Seduced by a Stranger

by Eve Silver

  Settling in a chair, she moved the candle so it was away from the draft, then opened the letter from Mrs. Northrop, noticing that a newspaper clipping had been included. She unfolded the single page, revealing script that was clear and precise, if slightly slanted.

  Dear Miss Weston,

  Our parting was less than convivial, yet I do not have the temperament to carry a grudge.

  Only one sentence in, and already a lie. During the term of her employment, Catherine had been subjected to Mrs. Northrop’s endless list of grievances against all those who had wronged her since childhood. It was fascinating how often people saw themselves completely in opposition to how others saw them.

  For some reason, that thought made an image of Gabriel St. Aubyn fill her mind. Did he see himself as she saw him, cold, aloof, his secrets hidden beneath layers of rigid control? And why did such a man appeal to her so? Perhaps because the only man she had ever believed she loved had been prone to fits of passion and terrifying, deadly rage.

  Memories broke over her like a crashing, storm-stirred surf. She wrapped her arms about herself, holding the waves at bay, her determination a dam against the flood. After a moment, she made a conscious effort to relax her shoulders and the rigid muscles of her back, to uncoil her arms and force her attention to the page once more.

  I forgive you your impertinence and poor judgment, and as a gesture of goodwill, I write you with news that must surely be of interest. Please do not trouble yourself to reply.

  * * *

  Martha Grimsby is dead. She was murdered.

  “Wha—?” Catherine read the sentences a second time and a third, the letters like little black bugs on the page. Martha? Dead?

  No. Surely it could not be true. She had seen Martha shortly before she had departed London.

  The letter fluttered as her hand trembled, horror sinking its talons bone deep. She felt ill, shaken and clammy, nausea roiling in her belly. What ugly game did Mrs. Northrop play at? Why would she write such a foul thing?

  Heart hammering, Catherine reread that line a fourth time, then continued on, searching for some indication that the assertion was a macabre joke.

  Martha Grimsby is dead. She was murdered.

  * * *

  There, I have said it outright. The quickest cut is the kindest. Do you not think so? I recall having a rather horrid Affliction of the skin as a child, a vile, weeping Carbuncle. Dr. Marks was quite decisive in his action and his insistence that the lancing be done with all haste and precision. I never forgot that lesson, and consider it one of great value. Hence, I share it with you.

  * * *

  I have taken the clipping from the Times and included it herein.

  * * *

  Cordially, Agnes Northrop

  Catherine swallowed, her throat tight, her chest twisted in a knot. She could not breathe. Could not think. Martha dead. Murdered. Why? How?

  It took a moment for her to realize that the low, plaintive moan she heard was coming from her own lips, that she had crumpled the letter into a little ball in her fist. With meticulous care, she smoothed the hated paper flat on the table, her palm stroking the creases until it lay before her like a dried leaf, the edges curled and bent.

  She took the newspaper clipping and unfolded it, her hands shaking as though she were struck by a palsy. Almost did she tear the paper, so jerky were her movements. She glanced at the date—March 29, 1828—and the headline—Waterside Murder. With her vision blurred by tears, she read the whole of it, blinking again and again as the letters swam before her eyes.

  Henry Day, Deputy Coroner, opened an inquiry respecting the death of one Martha Grimsby, the woman who was discovered on Friday last, at the London Docks, Wapping, with multiple stabs to her body.

  Catherine jerked as though a knife had been stabbed in her own breast. In that moment, she saw Martha as a child, laughing as she and Catherine ran through the garden a lifetime past, when Martha’s father had been a groom at Catherine’s father’s estate.

  Closing her eyes against the pain that twisted inside her like a wrung-out rag, Catherine struggled to make sense of this horrific news. Was it not enough that Martha’s life had carried her to St. Giles, to poverty and desperation, by day running a school for the local children in a dingy room, at night facing the need to sell her body to survive? Did she have to die like this?

  Like this?

  Feeling as though a hard blow had been struck to the center of her back and all the air driven from her lungs, she opened her eyes and forced herself to read on.

  Alfred Barrett, waterside laborer, came upon the place when he went to seek for work. He passed the spot even as George Reese arrived and the two found the deceased, lying on her back in a shallow grave, the soil of which had been washed away in a particularly violent downpour. Both men believe they would not have noticed her there save for the fact that early in the morning, a load of timber was moved unexpectedly, baring the place she lay to passersby. There was no blood, that they could see. Frightened, they did not examine her but instead immediately gave notice to the police. The witnesses saw no footmarks in the mud, nor did they find any weapon.

  * * *

  Dr. J.R. Cuddy, of 73, House-lane, said that he was called to the deceased, and found her dead. Her clothes had been cut away from the torso, and the chest and abdominal cavities opened with a sharp instrument, without precision. On postmortem examination of the body, he found the lungs, liver, stomach, and intestine removed, again, without precision. The heart was untouched. Dr. Cuddy thought these wounds had not been inflicted during life.

  Catherine forced herself to inhale against the oppressive weight that bore down on her. The wounds had not been inflicted during life. Martha had suffered so much, but she had not been alive to feel her organs sliced from her body.

  That was Catherine’s one comfort, that her friend’s body had been mutilated only after her death. Cold comfort it was. Tears welled over, trickling down her cheeks, dripping onto the backs of her hands. She stared down at them, aghast, knowing the battle was lost even as she fought to hold back the torrent, to remain composed. Her efforts were to no avail.

  Grief swelled beyond the confines she imposed, oozing through cracks in her façade, and for the first time in six long years, Catherine allowed herself to cry.

  Not only for Martha, but for the child Catherine had borne and never allowed herself to mourn.

  And for the man she had killed because he had killed her son.

  * * *

  In the dark hallway, Gabriel stood outside Catherine’s door. She was crying. The sounds were muffled, as though she struggled to suffocate them into silence. Something inside him shifted and turned, an unpleasant and wholly uncharacteristic instinct of chivalry that insisted he step inside and offer comfort of some sort.

  He had no idea how.

  What did one offer in the face of another’s pain? Here was a lesson he had failed to learn… no… a lesson he had never been taught. In the place where he had grown from boy to young man, there had been only lessons in survival. Hide behind an emotionless mask. Evade. Lie. Show only what they expected. The level of his suffering had been determined by his ability to guess exactly what they wished to see and hear. If he was right, they left him alone. If he was wrong, there were all manner of tortures and deprivation. He had striven to be right more often than wrong.

  The sound of Catherine’s sobs confused him. He wanted to comfort her as much as he wanted to avoid the necessity of doing so.

  Almost did he turn and walk away. She would never be the wiser, never know he had heard her private sorrow. But some intangible force drew him to stay. His knock went unanswered, and so he went beyond any acceptable boundary of propriety, turned the knob and opened the door, freezing in place at the sight that greeted him.

  Catherine sat in a chair by the window, her back hunched, her head resting in her bent arms, supported by a small table. A single candle sent shadows dipping and swaying along the walls. Throug
h the open curtains streamed a cool, pale swath of moonlight that fell across her upper body, leaving the rest of her in shadow. Her shoulders shook as she sobbed, her grief curling her fingers against the tabletop, straining her muscles, carving her in stark, tense lines.

  He crossed the room until he stood behind her, his hand outstretched, palm down. He hesitated, not touching, and finally simply rested his hand on her nape.

  She jerked and snuffled and raised her head, gasping to see him looming over her. In this moment, she was not beautiful. Her nose was red, her eyes and lips puffy, her cheeks wet with her tears. In this moment, her mask did not slip. It was ripped away, leaving her naked and bare.

  In her wide, shimmering eyes, he saw all the unfettered emotions he would never know in himself—grief, horror, desperation, myriad sentiments, vast as the stars—and he was fascinated, both attracted and repelled. He had thought her exactly like him. Damaged. Flawed. Unable to feel.

  But she was not.

  He could see now that she was not.

  She was something far more intriguing than that, for she obviously experienced emotion on a deep, visceral level, but somehow managed to control it to an outstanding degree.

  In contrast, what little he felt was like a world viewed through sheer fabric. Fear, joy, sadness… all were tempered by the walls he erected.

  He knew such emotions existed.

  He knew they could be felt, saw the expressions on the faces of others, recognized the situations that summoned specific responses. He analyzed them, but he did not feel them, not to any significant degree. His emotions were not buried, not hidden; they had never had the opportunity to evolve. The feelings he saw in others were not part of what he was.

  For a long moment, he simply stared down at her, saying nothing, aware that she studied him as he studied her. Reaching out, he touched his thumb to her wet cheek.

  Tears. She had shed enough to fill a bucket. He stepped away as she watched him with wary uncertainty, crossed to the washstand and poured a glass of water from the pitcher. Then he took up a folded cloth, wet it, and wrung it out.

  Three strides took him back to her side. She was exactly where he had left her, sitting in the stripe of moonlight, her porcelain skin made all the paler by the cool light. He offered her first the cloth—she swiped it over her face and handed it back to him—and then the glass. She drank the water in thirsty gulps, and set the empty glass on the table with precise, careful movements, as though she feared slamming it down and shattering it into a million shards.

  Dropping her hands to her lap, she stared straight ahead, her posture rigid, her expression brittle. He thought that the wrong word would shatter her into a million shards.

  “Catherine,” he murmured, reaching down, braceleting her wrist with his fingers. His thumb traced the delicate bumps and dips of her bones, the softness of her skin.

  He tightened his grip and drew her to her feet. She allowed this liberty, unresisting, the silence disturbed only by the rustle of her skirt as she rose.

  Then, as though waking from a daze, she did resist, tugging on her wrist, trying to pull away. He could not say why he did not let her go.

  Her head tipped back; her lashes lifted. The moon painted a pale wash on her face, leaving her eyes too dark, too big, shimmering with the tears that had yet to dry. But she did not cry now.

  She gathered herself, her chin angling up, her posture adjusting as she visibly called forth her inner reserves of strength. Her back arched a little as she strained away, and her arm was stiff and straight against his. Only the quick, hard pulse at her throat betrayed her unease.

  Her eyes narrowed, and her features changed from open to guarded. Her mask slid into place. He found he regretted that, though he would not have expected such.

  With a last sharp tug, she tried again to pull free.

  And this time, he let her go, let her step away, though it went fully against the unfamiliar instinct to draw her close, wrap her in his embrace, and hold her safe from anything that would harm her.

  Even himself.

  Like a slumbering beast, something deep inside him unfurled, a need to claim, to mark, to protect. Primitive. Dark. He understood it not at all.

  Glancing down, he took refuge in the simple act of lifting the scrap of newspaper from the table, tilting it to the light, and reading the first bit. He saw immediately that he had no need to read it all. He already knew a great deal about Martha Grimsby’s murder.

  “Is it the murder itself that has you upset, or something more?” He looked up. “The method of it? The organs taken?”

  She took a sharp breath.

  Ah. His questions only served to distress her more. A tactical error on his part.

  He stepped toward her only the single pace that she had stepped away earlier, and when she did not retreat, another pace. They were so close that all that separated them was their clothing and a thin span of night-cooled air. So close that he could feel the graze of her breasts against his chest with each breath she took, feel the trembling in her body as he took her hand in his, drew it down to his side and held it there, shifting them closer still.

  Her breathing grew short and rapid. Her head tipped down so she stared straight ahead at his chest rather than his face.

  “How do you know there were organs taken? You barely glanced at the page… certainly you could not have read it in its entirety.” Her voice was roughened by the violence of the sobs that had racked her earlier. He wondered how long she had sat here in the near dark, sobbing her heart out before he had found her.

  For a moment, he said nothing, weighing all possible answers, and finally decided on, “This clipping is from a paper days old.” He let it flutter to the tabletop once more. “But there is little new information in the more recent reports.”

  “Oh.” She blinked and shook her head mere inches to either side. Then she wet her lips and gave a soft sniffle. “I knew her. The murdered woman. Martha Grimsby. I knew her as a child.”

  Seconds ticked past. Tipping her head back, she met his gaze, waiting for him to respond, to offer some appropriate rejoinder.

  “You feel her loss. You regret it.” The words were not enough. He saw it in her eyes. For an instant, the silence roared as he searched… and then he came away with the fitting response, the exact words that had been said to him at a time of loss. “My condolences.”

  She swallowed. Nodded. “Thank you.”

  Dark lashes swept down, veiling her thoughts. But he knew what they were, read her pain in every tense line of her lush form. He wanted to take her suffering, pull it from her, swallow it into himself where it would not matter anymore.

  Her lashes lifted and she looked directly at him, into his eyes. Perhaps even deeper than that.

  He wanted to kiss her, to drag her against him and put his lips on hers, to know the hot, sweet taste of her mouth, her tongue.

  It was not the right time.

  Even he, with his shallow grasp of the nuances of emotion, understood that it was the wrong time. But he let instinct guide his hand as he reached out to draw the pins from her hair, letting the thick, heavy waves tumble free over her shoulders and down her back.

  There. He liked that, the feel of her silky hair against his palm, the look of her with her hair loose and mussed.

  Her eyes and lips were still puffy from her tears, and he ached to kiss her lids, her mouth, her throat. To lick the salt from her skin. He thought she would not welcome it. But still the urge swelled and grew. He knew nothing of comfort, but he thought that were their positions reversed, were he the one to feel pain, he would crave the succor of her touch.

  A shocking realization, for he could not recall having such a thought in all his adult life.

  * * *

  Catherine fisted her hands in her skirt and stepped away, suddenly wary. St. Aubyn filled the space, inhabiting it, owning it. Even in the dimness, he was painted in shades of gold and honey and finely brewed ale. Yet the meager light suited h
im, for he was more akin to shadow than light, regardless of his sun-bright beauty. He was a man who looked nothing like he ought to. If appearance reflected inner self, he would be cast in the smoke and pewter of shadows rather than the gilded gold of sunlight.

  That thought was enough to stir fear in her gut, to rouse memories of another man whose appearance had so poorly matched his temperament and secrets. A man who had cost her everything. The worst of it was, she had chosen to trust Jasper Hunt, to love him. In the end, he had broken her, shaped her to obey. By the time she had understood that, it was too late for her. For her baby.

  The woman she was now had risen from the ashes of the girl she had been. The woman she was now would not be lulled and tricked by anyone. She was wiser than that. She would force herself to be wiser than that.

  “What are you doing here, in my chamber?” she asked, aware even as she did so that the question was belated. She ought to have bid him leave the second he pushed open the door. And now it was too late, because even if he turned and left now, she would still have knowledge of the well-hidden part of him that had been driven to offer his own rather restrained form of comfort—a glass of water for her parched throat, a cool cloth for her fevered brow. He had taken liberties, crossed boundaries, created an intimacy she did not wish to have with him.

  “I heard you. From the hallway.” His lips curved in a faint, sardonic smile. “We seem to alternate roles skulking about in the shadows, you and I.”

  There was that. Strangely, his odd attempt at levity eased the ache in her heart just a little.

  “Why were you in the hallway? Only Madeline and I are housed in this wing, and I have doubts that you were on your way for a pleasant visit with your cousin.”