Chapter Five
‘But I never faint,’ Audrey muttered rather plaintively, her head against the pillows as she eyed her mother doubtfully. She wasn’t sure what had happened. All she could really recall was a ridiculous hallucination in which Mr. Kirkwood had walked into the room, which was clearly quite absurd. What on earth was the matter with her, carrying on in such a manner? ‘Did I truly do so, Mama?’
‘You did,’ Lady Hathaway assured her, eyes shrewd as she studied her daughter’s face. ‘And you still look rather pale. Do you feel ill?’
Did she? Audrey tried to recap, turning her attention to her wayward body. There was an unpleasant, nagging feeling in the back of her mind, a sense of something enormous waiting there, ready to pounce but she did not know precisely what it was and she did not think she wanted to know. Instead she focused all of her concentration on her physical state and found nothing untoward. She certainly did not feel ill. There was none of the unnatural heat she had suffered when she’d contracted a fever last year.
‘Really,’ she said crossly, ‘I cannot imagine why I fainted.’
‘You gave us all a dreadful fright,’ Isabella, on the other side of the bed, sounded anxious. She, too, looked as if she had sustained a shock and Audrey felt a little niggle of guilt, despite the fact that she had no idea what was wrong with her. ‘People do not faint for no reason, dearest. I’m afraid our new arrival received quite a shock.’
Audrey stilled at this. In fact, it felt as if her heart also stilled at her sister’s words. ‘Our… new arrival?’ Surely not! That had not been real. That could not have been real… She had imagined that Kirkwood had walked through that door. Months of wondering about him and then the arrival of Lord Allingham had momentarily overset her rationality.
Surely…
‘He was like the hero in the novel I’m reading,’ Millie observed from the foot of the bed. Naturally, all of her female relatives had gathered to ensure she was well and Audrey knew nothing would have kept Millie away. ‘Tall and brooding and darkly handsome, as Mrs. Radcliffe likes to say. Quite a lot, I must admit. It’s a habit of hers. He even acted like the hero, scooping you up in his arms the way he did. One minute he was walking in the door, the next he was picking you up as if you were as light as a feather. It was rather impressive, wasn’t it, Belle?’
‘Very impressive,’ Isabella agreed with a smile.
Audrey stared at her youngest sister for a moment, before removing her gaze to her mother once more. ‘Mama?’ she inquired in a small voice. That thing at the back of her mind and the sense of impending doom deepened.
‘It’s quite all right, my dear,’ her mother said soothingly. ‘We’ve actually met the gentleman, although it was some months ago. He introduced himself at Almack’s. Lord Allingham’s brother. Do you recall him?’
Ice trickled through her veins. Only as well as she remembered to breathe… She made herself do so now, before asking the inevitable question.
‘He is here?’
‘Indeed,’ Isabella said wryly. ‘His brother is far from pleased. I fear things are liable to be uncomfortable until we can all escape but he did not offer much hope of that. The road back to London is quite dreadful if we were fool enough to think of returning there. Which we aren’t, Little Paddocks being so close.’
Uncomfortable… Isabella could have no idea how true that was likely to be! Deprived of the reassuring fantasy that her mind had been temporarily disarrayed, Audrey was faced with the unpalatable truth that Roderick Allingham was only the second man in all of England that she had not particularly wished to encounter. Kirkwood outshone him effortlessly and she did not know how she was ever going to go back downstairs and face him.
‘He c-carried me?’ she stumbled over the words and the concept of being held in his arms again, even if she had not been sensate at the time.
‘Up the stairs,’ Isabella agreed, ‘and with a look on his face that would do justice to the wearisome men Millie was discussing in Mrs. Radcliff’s offerings. He beat both Harry and Lord Allingham to you, although to be fair, they were quite taken aback that you had fainted. Mama had to practically push him out the door when he brought you up here.’
‘Oh.’ It was all she could think of saying. Indeed, her head was suddenly going round and round, swamped with thoughts she could not hope to tame into some semblance of coherence. Kirkwood was here, under the same roof as she was. And, as he was trapped here just as they all were, it was inevitable she would see him again. Her heart hammered like a drum at the prospect.
‘You have no fever,’ her mother said now, considering Audrey with thoughtful eyes. ‘Are you sure you’re all right, my love?’
‘Perfectly. I think I am just very tired,’ Audrey said, attempting to rally. This would never do. She had no desire for her mother and sisters to guess that the arrival of Mr. Kirkwood had had such a profound effect on her. It was equally important that he did not think so, either. She had been forced to revise her ideas on Mr. Kirkwood’s attitude on that second meeting for he had seemed extraordinarily intense and quite oblivious, once again, to the proprieties. She shivered, remembering his seductive intensity upon that occasion and her own helpless reaction to it.
Oh dear…
‘Would you like to have tray in your room?’ Isabella suggested. ‘Dinner is sure to be ghastly. Allingham doesn’t seem to care for his half-brother in the least and I am sure that Lady Allingham will be far from pleased to see Kirkwood here. I have heard that she does not care for her… ah… stepson.’
Audrey hesitated. A tray in her room would keep her out of harm’s way for the evening. She need not see Kirkwood at all. Indeed, if she wished she could probably remain upstairs in this bedchamber until it was time to leave, thereby allowing her to avoid any awkward – from her point of view – encounters with the man. But I have wanted to see him so badly, if only to store further memories for the future, she reflected sadly. He was to be her great secret, she knew it already. The man that she would think of for all the long years to come, wondering what it would have been like if she had allowed him to seduce her. She recalled the way in which her knees had gone weak at the sight of him when they had met in Hyde Park. She had hardly believed her eyes when she had looked up and found him so close, her fantasy made real. The abstraction had cleared from those dark eyes, replaced with a sudden, predatory gleam that had left her feeling breathless. In that instant, she had known that nothing had changed between them since that night at Almack’s for all her staunch rationalizations to the contrary. He still wanted her and she… well, it would be pointless to even pretend that she did not want him. She had tried, of course, knowing that she was once again in danger of being compromised. Every tenet of social behavior demanded that she turn immediately and walk away. But of course she had done no such thing, transfixed by the fact that he was standing before her, tempting and quite astonishingly real.
In that moment she had been forced to acknowledge how much she had wanted to see him again. Every fiber of her being longed to drink her fill of him, if only to shore up those precious memories. And now he was here. They were trapped here together. Surely this would be the one and only chance that she would ever have again to look into those dark eyes? His being here was nothing more than another chance occurrence but it was up to her to seize the opportunity. If she dared…
For all that she had foolishly fainted at the sight of him, Audrey knew that she could not let this occasion pass. Desire superseded fear and in the end, the urge to see the man again won out. She knew she would regret it if she remained hiding in her bedchamber.