The Blacksheep's Arranged Marriage Read online

  But she trusted Peter, for no particular reason other than he had always been nicer to her than he had to be. He was being polite, stopping here, pretending in his gentlemanly way that he was in no rush to take her home. The idea he could want anything more was without substance and evaporated like so much wistful thinking into the cool night air.

  “I’ll take you home, if you prefer.”

  She opened her eyes then, to see the moonlight as it flared across the water and played tag with the surf. They were parked in an open area just off the narrow road, the only car in sight, so the night and the ocean were theirs for the moment. Thea rather liked the idea of that. She liked being with Peter and feeling, if not completely relaxed in his company, at least, at ease with him. She’d been to this particular place on Point Judith before—always in daylight and always alone—but here, on this same road. The rocks below were a good place to sketch, a good place to daydream. It felt right, somehow, to be here with him now, although her grandmother would have a fit if she knew.

  “Bryce taught me to surf right out there,” Peter said into the quiet. “The first real wave I caught took me straight into the rocks and smashed up my board pretty good. I had scrapes and bruises from top to bottom, but I was hooked.” A moment ticked past and then another. “Have you ever been surfing, Thea?”

  She smiled, a soft rush of humor curving through her at the thought of being in the water, straddling a surfboard, waiting for the perfect wave. “I don’t even own a swimsuit,” she said.

  He turned in the seat, brushing her hand with his thigh in the process, and sending pinpoints of heat scattering like naughty desires across her nerve endings. She pulled her hand back too quickly, making something out of nothing and feeling foolish in the process.

  “Please tell me you’re kidding,” he said, sounding equally earnest and appalled at the possibility.

  She shook her head, embarrassed. “A lady doesn’t kid.”

  “Ladies do, however, swim.”

  “Well, I don’t.”

  He considered that in silence while she wished she’d never opened her mouth. She didn’t want to talk about herself. He surely didn’t want to talk about her, either. Why hadn’t she asked him about surfing, or architecture, or what he thought about the space program, or any topic at all other than swimsuits?

  “May I ask why?”

  Now it was personal and a subject her grandmother had said was restricted to family. A lady didn’t discuss the tragedies of her life, nor did she open herself to questions about her past. Those things were private. But Thea was torn between her grandmother’s doctrines and her own—suddenly very strong—desire to explain to Peter why she was so different, why she had never once in her life put on a swimsuit. “My mother drowned.”

  The words hung there. Then with an urgency she couldn’t suppress, more words came out, as if she’d breached the dam and could no longer hold them in. “Grandmother said it was her own fault. I was only a baby and don’t really know what happened, except that Mother was wild and reckless and she drank. A lot. She did other things, too. Grandmother won’t talk about them. She just says my mother went out on the yacht with some people she shouldn’t have and did very unladylike things, and that sometime during the party, she fell overboard and drowned. Nobody on the deck could remember how it happened or even exactly when.” Thea bit her lip, horrified at what she’d told, and amazed at how good it felt to have finally said the forbidden thing aloud. “It was a long time ago,” she added, as if that explained away her relief. “Grandmother doesn’t like for me to talk about it, but that’s why I don’t swim.”

  She could feel his eyes on her in the dark and she was ashamed for blabbering like an idiot about something he couldn’t possibly be interested in knowing.

  “I’m sorry, Thea,” he said. “It’s tough to lose your mother, no matter how old you are when it happens.”

  His sympathetic tone washed over her, but the only response she seemed able to make was a half-hearted shrug, as if it didn’t matter.

  “I know when my mother died, no one wanted to talk to me about it, either. At the time, I thought it wasn’t polite or something, but now I realize that the adults in my life simply didn’t know what to say, so basically they didn’t say anything at all.” He paused. “My grandmother was the only one who encouraged me to talk and to remember my mother as she was.”

  “My grandmother was ashamed,” Thea said, hardly realizing it as the truth until the words were out. “She still is.”

  There wasn’t anything he could say to refute the claim and Thea was glad he didn’t try. He was leaning against the driver’s side door with his right hand extended along the back of the seat and, with just a slight stretch, his fingers brushed a tumbled strand of her hair. It was a gesture of understanding and simple kindness, catching her unprepared and vulnerable; leaving her breathless and bereft in its wake. “Your hair got all windblown,” he said softly.

  Self-consciously, she lifted a hand to fuss with the mousy tendrils, defeated by the fine, limp strands and a serious lack of style before she even made the effort. “I must look awful,” she said, aware as she had never been before of her unkempt and ugly appearance.

  “Moonlight becomes you, Thea.”

  He was a gallant liar, a thief of hearts. She knew that, yet the thrill went deep inside her and spread its warmth like melting butter. “It’s getting late,” she said. “You probably ought to take me home.”

  “It’s still early, barely eleven.” His smile teased her in the dusky moonlight. “And you have yet to make a wish on one of those stars.”

  She looked up into the canopy of distant suns, with all their accompanying celestial bodies, and wished someday, somehow, in a perfect universe, that a man like Peter Braddock might fall in love with her. “If I did make a wish, I couldn’t tell you.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because wishes are private and personal and a gentleman really shouldn’t ask a lady to tell her secrets.”

  “You know, Thea, between all the things a lady isn’t supposed to do and all the things a gentleman isn’t supposed to ask, it’s a wonder the human race is still in existence.”

  Smiling, she let her head drop back against the headrest, the better to see the stars. “It’s always been a mystery to me why anyone would want to be a lady. Or a gentleman for that matter.”

  He laughed gently in the dark. “I’m not sure there are that many of us left in the world.”

  She liked that he considered himself a gentleman. Too few men did these days. But right now, she wished with all her heart he’d make a pass at her. Just one. Just so she’d know what it was like for one instant to be the object of his desire. A sigh slipped past her lips, dreary with reality. “Why did you bring me here, Peter?”

  He gave her query a moment’s consideration. “Because this night is too gorgeous to waste on sleep. Because the ocean was here waiting for us. Because it’s too early to take you home. Because I’d like to hear you laugh before the evening ends.”

  “I didn’t think I’d asked a multiple choice question.”

  “It isn’t complicated, Thea. I wanted you to see Point Judith by moonlight, that’s all.”

  She thought it was probably simpler even than that. Peter knew—as everyone knew—that she wouldn’t, in her whole life, get many opportunities to ride shotgun in a convertible on a moonstruck night. He wanted her to have the experience, to feel the wind in her hair, the rush of air on her face, the sweet seduction of speeding like light through the darkness. That was certainly simple enough. And kind. In its way. She wished…oh, a thousand wishes as unobtainable as the stars, but mostly that she hadn’t asked him why. It was better to live in the moment and not cloud the evening with questions that could only have answers she didn’t want to hear.

  “I come here sometimes to sketch,” she said. “Usually early in the morning when I don’t have to jockey with the surfers for a parking space or an unobstructed view.”
r />   “It’s a popular spot,” Peter agreed. “What do you sketch?”

  She imagined drawing them—the convertible, the lighthouse, the ocean, the moonlight…Peter, with his dark hair tousled, his handsome brow, his easy smile. Maybe she’d put herself in the convertible with him. But probably not. It would be nicer to just imagine herself as she wished she were, instead of looking at a sketch and seeing at a glance all the many ways she didn’t fit into the picture. “I draw whatever I see. Rocks, the lighthouse, seagulls, sandpipers, people, if there are any around. It’s more pleasure than art.”

  “I never thought of you as an artist,” he said, then seemed to realize how that sounded. “I mean, I never thought of you as not an artist, either. It’s just that…”

  He never actually thought about her at all. Thea knew that’s what he was trying not to say. “I’m not an artist,” she said. “I sketch because I enjoy doing it. I imagine it’s much the same as you feel about surfing.”

  “Used to feel,” he corrected, his gaze turning once again to the frothy waves. “There doesn’t seem to be much time for it anymore. And I suppose, to be honest, I’ve outgrown the thrill…even though once upon a time, riding a wave was as sweet as a lover’s kiss.”

  The thrill transferred from his memory to her imagination and formed a longing that moved through her like the incoming tide. As sweet as a lover’s kiss…. Not that she would ever know either thrill. But, somehow, just hearing him say the words opened a cavern of regret in her soul and she wished he’d never brought her here, never been nice to her, never let her catch an instant’s glimpse of what she could never hope to know.

  Far out at sea, the lights of a ship blinked once, twice, then vanished into the darkness. Overhead, a bank of clouds slipped over the silver moon, obscuring it with a lethal silence, in much the same way her disappointment and anger passed over her then turned itself—without a single intelligent reason—on Peter. “I’d like to go home now,” she said tightly.

  He didn’t answer and she thought, perhaps, he might refuse to take her, might try to persuade her to change her mind, might ask her what was wrong. But he merely exhaled softly. Probably a sigh of relief that this awful date was nearly over.

  “I guess that means you’re not going to tell me your wish.”

  “I wished to go home.”

  She felt his eyes on her, questioning, uncertain, and she felt the tug of an attraction that was as one-sided as it was ridiculous, and as strong as the self-inflicted anger stirring up a tempest inside her heart. She had no business here on this rocky beach with Peter Braddock. He had no business being here with her, either. He belonged with someone blond and beautiful, someone confident and compelling—someone Thea would never be.

  And she belonged at Grace Place where she was loved to distraction by her cats.

  “All right, we’ll go,” he said, shifting in the seat and reaching down to switch on the ignition. “I’d better put the top up before we start back, though. Sounds like we could run into some rain on the drive home.”

  The storm that had been just a huddle of grumbling clouds on the horizon, now stirred the air and agitated the waves, bringing with it a far off roll of thunder and the rising scent of a coming rain.

  Thea wished he’d leave the top down, despite the possibility of getting drenched. It would, she thought, be a fitting end to this odd evening to arrive home as soggy as she was miserable.

  But of course, she didn’t say that, either.

  PETER TALKED ALL THE way back.

  He talked about Bryce and Lara. He talked about Adam and Katie. He talked about deeds and misdeeds committed by the Braddock brothers growing up. He talked about the mischief he liked to plot with his soon-to-be-official nephew, Cal. He doubled up on the charm, concentrated a considerable effort on engaging Thea in some form of conversation, and got exactly nowhere for his trouble…Unless he counted the few monosyllables she uttered when he asked a point-blank question.

  “Are you warm enough?”

  “Yes.”

  “Would you like to stop for a drink?”

  “No.”

  “How about ice cream?”

  “No.”

  “Everything okay?”

  “Fine.”

  She huddled against the passenger-side door, like a scolded child who believes if she can just be quiet enough and still enough no one will notice she’s there at all.

  With anyone else, Peter would have let frustration take its natural course and fallen into an indifferent silence. But he couldn’t imagine this happening with anyone else. The women he dated wanted to be with him. They held up their end of the conversation. They asked questions, they were avidly interested in hearing his answers. They smiled, they laughed, they made an effort to engage his attention and pique his interest. But Thea was only his date by default and, although he wished it could be otherwise, Peter knew she was as aware of that fact as he.

  He felt the complexity of her mood—its anger and apology, its aggrieved humility—and couldn’t begin to imagine what, if anything, he could have done to cause it. Or maybe it had nothing at all to do with him. Maybe she dreaded going home, despite her insistence on going there. Or maybe sudden storms made her moody and anxious. The rain had started with a few fat splatters soon after he’d put the top up and driven away from Point Judith and now the windshield wipers were working at top speed to clear away the steady downpour.

  For the twenty minutes it took to reach the turnoff and pass between the scrolled iron gates of Grace Place, Peter said whatever he could think of to ease her obvious unease, with no visible results. He couldn’t help but think she was cold, huddled as she was against the door. Reaching down, he flicked the heater to high, but that had little affect on the chilly atmosphere inside the car.

  “Are you sure you’re warm enough?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she said, her voice tight with misery.

  Peter wished he could just feel sorry for Thea and be done with her. But pity required some sense of entitlement from the recipient and there simply was none. Maybe it was something about the set of her chin and the way she’d folded her arm across her lap, a gesture clearly meant to state “Keep your sympathy. I neither want nor need it.” Or perhaps it had something to do with him knowing that she, too, had lost her mother in a tragic manner. The experience of being orphaned so suddenly and so unnecessarily gave them a common bond, an understanding of what it meant to be a motherless child.

  Of course, his mother hadn’t drowned and he’d never thought of her death as an accident. Peter believed his stepfather had always meant her harm in one form or another. That the death had come about accidentally didn’t, in his mind, absolve the man from guilt. Still he’d had James to rescue him, grandparents to welcome him home, brothers to emulate and admire.

  How different would Thea’s life have been, how different might she be now, if she’d been taken in by a loving family, instead of a critical and cold Davinia Grace Carey? Surely then, she wouldn’t have the look of someone who carried the weight of heavy responsibility on her thin shoulders.

  Grace Place came into view, a gloomy fortress with too many dark windows and too few lights left burning to welcome a traveler home.

  Peter slowed the car, hating worse than anything to deliver Thea to such a place.

  “Thank you, Peter,” she said in a rush even before the BMW roadster came to a complete stop, the words tumbling over themselves to be heard, coming out insincere and angrily polite. “It was a lovely evening and I appreciate your kindness.”

  Shifting quickly into Neutral, he shut off the engine and watched in complete bewilderment as she fumbled with the door handle. “It locks automatically,” he explained, reaching for the control switch. But his finger paused on the lever. He was at a loss to understand her hurry and couldn’t begin to imagine what was going through her mind. She couldn’t be afraid he’d try to kiss her good-night, could she? “If you’ll wait a minute, Thea, I’ll walk you to the d
oor so you won’t get wet.”

  Her shoulders sagged as if his words had somehow defeated her urgency. “You would, of course, have an umbrella.”

  “There’s always one in the car.”

  Her sigh was brief and poignant. “Look, Peter, there’s no reason for you to get wet. Thank you for the evening and now, if you’ll unlock my door, I’ll leave you in peace.”

  Now what in hell had brought this on? “If I’ve inadvertently said something to upset you, Thea, please accept my apology, but I am going to see you safely inside, even if we both get drenched.”

  The Beemer’s interior light stayed on automatically for several seconds after the engine was turned off and in the soft light, with the rain slickly coating the windows, confining them in the intimate space, she looked small and appealing and almost attractive. “That isn’t necessary,” she said.

  There was a note of pleading in her voice and he offered a smile to reassure her, in case reassurance was what she needed. “Seeing a young lady to her door is a gentleman’s duty and privilege.”

  The overhead light blinked out, but Peter would have sworn he saw a flash of resentment in her eyes, although it had to have been merely an instant’s reflection in the lens of her dark-rimmed glasses. “Then by all means,” she said tautly. “Get your umbrella and see me to the door.”

  He hesitated, wondering again what he’d said. “I’d like to know what I’ve done to upset you.”

  “Nothing, Peter. You’ve done nothing.” Her hands twisted a wrinkle into the skirt of her shapeless dress. “You’ve been a perfect gentleman all evening, but it’s getting very late and I’d like to go inside if you’ll just let me out of your car.”