One Night With You (The Derrings #3)(38)

Why, he suddenly wondered, had Madeline stolen his heart when it had been Jane with whom he spent all his time? They had ridden together, swum, fished, explored the countryside. Yet he had chosen Madeline. He had allowed her beauty and bold gaze to weave a toxic spell around him. Callowness of youth, he supposed.

He took his speculation further, wondering what would have happened if he had fallen in love with Jane. Would she have betrayed him for a man of wealth and influence?

He closed his eyes in a long blink, eliminating such senseless thinking from his mind. One could not undo the past.

"Lady Jane," he greeted, rising to his feet. With a wave of his hand, he indicated she take the seat across from his desk. "This is a surprise."

She settled herself in the chair's depths, a black crow against the blue damask.

"I believe my sister is in the garden with Rebecca," he went on, assuming that would be the only reason she had come.

"Actually I've come to see you." Her voice rushed forth as she tucked her hands within the voluminous folds of her skirts.

"Me?" He lifted a brow. After the musicale, he had thought she would never speak to him again—much less request a private audience. "What is it I can do for you?" Moistening her lips, her gaze darted about the room, assessing, looking everywhere but at him. He found himself admiring the elegant slope of her nose, wanting to stroke its length with his finger before moving on to test the softness of her luminous cheek.

The impulse jarred him and he gave his head a hard shake. He had done more than enough touching of her person.

"I have been less than honest with you," she hedged, voice gossamer soft, as if whispering the words would somehow lessen the impact.

"Have you now?" An icy finger landed at his nape and began a slow descent down his spine.

"Yes." Dipping her gaze, she nodded, staring at her skirts as if transfixed, spellbound by the sinister-dark fabric.

"Jane?" he prompted after a long moment had passed.

"God," she choked, the single word turning and twisting into a ragged sob. "I can't do this." Surging to her feet, she stumbled for the door in a graceless lurch. In a flash, he was on his feet and moving. His hands seized her shoulders and forced her around before she was halfway across the room.

Her stricken gaze flitted over his face and he felt transported to an afternoon years ago. A fence with the top rail splintered to shards. Grasses tall and lush around them as they crouched over his sister's still body. Jane's look of horror had echoed deeply inside of him… as it did now.

"What is it?" he demanded, panicked in a way he had not felt in years. In a way he had not thought to feel again.

Moisture swelled in her eyes, brimming in the hazel depths. She shook her head fiercely. A lock of nut brown hair fell loose, straggling over her eye, making her look suddenly young and achingly sweet. Tempting as hell.

His hands tightened, flexing on her yielding flesh. He pulled her closer. A strange little sound escaped her lips. Not quite a cry. More like a moan.

"Sssh," he soothed, dropping his forehead to hers, inhaling her scent, letting it surround him. Apples. Orchard fresh. Autumn on the wind. The scent of home. The scent of Jane. The scent of…

He pulled back, his heart jerking violently in his chest as he scanned her face. Two women that smelled exactly alike. That stirred him in ways long forgotten. That filled him with a desire he had never known. What were the odds?

She watched him, dread crowding the fear that already gleamed in her eyes.

"Aurora," he whispered, uncertain of the wild notion seizing him until her eyes flared wide, dousing him with a cold wave of comprehension. And he knew he was not wrong. Color drained from her face.

He dropped his hands as if stung, nausea churning his gut.

She staggered backward, colliding into a side table. A vase fell, shattering, matching the noise roaring through his ears.

His hands curled at his sides, the urge to wreck something, to destroy, to shatter another vase overwhelming. Realization washed through him, acrid as gun smoke. The woman he couldn't get out of his mind, the one he had searched for among the crowd at Vauxhall with a desperate fervor, who haunted his dreams… she had been under his nose all along. She had been the proper, starchy widow he had agonized over wanting—the lady he fought to resist because she was not that sort of woman. He shook his head as if he could shake free from the reality, the unwanted truth.

"You must have had a good laugh," he ground out.

"No." She shook her head fiercely, her knuckles whitening where she clutched the table, water running over its surface and dripping to the carpet. "It wasn't like that—"

"Is that how you amuse yourself?" he bit out. "Disguise yourself and bed whomever you like?

How many others have there been?"

Fire lit her gaze, flecks of gold in her green gaze. She swiped a hand through the air. "There have been no others."

"Oh, I'm certain," he scoffed, dragging a hand through his hair. "Only I inspired you to toss yours skirts to the wind."

Angry color mottled her face, chasing off her pallor. "Stop," she spit out, her lips trembling. "It wasn't like that!"

"Why did you come here?" he demanded, stalking an angry path toward her. "To gloat?" His eyes raked her, seeing past the ugly black sack she wore to body beneath, the warm flesh that had sheathed him, hugged and milked him, erasing the memory of every other woman that came before.