She could still hear the scraping sound of the razor she had used to shave him as he lay unconscious and sometimes still heard it in her head at night. Right along with the clicking of the metal spoon against his teeth which she had tucked past his parched lips, willing him to live when he had only wanted to die.
All while he had gazed past her without even knowing it was her.
His so-called career did that to him.
And then there were…the crowds. One would have thought the king had been shot.
The sea of spectators and journalists pressing their faces against his iron gates on Basil Street, whilst shouting and yelling about his attempted suicide, had made it impossible for her to leave through any door. The few times she had attempted, men and women shoved in disturbingly close, touching her hair and brown skin as if she were an animal in a cage and they had come to an exhibit.
Never again. “Setting aside everything I endured at your hands and whatever you call a career, I am never going back to an all-white city and its definition of what an Indian should live through. I have more respect for myself than that and will stay here until my braid goes silver. You can say it in French and I will say it in Hindi.”
His voice softened. “I remember you once wanted to stay in London. I remember you insisted you would never leave my side. Do you remember that?”
She pointed. “Do not use that overly soft tone with me and think it will charm my bindi into cooperation. I am still recovering from seeing you half-dead. The demands of your career is what ultimately led to your attempt at suicide.”
“It was more complicated than that.” He adjusted his leather belt. “It won’t happen again.”
She squinted, trying to understand what she never seemed to be able to: him. “Is that what you think I fear? That it will happen again? Ridley, you fool of a mercenary who knows nothing about women. It already happened. I already lived it!”
He tugged up the sleeve of his linen shirt, rolling the cuff and shoving it up. “You survived me and I survived you.”
She paused, her gaze settling on his strong bared forearm that had been heavily scarred by what appeared to be letters that spelled out…JEMDANEE.
Startled, her heart flopped, sinking down to her bare feet and toes buried in the grass. She frantically grabbed his arm, disbelievingly touching her fingers against the raised ridges of long-healed lettering that had whitened against the olive tone of his skin.
What did he do? “Ridley…this is not something you can ever erase.”
He gave her a withering look. “Why would I want to erase a woman who did this to my soul? At least this way, you can see the damage you’ve inflicted. Blame yourself.”
She glared. “I did not inflict this on you! Ridley, this is— First coca/limestone, then eight fluid ounces of laudanum and now a razor?! Are you mad?”
“Cease yelling.” Reaching out, he gripped her hand, kissed it hard, and then guided it to the linen shirt over his sizable bicep. He pressed all five of her fingers into it, molding it hard. “When you’re ready to face who I am, ask me about it.”
The pulsing of her fingers against ridges of what felt like rope bundled against corded muscle hinted of too many feral things unsaid.
She jerked her hand back.
If he could razor her name into his skin and bind rope around his bicep as if it were a bouquet of roses waiting to be given, the intensity of what his mind, his lips and his body would bring to her made her realize her knee caps needed iron reinforcement. “Marring yourself is wrong.”
His hair ruffled against the breeze, as a shaft of sun struck his hair through the branches of the swaying trees, making his chestnut hair gleam. “Do you think overcoming a broken body that was addicted to coca/limestone was easy? Most men don’t even overcome that much for themselves yet alone the woman they seek to claim. It’s a mindset I took on in your name and carving this into my skin saw me through the worst of my addiction. So don’t insult me by saying it’s wrong or you’re insulting what I feel for you.”
It was torture knowing she had afflicted him to the point of him needing a razor.
She shook her head, riled. “Carving yourself violates the respect I want for you.”
He stared her down. “You are misusing the word ‘respect’. The true definition of respect is and I quote, ‘a feeling of deep admiration for someone or something elicited by their qualities’. This is me showing you respect, Jemdanee. For I admire your qualities. I am embracing you for who you are and am asking you to embrace me for who I am. That is the foundation of a good relationship. Unlike other men, I am excessively passionate about my devotion, but I would never hurt you. Ever.”
Her throat burned. “You once did.”
Turning, she quickly crossed out of the shade and whipped past low-hanging branches that pushed her into the adjoining garden. She hurried across the extensive lawn toward the side entrance stairs leading into her three acre greenhouse, her bare feet burning against the hot pathway stone. The burning against her feet and the burning against her soul and the weight of the gown made her hyperventilate.
Seeing her name razored into his skin was too much.
It brought back her own pain. Her angst. Him almost dying. Him with the bottle of laudanum in his hand and his blank stare that almost killed everything and who she was.
Her breaths became choked and unmanageable.
“Ey.” His booted steps and thudding of his cane quickly followed. “You aren’t leaving angry after you mauled me with silence for three years. Trois. Show a bit of maturity.”
She glared back at him, walking faster. “Do not lecture me on maturity as you razor yourself with my name!”
His large frame drew closer. “Whilst I admire your tenacity to make an effectual point, mon chou, we are cultivated enough to address all points in conversation without yelling. I’ll be gone for four days and won’t be able to function if you toss me off like this. So bring that fourteen-pound dress back here. Turn around.”
Breathing raggedly through flaring nostrils, she shook her head, refusing to speak to him whilst angry. For she would only hurt him. She would only make this worse. “We will talk on Friday,” she bit out. “When I am calm and not as resentful.”
“Jemdanee Kumar,” he rumbled out. “Turn around. I won’t ask again.”
Her tongue was one of the smallest parts of her body, but one she brandished like a sword. It was her greatest weapon and her greatest flaw since childhood. Too many times she had made her own maa cry with hateful, hateful words she’d never be able to take back, especially now that her maa was gone.
It was something she lived with and something she always regretted.
Much like plants, which varied in their use and level of toxicity, words had the power to destroy and Ridley didn’t need her to punish him.
He needed her to do what no woman had ever done in his honor: guide him.
Which was why…she was biting her tongue to bleeding.
She gathered her skirts and marched up the long set of stairs leading to her greenhouse. “I am far too angry to have a rational discussion with you and will say things I will regret. So leave off. Leave off!”
She darted up the remaining stairs.
Ridley tossed the cane with a loud clang and jumped three stairs at a time beside her with a long-legged run, wincing in an effort to pass her on the terrace of the greenhouse.
She gasped knowing he was coming after her full force. She sprinted, frantically lifting the weight of her skirts against her scrambling bare feet, while trying to move against tangling petticoats.
Ridley skidded and grabbed her waist hard.
She choked, shoving. “I am attempting to respect you by not…saying anything!”
He jerked her into place against himself, tightening his hold as his chin dug into her hair from behind. “Unlike most men, I can swallow whatever blade you throw.” He adjusted his tensing hold, molding her backside to feel every rigid muscle in his bo
dy. “So throw it.”
She shoved him. “Cease—”
He adjusted her harder, his muscles rigidly shifting and leaned in from behind, grazing his lips against her neck. “Shhhh.”
Given he was holding her shoulders hard and she couldn’t move forward or back against the rigidness of that embrace, she used her elbows and her legs which were buried beneath useless skirts to try to connect with anything she could. “Ridley, I am…warning you!”
“I embrace that warning willingly.” With his teeth, he dragged out pins, spitting them out. “What do you want?” he intoned, dragging his lips back toward her throat. “What do you need?” He set his hot mouth on her throat and sucked at her skin, moving up and up.
She gasped against the moist heat of his mouth, unable to breathe, and staggered back against him, the lotus fluttering out of her hair as locks fell in curtains.
“Isn’t this better than arguing?” he breathed hotly into her ear.
She staggered.
Spinning her around, he shoved her against the entrance of the door she had been looking to escape through and held her hard in place. “Bonjour, gorgeous.”
The rest of her pins tinkered out and she couldn’t see past her own hair.
She peered through her black waves of hair realizing he was only a breath away.
Ridley squared in with the bulk of his large muscled frame.
He searched her face. “You’re ignorantly poking for a fight and I’m telling you right now, I’ll end it before you start one.” He waggled his large fingers at her eyes as if casting a spell. “So I razored my forearm. Oh dear me and gasp. It wasn’t your arm, dearest. It was mine.”
Jemdanee almost slid down the length of the door, venting out three horrid years of too many words unsaid to a man who had tortured her heart, her body and her mind. Unable to believe she was already losing control of her mind, she choked out, “Nothing about this association is normal, Ridley. Nothing! You are— I cannot think when I am away from you anymore than I can think when I am with you and you—”
“I feel the same.” He smoothed her hair, leaning in. “No more of this. I’m imploring that you not muck up what we share with irrational displays of emotion neither of us can handle. Talk to me knowing words are my rooks. Play the game with me.”
In that moment, she realized…he was far more forgiving of her than she was of him.
A tear she couldn’t hold onto escaped her eyes, revealing all too well what she had felt for him all along.
He tilted her face upward. “Ey.”
Their eyes locked and her heart rushed to her toes, her fingers, her breasts and her elbows. The single tear traced its way down her cheek.
He dragged it away with his thumb, searching her face. Lowering his head, he set his forehead against hers, the pulse of their pressing foreheads emphasizing what they shared. “Persephone and Hades,” he rasped. “That is who we are. Persephone never wanted Hades but he was unable to live without her. He dragged her into his realm and there she was forced to stay. She gave him no children, yet remained faithful to him and he to her. Always. Why? Because they came to an understanding of who they were to each other and the power it brought.”
Ridley leaned back to look at her face. “Everything about me will unsettle you. Get used to it. Well before my father was taken, I was still this, Kumar,” he admitted. “This. A riddle unto myself. I once spent an entire afternoon on the stairs of my home as a child counting how many nails went into building that staircase, pulling up the carpet until my fingers were raw. My mother had me nail every piece of carpet back into place, yelling in French, but how could I not be fascinated by the very thing that allowed me to move from one floor to the next? It was how my mind worked. By the time I was eleven, I could read eight books at once and still be bored, needing more. Is that normal? I cannot say. I had intelligence on my shoulder with an angel trying to choke the devil out. The only difference was that as a child, I feared that devil. Until I met the devil one night and realized it was human.”
She eyed him.
His expression stilled. “The devil lives in all of us, but unlike most, I understand that same devil can yield great power and protect not only me, but those that matter most. And damn you, you matter most.”
A knot formed in her stomach.
“I will always choose to protect you over myself and I don’t think it’s wrong,” he rasped. “I have never felt this way toward anyone. Not even my former wife. So if you want to know what scares me…this does. You do. Because drinking a bottle of laudanum is only the beginning of what I would do in your name, and yes, that should scare us both.”
A shiver of awareness skimmed through her knowing he meant it.
Holding her gaze, he said in a grudging tone, “This goes beyond love, mon dévot. I call it hell and you do nothing but keep me in it. You aren’t the prisoner here. I am. Yes, I have an incredibly macabre persona, and yes, I have always been a villain to these criminals, but they never show the world mercy, so why should I show them mercy? How have they earned it? By breathing? Taking breaths doesn’t make you human. Animals take breaths, too. There will be times you will see a dark side of me that will make you think I am one of them, but with you holding me, I promise to stay loyal to what I want most: you.”
She sniffed in exasperation, trying to return her mind to a breathing calm she had yet to feel knowing he was hovering close. Too close. His heat and his cologne was penetrating her senses and her mind.
Pressing each hand outside of her shoulders, he shifted his large frame toward her. “Are you still attracted to me despite the limp?”
She swallowed. “Yes.”
He grabbed her face, startling her. His large hands tightened against her face, tilting her glasses upwards. “I needed to hear that.”
She couldn’t breathe.
Holding her gaze, he used his calloused thumbs to touch her face beneath the lenses, dragging away another lone tear that escaped. “I regret not showing you what I felt back in London.” He re-looped the wire rims behind her ears, to ensure they were back into place and rasped, “I regret not getting into that water with you and flooding the floor and our lives, but you weren’t ready for me any more than I was ready for you. I needed you to be what you are now: bolder, stronger. Strong enough to ensure you don’t break when I hold you.” He rigidly traced his thumbs over the curve of her cheekbones, his features wavering.
She lingered, her breaths difficult to take as those large, heated hands possessed her.
Ridley gently rattled her face, the pads of his fingers dragging upward toward her lips. “Many women have passed through my life, but I have never had a Jemdanee. You’re going to feel what I feel and it will scare you enough to run, but don’t think for a moment you’ll ever be able to. We’re bound. Pain is incredibly subjective and experienced differently by every person. To me, a razor against my skin is no different than the pain you continue to dole. You enjoy hurting me. You revel in it. It’s who you are.”
She glared. “That is not true.”
He tapped a finger against her lips. “You don’t know yourself very well. For three years you let me suffer offering nothing but your silence as I fought against my own body and my own mind to be able to stand here. You let me suffer because you couldn’t handle the pain I made you feel. That is the difference between you and I, Kumar. I can take the pain. I can take it until I’m dead. You, on the other hand…can’t. You seem to think life is all about sunshine and good weather, when in reality, every human story comes with quite a bit of thunder and rain. Especially when it comes to those you love. You’ve been an orphan too long not to know otherwise, but if you don’t ever feel pain for those you love, you’re not in love with them at all.”
She swallowed.
He traced her throat with his knuckles. “I’m going to ensure you can’t breathe without me. I’m going to crawl into your skull and leave scars and you’ll not only let me, but will love me for it.”
She could see by the set of his jaw and the riled heat in his eyes that this was about to go well beyond the usual bond men and women shared.
This would become everything that defined Ridley…bone deep.
She tried to breathe knowing every minute in his presence was a second hand of a clock tapping and tapping at who she was. Digging. Digging deeper to the bone and skull he wanted.
“You appear to have caged yourself.” Reaching out, he removed her spectacles, his fingers grazing her skin. He folded them and tucked them into his own waistcoat pocket. “Hiding behind a pair of non-prescriptive spectacles tells me you have permitted the world to negatively influence you since I last saw you. Why are you wearing them?”
The tightness of her throat made it almost impossible to speak. “I find them fashionable.”
He tapped her nose. “Don’t lie. Not to me. Why are you wearing them?”
Damn him for knowing everything.
She veered her gaze to his. “My eyes are not meant to be blue.”
Ridley weighed her, his expression taut and derisive and final. “You and I are far more alike than you think. You accuse me of mutilating myself, yet you openly mutilate yourself, in turn. If you disrespect the half of you that is white, how do you expect anyone to respect the half of you that is Hindu? Hm? The world will seek to destroy whatever side you take, which is why it is up to you to show the world you are capable of embracing what they never will: both sides. My duality is hero and demon. Your duality is Indian and white. Your struggle will always be greater than mine, but the moment you choose one side over another, you limit your potential and your mind and become a villain to yourself. Don’t wear these spectacles again. Don’t. Fucking don’t.”
She swallowed knowing he was already crawling back into her brain as if she were in London again. Even worse, he was trying to crawl into the veins of her soul and seep into the one place she swore she’d never let him rip apart again: her heart.
“You’re done hiding.” A muscle quivered at his jaw. “I addressed a long list of contemptible vices back in London in your honor so that I might offer you a better man. Whilst you? You’re a mess on the rise. Even your corset is on backwards.”
The Devil is French: A Whipping Society Novel Page 9
