Merryn’s gaze fell on one lying on the bedcover and she blushed. The blush spread down her throat and across her whole body, naked as it was beneath the pink silk cover. She turned her head very slowly. Garrick was lying beside her still, despite the crush of people now in the room, deeply asleep. One strong brown arm lay possessively across her stomach, drawing her close to his side.
No wonder he was still sleeping. He must have been exhausted—for various reasons. The memories slid into her head like a disconnected pattern: Garrick comforting her when she had woken in terror in the darkness of the night, Garrick protecting her with his body when the walls had fallen, Garrick’s hands moving over her with such sure skill and endless pleasure. Garrick. Her lover.
She had slept with her enemy, the man who had killed her brother.
A wave of shock and self-loathing hit her so hard that she turned cold to her bones. The sickness rose in her throat. She was lying naked in a bordello with a man who was her sworn enemy. She had allowed him the most impossible intimacies with her body. She had lost her virginity. She was ruined.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“FARNE.”
Alex Grant’s tone was colder than the polar ice, his gray gaze hard as flint. In fact, Garrick reflected ruefully, he had had a warmer welcome from Spanish guerrillas than he was getting now from Lord Grant. Which was hardly surprising. He had comprehensively ruined the reputation of Grant’s sister-in-law and plunged the family into outrageous scandal. The only mystery was why Grant was wasting any time at all in speaking to him rather than simply putting a bullet through him.
“A glass of wine?” Alex asked, gesturing to the decanter that sat on the rosewood library table. “Or perhaps—” his gaze appraised Garrick’s face keenly “—we should make that brandy?”
“Thank you,” Garrick said. He felt a tiny amount of tension slip from his shoulders. So they were to be civilized about this. With a man such as Grant, who had allegedly wrestled a polar bear single-handed and had successfully saved his crew from certain death trapped in the Arctic ice, one could not be sure. Grant was a gentleman, of course, but Garrick was all too aware that he had broken every last tenet of honorable behavior and deserved no clemency.
“I cannot call you out,” Alex said precisely, as though reading Garrick’s thoughts. He strolled across to the decanter, poured for both of them and handed Garrick his glass. His gaze was still as cold as the polar sea. “Please do not misunderstand me,” he continued. “The idea has some appeal.” His gaze went to the pristine white bandage about Garrick’s left wrist. “Though I would wait until you were recovered, of course. Killing a wounded man is not my style.”
Garrick prudently kept quiet. He was not at all sure that Grant was joking.
“However,” Alex Grant continued, in a level tone, “there has already been one scandalous duel between our two families. I could not countenance distressing my wife with another.” He took a mouthful of brandy. “And then there is Merryn to consider. I do not believe that for me to kill you would help her in any way.”
“I would like to marry Lady Merryn,” Garrick said. He chose his words carefully. Others would not serve. “I want her. I wanted her from the first. I will always want her …”
He took a deep breath. There was nothing civilized about his thoughts or his desires or his need for Merryn Fenner, particularly now that he had taken her exquisite body once—twice—and burned for more.
He shifted in his chair. He knew that it was not simply desire that drove him, strong as that was. He had seen Merryn’s courage and her grace under pressure. He had held her in the darkest night and protected her from harm. He had saved her life and she had saved his. They were bound together now more tightly than they had ever been.
Regret raked him, opening old scars. He was not worthy to marry Merryn. He knew it. What could he give her, with his flawed honor and his equally damaged soul? Yet now he had to offer her marriage or be branded even more of a dishonorable scoundrel. He was trapped. There were no alternatives.
“I am aware,” he said, “that my behavior has not been that of a gentleman.”
“Not remotely,” Alex agreed, with an expressive lift of the brows.
Garrick gritted his teeth. Grant was right of course. He had lost control with Merryn, a circumstance that had never, ever happened to him before. He had been sworn to protect her and he had done so, but then she had kissed him and the desire had exploded between them and shattered every tenet of duty by which Garrick had tried to live his life. Grant was right. He had transgressed the code. He was angry with himself for it; he felt full of violence and it disturbed him. He had not felt like this for years, since the time Stephen Fenner had died. He had thought that such powerful feelings, such dangerous actions, were behind him. Yet Merryn had smashed his cold facade and brought every emotion burning to new life.
He wanted to see Merryn. It felt as though she alone could soothe the demons in him. Yet he knew it would not be that easy. He had no notion if she would even agree to see him again, let alone marry him. The hideous scene in the brothel had haunted his thoughts for an entire day and night. Merryn, throwing on her ruined clothes in a desperate frenzy of embarrassment and horror, looking at him with loathing and disbelief.
I regret every moment of what we have done and I hate myself for it …
Garrick flinched at the memory. Everything had disintegrated into tawdriness and scandal, spilling corrosive misery over an experience that had been profoundly sweet and intense. For a brief moment they had built something exquisitely tender. And then they had lost it again.
“I make no excuse,” Garrick said now, aware of Alex’s steady gaze on his face. “I take full responsibility for my actions. It was unpardonable in me.”
There was a silence. “Inexcusable, yes,” Alex said. “Inexplicable, no.”
Garrick blinked. “I beg your pardon?”
Alex shrugged. A small smile played about his lips. “Make no mistake, Farne,” he said. “I do not condone in any way what happened. But I am also no hypocrite. People died in that flood. You and Merryn had been trapped for hours, facing the possibility of death together. She told us that you saved her life. Twice.” He grimaced. “Such circumstances strain the self-control of even the strongest.”
Garrick felt a little more of the tension ease from his body. “That is more than generous of you,” he said, “but still I make no excuse.”
“Of course,” Alex said. “And I would not expect you to in all honor. So …” His tone warmed a little. “The question is what we are to do about this.”
Their eyes met. Garrick realized that he had passed the test and was glad. He was starting to like Alex Grant. Owen Purchase spoke highly of the man. Under other circumstances he imagined that they might have become friends.
“I am sincere in my desire to wed Lady Merryn,” he said, “and not simply because of the scandal. I have the greatest admiration for her.”
A small smile played about Alex’s lips. “I see,” he said, and Garrick had the disconcerting feeling that Alex saw rather more than Garrick had intended.
Alex put his glass down with a businesslike snap. “You speak well, Farne,” he said bluntly,
