“You’re thinking of Mrs. Wollstonecraft, aren’t you?”
“No!” she said, a little too vehemently. It was just that she’d been startled. She’d been thinking that Mr. Lloyd hardly knew her—she had been about to protest as much. But perhaps he understood her better than she realized.
“Well, if you were, don’t forget that her last marriage was—seemingly—quite a happy one, if less passionate than her relationship with Mr. Imlay. My point is that marriage need not be disruptive, to use your word. It can be a calm, rational coming together of two people who esteem each other.”
She nodded. She could make no argument there. The way he described it, it didn’t sound like the awful, oppressive thing she’d always vowed to resist.
“Don’t you want a family?” he asked. “Children?”
“I don’t know!” she cried. And she didn’t. Because she had always been so firmly against marriage, she’d never allowed herself to think about the possibility of children.
“Well, you can’t work here forever.”
He was right. And what if the recent downturn in bookings was the beginning of the end for the Jade? If it failed, she could hardly parlay her experience into a position as a housekeeper as she’d been hoping. What then? She could hardly bear the thought of going back to governessing. “I suppose…” she trailed off.
“Yes?” He looked like a puppy who’d just gotten a whiff of a treat.
“I suppose your future wife—whoever she may be—will not be employed.” He was a member of the gentry, after all.
“No, of course not.”
He must have realized he’d said the wrong thing, for his brow furrowed. But he was right, really, wasn’t he? A married woman of his rank—and as his wife would assume his rank—couldn’t work. Just because he was open to new ideas, was philosophically minded, didn’t mean he wanted his wife to be the testing ground for these new ideas.
“I’m sorry,” he murmured.
She couldn’t help noticing that he’d been sorry several times over the duration of their short conversation. Who knew a marriage proposal could come with so many apologies?
“I’m pressuring you,” he said. “I meant only to ask you, to lay out my case. And I have, so I’ll leave. But may I ask you to consider it? Not to reject my proposal outright?”
“Yes!” she cried. “I mean, yes, I’ll consider it.” He had handed her a way out of this increasingly uncomfortable situation, and she meant to seize it. She could write him a letter of refusal later. Or perhaps that was too cowardly. But she could at least take the time to compose her thoughts, and then she could refuse him gently.
For she did mean to refuse him.
Didn’t she?
…
Where the hell was Lucy? Trevor was attracting the attention of the few hotel staff members who were about this late—the very same men and women who usually ignored him—as he stomped around the hotel looking for her. Of course he hadn’t bothered to take off his greatcoat, which was covered with leaves and burrs from his vigil in Galsmith’s garden. And for all he knew, the wild, panicked feeling streaming through his limbs was visible in his eyes. Probably he looked like a Bedlamite, stalking through the corridors, growling under his breath.
It was just that he couldn’t get Blackstone’s astonishing statements out of his mind.
You stop being the sort of man she deserves.
Why don’t you let her be the judge of that?
The words sat heavily on him as he walked away from Galsmith’s house, strange and unfamiliar like an ill-fitting garment. They had gathered momentum, echoing through his brain as he followed Blackstone to Jespersen’s empty shop and performed the motions of a careful—and ultimately fruitless—search for anything decisively linking the man to the murders.
And as he walked up the path through the back garden to the kitchen door, Blackstone’s astounding words had become a deafening refrain exhorting him to act. Precisely how, he didn’t know, just that he had to find Lucy. Maybe then he could breathe well enough to think clearly.
She wasn’t in the kitchen. She wasn’t in her room. Or the garden, or his library. And yet the servants reported no sightings of her having left the premises. The hands that had not committed murder this evening buzzed with sensation, with a wild, untamable need to act, to do—to touch. He yanked open the door to one of the small private parlors that guests could hire. Empty.
He moved onto the next. Ah! There she was. The formless panic uncoiled a bit, like a cloud of smoke dissipating, giving him space to take a breath. “Lucy,” he whispered.
But when she turned and he realized she wasn’t alone, the panic contracted again, became solid, a rock in his gut, pressing up against his lungs. She was standing very close to Mr. Lloyd. Unremarkable, placid Mr. Lloyd, who cared about ideas. And he held her hands, clasped in her own, as one would greet a family member returned from a long journey.
“What’s the matter?” said Lucy, pulling her hands from Mr. Lloyd’s. “What’s happened?” When he didn’t answer, she said, “Mr. Lloyd was just on his way out.” That seemed to cue the other man, and he smiled and said, “Yes. And you’ll consider my proposition, Miss Greenleaf?”
“Yes, of course I will. Thank you again.” She spoke to Mr. Lloyd, but her attention was on Trevor. He must look worse than he thought, because her normally smooth brow was rutted with deep furrows, and she barely took her eyes off him as she followed her guest to the parlor door. “I’ll see you out, Mr. Lloyd,” she said, but though her mouth formed words meant for the visitor, she seemed to be speaking to Trevor as she inclined her head toward the settee, wordlessly ordering him to sit.
He did not obey, choosing instead to trail after her as she followed Mr. Lloyd. He wasn’t letting her out of his sight until he’d shown her what he’d come to show her. She needed to see—and understand. They made a silent line as they marched through the main lobby. Lucy, beautiful Lucy, flanked by the innocuous philosopher and the overgrown gutter rat.
He knew he was being rude, that his behavior bordered on unhinged, even, as he followed close on their heels. He granted them no privacy for their murmured farewells, ignoring the quizzical look Mr. Lloyd shot him before he disappeared into the darkness, outside, where he belonged.
“What’s wrong?” Lucy searched his eyes. “Is it Hammond? Has Jespersen struck early?”
He countered with his own question. “What was the proposition?”
She blinked. “Pardon me?”
“Mr. Lloyd. What did he want you to consider?” She would say that it was none of his affair, but she would be wrong.
She regarded him silently for a moment before sighing and saying, “Marriage.”
If he had been a chess player, there could be no surprise checkmate that would have shocked him to his core more than that single, simple word did.
“He asked me to marry him.”
“And you said no.”
He hadn’t meant it as a question, but she answered as if he had. “I told him I would consider it.”
Was she mad?
Was he? Because a week ago, Trevor would have counseled Lucy to accept Mr. Lloyd’s proposal, to seize the opportunity to better herself. She’d be comfortable the rest of her days, and it sounded like Mr. Lloyd was not only tolerant of her intellectual interests, but shared them. And he was a member of the landed gentry. In Trevor’s constant campaign to propel Lucy into a better life, he could never have imagined an opportunity like that.
He couldn’t make his mouth form the words, though. It was as if his body, which had propelled him through so much in this life, had suddenly turned traitor.
“I went to Viscount Galsmith’s today,” he said instead, watching her face like a hawk. He hadn’t been going to tell her, but he was seized with the idea that if this was a chess game, his next move was to physically topple the board. The concern etched onto her face turned to fear. Good. “I went there to kill him.”
“No Trevor! Please tell me you didn�
�t succeed!”
“Yesterday at the park, he was close enough to—”
“You haven’t answered my question.” Her voice shook. “Did you succeed?”
“I did not.”
She slumped against the wall. He wanted to reach for her, more than anything. His hands wanted to touch her just as much as they had wanted to kill her former employer earlier today. But he could not. Not yet. “Blackstone stopped me.”
“Thank God.”
“I went the first opportunity I got,” he continued. Now that he was telling her, he wanted her to know all of it. “I would have followed him right out of that park and killed him with my bare hands had Emily and Catharine not abandoned you earlier today.”
“So we went for ices,” she breathed.
“Yes, and we talked about providence and about firing a maid. And then Blackstone arrived with the news of the murders. And then I went to kill Galsmith.” He paused, aware that his matter-of-fact tone made it sound like he was reciting a marketing list. “I was hoping not to have to do it in front of his children, but I would have, had it been necessary.”
“This isn’t you. I don’t want to hear this.” She clapped her hands over her ears.
“And then I came home,” he said, pitching his voice to drown out her objections, “and ran Mr. Lloyd off my property in the crassest, most disrespectful fashion possible.” He paused before saying, “He’s perfect. You should marry him, Lucy.” Though Trevor meant what he said, he couldn’t keep the sneer from his voice. “In addition to being able to give you everything, he would never treat a guest so rudely.”
Lucy’s eyes filled with tears. “Why are you being like this? Why are you telling me all this?”
“I’m telling you because you need to know. This is all I’ll ever be. I am a gutter rat.”
The quick intake of her breath nearly deafened him. It took everything he had not to touch her, not to brush away the tears that had started to fall down her perfect cheeks.
“I am, too. Don’t you see, Trevor? I am, too.”
He allowed himself to hold out his hand, then. It didn’t matter that it shook violently.
She took it, and triumph and relief together sliced through his chest.
…
Lucy wasn’t entirely sure what was happening, but she knew that when Trevor started for the stairs, she had no choice but to follow.
He said he hadn’t killed Viscount Galsmith, but his eyes were haunted, tortured even. Something had happened to him. Something was different. It was as if they were playing a game, and the rules had changed suddenly and without warning. They were playing deep now, for high, high stakes.
He held the door to his suite open for her and led her silently to his bedroom. Once inside, he used the candle he held to light another, then handed her the original. “We need light.” He gestured expansively around the room, which was strewn with used candles in various stages of being burned down. “Light them all.” Peeling off his coat and throwing it on a chair, he crouched at the hearth and used his candle to light twists of paper, blowing on them to ignite the kindling stacked there.
She didn’t ask why, just hoped that bringing light to the room might also bring light to his troubled eyes. They worked silently for several minutes, intent on their respective tasks. Heat began to seep through her body, as if the small flames she was bringing to life kindled unseen twins inside her belly. She felt as if they were setting the stage for something, but what it was, she couldn’t begin to imagine.
Finishing with the last cluster of tapers in the corner of the room on a table at the far side of the bed, she turned to find him bathed in warm light, watching her. Her heart wrenched, and she was flooded with compassion for him. For both of them, the gutter rats standing in a golden room.
He held out his hands and, obeying the silent command, she moved to him. He clasped both of her hands in his, just as Mr. Lloyd had done earlier. But this time, unlike with Mr. Lloyd, the contact sent a bolt of sensation up her spine. He lifted both her hands to his lips and kissed them, one at a time, pressing his wet, open mouth to the back of each in turn, then flipping them over and doing the same thing to each palm. The gesture was shockingly intimate, somehow. Her two hands, which had worked so hard for so many years, scavenging food out of rubbish bins, darning stockings until they were nothing more than webs of thread, turning the pages of books, writing figures on slates for her pupils, were hers. He understood, somehow, that she was alive because of those hands. Those hands, together with her own sheer will to survive.
He must have understood about her will, too, because he dropped her hands and moved to press his lips to her forehead. “Beautiful mind,” he whispered, and she choked on a sob because, for a moment, she could believe it.
He took a step back toward the fire, and she reflexively followed him. He smiled then, and shook his head, gently pushing her away. “Stay there,” he rasped. Not waiting for her reaction, he reached for the hem of his shirt, muscles in his chest rippling as he pulled it over his head, exposing the map, the owl, and the rose. The images she knew were nowhere near as deeply etched into his skin as they were into his soul. They still took her breath away.
His eyes found hers again after the shirt was gone, and he held her gaze as his fingers set to work on the placket of his breeches. His green eyes pinned her in place. She couldn’t have moved if she’d wanted to, could only stand and listen to the roaring of blood in her ears as he stooped and peeled off the tight breeches, slowly, balancing on one leg at a time, all the while staring at her with an intensity that made her shiver, even though the room was ablaze.
“What are you doing?” she whispered as he straightened and stood before her, completely naked. Even if she had been capable of taking her eyes from his, even if his relentless stare subsided, now she wouldn’t dare.
“I’m showing you my final tattoo,” he said, voice low and gruff.
“I thought only your lovers got to see it.” She hated the fear she heard in her voice.
“That’s right.” He swallowed. “I made a mistake, see, when I let you withdraw your latest proposal for self-improvement.”
She felt as though her knees might buckle, and the room grew blurry for a moment, but he didn’t move, didn’t offer any assistance. When she still didn’t speak, he said, simply, “Look. Look at me.”
And God help her, she did. She let her eyes sweep down. And, oh, he was so beautiful. There was a grace to the long, lean lines of his unclothed body she wouldn’t have thought possible in a man. But there was a solid strength there, too, energy waiting to be unleashed, stored in honed muscle. It was that energy that had powered the rise of this hotel, that had propelled him to the near-murder of Viscount Galsmith. A will to match her own.
The map and the rose on his chest and abdomen gave way to narrow hips, strong legs corded with muscle and dusted with his ginger-blond hair. And of course there was his member. She’d never seen one before, and it was nothing like she imagined from the clinical lessons at Miss Grisham’s. It almost seemed to be alive, in a state somewhere between the resting and turgid extremes she’d been led to expect were possible. Even as she watched it, it jerked a little under her regard. Did I do that? She didn’t dare ask the question aloud.
He turned then, just slightly, and rotated his right leg so that his inner ankle caught the light. A small image was inked there. A hint of dark green.
“Trevor!” She fell to her knees, galvanized, seized with the need to examine the tattoo up close.
“Lucy.” Her name on his answering lips was a groan. And as she ran her fingers lightly over the ink, she almost couldn’t believe it was real.
“The jade,” she marveled, tracing the outline of the gold band, the familiar green stone. The view of the ring was from above, but off center, so she could see the simple prongs of the setting, which mirrored exactly those that cradled the real stone she wore.
“Oh!” she gasped as she took in the rest of the image, for
it wasn’t just the jade. The ring stood at one end of a tangle of foliage. She narrowed her eyes to examine it. There were vines, swirling vines dotted with pink flowers, just like the solitary vine that had grown up the side of the bridge she’d hidden under that last week in Seven Dials. One end of the vine had begun to circle around the band of the ring, coiling around the gold as if to claim ownership. “These are the flowers from—”
“From the bridge,” he finished.
But there was more. The vines were not random. When she looked closely, they resolved themselves into something. A word. She opened her mouth to read it aloud, but he beat her to it.
“Lucy,” he said.
…
A great, gasping shudder coursed through Trevor, so strong he had to struggle to stay standing as Lucy kneeled at his feet.
So don’t stay standing.
The idea was shocking, and he did not know where it had come from. But it was powerful, impossible to ignore. The thought that he could just sink to the floor next to her and stop fighting, for just a while. A respite.
He let his knees buckle beneath him. She was crying now, and he was sorry for it, but he couldn’t regret it. It was past time she saw everything. Taking her face between his palms, he used his thumbs to wipe away her tears. What now?
The truth.
“I couldn’t let you go,” he whispered, surrendering to the calm surety that speaking the truth brought him. “I thought I could send you away again, but I can’t.”
He didn’t want to talk, though, not anymore. Not now. If he was going to show her everything, it was time for action, not for words. So although she’d been about to answer him, he pressed his mouth down hard on hers, using the hands that were still holding her head to angle it back. As before, after just a moment she sighed, and her jaw relaxed. He nipped at her lower lip, and she surprised him by slipping her tongue into his mouth at the same time she slid her arms around him.
“Lucy,” he groaned. The feeling of her tongue, velvet, licking tentatively—it was almost too much. They were both still kneeling, and he pulled her closer, easing himself back to a sitting position and hitching her bottom up so she was sitting on his lap. She wrapped her legs around his waist. She was fully clothed and he completely naked, the soft muslin of her dress sliding and bunching against his feverish skin. The contrast was both arousing and maddening, but right now he couldn’t see his way through to breaking contact with her long enough to remedy the situation. So he just kept kissing her, as if she had the air necessary for his survival. He was surrendering, and it was glorious. He should have done so much, much sooner. If only he had known what it was like to breathe, to really breathe for the first time in his life, he would have taken hold of her that night she arrived on his doorstep, shivering and wet, and never let go.
The Likelihood of Lucy Page 26
