Chapter 30
Eliza froze. Oh my God. No. No. No. What would she do? Where would she go? I can’t leave. This isn’t the plan. She clung to Deveric, panic inundating every inch of her.
“No,” Deveric said, his voice calm steel. “I attacked her. The fault here is entirely mine.” He took a small step away from Eliza.
“You didn’t attack me,” Eliza protested, incredulous, even as Deveric continued speaking.
“You will not refer to Mrs. James that way ever again, Mother, nor will you treat her with anything less than the respect owed to a member of our family. I apologize for my actions, to you, and to Mrs. James.”
Eliza sensed it as he left her, emotionally as well as physically, his soul uncoupling from hers. It was as if he locked himself up behind some wall. No! she wanted to scream. No, our connection is real. Don’t do this. Why are you doing this? But she could say nothing to stop him. If she said anything at all at that moment, with tensions sky high, she’d likely only make things worse.
She watched mutely as duke squared off against dowager. A long moment of silence stretched the air, until the dowager tipped her head ever so slightly, raising her chin at Eliza. “As you command, dearest son. I will not speak publicly against Mrs. James in any way.”
Deveric nodded, grasping Eliza by the elbow as if to lead her away, when his mother spoke again. “But in return, I remind you of your obligation to the family honor. Do not bring disgrace upon the name you and I have worked so hard to rescue from your father’s and sister’s actions.”
With that, she turned, stiff-backed, her bearing as regal as any queen, and walked down the hallway from whence she had come.
Eliza exhaled a long, grateful breath. “I’m so sorry your mother saw us, Dev—” she started.
He broke her off sharply. “As I said, the fault is all mine. I am the monster.” He let go of her elbow and stepped away from her. Staring straight ahead, he said, “It shall not happen again,” his voice and face devoid of emotion. Without another word, he walked off in the direction his mother had gone, leaving Eliza stunned and heartbroken, alone in the hallway.
Dev stomped his way to his study, glaring at any unfortunate individual who happened to cross his path, which at this time of the morning was only one maid. She scurried away like a frightened mouse, and he made a mental note to apologize to her later if he could remember who she was.
Thankful to see a fire had already been lit—word of his return likely spread the instant he’d left his horse in the stables—he threw himself into the ornately carved chair behind his desk and picked up a sheaf of papers. After staring at them blankly for a few minutes, he tossed them back down in disgust.
What had possessed him? What had possessed him to attack her, a gentle-born lady, regardless from which century she claimed to come? He’d pushed her up against the wall like a common prostitute and would have taken her then and there, had his mother not interceded.
He ran his fingers through his hair. She’d responded. It was not as if she’d been unwilling. Did that make it better or worse? What did he know of this Eliza James, anyway? She’d already said sexual relations were laxer in her time. Had she lain with many men?
The thought saddened him, but at the same time, he didn’t believe it to be true. You don’t know her. “I know her well enough,” he grumbled, thankful no one was in the room to catch him talking to himself.
He longed to go back, to apologize, to erase that wounded look in her eyes he’d seen before he’d run away. And that’s what he’d done—he’d run away. He sighed, shame settling across his shoulders like a yoke.
What kind of man fled from a woman he’d disgraced? Where was his honor? Was he such a coward in the face of his own desire that he would abandon her the moment the truth was acknowledged?
His mother may have caught them, yes, but that wasn’t the real reason he’d run. He’d fled because he didn’t want to feel what she stirred in him. Desire ... lust ... a wanting so deep he didn’t know how to cope with it.
But not just that. He wanted to possess her, he wanted to consume her, yes, but he also wanted to know her, to know all about her, to simply be with her. He wanted everything.
The thought terrified him. When his wife had made it clear theirs was not a marriage of connection, it had saddened him. But, he conceded, it had also been easier. He hadn’t had to change his lifestyle much, hadn’t had to take anyone else into consideration, hadn’t had to expose any of his inner self.
That was how it should be, his mother would say. A Claremont does not lower himself to vulgar displays of emotion. He’d had that drilled into him since he was a child and his father had caught him weeping over a dead cat.
“A stupid animal is not worth your tears,” his father had said. “A Claremont does not cry.” He’d lashed Deveric with a belt to prove his point, not stopping until his son had ceased to shed tears.
Deveric had learned the lesson well. Stoicism was a better face for the world. It was what was expected of a man of his station, and it kept anyone from getting too close. Except for Eliza. She’d needled her way under his skin, and he hadn’t even spent more than a few days in her company. How? How did she do it? He’d thought his walls impenetrable since the loss of Mirabelle ... and Louisa.
Louisa. He tried not to think of his daughter. She’d been innocent, a tiny little thing, with a shock of red hair. She’d looked so peaceful as he’d held her, but it wasn’t peace. It was death. She’d never drawn a breath. According to the midwife, the cord had wrapped around her neck and strangled her.
Deveric had wept that day, wept for hours, clinging to his infant daughter until his mother finally pried the child away and had his valet dose him with laudanum.
After that, he’d ceased to talk. The family assumed grief kept him silent, grief over the loss of his wife and daughter. It was, to a point. But it was also shame—shame for what he’d done to Mirabelle, shame for his inability to save her and his daughter, shame for breaking down for the entire world to see. A Claremont does not cry.
He’d shut himself away from the world, throwing himself into managing the estates, into providing for his sisters, into whiling the hours away drinking with his friends, to all appearances detached, emotionless. A gentleman of good breeding does not display an excess of feeling.
Arthington and Emerlin knew the truth, though. They’d been with him since Eton. They’d seen him cry over finding an injured bird, seen him jump with joy over the attentions of a young lady at a ball, seen him rage at the injustices done to his sister Amara after that blackguard seduced her. They knew, but they did not judge him. Thank God. Arthington’s willingness to feel, to show, to revel in emotion was one of the things that had drawn Deveric to him. But he couldn’t be like that. He couldn’t.
But Eliza ... Eliza. She’d got under his skin from the moment he’d met her, from the instant she kissed him and sent them both whirling, literally, through time. Figuratively, as well, for his world hadn’t stopped spinning since. She made him want things. Want more. She made him want to laugh and weep and question and rejoice. She made him want to live again.
He stood up from his desk and walked to the brandy decanter. It may only be seven in the morning, but he needed a drink. As he poured, his eyes fell on the settee near the fireplace, the one on which he and Eliza had awoken those few weeks ago. Had it only been such a short time? It felt as if he’d known her, had been with her, had wanted her forever.
Sipping the heady drink, he walked to the fire, staring into its flames.
“You have burned me, Mrs. James,” he whispered. “Singed me to the core, and yet at the same time, brought me back to life. You’ve reignited me. I both hate you and love you for it.”
Love. The word echoed through his skull. Love? Did he love her? Could he love a woman he barely knew?
He didn’t think he did. Not yet. But he could see himself doing so very easily. He could see himself losing himself in her, opening his heart,
letting her in. The thought brought waves of terror with it. He’d lost one wife and he hadn’t even loved her. He’d been a monster to her.
He couldn’t be a monster to Eliza, too. Couldn’t get close to her, couldn’t let her get close to him, or she’d see. She’d see his passion was too much, his emotions were too much. She’d see he wasn’t a man. He was a mess. A mess of feelings too powerful to acknowledge, so he’d spent years tamping them down.
Leave the emotions to the poets, to Shakespeare and Wordsworth. He was Claremont. He was Duke. He didn’t have time to be anything more. Or anything less.
With a sigh, he sat down on the settee, nursing his brandy, losing himself in the flickering of the fire. Why had he come back? It’d been easier in London, easier to immerse himself in insignificant things with friends than to deal with how this one woman had turned his world upside down.
But she’d drawn him back. He had to know. Had to know more about her, had to know if she still affected him as she had in those first few days. He needed to know if the desire she’d kindled in him still flamed as hot, or if it’d merely been a momentary spark of infatuation, a temporary bout of insanity. He had to know if he could control himself around her.
The throbbing of his cock told him he couldn’t. He’d sworn he wouldn’t lose control with her, wouldn’t force her. Except he almost had. He threw the glass into the flames in disgust, listening with satisfaction as it shattered. What if he’d taken her there in the hallway? With no thought to the ramifications? What if he’d got her with child? His cheeks turned to ice as he pictured Eliza lying cold and pale in death, as Mirabelle had. As Louisa had.
No. No, he couldn’t do that to her, couldn’t do that to any woman ever again. He had to suppress his passions, had to regain control of his emotions, had to retreat behind the wall. Most of all, he had to go back to London. He couldn’t stay here, not when he knew she was here. He had to go back to London, or his own burning need for her would consume him alive. That was unacceptable.
A Claremont never lost control.
Chapter 31
Eliza lay across her bed, tears streaming down her face. This is not going to plan, Cat! She wanted to scream, wanted to beat her fists on the pillow, but if she did, one of the blasted ever-present servants was likely to hear and would come to her aid. She didn’t want anyone. Not right now.
What had gone wrong? She’d been ecstatic to see Deveric, even more at the look on his face when he’d seen her. Pleasure. He’d been visibly pleased to see her, and that had warmed her heart, made her feel as if she had a chance to make this fantasy come true. And then, in the hallway ... She touched her fingers to her lips, covered now with salty tears, remembering the deliciousness of Deveric’s mouth on hers, the feel of his body pressing hers into the wall, the desire to get closer to him, to wrap herself around him and in him.
No one, not even Greg, had roused this fierce need in her, this sense that something was missing, that the puzzle wasn’t complete and wouldn’t be complete until Deveric and she had fit together.
It went beyond sex. She wanted to know him in a way nobody else did. He obeyed social norms of behavior to a fault—in her modern opinion, at least. He preferred order and stability and calmness. But that interlude in the hallway was anything but calm. Anything but orderly. There was so much more to Deveric Mattersley than he let on.
Was it Mirabelle? Had his first wife done this to him? A cold fish, the servants had termed her. Ill-matched to a man like Deveric. What had happened between them to have such a passionate man draw such heavy walls around himself?
Now that she’d gotten a peek over the wall, she wanted to break down the door, unlock him, and discover exactly who he was behind the shield. Because she had a feeling she could love that man, love him truly, madly, deeply.
Oh, Cat. I need you. I don’t know what to do. This mess was definitely not what Eliza had wished for. She hiccupped through more sobs. She’d been so selfish, asking Cat to send her here to find love. She’d abandoned her friend to pursue a fantasy.
On the other hand, Cat wanted her to be happy, to move on, to grow, instead of hiding out in the bookstore while life passed her by. And it wasn’t like she and Cat had known this would work. A big part of Eliza had assumed it wouldn’t. After all, while Cat had the power to create her own love interests, they’d had no clue whether she could craft them for others.
Yes, Eliza’d taken this crazy chance for a reason: she wanted love. She wanted to love and be loved. She wanted passion and desire. She wanted someone so enthralled with her, so intoxicated by her, that he’d never leave her—and vice versa.
She snorted through her tears. Maybe that kind of love wasn’t realistic, no matter what romance novels claimed, especially in this society, where rules of propriety forbade all but the minutest of contact between single men and women, and where people were expected to follow the codes of conduct to the letter. Many didn’t. But Deveric did.
If she couldn’t find that kind of bone-deep connection in the twenty-first century, where men and women pretty much did whatever they wanted with each other without anyone batting an eye, why had she expected to find it here, in a society familiar and foreign at the same time, bound by countless customs and rules she couldn’t keep track of, in spite of all the literature she’d read from the period?
At that, her thoughts turned to Jane Austen, and her tears slowed. Austen had written about all those rules, the social niceties, the pressures and realities placed upon women in this time. But she’d also written about love, about grand, all-consuming love. About the kind of love that had led Darcy to declare to Elizabeth, “In vain have I struggled ... You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you.” That had had Wentworth confessing, “You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope.”
It had to be real. Or was Jane as hopeless a romantic as Eliza, wanting something that could never be had, an impossible fantasy? Darcy and Wentworth were literary creations, after all. In real life, Austen had never married. If she’d been in love with Tom LeFroy, as many asserted, it’d never gone anywhere.
Were the characters Austen created just as unrealistic as modern romance novel heroes?
Bitter tears streamed down Eliza’s face. Her eyes were red and raw, and her nose full of phlegm. This was reality. A mess of a face, a broken heart, trapped in a strange bed in a strange house in a strange country.
Could she have mucked this up anymore?
A few hours later, Eliza woke from the sleep into which she’d cried herself. Her eyes were puffy and raw, her lips dry and cracked. She was still in the chemise she’d been wearing since the night before. Where was Betsy? She hadn’t come in, as far as Eliza knew; perhaps the maid had heard her sobs and decided it best to leave her alone.
“Buck up, Eliza James,” she scolded herself. “You wanted this. And no one said it’d be easy.” The Coldplay song The Scientist echoed in her mind, and she sang a verse out loud.
Did she want to go back to the start? Did she want to give up? Would Cat’s escape clause even work?
Standing up, she crossed over to the dressing table and sat on the stool. The reflection in the mirror wasn’t pretty. She took a brush and started to work it through her hair when a knock came at the door and Betsy entered.
The maid’s eyes radiated sympathy. Eliza’s sobs had been heard in the hallway, then. Good. She hoped Deveric had been across the hall and had had to listen. The jerk. Why was he fighting his attraction to her so hard?
Maybe because attraction is not enough, Lizzie. Maybe he’s better at seeing—and understanding—the gaping chasm between your experiences and his. It’s not like you’ve been trained to be a duchess since the day you were born, as have many of these upper-class English ladies.
And sexual desire was not the same thing as affection, much less a wish to marry. If this had been a romance novel, he would have had to offer for her. He’d compromised her, after all. Hadn’t he?
Did people r
eally do that? Marry for something as innocuous as getting caught together in a hallway? Okay, she and Deveric had been doing more than merely lounging about, but still.
Well, if he did offer out of obligation, she’d turn him down. Marriage wasn’t a prize won by default. She wanted all of him or nothing at all.
“May I fetch you anything, my lady? A coffee?”
Goodness gracious, we’re back to my lady? Betsy had taken to mostly calling Eliza by her name in the past week. She must really be feeling sorry for me.
“No, thank you. I shall have some when I breakfast.”
Betsy held up the gown she’d brought in for Eliza. “Breakfast is long past, but I’m sure we can find something for you. Emmeline sent this dress today.”
Eliza eyed the white gown. White. White. She was so tired of white. At first, she’d been mad with curiosity for each and every garment she saw, ecstatic to try on authentic Regency garb. Now, the authenticity was getting to her. She didn’t want stays and petticoats and dresses with a zillion buttons, she wanted an exercise bra and a loose-fitting T-shirt with sweats. She wanted to curl up on the sofa in front of a fire, drinking coffee and zipping through Target.com on her laptop, Chinese food on the way.
“It’s nice.” What else could she say?
“And ...” Betsy shifted uncomfortably. “The dowager sent this cap for your head. She insisted you might be ... cold.”
Eliza’s mouth twisted in a half-smile, half-sneer. She knew what wearing a cap indoors meant; it’s what older women put on to signify respectability. She wants to mark me as ancient, as unavailable, as an old maid. Someone who poses no threat. Maybe as a widow, Eliza couldn’t be an old maid, but she could refuse the cap.
“No, thank you. I’ve gotten quite used to the temperature.” That wasn’t exactly true, but she was not about to put that ugly thing on her head.
The Magic of Love Series Page 50
