Chapter 25

Andrew stared down at his pile of counters. Although…could a person really call three counters a pile ?

"This is fun," Stacia chirped as she scraped all her winnings toward her.

They had divided up a bag of cobnuts from the food trunk. She now possessed all of them except three.

"I don't believe that you've never played this before," Andrew said, pulling the nutcracker out of the trunk and putting one of his counters out of its misery. He offered her the nut—which she took with a triumphant grin—before cracking the second one and tossing it into his mouth.

"Do you play cards a great deal?" she asked.

He smirked at her not so gentle jibe as he chewed and stared, amused when her cheeks darkened under his silent scrutiny.

"I wish you would not look at me in that odious way," she finally blurted.

"What way is that?" he asked, cracking his last nut.

She waved aside the proffered nutmeat. "You know how," she accused, and then gave him a demonstration of what she meant.

Andrew laughed at the exaggeratedly villainous face she pulled. "My, that is odious."

She scowled, or tried to, but the smile tugging at her lips made it difficult.

Stacia sighed. "She is not going to release us today, is she?"

Andrew glanced at his watch and saw that it was past noon. "I doubt it."

"What if—what if nobody comes?" she asked, a look of genuine fear taking possession of her features. "What if nobody knows? What if are left here to starve? To die—"

Andrew leaned over and took her hand. "Somebody will come."

"How do you know that?"

"Because Kathryn might be reckless, but she isn't homicidal."

"What if something happens to her and she can't—"

"I can get us out, Stacia."

She blinked. "You—you can? You mean you know where there is a latch?"

"No. I mean I can use what little we have"—he gestured to the heavy fire tools hanging from their cast-iron rack— "and hack the door open. You needn't worry—I will not allow you to perish here."

"So why haven't you opened it?"

Andrew smiled, even though he knew it was inappropriate—not to mention probably the same smug expression she had just called odious. "I have a few reasons. First, because it will cause a great deal of destruction and racket. Not to mention that I am not looking forward to wrecking Needham's pride and joy. Second, we've already been in here a day so it's not as if we can be in any more trouble if we wait. Which leads me to the most important reason"—he gently squeezed her hand— "I am in no hurry because I am enjoying myself far more in here with you than I would be out there with everyone else."

***

Stacia could not have been more surprised if he had just declared his undying love for her.

Well, that wasn't quite true, she amended, but she was flabbergasted all the same.

"You are?" she could not resist saying.

"Yes, Stacia. I am."

Why did her staid name sound so sensual on his tongue?

Because he could make the word dishrag sound alluring.

"Why is it so hard to accept that I am enjoying myself here with you?" he asked.

"Because…"

"Ah, yes. Your favorite reason: because."

Irked by his teasing, she said, " Because you have never even noticed me before. Why are you doing so now? Is it—is it just because I am convenient?" Stacia immediately wished she could take her questions back.

He inhaled deeply, and a new expression flitted across his gorgeous features: indecision.

Lord Andrew Shelton was many things—arrogant, insouciant, flirtatious, cavalier, dismissive, charming, amusing, mocking—but Stacia had never seen anything less than absolute assurance on his face.

His hand, which was still holding hers, began to slide away, but Stacia held on.

Both his eyebrows raised at her brazen action, but he did not pull away. Instead, his lips, which she now knew were soft and outrageously skilled, curled up at the corners.

" Hmmm , I don't know…" he drawled, his tone once again teasing. "You want answers for free? I am tempted to demand we play another round of Questions or Com—"

"You asked me yesterday what I did that made my aunt and cousin angry with me. It was because I rejected an offer of marriage. That is why they rejected me. They said I had made my own bed, and that I could sleep in it."

Stacia was pitifully grateful when he did not look particularly surprised, as if the thought of a man offering to marry her was not so outside the realm of possibility.

"Who was it?" he asked, no longer teasing.

She shrugged and pulled her hand away, disappointed when he let her go. "What difference does that make?"

"I need to know who I have to keep my eye on when I take you to London."

She snorted. "I never said I would marry you," she reminded him. "Furthermore, when and if I marry, I would not be the sort of woman to engage in dalliances."

Rather than look offended at her rejection, he gave her a boyish grin. "Tell me who it is, anyhow. It will stop me from eyeing every man with suspicion."

"You are being absurd, my lord. Besides, if anyone had a reason to eye everyone with suspicion it would be your w-wife." Stacia wanted to kick herself for stumbling over the word.

"Oh?" he said, wearing an innocent expression he had no right to, she was sure. "What do you mean?"

"You know what I mean. I daresay the ballrooms of the ton are littered with your—your—"

"Are you trying to say the word lovers ?"

"You know exactly what I mean," she snapped.

"You are adorable when you scowl." He pulled a face—which she assumed was supposed to be her—and Stacia couldn't help laughing. "There," he said. "That is better. Now, be a good girl and tell me who you rejected."

"I don't see why I should."

"Because I am tenacious."

She could believe it. Well, what difference did it make if he knew? "The Earl of Townshend."

His eyes went vague for a moment before they widened. "Not the one who breathes through—"

"He has to breathe through his mouth because he has terrible allergies," Stacia said icily.

"Ah."

Stacia snatched a cobnut off the table. If he laughed, she would throw it at him.

But instead of laughing he said, "The Earls of Townshend are wealthy—unless this latest one has managed to fritter it all away."

"No, he does not gamble. Or place wagers of any sort."

"He sounds boring."

He was, but Stacia was hardly going to admit that. "You find virtue boring, do you?"

"O-ho! He is virtuous, is he? And yes , to answer your question. Virtue is boring." One of his eyebrows lifted and his nostrils flared slightly. "At least most of the time." He swept her person with a boldly appreciative gaze that made her skin prickle.

Before she could stop herself, she threw the cobnut.

He slapped a hand over one eye and moaned. "Good Lord! I think you put my eye out!"

"I didn't mean to actually hit you!' Stacia knocked into the table in her haste to get to him, sending cobnuts flying. "Here, let me take a look." She bent low in front of him. "Show me, my lor—"

Stacia squeaked when her feet left the ground, and she suddenly found herself cradled tightly in his arms.

He grinned down at her— both eyes sparkling and undamaged.

Stacia glared up at him. "You liar ! That was not fair."

"No, it wasn't," he agreed. She squirmed, but his arms locked around her more tightly. "Oh no you don't. You are a prisoner and here at my leisure." His gaze dropped to her mouth. "The cost of freedom is a kiss."

She thrashed—or tried to—but his hold, as gentle as it was, was unbreakable. "Do you often have to resort to threats for kisses?"

"Never, and it has quite unmanned me. You see the lengths to which I'm willing to go for you, Stacia?"

She lowered her eyelids at his words, as if she could hide her greedy desire from him. "One kiss and you will release me?"

"Yes. But it must be a real one. No grandmotherly pecks."

Who was she trying to fool? They both knew she wanted to kiss him.

He shifted his hold, until their lips were barely an inch apart. Stacia, seized by bold lunacy, flicked his lower lip with the tip of her tongue, as he had done to her.

He groaned and his arms tightened. "More."

Stacia stared in wonder as his pupils swelled until the black almost swallowed the blazing blue. His lips parted when she pressed her mouth to his and she allowed herself to taste him, tentative at first, but bolder as he purred beneath her.

Yesterday the thought of putting her tongue into another person's mouth would have revolted her. Now, Stacia could not get enough, plundering him as aggressively as Sir Francis Drake invading Cadiz.

By the time they pulled apart, they were both breathing hard. His lips were slick and red, his expression unsmiling and sensual. "I am glad you did not accept Townshend, Stacia. You would have been wasted on him." He lightly caressed her jaw, his gaze flickering across her face and lingering on her mouth before returning to her eyes.

And then he set her upright, until her bottom rested on one thigh, and his arms fell away.

For one mad moment she considered crawling up his chest the way she'd seen Lord Bellamy's red squirrel climb up Lucy's arm to nestle against her neck.

Fortunately, reason intervened before she could make an utter fool of herself and she forced herself to stand and walk on wobbly legs back to her own seat, sending cobnuts skittering across the attic floor as she went.

Stacia told herself that she deserved a medal for getting up and walking away from him.

But all she got for her self-control was an almost suffocating wave of yearning when she sat down across from him, recalling how much lovelier the view of his face had been from inches rather than feet.

She was actually debating throwing pride to the wind and launching herself across the table and demanding some forfeits of her own, when he said, "I owe you honesty in return."

Stacia frowned at his grim tone.

"I told you that my older cousin, Nicholas, died while Chatham and I were in the army?"

She nodded.

"Nicholas was betrothed to a woman whose father had been a great friend of the late duke. The two men had arranged the marriage when Mariah was in her cradle and Nick just a lad. When Nick died, they decided to pass Mariah along to Sylvester." He gave a bitter laugh. "Men who wouldn't loan out their horse had no problem trading away their children." His lips twisted into an unhappy smile. "Chatham sold his commission and returned to England. You've seen Chatham's scar—it's…Well, it is savage even now, but eleven years ago, when it was fresh, it was—in all honesty—terrifying. Not just what it did to his face, but the pain he must have suffered—" Shelton broke off as he engaged in some sort of internal struggle.

After a few moments, he continued. "I came home on leave to attend my cousin's wedding." He sighed. "I will not beat about the bush. Mariah and I fell in love. I'd met her before, of course, but I'd been a boy when I went off to war and she was my age, so she'd been a girl." He smiled, his gaze fond but vague. "The last time I saw her before going away we bickered like siblings when her parents brought her to spend Christmas at Chatham. She followed Sylvester and me around like a shadow, all coltish legs and scraped knees and wild beauty. But a child." He paused, his eyes moving from Stacia to something over her shoulder—perhaps the past—as he thought. "And suddenly, when I returned, she was a woman. The most beautiful, vibrant, desirable woman I had ever seen."

Stacia was grateful he was not looking at her at that moment because she was incapable of hiding her pain and jealousy at his words. Shame at experiencing such an unpleasant emotion about a dead woman did not lessen the feeling. Especially because she now knew the truth: the Duke of Chatham's former wife might be dead, but Andrew Derrick was still deeply in love with her.

***

Andrew had regretted letting Stacia go after she had paid her forfeit. He had immediately missed her soft warm body which somehow managed to arouse and yet comfort him at the same time.

But now that he was getting to the ugly heart of his confession—for that is what it was—he was relieved that he did not have to face her shrewd gaze from mere inches away, no matter how much comfort he might have derived from holding her.

And no matter how willingly she had wanted to give herself to him.

Because Stacia's desire for him had been painfully clear. Andrew could have taken her then and there and she would have come to him most willingly. But she was a woman who could not even kiss without guilt. She would hate herself after they'd laid together.

And she would hate him, too.

No, it was better to tell her the truth about the man she thought she wanted so badly.

The revolting, sordid truth.

Andrew had never talked about that time of his life with anyone, not even during these past months while he'd lived with Sylvester. He and his cousin had talked for hours—about the war, about their experiences and the aftermath—but they had wisely avoided the subject of Mariah, choosing to focus on their future friendship rather than their past enmity.

Recalling the details of the ancient, painful tale brought Mariah back in ways he'd never expected. For years all he had felt was an aching sense of loss that she wasn't beside him, like the stories he'd heard men tell when they had lost a limb.

Only now that he was forcing himself to articulate the details of that brief time did he realize the appalling truth: he could barely remember her.

Not what her laugh sounded like.

Not her voice when she told him she loved him.

Not how it had felt when he'd been inside her.

And, worst of all, he could not even recall her face.

When had he forgotten those things? How could he forget?

He willed himself to remember so hard that beads of sweat broke out on his brow.

But when he tried to imagine Mariah, he saw a different face, heard a different laugh, and saw brown eyes, instead of blue.

Andrew looked up to find Stacia waiting, patient but pensive.

"We fell in love." He held her gaze, forcing himself to meet the judgment in her eyes.

But there was none.

"You aren't disgusted with me for falling in love with my best friend's—no, my brother 's—betrothed?"

"It is not my place to—"

"I want to know your thoughts."

Her throat flexed as she swallowed. "I am not sure it is possible to talk oneself out of love, no matter how hopeless or wrong or destructive the emotion might prove to be."

Andrew was usually not the most of observant of men, but he was arrested by the intense pain in her eyes. A shocking insight followed immediately on the heels of that observation. Stacia Martin had been in love. Deeply in love. And, if her expression was anything to go by, heartbreakingly.

She could not mean her mouth-breathing earl, could she? That made no sense. If she loved Townshend, then why would she have refused him?

No. There was someone else. Somebody ineligible? Perhaps even someone who had died?

"You speak from experience," he said. It was not a question, and she did not respond.

Andrew burned to know, but her eyes hadn't just shuttered, there might as well have been stone walls and a deep moat around her.

She had not been in love. She was protecting herself because she was still in love.

Disappointment stabbed him—startlingly sharp. How could he, of all people, marry a woman who loved somebody else?

"Finish your story," she said, so cool and distant that Andrew wondered if he had imagined her brief, raw-eyed desperation.

"Mariah begged her father to let her out of the betrothal, but he was adamant. So I went to him." He grimaced at the memory. "That…did not go well. He spoke to Chatham, who was slowly taking up his duties but hardly up to his pre-injury strength, and Chatham came to me. I had no pride; I begged him. He insisted the marriage was a matter of honor to his father and to Mariah's family. But that was not all—or even most—of the reason. You see," he said, his lips twisting at the memory, "Chatham was in love with her as well. It was inconceivable to him that Mariah might prefer me. He was the duke, and I was the younger cousin with nothing but a rundown northern estate, beholden to him for my money and his ward in the matter of my inheritance. I had always idolized him—worshipped everything about him—and neither of us could accommodate the sudden change in our positions. That I could demand something that was supposed to be his ." He gave an unhappy laugh. "When he did not capitulate, Mariah went to him and begged him to release her. Still, he would not relent. Rather than give in to our pleading—and unbeknownst to Mariah and me—he changed the wedding plans. Instead of a grand ceremony in St. George's, he acquired a special license, and they married three days after we had confronted him with the truth."

Andrew stood and poked at the fire. He stared at the sparks for a long moment, willing his blasted memory to give him even a glimpse of Mariah's face.

He saw…nothing.

Andrew slammed the poker onto the hook and spun to face her. "One more day and we would have been on our way to the Scottish border."

An expression of unease had settled on her face.

Andrew was glad. He didn't want what came next to be an utter shock to her.

"Chatham believed that was the end of it. But I made sure that it was merely the beginning of my revenge. You see, Mariah didn't just hate him, she feared him."

Her eyes widened. "He was cruel to her?"

"Sylvester never lifted a hand to her. He is not a violent man. It was something else she feared." Andrew shoved a hand through his hair and stared at the ceiling. Just how did a man say such things to an innocent—a virgin?

You never had any trouble telling them to Mariah.

He dropped his hand and forced himself to meet her gaze. "I told Mariah that Sylvester had unnatural appetites in the bedchamber."

Her lips parted in shock.

"She went to him filled with terror and loathing. Not only for that, but—and I regret having to admit this—Mariah could not see past Chatham's scar. I could have helped her overcome her revulsion at his appearance. But rather than tell her about my cousin's honor and decency, I encouraged her disgust. She cried when Chatham came to her on their wedding night and he vowed not to touch her until she welcomed him into her. Instead, she came to my bed. Night after night."

Andrew stared at her, waiting for the loathing he expected.

But it never came. Instead, he saw a mingling of sadness and pity.

Rather than feel gratitude, he was even more determined to make her see what a revolting cad and scoundrel he really was. "But that is not all. Mariah was already with child on her wedding day. We were careless and it was inevitable we were caught. Rather than show remorse, we taunted him with the fact that Mariah had already been pregnant when they married." He loosened his clenched jaws. "So, in that regard, Mariah and I had won. Or so we believed. My cousin banished me that very night. I did not go willingly. Sylvester had me dragged to his coach while Mariah watched, sobbing. And that was the last I saw of her. She died in childbed seven months later. I hated him for keeping me from her and for more than eleven years I made that hatred the center of my life."

Andrew felt exhausted, but also relieved that somebody other than Chatham knew of his infamy. He forced himself to meet her gaze. "That is how I carried on until this past summer, when I almost destroyed Lady Shaftsbury's life in pursuit of my revenge." He lifted his hands. "And there you have it."

She eyed him warily. "Your cousin has forgiven you?"

"Yes," he said shortly. "As little as I deserve it."

"And you have forgiven him?"

Andrew lifted an eyebrow. "You astonish me, Miss Martin. Do you think he has done something unforgiveable? She was his legal wife, after all."

"Forgiveness isn't about right and wrong, my lord. It is something you give regardless of right and wrong."

Had he forgiven Chatham? He thought so, at least mostly. Although he did on occasion experience a twinge of unarticulated resentment, like a pebble in one's boot.

"For the most part," he said when he saw she was waiting.

"And what about you, my lord?"

"Me?"

"Have you forgiven yourself?"

He opened his mouth to deny he felt any guilt, but that would be a lie.

Mariah had been pregnant with his child. And while she might have died from her pregnancy, regardless of the father, there was no denying that months of struggle and strife had left her fragile and weakened even before he had been banished. What had her life been like, alone with Chatham? She would have suffered horribly; he knew that instinctively. Not that his cousin would have been cruel to her, but she would have missed Andrew just as much—nay, more probably—than he'd missed her. After all, Andrew had had the War to keep him busy. What had Mariah had except her marriage to a man she hated?

If Andrew had stepped aside—if he had not poisoned her mind against his cousin—would Mariah have, in time, looked past his scars to see the man beneath?

You know she would have. She was not a cruel woman. Not until you made her that way.

Andrew met Miss Martin's shrewd, not unsympathetic gaze, and realized she was right. He had blamed himself.

And he still did.