Temptation & Twilight

by Charlotte Featherstone

  Carefully she rolled to her side, reached for the thick post at the foot of the bed and gripped it, holding herself steady. In four steps, she knew, she would be before the long looking glass. It had been a gift from her mother, a piece she had brought with her from France upon her marriage to Elizabeth’s father.

  Lizzy remembered its shining rosewood frame and scrollwork edges. The legs were turned, carved with ornate roses and clamshells. She wondered if the mirror was warped yet by age, or spotted with black marks.

  She remembered the piece as being decadent, a fri-volity to delight a young girl who enjoyed dressing up in her mother’s hats and evening shoes and tromping about her dressing room as she watched the Duchess of Sussex prepare for an evening out.

  Despite her blindness Elizabeth could still picture herself standing before the mirror, her short, chubby body drowning in her mother’s ball gown and gloves.

  She’d soon grown out of that chubbiness and into a body that made her violently self-conscious. She had ma- tured far too early, her mother said, and Elizabeth used to hide in her room, crying herself to sleep, despising the voluptuous curves that she possessed, and none of the other girls of their acquaintance did.

  Her mother had been losing her sight then, and Elizabeth longed to hear her remark upon her looks, even though she knew her mother was disappointed that she had not inherited her French beauty or slim figure. It would mean, at least, that her mother could actually see her.

  What would she think of me now?

  Her mother had died from a terrible fall down the staircase at a ball she had been hosting months after Iain deserted Lizzy. Elizabeth’s own sight was swiftly diminishing at that time, and she recalled how, weeks before the accident, they used to sit quietly in the salon together, contemplating their futures. She had known that the blackness engulfing her mother would soon come to swallow her as well, and it did, taking her hostage.

  Smoothing her hands over her body, Lizzy wondered if she had grown to resemble her mother. Sussex claimed she looked like their father. She had not wanted that, for the duke had been so cold and removed—and so very ashamed of her. She wanted to have nothing in common with him, least of all the cold austerity of his looks.

  What did others see in her? Her hair was black, she knew, and long. When it was unpinned, she could feel it hanging around her hips. When Maggie brushed it out for the night, she often commented on how shiny it was, like a pelt of sable, and perfectly straight.

  Her eyes were grey. They hadn’t changed with her blindness, Maggie assured her. Lizzy often wondered if she looked blind. It was a tiny fear of hers, to have wild, wandering eyes that were not focused or steady. She wondered if people averted their gazes from her when she spoke to them. She would never know if they did, and had always feared that they might, leaving others to observe her conversing with the top of a head, or an ear—or worse, a back.

  Was she beautiful? She didn’t know. When she had sight she had thought herself a strange-looking creature, with hair so dark and skin so pale. Her grey eyes often made her appear downcast and melancholy. Her lips were full, she knew, and her cheeks always plump, like the rest of her.

  She was nearly thirty now. The last time she had seen her reflection, she’d been nineteen. How much had she changed? Did she have lines around her eyes? Her mouth?

  Was her body enticing, or just doughy? Would she see a mature woman in the reflection, or would she see remnants of that sad, lost young woman?

  Her hands, of their own volition, slid along the curve of her hips, which her gown could not conceal, and over the rise of her belly, the soft protuberance beneath her corset, and up to the bodice of her gown.

  She felt the curves, sensed a woman’s body, but could not decipher if it was the sort that was becoming to men.

  Impotent frustration rose like a fury inside her. She was not vain, not at all, but there were times in a woman’s life when she wanted to see her reflection and gaze upon herself, to discover the woman she was. What others saw in her. Lizzy had no idea what appeared in the looking glass. No sense of identity, or person…

  “Wondering what he sees when he looks at you?” She started, gasped, nearly screamed until she felt the heat of Iain’s chest against her back. The firm grip of his large hands anchoring around her waist as he slowly brought her rigid spine to rest against the long length of his body.

  “Shall I tell you what he sees? What any man sees?”

  “Don’t.” Oh, her voice sounded breathless and weak, and so very unconvincing. She thought back to that afternoon, to Lucy and Isabella, and she only felt weaker, thinking of what they had said. What they saw in Iain’s gaze.

  “Let me be your eyes, Beth.”

  The whisper of her name, the name only he used, was at once so arousing and powerful, yet like a sword to the heart. How could one be aroused, when slowly but effectively being stabbed to death?

  “G-get out before you are discovered here.”

  “No one will discover us.”

  “Maggie—”

  “Is sound asleep in her room. She left the door open and I noticed her napping as I crept by. Your brother is lost in thought over his impending nuptials. There is no one to discover us.”

  “The servants, my maid…”

  “I’ve locked the door. It is only you and I and a very exhausted Rosie in this room.”

  “You have no right to come here, none at all!”

  “I think I do.”

  “Well, you’re wrong.”

  “I only wanted to make certain you were safe.”

  “And why shouldn’t I be? This is, after all, my home.”

  “You are determined to thwart my attempt at being a gentleman.”

  “No, to prevent any more lies that spring so easily from your lips.”

  His hand was hot, burning through the bodice of her gown. “All right, then. The truth. I came up here to find you because I could not stay away.” Elizabeth snorted, trying to find level footing. “Not likely. You have some other motivation up your sleeve.”

  “Perhaps. Maybe it’s that I want to kiss you again. To see your body naked in this mirror, with my hands covering you. I want, Beth,” he whispered darkly next to her ear, “to see myself sink deeply inside you. To watch you accept me.”

  “No.”

  “Slowly, penetrating deep, softly, lazily, until the past is gone, purged from us both.”

  That, she could not allow. She was not good at hating.

  Forgiveness and understanding came too easily to her, she feared, and knew it would be all too simple to forgive him for the past. To want to allow him that kiss. Or worse, to wish he would take the decision from her, and just do it. Yes, that… She had always gravitated to that aspect of him, the dominant part that always knew what she wanted, and wouldn’t allow her to run away in fear.

  Swallowing, she gathered her courage to fight him and her body’s natural instincts. “I am not at all interested in your kisses, my lord.”

  “Are you not?”

  How smooth and dark his voice was, whispering into her ear. The man knew she lied. It seemed she couldn’t hide anything from him.

  “What of Sheldon’s kisses?” he asked grimly. “Are you interested in his?”

  “I don’t see what concern that is of yours.”

  “Everything you do concerns me. Everywhere you go, everyone you visit, everything you do…or dream.”

  “You make things out to be there that aren’t.”

  “Is that so?”

  “Of—of course,” she stammered, despising how she felt obligated to gift him with a reason for spending time with Sheldon. “He has agreed to help me discover the name of someone in a diary I found.”

  “Ah, yes, the book you were carrying.”

  “Sinjin York’s personal diary. There is a mystery in it.”

  “And Sheldon, you think, will help you discover it?

  What a mad scheme.”

  “It’s not a scheme,” she snapp
ed.

  “The truth, Elizabeth. What game are you playing?” Iain said, his voice growing angry. “What purpose will it serve to bring Sheldon where he doesn’t belong? Where he can only create havoc, and not solve the mystery?

  Leave him out of it. Why risk the safety of the Brethren Guardians by showing him this book?” She didn’t like Iain’s tone, or the way he just seemed to think it was his right to command her, to bend her to his will.

  “What possible help could he be to you?”

  “He’s agreed to be my eyes,” she replied tartly.

  “I could be your eyes, Beth.”

  She would not tremble… would not…. “I doubt you could be of any assistance.” No, he would be a liability to her, a menace.

  “And you think he can aid you, is that it?”

  “Yes.”

  “He can’t. And it would be more than dangerous to think he could. To show him that damn diary.”

  “Of course he can help me,” she sniffed.

  “No, love,” he whispered. “He can’t. But there is one person who can.”

  She was not his love. Had never been his love. “Oh? I suppose you know one who will better serve me, then?”

  “Me.”

  “Your arrogance astounds me,” she snapped irritably.

  “What makes you think you can help me?” “What makes you think I can’t?”

  “You’ve never been interested in helping anyone before. It is not in your makeup to care, to want to come to the aid of another.”

  “You are partially correct, Elizabeth. I am arrogant and selfish, and, no, I haven’t cared about helping anyone, except one person. You.”

  “I doubt that. You wanted only one thing from me, and you got it, and promptly walked away. Let that be enough.”

  His body stiffened behind her, and she wondered if she had hurt him, or if it was his considerable pride that baulked at the reminder that he had been nothing but a horrid rake and unscrupulous seducer to her. He had never cared. If he had, he would not have said the things he had to her.

  “Let me help you with the diary.”

  “No, Lord Sheldon has offered, and I have accepted.

  You are free to pursue your own vices, and no longer have to involve yourself in anything I’m doing.”

  “I’ve been involved in your life, Elizabeth, whether you have noticed it or not, for a very long time.” She struggled against him, fighting against a warmth that refused to fade. How she wished she could send him on his way, but she was weak and inconstant. The wicked creature who always found him irresistible was much more insistent than the woman of good sense.

  “You’ve said your piece. Now it is time to leave.”

  “Not yet. You haven’t answered my question,” he said quietly, his voice wrapping around her in the dark. “What is your purpose in standing here before this mirror?”

  “None of your business.” She could not weaken. Could not. “You have no right to know my thoughts.”

  “I know it for the truth, that I should never be allowed into your life, that I have no right to assume I should be.

  Yet I cannot help but think it is my concern. After all, I have tasted you, have brought you to shuddering climax.

  My body has been deeply inside yours. I know you as no man ever has, Elizabeth. We have a connection, and although you want to deny it, to ignore the fact, the bond between us remains—neglected and dormant, perhaps, but like a bud in spring, is ready to awaken in the heat.” Her head was swimming. “I will never allow you back in.”

  He sighed, and Elizabeth felt his chin drop to the junc-ture of her shoulder and neck. He needed a shave, for his jaw was covered in a night beard. The devil slowly brushed his chin against her skin, abrading her, sensitizing it, and her womb responded with a deep ache of want.

  Blast him, not even a kiss, only a small grazing touch, and she was already aching inside. She closed her eyes against the knowledge, the realization that she was weak and wanton.

  “I am already there, aren’t I? Already so deep inside you. Just as deep as you are inside me. The past might lie between us, but there is something there beyond the hurt. Isn’t there?”

  She refused to answer. Couldn’t. Didn’t trust herself to speak for fear she might say yes, or even nod in agreement. No man made her surrender, made her give up her control like Alynwick.

  “Damn, but you smell so good,” he murmured as his palm, large and firm, moved from her waist to make a slow progression over her stomach, her ribs, the valley between her breasts, where the tips of his fingers toyed with the bow on her bodice. “I can smell you, the building desire, the struggle within. I remember it from all those years ago, the heady musk of your excitement. The outline of your body before the window. The way it made me feel to look at you, to know you were mine. The way I took you…” His lips brushed softly over her flesh. “The way you gave yourself to me.”

  Once before, they had stood like this in the dark of night, when he had crept into her room. She had been watching for him from her window, and he had silently come up behind her, captured her around the waist and tore off her night rail and wrapper, rendering her naked.

  He had made love to her like that, with her naked and on her knees, her hair fisted in his hand. Him, behind her, fully dressed, breathing hard—exciting her. He had possessed her, and she had allowed him to. Had given him everything she had, and he’d taken it. Like a man starved, he had greedily consumed her.

  “Tell me what you were searching for, standing before this mirror?”

  Shaking her head, Elizabeth pressed her lips together.

  She refused to answer, to give words to her vulnerabil-ity. But he knew… Somehow the soulless, callous Alynwick always could read her thoughts…. Knew what she wanted, what she yearned for her. He proved her correct when he said, “See yourself through my eyes, Beth.” Coward. Weakling. Silly wanton. No, she could not allow him to show her what she was. She had no wish to see how quickly and easily she could succumb to him.

  But, oh, God, his fingers, hot on the bare flesh of her bosom, felt so good. Their trembling against her, the sweep of his mouth across the bounding pulse of her neck… It felt too good to resist, and she allowed her head to fall back against him. It had been so long since she had been touched. She’d had so much of him before—his mouth, his hands. His body moving inside hers. And then he had left, abruptly withdrawn from her. His touch had been a living thing, a life, and when he had gone, it had been like a death. Hers.

  How she longed for this in the night. To be stroked.

  Held. Caressed. There was nothing to rival a lover’s soft, reverent touch, and it had been sacred to her. He had made her body his, a supplicant only too willing to obey with just a touch. Then, like all masters do with their slaves, he had tossed her aside when she was no longer of any value to him.

  “You are so beautiful.” His lips moved over her neck, his chin over her sensitive collarbone. “You cannot imagine how lovely, Beth. Every man’s dream. My most wicked, erotic fantasy come to life.”

  “No.” She shook her head, protesting not his assess-ment, but the way she felt herself falling against him, the way her arm rose up over her head to clutch at him.

  She could not stop the action, nor prevent the tears that started to well behind her closed eyes.

  So much pain…. Her heart was aching with it, with the memories of his betrayal. It was mixed with the onslaught of pleasure, so acute, so overwhelming. She was literally trembling with it, her body awakening after years of feeling cold and dead. It wanted to reach out to him.

  To live. The inner struggle was tearing her apart, and she could do nothing more than rest against him and pray….

  Pray that he would not destroy her once again.

  “Just the other night, I dreamed of you, pale and naked, crawling to me, your body covered in red wine—your curves, the tips of your breasts. You were wanton and beautiful, seductive. And I was your slave, Beth.”

  “Iain
.” She wanted to beg him to stop, but could not say the word.

  “Beth…Beth…” His voice was hoarse, calling to her from a place that sounded far away. But he was here; she felt him, the gentle, seductive slide of his lips along her throat. The moist heat of his breath, the hardness of his erection pressing into her bottom. An erection he took no shame in, but pride, for he crushed it against her, made her feel it. Want it.

  It was insupportable, to know soul deep that it was wrong of her to take any pleasure in this. To allow him any liberties. But she was mortal, and mortals were con-ceived in sin. She was at the mercy of her humanity now, not her mind. Even her free will had been stolen the moment his fingers touched her, awakening her like a dormant tree in the spring sunshine. And the first tear slipped down, unchecked. Oh, God, what was she doing?

  “Don’t cry…my Beth.” He could hardly believe that hard rasp was his voice. But it was. “My love, don’t.” Her eyes were closed, her head tilted back, her face averted so he could not see her, only feel the slow slide of a tear that slipped unbidden from the corner of her eye, down her cheek and onto his lips.

  Holding her tighter to him, his heart pounding, Iain tried to find words, the words that would make her feel safe in the arms of a monster who had ruined her. But he couldn’t. Only after they had made love had he felt able to talk to her. Words had never come easily. His childhood had been one of solitude and silence, and he was comfortable with that. But Elizabeth had always made the silence unbearable. And when he had finished making love to her, he would lie down beside her and hold her, and together they would talk about everything, anything. For him, the conversations after were every bit as intimate as the acts they shared. He still felt that way, and could not summon the courage to just talk, and hold.

  There were walls around them, walls that had never been there before.

  If he could only tear them down…

  “I want to see you.”

  She shook her head, denying him.

  “Yes, let me.”

  Carefully he dragged one corner of her bodice off her shoulder. She was beautiful there, rounded and soft, her skin as luminescent as a pearl, as pale and alluring as moonlight. Brushing his face against her, he listened to her breaths, turned his cheek against her and swiped his tongue, circling the delicate ball of her shoulder until the circles became smaller and he was sucking her, watching her—them—in the reflection of the mirror.