Page 39 of Scandalous Nights With the Earl

A kind answer and one that placed her questions about his relationship with Gretel at rest. Phillip Moreland had cared for her and if she had not perhaps filled all of his needs then she had still met enough.

‘I will not marry again but sometimes…’

He stopped and looked at her, a hope in his eyes that could not be missed, and without thinking she simply leant forward and kissed him softly on the cheek, so that he could move away if he wanted to. She was a free and independent woman and had been since her husband died, but Phillip Moreland had awakened something in her that could not be ignored. When his hand curved around the back of her neck and he brought her closer she did not resist, and when he changed the angle of the kiss so that his mouth slanted across her own she asked for more. This was not like the kiss in the Elmsworth kitchen, but a fiercer, more desperate variety, and one that asked for things that had not seemed possible back then. She opened to him, inviting him in, feeling in the passion a different request, a more sensual one, a need that went beyond what was offered.

His mouth fell lower to her throat, his free hand moving across the rise of her breast. You are mine, every action seemed to say, mine in flesh and lust, in appetite and fever.

There was no reason left in her, no will to stop what was happening. She wanted to lie down on the seat and tear open her dress so that he could find the secrets of all that lay underneathand take them. But he was suddenly still and his words were a far cry from the thoughts she was having.

‘Lord help me,’ he said as he pulled her against him, his breath as ragged as her own. ‘I cannot take you like this. It is wrong.’

Wrong because he did not want her? Wrong because he still loved his wife? Wrong because she had acted like a loose woman and it had shocked him?

She ground her teeth together and sat up very straight, for already the outskirts of London were visible through the window and she could not quite understand what might happen next.

‘I am sorry.’ His quiet apology only made her angry and she shook her head, for she did not want that from him. She had misjudged him, misjudged his needs and her own. If she could have left the carriage then and there she would have, but there was still a good twenty minutes before that would be possible, so they were stuck together in the silence of regret.

Wilhelmina collected her flowers and exited the conveyance as soon as it stopped, disappearing into her town house on Russell Square without once looking back.

‘Damn,’ Phillip whispered softly into the shadows of the waning day. He had wanted to take her hand and explain what he’d meant by ‘wrong’ and if she had given him even one sign of desiring clarification he would have given it. But she had sat ramrod stiff against the seat, the fingers of her right hand twisting the silk in her skirt in a way that told of great agitation. He had not had much experience with the ways of women apart from his wife, and Gretel’s anger at him at times seemed mirrored in Wilhelmina’s posture.

Surely she understood why it would have been wrong? He could ruin her for one and she would be forever exiled if anyonewere to observe them. It had to mean more, be more, on both of their parts, this binding of the flesh. It could not be a nothing thing decided in a second in a moving carriage on a public street.

The whole day had been a disappointment to her, no doubt, and perhaps after her own troubles she now did not have the heart to take on the wretched truths of another man who would only disappoint her further.

He could not blame her for that either but the hope of it left him empty. He didn’t want to go home to the Moreland town house and at this hour of the evening he could not safely leave for Elmsworth Manor either.

The thought of his private club in the city came to mind, a place he had rarely visited but one which could now provide a drink and limited company. Banging on the carriage wall, he waited for the driver to slow before giving him new directions.

White’s was just as he remembered it, with its green walls, red seats and blue carpet, and as he came to the set of steps leading to the second floor he did feel a comforting sense of familiarity.

The salons were far busier at this hour than he’d imagined they would be but he did not turn away, walking instead with intent to a table in the darker end of the first room and sitting on one of the expansive leather chairs beneath a window. The barkeep came before he could even look around and he remembered the stellar service of the place with a smile.

‘Whisky, please.’ The drink of broken men and their broken dreams. It seemed appropriate.

A number of the brands available were mentioned and he chose the last one, only because he had not really listened to the first options. Within a moment the man was back with a full glass, the bottle it had been poured from set beside it on a silver tray.

‘Thank you.’

‘It is our pleasure, Lord Elmsworth.’

Everywhere he went they knew his name. So unlike America, where he had journeyed alone. Lifting the glass, he finished it and then poured himself another. And another. The room began to feel less sharp, Wilhelmina’s kiss a warming memory, and he liked how reality slid away into something else. Drink was how he had coped after Gretel’s death, the way he had got himself up every morning and lived.

But tonight it felt different. Wilhelmina St Claire was a mile away in her Bloomsbury town house, readying herself for bed, untying her hair, slipping between the sheets, finding sleep.

He imagined her dreams, freedom probably as much a part of them as the awful ending of their late-afternoon carriage trip.

He stared into the space before him to try and find the thought that was eluding him, skimming on the edge of his reasoning. Then he had it. He wanted the same things as she did. Freedom and the space to be alone, and had she not told him time and time again that she wasn’t a woman who gossiped?

He sat up straighter and helped himself to another whisky. The alcohol was giving him a clarity he had not had before, a way forward that might be conducive to them both if they were brave enough to try.

Not a replacement for Gretel, never that, but a woman whom he liked and admired. As permanent as she wanted it. Or as temporary. Private. Hidden. Undisclosed. When Wilhelmina tired of him, which he knew would happen, they could simply say goodbye in a civil fashion, and get on with the rest of their lives.

Not a love story either, which stripped the guts from you and left you writhing from betrayal, but a logical, lucid and well-structured plan. A plan that no one, save them, ever needed to know of.

Could it work?

Was it possible?