Page 33 of Bad Luck Bride (Scandal at the Savoy #3)
His mind flashed back to another maze in another garden long ago, and he closed his eyes, working to shove memories away, striving to bring himself back into the present and a girl who was not Kay.
But when he opened his eyes, his efforts were for naught. Amid the guests taking advantage of the agreeably warm spring evening to stroll the labyrinthine paths of the maze was the woman who’d dominated his thoughts for the past fortnight.
A hat of pale straw shaded her face, but beneath it, tendrils of her bright hair curled at the side of her neck.
Her figure, slim and lithe in a frock of apple green, evoked as much lust in him as the generous curves of her youth had done, and he began to fear that whether she was chubby or slim, seventeen or seventy-five, or anything in between, his desire would still be there, rumbling within him, ready to flare up at the slightest provocation.
After their first encounter in the flower shop, he’d thought things would get easier, but the opposite had proven to be the case.
Seeing her, being near her was much harder than it had been seven weeks ago.
Now, he could no longer prop himself up with anger and hurt pride.
His resentment, his bitterness and rancor were gone, leaving only an awful aching vulnerability, the vulnerability of knowing that if he ever allowed himself to be that stupid, he could fall in love with her all over again.
She turned her head, lifting her face to say something to Rycroft, and when Devlin saw the wide smile that curved her mouth, a smile he’d seen many times in his youth, it hit him like a punch to the stomach.
He turned abruptly away. Pam, he reminded himself brutally, was waiting downstairs for him to take her for a stroll. They would not, he decided sourly, be exploring the boxwood maze.
Though Devlin had managed to avoid Kay after tea by escorting Pam and her mother through the rose gardens, ducking her that evening was more difficult.
Calderon’s drawing room was not a large one, and though Kay seemed as averse to his company as he was to hers, avoiding her altogether was simply not possible, especially since each of them had to pretend a casual amiability that neither of them actually felt.
He managed to keep up the pretense somehow—by sheer force of will, probably—through the aperitifs and small talk, but when dinner was served, he found himself in trouble.
Though Lady Stratham had seen to it that they were not seated near each other, that fact, he soon discovered, was meaningless.
Kay was seated a good ten feet away on the opposite side of the long dining table, but that only meant that every time he spoke with the person to his right—a social necessity at dinner—she was directly in his line of vision.
Beside him, Lady Marchmont rattled on about breeding terriers for ratting, and though he made a pretense of hanging on every word, he found his gaze wandering to the other side of the table again and again. Given how Kay looked tonight, he doubted even a saint could have resisted a peek or two.
Candlelight had always been Kay’s element.
Its soft, gleaming light lent an incandescent magic to the fiery riot of curls piled atop her head.
Above the damnably low neckline of her soft pink gown, the candle glow gave her skin the translucent sheen of marble, and the pale brown sugar freckles scattered across her collarbone were plainly visible, just begging to be kissed.
Every time he looked at her, the desire within him rumbled again, reminding him—as if he needed any reminding—that where Kay was concerned, he was weak as water.
He wished he could have diverted his attention with a glimpse or two of his fiancée, for Pam’s stunning beauty might have been enough to haul him back to sanity and remind him of his priorities, but, sadly, she was at the very other end of the table on his side, and Devlin could only see her if he leaned far forward.
On the occasions when he did so, she was deep in conversation with Rycroft, who was seated beside her.
It was twelve courses of hell.
He got some relief when the ladies went through, leaving the men to their port, but it was a brief respite.
When the men rejoined the ladies in the drawing room, Simon’s sister suggested dancing and told the butler to bring the gramophone into the great hall.
As the servants rolled back the carpets and someone put a waltz recording on the gramophone, any relief Devlin felt evaporated.
He turned to find Pam, but it was too late, for she was already dancing, locked in the embrace of a good-looking young man whose name Devlin could not remember, but who was clearly the best dancer in the room.
More couples filled empty space in the great hall, leaving only a handful of guests on the sidelines. Rycroft, for one, who was standing nearby, talking with Simon and several of the other hotel investors. A bit surprised by that, he glanced around the room, searching for Kay.
He found her, back against the wall on the other side of the room, rather reminiscent of the ball at Lady Rowland’s so long ago. Before he knew it, his footsteps were taking him to her side of the great hall.
As he approached, he didn’t know what to expect, but he supposed the alarm he saw in her face was not wholly unexpected.
“Please don’t ask me to dance,” she said at once, holding up one hand as if to ward him off.
He hastened to reassure her. “No fear.”
“I’m not being a rabbit.”
“I didn’t say you were.” He moved to stand beside her. “But that remark of mine at Lady Stratham’s opera supper really got under your skin, didn’t it? Sorry about that,” he added when she made a brief nod of confirmation. “It was a boorish thing to say.”
“Yes,” she agreed, understandably in no frame of mind to let him off the hook. “It was.”
“Again, I apologize.” He turned, nodding to a man on the other side of the room. “I thought,” he said, sliding her a sideways glance, “you’d be dancing with Rycroft.”
Her profile remained impassive. “No,” she said without looking at him. “Wilson doesn’t really like to dance. He’ll take a turn once in a while, but he really prefers to talk business.” She lifted her glass of champagne, gesturing to the subject of their conversation. “As you see.”
“Not very romantic of him.”
For some reason, that made her laugh. “Says the man whose fiancée is dancing with someone else right now.”
He laughed, too. “Fair point. Pam adores dancing, so she latched on to the best dancer in the room immediately, and I was happy to let her.”
She tilted her head, studying him. “And you’re not the least bit jealous?”
That, he almost blurted out, would imply passion. “Over a dance?” he said instead. “Hardly. I’m not that sort of man.”
“Unlike Wilson.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“But you were thinking it. The truth is,” she added before he could admit or try to deny her accusation, “I don’t much like dancing, either. So, you see?” She lifted her chin, and a hint of defiance shimmered in her eyes. “Wilson not dancing with me doesn’t bother me in the least.”
“You don’t like to dance?” he said in surprise. “You seemed…” He paused, self-preservation warring with curiosity. “You seemed so keen on it whenever we danced.”
“That was diff—” She broke off, but not before an odd sensation struck him—a feeling of triumph, and pleasure, and something else, something he couldn’t quite define, something sweet and painful that he hadn’t felt in about fourteen years.
“That was a long time ago,” she said after a moment.
“Not so very long.” He drew a deep breath. “I still vividly remember that night at Lady Rowland’s ball.”
“Devlin,” she began, but he cut her off.
“I remember thinking how much I hate balls. And then,” he added, clearly determined to be a glutton for punishment, “I saw you.”
Her lips parted as if his words surprised her. He didn’t know why they should, for with her, he always felt as transparent as glass. He stared at her mouth, and before he knew it, he was thinking of another ball from that London season.
It had been at the Marquess of Harrington’s villa in Chiswick, he remembered, down by the river.
He’d found her on the terrace, catching a bit of air, and when she’d turned, looking at him in the moonlight, he’d felt the earth shift beneath him.
Without a word, without even a conscious thought, he’d taken her hand and led her down the terrace steps and into the garden.
There, beside a fountain in the center of the boxwood maze, the gardenia scent of her hair filling his senses, he’d kissed her for the first time, and his fate had been sealed.
“Aw, hell,” he muttered helplessly. “Kay.”
She stiffened, pokering up at once. “You talk as if you don’t like dancing,” she said, a slight hint of desperation entering in her voice that told him she was feeling, at least a little, what he felt.
He forced himself to reply. “I don’t, usually. It depends.”
“On what?”
He stared at her lips, parted, full, and pale pink in the candle glow, and a slow burn began in his body. “On the partner.”
“And Lady Pamela is not that partner?”
He lifted his gaze to hers. “No.”
The moment the word was out of his mouth, he wanted to take it back, but it was too late for regrets on that score. “Pam and I are not madly in love, if that’s what you’re thinking. To quote you,” he added, “I’m very fond of Pam, and she’s very fond of me.”
If he had hoped she’d display some hint of feeling—relief or pleasure or something like that—he was disappointed.
Her expression remained impassive. “I see.”
“The truth is,” he said slowly, thinking how to explain when he didn’t quite understand it himself, “Pamela and I are both in this marriage for reasons that don’t have anything to do with true love.”
“What reasons?”
“Pam’s mother is a lot like your parents. She doesn’t approve of her daughter marrying me. Not because I can’t support her, because I have plenty of money to support a wife nowadays.”
“Why then?”
“Position. She feels that the fifth son of an inconsequential baron isn’t much of a catch.
Unlike you, however, Pam doesn’t care two straws what her parents think.
She wants to annoy her mother, so she adores the idea of marrying someone Lady Walston doesn’t approve of. It adds tremendously to my appeal.”
“And her father? Doesn’t he have to agree, since she’s not yet twenty-one?”
“That was an easy thing to manage. I told you, Walston’s broke, and when I presented him with a very lucrative marriage settlement, he was happy to give both his permission and his blessing.
So you see?” he added when she didn’t reply.
“Pam is not, by any stretch of the imagination, in love with me.”
“And you?” She tilted her head, studying him with those strange, magical eyes. “If it’s not love, what is your reason for marrying her?”
Just now, looking at Kay with memories of all their past kisses throbbing through every cell of his brain and his body, his reason seemed completely futile. “Escape.”
Realizing he’d said too much, he turned to go, but her voice followed him as he walked away.
“But what are you escaping?”
He stopped. He tilted his head back, staring at the ceiling, not daring to look at her. If he made that mistake, if he turned and looked at her, he wouldn’t be able to resist answering her question, and what good would that do?
He was marrying someone else, and so was she. Telling her the truth would be stupid and pointless, so instead, he resumed walking away, saying nothing, working to hang on to what little shreds of self-respect he had left.