“You don’t have to settle for a fantasy,” Phoebe said impulsively. “Just because you don’t want forever with me doesn’t mean we can’t—”
“No.” West’s breathing roughened despite his effort to moderate it. He held up a staying hand as she parted her lips, and the slight tremor in his fingers electrified her. “If you have any misguided thoughts about taking me into your bed, you would find it a vastly mediocre experience. I’d be on you like a crazed rabbit, and half a minute later the whole thing would be over. I used to be a proficient lover, but now I’m a burnt-out libertine whose only remaining pleasure is breakfast food. Speaking of which—”
Phoebe reached for him, brought herself up hard against him, and interrupted him with her mouth. West flinched as if scalded and held very still in the manner of a man trying to withstand torture. Undeterred, she wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him as passionately as she could, touching her tongue to his stiff lips. The feel and taste of him was exhilarating. Suddenly he responded with a primitive grunt and his mouth clamped on hers, wringing sensation from her with demanding pressure. Forcing her lips apart, he searched her with his tongue the way she remembered, and it felt so good, she thought she might faint. A whimper rose from her throat, and he licked and bit gently at the sound, and sealed their mouths together in a deep, insatiable kiss that involved his lips, breath, hands, body, soul.
Whatever it might be like to go to bed with this man . . . it would be anything but mediocre.
Phoebe was so lost in the explosive sensuality of the moment, only one sound could have snatched her back to full alertness . . . her son’s small voice.
“Mama?”
Jerking her head back with a gasp, Phoebe looked toward the sound, blinking in confusion.
Justin stood in the corridor, near the breakfast room, wide-eyed and uneasy at the sight of his mother in a stranger’s arms.
“It’s all right, darling,” Phoebe said with an effort at composure, disentangling herself from West. She teetered on ramshackle legs, but West grabbed her reflexively and adjusted her balance. “It’s Mr. Ravenel,” she told Justin. “He looks a bit different because of his beard.”
It surprised her to see the way her son’s face lit up.
Justin charged forward, and West bent reflexively to catch and lift him in the air.
“Look at this big fellow,” West exclaimed, holding the child against his chest. “My God, you’re as heavy as a clamp of bricks.”
“Guess how old I am now,” Justin boasted, and held up a spread-fingered hand.
“Five? When did that happen?”
“Last week!”
“It was last month,” Phoebe said.
“I had plum cake with icing,” Justin continued eagerly, “and Mama let me eat some for breakfast the next morning.”
“I’m sorry I missed it. Fortunately, I’ve brought presents for you and Stephen.”
Justin squealed happily.
“I arrived in London late last night,” West continued, “after Winterborne’s department store was already closed for the evening. So Mr. Winterborne opened it for me, and I had the entire toy department all to myself. After I found what I wanted, Winterborne wrapped your toys personally.”
Justin’s eyes turned round with awe. In his mind, a man who could have a department store opened just for him must possess magical powers. “Where is my present?”
“It’s in that bag on the floor. We’ll open it later, when there’s time to play.”
Justin studied West intently, rubbing his palms over his hair-roughened jaw. “I don’t like your beard,” he announced. “It makes you look like an angry bear.”
“Justin—” Phoebe reproved, but West was laughing.
“I was an angry bear, all summer.”
“You have to shave it,” Justin commanded, framing the man’s smiling mouth with his hands.
“Justin,” Phoebe exclaimed.
The boy corrected himself with a grin. “Shave it please.”
“I will,” West promised, “if your mother will provide a razor.”
“Mama, will you?” Justin asked.
“First,” Phoebe told her son, “we’re going to let Mr. Ravenel settle comfortably in the guest cottage. He can decide later if he wants to keep his beard or not. I for one rather like it.”
“But it’s tickly and scratchy,” Justin complained.
West grinned and dove his face against the boy’s neck, causing him to yelp and squirm. “Let’s go see your brother.”
Before they went to the breakfast room, however, his gaze met Phoebe’s for a searing moment. His expression left no doubt that their impulsive kiss was a mistake that would not be repeated.
Phoebe responded with a demure glance, giving no hint of her true thoughts.
If you won’t promise me forever, West Ravenel . . . I’ll take what I can have of you.
Chapter 23
Raw-nerved and unsettled, West went with Phoebe on a tour of the manor after breakfast. The majesty of the house, with its portico and classic white columns, and banks of windows on all sides, couldn’t have provided a greater contrast to the Jacobean clutter of Eversby Priory. It was as elegant as a Grecian temple, occupying a ridge overlooking landscaped parkland and gardens. Far too often a house seemed to have placed carelessly upon a site as if by a giant hand, but Clare Manor inhabited the scenery as if it had grown there.
The interior was open and lofty, with high vaulted ceilings of cool white plasterwork and sweeping staircases. A vast collection of fine-grained marble statuary gave the house a museumlike air, but many of the rooms had been softened with thick fringed rugs, cozy groupings of upholstered furniture, and palms in glazed earthenware pots.
West said little as they went from room to room. He was feeling everything too deeply and struggling to hide it beneath the façade of a normal, reasonable person. It seemed as if his heart had just resumed beating after months of dormancy, forcing blood back into his veins until he ached in every limb.
It was clear to him now that he would never find a substitute for Phoebe. No one else would ever come close. It would always be her. The realization was beyond disaster . . . it was doom.
West was no less troubled by the fondness he felt for her children, both of them bright-eyed and heartbreakingly innocent as they sat with him at the breakfast table. He’d felt like a fraud, taking part in that wholesome scene, when not long ago he’d been a scoundrel other men wouldn’t want anywhere near their families.
He thought back to the conversation he’d had with Ethan Ransom in London the night before, when they’d met for dinner at a west-side tavern. An easy friendship had struck up between them during Ransom’s recuperation at Eversby Priory. On the surface, their backgrounds couldn’t have been more different—West had been born into a blue-blooded family, and Ransom was an Irish prison guard’s son. But they were similar in many ways, both of them deeply cynical and secretly sentimental, well aware of the darker sides of their own natures.
Now that Ransom had decided to discard his solitary ways to marry Dr. Garrett Gibson, West was both puzzled and envious of the other man’s certainty.
“Won’t you mind bedding only one woman for the rest of your life?” he’d asked Ransom as they’d talked over mugs of half-and-half, a drink of equal parts ale and porter.
“Not for a blessed minute,” Ransom had replied in his Irish brogue. “She’s the delight of my soul. Also, I know better than to betray a woman with her own collection of scalpels.”
West had grinned at that, but sobered as another thought occurred to him. “Will she want children?”
“She will.”
“Will you?”
“The thought freezes my inwards,” Ransom admitted bluntly, and shrugged. “But Garrett saved my life. She can do whatever she likes with me now. If she decides to put a ring through my nose, I’ll stand there docile as a lamb while she does it.”
“First of all, you city toff, no one puts a nose ring on a lamb. Second . . .” West had paused and drained half his drink before he continued gruffly, “Your father used to beat you—buckle, strap and fist—just as mine did to me.”
“Aye,” Ransom said. “Rightsidin’ me, he called it. But what has that to do with it?”
“You’ll likely do the same to your own children.”
Ransom’s eyes had narrowed, but his voice remained even. “I will not.”
“Who will stop you? Your wife?”
“I’ll stop me damn self,” Ransom had said, his brogue thickening. He frowned as he saw West’s expression. “You don’t believe me?”
“I don’t believe it will be easy.”
“Easy enough, if I want them to love me.”
“They will anyway,” West had said grimly. “It’s something all violent men know: no matter what evil they commit, their children will still love them.”
Ransom had stared at him speculatively while draining his own mug. “Ofttimes after my father gave me a blacked eye or a split lip, Mam would say, ‘’Tis not his fault. ’Tis too strong a man he is, hard for himself to manage.’ But I’ve come to realize Mam had it all wrong: the problem was never that Da was too strong—he wasn’t strong enough. Only a weak man lowers himself to brutishness.” He had paused to signal a tavern maid to pour them another round. “You may have a hasty temper, Ravenel, but you’re not a brute. Neither am I. That’s how I know my children will be safe from my raising. Now, as for your red-haired widow . . . what are you going to do about her?”