Page 41 of When the Marquess Needed Me (The Rake Chronicles #4)
Chapter Thirty-Nine
L eith did not relish another three days of hard travel back to Somerset. But, if it mean he would see her again, it was nothing.
He decided to take his carriage, but he couldn’t stand the idea of more confinement, so he took his own horse as well, galloping ahead of his conveyance. The exercise was good for him and gave him time to think.
About Beatrice.
And all he wanted with her.
He imagined many things on that ride out of London. He imagined children with her dark hair and eyes and sharp mouth. He imagined himself as an old man, her fingers intertwined with his own, and how she would give purpose and meaning to his last days. He imagined himself tied up with her in bed, night after night, and all the things that they could and would explore. All the pleasure that he wanted to bring her, if she would only let him.
He thought of what he would say when he saw her again. How he would apologize for leaving, for being cross, for losing his temper and storming off. He would explain that, before her, he had scarcely been alive. That she had saved him from a tomb of apathy and passionless encounters. That he was indebted to her for the saving of his very soul. And that he would follow her to the ends of the earth—or, more likely, he would live all the days of his life in Somerset—if it meant she would keep saving him every day with her boldness and her gentleness and her inability to settle for less than what she wanted.
He just hoped that what she wanted was him.
Leith knew that he would stop yet again at Mrs. Bercine’s for the night. He imagined the wry look the woman would give him when she saw him back again. The wise innkeeper would know where he was going and smirk. She might even tell him that he was making the right choice.
The inn appeared and he was glad to see it. He was one step closer to Beatrice. Soon, but not soon enough, he would be back in Somerset. He stopped in front of the inn, already preparing to hand off his horse to the groom waiting near the entrance.
And then he saw her.
Beatrice.
He was sure he was hallucinating.
She was standing, looking up at the inn, so that he was confronted by her striking profile, almost ascetic in its severity, with her carefully plaited dark hair and high brow. From that angle, she looked as if she had been set in a stained-glass window.
He dismounted from his horse in a daze.
Given how much he had been yearning to reach her, to get back to Parkhorne Hall, he thought she must be a figment of his imagination.
Especially since she was dressed in the exact clothes she had been wearing when he met her. That unfashionable gown that he had thought so horrid—and which now he could only think made her look exquisitely beautiful. How addlepated he had been then, he reflected, not at pains to reach her, because she couldn’t be real, to think that such a stunning woman was unattractive because she wore an out-of-season dress. He couldn’t relate to the feelings of such a man, although that man had been him not long ago.
She turned and he expected her to disappear with the wind.
But, instead, their eyes met.
And he realized that she was very real indeed.
The Marquess of Leith felt his heart stutter and then stop completely.
She walked towards him, and he felt as if his blood had frozen solid in his veins.
It was Beatrice, his Beatrice, as fiery and beautiful as ever, her dark eyes roving over him with that intelligent vivacity that he had once found calculating.
What was she doing here?
He didn’t understand.
“Beatrice,” he croaked. “Why are you here?”
He realized now that she was crying. Tears leaked out of her eyes and down her face. He wanted to stop them with his fingers, to wipe them away with his lips.
“I was coming to find you,” she said. “In London. Why are you here?”
His throat tightened. His chest constricted. But he found the words.
“Coming to find you. In Somerset.”
She began to cry harder.
He stepped towards her. But she held up her hands.
“No.”
He stopped, utterly confused.
“I don’t deserve that. Not yet. Not after what I said to you. How I treated you.”
Leith shook his head. He didn’t care about the words that she had said when she was overwhelmed. He just wanted her .
But she seemed determined to speak. And he would let her, if that was what she needed.
“I am so sorry, Thomas,” she began. “I should have been grateful for your help. It is only that I had this idea in my mind—that I would save Parkhorne. That it had to be me to do it.”
“I should have told you. It was not my intention to upset you.”
She shook her head. “I know. I was so ridiculous. You saved my family from two men who made us prey to their vile scheme, and I repaid you with such venom. I can hardly live with myself when I think of it.”
“Darling—” He stepped forward again.
“No,” she said. “Not yet. Please.”
He stilled, all his hope hanging on that “not yet.”
“And you were right. About London. About me wanting to escape. I couldn’t imagine living anywhere else but Parkhorne, and yet I also think, in some way, I was dying there. I love my family but—I was lonely. My lovers, when I had them, didn’t know me. My family adored me, but I will always be first a daughter and a sister to them. I wanted to be more. But I didn’t know how to be.”
“And then Mr. Gordstone came with his threats. And I thought of all that I had read of London. You see, Thomas, I told you no one reads the scandal sheets at Parkhorne Hall, but that is a lie. I read the scandal sheets. I read all about you before I ever met you.”
He would have been shocked, if he hadn’t spoken to Montaigne. Instead, he was merely fascinated.
“You read about me?”
“I did,” she said, crying and laughing both. “From the time I was sixteen, I read about you in the scandal sheets. This lord who had a different woman in his bed every two weeks.”
“A scoundrel.”
“Yes,” she said, with a little smile. “A man who knew what he wanted and got it. Again and again and again.”
Between the two of them then, a look of such knowingness passed that it took his breath away. They both knew that, when she had met him, he was not what he had appeared. Far from it.
“I must have disappointed you.”
“You shocked me. At first, I couldn’t believe you were real. You were just as handsome as the papers said. And then, when I realized you weren’t all that they had said, that I could teach you something, I was so gratified.”
“Once your outrage wore off,” he said, unable to suppress a grin at the memory of her dismay at his sexual proclivities, such as they had been.
She nodded. “Yes. You see, I admired you from afar. I fantasized idly for years, even before Gilchrist, about what it would be like to be one of your mistresses. To be paid to be bedded by one of the most desirable, most wicked men in London.”
Leith imagined a younger Beatrice, reading her scandal sheets, bathing in her copper tub at Parkhorne Hall, imagining such things. The idea was powerful and evocative and strange. It also made him a little sad—for he had been far from what her girlish fancy had envisioned. But then a pleasant thought occurred to him.
“You did not find me as you imagined me—but you made me into that man.”
“No,” she whispered. “In truth, once I came to know you, you were better than I ever could have imagined. More than I ever could have dreamed up. And then I dashed it all away. Because I am a fool.”
“I am here now,” he said, advancing on her again. This time, she did not flinch or evade him. He put his hands around her waist and pulled her towards him.
“Can you forgive me?”
“Of course, I forgive you. I’d forgive you anything. I love you beyond reason, Beatrice.”
She threw her arms around him and kissed him. He pulled her tighter and kissed her back, his hand tangling in her hair. His body somehow both calmed and fired at her nearness. Everything was righted now that she was back in his arms.
He broke the kiss and looked down at her, his beguiling, unusual darling.
“I do need to know another thing, my love,” he said, unable to stop the smirk playing on his lips. “I have been informed that you are not actually Monty’s cousin.”
Instantly, Beatrice blushed a deeper crimson than he had ever seen. In fact, he wasn’t sure he had ever seen her blush before, especially if this shade was what she looked like.
She buried her face into his chest.
“Come now,” he whispered into her ear. “It cannot be as embarrassing as all you have discovered of me.”
“It is worse,” she groaned. “To be discovered in such a lie.”
“Tell me of it. I am very curious.”
She sighed and looked back up at him. “When I came up with the scheme of paying back the debt as a courtesan, my thoughts, of course, flew immediately to you. I had long nursed this fantasy of becoming your mistress—and, I reasoned, that once you had done with me, other men would want me because you had been my protector.”
“Very logical.”
“I thought of approaching you directly. But it seemed far too forward. And I doubted that your mistresses approached you .”
“A fair surmise.”
“And I knew, from the scandal sheets, that you were best friends with the duke and Lord Trem and Lord Montaigne. I thought if I could convince them to convince you, then you might not say no. But I wasn’t sure how. And they were all married. I looked at Burke’s Peerage and I saw that Lord Montaigne was related to so many families. Cousins upon cousins upon cousins. There was no way he could keep track of them all. Especially not third cousins.”
“Very clever.”
“And he had just married Olivia. She had been a maid. In his home. I thought that—well, I thought he seemed kind.”
“You were right about that.”
“I was.”
“So you told Monty that you were his third cousin so that you could bed me? My, my, Miss Salisbury, you do put the worst rakes of London to shame. I do not think me or any of my friends have ever tried so desperate a scheme.”
Beatrice groaned. “I was sure it wouldn’t work. But then it did. Beautifully.”
“I did wonder for a time why you did not take Monty’s offer of money. I thought it was merely your pride. You are very proud. But now I see that you were even more delicately situated than I imagined.”
She blushed again. “It seemed wrong to take money from an earl who thought I was his relation—when I was, indeed, not his relation at all. And anyway it was you I wanted.”
“And yet, my love, you were not altogether very warm with me when we first met. In fact, you seemed like you didn’t like me in the slightest.”
“You should have seen how you looked at me! When Lord Montaigne suggested that I be your mistress, the turn of your countenance…it was dreadful.”
“Well, you know better now why I may have felt that way. I certainly did not want anyone prying into my affairs, such as they were.”
“No, you did not. But I didn’t know that yet.”
Leith was gazing deep into her eyes now. He couldn’t believe that he had found her here—and he couldn’t believe that, on some level, she had wanted him all along. She had traveled to London to become his mistress.
He kissed her again, drinking her in, until he forgot anything but Beatrice, her touch and her fire and her goodness. When he broke the kiss, her cheeks were flushed from, he suspected, a completely different emotion than embarrassment, and she was looking at him with an expression that by now he knew well.
But before they did that, he needed to ask her a question. Hopefully, this time, as Monty had discovered with Olivia, a repeat application would earn a more positive reception.
“Will you marry me? Will you be my wife, my marchioness, my everything?”
She smiled up at him, her dark eyes flashing. “Yes,” she whispered.
He picked her up, then, and kissed her once more. “I will love you forever, Beatrice.”
“Good,” she said, smiling and crying at the same time. “Now take me to bed.”