saw, glowing in the dark like a beacon, the small, white bark basket on her bedside table. She stretched out one hand and traced the rough texture of the surface. The question drifted through her mind again; was she incapable of love? She had begun to think so, until Marcus Westhaven had entered her life. He was everything she had always pictured in the perfect beau; tall, handsome, bold, adventurous, and with an air of wildness that she found enticing and enthralling.
But were those not all surface attributes? Surely there was more to love than a handsome face or a pretty figure. This was an unaccustomed train of thought. She had never thought so before, but she had begun to wonder, after watching her cousin and Lord Drake together, if there was not something more to love, something she had never experienced, a bond between two people that welded them into one.
How did it happen? When did that miracle happen; before marriage, when the couple fell in love, or as they wed, or after the marriage? She had attended three weddings over the course of the winter and spring; True had married her wealthy viscount, True's younger sister, Faith had married the brother of her best friend, and the girls' father, an elderly vicar Arabella had always loved as if he were her father, too, had married the plump, motherly widow, Mrs. Saunders, in a ceremony that was simple, and yet for Arabella, most touching.
Each wedding had had moments of emotion, touching scenes that lived on in her memory. But of the three, the one that stayed with her was the vicar's. He was in his late sixties and the widow in her fifties, but the love that shone from their eyes as they were joined in wedlock was a stunning surprise to Arabella. Love, at their age? But yes, it was love, as fervent and real as any pair of mooning twenty-year-olds, and perhaps more fast and steady for their age.
So what was love? She rolled over on her back and stared at the ceiling, pulling the soft covers up under her chin and drawing her feet up out of the chilly regions of the bed.
The feelings that had coursed through her the moment Marcus had taken her in his arms had been powerful and new. But they were physical; thrumming blood, a thrill down her spine, and tingling in her toes. Was that love, then? Is that what the vicar and the widow felt that made them want to marry? It seemed ludicrous, but was it?
Restlessly she rolled over on her side again, eyes wide open in the dark, the blackness like a velvet blanket around her, except for a faint brightening of the window through the heavy drapes, and the white blur on her sidetable that was the basket Marcus Westhaven had given her. Love had to be something more than just tingling and thrumming and thrilling. It had to be! So what she felt for Marcus Westhaven was just a passing fancy and it would not, as her darkest fears would have her believe, plague her for the rest of her life with regrets and fearsome longings.
Arabella closed her eyes against the darkness, but try as she might she could not rid herself of the sensation of lips firmly pressed to her own and hands that trailed down her back, leaving alternately icy and burning traces on her skin under her gown. It was not love!
But whatever it was, it kept her awake until the early morning sun brightened the eastern sky.
Reading was not far from London, not even a full day's ride for a young man on a horse. So when the message came that the old man was conscious, it had not taken long to respond. Marcus sat at the bedside trying not to inhale the scent of old man, bed linens in need of washing, and a lingering smell of imminent death. He gazed down at the man on the bed and examined the blue veins that traced a path across the temple and into the sparse hairline. It had been so many years. He didn't recognize this frail body, this figure that barely made an impression in the bed, as the man he remembered from his childhood, the old man who smelled of tobacco and hoarhound
But were those not all surface attributes? Surely there was more to love than a handsome face or a pretty figure. This was an unaccustomed train of thought. She had never thought so before, but she had begun to wonder, after watching her cousin and Lord Drake together, if there was not something more to love, something she had never experienced, a bond between two people that welded them into one.
How did it happen? When did that miracle happen; before marriage, when the couple fell in love, or as they wed, or after the marriage? She had attended three weddings over the course of the winter and spring; True had married her wealthy viscount, True's younger sister, Faith had married the brother of her best friend, and the girls' father, an elderly vicar Arabella had always loved as if he were her father, too, had married the plump, motherly widow, Mrs. Saunders, in a ceremony that was simple, and yet for Arabella, most touching.
Each wedding had had moments of emotion, touching scenes that lived on in her memory. But of the three, the one that stayed with her was the vicar's. He was in his late sixties and the widow in her fifties, but the love that shone from their eyes as they were joined in wedlock was a stunning surprise to Arabella. Love, at their age? But yes, it was love, as fervent and real as any pair of mooning twenty-year-olds, and perhaps more fast and steady for their age.
So what was love? She rolled over on her back and stared at the ceiling, pulling the soft covers up under her chin and drawing her feet up out of the chilly regions of the bed.
The feelings that had coursed through her the moment Marcus had taken her in his arms had been powerful and new. But they were physical; thrumming blood, a thrill down her spine, and tingling in her toes. Was that love, then? Is that what the vicar and the widow felt that made them want to marry? It seemed ludicrous, but was it?
Restlessly she rolled over on her side again, eyes wide open in the dark, the blackness like a velvet blanket around her, except for a faint brightening of the window through the heavy drapes, and the white blur on her sidetable that was the basket Marcus Westhaven had given her. Love had to be something more than just tingling and thrumming and thrilling. It had to be! So what she felt for Marcus Westhaven was just a passing fancy and it would not, as her darkest fears would have her believe, plague her for the rest of her life with regrets and fearsome longings.
Arabella closed her eyes against the darkness, but try as she might she could not rid herself of the sensation of lips firmly pressed to her own and hands that trailed down her back, leaving alternately icy and burning traces on her skin under her gown. It was not love!
But whatever it was, it kept her awake until the early morning sun brightened the eastern sky.
Reading was not far from London, not even a full day's ride for a young man on a horse. So when the message came that the old man was conscious, it had not taken long to respond. Marcus sat at the bedside trying not to inhale the scent of old man, bed linens in need of washing, and a lingering smell of imminent death. He gazed down at the man on the bed and examined the blue veins that traced a path across the temple and into the sparse hairline. It had been so many years. He didn't recognize this frail body, this figure that barely made an impression in the bed, as the man he remembered from his childhood, the old man who smelled of tobacco and hoarhound
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