Days of Rakes and Roses Page 3

  Hostility was easier to bear than pity. She couldn’t endure this sense that he saw into her soul to all the loneliness and longing and rage there. She blinked to clear the mist of tears from her eyes and forced a cheerful reply. “It’s all for the best, anyway.”

  “Is it?” he asked and a shiver ran through her at the dangerous rawness in his question. After a bristling silence, he went on, his voice returning to lightness. “Whatever your marital plans, I assumed that after I’d led you into such a compromising situation, you’d never want to speak to me again.”

  “I didn’t.” Yet another lie. She paused and went on with a bitter edge and perfect sincerity. “I don’t.”

  His hand tightened around her waist and he drew her closer. She tensed to prevent her body meeting his. The gossip she’d heard over the years about his wildness indicated that he wouldn’t cavil at creating a public fracas to break her engagement.

  “Don’t marry that fellow, Lydia.” Simon sounded serious, like a mature man. She didn’t trust this new version of him. She’d have trusted the boy who grew up on the neighboring estate with her life. This man was a stranger.

  She jerked against his hold, but he was so much stronger and a scene would only play into his and Cam’s hands. She took a shaky breath and wished with an intensity unknown over the last decade that Simon had stayed away. “My marriage is none of your concern.”

  “I know you’re angry at me.”

  “I’m not angry at you,” she snapped back. It was too vexing for him to imagine that she’d worn the willow for him all these years. Even if, God rot him, it was true. She drew herself up and glared at him. “I have no feelings for you whatsoever, apart from chagrin that in your arrogance you imagine you can trot back into my life and give me orders. I’m twenty-seven, not seventeen, Simon, and more than capable of deciding my future.”

  He endured her scolding without a flinch. “Not if your future is to become the wife of that prosy bore.”

  “You’ve said three words to Sir Grenville, yet you condemn him as a bore? You’re absurd. He’s a good, reliable man with qualities a brute like you wouldn’t even recognize.”

  “He’s a wet blanket.” A muscle flickered in Simon’s cheek and a white line rimmed his lips. He looked furious. “I hate to see a woman of spirit and intelligence sacrificing herself to his ambition.”

  “You don’t know me well enough anymore to comment on my spirit or intelligence,” she said sharply. Her hand fisted against his shoulder, the glove stark white against his deep black coat. “And whose ambition should I worship instead? Yours?”

  She watched his temper fade. “I only want what’s best for you, Lydia.”

  She gave a sour laugh and realized that right now she genuinely hated him. “No, you don’t. You want to control me. You always did.”

  “Don’t marry him.”

  “What should I do instead? Marry you?”

  The words hung in the air like a miasma. He jerked back as if she’d struck him. “Your father accused me of pretensions above my station, as a second son angling after a duke’s daughter.”

  What had she expected Simon to say? That he’d longed for her as she’d longed for him? If he’d wanted her any time after he’d left, he had merely to get a message to her. She’d have swum the Channel with one arm tied behind her back for the promise of a life with Simon.

  “As I pointed out, my father is five years dead,” Lydia said coldly.

  She tried to pull away, but he held her with an implacability foreign to the boy she’d loved. But of course, he wasn’t the boy she’d loved. He was a man a decade older and in possession of infinite worldly experience. She couldn’t imagine what entertainment he hoped to gain from barging into her bridal ball. Unless he wasn’t here for entertainment, but because Cam had placed him under the obligation of friendship. Oh, how mortifying if Simon had returned purely because her brother felt sorry for her.

  Simon’s jaw set in a stubborn line that was also unfamiliar. “You’re throwing yourself away on that prig.”

  She’d had enough of this. “Stop it. You’re not fit to wipe Grenville’s boots.”

  “I know all about men like him. You’ll sleep in a cold bed every night while he’s off bolstering his self-importance with his parliamentary cronies.”

  “How can you know? You’ve been thousands of miles away.”

  “Cam told me—”

  “Cam needs to mind his own blasted business.” Finally she managed to wriggle free. She struggled against the impulse to give Simon a blistering dismissal. She was Lady Lydia Rothermere, a woman who had never put a foot wrong in society. She intended to maintain that reputation. “I don’t want to dance any longer. I hope you enjoy your short stay in England, Simon. I don’t expect we’ll see each other again.”

  Unforgivably he smiled at her. “You’ve turned very imperious in your old age, sweetheart.”

  It was unfair that he became even more handsome when his lips curved and the lines around his eyes crinkled with humor. Her hands clenched at her sides as she stifled the desire to slap him. She’d never committed violence against man or woman, but just now, if she had a pistol, she’d happily put a bullet through Simon Metcalf’s black heart.

  She didn’t smile back. “I’m not your sweetheart.”

  “Lydia, can I be of assistance?”

  The relief that flooded her was the strongest reaction Grenville had ever aroused in her. She turned to her betrothed with a grateful smile, then aghast, she realized that the antagonistic exchange with her dancing partner had attracted general notice. After all, only trouble of major proportions could have interrupted Grenville’s political intrigues.

  “As you say, it’s very crowded in here. One can hardly breathe.” Curse this blushing. Curse that cad Simon Metcalf for making her blush. She raised her head and strove for a facsimile of her usual composure, squashing rage and anguish far inside her. With an unsteady hand, she took Grenville’s arm and glowered at Simon, hoping he picked up the implication that his absence would clear the air. “Perhaps I should sit down for a moment.”

  “Of course, my love.” Grenville cast Simon a quelling glance. “Pray excuse us, Mr. Metcalf.”

  “It’s been a pleasure seeing you again, Lady Lydia,” Simon said in a silky tone that she’d never heard him use before. But as she kept reminding herself, he was a stranger. If she was lucky, he’d remain a stranger. Unfortunately, she wasn’t nearly optimistic enough to believe that he’d accept this dismissal as final.

  No, she was bleakly aware that Simon Metcalf meant to stir up difficulties. And if she wasn’t extremely careful, before he was done, he’d break her heart all over again.

  Chapter Three

  “That went well,” Camden Rothermere, Duke of Sedgemoor, said drily. He leaned back in his chair and stretched his feet toward the hearty fire that warmed his well-stocked library in Rothermere House.

  With a snort of unamused laughter, Simon glanced up from where he poured himself a brandy at the sideboard. “Sarcasm doesn’t become you.”

  It surprised him, this immediate ease in Cam’s company. Neither had kept up correspondence during Simon’s exile, but from the moment he’d met Cam again, he felt as though they’d parted mere days ago. Cam still felt like the close friend of his youth.

  If only his reunion with Lydia had gone so smoothly.

  Cam’s smile was wry. “Believe me, anything that ruffles the smooth surface of my sister’s perfect manners is good. Lydia’s been such a paragon since that brouhaha ten years ago, she even frightens me. At least she wasn’t indifferent to you tonight.”

  “No, she hates my guts,” Simon said flatly, slumping into the matching leather chair on the other side of the hearth and taking a disheartened gulp of his brandy. It was late and the house around them was quiet. The last guests had left the ball more than an hour ago.

  Seeing Lydia again had left Simon’s belly churning with desire and regret and old, futile anger over events
that he couldn’t change. How he hated to revisit those first months after he’d realized that his only honorable action with respect to both Lydia and his family was to leave the country.

  Hell, he hadn’t been fit for human company for over a year after he’d forsaken Lydia. Afterward, he’d reached a point where he could pretend that he functioned as a normal man, but he’d remained a walking automaton. Beneath the cynical façade he cultivated, he’d felt as though someone had ripped out his vitals.

  “She doesn’t hate you,” Cam said.

  “She damn well should.” Simon glared at his friend who, as far as he could tell, had little reason to look so pleased with himself and his lunatic scheme. If Cam had heard how contemptuously Lydia had referred to marrying Simon tonight, he wouldn’t sound half so jolly. “She rumbled our plans immediately. She knows you don’t want her to marry that pompous warthog and she knows you brought me onto the scene to cause trouble.”

  Cam’s smile was faint but fond as he idly tilted his glass side to side, watching the brandy eddy. “She’s a clever girl, my sister.”

  “I may as well have stayed away.”

  Cam looked up, his hand stilling. “Come, come, old man. Faint heart never won fair lady.”

  “Fair lady washed her hands of me years ago.” Simon emptied his glass. Not that alcohol calmed the turmoil in his heart. He’d tried to find comfort for Lydia’s loss in liquor years ago and failed.

  “I don’t think so. After Father banished you from England, she spent months looking like a ghost.”

  “Puppy love.”

  “Then why has she never married? Believe me, she’s had her chances. Much better chances than that superannuated walrus.”

  “Oh, I do believe that,” Simon said grimly.

  Of course she’d had men after her. She was more beautiful now than she’d ever been, especially once he’d needled her out of acting like a pattern card of propriety. Anger had unleashed the vibrant woman concealed within. At seventeen, Lydia Rothermere had filled his every dream. Her memory had haunted him ever since, although until he’d received Cam’s letter pleading for him to come back, he’d never imagined he still had a chance with her.

  After tonight, he knew he didn’t have a chance with her.

  That didn’t mean her beauty hadn’t sliced through him like a blade, reopening wounds that had barely knitted during his exile. And somewhere since he’d gone away, she’d found her strength. She stood up to him now, put him in his place. To his sorrow, he recognized that his place, in her mind, was far away from her.

  He’d loved how the girlish Lydia had adored him with her eyes. But there was a snap and a challenge about this more mature, prickly woman that he found breathtakingly exciting.

  And this gloriously sensual creature intended to waste herself on that self-satisfied bore Sir Grenville Berwick? It didn’t bear thinking about.

  Simon sighed heavily and stared into the flickering flames. How her sherry-brown eyes had flashed when she’d told him to take his cheap flirtation and stow it. How her delicate, high-bred face had flushed into vivacity when she’d denied his right to meddle in her life.

  Ten years ago, he’d tasted her passion too briefly. Meeting her again, he was eager to take up where he’d left off. Except this time, he was a man with a man’s experience and in return, Lydia offered the promise of a woman’s ripe desire. She’d turn his nights to flame.

  Good God, what was he doing? These were hardly thoughts a man should entertain while he drank her brother’s brandy.

  Cam’s stare was unwavering. “Don’t tell me Simon Metcalf is suffering a crisis of confidence? I’d never have credited it.”

  Simon’s mouth stretched in a bitter smile, even as he hoped his friend caught no hint of the graphic scenes heating his imagination. “Given her choice, Lydia wouldn’t spare me the time of day.” He paused. “What makes you so sure she still wants me? Has she told you she loves me?”

  Cam’s laugh was as sour as Simon’s smile. He rose to refill their glasses. “Don’t be absurd. Of course she hasn’t told me. In the Rothermere family, we don’t discuss our emotions. We’re too busy behaving with perfect correctness.”

  Simon understood Cam’s acerbity. As a boy living near the ducal estate, he’d witnessed firsthand the glacial chill at the heart of the Rothermere household. “You know that if she throws the blackguard over in my favor, there will be a scandal.”

  “Surely by now my credit is strong enough to weather a bit of tattle. I want Lydia to be happy. She deserves better than a cold marriage. The members of this family have enjoyed little enough happiness. At least happiness within wedlock.”

  As Cam leaned down to stoke the fire, flaring flame illuminated the sadness weighing his expression. Restoring the family name was Cam’s unfailing purpose. Simon had always admired how he’d devoted his considerable energy and intelligence to overcoming the previous generation’s notoriety. He guessed now that Cam dwelled upon the fact that while the duke’s sister might marry purely for affection, the quest to clear the slate afforded the duke no such luxury in choosing his future bride.

  “I appreciate your efforts on my behalf. And your sister’s,” Simon said quietly. “But you know they come too late. In our youth, Lydia and I were in love, but we’ve both become different people since.”

  Except, damn it, that wasn’t how he felt. He’d seen Lydia tonight and it was like they’d never been apart. In his heart, she was his, she’d always be his. The problem was he had a strong suspicion that, while she may once have felt the same, she felt the same no longer. Again he cursed evil fate, in the guise of that bull-headed old villain her father, for separating them. “She seems set on marrying Berwick.”

  Cam continued to brood into the fire, his expression pensive. “She’s stopped hoping for anything better.”

  Simon winced. Hell, he knew what that was like. Desperately as he’d struggled to forget Lydia—and he’d struggled like the devil—he’d long ago given up on ever falling in love with anyone else. Ten years and five continents hadn’t banished her from his heart. Seeing her tonight had only confirmed that he’d pledged himself to her eternally.

  First he’d gone to France, then Germany, then two years in Italy. Then he’d ventured into wilder territory; the Ottoman Empire, Russia, China, the two Americas. In the futile hope that distance could mend his broken heart. Yet wherever he went, he hadn’t cared where he was or who he was with. Without Lydia, nothing mattered.

  He’d nearly drunk the world dry and he’d taken up with too many women who to his shame he couldn’t remember past the brief oblivion their soft bodies had provided. Grief and loneliness had made him selfish. He wasn’t proud of the man he’d been then.

  Eventually on a ship somewhere in the mid-Atlantic, he’d reached the painful conclusion that Lydia was lost to him forever and that if he continued as he was, he wouldn’t see his thirtieth birthday. He didn’t particularly care, but he had a family back in Derbyshire who would.

  He’d started to live again, after a fashion. Nobody could spend a lifetime in the mad despair that had gripped him after he left England. He’d stopped acting purely out of misery and anger and found some use for himself as a wandering scholar of small reputation. Sadly his years of misbehavior had saddled him with a much more impressive reputation as a hellion.

  But through all that time, nothing had erased the memory of the one woman he’d ever loved. And nothing had eased his yearning for her.

  Tonight he stood in Rothermere House again. He still couldn’t accept that after all this time, Cam believed that Simon had a chance to set his life right, to appease the aching loneliness that had darkened every day away from Lydia. “I remain a mere second son, a man of no particular distinction. I’ve got my aunt’s estate now, so my pockets are no longer to let, but my fortune hardly compares to the Rothermere holdings. Are you sure I’m prime enough for your sister? Even if she ditches the bore before the wedding, a duke’s sister can look much higher
for a husband than plain Mr. Metcalf.”

  “What do I care for rank? If you want proof of the blessings a great title delivers, just consider my parents.” Cam straightened and returned the poker to its stand with undue force. His somber expression didn’t ease as he wandered toward the sideboard.

  Simon didn’t know why he kept harping on the reasons he was unfit for Lydia. “There’s also the small matter of the gossip about what I got up to on the Continent. Aren’t you worried that you invite a libertine into the family?”

  Cam leveled an uncompromising stare on him as he lifted the decanter. “Do you mean to play my sister false?”

  “Of course not.” He paused. “But how can you trust me?”

  “You can’t have changed that much from the boy I grew up with.” Cam refilled his glass. Simon’s was still full. “Anyway the best proof of Lydia’s hold on you is that you came the moment I sent for you.”

  “She can do better than a man with a grubby name who can only offer her a rundown manor in Devon.”

  Cam’s face remained austere. “The best Lydia can do is to marry a man who loves her. I’m hoping that man is you. Is that still true? Will you have her?”

  After a decade away, it seemed crazy to be so convinced that Lydia Rothermere remained the only one for him. But Simon saw so many reminders of the girl he’d adored in the woman who had delivered tonight’s uncompromising set-down. The heart, the wit, the beauty. And she was even more desirable than he remembered. Lovelier. More complex. More compelling.

  Since his return, the reports he’d heard had indicated that Lady Lydia had buried the youthful passion he recalled so sweetly in endless good works. Tonight he hadn’t noticed any lack of passion. Tonight she’d been a woman who set the heavens afire.

  He longed for that fire to warm him for the rest of his life; at last he was prepared to fight to make that longing reality.

  As he stared at his childhood friend, his voice emerged steady and sure. “I will.”