The silence that crashed down was so deep that it extended to the center of the earth. Even the soft creak of the carriage and the clop of the horses’ hooves faded to nothing.
Campion must be going mad. This couldn’t be happening. Feeling suddenly awkward, she lowered her hands and twisted them in her lap. From the first, she’d known that she could never be his wife. His exalted name demanded a bride of aristocratic lineage and powerful connections.
She waited for him to say more. To admit that he was joking or teasing. Or perhaps seeking childish revenge for the afternoon’s desertion.
He didn’t speak. There was only the steady glow of his eyes fixed upon her, although in the darkness he couldn’t see any more than she could.
Eventually she forced herself to respond. “What did you say?”
“You heard me.”
“I heard what you said.” She was shivering, despite the warmth of his body so near to hers. “But it makes no sense.”
His grip on her shoulders softened to a caress. “Campion, you must know I want to marry you.”
She frowned. “Why on earth would I know that?”
His sigh this time was long-suffering. “I told you I loved you.”
“Even in Croxley, there are disreputable young men with wild oats to sow. When a fellow wants to tumble a woman, he tells her that he loves her.” Her tone was dull. “It’s part of the game.”
“What a cynic you are, my darling,” he said with a huff of derisive amusement. “And while some men might do that, I don’t.”
“Why should I think you any different from every other rake in London?”
“Come, Campion, I don’t believe you mean that. You know I’m different. If you didn’t know I’m different, you’d never have given yourself to me.” His voice developed an edge. “Even if you imagined I was trifling with you at first, you must know by now that you have my heart. If you don’t, then for a clever woman, you haven’t been very clever. I’m not a fickle man, nor do I take what we did lightly. I’m utterly in love with you. I’ve hardly kept it a secret.”
“I was trying so hard not to lose my head,” she said unsteadily. His proposal echoed through her mind like a thousand clashing cymbals. Had he really asked her to marry him? To the invisible stars, she’d whispered a wish for Lachlan to love her forever. Could they have granted her request?
“And in the process, you tortured me with endless uncertainty. You’ve never told me you loved me.”
His admission shocked her. As did the pain lurking beneath his words. It suddenly struck her that she’d been so busy protecting herself in their affair that she hadn’t given his feelings much consideration. A pang of guilt made her squirm uneasily.
“I didn’t want you to feel sorry for me,” she said, then realized how she betrayed herself. She rushed on to stop him claiming victory before she was ready to concede defeat. “You haven’t courted me. Instead you took me to bed. That’s not how a gentleman expresses honorable intentions.”
“I knew the moment I saw you in that ridiculous dress at the masquerade that you were the girl for me. But your dragon of an aunt would have exiled you back to Sussex if I’d shown even a glimmer of interest in you over your cousin.” His voice lowered and she heard an unfamiliar hint of discomfort. “My intentions were honorable despite my dishonorable behavior. I thought you understood that. I’m not a liar and I’ve never lied to you. No man of integrity would ruin a defenseless girl purely for his own selfish pleasure.”
With a faint rustle, he shifted on his seat, as if physically rejecting the idea that he would compromise her without thought for her welfare.
“I didn’t understand,” she said dully, still twining her hands together in silent distress. “How could I?”
He growled low in his throat, the sound vibrating with self-disgust. “I should have spent more time talking to you and less time touching you. But I want you so much. Surely, whatever else you believed about my intentions, you knew how desperately I desired you.”
“Oh, yes,” she said, unable to hide her bitterness. “You were endlessly seductive.”
“A man can woo with seduction.”
“Not in respectable society,” she said grimly. She remained wary of his confessions, sweet as they were to hear. He dangled the promise of heaven so close, yet still might tear it away. All day she’d been battered by circumstances, pitched from anguish to joy and back to anguish again. She couldn’t trust that she’d reached safe harbor at last. “The Earl of Ravenglass can’t marry the woman who’s been his mistress for six weeks.”
“Watch me.”
She heard the same determination that had carried his mother to success against Aunt Ida. Campion had a feeling that she fought a losing battle here. Still she wasn’t quite ready to surrender.
His breath escaped in a frustrated hiss. “Sweetheart, none of this matters a tinker’s damn. Society. Manners. Propriety. What matters is that I love you. Do you love me?”
Her tone turned tart. “Clearly you think I do.”
His actions had bordered on arrogance and she couldn’t help but feel that he’d played with her from the start. Was he playing with her now? She’d been so wretched. She couldn’t yet allow herself to believe that a happy ending beckoned.
“I’ve always hoped that you gave yourself to me because you love me,” he said with uncharacteristic humility. “Please tell me that’s so. You’re not a girl to yield to a man unless your heart is involved.”
How tragically true that was. But still she didn’t relent. Not quite.
He must have sensed her continuing resistance, because humility turned to an urgency unlike anything he’d revealed before. “My love, please don’t toy with me.” He caught her hands. “I swear I meant to propose this afternoon. I was a blockhead not to speak immediately. But I defy any man not to let nature take its course when the woman he loves greets him naked. I planned to tell you everything, then take you straight to my mother. You never have to go back to those witches. Say the word and you’ll be safe forever.”
He lifted her hands to his lips. The desperation in his kisses betrayed his anxiety. He was shaking.
“And that word is ‘yes’ to your proposal?” She broke his hold, wondering why she hesitated.
But she’d been too easily won when she’d agreed to be his mistress. She wanted him to feel that he’d needed to strive to gain her as a wife.
He was so used to having the advantage. But not tonight. Tonight, dressed in silks and wearing diamonds, she felt powerful and worth the winning. She wanted him to acknowledge that.
He straightened and caught her hands again, despite her fluttering attempts to evade him. He brought them down between them. “I’d crawl over broken glass to make you my bride, but no, there are no conditions on my offer of help.”
She licked her lips and raised the subject that had troubled her since this afternoon. Troubled, haunted and gladdened her, whatever dilemma it presented. “I could be carrying your child.”
His clasp tightened almost to bruising. She heard his uneven breathing through the darkness. “I was careless this afternoon. I couldn’t hold back. You touch me and I go insane. I’m so sorry, my love. But I’d hoped we’d be married soon and a child would be a welcome arrival.”
“Did you think to force my hand?”
Even with a pregnancy threatening destitution and disgrace, she couldn’t relinquish herself to him. Not yet. Not until she knew that he’d never take her for granted.
For ten years, nobody had valued her. Lachlan said he loved her. He wanted her as his bride. But she needed to be certain that he was willing to fight to win her.
“No!” His trembling tension told her that if he’d been sure of her when she’d stepped into the carriage, he was sure of her no more. “No. You’re free to choose your own way. If you won’t marry me, we’ll work something out. You’ll never suffer because of anything I’ve done.”
“I could remain your mistress,” she s
aid bleakly.
“To hell with that!” She winced at the anger in his tone, even as she rejoiced that he rejected her reluctant suggestion. “You deserve better than that. We both know it.”
During the last quarter hour, she’d discovered more about his feelings than in all their passionate afternoons. Something stirred inside her. It felt remarkably like hope. “So it’s marriage or never having you in my bed again?”
“This breaks my heart to say so, but yes.” He lifted her hands and kissed the knuckles, his mouth hot and passionate. “Do you want me to court you, sweetheart? I’ll court you as no woman in history has been courted. I’ll do anything to make you my wife. I can’t believe that you reject me absolutely. You must like me a little.”
This was a long step down from his earlier conviction about her feelings. He sounded afraid and unsure and not at all like the man who had swept her away on a raging tide of desire.
Maybe it was time she stopped tormenting him.
Her lips curved into a smug smile. She was glad he couldn’t see her. “A little.”
Something in her tone must have alerted him. The air pulsed with new awareness. “A little?”
She paused. “A lot.”
He groaned and swept her up against him, peppering kisses across her face as if he wanted to devour her whole. Then his lips settled upon hers. The kiss conveyed a profundity of feeling that she’d never experienced before, even at the height of rapture. The last wisps of uncertainty and mistrust vanished.
Lachlan lifted his head. “Blast this darkness. I can’t see your eyes. Your eyes tell me so much. Do you love me, Campion?”
Torturing him had been enjoyable to a point, but this moment was too important for games. She stretched to place a clumsy kiss on the hard line of his chin. “Yes, I do love you, Lachlan Macmurrie.”
“And will you marry me?” His voice sounded raw.
“I think I’d better,” she said, then lost all impulse to make light of her answer when he ravished her mouth again. More of those long, soul-searching kisses that turned her bones to warm honey.
Eventually she surfaced for air and realized that they still trundled through London. She sat on Lachlan’s lap. Under the velvet cape, his hand cupped her breast. “Aren’t we going to the ball?”
“Wouldn’t you rather stay here?” The happiness in his voice made her heart clench with poignant adoration. “We’ve never made love in a carriage. Although you teased me so cruelly on those occasions, I came damn near to losing control.”
She didn’t smile. Her heart was so crammed with love that she felt embarrassingly close to tears. Her earlier despair had melted to a joy that should light the whole world, let alone this dark interior. “Do you know what I’ve always wanted to do with you?”
She sensed his immediate interest. He knew that she was about to say something significant. He always did. “Will I be shocked, my love?”
She smiled into his shirt front, breathing in his delicious scent. Clean skin and warm male. “I think so.”
“Then for God’s sake, don’t keep me in suspense.”
Gently she drew his head down and whispered her most secret wish into his ear.
The tall gray house in Grosvenor Square was festooned with bright greenery and scarlet banners for Christmas. In the thickening snow, the rich colors glowed against torch-lit white.
A street away from Lady Winterson’s, Campion and Lachlan had reunited with Lady Ravenglass. Now a properly chaperoned Miss Parnell arrived at the ball in the earl’s fashionable town carriage. She also arrived with her dress straight and her hair comme il faut. After Lachlan’s passionate embraces, Lise needed to revisit her earlier work on Campion’s appearance.
Lines of people slowly moved along a red carpet toward the open door and the welcoming blaze of light. Chatter and lilting music flooded from the house. A tall gray-haired man with a youthful face and an enigmatic expression supervised the procession.
“Good evening, Lady Ravenglass,” he said with a bow deeper than the one he’d bestowed upon the preceding couple. “Always a pleasure to welcome you.”
“And you, Philbert,” the countess responded with a fond smile. “It’s a crush again, I see.”
The man didn’t smile, but his manner conveyed vast respect. “I often wonder how Lady Winterson squeezes everyone in, my lady. But every year she does.”
“A Christmas miracle,” the countess said with a bell-like laugh.
“We always have at least one each year, my lady,” the man, who Campion now identified as a senior servant, said. He glanced past Lady Ravenglass to where, in defiance of convention, Lachlan held Campion’s hand. “My lord. And the charming Campion Parnell. It’s a privilege to welcome you to 3 Grosvenor Square, Miss Parnell.”
Campion had undergone so many shocks in the last few hours that she hardly registered that this distinguished stranger recognized her. She smiled. It was difficult not to smile when all one’s hopes came to fruition. “Thank you.”
People pressed behind them and Campion and the Macmurries stepped into the hall. When a footman took Campion’s cape, she turned to find Lachlan staring at her as if he’d never seen a woman before. And the sight captivated him into awed silence.
If she hadn’t believed he’d loved her before, his thunderstruck expression as he beheld her in her glorious blue gown would have convinced her.
“I’m the luckiest devil alive,” he muttered, his eyes dazed as if he couldn’t comprehend the extent of his good fortune.
In that magical moment, Campion Parnell, poor, neglected, unloved, felt herself blossom into a woman capable of commanding nations with the merest hint of a smile. She drew herself up to her full height and extended her hand toward him. “I believe Lady Winterson has achieved another Christmas miracle in us, my lord.”
“My darling, I—”
She’d never seen him at a loss for words. That perilous lump of emotion lodged in her throat again, even as she told herself that she couldn’t cry here in public on the happiest night of her life.
When Lachlan drew Campion aside, he attracted even more curious stares than he had arriving hand in hand with an unknown lady. “I want the world to know you’re mine.”
“I am,” she murmured for his ears alone.
The hand that he slid into his jacket wasn’t quite steady. He withdrew something small and glittering. “Say you’ll wear this tonight. And forever. Please.”
The “please” touched her. But not quite as much as the sight of this supremely confident man regarding her with such agonized yearning in his green eyes. He extended the sparkling diamond ring toward her.
“You’re certainly prepared,” she said huskily, staring at the ring without shifting forward. Tonight had been so packed with surprises. She became inured to marvels.
“I intended to give it to you this afternoon,” he said in an undertone. “But you took to your heels before I had a chance.”
Feeling as if a flaming torch burned inside her, she held her hand out in consent. “In future, I promise to stay and listen whenever you offer me diamonds.”
“I’ll remember that.” His face alight with love, he slid the ring onto her finger. His shaking urgency made her realize anew that she wasn’t dreaming. “Now let me take you upstairs where I intend to fulfill your wildest fantasies.”
With her eyes, she silently vowed her love to him. “I can hardly wait.”
Up, up, up the curved marble stairs they went, joining the cavalcade flowing into the exquisite ballroom. Campion was in such a daze of happiness that she hardly noticed the woman who greeted them at the door and wished them every happiness. Although since she’d arrived in London, she’d heard a thousand stories about Lady Winterson’s beauty and elegance. And a few whispers about her scandalous past too.
Lachlan turned her into his arms and smiled down at her, his eyes alight with pride and unashamed worship. “May I have this dance, my darling?”
“You
may, my lord.” She choked back another surge of powerful emotion. She could hardly believe that all this happened to her. Surely she must burst with the joy exploding inside her like fireworks.
On a swell of sweet music, the man she loved swept her into a swirling waltz and transformed Campion’s secret dreams into glorious reality.
The End
Anna Campbell has written eight multi award-winning historical romances for Grand Central Publishing and Avon, and her work is published in sixteen languages. Anna lives on the beautiful east coast of Australia where she writes full-time. For more information on Anna’s books and her latest series, Sons of Sin, please check out her website: www.annacampbell.info
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The Last First Kiss
A Holiday Short Story
By
KATE NOBLE
Copyright © 2013 by Kate Noble
To my niece Evelyn,
A horse-crazy tomboy/beautiful woman-in-the-making
Chapter One