by Liz Carlyle
At last recognition dawned, widening her eyes. “Aah,” she said.
“Yes, aah indeed,” he replied, shoving one arm beneath his head. Lord, he hadn’t thought of the bounteous Mrs. Minter in years. “So I lost my virginity and I lost my heart—and in the end, I lost my beloved.”
“What happened to her?”
“She married an elderly ironmonger who’d made a right royal fortune selling fire-dogs in the Strand,” he said. “But he—she later explained—turned out to be so frail he preferred to go to bed with the chickens instead of his wife. And I was most welcome to call upon her most any evening—after the chickens had roosted, of course.”
“Oh, I see,” said Lisette knowingly. “And did you?”
Napier felt his mouth twist a little. “I did not,” he said. “Whilst I’d turned to fornication pretty cheerfully, I somehow didn’t fancy adding adultery to my long list of sins.”
Lisette giggled, and covered her mouth.
He turned his head to look at her, willing his eyes to be gentle. “And I believe,” he said quietly, “that I once asked you a similar question about being in love, but you declined to answer it.”
After a time, she sighed. “No, I said a few young men tried to court me,” she answered, “assuming, I suppose, that I’d inherit whatever was left of Uncle’s newspaper.”
Napier saw an avenue to a question that had been nagging at him. “Lisette, was it always Mr. Ashton’s intention to put you to work? Was that why he wanted you and your sister?”
Lisette’s gaze grew distant. “No, he did it because Lord Rowend paid him a stipend to take us. Besides, Ellie would have been of no use in that regard. If brains were feathers she couldn’t have flown from one side of the street to the other. But she would certainly have married money—and brought Ashton influence—because she was so pretty.”
Napier caught her chin in his hands. “Yes, she was pretty in the way a rose blossom is pretty. But you’re beautiful, Lisette, in a bone-deep way that never fades. And you’re intelligent. Determined. Only a fool would wish to trade those things for mere prettiness.”
She shook her head, and he let her go. “I don’t wish it,” she said. “I never have. And, yes, I had suitors, but nothing ever took. Always, in the back of my mind, I was thinking of Lazonby. How he’d escaped death whilst Papa and Percy and Ellie had not. How that, someday, I’d run him down like the dog he was.”
This time, Napier was not fool enough to begrudge her anger.
“But we recaptured Lazonby, and put him in prison,” he said gently. “Didn’t that free you to live your own life?”
She shrugged. “I suppose, but by then Uncle was dead and Aunt Ashton and I were just trying to keep the paper afloat. We were desperate—and everyone knew it.”
“I see,” he mused. “So that’s when you became—” He couldn’t think how to word it.
“Became what?” Her brows had knotted so prettily, it distracted him an instant.
“—Jack.”
He dropped the name like a mortar shell, right into the middle of the bed.
All the color drained from her face. It was too late to wish back the word.
And really, what was the point?
“Come, Lisette,” he said quietly, “this has become a fool’s game. You know that I know Jack Coldwater doesn’t exist.”
“Tell that to Lazonby,” she answered curtly.
“Lazonby merely relayed a story that could be neither proven nor disproven,” said Napier, “and told it with his tongue tucked so firmly in his cheek it’s a wonder he got it out again.”
She wasn’t looking at him now. “Apparently you must decide for yourself what the truth is.”
“I decided that weeks ago,” he said gently. “Now, I still don’t know who killed Sir Wilfred or why—most probably it was you, but it could have been Lazonby or even Anisha—hell, perhaps the dastard shot himself or the butler did it. I’m not sure I care anymore.”
“And yet we find ourselves still talking about it,” she retorted. “Why is that, I wonder?”
“Because, Lisette, I’m merely trying to understand . . . you.”
“Trying to understand me—?” She turned a little away from him, and sat up on the edge of the bed, one long leg still tucked beneath her. “Tell me, Napier—do you think me mad? Or dangerous?”
“What?” Napier swallowed hard.
He had misjudged the intimacy, he realized. He reached for her, hoping to undo the damage. “No, of course not. Lisette, love, come back here.”
But her fingers were digging into the edge of his mattress, and she would not turn around. “And have I done, Royden, all that you’ve asked of me in your investigation?”
He dropped his hand. Her voice had gone utterly cold.
“You’ve done more than I’ve asked,” he said. “Christ Jesus, Lisette!—I’ve been half terrified if there actually was some wickedness afoot, you’d put yourself in danger resolving it—but what has that to do with this?”
She stood, her hands shaking but her voice oddly steady. “We had an understanding in Hackney,” she said, snatching her shift from his carpet. “You said you meant to keep an eye on me until you were sure I wasn’t mad or dangerous. And then, if I’d done everything you’d asked, you’d drop all this. And you’d keep me safe from Lazonby if he turned vengeful.”
“And by God, I will.”
But Lisette was already dragging her shift on. “Yet you keep browbeating me,” she said, the words coming swiftly—and a little angrily—as she shoved her arms through. “You keep on insisting on having something I don’t wish to give, and looking past what I’m offering. My body. My desire for you. I don’t wish to shut you out. I care for you, Royden. I do. Far more than I wish to. You are an exquisite lover. And . . . and I don’t mind you haven’t any charm. Or pr-pretty words.”
Something in her throat caught at the very end, her face softening wretchedly.
Napier rolled off the mattress, and came around the bed. “So you care for me and I’m a fine lover,” he echoed, watching as she grabbed up her stockings and corset. “And I’ve declared fervently that I love you. But you have tears welling in your eyes. Forgive me if I cannot grasp the problem.”
At last she straightened up, and looked him hard and square in the eye—in a way few women dared to do—and he knew with an awful certainty his life was edging toward ruin.
“The problem,” she said, ramming a wad of blue silk under her arm, “is that if we go on in this vein, one day you’ll look back and remember this conversation. You’ll remember the moment I told you the truth and made it so hideously real for you. You’ll remember to the very breath that instant when you made your hard choice to do nothing and just keep fucking me. And eventually, when the heat fades, you’ll look back and wonder if you compromised your integrity for lust. If I orchestrated this whole bloody seduction.”
Napier fisted both hands to keep from dragging her back to bed and laying a hand to her bottom. “Lisette, I am not fucking you,” he said tightly. “I am making love to you. We are making love with one another. And everything else you just said is utter balderdash.”
“But what if it isn’t?” She started for the door, one stocking trailing from the bundle. “In the passageway—before passion addled your brain—you didn’t even want to let me past the door. You said you thought I’d shove a screw in your heart. But I practically pushed past you, then pushed my way into your bed—and I meant to do both, if I could get away with it.”
He was on her heels, angry and a little frightened. “Oh, so you seduced me tonight?” he said. “And then you managed to tie yourself to my headboard in the bargain. And forced me to bed you breathless with a cockstand the likes of which I haven’t seen since I started shaving. Oh, that was a clever trick.”
She whirled around, her face bloodless and frozen. “And God knows I’m nothing if not clever,” she whispered. “I can raise duplicity to an art form. Those were your words, not m
ine. Don’t forget them now, Napier, merely to have them come back and haunt you later.”
He reached around her, and slammed his hand flat against his door. “Oh, I haven’t been seduced, my dear, since Mrs. Minter took my virginity,” he growled, “so I think I’m old enough to know the difference between love and lust.”
“Kindly move your hand.”
Instead, he leaned against it with all his weight. “I know the difference,” he reiterated. “And whatever I do or don’t know about you has become almost irrelevant.”
Her eyes drilled into his, ageless and hard as she leaned very, very near. “If it were so irrelevant,” she said softly, “you wouldn’t be haranguing me.”
“Oh, haranguing!” Still wedged against the door, his arm was as rigid as his erection had been mere minutes ago. “Now you listen, Elizabeth, and listen well. I will not be gainsaid in this. And what I feel for you is a simple fact.”
The anger drained away, replaced by an age-old weariness as she shook her head. “Oh, Napier, surely you cannot be that naïve,” she answered. “Nothing is ever simple. Least of all facts. Much of the time, they’re dashed inconvenient. Particularly so when we’d like the world to be as we wish it. When we need desperately to see what we want to see, and to live a life of certitude. But facts are always there, getting in the way—even if we manage to forget them for a time.”
He dropped his hand, and she whipped around, yanking the door open.
“Lisette,” he demanded, seizing her arm and causing her to drop a stocking. “Lisette, for God’s sake. This is madness. You’re going out into the passageway in a damned shift.”
“You think that’s madness?” She spun around, her expression incredulous. “You want me to bare my soul and confess to you that I murdered Sir Wilfred Leeton? But you’re worried someone might see me in my underwear? Have you any idea, Royden, how bollixed up that is?”
He shoved both hands through his hair, fighting the urge to seize her and drag her back inside. Standing there like some bare-arsed fool, and wondering what he might say or do to simply fix it.
In response, Lisette’s lip just curled, but whether from derision or tears, he could not say. Then she turned on one heel and walked away.
Napier just stood there, staring into the emptiness. The fear and rage still warred inside him. He felt desperate. Blindsided. There was only way he could think of to make matters worse—and that would be to stride after her in a great ruckus, and force her back into his bed to finish this.
He likely would have done it, too, but he was still turning the notion in mind when he heard the slam of her door, and the sound of her lock snapping shut—like the hammer on a dry-fired pistol, a hard, ominous snap! in the gloom.
But Napier had already been shot down. He felt as cold and as bloodless as Sir Wilfred, laid out on that flagstone floor, his life leeching away into his own spring box. He felt that awful press of warmth behind his eyes.
He had failed. And Lisette hated him.
How in heaven’s name had it happened? Did he really understand women so little? Was her affection for him so nascent, so desperately fragile, his ham-fisted ways had crushed it?
Or was she right? Was his love for her contingent on something he’d as soon not think about?
Damn it to hell, she’d put mad thoughts in his head. She’d done what she’d set out to do: to make him doubt. To make him question his own judgment.
Somehow, he forced himself to breathe—found the presence of mind to pick up the stocking she’d dropped and shut the bloody door. He returned to his night table, half sick at his stomach. His drawer still gaped open, the steel blade of his knife winking up at him. Taunting him in the pure white light by which he’d spun his own gossamer fantasy.
The fantasy of a bride by moonlight.
Slowly, he let the silk slither from his hand to pool atop the satin cord she’d tossed on his bed so many days ago. Years ago, it now seemed. Good Lord, he loved her.
He loved her.
And whatever they had shared, it seemed over. Lisette was not going to listen. There mightn’t be another chance. His bullheaded insistence had driven a stake through her trust.
The hell of it was, she was right. He had harangued her. He had done—over and over again—the one thing she’d begged him not to do. Something caught in his chest. A sob that wouldn’t come. An awful ache simply caught in the void where his heart had been, and was likely never to leave him. He sat down on the bed, grief curling around his heart like tentacles of ice.
His hand shaking, he rummaged in the still-open drawer, and drew out the green cording, wrapping it around his hand so tight the blood could barely flow. Until the pain wasn’t pain but just a dead numbness that throbbed with the beat of his heart.
CHAPTER 13
Our Concerned Citizen Confesses All
Lisette stood in the open doorway of the green bedchamber, studying with some dispassion the room’s swift transformation. It was beautiful, she supposed—the walls were the color of warm stone, the draperies a complementing shade of champagne. The furnishings, however, were still in disarray, with both the massive dressing chests pushed to the center amidst half a dozen boxes and trunks.
After drawing a steadying breath, she knocked on the door frame. “Might I come in?”
Lady Keaton’s head jerked up. “Oh, Miss Colburne!” Seated amidst the jumble, she leapt up from a three-legged work stool. “What a pleasant surprise! Where have you been all morning? We missed you at breakfast.”
“Good morning, Lady Keaton.” Lisette looked tentatively about, pausing just over the threshold. “How do you do?”
“Why don’t we just be Anne and Elizabeth?” Attired today in a simple black dress, the petite blonde picked her way through the open trunks and cartons, pushing a loose curl from her forehead as she came. “And I do very well, thank you. But my dear, I wonder if you do?”
“Do I look a fright?” Twisting a handkerchief in her hands to keep them from shaking, Lisette stepped into the bedchamber. “I confess I did not sleep well, nor have much appetite.”
“I’m sorry. Come, sit.” Anne caught her hand. “I was just helping Gwyneth and Diana clean out all these drawers.”
“I was looking for Gwyneth and Diana, actually,” Lisette confessed, tucking the wrenched handkerchief away. “Marsh said I might find them here.”
“Oh, dear. You just missed them.” Anne had drawn her to a second stool situated by an old traveling trunk, its lid thrown wide. “Diana leapt up in the midst of all this, declaring she’d forgotten a walk she’d promised Miss Willet.”
“I somehow thought they meant to go in the afternoon.”
Anne shrugged. “In any case, next I knew, Aunt Hepplewood was here to fetch her, expecting she might accompany her to the vicarage. But since Diana had gone, Gwyneth offered to go instead.”
“Gwyneth offered?” said Lisette, perching herself on the stood. “How very . . .”
“—out of character?” Anne supplied, chagrin sketching over her face. “Yes, I fear it speaks to Gwyneth’s desperation.”
“Desperation?”
Anne’s smile returned. “You’ve doubtless noticed, Miss Colburne, that my elder sister is less than enamored of household chores,” she said. “And Diana, whilst she adores the more artistic aspects, finds routine drudgery far less compelling. I shamed the pair of them in here, and now they’ve squeaked out again.”
“Heavens, and left you sorting all this?” Lisette was glad to feel sorry for someone other than herself. “May I help? I’m sure I shouldn’t mind.”
“I ought to refuse, since you’re a guest.” Hands on her hips, Anne surveyed the disorder. “But then, I suppose I am, too. And soon enough all this will be yours to sort anyway.”
“I do wish people would quit pointing that out,” said Lisette on a faint laugh.
“Well, in any case, I accept your kind offer,” she said, returning her concerned gaze to Lisette. “It will give us a cha
nce to chat. My husband tells me you’re frightfully well-read. I so look forward to knowing you better.”
“You’re both very kind,” said Lisette—and she meant it.
She had greatly enjoyed Sir Philip’s company at dinner, and his wife, too, seemed most amiable. With Anne, there was none of Gwyneth’s prickliness, and none of Diana’s demure reserve.
But Anne was motioning about the clutter. “So, that contains Uncle Hep’s stockings,” she said briskly, pointing at a drawer hanging open. We’re sorting everything into three cartons: mending, charity, and rubbish. Pull out the dressing slide if you wish, and use your best judgment. Uncle was a frightful packrat.”
Grateful for the distraction, Lisette began at once. “Your uncle has been gone some months, hasn’t he?” she asked casually.
“Yes, but Aunt Hepplewood couldn’t bring herself to do this. And Diana just never got round to it. Now the room must be readied for Tony and Felicity, not left to languish.” Anne heaved a slightly put-up sigh. “I shall be so glad, Elizabeth, when you are Lady Saint-Bryce.”
“Shall you?” Lisette turned. “Why?”
Anne snapped the wrinkles from a nightshirt. “Oh, this grand old house hasn’t had anyone to love it properly in an age,” she mused, examining the seams for tears. “Since Mamma died, I daresay. Gwyneth tries, but her heart isn’t in it.”
“Bea’s mother was frail, I collect?”
“Quite, yes, but very kind.” Anne folded the shirt and laid it in the carton marked Charity. “Now, Elizabeth, allow me to pry. I wish to know what’s caused those frightful smudges under your eyes.”
“It’s this dratted pale skin,” said Lisette despairingly. “It shows everything.”
“But why did you not sleep, my dear? I cannot imagine my husband’s dinner conversation was so stimulating it kept you awake into the night.”
Lisette laughed. “I found your husband fascinating, and deeply thoughtful.”
“Thank you! I do, too!” Anne’s eyes danced for a moment. “Papa always thought Philip dull, but he did not know him as I do. Philip has an incisive mind—and a sharp wit, once he knows you. But there, you didn’t answer my question. About your bad night?”
