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It had been so long since she’d danced. She began to hum, the Strauss waltz that had been the very last thing she had danced to, the night before their world had collapsed. She couldn’t even remember her partner, but she remembered the waltz, and she moved through the garden, her eyes half-closed, reliving that dance, her imaginary partner bending over her, tall, commanding, with devilish eyebrows and mocking eyes . . .
She stopped immediately. She was not going to indulge in any more fantasies—they had become too dangerous. She would not pretend she was dancing with Alexander Griffiths. She was never going to see him again, thank God; she’d be gone before he returned from his nights of debauchery. She needed to let go.
Still humming, she moved through the gardens, touching a leaf here, a blossom there. She had never appreciated these when she’d lived here, and now they were lost to her. But not tonight. Tonight they were hers alone.
She hummed, and moved, a graceful half dance, circling the carefully laid-out gardens until she ended, to her surprise, at the long, shallow pool. The moonlight was mirrored on the glassy water, and somewhere in the back of her mind she remembered the term moonling. Hadn’t it come from a fool who saw the moon reflected in a pool of water and drowned trying to catch it?
She was a moonling, all right. Reaching for what she could not have, almost drowning in the process. She stood at the far end of the pool, not even glancing up at the darkened house. Everyone would be asleep by now. She couldn’t catch the moon, but she could swim with it. Let the cool water that had caressed the Dark Viscount’s skin caress hers as well. She didn’t know why that was important, but it was. Illogical as it was, she wanted some kind of imprint on her flesh to take with her, even as the rest of her was forced to forget.
She tilted her head back, looking up at the bright circle of the moon, just as a cloud scudded over it, momentarily plunging the night into darkness, and her hands stilled, just as she was about to reach for the buttons at her throat, the so-convenient buttons that enabled her to dress and undress herself. She should go back inside. She should pack her valise, write a note for Prunella and Dickens, and then try to get what sleep she could until morning.
But the cloud moved, the silver moonlight bathed her, and the reflection in the pool called to her. Come to me. I am yours. Catch me, moonling.
She began to unbutton her dress. It dropped to the grass, followed by her loosely tied corset, her petticoats, her stockings and garters. At the last moment she pulled off her shift and pantalets, so she was shockingly naked in the moonlight, and she didn’t care. Let them look.
She laughed to herself. Brave of her, considering everyone was either asleep or gone. It was a very strange sensation, to let the night wind caress her bare flesh. She looked down into the pool. She couldn’t swim, but it wasn’t very deep. She sat down on the side and slipped into the cool, lovely water.
It felt glorious. No wonder he swam whenever he could—the feel of the water surrounding her body was a sensation so astonishing that she could stay there forever. She moved, feeling the water flow about her as sheer joy filled her heart. This water could seduce her just as surely as Alexander could, and she needed to get out, to dry herself and get dressed before it was too late.
She slid out, reluctantly, and rose, squeezing the water out of the ends of her hair. Her flannel petticoat did as good a job as a towel in drying her, and she pulled on her shift, then looked at the massive pile of clothes, including her discarded corset and her shoes. The thought of putting all that on again was too much. Without a backwards glance she left it, heading toward Bryony’s roses, her bare feet dancing across the damp grass.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
ALEXANDER GRIFFITHS WAS IN a strange mood. He’d left the small, discreet house in the nearby town of Whiston without partaking of any of the young ladies’ charms. He’d been more than ready to avail himself of a particularly fetching young thing, small, rounded, with blue eyes and a mass of blond hair. But the blond hair was too brassy, the blue eyes too flat, the curves too curvy, and her pretty little mouth had smiled at him instead of offering him saucy rejections. Then again, he’d been paying her for her smiles.
In the end he walked away. Damn it, he was paying Madame Sophie for her smiles, and what had it gotten him? A damned case of blue balls and an obsession that was destroying his ability to concentrate on anything else.
Which in its own way was a good thing. It gave him less time to think about Rufus and the possibility that he had survived. Faced with the possibility of Rufus’s reappearance, reality had settled in. He expected the worst—he’d learned that early on. He’d grown up with few memories of his mother and learned from Adelia’s tender mercies much about the goodness of women and the possibility of happy endings. If he’d had any doubts, his fragile, beautiful young wife had taken care of those. His marriage had been a cold, empty thing, with Jessamine flirting with every male except her own husband. She’d married him for the title, and it was taking him too long to inherit it, and a woman like Jessamine didn’t want to live immured in the country with no one to appreciate her. She’d hated him, and he’d begun to hate her.
The furor surrounding her death had finished him off. “Death under suspicious circumstances,” the coroner had ruled, and everyone had eyed him accusingly. But no one had dared say the words—he’d simply been shunned, whispered about, even as Rufus had staunchly supported him.
Then came the title, the house, and the money. The title was no surprise—his great-uncle, the magnificently wasteful second Viscount Griffiths, had never married, and Alexander’s father had been his only brother. His father had been in excellent health and could have lived for decades longer, but instead he’d died when Rufus was seven, drowned trying to save his younger son. Rufus had been a strong swimmer, even at that early age, but he’d developed a cramp, and their father had been the one to die.
For years Alexander had been saddled with Adelia and her incessant demands for money. In any other circumstances he would have given her anything she wanted, as long as she disappeared from his life; he’d promised his father he’d look after her, and for his half brother’s sake he put up with the woman. He had the cynical suspicion she’d wanted everything, including the title for her son, and he’d learned to be very careful.
If Rufus was truly dead—and Alexander still had his doubts there’d been any deus ex machina to save him—then he could finally dispense with the witch. Perhaps now she’d be amenable to a generous settlement. He’d once even considered offering her Renwick, but he’d changed his mind about that. Oddly enough, the moment he stepped inside, it had felt like home, and despite Adelia’s elaborate redecorating, he’d claimed it in his heart. Normally he wouldn’t have cared about his surroundings, as long as they were neat and clean, and he let Adelia do what she wanted in a few of the public rooms, but she was allowed nowhere near his private areas.
The change he’d made, and the most important one, was the transplanting of the rose garden and the pool. Even his father’s death by drowning couldn’t halt his love for being in the water, and his ancient Scottish nanny had told him tales of the selkies and sea people. He used to wish he had webbed toes.
The only way to make Renwick perfect would be to get rid of Adelia, and presuming Rufus didn’t return from the grave, he’d figure out a way to do it short of cold-blooded murder.
Madame . . . though it must be Mademoiselle . . . Sophie was a different matter.
He should get rid of her, too. Much as her games distracted him and built his appetite, his obsession with her was becoming too strong. He didn’t like being a slave to his senses, and he hadn’t asked for a challenge. He’d ordered a comfortable woman to ease him and stay quietly in a nearby cottage, ready to service him and to make life simpler. Instead he got someone moving into his house and his kitchen but doing everything she could to avoid his bed.
A wise man would send the girl packing. He didn’t need those kinds of complications in his life, particularly when it came to women. Every relationship he’d had with women had been fraught with hysterics and treachery and violence. He’d wanted a woman for one reason alone, and the offering Mrs. Lefton had sent him was giving him everything but.
Somehow over the last few days he’d lost control of the situation, seduced by her cooking and the addictive taste of her mouth and, yes, even her sass. The first step in regaining his life would be to get rid of her. He could even stomach the unappetizing results from the kitchen if he didn’t have this constant . . . need for her. It was a bad word—he didn’t want to need anything. Need made you weak, made you vulnerable, and then the tigers would pounce.
In the end he was glad he’d left the overscented whorehouse. The night air was warm, and the moon so bright he could see clearly enough to ride at a comfortable pace, and the moon was still high in the sky when he returned to his darkened estate.
No one was up, not even a footman. It didn’t surprise him—he’d told them not to leave someone waiting around for no reason, and when he went out on his visits it usually took him a couple of days to slake his hunger. Thinking of Sophie, he found himself grinning. It would take more than that to have enough of her.
He needed to send her away, and that’s exactly what he would do. Damn the food, damn his stripling lust. He wasn’t in the mood for adventures right now.
A sleepy stable hand appeared just as he was about to take care of his own horse, and Alexander gladly handed over the reins. He was tired; he needed his own bed.
The house was still as he entered, and he breathed a sigh of relief. Not that he wasn’t fond of Dickens, who’d been with him since just before his father died, but there were times when he really got tired of being hovered over, particularly by
