Seventeen

My wits have truly gone a-beggin’ now, Lilith thought as she entered the stables in what Frances would have called “the middle of the night.” She had been up into the early hours anyway, crying and thinking about all the things she wished she’d had the presence of mind to say to George in the heat of their fight. She whipped her skirts with her crop. She had reached across a vast ocean filled with decades of hurt to reach out to him, and he had mocked and belittled her pain. And all she had wanted was a simple sketch.

The only reason she was down at the stables at dawn was to articulate to him, in rehearsed words, just how much he hurt her last night. She tugged at her habit again, which pulled across the bust and bunched up around her waist. She didn’t know where it came from except that it probably looked quite exceedingly fashionable about twenty years ago on a very trim and tall woman.

She stomped around the corner and there George stood, quietly holding the reins of a squat, spotted, and homely horse in one hand and peering at his watch with the other.

“How many minutes am I late, George?”

His head jerked up. His handsome face was pale, his eyes weary, the lines around his mouth etched a little deeper. Her heart weakened. Had he been up all night too?

“Good morning.” He bowed properly. “You look lovely this morning.”

“What a plumper. I look hideous this morning. Don’t you dare say a thing about this ridiculous riding habit or I’ll whip you with my crop.” She brandished it in the air. “Dashingly useful accessory, a crop.”

“It’s the morning light,” he said and gestured to his own face. “It sets off your skin and beautiful eyes.”

Was this his way of making peace? It was working better than she wanted to admit. “Why don’t you paint a picture of me and this horse with all its lovely spots? Bask, indulge in the morning light.”

“Lilith, please,” he said quietly. “Could we just have a lesson, or would you prefer Lord Charles to teach you?”

“Let me consider. Which is the lesser of two evils? Hmm. Alas, I’m already dressed and you are conveniently here, so you may as well teach me.”

He placed his hand on his heart. “I’m honored. Now, I’ve already selected a horse for you. Her name is Maude.”

Maude gazed up at Lilith with lovely eyes, those ancient, compassionate kind that made Lilith want to believe the Hindoos’ theories of reincarnation. Her heart melted. “She is darling.” She ran her hand down the mare’s neck. “Maude, we shall be friends, I can see that already. Here, I have a gift for you to seal the friendship.” She unfolded her hand to reveal lumps of sugar she had taken from her breakfast. Maude gently lapped up the offering.

“Please don’t give her sugar,” George said. “My horses adhere to strict diets.”

“Don’t listen to him, Maude,” she whispered aloud in the mare’s ear. “He doesn’t understand females.”

“I know Maude isn’t much to look at. She is—”

“Don’t hurt her feelings! She is stunning.”

“—steady and intelligent. She often is stabled near my high-spirited stallion to calm him. As you see, I’ve had her saddled and bridled, but an accomplished horsewoman must learn to do these things herself.”

“I have no aspirations to be an accomplished horsewoman.”

“Your future husband shall desire a wife who rides.”

“What if my future husband desires that I tattoo his boyhood pet name Jon-Jon Tushykins on my bum, should I do it?”

“Of course,” he said in dead earnest. “You should obey your husband in all matters, horse, tattoos, and otherwise.”

Lilith had to stifle a giggle. After all, she was quite irate with him.

“Give me your crop,” he ordered. “You won’t be needing it.”

“I understand that manners are all the rage in those etiquette books you made me read. I remembered it prominently mentioned in The Lonely Suitor’s Guide.”

Her lips trembled, but she refused to give in to his infectious gentle laughter.

“Dearest lady, I humbly beseech you to bestow the honor of your riding crop upon me.”

“If I must,” she said airily, allowing him to withdraw it and set it on the stable ledge.

“There now.” He knelt and placed his opened palm on his knee.

“I prefer you in this groveling position,” she said.

“I know you do. Now I want you to place your foot in my hand. Yes, that’s good. Now put your hand on my shoulder like so. Hold on to me and I will lift you into the saddle. Here we go.” In an easy motion, he lifted her. She released his shoulder as she slid across the saddle, almost falling over the other side of the horse.

“George!” she cried, flailing.

He quickly caught her wrist and then secured an arm around her waist. “Hold on to me,” he said. “I won’t let you fall.”

The heat of his body and the security of his firm grip caused her eyes to water. She tried to blink the embarrassing tears away, but one escaped and slipped down her cheek.

“Lilith.” His voice shook. His hold on her tightened.

“Please say you didn’t mean those words last evening. They really hurt me.” The long, angry speech that she had composed during the night was now reduced to a few plaintive words.

“Forgive me,” he whispered. “I can’t imagine how it felt to be exiled from your family. I trivialized your pain and I’m sorry. I only want your happiness.” Poor Maude was so squat that George could draw Lilith close, letting his hand trail up and down her back. How could she hate and desire one man so fiercely? Why did she find the safekeeping she had sought in the man she had spent years running from? They silently held each other until the sound of stable hands conversing in another part of the stable drew them apart.

“Now carefully put your right limb around the pommel.” George’s voice was hoarse, laboring with emotion. He patted the hornlike things sticking up from the saddle.

She lifted her skirt, revealing the bottom of her pantalets, and lifted her leg, hooking it around the pommel. “Like this?”

“Lilith!” He glanced about, in case she might destroy some stableboy’s innocence. “Have you heard of modesty?” He chuckled and yanked down her skirts.

“Modesty?” She shook her head. “No, I’m afraid I don’t know that word.”

Still chuckling, he placed her feet in the stirrups. His hand wandered up her ankles. She enjoyed the pressure of his fingertips even through the leather of her boots.

“Now I’m going to give you the reins,” he said.

“The reins. I can go anywhere! You can’t stop me.”

“Maude will. She knows her master.”

At the sound of her name, Maude whinnied.

“She’s only pretending to agree with you,” explained Lilith. “That’s how we females work.”

“You mean there’s a method to female madness?” he quizzed her.

She gave him a playful swat. “I should never have relinquished my crop.”

“No, you should not have. Now hold the reins with the first three fingers.” He carefully tucked the reins accordingly. “And there you go.”

He patted Maude on her hindquarters and the horse began to walk.

“Look at us, Maude!” Lilith cried as they headed for the corral. “Aren’t we a clever pair?”

George was a patient teacher, if not a little too overprotective. Whenever Lilith began to speed up, he slowed her down, saying he didn’t want to fetch Lord Harrowsby’s physician that morning to see to her broken bones. She had to admit, as much as George carried on like a nervous mother hen, it was lovely to have someone care about her well-being and fuss over her.

After he was confident she could safely ride around the corral without his guiding hand, he had his own horse fetched. Studying him atop his stallion, Lilith felt no better than a fifteen-year-old in the heat of her first spoony crush. His powerful thighs straddled the steed. He sat high, his shoulders broad and strong.

Even Maude stepped a little lighter, no doubt feeling for that powerful stallion what Lilith felt for its rider.

“We are hopeless cases, Maude,” she said.

* * *

Lilith laughing in the sunshine. Lilith clowning with her horse. George realized she would never be an excellent horsewoman. She was more concerned with being Maude’s friend than mistress. George wished he could stretch out this moment for the rest of the day, him and Lilith with her eyes sparkling in the light.

“What have you done? What is this?” Charles entered the corral with Mr. Fitzgerald, Lady Cornelia, and Miss Pomfret in his wake. “What kind of mount have you given the fair Miss Dahlgren?” he asked George. “A dull stock horse?”

George watched anger tighten Lilith’s features. Then she quickly concealed the emotion behind a breezy laugh. “Lord Charles, don’t you dare insult my dear Maude. I adore her and if I adore her, of course you should, too.”

Lord Charles’s lips trembled with an unexpressed smile. How deftly Lilith turned him. For years, George had only received the direct heat of her vivid personality. At its most intense, she burned away any thought, any emotion that wasn’t her. But now, watching from outside as she focused her vivid energy at others, he saw how nimbly she moved. Her dance that he once thought chaotic actually responded with perfect precision to the undercurrents of a situation. How tired she must be, always to be dancing on her toes. He wondered who Lilith was in stillness. How could he capture her and keep her still? How did one stop the beating of the hummingbird’s wings?

“Lord Marylewick, do not think that I’m not vexed that you stole my opportunity to teach Miss Dahlgren.” Charles tossed back his head in a casual laugh, but George detected the lurking malice. “Now I shall have to undo all your work and teach her to gallop freely instead of in this safe circle. She cannot be contained. Come, my ladies, Mr. Fitzgerald, let us hope that we all have such fine horses as Miss Dahlgren’s.” Lord Charles winked at Lilith. “Maude is without equal.”

After the guests entered the stables, Lilith leaned down in her saddle. “Don’t listen to him,” Lilith told Maude, but her glance flickered to George. “Charles may be handsome and charming, but he’s an arse. We are not fooled.”

* * *

George, concerned for Lilith, guided the party at a plodding pace along the flat fields. Cornelia discussed her favorite flowers and Mr. Fitzgerald entertained Miss Pomfret by analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of his favorite cricket players. Meanwhile, Charles pestered Lilith with his usual inane conversation, brimming with lascivious undertones. George gripped his reins, his muscles rigid. Each ridiculous word Charles uttered chafed at George’s already raw nerves. Lilith bore Charles’s flirtation with a charming smile that George, now knowing her better, recognized as feigned. He wanted to snatch her away, put her atop his horse and ride away, both of them escaping this life of pain hidden behind smiles.

“Lord Marylewick, my horse is dying of boredom,” Lord Charles complained. “Let us burst forth in a wild gallop. Let Miss Dahlgren experience the exhilaration of a powerful beast beneath her.”

“Enough!” George thundered. He turned his horse. “That is entirely inappropriate. Apologize to Miss Dahlgren at once!”

“I can tell she is bored to flinders with this humdrum pace—”

“You don’t mean the pace,” George shot back.

Charles smirked like a filthy-minded adolescent. “What did I mean, Lord Marylewick? I would like to know so that I might apologize for it.”

It was Lilith who saved the moment. “This is my first real ride and I pride myself for not having fallen off, ridden into a branch, or knocked someone else from their horse.” The dangerous tone in her voice filled George with dread. “There is nothing Maude and I love more than experiencing powerful beasts. Why don’t all the gentlemen race across the field, and we shall see who is—I mean has—the the most powerful beast?”

“Miss Dahlgren, you are very naughty,” said Miss Pomfret. She and Cornelia broke into schoolgirl-like giggles.

“Lilith—Miss Dahlgren—I don’t think that is a good idea,” warned George.

It was too late. She had already planted the vile seed in Charles’s fertile mind.

“No, it is a smashing idea,” he countered. “Fitzgerald, are you as good on a horse as you are on the cricket field?”

Fitzgerald’s eyes had that glassy look of primal masculine competition. “Bloody hell, yes,” he said, forgetting his company.

The ladies, other than Lilith, blushed.

“I apologize, ladies, for Mr. Fitzgerald’s impolite language,” said George.

“Uh, yes, I apologize too,” muttered Fitzgerald. “I daresay, this horse ain’t near as fine as my own, but it’s the rider that matters.”

“Precisely,” said Lord Charles. “Are you coming, Lord Marylewick, or are you staying behind with the ladies?” Derision bled through his words.

“He’s going,” said Lilith.

“And you can’t disappoint a lady, Lord Marylewick,” said Charles. “It’s ungentlemanly.”

“Miss Pomfret shall make the call to start,” Lilith said.

“The things we do to impress the ladies,” Charles said as the men rode to the edge of the field.

They lined up their horses. The rivals’ faces were stony and tight.

George wanted to shake Lilith. Why did she encourage this little race? What did she want to prove? He leaned forward in his saddle, his nerves on a razor’s edge waiting for the call.

“Go!” shouted Miss Pomfret.

Then the only thing George could hear was the pounding of hooves on the grass. He stood in his stirrups, feeling the air stream over him. In his peripheral vision he could see Charles approaching. Rage, as black as the blood in his veins, boiled up from deep inside George. That goddamned cove would not beat him. He lowered his head until he was almost on the horse’s neck. His anger flowed through his muscles into his horse’s, combusting into speed and thunder as they sliced the air. Charles disappeared. All George saw before him now was grass and sky. For those seconds, he was free and powerful. He wanted to seize this sensation and put it into Lilith. Press his hardness deep into her softness until she cried out in ecstasy. Lilith. A mere glance back at her shattered the moment. Charles and Fitzgerald were at least six feet behind him. What would Disraeli say? George was destroying the Stamp Duty Extension Bill to show how big his cock was. He eased up.

* * *

“What!” Lilith exclaimed as she watched the others pull ahead of George. But he was going to win. He was ahead for the entire race. How did this happen? Lord Charles sailed across the path first, then Mr. Fitzgerald, followed by George. “No.” Her heart crumpled. George needed this win. He needed to show that he was the best man on all counts.

“Victory!” Lord Charles raised his fist and shouted to the sky. He bounded over to Lilith like a happy puppy expecting a reward. “Marylewick gave me quite a run. I didn’t expect it from him. But alas, I prevailed. It would be quite a blow if I lost to Lord Marylewick. I would be tormented in the clubs for weeks.”

She glanced at George. He wore the sheepish grin of a good loser.

He had lost on purpose!

“Congratulations,” she told Charles. “Your reputation is preserved. How simply horrible it would be to lose to Lord Marylewick.” She struggled to keep the bitterness out of her voice. She wanted to slap the congenial expression off George’s face. Why did you let the arse win? Don’t tell me it was because of your stupid bill?

“A horror, indeed,” agreed Lord Charles, so puffed up with victory he couldn’t conceive that it was handed to him. “What is the prize? I know, a kiss from a fair maiden as in the olden days of chivalry and armor.”

“I don’t think that’s appropriate,” said George.

“Of course you wouldn’t,” Lord Charles replied. “What do you say, Miss Dahlgren?”

The other girls giggled. Lilith wanted to suggest that perhaps they should kiss him if it was so amusing.

Charles didn’t wait for her reply but positioned his cheek for the coveted prize.

Yet another frog kiss, Lilith thought with a sigh. But as she leaned closer an odd reaction welled up inside her. He wasn’t George. How could she kiss a man who wasn’t George? Her body rebelled, unable to perform even a casual peck on the cheek. An awkward moment passed; she wasn’t sure what to do. Her savior came from an unlikely source. Maude decided to give Charles’s horse a good bite for getting too close. His horse reared up and then galloped several feet away.

“I’m sorry. It seems my chaperone didn’t approve.” Lilith gave Maude a rub of appreciation.

“Don’t worry, Miss Dahlgren,” said Charles, resuming control of his horse. “I will get my prize.”

* * *

All the way back to Tyburn, Lilith had to listen to Charles boast about his victory and Mr. Fitzgerald breaking apart the race second by second. Lilith had to clamp down on her rebellious, vitriolic tongue. By the time she reached the stables, she was a bundle of pent-up rage. She thanked Maude and whispered that she would sneak her some more sugar. One thing she had learned from a shifting life was never to take a friend for granted, even if she were a horse.

In her chamber, she yanked herself out of her hideous riding habit, washed her face and hands, and was struggling with the buttons at the back of her fresh gown before a servant arrived to help her. Then she marched to George’s study and waited for him, pacing about the room.

She assailed George when he entered, wearing a fresh gray coat and trousers and a blue waistcoat.

“You lost on purpose,” she cried.

He jerked his head, surprised to find her there, and quickly shut the door.

“Perhaps you should not have forced me to race.”

“I saw how you flew on that horse. You were magnificent. Why did you let that…that…arrogant, assuming arse of a man win? Why do you always let him win?”

“Because I need that arrogant and assuming arse’s vote.”

“To Hades with that blooming tax. Let some other Tory support it and kiss Lord Charles’s backside. You’ve done enough.”

He rubbed his forehead and strode past her to his desk. “I know you have a difficult time understanding the concepts of duty—”

“Stop being patronizing.” She followed him, talking to his back. “It’s time for grown-up boys like Lord Charles to do their share. He thinks everyone is here for his amusement. Meanwhile, you’ve done your duty over and over. You’ve done it so much, sacrificed so much, that you don’t even know who you are outside of your responsibilities.”

“I disagree.” He shifted a pile of letters, picking up the top one. “I know very much who I am. I’m the Marquess of Marylewick.”

“No, you are George, the gentle, profound, and soulful artist.”

“Please don’t start with that nonsense again. Enough.”

She yanked the missive from his hand. “Do you know what Lord Charles told me? That it’s a joke how the prime minister leads you about like a dog on a leash. It makes great fodder for Punch magazine.”

That caught his attention. The muscles worked at the back of his jaw. “I would seriously question any account you get from Lord Charles. Please hand me the letter. It’s from my solicitor.”

She offered it, but caught his hand when he reached for it. She caressed his knuckles with her thumb. “Did you draw today?” she asked softly. “Let your fancy wander?”

“Lilith, please stop.” Yet he made no move to extract his hand.

She edged closer and pressed his hand to her chest, savoring the sensation of his touch. “Did you think about drawing? Did some image enrapture your imagination?”

“You’re not talking sense,” he muttered. “Now, I have some correspondence to return before luncheon and then we have croquet on the lawn.”

“It’s all so carefully planned. No little cracks in your day. No time to question ourselves. It’s all work, responsibility, and croquet.”

“Yes, every day,” he quipped. “Work, responsibility, and croquet.”

She transferred a stack of letters to the opposite corner of the desk. “Oh, look what I’ve done! It’s out of place now. What shall we do? Our lives may shatter.”

“Please put that back. It’s all sorted.”

She picked up a letter and placed it atop another pile. “I’ve ruined everything. It’s all chaos. How will we ever find anything? It’s all so hopeless…”

“This is not a game.” He replaced the letter in its proper place. “Stop.”

She seized the stack. When he tried to grab it from her hands, the letters scattered onto the floor. “No!” she cried in earnest. “I didn’t mean for that to happen. Truly. I…” She stopped, tilted her head, and stared at a particular letter on the floor—the one with the nude sketch on it.

“Dammit!” He reached for it, but she was faster. She snatched the missive and rushed to the other side of the room by the window. She drew back a curtain, letting a shaft of sunlight penetrate the room.

“Please,” he whispered, his arm extended, reaching for her. “Please, don’t look at that.”

“You have been drawing, after all,” she said slowly, studying the face and eyes of a woman wanting to be seduced, to have her body ravished with pleasure. Lilith knew those eyes. They stared back from her mirror every day. Her head turned dizzy. “Is this…is this me?”

He sank into a chair and slicked his hand down his face.

“Oh God!” She released the letter and fled.

* * *

George rubbed his aching temples. He should go to her, but what would he say? I’m sorry but I dream all day about how to capture you in stillness and in motion. I want to know every aspect of you. But I can’t have you. You must marry another.

Never in any relationship in his life had the words “I’m sorry” been uttered so many times. He would give her a little time to calm down and then he would approach her. He carefully picked up the offending letter and shoved it in his desk. Then he retrieved the scattered correspondence, placed it back into its proper piles, and returned to his work, because he didn’t know what else to do. However, as he read the missives from his steward and man of business, her horrified face bled through the lines. What had he done? As he opened the drawer again and studied the drawing, shame washed over him. But damnation, she had fondled him and allowed him to caress her breasts. She had to have some inkling of his desire.

That didn’t matter. He hadn’t behaved as an honorable gentleman, and he had abused his position as her trustee. Unless he intended to marry Lilith, he shouldn’t have allowed such intimacies between them, much less sketched her nude likeness. He would apologize and refrain from touching her in an improper manner again. He picked up her sketch, crossed to the grate, and tossed it on the burning coals. As the paper caught fire, he desired to yank it back, but forced himself to keep it over the flame. It must burn away.

* * *

Lilith sent word that she suffered a headache and preferred to stay in her chamber for luncheon. George couldn’t very well barge into her room and force his apology upon her. So he remained in agony, unable to talk to her, to understand her feelings, to beg her forgiveness. While he concealed his disappointment at her absence, Charles made public his displeasure, uttering such inane statements as “My soul aches without Miss Dahlgren” and “All is emptiness.”

Luckily for Charles’s aching soul, Lilith appeared for croquet in the afternoon and stayed close to Penelope. Charles circled her like a wolf, keeping George and the other men away. Then she disappeared again.

That evening Charles cornered George outside the dining room as everyone waited to enter. “May I request a few moments of your time tomorrow, my good man?” he said.

Dread churned in George’s gut. “Concerning?”

“Concerning a certain…” Charles faltered and then muttered, “Dear God.”

All the conversation in the room dropped to a hush. George didn’t need to look up to know she was near. Her presence charged the air. When he finally raised his eyes to see, his cock jolted. She wore a garnet-colored dress, cut low to display her creamy shoulders and generous bosom. Her hair was piled high, leaving her neck bare but for one teasing tendril that wound down her neck and rested on her left breast. She gazed about the room from under her lashes, her eyes glittered like a stalking feline.

He wasn’t the only one feeling her powerful magnetism. Every man in the room was caught in its draw. Lilith was in heat.

Her gaze locked onto George and her mouth opened just enough for him to see the tip of her red, wet tongue.

“She’s mine,” murmured Charles. He pushed through the crowd to claim her, but not before George received another powerful flash of her dark eyes, sending a scorching rush of heat to his sex.

At dinner, his mother tried to launch into her tired “ladies in my day” conversation when Lilith cut her off and directly asked the Duke of Cliven, the most powerful man at the table, to tell her about the grand tour of his youth. She laughed at his tales, gently encouraging others to share their travel stories. Now that he knew more of her agile mind, George watched her work in awe. She deftly controlled the conversational current by encouraging everyone to talk. She added little except to smile and praise the words of others, helping them to relax and enjoy themselves. It was masterful diplomatic maneuvering that no book of etiquette could teach.

She turned her head and caught him watching. She hiked the edge of her lip and subtly glanced down. He followed her line of vision to see her spoon atop her knife. Meet me later.

However, after the men had hurriedly finished their port, they returned to the drawing room for an evening of cards only to find Lilith missing.

“Such a shame,” Lady Marylewick said. “She had another one of those headaches that have been plaguing her. Poor thing. We shall miss her.”