“My mother died shortly after my birth. With Papa at sea, I was raised by my mother’s parents. Grandfather died when I was eleven, leaving me alone with Grandmother.”
“You say her name with such negative emotion. Was she really so terrible?”
“No, not terrible. She was just a frail woman, Alex. She couldn’t cope with too many troubles. If I caused her the least worry, it gave her terrible megrims. I had to take great care not to disturb her. It made life very difficult at times, though, because she had so many requirements for her peace of mind.”
“Such as what?”
“Such as I must always be at home. She must always query me about my thoughts, was I thinking about something impure? Was the devil perhaps tempting me? She believed my art was something sinful. A way for Satan to gain a foothold. I had to hide it.
“I must read to her, from the Bible, every night, from the end of supper until bedtime. I must brush her hair exactly one hundred strokes before she went to bed. We must sing hymns together, for hours, every Sunday afternoon. Everything in the house must be in its exact proper place. Everything must always shine and sparkle. I must not engage in unseemly behavior. I must never read unseemly materials. I must associate only with the best people.”
“And who were the best people?”
Emily laughed with a catch in her breath. “No one we knew, that much is certain.”
“So you had no suitors?”
She shook her head with a tight, false-looking smile. “I think Grandmother rather hoped I wasn’t going to marry.” Sadness entered her eyes. “She said she’d be lost without me. It made me feel… I don’t know, desperate inside, trapped, when she said that.”
“Your father was a common mariner?”
“Yes—well, he was a captain once.”
“Really? What happened?”
“His ship was captured in the revolution. He was injured in the fray; hit in the head.” Her eyes were sad. “He was never the same. After that, he needed time to think things out. He could never make clear decisions under pressure again. Things just slipped out of his control and he never managed to attain another position as ship’s captain.”
God, she’d been so sheltered from life and yet had suffered so many disadvantages. She deserved happiness in her adult life. She certainly deserved better than to be shackled to him. His chest tightened almost painfully. Damn it all, he wanted to keep her for himself. Yet he knew what he had to do.
“You said you had no suitors, yet you know Dr. Abbot.”
“He was seeing a woman in the boarding house, but I came to know him mostly after the fever took Grandmother. He saw me through the worst of the fever and then he looked after me during my recovery and he was kind.”
“He’s taken with you.”
“Oh, I don’t think so. I think he just sees me as a pitiful young woman who needs looking after.”
“You’re wrong. He is taken with you. I heard the sound of his voice when he spoke of you. He’d offer for you, given the least chance.”
Her eyes flashed with sudden defiance. “I don’t want to marry him. Or any man, you know that.”
“Well, you shouldn’t dismiss the idea out of hand. He seems a very good man with a promising future.” And he intended to make it lot more promising when John returned. He would introduce him to all the right people and ensure he had a wealthy clientele.
Hadn’t he denied her the pleasure and satisfaction of being there when he interviewed the artisans for the woodcuts for her book, solely because he hadn’t wanted her to even meet any of them? He’d been concerned that she would see them as men of a like mind, artists, and become attached to one of them. She deserved a better life than being tied to a mere craftsman.
“John hasn’t two dimes to rub together—I doubt he’s looking for a wife.” Her tone was tart.
Alex turned away from her and crossed his arms over his chest. “He’s about to accept a well-paying position. Yes, he’ll be gone at least two years, but that would give you time to take art lessons, live your own life and work out all this skittishness about marriage.”
Emily’s chest constricted and she swallowed tightly. Why was Alex talking about her marrying John? She couldn’t tell him the shaming things that John had accused her with. But did Alex really wish to get rid of her so soon?
She had assumed he shared the same exact feelings that she did.
Surely a love affaire lasted longer than this? No matter that she had thought to end things before, to have him wanting to end things now, in this moment hurt deeply. It appeared she had no control over the feelings of her heart.
She tried to smile but her lips trembled. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were trying to pawn me off.”
He turned back to her but didn’t smile. Coldness settled in her insides. Oh dear. He did wish to be rid of her. “You don’t know me, Emily—not really.”
“How could I? You tell me nothing of yourself.” She jumped to her feet and walked about the study. The easel with its half-sketched map caught her eye. “From what I hear you’re never here. This is not where you live. You live out there on the seas, on the ships or in foreign lands.”
His boots sounded behind her. She ignored them, still trying to make out some familiar shape from the curving lines on the paper. Her whole body attuned to his presence behind her. He touched her shoulders lightly.
“You want to know something about me, my life?” He reached over her and traced a fingertip over one of those lines. “This is the coast of an island we found in the Pacific. I have not been able to find record of it anywhere else. I charter my voyages to survey the geography of distant places and correct inaccuracies in maps. Do you want to know why I do it?”
“Yes, I would.”
“Because it consumes me. It is one of the few things that I can truly lose myself in.”
She turned and looked up at him. “You want to lose yourself?”
“Yes, it’s all I want out of life now.” He stared back at her without a trace of his normal charm. He appeared much older. Weary. But worst of all was the terrible blankness in his eyes.
She grasped his arm. Beneath the fine wool of his jacket his muscles went hard, as if he were defending himself against her touch. “You can’t mean that.”
“If you were me, with my past, you would want to lose yourself, too.” His grim tone filled her with an echoing emptiness.
She let go and stepped back. “Goodness, you say that so coldly.”
He chuckled softly, somewhat sinisterly. “Don’t ever grieve for me when I am out of your life. The things we shared in bed, the pleasures we gave to each other, that’s all I can ever offer you.”
His bleakness stabbed at her heart. Tears pricked her eyes. Aside from his dictatorial stance with the contract in regard to her art, his kindness at other times his company, were things she valued every bit as much as their time in bed. Yes, despite it all, even if he were to be made a eunuch, she would still want to be around him. The last thought rocked through her, an epiphany that set her world off-kilter. Upset energy combined with an overwhelming sympathy and undeniable affection propelled her words. “No, that’s simply not true!”
“Some people are damaged inside. Some damage cannot be repaired.”
“Yes, surely, but not you.”
“Yes, it is the absolute truth. And I’ll tell you this again, to make sure you hear me, so you’ll know…”
She put her hands over her ears. “No, I don’t want to hear any more of your self-denigration.”
“It wouldn’t have lasted. I would have taken other women and hurt you.”
She couldn’t believe that. He might use her art for the cause he believed in with all his being but he would never intentionally hurt her. It wasn’t logic talking but something in her heart that she couldn’t ignore. She had no powers of reasoning now, just feeling. She shook her head back and forth so hard she feared her neck might snap.
“Yes, I would hav
e. That’s the truth about me, that’s what I am. I lose myself in women just as I lose myself in other things. I search for things that fascinate me. You are my current fascination.”
“No, I’ll never believe it. You feel more for me—”
“I do, Emily. In fact, I have a man’s love for you.”
Love.
Her mouth dropped open. She gasped and placed her hand to her throat. She looked into his eyes and saw nothing but sincerity.
And pain.
“Yes,” he said. “Love. The type of love a man gives the woman he wants to marry—”
“Marry?” The word exploded from her lips before her mind could even make sense of what he’d said. Marriage. The floor seemed rock beneath her feet. Her heart hammered against her chest. A sense of being endangered arose in her. Tingling suffused her from head to foot. A wild sort of fear. The urge to run energized her legs. But she found herself unable to leave, shifting uneasily on her feet. She was compelled to listen further.
This man, this gorgeous, fascinating, enigmatic man wanted to marry her.
He wanted to marry her?
He held up a forestalling hand. “Oh yes, I know your aversion to marriage. Don’t bother—I would never marry you. I couldn’t be that unkind. Because you see, this fascination thing, it is very different from that kind of love, at least for a man.”
A ball of fire swelled in her throat.
He did not want to marry her. It didn’t matter. It really didn’t.
Marriage was the last thing in the world she wanted. Ever.
“I assure you, I have no wish to marry anyone—not even you.” She had to push the words out past that burning mass in her gullet. Well, it was the truth. Wasn’t it? She never wanted to give a man authority over her. At least not yet. She had too many things to do with her life.
And he didn’t want to marry, didn’t want to have commit himself to a life of faithfulness to one woman.
So they were a good pair, weren’t they?
And yet… She flickered her gaze back to his face. “You wouldn’t really go to other women…I mean you couldn’t. Not if you feel the way I do.”
“Emily, the night of the dinner party, I was ready to leave the house and see one of my other lovers. I haven’t seen her yet since I arrived home.”
“No.” She shook her head. “No, you couldn’t possibly.”
“If you hadn’t come to me and disturbed me, I would have gone to her.”
She began to breathe very shallowly and quickly. Could this kind and tender man truly bring himself to hurt her?
“It wouldn’t have meant a thing to me,” he said. “None of them do. That’s truth about me. I go to sea and I think no more of them. And I wouldn’t have done it intending to hurt you. Believe me.”
Perhaps he just wants freedom, the way I wanted freedom from Grandmother’s suffocating ways. I can understand that. I can be just as sophisticated about love as he is. I can be just as carefree.
She lifted her chin and tossed her hair. “Well, if it didn’t mean anything to you, then it wouldn’t have mattered between us.”
“Emily, you’re fooling yourself if you believe it wouldn’t have mattered. You’re not that kind of girl.”
Would it really hurt her if he were to take other women to his bed? She pictured him naked in his bed, his body covering the redheaded barmaid from the Blue Duck. The burning mass threatened to choke her.
Suddenly, she felt he might be right. She might be in over her head here, a naïve little girl playing with a bonfire. She turned away from him and hugged herself.
“You just want to end things now, just cut them off—how can you do that?” she asked.
“What future can we have together? Did you picture yourself as my long-term mistress?”
“I—I don’t. I just—I don’t know.”
“Now you want to be my mistress long-term?”
“I might…if such a position were still being offered.” She spoke the words with a sense of wonder…maybe even horror. But yes, God, yes she would like to stay with him… “Only if I could have my freedom at the same time.”
He sighed. “You don’t really want freedom, not the way you’re thinking.”
She whirled back around. “Oh, really? And I suppose you know what I want?”
“I know women like you—you with your willful mind and ardent emotions. You swear you want your independence, but the whole time you are begging a strong man to come along and give you perfect love, total connection. Absolute loyalty.”
The way he said that! As if it were an anathema. Suddenly, she was breathing fast again. Far too fast. In her vision, he seemed to recede and the chamber began to spin.
He shook his head. “I am not that man. I don’t have perfect love or absolute loyalty to give.”
He had wanted to go to his one of his other lovers!
Right after the special closeness and passion they had shared. Or that she thought had been special.
His image grew a little blurry and she swallowed hard.
Get control over yourself! Don’t let him see you fall to pieces over this.
Trembling, she hugged herself and tried to sort out her feelings before they could overwhelm her. He was being purposefully opposed to their union. Why? Surely what they shared was something special. Rare. She wanted to feel it, all of it. Even if it hurt her in the end. Why was he denying her this experience? Experience necessary to her art, to her very life. If this ended too soon, before she could know all there was to feel and learn and explore here, she would die a little inside.
She really would.
He approached her and took her hand.
She balled her fist to evade him. He wasn’t being completely truthful with her and that was most hurtful of all. He’d said more than once that they were friends. Why wouldn’t he let her be a true friend to him? Why wouldn’t he accept the comfort and understanding she wished to give him? “This is about Algeria, isn’t it? You were in Algeria and something happened there.”
A smile quirked his lips. It didn’t match the pained look in his eyes. “Why do you say that?”
“Because that night, when Peter said you had a special interest, a special sympathy about the Algeria situation—your look, it was terrible. It was the same look as that first night, when you said that you had certainly seen something of the world. And you did not sound like a young man who had simply gone to sea and had his heart broken by some foreign lady. You sounded and looked like someone who had seen hell itself.”
He stared at her, his eyes widening as if he were horrified.
“I felt such sympathy for you. I wanted to comfort you but I didn’t know how,” she added.
His expression closed off. It put a chill over her.
“You have the sweetest female notions.” He laughed softly. A harsh, catching sound that cut into her.
He was distancing himself. There was nothing she could do about it.
She reached to touch his arm. His muscles hardened under her hand.
“Damage can be repaired.”
He pulled his arm away. “Some damage is irreversible.”
“No, I can never believe that.”
He glared at her with such intensity that she instinctively jumped back. “You ought to run very hard and fast from me. You’re so innocent, so fresh. I’ll damage you, too. And you’ll end up hating me for it.”
“No, that’s not true. You’re a kind, generous, good-hearted person.”
“Listen to me, for I shan’t speak of it again. There are things you don’t know. Things I shall never reveal to a living soul. And now I am filled with such a lack of peace that restlessness harries me always. I am never happy with any place or any thing for any length of time. That includes women. When I met you, I thought you were someone else, someone who knew how to play lightly. You aren’t and now I have done you so much harm, Emily. You’ll want to marry someday. You’ll want a normal life. I can’t give it to you. A man like Dr. Abbott
could.”
“But I don’t want to marry. Ever.” Her words came out choked by the tension in her voice.
A small smile curved his mouth. “Every woman wants to marry. Eventually.”
“I spent too many years under my grandmother’s thumb. Why would I want to do the same in marriage?”
“It’s different in a marriage. Especially to the right kind of man.”
“I can’t see how.”
He walked away from her towards the window and braced his hands on the ledge.
She stared at his broad-shouldered back, waiting while silence hung between them. It wasn’t fair. She wasn’t ready for it to end now. He held all the power of choice. She was powerless. She’d always been powerless and always would be. A crushing weakness made her sink into the settee. If life was always this way, how did people bear it?
“This is what will happen, Emily.” His grave voice broke into her thoughts. “You will live here with Aunt Rachel for a while after the book is finished, and she can help you polish your rough edges.”
“Wait—w—what?” She gaped at him. “Live here with your aunt as a chaperone? Another controlling person in my life? No, thank you.”
“You’ll need guidance while adjusting to your change in income.”
“Change in income?”
“Yes, I‘ll provide a generous allowance while you take lessons to perfect your art, then I’ll launch you as a portrait artist here in Philadelphia.”
“When did we discuss this?”
“It’s all decided.” He tapped his fingers with slow deliberation on the windowsill.
She laughed, the sound sharp to her own ears. “And then after my education is over and John comes home, then I shall just obediently wed him.”
“If he doesn’t please you, then someone else. Someone suitable. I’ll introduce you to my cousin, Cornelia, she can introduce you to society. I know you’ll catch the eye of some gentleman.”
“Again, thank you, but no. I survived just fine before you—I will after as well.” One side of her mouth curled upwards slightly. “I won’t be dictated to. It’s degrading.”
He scowled. “Degrading?”
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