Candace Camp - So Wild A Heart

His failure to appear tonight was something that could be remedied, he supposed, with some effort on his part, but, as always, he rebelled at the thought. Something inside him quailed at the idea of spending the rest of his life shackled to a woman for whom he felt at best indifference…and, at worst, active dislike. He had seen enough loveless marriages made for the sake of name and family—including that of his own parents, not to mention Rachel’s and Leona’s—to know that he did not want that state for himself. He was not, he hoped, such a romantic fool as to wish for love in a marriage—or, at least, he had not been for many years. However, he was fairly sure that it was better not to marry at all than to live in the sort of quiet loneliness that was Rachel’s and Westhampton’s lot.

Carson returned, carrying a cool, damp cloth on a small silver tray. Devin took the cloth and held it against the cut on his lip, remembering as he did so the way the woman tonight had wiped away his blood with her handkerchief. He could smell again the faint scent of roses that had clung to the lace-trimmed cotton. He wondered if she, too, smelled of roses.

“A note arrived for you tonight, sir,” Carson said and went over to the small table in the foyer, where another small salver held a square white piece of paper, folded over and sealed. “Ravenscar” was all that was written on the front, in the bold, loopy handwriting that he recognized instantly as Leona’s.

A familiar sense of anticipation snaked through him as he took the note from the tray Carson offered him. He split the seal and unfolded the note.

Darling,

Tonight after midnight. I have a surprise for you.

It was a message typical of Leona—brief, unsigned and faintly mysterious—and it immediately wiped out all thoughts of the woman he had met earlier this evening.

“What time is it, Carson?”

“Why, a bit after eleven, I believe.”

“Good. We have enough time. I need to clean up before my visitor arrives.”

Both of them knew who that visitor was, but neither would, of course, say it aloud. His relationship with Leona existed behind a veil of secrecy, however flimsy that veil might be. Though every gossip in London society knew about them and whispered about their long-standing affair behind their backs, it was still only gossip and not proven fact as long as they maintained their secrecy. Lord Vesey did not care what his wife did—they went their own ways quite happily—as long as he was not subjected to public ridicule.

So, as it had been for many years, Devin saw Leona only now and then in public—perhaps making one of her party at the theater or opera, or attending a ball to which she was also invited—never by a word or gesture indicating that she was anything other than a friend. He did not go to her house except when he went with her brother Stuart. They met late at night when she left her house or whatever party she was attending and, thoroughly hidden in a hooded cloak, took a hack to his house, slipping around the side and entering through the garden door. At those times, he waited for her by the fire in his bedroom as he would tonight, a glass of brandy on the small table before him, his pulse thrumming with expectation.

There were evenings when she did not come. One never knew with Leona—it was one of the things that kept any relationship with her from becoming mundane. Sometimes she could not get away. And sometimes she simply liked to keep matters unsettled. Over the years, Devin had reached the point where her absences no longer drove him nearly mad, but he had never been able to quite get rid of the prickle of jealousy, the thought that she had not come because of some other man—her husband, who, despite their avowed disinterest in each other, still had first call on her, or perhaps a new swain, some fresh-faced lad who hoped to attract the attention of the most desirable lady in London. Earlier in his career, Devin had settled matters with one or two of them. His blood no longer ran so hot or so fast, but still, the thought of her being with another man, even just to talk, carried a sting.

The secrecy and mystery, that sting of jealousy, the uncertainty of their rendezvous, all had served to keep alive the excitement of their affair through the years that they had known each other.

He took the stairs two at a time, his valet trailing after him, and went to his room. It did not take him long to clean up, and even though Carson was meticulous to the point of irritation about his ascot being tied just so, he was also nimble-fingered about it, and so, several minutes before midnight, he was once again impeccably dressed and groomed. He sent Carson off to bed and settled down before his fire to wait, pouring himself a small snifter of brandy.

He had a good deal of time to wait. It was almost one o’clock before there was the soft scrape of a shoe outside in the hall and the door to his room opened. Devin rose to his feet as a woman slipped inside. She closed the door behind her and turned to him, reaching up slowly to push the hood back from her face. As many times as it had happened this way, his pulse still beat a little faster. Leona looked at him, a faint smile hovering about her lips.

She was aptly named, Devin had always thought, with her tawny golden hair, rounded, sherry-gold eyes, and lioness spirit. Leona was a wild creature, barely tamed by the rules and strictures of English society. She paid them lip service and nothing more, in private going her own way.

Devin had met her when he was eighteen and first came to London from his father’s estate. The world had opened up to him then, the sophistication of the city replacing the stultifying life he had known at Darkwater. Instead of his father’s prayers and moralizing, there had been gambling and boon companions and late nights spent in clubs and taverns. Instead of daily lessons, there had been hours of time to do with as he wanted. And instead of boring country misses, there had been…Leona.

He first saw her at a ball at Lady Atwater’s. She had been wearing a dress made of gold tissue that clung to her every curve, and her skin had gleamed in the candlelight, her eyes reflecting the glitter of her dress. He had wanted her with a rush of lust he had never before experienced. She had played him like the green lad that he was. Looking back on it, Devin could see that, but, these years removed, the fact that she had done so only amused him. He had stumbled all over himself, trying to get her into his bed, but she had teased and eluded him for over a year, rejecting him until he was on the verge of giving up, then subtly sparking his desire into flame again with a look, an accidental brush of her bosom against his arm, a quick kiss in the garden.

His pursuit of the married Lady Vesey had been a scandal, of course—one of the many scandalous things he had done in Town that brought down his disapproving father’s wrath, driving an ever-widening wedge between the two of them. But he had not cared for scandal. Most of the things he enjoyed in life, he found, were a scandal. As Leona had pointed out to him, he and she were not like other people.

“Hello, Dev,” Leona said in her distinctive, throaty voice.

“Leona.” Devin strolled over to her, his eyes roaming over her face and down her throat to her chest, where the full globes of her breasts swelled up over the neckline of her dress. Leona, like some of the other “wild” set of ladies, often dampened her thin dresses, so that they clung to her voluptuous body more tightly. Tonight he could see the dark circles of her nipples through the thin material of her virginally white muslin dress, and his loins tightened in response. Trust Leona to dress like a maiden making her debut, yet somehow manage to look like a wanton.