Джудит Макнот - Until You

Victoria stepped away from the group and glanced at the Skeffingtons. "Miss Bromleigh and I are both Americans," she explained. "I am longing to talk to someone from my own country. Will you excuse me until supper?" she added, looking at her husband.

Jason Fielding-who had once been the subject of ugly gossip and an outcast from polite society-grinned at the young wife who had changed all that. With a tender smile, he bowed slightly and said, "I will be desolate without your company, madam."

"I, too, would love to know more about America," Alexandra Townsende announced as she broke away from the group. Turning to her own husband, she said with a smile, "And you, my lord? May I count upon you to be equally desolate without my company?"

Jordan Townsende-who had once regarded his marriage to a besotted young Alexandra as an "obligatory marriage of inconvenience"-looked at her with unhidden warmth. "I am always desolate without you, as you perfectly well know."

Whitney waited until her coconspirators were well on their way to the house before she fixed a bright smile on her face and prepared to invent an excuse to leave, but Lady Skeffington forestalled her.

"I cannot imagine what has gotten into Sheridan Bromleigh," she said, her face red with ire. "I am always saying to Sir John that it is so very hard to find good help. Isn't that what I always say?" she asked him.

Sir John nodded and hiccupped. "Yes, my dove."

Satisfied, she turned to Whitney. "I must implore you to tell me how it is done, your grace."

Whitney pulled her thoughts from Stephen, who was conversing with Monica and Georgette as if nothing had happened-the grain sack Sheridan had sweetly offered him on the ground beneath the heel of his boot. "I'm sorry, Lady Skeffington, my thoughts wandered. You wished to know something?"

"How do you find adequate servants? Were it not so difficult, we certainly wouldn't be employing that brassy American woman. I have the gravest misgivings about keeping her in our employ for another hour."

"I do not regard a governess as a servant-" Whitney began. She had thought Stephen wasn't listening, but at that remark, he looked over at her and replied to Lady Skeffington in an acid voice, "My sister-in-law regards them as family. One might even say she holds them in higher esteem than mere family." His dagger gaze shifted to Whitney. "Don't you?" he snapped sarcastically.

It was the first remark he had addressed to Lady Skeffington since their introduction, and that lady seized on it as a source of great encouragement; at the same time she missed the sarcasm in his voice. Dropping the subject of a governess altogether, she hastened to his side and said, "My dear Julianna is the same way, as you will have noticed. She leapt right to Sheridan Bromleigh's defense. Julianna is such a wonderful girl," she continued, and somehow managed to squeeze herself between Stephen and Monica, "so very loyal, so sweet…"

When Stephen walked off to the house, she stayed at his side with Sir John trotting along in their wake.

"I could almost feel sorry for him," Clayton remarked idly, watching Lady Skeffington continue her one-sided monologue.

"I cannot," Whitney said, still stinging from his cutting remark about her misplaced loyalty. With a quick apologetic look at the men, she said, "I want to talk to Victoria and Alexandra."

They watched her leave, all three of them silent and thoughtful. "Despite what our wives think, this was a mistake," Jason Fielding said, echoing all their thoughts. "It's not going to work." He looked at Clayton and added, "You know Stephen far better than Jordan or I. What do you think?"

"I think you're right," Clayton said grimly, remembering the expression on Stephen's face when Sherry sweetly offered him the "favor."

"I think it was an enormous mistake, and Sheridan Bromleigh is the one who's going to be hurt by it. Stephen has marked her down permanently as a scheming opportunist who fled out of fear of prosecution, but who has now gained enough confidence because he didn't file charges against her to try to insinuate herself again. Nothing she says or does is going to matter, because she is going to have to prove he's wrong. And she can't."

Their wives, who had gathered in the blue salon to discuss the situation, were of a like opinion.

Whitney slumped back in her chair, staring dully at her hands, then she glanced around at her coconspirators, including the dowager duchess. "It was a mistake," she told her mother-in-law, who'd watched the "show" from the window of her bedchamber.

"I felt like crying when he ignored her gesture," Alexandra said with an ache in her voice. "Sheridan was so brave about it, so open, and so terribly vulnerable." She looked over her shoulder to politely include Miss Charity in the conversation, but the elderly lady had nothing to say. She sat on the window seat, her brow furrowed in concentration, looking straight ahead, giving the impression that she was either listening intently or not listening at all.

"We still have another full day and evening," Stephen's mother said. "He might soften by then."

Whitney shook her head. "He won't. I was counting on proximity to make him listen, but even if he listened, he wouldn't change his mind. I realize that now. For one thing, I discovered earlier that he knows she went to Nicki the day she left his house, and you know how he feels about Nicki."

Miss Charity turned her head sharply at that, her frown deepening with intense concentration.

"The thing is that Stephen wouldn't believe anything Sherry says without proof. Her actions spoke so loudly that nothing else matters. Someone would have to present him with some other viable reason for her to have run away-" She broke off as Miss Charity stood up and walked silently out of the room. "I don't think Miss Charity is holding up very well under the added stress of all this."

"She told me she finds it all very exciting," the dowager announced with an irritated sigh.

From Sheridan's perspective as she stood at the window of her room and watched Stephen laugh at something Monica said to him, the situation looked even more bleak. She couldn't get him off alone to try to talk to him because he clearly wouldn't cooperate with anything she wanted, and she couldn't talk to him in front of the others because she'd tried to communicate with him when she gave him her "favor," and that had been a disaster.

Stephen's decision to ignore her existence became harder and harder to adhere to as evening drifted into night, and he saw her hovering on the edge of the torchlit area where the tables had been set up for supper. The shock of seeing her had fortified him for the first few hours, but now he no longer had the advantage of that barrier. Standing off to one side, behind the other guests, his shoulders propped against an oak tree, he could watch her without being observed, while the memories he couldn't seem to stifle paraded across his mind.

He saw her standing outside his study doors, talking to the under-butler. "Good morning, Hodgkin. You're looking especially fine today. Is that a new suit?"

"Yes, miss. Thank you, miss."

"I have a new gown," she'd confided, doing a pirouette for the under-butler's inspection. "Isn't it lovely?"

A few minutes later, when Stephen had stalled for time before he told her he wanted her to look for another husband, he'd asked why she hadn't read the magazines he'd ordered for her.

"Did you actually look at any of them?" she'd asked, making him grin even before she embarked on her description. "There was one called The Ladies Monthly Museum, or Polite Repository of Amusement and Instruction: being an Assemblage of what can Tend to please the Fancy, Instruct the Mind or Exalt the Character of the British Fair," she'd explained. "The article in it was about how to rouge one's cheeks! It was absolutely riveting," she'd lied with an irrepressible smile. "Do you suppose such an article falls under the heading of 'Instructing the Mind' or of 'Exalting the Character?"

But most of all, he remembered how she felt when she melted in his arms, the sweet generosity of that romantic mouth of hers. She was a natural temptress, Stephen decided. What she lacked in expertise she more than made up for with willing passion.

A few minutes ago, she'd gone into the house to get the Skeffington boys, who were evidently going to sing for the amusement of the guests, and when she emerged, he could see she was carrying some sort of an instrument. He had to drag his gaze from her and force himself to stare at the brandy glass he held, so that he wouldn't meet her gaze and wouldn't start wanting her.

Wouldn't start wanting her? he thought with bitter disgust. He had started wanting her the moment she opened her eyes in his bed in London, and he wanted her no less badly now, within hours of seeing her again. Clad in that plain gown with her hair scraped back off her forehead and twisted into a stern coil at her nape, she made his body harden with lust.

He glanced at Monica and Georgette who were talking to his mother. They were both beautiful women-beautifully gowned, one in yellow and the other in rose, beautifully coiffed, and beautifully behaved. Neither one of them would have considered dressing like a groom and galloping about on that damned horse.

But then, neither one of them would have looked so glorious had they tried.

Neither one of them would have offered him a grain sack with a beguiling smile and pretended she was bestowing a "favor" upon him.

But then, neither one of them would have been brazen enough to gaze into his eyes, inviting him to pull her into his arms, daring him to do it.

In the past, he'd thought of Sheridan Bromleigh as a sorceress, and as the first strains of music began to throb from the instrument she was playing, the thought hit him again. She mesmerized everyone, especially him. Conversations among the guests had broken off completely, and even the servants were pausing to look at her, to listen in awe. Stephen glowered at the brandy in his glass, trying not to look at her, but he could actually feel her gaze on him. She'd looked at him often enough tonight to make that likely. The glances were always soft, always inviting, sometimes pleading. They infuriated Monica and Georgette, who were confused and disdainful of how forward she was, but then Stephen hadn't had his hands all over either of their bodies. Sheridan alone knew exactly what she could make him want… and make him remember.

Furious with his weakening resolve, Stephen shoved away from the tree and put his glass down on the nearest table, then he bade the guests good night and headed for his room, intending to drink himself into a private stupor if that's what it would take to keep him from going to her.

Her head reeling from the tension of the day, Sheridan opened the door to the small bedchamber across from the playroom. Moving cautiously in the dark, unfamiliar room, she found the bureau and felt for the tinder to light the candles in the holder on her bureau. She was in the process of lighting the fourth candle when a deep masculine voice made her choke back a startled scream as it said, "I don't think we're going to need much light."

She spun around, her hand falling away from her mouth, her heart beginning to beat in deep, fierce thuds of pure joy. Stephen Westmoreland was sitting in the room's only chair, the image of relaxed elegance with his white shirt open at the throat and one booted foot propped casually atop the opposite knee. Even his expression was casual. Too casual. Somewhere in her whirling thoughts she registered that he was treating this momentous meeting with a cool nonchalance that didn't seem at all appropriate, but she was so happy to see him, so achingly thrilled to have him this close, and so much in love with him that nothing mattered. Nothing.

"As I recall," he said in the lazy, sensual drawl that always made her heart melt, "the last time I waited for you we were planning a wedding."

"I know and I can explain," she said. "I-"

"I didn't come up here for conversation," he interrupted. "Downstairs, I had the distinct impression you were offering me a great deal more than talk. Or did I mistake the matter?"

"No," she whispered.

Stephen looked at her in impassive silence, noting with the eye of a connoisseur, not the besotted fool that he'd been, that she was every bit as enticing and exotic as he'd recalled… except for the severe style of her hair. He didn't like that look, especially not when he was letting lust and revenge drive him to consort with this scheming, ambitious slut who looked more like a prim virgin at the moment. "Take the pins out of your hair," he instructed with curt impatience.