Page 20 of Becoming Lady Dalton
“Viola, dear?”
“Yes, coming, Grandmother.” Viola curtseyed to the man she’d just behaved most inappropriately with.
“How can you kiss me while your suitor awaits you downstairs?” Piers demanded.
“I can’t get rid of him.” She shrugged helplessly. As long as her grandmother was convinced of the possibility for an engagement under the mistletoe this Christmas, Viola was stuck with his attentions—no matter how annoying she found them.
“I’ll save you from the admiring admiral.” Piers stalked toward her with a determined set to his jaw.
“Not so fast, Lord Dalton. I can protect myself, should I feel it necessary.” Viola caught his arm and swung him back to face her. She had to protect him, too, from the truth about her marriage.
“I don’t understand why you let that bellowing steer of a man monopolize your time. He’s a terrible match for a woman of your intelligence and refinement.”
Piers raked a hand through his hair. The sensuous curve of his bottom lip was plump and glistening from their kiss—her kiss. She had driven imposing, aloof Lord Dalton to distraction. Viola loved it.
This was power. Holding another person’s emotions in your hands, staring into one another’s eyes with unguarded hearts… This was heady, butterflies-in-her-stomach, incredible. It was all she could do not to throw herself into his arms again.
But oh, the arrogance of this man, thinking he had any right to dictate how she passed her days.
“It is my time to use as I see fit,” Viola replied, whirling away so her skirts flew out and twisted about her knees. There would be no running away out of pique. At best she might trip and fall down the stairs. A second wave of headiness washed over her, for Viola had—for the first time in her life—the ability to say no as easily as she said yes. She hadn’t fought her way free of an unhappy marriage to a charming schemer just to throw herself at the first young lordling who asked for her hand.
“Have I no claim on your time?” he asked softly. An undertone of ferocity rumbled just beneath the surface. “Are we not courting now?”
“No, my darling, deluded Dalton, we are not. You are far too young for a tired old widow like myself. You need a young lady of refinement.”
“You are hardly fit for the slaughterhouse,” he scoffed, pacing after her. Viola put a striped silk settee between them. Piers waited to see which way she meant to turn. His dark eyes never left her face. What she read there terrified her.
With great power over a person’s heart came the ability to shatter it beyond all recognition. Viola had no wish to hurt him. If she were anyone but herself, she wouldn’t hesitate to take what she wanted from this man and give herself in return. But she had lived in the world too long to believe in lasting happiness. Having been on the receiving end of having her heart crushed dead and flat inside, Viola refused to do the same to the man who tempted her beyond reason. All she had to offer him was pain.
“Oh, my,” she laughed without humor, “what elegant compliments my lord bestows on me.”
“Minx,” Piers growled.
“I mean it, Piers. This kiss changes nothing between us. I shall manage Admiral Saxon as I see fit. You shall court Lady Margaret.”
Viola would make everything right all on her own. She hadn’t needed anyone’s help in a very long time. Well, that wasn’t entirely true—she and Matthew would be homeless now if not for her grandmother. But Viola was accustomed to fending for herself, and a kiss had changed nothing. More kisses would continue to change nothing. If Piers couldn’t accept that fact, it was best they part ways now.
Viola’s heart ached at the possibility. But she wasn’t about to risk the wonderful future within her grasp—two rooms of her own in an exciting city—to grasp at a mirage. Piers thought he wanted her for a wife. What he needed, Viola decided, was an affair. She might be able to give him that, for a while. She certainly wanted to. But the man wasn’t asking for a temporary place in her bed. Piers had gone and mistaken the intense attraction between them for pure love. He demanded the moon when it was not hers to sing down for him.
What a shame, for if there was any man deserving of love, it was he.
“I am here if you should need me,” Piers offered, gentlemanly to the core. He wouldn’t push her. But neither was he going to let her brush him away like a fly. It was wrong to let that knowledge thrill her. It was silly to take comfort in knowing that he, a lord four years her junior, was so taken with her that he wanted to protect her. Viola squashed the kernel of vanity in her soul.
“Whom are you up there with?” came the querulous voice of her grandmother from one floor below.
“Lord Dalton. He was just leaving.” Viola cast the man who’d awoken her senses the most imperious glare she could muster. When he failed to comply immediately, she raised one brow and lifted her chin. He held her eye for a long moment before descending ahead of her, as was proper, so as to avoid stepping on the train of her violet and yellow striped day dress. The wool and silk fabric gleamed faintly as Viola smoothed her hands down over it then caught herself. A lady wouldn’t smudge her dress over a few conflicting emotions.
It seemed her lady training remained incomplete.
The admiral took Viola by the arm before her feet left the final stair. His ham-handed attempt to assist her nearly sent her sprawling. Viola caught herself on the newel post.
“I have you, Mrs. Cartwright,” Saxon bellowed. Hedidspeak too loudly, though Viola decided to be charitable and chalk it up to burgeoning deafness. Would the man get louder as he grew older and his physical infirmities piled up?
Viola shuddered—not in disgust, but because she had married a man twenty-five years her senior and knew what aging did to a couple. No, the involuntary reaction was strictly due to the fact that she’d turned down an offer to be a younger, far handsomer man’s paramour only minutes ago. Her noble intentions had boomeranged at her in the space of a few minutes.
Over the admiral’s shoulder Piers smirked unrepentantly. Viola bit back a grin as he doffed his hat and ducked out.
It required several rounds of goodbyes and sendoffs, but they managed to get Admiral Saxon out the door a few minutes later.
