Shadows of the Night

by Lydia Joyce

  All the anger and shame and disappointment of the past two days came rolling over her. He is going to destroy me, she thought, panic rising in her throat. He is going to shut me away in a little box until all the air is gone.

  Her entire being revolted from the idea—revolted from him and his power over her. Her blood swirling, Fern opened her mouth, but nothing came out except a ragged sound that might have been a moan or a cry of rejection. She clamped her jaw shut, her heart beating wildly. His hand on her arm was like a vise.

  Trapped, trapped forever … She had to get away now. Without thinking, she threw her body weight away from him, but his grip was too tight. She couldn’t escape. Fighting down a sob of hysteria, she lashed out blindly, her free hand striking his face with a ringing slap.

  Colin felt the pain, sudden and sharp, cutting through layers in his brain that he hadn’t known were there. Layers wrapped around his brain … It was like a jolt of light to eyes that had always been in darkness, burning into his mind and flooding it with color that he could never have imagined.

  Colin released Fern with a shove that knocked her hard against the side of the coach. In the sudden silence, they sat frozen, staring at each other. Fern was incapable of speech, shocked at what she had just done but unable to apologize as fury and rebellion still roiled, choking, inside her. Colin’s expression was frozen, the livid lines that her fingers had left already outlined in red. But under the dark slashes of his brows, his eyes flared, and for the first time, Fern felt the presence of a person at the bottom of their dark depths, looking back at her.

  Her breath caught. This is not the man I married, her brain wailed in warning. But she had not married a man at all—she had married a title in the form of a man, with nothing inside. Now there was something there, and she couldn’t recognize it.

  “Who are you?” she whispered into those eyes, the eyes of a stranger.

  His gaze only burned into hers with more intensity, and he extended his hand. Fern pressed back harder into the corner away from him, but he merely held it there, the white kidskin palm glowing in the dimness. Seconds ticked by. What could the man want? More to the point, what could he want that he couldn’t take?

  Tentatively, Fern placed her hand on top of his.

  He closed his hand suddenly and pulled her hard against him, his mouth coming down to meet hers so abruptly that her lips were bruised against her teeth. He took her mouth instantly, wholly. There was no finesse in this kiss, no refinement. He crushed her against him as his mouth moved hard against hers. Fern fought a wave of panic even as her center tightened in reaction and her heart beat a confusing tattoo of fear and desire.

  No—this is not what I meant when I took his hand, she thought wildly. She tried to jerk free, but he held her too tightly against him. She pushed against his shoulders, and when that did not work, she took his lower lip between her teeth and bit down hard. The coppery taste of blood hit her tongue as he shuddered and cursed against her mouth, but instead of releasing her, he pinned her back into the corner of the carriage with his weight as he jerked at her bonnet strings. The hat came free, and he yanked it off.

  “What are you doing?” She gasped, her heart thrumming with the rush of their encounter as her stomach made little shivering flips. She licked the taste of his blood from her lips, and, swearing again, Colin closed his eyes for an instant before fixing her with a piercing gaze. Fern wedged herself farther into the corner. She had become so accustomed to the blankness behind his green eyes that this attention was unsettling.

  “I am kissing you.” The words were spoken with such tenseness that they scarcely sounded like his. Fern opened her mouth to rebut his announcement, but he put actions to words, catching her mouth, his hands tangling in her hair.

  The taste of his blood sent a disturbing shock through her, half horror and half titillation. Was he punishing her? She couldn’t breathe! She pushed at him, bracing against the corner of the carriage and shoving with all her strength. He broke away, rocking back.

  “Do you want me to hurt you again?” she said, between a snap and a plea.

  Colin simply looked at her, his eyes burning in the dimness. “I cannot,” he said distinctly, “remain in Brighton with you.”

  Fern swallowed hard, fighting against the sensation that she was falling. “You are going to leave me?”

  His lips curled up strangely. “No. We will both leave. Wrexmere is at my disposal, and I have business that needs to be attended to there, anyhow. We will travel by post.” He gave her a searching look. “Tonight.”

  As he said the word, the carriage came to a shuddering halt. Without waiting for a reply, Colin jerked the door handle down and pushed out. Fern was still immobile in shock at his announcement. She blinked in the dazzling wash of light that flooded through the carriage door. They were in Clifton Terrace. Colin did not pause to help her down but tossed a coin to the driver as he strode swiftly up the stoop and disappeared into the house, leaving Fern to push unsteadily to her feet, collect her hat, and follow.

  Wrexmere. The name shot through Fern. She stumbled up the stoop. Suddenly, that was the last place in the world that she wanted to go.

  Inside, the house was already in an uproar. The housekeeper was running about, and Fern could hear hurried footsteps on the first floor above her head. She climbed the stairs slowly.

  Fern stepped through their bedroom door. Colin stood against the wall, his arms folded over his chest as her maid and his valet dashed back and forth from the wardrobe to the open trunks in the middle of the floor. He was a stranger, so dark and glowering, a shadow that lorded over the servants who scurried to do his bidding. He glanced at her, and his eyes were dead again.

  A thousand questions burned in her mind, but she could not speak, dared not speak, for the brief flame of her rebellion had been lost in confusion, and all that was left was her fear.

  Who was this man whom she had married? Was he the creature she had seen so briefly, lurking within the emptiness? She did not know, and suddenly, she was afraid to find out, longing for the blank smiles and hollow words that had so disturbed her only a day before even as a part of her wanted almost as badly to make him kiss her like that again. Instead, she simply stood mutely in the doorway, fraying the ribbon of her new bonnet in her hands.

  In minutes, their trunks were packed and carried down to a waiting post chaise. Colin’s commanding glance sent Fern down after them. The valet and the driver heaved their luggage onto the roof of the coach and bound it in place.

  Fern could do nothing but watch. She wanted to ask about their destination, for she had no idea where this Wrexmere was. She wanted to demand that she have a chance to write to her mother and sisters, or at least to change into a traveling dress. But she was frozen into silent acquiescence by the sheer towering authority of the man who stood behind her. A good girl—that was what she was. A good girl who would become a good wife, a good hostess, and a good mother. She had no place in this burst of strange activity, no background that could give her hope of controlling any of it.

  The valet opened the door to the coach and stood aside. Colin touched Fern for the first time since he had left the carriage, taking her arm in his, the strength and heat of his grasp sending a small shock down into her center and up through her brain. She hated herself for it—not for the sensation itself but for the multitude of indecisions and uncertainties that came with it. If she wanted his touch, why did it make her mouth go dry with fear? And if she was afraid, then why did a dark, secret part of her mind keep replaying that last, brutal, blood-tinged kiss with a shivering relish?

  She was not a good girl. She was not a good anything. Helplessly, she let Colin lead her forward, into the dark mouth of the coach. He released her as she sat and stepped in behind, shutting them in the hot darkness with a click of the door.

  Fern could not bear to look at him. She did not know whether she wanted to beg for forgiveness or deride him, whether she wanted him to kiss her hard and wildly o
r whether she wanted to slap him again. So she took the coward’s way out. She shut her eyes, leaning her head against the back of the squabs, and tried to make her mind as blank as her vision as the coach rocked into motion.

  And she tried not to think of what Colin would do about it.

  Chapter Six

  It was hot. Intolerably hot. Fern struggled to hold still, to keep up the pretense that she was resting or even asleep. But a trickle of itchy sweat had rolled down between her breasts, and another was making its way down her spine even as her eyes stung from salt that had worked its way under her closed eyelids. She could feel the heat of her face, radiating into the still air around her. She would have to move to wipe away the sweat and retrieve her fan from the chatelaine at her waist, or she truly would swoon in a moment.

  When she could bear it no longer, a whisper of air brushed across her skin. Had Colin opened the window? The noise of the wheels on the road, which had changed from the sharp rattle of cobblestones to the more muffled rumble of dirt and gravel, had grown no louder. There—there it was again, a faint, soft gust against her neck. But it wasn’t cool. In fact, if anything, it was damper and hotter than the air within the coach.

  Fern’s brain made the connection just as Colin spoke, his words low and compelling, each one accompanied by the soft wind of his breath against her skin.

  “I know you are not sleeping.”

  What was he doing? Kneeling? He was not a man to kneel. She hadn’t felt his weight settle next to her, had not felt his body press against her skirts. Fern kept her eyes tightly shut, but she could not control the quickening of her heartbeat.

  “I don’t know why the hell I’m here,” Colin continued, rough and quiet. “I don’t know what it is that you did to me. But I do know that I will not allow such a—an irritation to be unilateral.”

  Fern gave a sharp intake of breath as Colin’s mouth came in contact with her skin. She kept her eyes shut hard—out of stubbornness now, and a fearful curiosity that would not be denied. His lips moved across her skin with the studied seduction of the night before, but there was a new urgency under it that made her blood rush to her head as her skin burned with every movement of his mouth against it. He moved lower, to the hollow of her collarbone that was barely exposed by the high neckline of her dress, and the air in the coach seemed to thicken in her lungs. With a groan, she opened her eyes and pushed herself away from him even as she ached for more. He stood in the center of the carriage, balancing on the balls of his feet and stooped over her.

  “Why are you doing this?” she asked. “You shouldn’t kiss me like that—not here. What do you want of me?”

  Colin stooped lower, looming over her. Fern pressed into the corner formed by the seat back and the carriage side so hard that the back of her head ached, but there was nowhere for her to go. His face came closer and closer to her own until she found herself staring at his strong throat as his lips brushed her forehead. “I would think that the answer to both questions would be obvious.”

  “Well, it isn’t to me,” she burst out, her confusion, frustration, and desire overwhelming her usual rectitude. “I don’t understand any of this. Last night, in the bedroom, you kissed me and told me that I was pretty, but then you did that … that to me. Then today, when you yelled at me until I hit you, instead of yelling more or beating me, you kissed me again, and that time it was like you meant it differently …” She trailed off helplessly.

  Colin shifted so that his dark eyes were staring directly into hers from only a few inches away. Fern fought against the dizzying fear that she could be sucked into those depths and lost forever.

  “Are you saying that you do not know what happened last night?” he asked. His voice was quiet, holding neither incredulity nor scorn.

  “I know what happened,” Fern countered, feeling stupid and hating it. “I was there.”

  “Did you not know what it was? What it meant?”

  Fern stared at him, trying to discern the meaning of his words, but she might as well have been looking at a painting of a man, for all the reaction that he betrayed. “It was terrible,” she whispered. Those words loosened her tongue, and she found herself saying far more than she had meant to. “It was most terrible of all because it was not as terrible as it should have been. You hurt me. You took … some part of me, and I will never get that back. But a part of me wanted it. Reveled in it. I knew you were stealing from me, but I couldn’t refuse until it was too late, and even then … a part of me didn’t want to.”

  There was a long pause as Colin’s face remained as still as a mask, and then he gave a low chuckle that raised the hairs on the back of her neck. “Oh, Fern, you have so much to learn. A day ago, I would have been peeved at such a misapprehension, but now, I find that I am relishing the opportunity to be your instructor. Perhaps I was a bit ham-fisted last night. If so, I can promise that tonight will not be the same.” He paused. “No, I don’t think it will be the same at all.”

  “What are you talking about?” Fern asked, the words half a question and half a demand.

  “What we did last night, Fern, is what a man and his wife are meant to do.”

  Fern shook her head spasmodically. “I can’t believe it. Women could not live with that.”

  He straightened slightly, still looming over her with his head and shoulders brushing the roof of the coach. “It is not a terrible thing, Fern. You were understandably surprised and confused, but I don’t believe that even you truly think that it is terrible.”

  “I couldn’t stop you,” she said, avoiding the implicit question.

  “Did you want to?” he retorted.

  “I don’t know.” The answer slipped out before Fern could stop it, and she bit her lip.

  “Did you not enjoy it?” Colin pressed. “Just a little?”

  She dropped her eyes, unable to lie. “Yes. Yes, I did.”

  “Then what was wrong?” he pursued.

  “I couldn’t stop you,” she repeated helplessly. “I couldn’t do anything. I was powerless. I couldn’t stop anything.”

  His face took on a curious expression, clouded and inward-turning. “You were not powerless earlier today when you bit my lip.”

  Fern flushed and looked at the lip in question, which bore a faint purple bruise. She reached out tentatively, touching it. “Does it hurt?” she asked.

  “Why? Do you want it to?” His mouth brushed her hand as he spoke.

  Fern froze, startled at the question. “I don’t think so,” she said. She dropped her hand.

  “If I kissed you like that again, would you do it again?” His eyes were strangely bright.

  “Yes,” she said with a surge of resentment. “Of course I would.”

  “Of course you would,” Colin murmured. “I will keep that in mind.”

  “Why did you have us leave Brighton?” Fern asked suddenly, eager to change the subject.

  Colin’s expression shuttered, growing cold. “I could not stay any longer. That is all you need to know.” He bent over her again and kissed her, softly, on the lips.

  “I don’t understand,” Fern whispered against his mouth in the moment before he pulled back.

  “Don’t worry. I promise that you shall.” Then he kissed her hard, pushing her bruised lips against her teeth, pressing her back into the corner of the carriage.

  Fern battled confusion and her body’s mindless reaction to his mouth against hers, moving roughly and desperately. What was he doing? Why? His hands were pulling at the row of tortoiseshell buttons down the front of her dress, his tongue pushing insistently at her teeth. If I kissed you like that again, would you do it again? The words echoed in her head.

  Do you want it to? He had asked her that question, but she could have just as easily posed it to him. Why was he playing these games?

  Whatever the reason, she would win, she thought with sudden ire. Her hand around the back of his neck turned into a claw, her nails sinking into his skin. Ruthlessly, she raked her fingernai
ls across the nape of his neck, and his frame shook, the frenzy of his kiss turning to a more methodical insistency, his hands slowing in the unbuttoning of her dress.

  “I won’t do this,” Fern said, finding her voice as he broke away. “And I certainly won’t do it here.”

  “Don’t tell me that a part of you doesn’t want it,” Colin returned, tugging her bodice down over her shoulders.

  She made fists with her hands so that the sleeves could not be pulled over them. “I don’t want to hurt you. But I won’t let you steal from me again.”

  He leaned close, so that his chest was pressed up against her breasts as he whispered into her ear, “It is a gift, not a theft. You end with more, and I with less.”

  Shocked as she grasped his meaning, Fern jerked back, rapping her head against the wooden wall of the coach. “Sir!”

  “How do you think babies come into this world?” Colin asked, tugging at the last buttons of her dress.

  “I am quite sure that I don’t know,” Fern said crisply. She pushed his hands away.

  “A babe looks like both its parents because it is begun with a piece of the man entering the woman,” he said, his voice tinged with a mocking kind of amusement. “It is true. You steal from me, not I from you.”

  “I don’t care about physiology,” she insisted, even though she knew he was telling the truth. “I know what happened.”

  “You were surprised.”

  “I was sane,” she returned.

  “You were confused.”

  “I knew what was happening to me. I didn’t like it. I don’t like it now.” Oh, God, if only that were true …

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t like being powerless … helpless …” She made a frustrated noise, capturing his hands between hers. “Female, you will say.”

  “As I have already said, you were not powerless in the carriage earlier today.”