Page 16 of How to Tempt An Earl (Wed Within a Year #2)

C eleste held on to the days that followed with both hands, despite the knowledge they would inevitably slip through her grasp. She’d never be able to hold on tight enough. They were happy, heady days. The proof was everywhere. One just had to ask Mrs Hanson, who insisted all was right at Wrexham for the first time in years. One just had to see the contentment on her face, or walk around the Hall to note the happy signs of progress: the polished banisters, the dust-free tabletops; the vases full of fresh seasonal flora decorating those tabletops; the beaten carpets, the swept floors and the polished silver that decorated the supper table each night for meals that featured farm-grown produce and locally raised meats.

‘All thanks to you, miss,’ Mrs Hanson would say. ‘You’ve brought us all back to life.’

It was not just the staff, which now boasted several newly hired and rehired faces, or the dusty, neglected house, but Celeste had brought herself back to life as well for a short time. She was like the leaves turning in the autumn in a last brilliant sweep of colour before they dried up and were blown away. Deep down, she had to face the truth: these days at Wrexham would be her last with Kieran.

Despite the engagement ruse, she would have to leave, although it was easy to set that aside in the moment of the day. The key to any good fantasy was complete immersion and she’d mastered that, throwing herself into the role of lady of the house. She had a routine: hacking out each morning with Kieran before breakfast, then breakfast and meeting with Mrs Hanson. There were various projects to oversee in the mornings and then calls in the afternoon before dinner. She was good at running a large home; her boarding school education had seen to that. She enjoyed the challenges and planning that came with it. And it pleased her to please Kieran, to make this house a gift to him—a parting gift.

She regretted none of it except knowing that this time with him was not sustainable. Perhaps that was why she held on to the days so tightly and threw herself into her role so thoroughly. The perfection of these days was precious, but it wouldn’t last. Therein, she thought, lay the reason for their perfection, for their preciousness: they were rare and short-lived, like the vibrant colours of leaves on the newly trimmed trees of the lime alley.

Today, she and Kieran were celebrating that foliage with a picnic on Wrexham land, and the day could not have been more perfect for such an outing. There was a coolness on the air as she and Kieran lay staring up at a crisp blue sky, the remnants of their impromptu picnic packed away in their saddlebags. The day was too nice to be indoors, Kieran had argued, and she’d needed little persuasion. Riding round the land at the Hall was becoming a delight, each bridleway a little more curated each day thanks to the newly hired stable staff. While she’d been busy in the house, Kieran had been equally busy with the grounds and the stables.

‘Landownership suits you,’ she said as she snuggled against him. It was just cool enough to appreciate the warmth of another body.

‘It’s a thankless task and a never-ending one.’ Kieran brushed off the compliment but she heard the pride in his voice and how pleased he was with her words. He stretched and wrapped an arm about her. ‘I did not think I’d like running an estate. More to the point, I did not think I’d like running this one.’

Her fingers played idly on his chest. ‘Because you felt the title and the estate were recompense for Stepan?’

He nodded. ‘I didn’t want to like Wrexham but I do. There is work to be done here and there is a lot of potential that has not yet been tapped. This property could be a real legacy.’ He was thinking of a family, a son or two to leave it all for. She loved listening to him talk like this, letting his thoughts and dreams play out. Through his words, she could see Wrexham Hall come alive. Those dreams danced in his eyes as he looked up at the sky and she had to look away. Those were dreams she could not be part of.

‘The community would benefit,’ he went on. ‘There’s coal here. If I rented out coal fields, we could bring more business to the area and create more jobs, more trade. Coal is going to be in high demand over the next few years.’

‘You’ll do it. You will do it all,’ she encouraged, the familiar reminder flaring to life that she would not be here to see it. She tried not to think about that and most days she was successful.

‘I suppose that’s a rather long response to whether or not I’ve enjoyed being a landowner these past weeks.’ He gave a chuckle, laughing at himself.

‘What of you?’ He raised himself up on an elbow, his gaze lingering on her face as if searching for something. ‘Have you enjoyed these weeks running the house? I admit that I had not planned to put such responsibility on your shoulders. It was not intentional when I blurted out our ruse. I want you to know that.’

‘I know,’ she replied carefully, sensing that the question led to something more. ‘I have enjoyed it.’

She paused, debating her next words. This was a chance to assure him she’d not been put out, and also a chance to remind him that nothing had changed between them or could change. Even if he might have forgotten it for the moment, she had not.

‘When I ran Roan’s household, there was no joy in it once I understood his intentions. It was all strategy. I felt like a general commanding troops for corrupt purposes. I’d plan meals for men who were in the business of killing, of harming their fellow man. I’d organise entertainments for men who deliberately made war. That made me complicit in Roan’s evil. But here, my efforts are put to good. That pleases me. I like having a purpose.’

‘It suits you. Mrs Hanson swears you’re a marvel.’ Kieran grinned. ‘I think you’re a marvel too. Likely for different reasons, though.’

He gave a wicked laugh that had her thinking of the nights spent in his big bed. She would miss those nights. She needed to be careful here; the look in his eyes was worrisome. He was contemplating diverging from their predetermined path. Being at home, his home, was affecting him. No doubt, he was reconsidering his stance on avoiding marriage now that he’d lived at Wrexham and seen its potential. He needed a wife. It was natural to look in her direction—she was close at hand. But it could not be her. She would need to maintain objective detachment for them both before this went too far.

‘I am glad you’re pleased. I want things in good order before I go so that you’ll have something to build on.’ She smiled to soften the introduction of a difficult topic. She did not want him to guess how much it cost her to say the words, how much it hurt to think of him moving on with his life without her, or to think of him bringing another here and having that other take over the work she’d begun. If he suspected how hard it was, he would use that to persuade her.

He met the mention of her leaving with equanimity. She’d not expected that. She’d expected an outburst, an angry protest. Instead, he kissed her fingers, each one in slow consideration, and posed the question that haunted her whenever she thought about going. ‘What if you stayed?’

‘What ifs’ were dangerous ground, full of make-believe and things that simply couldn’t come true. She pulled her hand away. ‘Don’t do that, Kieran. Don’t play at such possibilities. You and I both know what we’re doing here. We’re playing house. We’ve created an incredible game of make-believe and we are falling for our own fantasies.’

‘Make-believe?’ He sat up, offended at her words. Now she had a rise out of him. ‘Do you really think that when we make love it’s all pretend?’

She sat up too. She didn’t want to quarrel with him. Their time together was too fleeting to waste it sparring over the inevitable. But the inevitable must be discussed and they’d been putting it off since the night she’d given him the first half of the list. ‘Playing house doesn’t put off Roan riding down the road towards us.’ That was the most obvious reason they had to discuss.

There was a light in his eyes, a slow smile curling on his mouth. She wondered what trap she had sprung. ‘What if Roan never comes? It’s possible. I have made connections with people who caught him the first time—Preston Worth, who manages the coastguard, and Sir Liam Casek. If Worth can catch Roan before he even lands, or Casek can stop him in London, he will never come down our road. What do you say to that? Surely, that changes everything?’

It was a large assumption, though. ‘Even if it were true, it wouldn’t be enough,’ she said softly, hating to play the devil’s advocate, but such an advocate was desperately needed when one stayed in a fantasy world too long. ‘It doesn’t change the fact that you’re a Horseman. There is the list. You have a brother to avenge and there will be missions after that. You can never solely be the lord of the manor.’

‘Can you not live with that duality?’ Kieran questioned. ‘It did not seem to be a concern on the road or up until now.’

‘It didn’t matter up until now. On the road, what we had between us was only an affair, two people taking comfort with one another during a crisis. Even here at Wrexham, this was to be a ruse with an end. There was no need to contemplate the future. The future comes with different expectations than the present does.’ Life with a Horseman, life with a man who would always keep her safe while constantly putting himself in danger, would mean never completely getting away from the world she’d run from. She’d merely be on the other side of it.

‘Don’t you think it could end another way?’ Kieran prompted.

‘Do you ? Really, Kieran? I think you’re caught in the fantasy of playing house. A few weeks ago, you were determined not to wed, as I was. Have you forgotten that neither of us are the marrying type? Now we’re trying to convince ourselves otherwise simply because what we have at present is…nice.’

‘Nice?’ He snorted at that. ‘We have something better than nice between us, Celeste.’

‘But there is more than that to us, more between us that must be sorted. We have our own needs. Marriage requires the surrender of my freedom. I do not want to be owned by a man, Kieran. I’ve already travelled that route. As my guardian, Roan possessed me. I promised myself when I fled I would not put myself in that position again.’

‘I would not ask it of you. You would not be my slave, Celeste. Surely, in the time we’ve been together, you know that? Surely I’ve shown you I would not treat you like that?’ He paused, another thought crossing his dark eyes. ‘Is that what you think of me—that marriage to me would be akin to being Roan’s ward?’ Kieran was either aghast at her thoughts or the dark direction of their conversation.

‘Yes and no. Legally, the ownership would always be there. Marriage is easy for men, Kieran. Men give up nothing. Even so, I wonder if you’re truly free. You are owned by your grief. You will spend the next year hunting the men on the list because you can find them, whereas you cannot your brother. You’ve not dealt with the loss of your brother. I… I am not sure there’s room for another in your life until you can accept that he is gone.’

‘He is gone,’ Kieran said forcefully. ‘But I refuse to forget him. I do not want to erase him.’

She grabbed his hands in her earnestness. ‘No, of course not. I’m not saying to forget him. I am saying I’m concerned about what this list will do to you. I regret offering it to you. It’s a tool for revenge. It would be easy to think that you owe your brother that revenge. It would also be easy to think that, by avenging him, you will fill the space his loss has left. It won’t. Violence solves nothing but it does beget more violence.’ She’d lived through it. She did not think she could live with herself if he died pursuing that vengeance.

His dark eyes were obsidian-hard. ‘Am I to ignore the list, then?’

She would make this demand and force him to see that she asked too much of him; that his fantasy of playing house asked too much of him and that it existed in contradiction to the life of the Horsemen. ‘I think you must if you want to keep a family safe. I do recall that was originally your biggest opposition to marrying when we first met. You cannot seek out violent men and expect them not to retaliate. You would be deliberately bringing that violence home.’

Kieran was quiet for a long while. Her argument had hit a target. ‘My brother has chosen marriage. Grandfather chose marriage and kept his family safe for decades.’

‘But what if you can’t? What if the worst did happen? If you’re going to play with “what ifs”, Kieran, you have to play with all of the possibilities. Could you live with yourself if anything happened to them?’ He already had one scar and she suspected that was merely the visible one. ‘You still carry Leipzig with you, in your mind. The blame, the guilt for letting down your guard just the once, has left you with doubt.’

She relented for a moment, lying back down on the blanket before launching her last salvo, a gentle arrow aimed at his heart. God, how it would hurt to give this man up. He was certainly too good for her. She had to help him see that. ‘Even if all of your “what ifs” were right, I would not be a credit to you.’

He followed her down and propped himself up on an elbow. ‘How can you say that, when I look at the progress you made in the house, when I hear Mrs Hanson sing your praises? I see what you’ve done for me, and for others, even though your role is only part of a ruse. But you haven’t treated it as such. You’ve made these last few weeks real . I don’t believe they are all pretence for you. You don’t want to walk away from this or from me.’

So, he had seen the truth despite her best efforts. He was too perceptive by half. ‘As you said that first night, our being here is different for the staff, for the town, than it is for us. They’re counting on me. They need more from me than a facade.’ She tried to rationalise why she’d thrown herself into her role wholeheartedly.

He reached a hand out to stroke her cheek and push back a russet strand of hair, and her resolve trembled. ‘What about what I need from you? Maybe I need you to stay, Celeste.’

He needed her. It was a wonderful, warming thought. His eyes lingered on her mouth, dark and burning. It would be easy to let the conversation go, to let sex replace words, but it wouldn’t solve anything, and she didn’t want him to think he’d won this argument.

‘I am not countess material. Yes, I went to boarding schools with the same girls who were raised to marry titles and run noble homes. But their reputations were spotless. There was no blemish to their name, no scandal. I am none of those things, and you know that.’ He was too smart not to, and he knew how Society worked.

‘I am none of those things either. I’ve killed men, I’ve stolen secrets and I’ve spread false information to confuse enemy troops. I’ve had numerous affairs, some with married women.’

‘And for that, Society calls you a rake and celebrates your behaviour. Women do not have that leniency. We are either Madonnas or whores. Neither are actually celebrated. Madonnas are too ethereal and whores are too earthy. We can’t win.’

She could feel his gaze on her, considering, weighing her words, and feel the warmth of his hand on her hip. ‘No decent girl would be caught on a picnic blanket like this.’

‘Then we will be scandalous together and everyone will say how well we suit.’ He was patently avoiding the arguments she’d made earlier, treating them as if they didn’t exist or matter.

‘That won’t last. We’ll be outcasts, and not because of you but because of me. I am the ward of free Europe’s sworn enemy, and the personal enemy of the Horsemen.’

She lowered her voice even further. ‘No one marries the ward of the man responsible for killing his brother. A man of your standing does not marry a woman who has nothing. I have no money, no title, no bloodline. You are an earl and the grandson of an earl. Your sister is married to a duke. I am beneath you in every way. You are a man of honour but I am a woman of dishonour—my father’s and Roan’s. I am dirty, Kieran.’

And there were all the ways in which she’d abetted Roan’s perfidy. These were considerations that might be overlooked for an affair on the road, but must be weighed in the balance when one contemplated a future in which they were tied to one another.

He dismissed her arguments with three simple words. ‘I don’t care.’

How nice it would be to think that was true, that his words would be true today and on into the future. But there would come a time when he would care—for the sake of his family and for the sake of his children. He was being stubborn. He didn’t like to lose. She had to make him see the impossibility. ‘I care, though—for you and for me. Maybe you have talked yourself into the idea of making this fantasy real, but I have not.’

Perhaps he, too, sensed they were at impasse. He shifted on the blanket and changed his tack. ‘Instead of a life together, you will seek a life of loneliness when you leave here? You would trade what we have and could have for that?’ It was cannily done. He knew very well her plans for the future were unformed, contingent on the outcome with Roan.

‘I object to the word “loneliness”. I will seek a life of freedom and independence,’ she corrected. ‘Why is it so hard for men to see that?’ Probably because they’d never been without those things and didn’t understand their worth. His eyes were dark with thought. She’d disappointed him. No doubt he was seldom disappointed by women. But he would appreciate it later.

‘I can give you more than that. I can give you a home. I see how you crave this place. I saw how your eyes lit up from the first day. I can give you a family. You envy me mine—in the best of ways.’

‘At the expense of my freedom and your happiness?’ She shook her head. ‘Kieran, it’s not that I don’t care for you. It’s that I care too much for you. I can’t make you happy. Your misery would become my misery.’

He gave a dry laugh. ‘Is this the part where I am supposed to say, let me be the judge of that? We don’t have to decide anything today. I did not mean for our picnic to turn into this and I don’t think you did either. But, if you’re thinking about leaving, promise me you will also think about what I said. Think about staying…because I want you to.’

‘I will.’ She could give him the words. It wouldn’t change anything; it couldn’t. But heaven help her when he looked at her with those eyes and stroked her hip with his hand. He wasn’t making it easy. She was going to have to fight a two-fronted resistance—one against him and one against herself. History was not kind to such battles. They were seldom victorious strategies.