “I would.”
She couldn’t stop herself. “Why?”
“Most people think I’m an idiot.”
She did not pretend to misunderstand. “Most people are idiots themselves,” she said, feeling suddenly very protective of this man who should have tossed her out of the house with glee but instead, offered her a drink and a chat.
He tilted his head. “Most people think you’re odd.”
She smiled. “On that, most people are right.”
“You know, I used to think they were. You’re brilliant and have a passion for animals and strange flowers, and you were always more interested in the crops that rotated on my estate than in the trappings of my town house. I’d never met a woman like you. But, even as I knew you were smarter than I, even as I knew that you knew that you were smarter than I . . . you never showed it. You’ve never given me any reason to believe you thought me simple. You always went out of your way to remind me of the things we had in common. We both prefer the country. We both enjoy animals.” He shrugged one shoulder. “I was happy to think that you would one day be my wife.”