Price of Desire

by Lavinia Kent

  She would have liked to know more of Wulf’s story, but one did not question the Marquess of Wimberley. For all his youthful appearance one glance from those most pale of eyes and she’d held her words back. He’d done the same to others over dinner. He’d joke and keep the conversation lively, but he had only to turn his stare and conversation turned in the direction he desired. The company didn’t even seem aware he’d done it. She’d never seen the like. The dashing young man held surprising power.

  She brushed her hand again along the soft fabric of the blanket, her fingers twining in the fringe.

  A crash of thunder startled her upright. No storm had been expected, but as roll upon roll of thunder trailed the lightning that sped across the sky the heavens themselves seemed to bellow with grief.

  Nervous butterflies played in her belly as she rose, and, checking to make sure Anna still slept, made her way to the stair.

  It was not her place to worry. What should a storm matter? She had denied Wulf all rights in her life, but she could not let it alone. Some deeply buried part of her demanded that she find him and offer comfort as needed.

  She slipped down the dark stairs, her tread ringing hollow in the still of the sleeping house. If his room was dark she’d go back. Surely all she needed was the reassurance that he slept, that Morpheus had offered elusive comfort, that he did not lie listening to the storm trapped in misery.

  The cool night air brushed about her as she crept down the dark stair. The faintest of lights shone from beneath his door as she raised her hand and knocked.

  Chapter Eleven

  There was no answer.

  She pressed her ear against the door, but no sound came from within, only the echoing of thunder as another bolt of lightening lit the corridor.

  She tapped again.

  Again, there was no response.

  She wrapped her fingers about the cool metal handle. Her heart beat so loudly she was surprised no one came running. She twisted the handle and it gave easily.

  Not giving herself time to think she eased through the door and into the room. She slipped the door closed behind her.

  The heavy scent of brandy and smoke met her nose. Normally she considered the combination pleasant, but here in the gloom of the single candle burning on the mantle it seemed to harken dread. At least the maids had straightened the room. She wondered if in his current state he even remembered his anger of the previous evening and the destruction it had caused.

  She crossed towards the bed, thankful for the thick carpets that drowned her step. If he slept, free from worry, she did not want to waken him. Her only purpose was to assure her worried nerves that he was secure, not lying tormented by the demons of the day.

  The bed was empty. She turned, about to leave and search elsewhere, when she saw him. He stood outlined in the window, his immense frame lit by the fireworks without.

  He had not turned at her entrance and remained back to her. She was not sure if he was aware of her presence.

  “Wulf.” She spoke his name softly. The pounding of the rain drowned her words.

  He did not turn or give any indication he had heard her.

  She stepped towards him, but still he gave no indication that he was aware of her. She moved closer until mere inches separated them.

  “Wulf?” She spoke louder, injecting all her care and worry into her tone.

  Still he gave no indication or acknowledgement.

  She paused, unsure. He stood so still and statue like, only the occasional shudder of breath betraying his life.

  “You should not have come.” The harshness of his voice resounded through the chamber.

  “I had to. I was concerned when you did not come to dinner and your tray returned, untouched.” She would not share Anna’s confession.

  “You’ve made it clear I am not your concern. Why change your inclination now, my lady?” The title was again an insult, more bitter and cutting than she had yet heard.

  She lifted her hand and held it just above his back. She longed to touch him, to sooth the tension she could see in the knotted muscles and stretched tendons.

  “Why don’t you go?”

  “Is that really what you want?”

  “Yes.”

  The one word so flat and cold sucked the breath from her and her hand fell back to her side. She turned and began the endless walk back to the door. She pressed her palm against the wall, she knew she should leave but could not bring herself to slip open the door. She closed her eyes and prayed for guidance.

  Her answer came as his deep sigh, or was it a cry that wrenched through the room as thunder pounded loud? She spun and faced him.

  She could not leave him like this. She stood and waited. Finally he turned to her. His face was still obscured by darkness, but she could see the shine of tears on his cheek as the night sky flashed.

  She walked back towards him, drawn by an inextricable pull. She drew close and lifted her hand to the rivulets of moisture. He drew back as if struck.

  She said the first words that came to her.

  “I know he is but a child, but you never met him. Why do you grieve so deep? He is not even dead.” Her words sounded uncaring even to her own ears. That was not what she had meant to say. She lifted a hand to stroke him, let it hover near his face, not touching.

  “He may be. He could die, now, this instant, and it would be well over a day before I knew. So, how should I grieve? Is there a prescribed amount?”

  “No, of course not, but you seem as if your heart has been wrenched from you.”

  He answered with a bitter humor.

  “I thought you believed I did not have one.”

  “No, that I never doubted.” She finally laid her hand on his cheek. “It was never your heart I doubted.”

  “You really should go. I am not fit company.”

  She drew even closer and lay her head against his chest, listening to the beat of his heart, smelling the sweet smell of brandy and smoke. When she’d entered the room it had brought distaste, now mixed with the manly odor of his sweat and tears it brought comfort and reassurance. She burrowed her face into his shirt and just breathed. She heard him swallow and in a single exhale relax.

  “He is not my cousin.”

  Startled, she drew back.

  “How can you say such a thing? You may never have met the lad, but I have.”

  “You met him? You met Peter?”

  “Yes, I took Anna to the park one morning when we were in London last year. He rescued her ball from a bush. I made inquiries afterwards. The eyes are unmistakable.”

  “Yes, those dratted Falmouth eyes. Always do breed true.”

  “And yet you claim he’s not your cousin.”

  Wulf set his hands about her shoulders and pushed her back gently until she could peer up into his face, his eyes hooded and lips twisted in some private joke.

  “No, he is not my cousin. Would that he was.”

  Though barely above a whisper his voice rang hollow through the room.

  “I still don’t understand. Don’t understand any of this,” she answered back.

  He turned away from her then, not moving away, she could still feel the heat of his body seeking her out, caressing her. But in that one turn of his head he built a wall between them.

  “He is not my cousin. He is my son.”

  Rose stepped back, collapsing on the edge of the bed as she tried to make sense of his words. She raised her eyes up to his in question. His met hers, his expression cutting.

  He looked away. “I seem to make a habit of playing the fool. I despise myself for allowing weakness. It was inexcusable.”

  Scrabbling to catch up with him she replied, “But, you would never, I mean with me you did, but you didn’t know. I can’t believe, with your own aunt.”

  “No, you’re right, I never would, but did you think you were the only lady to lie and cheat to get her own way.”

  “But, how? Why?”

  “I would think the ho
w is obvious.”

  He strode away from her and sloshed a measure of brandy into a glass. The decanter was almost empty.

  She swallowed and rose to come before him. The whole world had coalesced with amazing clarity and Rose knew that this was the heart of it all, the heart of everything that had stood between them.

  “I don’t mean that. How could you take your aunt into your bed? We may disagree, with great frequency, but I have never doubted your honor.”

  He chuckled, but not with mirth. “Did you ever see Clarissa, my uncle’s child bride?”

  “No, that day in the park your – neph – the boy had only a nurse for accompaniment. I avoid society.”

  “She was the prettiest thing I had ever seen.” Rose sensed he was no longer with her, but back in time and space. “I was not the man I am now, a man fit only for killing and leading men into cruelest battle. I was young, so young and full of ideals. I’d just taken a first in history at Oxford and was returning home full of pride. My uncle thought my getting an education foolish. I’d have the estates to run, but I’d been so determined that he did not dissuade me. Nonetheless, I knew he’d take pride in my success. I truly was the son he never had.”

  He swallowed the brandy in one gulp, the great muscle of his neck straining with unbearable tension.

  “I’d always been so blessed. For a boy with no father, my own died before I reached a year, I was given two. Lord William was, is, the kindest father a man could want. He frequently grew lost in his own studies, but he made my mother happy and also me.

  “And Falmouth. It was clear his wife would have no child, she was over forty when I was born. He took me as his own when my father died and only grudgingly shared me with Lord William. He taught me all I’d ever need to know to take his place, and did it with grace and goodwill. I truly think he loved me as a son.”

  He poured another jigger. She thought new tears marked his face, but it could have been a trick of the flickering sky.

  “That was how I came home that spring, the young lord returning to his realm. I knew my uncle had remarried, hurriedly, but thought little of it. He was close to seventy and while still hardy, not a man given to great passions. I figured he’d sought a nurse for his declining years.

  “There was an inn I always stopped in, about a day’s ride from Whytehill. I stopped there that spring also, not realizing what a fool fate took me for.”

  He put the glass down on the table and walked back to the window, the white of his linen stark in darkness.

  “I went down to the tap room for my dinner and beheld a vision reclining in the corner as I had never seen. God, she was a goddess – or a fairy queen.”

  He stopped and Rose knew he was back in that moment, the gangly lad spying a heart’s delight.

  “All fiery red hair and creamy skin. Her eyes were the deepest clearest blue you’d ever seen and her lips, oh god her lips. I was captured in a moment, never stopped to consider. I’d never seen anything so sensual, or so innocent.

  “I couldn’t think at first what she was doing there. Even with her protectors no lady should have been in such a place. Yet, everything about her spoke of class, and breeding, and good manners. I didn’t know what to think, I was too befuddled by her beauty to put much effort to it.”

  He walked back to the bed and sank upon it, resting his head forward as he cushioned his elbows on his knees. She could feel the weight of his thoughts. She moved back to his side, but did not risk a touch, she needed to hear this to the end.

  “She reeled me in like a trout on a line, but I did not see it then. With the smallest gesture of a finger she pulled me over. I don’t even remember the story she told of being stranded and not knowing which way was safe. All I remember are those eyes, that skin, those shimmering breasts.

  “She was so tiny, I thought she’d break if I touched her. She sat me down beside her, this tiny spite who seemed so much younger than my worldly self. She fed me bits from her own plate, filled my glass again and again, and made me believe in her perfection even as she wrapped her talons around me.”

  Rose closed her own eyes against his pain. She knew where this was going and wished with all her heart there was a way to divert its path.

  “Enough, I understand. You don’t need to tell me more.”

  He raised his eyes to her and she could not miss the spark that hung between hate and despair within them.

  “But, my Lady Burberry, my sweetest Rose, surely you want the full tale of how you were not the first to corrupt all my ideals, to tempt me when I should have known better, to turn me from the man I should have been to this.” He gestured down at himself. “An oversized beast, bringing only death. I’ve severed men in half with my saber, given the orders that killed dozens upon dozens. I am death.”

  His face burned pale and intent in the darkness, the emerald glow of his eyes unmistakable even then. She could see the pain his words caused and feel his deep-rooted belief in them.

  “So don’t tell me to stop. Don’t tell me your ladylike ears don’t want to know how the life was sucked from me, how I was driven from all I knew and loved by one moment’s indiscretion. And I was still foolish enough to hope again with you.” He looked at the floor. “I should have known better. That is what eats at me the most. With Clarissa I was a boy. I can understand what happened. But, with you, with you I should have questioned. I should not have allowed temptation to lead me astray twice.”

  He patted, or rather pounded, the bed behind him.

  “Now come. You wanted to hear my sad story, so now sit and listen. Hear how I’ve come full circle, yet lost my soul in the process. It is surely a tale of most ladylike delight.”

  What had life done to him? What had she in her foolish belief that passion could be had without a cost done? She stepped around his knees and perched beside him. She owed him this, at least this.

  “Where was I, oh yes, overcome by sweet Clarissa’s innocence and beauty. I don’t think ever a lamb went as willingly to the slaughter as I went on that night. The greatest joke – she was my first. I’d never before given in to manly impulse, between my uncle and my stepfather I’d learned restraint, learned that all good things must be worked for. And then, in one flash, I threw it all away.

  “I followed her up those stairs to her chamber, never questioning what this perfect confection of society could want with me. I was such the fool that even as I sank into her body, and felt her writhe with passion beneath me I never questioned fortune. I was so overcome with the wonder of it all that I never even thought that she might be anything but as taken by the enchantment between us as was I.

  “I fell asleep dreaming of her delight when I told her who I was and what I could offer. I imagined her smiles when I told her she would be a countess – never of course imagining that she already was.”

  He lay back on the bed then and stared up, his eyes locked on the swirling darkness of the canopy above. Rose wanted to touch him, to offer comfort, but knew she had no right. The very stiffness of his body told her he was miles away in a place she could never reach.

  “I didn’t awake ‘til well after noon. I don’t know whether it was merely the wine, or she’d some other drug. I woke all grins and smiles, stretching at the miracle that had happened.

  “She was gone. There was no trace she’d ever been there. My fanciful young mind actually wondered if she truly had been a fairy queen, vanished with the very dawn.”

  He stopped then, and she could feel all the hopes and passions of the young man he’d been, could taste the sweetest dreams of youth and all they’d meant to him.

  When he began again she feared that ice dripped with his every word.

  “I set off for home, for Whytehill, much later than I’d planned. I’d made inquires after her, but though many remembered seeing her none knew who she was. All the innkeeper could tell me was that she’d paid with a purse of gold guineas.

  “By the time I reached my uncle’s home my mind was full of plans to
seek her through every ballroom in London. She would be the object of my quest and I the epic hero.

  “My uncle greeted me with great joy and hearty hugs. I was not mistaken in the pride he took in my accomplishments. He led me into the dining room. He was eager to show off his own joy.

  “She sat there at his table, and for a moment my heart overflowed with bliss. She’d found me. I didn’t even need to search.”

  He closed his eyes and his throat clenched tight as he swallowed. Rose could resist no longer, she lay her hand upon his chest in a gesture of condolence. He gave no sign he even knew it was there.

  “Then he introduced her, Lady Clarissa Huntington, Countess of Falmouth, his love, his sweet, the miracle of his life. For a moment I felt stunned, then jealousy descended. How dare he steal my dream? The thought of his elderly hands on that white and perfect body. It turned my blood and then drained it. I thought I’d faint dead away.

  “Then I turned and saw her again and knew the worst had not begun. She stared at me like a cat who had not only played with the mouse, but devoured it whole. She could not have been more than eighteen, but she shot me a look full of power and victory that Wellington would have been proud of.”

  “I am not sure I understand. Why would she . . .”

  He didn’t give her time to complete the sentence.

  “Don’t you see? I would have thought you’d know the game well, although I must admit I felt the same confusion at the time. I was sure she’d been forced, compelled, that I was her one true love, but that she’d been forced into my uncle’s greedy hands. One look from her lake deep eyes and I betrayed all belief in the man who raised me. I’d already betrayed him by body, and now I betrayed him by mind. I could not doubt my fairy queen.

  “She let me know the truth soon enough. I tried to approach her, to let her know I’d protect her, I’d take her away and manage somehow. I was, after all, my uncle’s heir. He could not disinherit me. I actually told her he could not last much longer.”