Page 15 of How to Tempt An Earl (Wed Within a Year #2)

T he list was her antidote against the fantasy, the anchor that kept her from slipping entirely away from reality. Celeste smoothed the slip of paper flat on her dressing table and made a fold down the middle, dividing it in two. Tonight, she had to make good on her promise to deliver the first half of the list. She made a neat crease and then a neat tear before folding one half and tucking it into the bodice of the altered gown. She returned the other half to its hiding place until it was needed.

When might that be? Kieran believed they’d have a month before they needed to worry about Roan. When Roan was resolved, she would be free to go her own way and Kieran would be free to hunt down the men responsible for his brother. The thought should have filled her with expectation. She ought to be looking forward to the time when this interruption was behind her. That was really how she should be looking at these weeks with Kieran—as an interruption. She should not be looking at these weeks as an interlude, an idyll, a welcome stretch of time.

These weeks would end. Once Roan was dealt with, and once Kieran had the list, they would have no reason to need each other. There’d be no foe to fight and nothing to unite against. There’d be nothing she needed him for. The only reasons left to them would be their own and that would mean admitting to certain things—feelings that transcended their circumstances. She would not be able to hide behind her need for a bodyguard any more than he could hide behind his desire for the list and exacting justice for his brother. They would have to decide how much they meant to each other. They might decide they didn’t mean anything at all; that it was their circumstances that had heightened their need to connect with another human being.

Until then, though, there was the fantasy. Already, this room looked like home. It bore her trappings, meagre as they were: her mother’s pearls in a lacquered trifle box sitting beside her prized miniature on the dressing table; dresses meant for her hanging in the wardrobe. It was the details that made a fantasy real, that sucked a person in and allowed them to play out their dreams. She lifted the lid of the trifle box and traded her sea-glass pendant for the pearls. She struggled for a moment with the clasp, a vivid image flashing through her mind of Kieran standing behind her, dressed in his evening clothes, smelling of spice, his hands at her neck as he solved the clasp for her like a considerate lover, like a doting husband.

She pushed the image away with a reminder that she didn’t even want a husband. Men possessed; it was their nature. Given enough time, men betrayed. The only real freedom was the freedom she could give herself and that could only be maintained by being alone. To take a husband would be to trade power for protection. She thought of the dagger residing in her dressing-table drawer, the one Kieran had bought for her last night at the fair. He understood she would need to protect herself.

Celeste took a final glance at herself in the mirror and gave a little smile. She touched the pearls at the base of her neck. They looked well above the square-cut neckline of the dark-blue silk gown, shown to advantage by the maid’s efforts with her hair, which had been swept to one side and fastened with a simple gold clip. Tonight, she looked like a countess. She pressed the paper inside her bodice with her fingertips, her touchstone with reality. She might look like a countess but she was only Celeste Sharpton, who had nothing but her wits to keep herself safe.

* * *

He nearly lost his wits when he saw her enter the drawing room. All that burnished chestnut hair was swept to one side, revealing the slim length of her neck, and that gown…oh, that gown. Dark blue was usually a matron’s colour, but on her it was sophisticated—subdued elegance at its finest. Kieran crossed the room and took her hand, raising it to his lips.

‘Civilisation agrees with you.’ Then he added in a husky whisper, ‘But I thought the road agreed with you as well.’ He tucked her arm through his and began a slow stroll around the room. ‘Would you like a sherry? Trafton tells me it will be twenty minutes before dinner is ready.’

She gave a throaty laugh and slid him a coy look. ‘You clean up well, too, although I rather liked your look earlier.’

He had, too. There was something quietly potent about the intimacy of a bath, of warm water and her hands on him, ministering to him and caring for him. It was an intimacy that transcended sex. He could have taken her on the bed afterwards and he had thought about it. He’d seen in her eyes when he’d risen from the tub that she was thinking about it too. But he’d not wanted to ruin the moment. Not everything had to lead to sex in order to be intimate. It was something he knew intuitively but seldom practised. That he was practising it now, experiencing it now, carried its own level of alarm and warning.

They stopped at the sideboard and he poured her a glass of sherry. ‘Cheers; here’s to a safe arrival and looking good in our second-hand clothes.’

She sipped her sherry, her sea-glass eyes intent on him over the rim of the tiny glass. ‘I see we’re playing by all the rules tonight: the clothes, the etiquette… You are a compelling lord of the manor.’ She paused. ‘But of course, you really are lord of the manor, Lord Wrexham.’

He could not tell if she meant that critically. ‘You are playing your part admirably too, future Lady Wrexham.’

‘All the world’s a stage.’ She offered the Shakespeare line with a little toast of her own.

Too true. While they were here at Wrexham, they would be on stage every minute of every day. The house and its staff, the vicar, and the townspeople would all require it of them.

‘Did Mrs Hanson find the pearls for you?’ he asked.

‘No, they’re mine, from my mother. My father gave them to me for my sixteenth birthday.’ She smiled a little as she said it.

‘When is your birthday? It seems like something a fiancé ought to know.’ A small detail to add to his growing horde of facts and observations about this fascinating woman.

‘February.’ She gave him a meaningful look, willing him to put the pieces together without comment. He could do that now. In some ways, it was a testament to how much he knew of her. February—three months before her father’s death. They would have spent the birthday dreaming of their new home and their new life.

Trafton called them to dinner and Kieran leaned close to her ear. ‘Are you ready for Act Two?’ Perhaps it hadn’t been fair of him to require such a large commitment from her. He was only now beginning to see the extent of the ruse. They could not let their guard down, even in their own home.

Dinner was delicious, but it was public. He’d not realised how public a gentleman’s meal was until he was desperate for some privacy. Footmen stood nearby waiting to fill glasses, remove covers and hear every word. Everything he and Celeste said would be reported downstairs, so they filled their dinner conversation with a discussion of their day. While the steward had shown him the stables and the grounds, Mrs Hanson had toured her through the house, discussed linens and silvers and the need for more staff.

‘I’ll send enquiries to the town tomorrow and start the hiring process. I’ll want to see the stables as well, so I can choose a horse for riding,’ Celeste said from the other end of the table. The distance was ridiculous. He wanted her beside him, close enough to breathe her in.

‘It would be much appreciated.’ He felt caught in a limbo that was part reality and part make-believe. This was his home now; that part was very much real. But this taste of domestication, of discussing his day and handling the business of running a home with Celeste, was no less powerful for its pretence. They were pretending they were setting up house; that they would build a future here. That she would always be here. For better or for worse, this pretence would be finished within a month. And, when it was done, she would have stamped her mark all over it. He would sit in this room and imagine her in her blue silk. He would smell her scent in the countess’s suite. He would awake at night, reaching for her. He would spend his days wondering where she was and if she was safe.

By the end of the meal, he’d had enough of being on display, and perhaps she had too. Her hand kept drifting to her necklace, her fingers worrying a pearl.

Kieran turned to the butler. ‘Trafton, my compliments to Cook and to everyone who scrambled to make the meal possible. We’ll have help for you as soon as we can. For now, consider yourselves dismissed until morning. Miss Sharpton and I can finish in here on our own. Close the door behind you.’

When they were alone, Kieran offered a smile. ‘I am sorry I could not dismiss them sooner. It would have disappointed them not to serve on our first night.’ His staff saw this visit quite differently from the way they did. For the staff, this was the beginning of a new lord to serve and the chance to be active once more after a three-year hiatus. This visit was about hope and new possibilities.

Celeste straightened her shoulders and set aside her napkin as if she were setting aside her role as Miss Sharpton, the Earl’s fiancée. When she looked at him from the other end of the table, she was Celeste Sharpton, the keen-minded woman he’d met at St Luke’s who’d been desperate to protect herself and was intent on trusting no one. ‘I understand. You are playing a role and yet you’re not playing a role. You are beginning relationships that will last throughout your lifetime. You must establish yourself.’ Him. But not her. These were things that he, and only he, must do.

Kieran did not like the sound of that—how exclusionary it was, as if she’d already cut herself out of that future because she didn’t belong here and she was not part of that world. Unless…came the unbidden thought…he invited her in… Unless he made a space for her in this world. Would she accept a space even if he could find a way to make one? It would require breaking promises he’d made to himself.

Her statement struck him as accusatory too, as if he was changing; as if Lord Wrexham and Kieran Parkhurst were two different men. ‘I am still a Horseman.’ He defended himself.

‘Yes, and to that end we have business to conduct.’ She rose from her chair and came towards him, hips swaying beneath the blue silk, conjuring hot images of what he’d like that business to be. He’d like to sit her on the edge of this table, spread her legs wide, bury his face beneath her skirts and pleasure her until she moaned his name, his own mind devoid of any thought but delivering that pleasure. She reached him and her hand went to the bodice of her gown. His cock hardened.

‘The first half of the list.’ She pulled out a slip of paper and his thoughts tumbled like the shards in a kaleidoscope, forming and reforming until the shape of them made sense. She was not seducing him; more was the pity. ‘I promised payment upon safe passage to Wrexham. I always pay my debts.’

The list—the damn list. Something angry and hot flared within him. The anger was for himself. He’d not been thinking of the list but perhaps he should have been. That list was the key to avenging Stepan. Vengeance might be the only recourse they had. But he’d been too carried away with imagining his life at Wrexham, imagining her here and then imagining her gone, and thinking about what the future might look like when he should have been thinking about the present—about his brother. Goodness knew, there was plenty in the here and now that demanded his attention. He’d thought he was beyond such distractions, that he’d learned his lesson from Sofia, and that he had his attraction under control. Apparently, not as well as he thought.

‘Put the list away.’ He reached for her hips and drew her to him. Celeste was not Sofia and tonight was not for reviewing lessons or lists. Remorse could wait for the morning.

‘I always pay my debts,’ she repeated, putting the list on the table beside his plate, her tone challenging his command and her eyes like sharp shards. Her walls were going up. She, too, was aware of the magic this place was capable of. She, too, understood the lines between business and pleasure had been crossed in some irrevocable way. She was trying to hold back, trying not to take the next step over that line. He wouldn’t allow it. He would break them down before they had time to set. He wanted her with him in this madness completely.

‘Is that all this is to you—a balancing of the scales? Is that all I am to you?’ He would have the truth from her, and he would pleasure it out of her if needed. Her mouth might speak of business, but her body said she’d spent the meal struggling with the same dilemma that plagued him: how to balance personal want with worldly needs? And what happened when the thing, the person , you wanted required you to go against all that you thought you believed in?

‘Don’t ask those questions, Kieran. I cannot answer them any better than you can.’

She reproached him but her eyes were soft now, the shards gone. She reached a hand out to his hair, running her fingers through the tangle of his curls. He turned into her caress, letting himself luxuriate in her touch. Usually, he was the one doing the touching, perhaps because he knew how good it felt to be touched, how much he loved being touched and how powerful touch could be to heal, console and arouse. Here and now, her touch was all three. He wanted her with a fierceness unrivalled.

He rose, desire riding him hard. ‘Close your eyes and make a wish.’

She did, a smile playing at her lips that said she guessed the direction of his thoughts and that she approved. ‘I wish we were on the road again…’ She breathed the words into reality. He wished that too. On the road, the world was simple. The road was not so much a place as it was a mindset. On the road, one could live in the moment.

‘Your wish is my command,’ he whispered against her ear. He lifted her to the table and knelt before her, pushing back her silken skirts.

This was his wish too—to lose himself in her pleasure and to forget for a while as he placed slow kisses up the length of her leg, listened to her gasp when he tongued a sensitive spot behind her knee and heard the passion unfurling in the moan that purled up her throat when his mouth found the epicentre of her pleasure.

He felt the ripple of languid waves move through her and felt them grow to quakes until her body shuddered and shook with them until each lick of his tongue turned her moans into uncontrolled gasps and her breath became ragged…until her body arched and something on the table above him crashed. Her legs clamped around him, holding him to her as her pleasure fully loosened, his thoughts of lists, payments and revenge forgotten and set aside.

For a short while, all was right with their world. If only they could hold on to it. But that was an impossible wish. These moments, this time here at Wrexham, would have to be given up. Their lives would demand it, vengeance for Stepan would demand it, even if their hearts might request it be otherwise.