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He hired a bow-street runner to find her. He could not stay away from her a single minute more. After weeks of search, she continued disappeared. She left no trace. The runner explained that it would be difficult to find a person who looked so average and belonged to the working class. London swarmed with such people. Hugh told him to continue looking though.
In time, his bleeding pain turned to anger. How come, a maid rejected the lord? She had to cling to him until he tired of her, not the other way round. Had he no pride to brood over such a simple girl? He could have the women he wanted. He had been famous for having the most coveted mistresses in town; refined, sophisticated women, women who never left him. He left them!
Therefore, he stopped looking for her. To hell with her! He would not waste his time anymore! Enough. The thought of her, though, would always burn red-hot in him. He would compare every single woman with her; and all of them lost shamefully. Her generosity, her warmness, her hunger for him, her candidness left an indelible mark in him. That he would carry to the grave.
CHAPTER 10
“Lady Wilkins,” the butler called respectfully after being admitted in the library. “There is a gentleman here to see you.”
Sarah lifted her eyes from a financial report. “Who is it, Evans?” With so much work to do, she could not afford receiving social visits.
“He prefers not to be identified, my lady.”
Curiosity got the best of her. A rich widow of the Ton would be bound to be called on. “Alright, Evans, make him come in.”
“Yes, my lady.”
She stood up and checked her respectful, but expensive Boudreaux dress. She felt for her hair, artfully caught on the top of her head. Her lady’s maid very skilled, she thought.
Evans opened the door and the blood drained from her face. The man who had not left her thought for a single second in the last two years materialized in front of her. The tall, dark-haired, lean man she’d been avoiding like the plague since she got out of mourning and went back to social life.
The door closed and their eyes met. “Sarah!” His grave whisper filled the room like warm scented smoke.
Hugh’s estates were in financial difficulty. Some bad crops and wrong investments caught him in hot water. The Ton ablaze with the return of Sir Alfred Wilkins’ widow. The former rich banker had been a very venerable old man and his wife, admired for her discreet and serene ways. Hugh had never met her, though. He had thought to be introduced to her socially, but that never happened. So, he decided to make a move. Not giving his name, a strategy, lest she would reveal to be a shy woman.
The sight of her provoked a whirlwind of thoughts and feelings in him. It felt like a dream and a nightmare at the same time. The woman he could never forget, now the lady of that bourgeois mansion. She, whom he looked for in every corner of London, now materialized in front of him. She, who kept him dreaming and remembering for long two years, had been right under his nose all the time.
“Lord Hawkmore.” Sarah ext
ended her hand for him to kiss. Despite the turmoil inside her, she managed to keep a dignified stance.
She did not feel prepared to meet him. Would never be. She must have refused the visit. His presence bursting like a ball of fire in her heart. Hot memories and her blood running cold. Unbelievable that she still felt this emotional avalanche, after all this time. She tried. Oh, she tried so hard to forget him! Nevertheless, he remained in her memory, in her heart, in her blood, like a fever. He stood there, a couple of feet from her, towering, lean, manly as hell, only to get her ablaze all over again.
At her calling his name so impersonally, Hugh forced himself to shake from his frozen state, approached and took her hand. Soft as silk, when he remembered them callused, caressing his skin. How would it feel if she caressed his bare back this very moment? Dormant sensations threatened to come back to life, as his body seemed to awake from a long, long sleep. A perfume of lavender came from her, sweet, seducing. washing soaps were not for her anymore.
He did not seem to be capable of uttering a word. All that came to his mind the question that kept pounding incessantly for more than seven hundred days: Why did you leave me? Why? Why did you throw me in this dement longing? But he surely would not give her the satisfaction of knowing he cared!
Sarah watched him bend, as his thin colourless lips touched her skin. Those tempting lips that took her to an agony of paradisiac sensation every time they touched her body. Red-hot iron would not have so much effect. His lips on her hand burned with recollection, recognition. Her ice-wrapped body started to melt into re-born life. Air caught in her lungs. She made herself stand still, lest she would snap her hand for fear it would caress his sleek jet-black hair.
“You seem to have made…profitable choices, Lady Wilkins.” He could only hope sarcasm would protect him from the earthquake she caused in him.
Sarah flushed with indignation. Nothing would ever be ‘profitable’ when you had a dilacerated heart. She would not tell him this, would she. What for? “I’d say life carries us to unexpected lanes, Lord Hawkmore.” She dismissed his sarcasm elegantly.
He saw no trace of the meekness of Sarah, the downstairs maid. His name pronounced by her appetizing lips, though, had steamy consequences all the same. “So it seems.”
“To what do I owe your honourable presence?” She took her hand back and paced backwards.
Honourable did not describe exactly how he felt that precise minute. His body responded to her in the same intensity it did those years ago. No, it felt tenfold more intense now, if that could be possible. “Since we’d never met in social occasions, I decided to come and introduce myself.” He hid his hands behind him, as they fisted with tension. “Now I see it as unnecessary.” Against all protocol, he must admit. He had heard so much about this Lady Wilkins, whom he had never had the opportunity to meet. She enticed his curiosity, to be sure. The only way to meet her, to defy social conventions, it seemed.
Sarah made her secretary, Mr White, check discretely the confirmed guests of the selected social functions she attended. If Lord Hawkmore’s name stood on it, she would spend the evening home. He meant suffering and she had had enough of it for two lifetimes.
She ignored his comment. “My condolences for Lady Hawkmore’s passing.” The blonde beauty had been snatched away by one of the numerous London epidemics some eighteen months ago.
“Thank you, Lady Wilkins.” He and Adelaide were never close. The nearing of her end made them talk more sincerely than in the whole time they were married. They had become friends of sorts in those couple of weeks. He mourned the parting of a newly found friend.
“Something tells me you did not call on me moved by mere curiosity, my lord.” Naturally, as a bank owner, she had heard of his financial difficulties.
How many thousands of times did he remember her calling him ‘my lord’? She would call him like that even in the utter heat of their passion. No submission there this time, but his blood boiled anyway. “I’m afraid not, my lady.” It felt good call her the same way. “Since I now know who you are, I think I’m not advocating the reason for my coming.” His smooth grave voice never forgotten.
