Page 11 of Much Ado About Hating You (Second Chance Season #2)

Ten

R ichard strode through the halls of Slopevale for the second time that day, looking for the same woman. He found every other guest, spread across the rooms, engaged in cards or reading or flirting, but not Beatrice. Nor even John and Evelina.

He did however find, upon entering the library, three people who might be able to help him. He ignored the one with cheroot fingers and approached her cousin and Martin instead. “Miss Bell, have you seen Beatrice?”

Her gaze flew to Peterson. “You’re not the first to look for her.” Her gold brows pinched together. She looked pale.

Martin’s hand covered hers. “She’s fine, I’m sure,” he said. “Do not worry, Lena.”

Selena tried to nod, but it came out choppy, uncertain. She gestured to a seat next to her, and when Richard sat, she said, “I told her.” She paused, searching his face.

“Told her about…?”

“What happened seven years ago. What I did.” Her voice so low Richard almost could not hear, her gaze heavy on Peterson across the room, sitting near an open window, book in one hand, cheroot in the other. Idiot. He could burn the entire place down.

Richard marched over, plucked the cheroot from his hand, and tossed it out the window.

The man’s indignant yelp was music to his ears. “You can’t do that!”

“I have done that. Do not smoke in the library, please.”

“It’s not your library to give orders over.”

A punch to the gut, that. None of this his, even if it all felt familiar, felt like home. “As the estate manager, I can and do give orders. Go somewhere else to smoke.”

“Barbaric.”

“I am, aren’t I? So, you’ll believe me when I say that if you prepare another cheroot in this room, I’ll toss you out the window next.” Richard sneered, taking his seat beside Selena once more.

The man snorted but remained seated. He had the determined look of a stubborn child who knew they were doing wrong but refused to do anything else. Let him remain if he wished.

Richard scooted closer to Selena, focusing in on a very, very good thing. If what she said was true—and why wouldn’t it be—he was free. “You told her about you and… my brother?” He studied Martin for a moment, but the man seemed cool, at ease, his hand still resting lightly on top of Selena’s.

She nodded.

And Richard released a breath he’d been holding for too damn long. “How did she respond?”

Selena shook her head, eyes glistening with unshed tears.

“Damn. That bad. Where is she now?”

Flipping her hand palm up on the table, Selena threaded her fingers with Martin’s as if for strength. “I do not know. She left the house.”

“In the rain?”

She nodded. “And she has not returned. I’m worried.”

Martin squeezed her hand. “Miss Bell is an intelligent woman. She can care for herself.”

“Yes,” Richard grumbled, pushing to his feet, “but she shouldn’t have to.”

“Curses,” Peterson said from across the room. He’d jumped to his feet as well, his arms bent behind his back, his face red.

“My lord, are you unwell?” Selena asked.

“Something’s stung me, I think.” His hands clawed at his back. “Zeus, it itches!”

Richard did not have time for this, but he swung toward the man and spun him around. “No bees. No insects at all. You’re likely allergic to the country air. I suggest you return to London immediately.”

Peterson scowled, still scratching his back, mostly the back of his neck, like mad. There, peeking out from between the hair at his nape and the snowy white folds of his cravat—a bit of greenery.

Richard snagged it, dropped it immediately. “Martin, come here. You’re wearing gloves. Could you pick that up?”

Martin did so, throwing it outside the window. “What is it?”

“A plant that grows on the south side of the lake. Makes your skin itch like the devil. Have you been rolling in the grass, Peterson?”

“No! I’ve been nowhere near the lake today!”

Richard made for the door. No time for hijinks this afternoon. Beatrice knew the truth, and he needed to find her. “I suggest a bath. And no grass rolling. And telling the truth, Peterson. No lady will have you otherwise.” And then he was sweeping down the hall and out the door into the driving rain.

Where in hell had she gone? He checked the dry places—stables, boathouse, his cottage. No Beatrice. He checked the wet ones—forest, lake, and gardens. No Beatrice.

“Bloody hell.”

He was soaked through, and the rain was not letting up. He should return to the house.

But he kept going.

Until he saw a swath of blue like a wound against the green grass at the bottom of a hill, partway between Slopevale and his own home.

“Beatrice!” He ran. When wind and rain swallowed his cry, he screamed her name again, still running, the slash of a blue wound taking shape. When he hit his knees beside her, he didn’t touch her. His hands hovered, uncertain. “Beatrice?”

Her eyes were open, staring into the rain. Then she blinked and turned her head, and her chest rose and fell as if seeing him gave her breath.

Now he could touch her, now that there was a spark of life, a glimmer of recognition, and something else in her sad eyes. Sad?

Good God, no. Not Beatrice. A crime.

He brushed the hair away from her forehead, stroked his knuckles down her temple, inspected her neck and shoulders for wounds, found her hands to check her pulse at her wrist. “Are you hurt?”

“My pride is fatally wounded.” She closed her eyes.

He chuckled. Relief was a sweet thing, a spoonful of sugar to ease his worry. Thunder rumbled in the distance, but he sat beside her, the wet grass soaking through his trousers and smalls immediately. “Why am I constantly saving you from drowning, Beatrice Bell?”

“That’s only happened once.”

“It is about to happen again.”

“You cannot drown in the rain.” But each word was garbled by the torrent pouring straight into her mouth.

He chuckled again, tilted her head away from the sky and toward him. Better. “Oh, I’ve no doubt you can do anything you set your mind to. And it looks like you set your bloody mind to lying down, opening your mouth, and taking the time to die a rather prolonged death, raindrop by bloody raindrop.”

She sat upright, pulled her knees to her chest. “It’s your fault.”

“I’m sure it is.” He studied her from the top of her head to her toes and everywhere in between. “Are you sure you’re uninjured?”

She winced. “Perhaps a bit bruised. I fell.”

“What are you doing out here?”

“Being terribly silly, I’m afraid. More than a little melodramatic as well. But sometimes a lady needs to act a fool. On her own. Just for a little while.” When he didn’t contradict her, she said, quietly, her voice so very still and careful, “Selena told me.”

Ah. There it was. What happened next?

“I-I know,” she said, emotion clogging her voice. “And I-I was wrong.” A sob ripped from her, as if old wounds had cracked open and were wailing ancient sounds imprisoned long ago.

He gathered her into his lap. “Shh. Shh.”

“I’m so very sorry. I did not know. I did not know .” Her shoulders heaved, and she hid her face in his chest, cried into his warm, wet skin as he stroked a large hand up and down her back. “I hate being wrong. And I was mean .” The last word a wail.

“Shh. Shh.” His body wrapped around her, giving her everything it possessed—warmth, protection, comfort.

“I thought I had a right to be mean, but… but—” Another wail, this one muffled by her face pressed against his chest. She wrenched out of his hold and stumbled to her feet. When he surged after her, she held out a palm. “No. No. I just… I need to think.”

“Can we think somewhere else?”

Lightning flashed across her face. Anger howled there like a ripping wind. “How could you not tell me! Seven years, Richard Clark! Seven! I could have fallen in love with you! I was falling in love with you! You could have told me about Selena and Daniel, and we could have avoided… And this”—she flung her arms out wide, then brought them together, palms up, between them, nearly crossing the distance between their bodies—“could have been different.”

He hung his head, slicing his hands through his hair, and droplets flung everywhere. When he looked up at her, she ensnared him, her green eyes holding him tight, passing on her rage. “Do you think I didn’t want to? Do you think I enjoyed watching you hate me? It was not my secret to tell, but hers. And in the end… Hell, Beatrice, in the end, it’s better you hate me than I abuse the trust of the cousin you love so completely.” He turned from her. Couldn’t take seeing her pretty face contorted in anger—at him—one moment longer. “That was my solace. Knowing that if you knew, you would not hate me at all.”

“Richard…”

He waited for more. Was disappointed. “I thought only of two things. Getting Selena away from my scoundrel brother as quickly as possible and getting Martin away from a woman who was so unsure about her feelings for him, she was willing to kiss another man. It sounds so logical now. So reasonable when spoken aloud. It did not feel that way back then. It felt red and raw. Like a sacrifice of the body.” He swallowed, said quietly, “And the soul.” It had felt like grief clawing out his heart.

He turned around. She was holding herself, shivering, her face a graveyard.

“Bloody hell. You cannot stay out here longer.” He scooped her up into his arms.

“Where are we going? The house is that way.”

“ My house is this way.”

“Your—” Her voice a squeak that broke off as he hitched her higher, more securely in his hold, and she wrapped her arms around his neck.

“It’s closer. You may berate me all the way there if you like. Have at it, hellcat. I can take it. But this is the direction you’re going as long as you’re in my arms.”

She went very still. And then her heart, nestled so close to his own, began to race. She controlled it with several measured breaths, then laid her head on his shoulder, and closed her eyes.

He carried her, ignoring the eventual burn in his arms, the sting of rain in his eyes, all the way to his small cottage. He stopped only once they were dripping on the floorboards of the entryway and set her on her feet.

Somehow, her arms remained around his neck. Small miracle. A welcome one.

“You can stay here until it stops raining,” he said. “I’ll start a fire in the?—”

Parlor. He’d meant to say parlor. But when she stretched up on tiptoe and kissed him, every word he’d ever known spiraled out of reach. She tasted of rain and something essentially Beatrice. The sweetest taste. It could become an addiction. As could the small of her back where his hands fit perfectly.

Rain could wash away so much that muddied the world.

So could truth.

He pulled away just enough to break the kiss. “What are you doing?”

“We wasted seven years. I’m not wasting another seven seconds.” Her lips not only tasted like perfection, they spoke sense. “You offered to be my lover…”

“Are you accepting?”

“I want you to kiss me, Richard Clark. And yes, I want much more than that, too. From you.”

His eyes closed for a heated moment of hesitation. “You hate me.” He could still feel every word she’d given him like a laceration across his back. But every word he’d given her stung sharper, dug deeper. He hated himself.

She kissed the tip of his nose. “ No te odio , Richard Clark. And I begin to suspect there’s not much you could do to change that.”

Right. Yes. “Fire.”

“Pardon?” Her hold on him went slack.

He pulled out of it, tripped up the stairs. “Fire. In the bedchamber. If I’m going to get you naked, Beatrice Bell, I refuse to let you freeze.” He tumbled back down the stairs and set his palm atop her head, pinning her in place. “Wait. Right. There.”

She nodded, grinned.

And upstairs, he brought a fire to roaring life more quickly than he ever had before. When he reached the entry hall once more, she was gone.

“Bloody—Beatrice!” He yelled her name. “Where are you?”

“Here!” Her voice soft from a room down the hall.

He followed it to the study he never used. Set at the back of the house, it looked out into the garden, or rather, a small boxed-in section of the garden crowded with flowers newly blooming.

Beatrice stood at the small desk beside the chair that faced the window, the garden. Just as he’d always imagined her.

“This is”—she exhaled softly, then swung around to face him, hands clutched together at her heart—“lovely.”

“Do you recognize it?”

She shook her head. “Of course not. This house was not here when I last was.”

“Hm.” He stood next to her, her shoulder brushing against his arm.

“You must get much work done here.”

“None. I use John’s study at Slopevale. His estates. His study.”

“But then why make this?”

He shrugged, running a flat palm along the large yet elegant desk that looked out into the garden.

“You know,” she said, “I always imagined having a little study just like this. Books everywhere, the desk facing the window instead of away from it. I’d like to look up from my translations to see how the world?—”

“Is changing outside the window.”

“Yes.” She peered at him, a question in her gaze. “But only a small bit of the world. The garden out there is more of a little corner, secluded. A source of variety as the seasons change but not too much distraction. You could take a desk out there and work if the day is nice.”

“There’s a portable one in the corner for just such use. And a chair and a little rug to go beneath.”

“My… you’ve thought of everything.”

“No, you’ve thought of everything. And you’re dripping, sweetheart. Let’s undress you. I’ve a fire upstairs.” He tugged her toward the door.

She stopped him, her gaze slowly skimming every surface of the room. “It’s as if you peered inside my head and brought it all to life.”

He leaned a shoulder against the wall. “Didn’t have to. You told me what you wanted. Before everything happened, when you weren’t enraged with me yet. I remember the look on your face when you were describing the exact room you’d want for yourself. To work in. If you ever convinced your father to trust you. I always knew you’d convince him. Never doubted you.”

Before, she would have scoffed. Now, she turned with hard determination in her eyes, shoulders pushed back. “Here. I want you here, Richard Clark. In this room you made for me.”

His throat was dry like a biscuit baked too long. “I didn’t… it simply happened… Here? There’s no fire. You’ll get cold.”

“You’ll be my fire.”

And that was enough. It snapped him into action. He picked her up by the waist, delighting in the little squeal she gave when her feet left the ground. He plopped her down in the desk chair—a large, winged thing designed for comfort—and twisted it around to face him. He wouldn’t let himself undress her here. No matter how many flames his body produced, a natural reaction to touching her, she would still be too cold for comfort. He’d wait for himself. For the pleasures of her body unguarded beneath his own. But he could still give her what she wanted. What he wanted, too. A pleasure for them both.

He hit his knees before her. Curiosity and excitement flared in her green eyes, and he rucked her skirts up, revealing her soaked stockings, the limp ribbons holding them up, the creamy pink skin of her lush thighs. He kissed one, dragged his teeth along the other.

She shivered, and he gave her a little push. She teetered off-balance so easily, falling into the chairback, her hands clawing around the arms for balance, security. And he scratched his nails up her thighs, held her gaze tight and forever as his hand snuck under the sodden folds of her skirt and chemise. He found her crisp curls and began a circular search for—ah. He’d found it, and it produced immediate results. She threw her head back, moaning, stirring his blood and his cock.

He dragged his lips along her warm inner thigh. “So soft. So lovely. And so very much mine.”

Her hands tangled in his hair. “Kiss me.” Her voice breathy and low.

“Oh, I will, hellcat. Don’t you worry about that.” He kissed her as high on her inner thigh as he could, the scruff on his cheek grazing her sex. She must have been sensitive already because her breath hitched, and her body quivered.

“You… you cannot… not from… down there.”

He looked up, fingers splayed across the top of her perfect thighs. “Have you taken a lover before?”

“N-no. I tried. I was…” A blush, fierce and fast. “Concerned about the ramifications.”

Of course. Smart. A shame. But also good . That meant she was his. Only his. What did she call him? Que bruto? Yes, he felt like a brute. “I’ll take care of you. No ramifications. If you’re mine, I won’t let a damn thing happen to you that you don’t want. Do you understand?”

She swallowed, nodded, seemed almost passive and gentle for a moment. Then her fire returned, and she pushed his head back a bit with those fingers tangled in his hair. The force enflamed him, drove his desire higher.

Matching desire flashed in her eyes. “You are mine, too. I accept nothing less. No other lovers for you.”

“Never.”

“Or for me.”

“Better not.”

“As long as this lasts.”

Forever. It must last forever. “Do you trust me?”

She laughed, a real thing composed of sunlight and joy. “God help me, I do. I trust, I think, no one more than you.”

“Then release me, hellcat,” he growled, “and let me kiss you.”

She did, and he returned his mouth to her inner thigh, worshipping for but a moment before he gave her what he’d promised—a kiss.

There went her hands in his hair again as she gave a little shriek, her hips rolling as her muscles contracted. He swept a tongue across her, groaning. “You are wet and ready, and my cock is too.” He kissed her again, and again, and again, loving each little squeak and moan that seemed to tether them more tightly together. Her noises and her wiggles a spool of twine being unwound around them, winding them up instead. No escape from this.

Didn’t want that anyway. He wanted her plentiful flesh in his hands and the taste of her arousal on his tongue. He wanted to know that each sound and move she made meant she didn’t hate him. Needed to show her he didn’t hate her. Never had. Never would. He could feast on her forever, but she was losing control, gulping for air and clawing at him, and hell, he was hard and aching. But when she cried his name, shattering, clenching around the fingers he’d slipped inside her, he hardened further.

She went limp, and he dragged her into his arms, carried her up the stairs, each step painful, and set her limp body on the floor of his bedchamber, the fire still roaring nearby. She blinked at him, and he chuckled. She seemed to get this way after her climax—all docile and sweet, from hellcat to pussycat because of him. Adorable in either state.

He’d adore her more naked.

He trailed his fingertips up her arms, skimming across the gooseflesh that ranged over her skin, up the sodden sleeve of her gown, her collarbone, her neck, to cuff her throat just below her chin and tip her face up.

“I… I’m throbbing,” she whispered. “ Down there .”

“I’m in a similar state, sweetheart.” He kissed her. He drew from her lips long and slow, taking with his leisurely taste an inhalation, too. Rain soaked, she smelled fresh and wild, like she’d arrived with the storm, dropped from the clouds right into his lap. She shivered.

He ripped away, and she gasped, wobbling a bit, eyes glassy. Anger built on her brow as her gaze cleared. “Do not stop now.”

“I’m not. Off with the gown, Beatrice.”

“Take it from me.”

Ah, the hellcat had returned. “Gladly. But… I would prefer that you surrender it. You can ask a man to ravish you, to be your lover, but you cannot undress before him? Hm.” He tipped her chin up. “Scared?”

Fire snapped her head back, ranging all over her body and coalescing in her eyes. “Scared? Me? Ha!” Her arms contorted, elbows flying out to the sides as her hands disappeared behind her back. She held his gaze, steadfast, not at all afraid. And when her arms dropped to the side, the neck of her gown loosened, slipped. There—her stays framing her breasts, her shift… soaked, the deep red roses of her areolas peeping through, her nipples pebbled.

Damn him. He shifted to keep the buttons on his fall from popping under the pressure of his arousal.

Her gown hit the floor with a sodden thunk , and she pulled at the little bow at the front of her shift, untied it, then twisted her arms behind her again. This time, her lips contorted, too, in concentration. She cursed under her breath, and her little wiggles as she tried to work her stays free drove him over a cliff. He spun her around and ripped the ribbons holding her together. Gone like his control. The stays and shift gone, too, leaving only her rosy skin made molten by the light of the leaping flames.

“Brave Beatrice,” he said, shrugging off his jacket and waistcoat, grunting out of his boots, and pulling his shirt off to soak the floor beneath their feet. He backed her toward the bed. Her arms covered her breasts, but she’d lifted her chin, unafraid. “Get on the bed.”