She reached blindly for that hand, her palm striking something hard, knobby. A wrist. She seized it and set his hand hard against her temple.
Cooling, weighted bliss.
“I cannot bear this.” His low voice barely penetrated through the pain muffling her ears. “I want to ease your pain.”
Twin spots of pressure pushed against the skin between her eyes. His thumbs. His fingers came to rest at her temples, his hands cupping her brow and the ache there. His blunt fingertips began to draw slow, deep circles, while his luxuriant voice murmured soothing nonsense.
His fingers pushed the pain away, his words wrapping her in comfort, reminding her that there was something beyond this agony.
The pain went to low tide, finally allowing her to curl up on the shore and sleep.
Two hours.
For two hours he’d been watching over her as she slept. After the first fifteen minutes, he’d removed the cloth so she wouldn’t catch a chill. And kept his hands from her forehead.
He stayed. The door was open, the maid was puttering about down the hall—it wasn’t terribly improper, as far as things went.
Watching a woman he admired as she slept was something he shouldn’t be doing. He shouldn’t even admire her.
But the distance between what ought to be and what was—it was too far for him to traverse any longer.
He’d been on his way to his own room, passing her open door as he did. When he’d seen her lying on the floor like that in such obvious agony—his entire world stopped.
Once he’d assured himself that she wasn’t bleeding, that she hadn’t been shot, the agony in his chest shifted as his mind stuttered forth memories of another lady, weeping and broken on the floor exactly so.
He’d shoved the recollections away and gone to help Isabel. He recognized it as a migraine from the symptoms.
Close the curtains, keep noise to a minimum, a cool compress, and rest. Simple things to help her, her sigh of relief as she’d slipped into sleep telling him her pain had eased.
It was the other things he’d done that worried him. Carrying her to the bed had been necessary, but now his arms could never forget the feel of her there. Running a finger down her cheek—that had been entirely unnecessary.
Two hours by her bedside, watching the rise and fall of her chest, listening to the soft noises she made as she dreamed, inhaling the scent clinging to her—that was beyond unnecessary.
It was madness.
He’d fought madness before. The evil kind, composed of smoke and fury, that left only ash in its wake.
This kind of madness was sweet and all the more dangerous for it.
She curled in on herself as she slept. Those dark eyes were hidden, but she couldn’t hide her thin nose or sharp cheeks. Another man might not have found anything to linger on in her face, but his gaze could not be pulled away.
He’d seen the resolve she carried with her, as sturdy and shining as a shield. He’d seen her deploy it fearlessly in even the worst of conditions, even when a man who’d violated her without mercy lied about it without shame, almost to her very face.
Another man might take a fleeting glance at her face and never think to linger to find the fierceness behind it.
But it was her hair that called to Sebastian. Darker than the River Lethe it was. He could imagine running his fingers through it, the great wave of it spreading all about him. How long was it? Did it fall to her shoulders, her back, her flanks?
Slowly, he reached for that enticing darkness. It was pinned up, but a few strands had escaped. He set a fingertip—only a fingertip—against one of those free strands.
After a few moments, he drew it back ruefully. It was soft, yes, and invited a man to linger—but the touch of it didn’t bring forgetfulness, didn’t wash away his memories or his sins.
He turned away from her, focused his attention on the wall, and marshaled his thoughts toward more appropriate subjects. His notebooks, for example. He’d be with them for hours tonight, cataloguing all of this.
He’d dreamed of her last night, standing before him as he knelt, naked and bound, as she forced him to confess the dark truth of himself. She’d listened with unblinking regard, as unresponsive as a sphinx.
When he was finished, she’d shoved him down, straddled him, and clawed a shame-filled climax from him.
He’d awoken as hard and hot as a blacksmith’s hammer. Pulling his belt from the dresser, he’d wrapped it tightly around his hand, once, twice, until his fingers went white and tingling.
His father had liked to do the same, wrap the end of his belt round his hand like that. No matter how drunk Judge Spencer was, his hands never shook as he twined the leather around his palm.
Sebastian had clenched his fist tight and paced the room, quoting Marcus Aurelius until he’d once more mastered himself. By that point, the belt had rubbed his hand raw, the leather clinging to the wound it had made. He’d slowly peeled it away, bandaged his hand, and gone back to bed.
The wound was now only a line of pink along his palm. He’d always healed quickly.
A soft sigh and a rustling from the bed brought him back from his undimmed memories. He allowed himself to turn back to her.
She was blinking sleep from those fine dark eyes of hers, soft in every aspect, such as he’d never seen from her. Her eyes widened a hair when she saw him.
“How long have I been asleep?” Her sleep-rumpled voice scraped pleasantly along his ears. “A quarter of an hour?”
He shook his head. “More like two.”
She darted a glance to the open door, but did not ask the obvious question as to why he’d remained while she’d slept. Lucky for him, since he couldn’t have answered it anyhow.
“I—” She rubbed at her forehead. “Where are my spectacles?”
He handed them to her. “Are you feeling better?”
“Yes.” She slid the frames up her nose, her gaze taking on its more usual sharpness. “Although I always feel a bit cotton-headed after an attack. There’s no pain—my head just doesn’t feel quite right.” Her face tilted toward the bed. “Thank you for your assistance.”
“It was nothing.”
That was a lie. It had been everything to help her through her misery. He should go now that she was more herself, before he succumbed to the lure of destruction she presented.
But his will wouldn’t hold. It became slippery as a thrashing eel, fighting free each time he tried to grab it. So he allowed it to slither away.
“Would you like me to read to you?” he asked.
Her eyes went wide behind her spectacles. She watched him as if weighing his intentions. Or perhaps her own. “I wouldn’t want to torment you with any novels.”
He ducked his head. “I don’t mind when you torment me.”
The dream bloomed in his mind, her above him, wreaking the most delicious havoc. He took a slow breath.
“I believe I can find something that would suit the both of us,” he said.
Once he was in the library, he forced himself to look at his notebooks to remind himself what was at stake. When he sinned, it wasn’t venial—it was catastrophic, mortal.
The blood in the first notebook attested to that.
Finding the volume he wanted was easy, slim as it was, bound in blue, sitting between La Commedia and Paradise Lost.
When he returned to her room, she was sitting up in bed, her hair smoothed back to perfection, hands folded in her lap. She watched in silence as he sat in the chair next to the bed.
He opened the volume, the pages smooth beneath his fingers.
“Yo soy un hombre sincero, de donde crece las palmas…”
He didn’t really need the book—he had Martí’s poems memorized. But it gave him something to hang on to as he watched her face. She lifted it like a bloom to the sun, as if his voice was her source of light and life. When he reached the bit about “mi pecho bravo—my brave heart” her eyes slipped closed and she mouthed the last few stanzas with h
im.
When he finished, she sat in a kind of pained rapture. Or perhaps the pain was all on his side, witnessing how such simple verses transported her.
“Are you a sincere man?” she asked after a time.
Now that was painful. Because if he were truly sincere with her, told her of the dark heart of him—
“No.” He shut the book and stared at his hands. So many scars there. All of them self-inflicted. “I am the dark night. Mortal deception, sublime pain,” he quoted from the poem.
Her mouth twisted. “Which makes me what? A comely woman? Divine beauty?”
“No. You are the diamond.” He couldn’t help but offer that compliment. “And I am the coal,” he finished. He meant it as a warning—he hoped she’d heed it.
She laid a hand on his arm. For a moment, it appeared as if the pale length of it would be swallowed by the darkness of his suit.
“We are both coal, I think,” she said with soft wryness. “But coal has its own luster. In certain lights, it gleams.”
You gleam to me. Not just in certain lights—in all lights.
He could never say such a thing to her. She’d find no luster in the darkness within him if she knew the depths of it. He wasn’t coal; he was the dank, hot mine from which it was torn, swallowing men whole.
She removed her hand. “You don’t agree.” She linked her fingers together. “What have you done that is so terrible?”
An icy fist gripped his heart.
“To me, at least?” she continued, and the fist released.
“When I kissed you—” He stopped, brought his voice back under his control. “You are a guest under my roof. It was ill done.”
“I kissed you as much as you were kissing me. It was done together.” She brought a hand to the hollow of her throat, hidden by her high collar. “What that man did to me—that was ill done. Never put what we share into the same drawer as what he did.”
Theft, assault, attempted murder—if he dared detail them to her, the catalogue of his crimes would look much like McCade’s. Some of them were worse. And that last sin, trapped in his first notebook…
If he could dip that notebook into the River Lethe and wash away his sins along with the ink—then and only then could he think of reaching for this woman.
He stared at the slim volume in his hand. He must keep holding the book. He must never reach for her, must never even think—
“Sebastian.”
The steel she put into his name made his blood run hot. He raised his gaze to hers.
“Yes?” With that one word, he all but begged her to do it again. Even as he feared she would.
“In the courtroom yesterday,” she asked, “you wanted to harm McCade, didn’t you?”
She’d no idea of the harm he could inflict.
“I did,” he said slowly.
“Yet, you held back. You did not give in. I don’t believe that outlaw would have done such a thing. I know exactly what he’s capable of.”
“You’ve no idea what I’m capable of.”
She only shook her head as if his attempts to warn her off were pitiable. “My collar.” She raised a hand to it. “I have to wear it as high as I can now. For the sense of protection it provides.”
He nodded. Wasn’t his suit, his sober mien, his own kind of armor?
“But it pains me.” Her voice went low. “I feel as if I am strangling all over again, with this collar tight round my neck.”
He understood. By the end of the day his fine suit was rougher than a hair shirt. He was always surprised to see his skin smooth and unblemished beneath, so violently did he imagine his clothes rubbed against him.
She took his hand, the one wrapped around the book, and pried it free. Slowly, slowly, she lifted it to the first button at her neck.
What did she mean by this? He’d warned her, he couldn’t have said more clearly how dangerous he was…
“Isabel, I—I cannot dishonor you.”
If she commanded him to, he would, though. He’d always bend before the steel within her.
“You wouldn’t dishonor me,” she said softly. “I am asking you.”
Asking. A request from her was as good as a command, as addled as he was.
He heard the maid moving in the next room, the door wide open on the iniquity he was about to perform. He pinched the button between his thumb and forefinger, the hole pulling wide as he did.
Just like that, it was free.
“More,” she said.
One by one he eased each button free, both of them breathing shakily. When he was done, he set his hand next to her thigh and simply watched her. Her eyes were wide, her chest jerking with her breaths. A mirror to the anxiety twisting within him.
“Isabel, are you all right?” Perhaps he shouldn’t have done this, no matter that she’d asked.
She nodded. “And you?”
“It wasn’t like this. Before.” Their kiss had been fervent, frantic—this was trembling, halting.
“No, it wasn’t. Today”—she grabbed his hand again—“today we are not playing at love. Today, we are testing each other.”
He wanted to pass this test of hers—to never fail her again.
She set his hand against her thigh. “Here. Here is where he set his hand, and told me all the foul things he’d inflict on me.” She pressed his fingers hard into her thigh, trapping them between her urgency and her soft flesh. “Is that what you would do if you could?”
“Never.”
You would hold me down and detail the things I must do to please you. I’d do them all, every last one, to have a kind word or caress from you when I’d finished.
She pressed again. “You claim to be a monster, that you are coal, neverending night. Yet you unbutton me to the waist, I shove your hand against my thigh…” She watched him, then moved his hand to her waist. “Where is this monster?”
He closed his eyes tight. He wished he had the fortitude to tell her everything, so that she would end this dangerous trial.
Her hand came to his cheek, her fingers rubbing. Didn’t she feel the stubble there? Didn’t it burn her palm the way it did his?
“One thing I have wondered about you,” she mused.
He stiffened. If she asked again what he’d done, he might not be able to refuse her.
“Do you have to shave more than once a day?” She punctuated that with another sweep of her fingers along his cheek.
His lungs released in a great rush, the closest to a laugh he’d allow. “When I can.”
She set her hand back in her lap, the shy smile she gave him recompense for the loss of her touch. “Would you read more?”
He took up and read, until the clatter of the front door signaled the return of their mothers. The shadows in the room were long, the light wearing the dark gold of evening as it fell across Isabel’s face while she buttoned herself back up, hiding her throat once more.
When their mothers appeared in the open doorway, the scene they presented—her sedate in bed, him reading to her from across the room—was entirely unobjectionable. But something tight passed over Señora Moreno’s expression, even as his mother’s opened.
Señora Moreno was right to be anxious—her daughter hammered at his control like no other.
“Good evening, Señora. Mother.” Serene as a swan gliding across a lake, Isabel was. “I had a headache earlier and the marshal offered to read to me once it had passed.”
He daren’t look at any of them, so kept his gaze on the book in his hand, his finger pinched between the pages to keep his spot.
“How kind of Sebastian,” his mother offered, “to keep you company.”
Would his mother never cease to think him extraordinary? Worthy? The love he had for her threatened to crack his chest open.
“Yes,” Señora Moreno said. “How kind.” Suspicion flavored her words.
“He is,” Isabel said firmly. “You know how my attacks are.”
He cleared his throat. No more compliments for h
im—he couldn’t take any more. “How was your day out?”
“Wonderful,” his mother said. “We’re quite ready for supper.”
He looked to Isabel in the bed, still paler than he’d like. “Would you like to come down? Or should we send up a tray?”
The frank gratitude in her gaze made him ache. “Perhaps it’s best that I take a tray here. And retire early.”
He nodded and went for the door, commanding his will to hold and not look back at her as he passed both their mothers.
Chapter Fifteen
An entire day spent reading wasn’t quite as enjoyable as Isabel had imagined.
The trouble was, nothing was keeping her attention.
The Señoras had left right after breakfast and Sebastian, for all his promises to entertain her, hadn’t been seen. No poetry from him today. She looked at the clock on the mantel—noon. She’d had four hours alone.
She’d idly flipped through the papers for an hour before they lost their charm. But she had carefully read the article in the Herald on “The Water Issue,” which had prominently featured Mr. Edwin McCade. There had been a short, neutral mention of his son’s trial within—and thankfully nothing about her.
After, she’d flicked the electric lights on and off, enjoying the buzz. She’d look a perfect rube if she were caught, but she’d risked it for the pure enjoyment.
Then she’d spent a half an hour deciding on a novel to read, before settling on Middlemarch. She found herself only able to skim until the Reverend Casaubon exited the stage. She liked to imagine a different ending—Dorothea living alone in Europe, enjoying herself with the wealth the Reverend had left to her.
Isabel tossed aside the novel, the thunk of it as it bounced along the sofa oddly appealing. Time for something new.
She rose and sidled over to the north window. The curtains had been drawn this morning, and when the maid had come to open them, Isabel had done her best to ignore what might be beyond those windows.
Enough cowardice. McCade wasn’t there—he was in jail.
Taking a deep breath, she stepped in front of the windows, exposing herself to whomever might be watching, expecting there would be no one.
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