Seduction - His Every Kiss Part 25

Dylan's head roared. His heart wrenched. His eyes saw.

He looked up, and he wanted to hurl himself at his brother and beat him to a b.l.o.o.d.y pulp for even seeing Grace's body like this.

Ian sensed what he felt. He stared back at Dylan steadily, and Dylan closed his eyes for a moment, trying to get control of himself. This was not Ian's fault. Any man who had seen this would stare at her the same way if she was sitting across from him.

Oddly enough, it was not only her body, produced like this for public view, that enraged him, that caused the whine in his head to scream and his heart to be ripped out of his chest. No, it was her face. Her beautiful face showing an expression he had never seen.

He felt himself splintering into pieces. His hands shook, and the pamphlet fell to the floor, right side up. He leaned forward, his forearms on his knees, staring between them at her face. No wonder Cheval had been one of the great masters of his generation. His hand and eye had been true to his art, faithful to what he'd seen: the love and adoration for him in a young woman's face.

I loved my husband.

Now he knew how much. Love, the essence of it caught on canvas, frozen in time forever. Now available for any man to see, to l.u.s.t after, to have for himself, if only in his imagination. Magnificent, Ian said they were, and Dylan could see why. Someday, they would be hung in museums for people to gawk at. Grace on public display, giving every man the look of love that should be his but was not his.

"My G.o.d," Ian muttered. "You love this woman."

Dylan was smothering. Rage was erupting inside him. His reason was dissolving. He had to go, walk, move, he didn't care where. He could not sit here one moment longer.

He s.n.a.t.c.hed up the pamphlet, stood up, and shook back his hair. He walked away from Ian, out of his childhood home, out into the fresh air, taking deep, gulping breaths. He got on his horse and he rode, as fast and as hard as he could. He did not know where he was going. All he knew was that he had never seen Grace look at him with all that love in her face. Not once.

Chapter Twenty.

Dylan did not come to the cottage that night. Grace waited there for hours, but he did not come. He was not back the next morning, and she concluded he had stayed the night with his brother. They must have had a great deal of business to discuss.

It was late afternoon by the time he came home. Isabel was down at the farm with Molly, and she was bedding out geraniums in a sunny patch of the garden when he arrived. She did not know he had returned until his wide-shouldered shadow crossed the patch of dirt in which she was working.

"Finally!" she exclaimed in relief as she turned toward him and stood up, brus.h.i.+ng dirt from her hands. "I was getting worried about you."

She looked at him, and the moment she saw his face, she knew. He was ending it.

Her heart rejected it entirely, but her head knew. It was inevitable. She'd always known. Grace felt herself shaking inside, and she wrapped her arms around herself so she would not come apart. She tried to tell herself she was mistaken.

"I want you to leave," he said. "Now. Today."

No mistake.

She lowered her gaze to a bundle of papers in his hand, and she watched as he dropped them into the empty basket beside the pots of geraniums. Papers and banknotes. Something else landed on top of them, something small and heavy. A key. "Why?" she said, trying to think, but her wits were muddled, thick like tar.

"I have a lodge in Wales I inherited from my mother. It's a few miles outside Oxwich, in Swansea. It's yours. The deed is here, with my signature. A manservant and his wife see to the place, and there is a letter with my seal that tells them you are the new owner and will be living there from now on. There is a billet of pa.s.sage across the Bristol Channel in here, and five hundred pounds. I have sent an express to my agents in Oxwich, and they will have the other five hundred pounds deposited in an account for you by the time you arrive. The place has a... has a garden, I think."

The catch in his voice almost broke her. She drew in a deep breath and did the hardest thing she had ever done. Harder than leaving her husband. Harder than seeing her sisters' faces. She looked into Dylan's black, black eyes. "Why are you doing this? Why? Is it about our quarrel yesterday? If that is so-" She broke off, hearing a wobble entering her voice, sensing she was about to say things that were desperate, ask the pitiful questions of a cast-off mistress. She would not. This was not about their quarrel. She held his gaze and waited for an answer.

She was not to get it. He was the one who looked away, bending to pick up the basket. With his free hand, he straightened the papers and pulled the ten-pound notes into a neat stack. "If you need anything-" He paused, his hands stilled, and Grace felt herself beginning to panic.

"You have your cottage," he said, amending whatever he had been about to say. He shoved the basket toward her and said, "Here. Go."

She did not take the basket he shoved at her, and he simply set it back down on the turf. She had known he could be cold, but not as cold as this, to be so abrupt, to refuse to explain.

"I knew it would be over between us one day," she heard herself say. "I just did not expect it to be so soon." Her throat closed painfully, and she could not say anything more. He was setting her aside as he would any mistress. What was there to say?

This was the same man who had made love to her as if he wors.h.i.+ped her, who could smile and make a woman believe anything, who wrote music that was as beautiful and full of love as something not made by G.o.d could be. A man who could go to a wh.o.r.e without a thought, but loathe himself for it because it made his daughter cry. A man who could make her laugh and make her want to live, a man who could demolish her with only a few words and then look at her as if she were a total stranger. "You were going to shoot yourself," she said. "Why didn't I let you?"

Unable to bear looking at him a moment longer, she turned her back and looked down at the geraniums she had just planted. She knew that all her life, she would remember that exact shade of red. "You b.a.s.t.a.r.d. Oh, G.o.d," she choked, "you b.a.s.t.a.r.d. Why now? Why this way? With no explanation?"

Seconds went by, and he did not reply. She turned around and found that he was gone.

Grace sank to her knees in the dirt. She wanted so badly to weep, but the pain was too sharp for tears. Her sobs were dry, like hot, desert air through her lungs. She could still not believe what he had just done to her.

She had to get control of herself. What if Isabel came home and saw her this way? It took everything she had, but Grace forced herself to stop.

After a moment, she picked up the basket and rose to her feet. She stared down at the key that lay on top of the pile of papers, and she picked it up. It was a perfectly ordinary latchkey, but she studied it as if it were the most important thing in the world. As she held up the key in the sunlight, a strange sort of detachment came over her, almost as if she were watching herself in a dream. Numbness filled her limbs and Cornish common sense filled her head. Her hand curled around the key, and she put it in her pocket. She told herself that at least she had a place to go, and she tried not to think about how bleak that seemed.

She rifled through the deed and accompanying papers, papers with her name on them, and she looked at the tidy pile of notes. She wished she could go after him, throw it all in his face and call him a b.a.s.t.a.r.d again.

She did not do that. She took the papers, the sealed letter, and the key. That was what they had agreed to, and if he wanted to end their bargain early, she would be stupid to refuse it. She had to leave here, and where else was there to go?

Grace looked at the money. She would take only what had been defined in their agreement. Grace pulled out two ten-pound notes to pay for the clothes she had bought, and tucked the rest of the money in her pocket. She carried the basket of papers into the house.

She took the two ten-pound notes to his piano, wanting to put them somewhere he would find them. His folio was propped up on the music stand, and she opened it. She would put the money in here with the completed pages of his symphony. He'd be sure to find it there.

Grace started to get up, but then she caught sight of the t.i.tle written at the top of the page, and she paused.

Inamorata. A woman who was a man's lover. This symphony was about her, she realized. About their affair. She flipped through the pages and counted four movements. She knew his symphonies were always four movements. She pulled out the final sheet, and she saw the proof at the bottom of the page, written in his hand. Finis.

He had finished the symphony, so he had ended the affair. Of course. She had known from the beginning that it would come to this. Artists and their art. Composers and their music. They were all the same. The work came first. First, last, and always, the painting or the symphony was everything.

That was when she began to cry. She felt the tears rolling down her face, blurring the notes of sheet music in her hand and smudging the ink. She dropped the page, heedless of where it landed, shoved back the bench, and picked up the basket of papers from the floor. She called for Osgoode and, bless the man, he did not say a word about the tears staining her face or the incoherency of her words as she asked him to send for the carriage. He did not even change expression. He must be accustomed to crying women asking for carriages, she thought as she turned away and ran for her room. Galling to think how many times the butler must have seen this sight before.

She packed heedlessly, shoving her clothes into her valise without bothering to fold them, her only thought to get away from here. She put in her sc.r.a.pbooks, threw the deed, the key, and the money on top, buckled the valise, and was running for the waiting carriage. She did not take one look back. When the carriage pa.s.sed by her cottage on the road into the village, she could not bear to look at it, and she turned her face away.

It was only after she was at the inn in Cullenquay, waiting for the post coach that would come the following day, that she realized she had not said good-bye to Isabel. She would write the child a letter, for there was no going back now. One could never go back. One did not get to do things over. That night, Grace lay in the hard bed of her room at the inn and cried herself to sleep for the first time in years. When was she going to learn the most important lesson about life? There were no second chances at anything, not even love.

By the time Dylan arrived back at Nightingale's Gate, it was twilight, but he did not go to the house. Instead, he left his horse at the stables with a groom and went for a walk. Twilight turned to dark, but still Dylan did not return to the house. During the hours that followed, he did not know how many miles he walked, but he went to every place he could think of that they had been, relived everything he could remember that they had done. He walked down to their favorite picnic spot along the sh.o.r.e. He went to the mills, inhaling the scent of pear oil until it made him physically sick. He lay on a patch of turf and looked at stars.

He went inside the cottage, lay on the mattress, and tortured himself with memories of all the things that had happened between them in this room. He tried to sleep without her. It didn't work, but he lay there a long time.

He planted those geraniums of hers by moonlight because she'd left them there outside their pots on top of a patch of dirt. He could have called for the gardeners, but they were asleep, and as Grace had once told him, servants work hard and need their sleep.

He could not shut out of his mind that look on her face in the paintings, and how jealousy was eating him alive because of how much she had loved another man. She would never love him like that. How could she?

There were some who would find this entire situation very amusing. How his enemies would laugh if they knew, and what a good joke it was. Dylan Moore jealous of another man, a dead man at that. As he shoved geraniums into the dirt, he realized that he had never known jealousy because he had never cared enough to get that worked up over another person. That was the bitter truth. He had never cared more about another person than he cared about himself and the music he made.

You don't know what love is.

Grace had been right about that. Michaela; he'd fancied that was love. The girl who had refused him had made a nice, tidy reason to explain why he'd never given his heart away, but really, that hadn't been it at all.

He flayed himself for what he had done, trying to figure out why he had just thrown away the closest thing to love he'd ever known. Six hours of wandering around the Devons.h.i.+re countryside without purchase, and still, he did not know why. The look in her eyes. No, he would not think about her eyes.

It was just before dawn when he went back to the house. He went upstairs. He took a look in Grace's room, but found nothing there to see. All her things were gone.

He went to Isabel's room and peeked inside. He lifted the lamp high enough to see that she was asleep. To his surprise, he saw that Molly was in the bed with her, holding her tight, and he realized his daughter had cried herself to sleep, comforted by her nanny. Music and hurting others. His greatest gifts.

He went downstairs to the piano and sat down. He opened his folio, which was propped up on the music stand, and the moment he did, two ten-pound notes fluttered out and landed in his lap. He stared at them, and it took him a moment to understand why they were there. She was paying back the money with which she had bought her clothes.

Grace, he thought, staring down at the money. Why didn't you tell me about him? If he had known... if he had known. But he had known. She had told him.

I loved my husband.

He just hadn't been listening. He had not wanted to know, had not wanted to think that any man before him could be more important. The enormity of his own ego was something he had never thought much about, but he thought about it now, of how he had allowed that and his own selfishness to hurt the most wonderful, most vibrant person he had ever known. He loathed himself.

"Papa?"

He looked up to find his daughter beside him. He hadn't even heard her come in. "What are you doing down here at this hour?"

"You woke me up with the lamp when you came in."

"You need to be back in bed," he told her and stood up. He lifted his daughter in his arms and started out of the room.

"Why, Papa?" she asked against his neck.

He was saved from answering by Molly, who was coming down the stairs, a lit lamp in her hand and a frantic expression on her face. "Oh, sir," she gasped, "I'm sorry. I woke up and she was gone. I'm so sorry."

She thought she was about to get the sack. Dylan looked over his daughter's head into the nanny's frightened face, and he said, "It's all right, Molly. It's all right. Just help me get her back in bed."

The servant followed him as he carried Isabel up the stairs. The child said nothing more as he laid her in bed, but if he thought it was because she had decided to let the matter drop, he was mistaken.

"Why did you send her away, Papa?"

He froze, the edge of the counterpane in his hand, and looked down into his daughter's face. Don't cry, he thought, looking at the awful glisten in her eyes. Don't cry anymore or I'll come apart.

Here was another person he had not thought about before doing what he wanted to do. He had not thought of how painful it would be for his child to lose her mother, and then her governess, a woman who had also become her friend. No, he had not thought of anyone but himself. What he felt. How he hurt. He watched his daughter's tears spill over onto a face already puffy from crying, and they brought him to his knees beside the bed.

Now I know, Grace. Now I know what love is.

"You made her leave."He did not deny it. He could not, even though it came from the one so vulnerable, who adored him so much, who wanted him to be a knight on a white steed. He brushed tears away with his fingertips. "Yes."

"Why, Papa?" she cried. "Why?"

Dylan stalled. "I thought you did not like Grace very much."

"Is that why you sent her away?" She looked at him as if he were a hopeless pudding-head. "I didn't like her at first, but that was ages ago. I told you how governesses are, but she didn't let me walk all over her. And she wasn't stupid or silly, and I started to like her. Even though she's in charge of me, she doesn't treat me like a little girl. She treats me like a person. That's why I like her." Isabel sat up and grabbed his face between her hands. "You like her, Papa. Molly said so. I heard her tell Mrs. Blake."

From somewhere behind him, Molly sniffed. Christ, almighty, he thought, is every female in this house going to cry?

He pulled Isabel's wrists down and held her hands in his. He tried to find solid ground, but Grace was gone. He had no solid ground. "You overhear too many things."

"You like her and you sent her away."

"Why did you quarrel with her all the time?" he countered, letting go of her hands to pull the sheets up over her and tuck them around her body.

"She wants me to be good, and I know I have to be good, and it's hard." Isabel wriggled. "Papa, you're tucking me in too tight."

"I'm sorry."

She looked at him. "You understand what I mean, don't you, about being good?"

"Yes, sweeting," he said. "I understand."

"So why did you send her away?"

He looked at her helplessly. "I don't know."

"Sometimes I do things and don't know why. Everybody does, don't you think? You just have to fix it."

Fix it. Of course. Oh, to be eight years old and believe again that anything could be fixed, no matter how broken it was.

"You have to get her back," Isabel told him. "I had it all planned."

"Planned?"

She nodded. "I was thinking if you liked her, you could marry her, and then I'd have a mother. But you hurt her and made her cry and she left."

Shame consumed him. How many women had cried because of him? Too many, he knew. Far too many.

"You'll have to apologize," Isabel told him, "and that's always hard. Take flowers, too. That's what I do, and she always forgives me."

Apologies and flowers. How many times had he used those techniques with women? Dozens. How shallow they were. Easy, cheap, and shallow because he had never really cared whether they worked or not. Dylan leaned forward and kissed Isabel's forehead. "Go to sleep."

He pulled the covers up to her chin and left the nursery. He went downstairs and, because there was nowhere else to go, he sat down at the piano and began to play whatever came into his head. It was the only thing he knew to do. There were no other distractions left.

He could not go back to days of opiates and has.h.i.+sh, gambling and women. All the women. He could not go back. He was out in the open now, raw and exposed with nowhere to run and a daughter who depended on him. He stopped playing.

"Grace," he said in despair, "how am I supposed to raise her without you to help me? I don't know how to be a father."

There were so many things he didn't know. He didn't know himself, but Grace knew him. She had understood him from the very first moment. He looked at his folio on the stand. He stared at the symphony named for her. For the most generous heart he had ever hurt, for the girl with green eyes. Eyes that would haunt him for the rest of his life because of all the love in them that was not for him.

He loved her. He knew that now. Too late.

You b.a.s.t.a.r.d, she had said. And he was. He lowered his face into his hands. There was nothing he could say to get her back, nothing he could do to get what he wanted.

But perhaps there was something he could do for her. To give her what she really wanted. Dylan got up. Dawn was breaking, and he had a great deal to do.

Within two hours, he was back at Plumfield, insisting to the butler that Ian be woken at once and he didn't care if it was seven o'clock in the morning.