Page 19 of A Gentleman’s Offer

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Dominic looked down at Meg as the hackney carriage rattled away, leaving them standing close together on the pavement. The houses just here were silent and shuttered, but people were spilling noisily out of a mansion further up the street; carriages were waiting to meet them, and link boys with flaming torches stood ready to light their way home. Some of them would probably be heading in this direction soon enough. They were a few minutes’ walk from Grosvenor Square, and her father’s house. No more than that.

That ridiculous hat of hers had come off in the carriage – and no wonder – and she’d almost left it behind, scrambling back inside in a panic to get it as he’d paid the jarvey. She was clutching it now, looking dazed, dishevelled, her lips swollen from his kisses; he didn’t suppose he was in much better case. Probably worse, because at the start of this evening, which felt like several months ago, he’d been immaculate; she’d called him a dandy, but in reality he’d been a Corinthian ready to take on the town, while she, however adorable she looked in jacket and breeches, had never been anything remotely close to that. He couldn’t say, in fact, what she might look like to others – a scrubby schoolboy, an urchin, or very obviously and shockingly a beautiful girl in disguise? He was far past telling. All he knew was, he wanted, needed, to pick her up and carry her home with him. When they got there – it was a good twenty-minute walk, probably more if carrying someone, but he felt equal to anything just now – he’d bear her straight up the stairs and take her to his bed. It was a large, comfortable bed, which he’d never before shared with anyone, and perfect for what he had in mind. He wasn’t sure if he’d then strip her of jacket, waistcoat, shirt and breeches quickly, in his eagerness, or very, very slowly, to prolong the delicious, forbidden experience, but in either case, they were coming off and staying off. And she was getting in his bed, naked, and staying there, possibly for a couple of weeks. Months.

None of this was truly going to happen, of course. Not now and not ever. He’d walk her home like a gentleman and see her safely inside, and then he’d… go and throw himself in the Serpentine? That should cool him down nicely. Was it deep? Presumably he’d find out.

He had to say something. ‘I’m sorry, Meg.’ She’d ceased being Miss Nightingale to him some time ago, it seemed. This abrupt apology hardly demonstrated his perfectly polished manners, his icy self-control, but it was a start, he supposed.

‘Are you, really?’ she said, her voice still warm and intimate. She didn’t seem to be. He wanted to kiss her again. To eat her up. Perhaps he could kiss her while he was carrying her home. Perhaps she could wrap her legs around his waist…

‘No.’

‘No? No, you’re not sorry after all, or no to something else?’

He sighed raggedly. ‘No, I’m not sorry, but I should be. No to… all the crazy ideas in my head. I took advantage of you, I told you quite unforgivably that I wanted to kiss you and you were understandably agitated by all that had occurred…’

‘I kissed you first.’

‘I know you did, I’m hardly likely to forget it, but that doesn’t help at all! I’m trying to take the blame, Meg. As a gentleman must. It shouldn’t have happened. And we shouldn’t be standing here talking. Drawing attention to ourselves. I dare say I am acquainted with the residents of half these houses, not to mention the people leaving the party, some of whom are about to drive straight past us and get a good look at our faces.’

‘You’re right.’ She set off at a fair pace in the direction of Brook Street, her long legs making short work of the pavement, and he caught up with her. They walked for a while in silence, but it was a silence that hummed with tension. If they hadn’t been interrupted, if the carriage journey had been longer because her father had lived in Kensington or Hampstead, where would they be now? He didn’t want to dwell on what might have happened next, however wonderful it would have been. It wasn’t as though he could, as he should in all honour, offer to marry her to save her reputation. He’d be perfectly happy to do it, if it weren’t for the inconvenient fact that he was already bloody well betrothed to her sister.

She said, ‘You didn’t take advantage of me – I won’t let you say that, or even think it. I knew exactly what I was doing.’

‘I’m glad to hear it. But I don’t think either of us knew what we were doing, or we wouldn’t have done it.’

‘It felt as though we did.’

He groaned. She was making this much harder than it needed to be, with her damned inconvenient honesty, which he was now obliged to match. He might wish that what had just passed between them had never happened, but he couldn’t let her think that he hadn’t wanted it. He’d wanted it more than anything he’d ever experienced in his life, and he wasn’t prepared to lie about that, least of all to her. ‘I know that. I know it felt right. More than right.’

‘Necessary.’ She said it softly, matter-of-factly, but it pierced through him like a blade. It was so exactly what he felt himself. Trust her to put it into words that shouldn’t be uttered. Naming things made them more real, and so much more dangerous. ‘It felt necessary.’

He wouldn’t admit quite so much to her. What good would it do? ‘We’ve had a difficult few days, we’ve been forced together, and we spent time in that damned bawdy house, where everyone was looking at us as if we’d gone there together for a purpose quite different from our actual intentions. The whole atmosphere was overheated, you must have felt it. In fact, I know you did. I’m sure that’s partly to blame.’

‘Did it excite you, then, being in that house with me, having everyone think…?’

‘No,’ he said again, when he wanted to match her candour and say yes. Yes, I wanted to demand they give us a room we could lock ourselves away in for as long as we both wanted.

‘You can admit it, you know. I won’t be shocked.’ After a moment, ‘It excited me . It felt wicked, forbidden, and I liked it. If we’d been left alone there…’ He groaned at the thought, and at the piercing knowledge that she shared it. It was all too easy to picture what might have happened. His self-control was a fragile thing just now. ‘Although it began, I suppose, when you took hold of me and almost kissed me in the park. Or even before that.’

They were back at the mews now, the narrow street as dark and deserted as it had been a few hours ago. Nothing had changed, except that they’d kissed. Would undoubtedly have done much more than kiss, if they’d not been so rudely interrupted. And now they were talking about it. It was thrilling and terrifying in equal measure. He was supposed to be a gentleman of honour. He was .

‘I’ve been unsettled ever since I came to London,’ she told him, moving a little further ahead, into the deeper shadow. He followed her. Of course he did. He’d follow her anywhere in this seductive darkness. ‘I used to have a lover – well, no, that’s wrong: I had a sweetheart. We used to meet, and kiss…’

‘You climbed out of your window in the moonlight.’ He remembered what Jenny had said, and he could easily imagine her doing it. He could imagine her coming to meet him, rather than another. He’d be waiting for her, eager and impatient for her touch. He’d take her in his arms… His imagination was doing a great deal of work tonight.

‘You heard and understood what she was saying? I was afraid you had. I did do that. More than once, many times. And I liked it. The adventure, and the kissing and all the rest. It’s natural, isn’t it? But we’ve stopped now, he and I. A few months back. He didn’t break my heart, nor I his – we just drifted apart, I suppose. I’m sure he’ll marry soon, before he’s twenty-one; people often do, in the country.’

‘You didn’t want to marry him?’ Though it was none of his business, he could not help but ask.

‘It never occurred to me. Maybe it did to him, but he must have realised it would be a mistake. You shouldn’t have to marry someone just because you want to kiss them in a barn. Or do a great deal more than kiss them. You need a better reason, or you should.’

‘You’re a dangerous radical, Meg Nightingale.’ It was so intoxicating to talk so intimately with her, here in the warm night. She was intoxicating, that was the truth.

‘Do you disagree with me? I wouldn’t have thought you were a hypocrite. I expect you’ve kissed people, and done much more than kiss them, and yet not married them. I won’t believe you, actually, if you tell me you haven’t.’ He had to laugh – he had no defence against her devastating frankness. She went on matter-of-factly, ‘It’s not as though my parents’ marriage made me want to rush into matrimony with the first man I met, so I could be miserable just like them.’

How could he raise any honest arguments against that? ‘You told me theirs was an arranged marriage. Like my parents’ was; a family decision, not theirs, such as so many young people were obliged to submit to, twenty or thirty years ago. And that match wasn’t particularly happy either, for that matter. Not at the start, and certainly not for long.’ There was much more he could have said, but it was not his secret to share.

‘So you thought you’d make yourself unhappy with my sister in exactly the same fashion, even though times are changing for the better and arranged marriages are no longer so common. That makes no sense at all.’

‘You’re right, of course. That was a terrible mistake too. I sleepwalked into it, I thought it didn’t signify what I did, because… well, it doesn’t signify why. I hope it’s not too late to put it right.’

‘Dominic…?’

‘Yes, Meg?’ She hadn’t called him by just his Christian name before, while he’d been making free with hers for quite a while, it seemed. Odd that it should matter.

‘Why are we still talking? It doesn’t seem to be resolving anything, and all the while you could be kissing me. Holding me.’

‘In this alleyway?’ He took her in his arms, not needing to be told twice, and she relaxed into him with a little sigh.

‘Well, there’s no barn available. Or private room. The plain truth is, I’m confused, Dominic. I’m worried about Maria, and a little angry with her too – why didn’t she write to me, or to Mama? I still don’t understand that. I’m beginning to wonder if I ever really knew her, and if others, like Jenny and Lady Primrose, know her much better, because she has allowed them to. I think she must have secrets, when I never kept any from her, however discreditable they might be considered to me, and that hurts. I don’t know what’s going to happen to any of us. If we can’t find her, I wonder if it’ll be because she’s perfectly safe and well but just doesn’t want to be found. A little part of me is thinking she might just be very selfish and careless of others’ feelings. And if she does choose to come back, on another whim, what then?’

‘I’m not marrying her; I can tell you so much. I know men don’t break off engagements, that they can’t. Well, I’m breaking this one off, no matter how much scandal it will cause.’

She gave a little hiccup of wild laughter, presumably at the thought of the new horrors his words called up, and rested her head on his shoulder. ‘My father might challenge you to a duel! Can you picture him calling you out?’

‘I cannot. Your half-brother might, I suppose, if he felt the family’s honour was at stake. But no, he wouldn’t, not if I explained all the circumstances to him. I’ve no intention of fighting him, or anybody else – matters are difficult enough as it is. Nobody can be expected to marry someone who runs away from them and hides and sets everyone in an uproar rather than simply talking. I’m not an ogre and I won’t be treated as though I am.’

‘No, you’re not. Of course you aren’t. You don’t deserve this either. But what I meant to say, Dominic, was that I feel I don’t know anything – not where I’ll be or even who I’ll be, Meg or Maria, by the end of the week – but I do know I want you to kiss me again. For much longer. And I think you want to kiss me too. In fact, I know you do.’

He drew her deeper into the shadows, his hands tight on her waist, and said, ‘I’d like to do a great deal more than kiss you. You must be aware of that.’

‘Of course I am. I’ve told you that I’m not entirely inexperienced. But there is no barn, no place we can be private, and perhaps it’s just as well. Life is complicated enough right now, don’t you agree? To be completely alone with you with no checks on our behaviour but the ones we can manage to put there is more temptation than I need tonight. I don’t trust myself to resist you. But I don’t believe kissing and taking some comfort from that will make things any worse – do you?’

He pulled her closer still, which was answer enough, and in the darkness their mouths found each other again, and there was no more talking. They held each other tight and lost themselves in each other, for a little while – a precious oblivion. His hands were under her coat, seeking her warm, soft skin and finding it, beneath waistcoat, shirt and chemise, and soon enough they had pushed the fine fabrics aside to cover and caress her breasts. Her nipples were hard buds of desire and she pressed herself into his hands, filling them, urging him on; God, this was so good, so wonderful, and more would be better, more would be everything.

But even as he kissed her and held her, took pleasure and comfort from her warm, responsive body in his arms, and gave pleasure in return, he wasn’t sure she was correct in what she said. He feared that every moment he spent with her, every caress he gave her or she gave him, every single smile or confidence they exchanged, drew him deeper into a place of sorry confusion, where his desires and even his hopes warred against what he knew to be right, and what the obligations of a gentleman must be.

Dominic had never considered himself to be a man ruled by sexual desire, certainly not to the extent of losing his senses over a woman; he’d seen others do it often enough, and failed each time to understand what had driven them to it. That was a temptation he’d never known and had, previously, struggled to imagine. A brief, intense infatuation with a bold-eyed young woman of the town when he’d been in his late teens, at Oxford, had been as close as he’d come to making any kind of fool of himself, and really, that had been nothing to speak of; he’d known even when he was enmeshed in it that it was bound to end soon, and not in marriage, despite his youthful posturing. There’d been embarrassing scenes with his parents over the whole business, but it had not been genuine deep feeling on either side, nor anything close to it.

He was experienced enough, but all that experience had been more a matter of physical release and physical sensation – of taking and, he hoped, giving pleasure with a willing partner who did not treat the matter any more seriously than he did. He’d always been careful, had taken no risks with his health, his reputation, or his heart. As a result, he knew he had the reputation in society of being a cold fish with little interest in women. In the past, he’d shrugged when his friends accused him of being heartless – why should he deny it? Excessive emotion was so tedious, and such bad ton, he’d drawled with languid affectation, almost convincing himself that it was true. Some of them had laughed, and some of them had shaken their heads and told him he was sadly mistaken.

He’d never even fancied himself in love, not really, and a part of him had been glad of it, while a smaller, quieter part had been sorry, aware that he was missing something important, unsure what he could do about it. But it was foolish to harbour regrets, he’d told himself. He’d seen men – his own friends among them – take ruinously expensive mistresses and lavish fortunes on them that they didn’t have, he’d seen married men run away with other men’s wives and wreck the lives of dozens of people, including innocent children. His own father… Sir Thomas had whispered to him once nine years ago, very close to the end of his life, every word a perceptible effort, ‘I know you don’t understand the choices I’ve made, Dominic, in the name of love, and perhaps you judge me harshly for them. But you’re young. One day you’ll know. I pray for your sake, my dear boy, that you will know. Otherwise you won’t really be living.’ His father was long dead, his dangerous decisions and human inconsistencies buried with him as far as the world knew. How could this belief in overmastering love sit easily with Sir Thomas’s wish to arrange a marriage for him? He’d never know now, he supposed, for it was far too late to ask. But for himself, in his father’s terms he’d never truly lived in all these years; he’d never lost sleep over a woman, still less been tempted to throw all at hazard for the prospect of a joy he’d never experienced and had been unable even to imagine.

Until now. Now, when he was betrothed to her sister.