The Dark Affair

by Máire Claremont

  She sucked in a sharp breath, realizing she’d been holding it and had been lost entirely in her own thoughts. She didn’t like it. Not one bit. She’d put an iron cast about her heart and soul some years ago, and she’d let no one in, let alone a half-mad lord who drowned himself in opium and gin. But given his current clarity, he was going to become agitated with need very soon. So she had to speak quickly.

  “Where’s the fierce lass from yesterday? You may come nearer, you know.” His lids narrowed. “I shan’t bite you, if that’s what you fear.”

  She shook her head and let her fingers slide over the leather at his forehead. As she worked the binding free, her fingertips trailed through his thick hair. It slid over her hands like liquid silver, and she found herself disconcerted by it. Hungry for more of it. She was possessed by the strangest urge to plunge her hands into the strands and wind her fingers about it. Perhaps his madness was infecting. Her cheeks heated, and the oddest sensations bloomed in her chest, warming her breasts. But he was her patient, which made her actions exceptionally dangerous.

  And yet his father had made it quite clear that she was to be his wife. It made her position difficult and fascinating.

  The buckle clunked as she dropped it against the side of the iron bed. Its binding dangled limply. Her hand remained aloft, suddenly bereft. For the first time she could recall, she had no idea what to do with her hands. Where to place them. They were lost between the desire to press into his hard chest and feel his heart beating and to go where they belonged, folded calmly before her.

  Slowly, he turned his head left to right. He then proceeded to arch his neck in a most peculiar way. A loud cracking pop resounded through the room, and he let out a sinful groan, which one might have assumed arose from some entirely darker pleasure. “Much better.”

  It would be appropriate for her to remain standing, hands rigid at her sides. Yet if she did so, she’d have to stare down at him in the most condescending of ways, and what she had to discuss warranted something entirely different. Without ceremony, she sat beside him, her bottom barely on the edge of the bed, given his size and the annoying fullness of even her economically cut gown.

  As her skirts fanned out and spread over his thighs, his eyes widened. “My dear Ms. Nightingale. Hast thou come to soothe my fevered brow and assuage my illness?” he mocked.

  She arched a brow. “No. Quite the opposite, I should think.”

  He shook his head. “Pity. I should have liked you to stroke me.”

  Her spine, which had already been rigid within the confines of her corset, straightened to the point of breaking. “None of that, my lord.”

  “None of what?” he asked innocently, his gaze peering up at her with a feigned and infuriatingly lamblike manner.

  “Your innuendos,” she said flatly. She’d spent enough time with men just in from the battlefield to know that permitted innuendos would eventually lead to more vulgar or disrespectful behavior. She cleared her throat, girding herself to broach a subject she never would have dreamed of twelve hours prior. A future she’d never imagined for herself in any capacity. “Not if we are to . . . assist each other.”

  A mild flash of amusement lit his eyes. “If you think that is an innuendo, my dear, you have been treating virgins. And I believe I made it clear upon our last meeting that I have no desire for your assistance.”

  She was tempted to set him down for suggesting she hadn’t heard worse given her experience with rough men, but the point of the conversation was rather imperative. He was a master of catching one up with trifles. And being caught up in one would not serve either of them. He did need her assistance. And now she needed his.

  Twisting her fingers together and savoring the bite of her nails into her soft flesh, she looked down at him with practiced serenity. Had hell existed, her next words were about to condemn her to that fiery pit . . . even if truth lurked in them. “New circumstances have arisen . . . circumstances that I believe will induce you to comply with my offer of assistance.”

  He rolled his eyes, then turned his head to the side as though she were some trying harpy come to harangue him to death. “Indeed?”

  She swallowed back any hints of reticence or soul-trying guilt and rushed, “I believe your father is unwell.”

  His head snapped back toward her, and his body ratcheted against his straps. “Unwell?” Shock edged his tone before he gritted, “Tell me.”

  The command was sharp and compelling, and she tasted more bitter guilt upon her tongue. After all, she was using him now for her own ends, even if she might help him in the process. And good God. The way his body moved. There was that tiger again, sinews wild and feral anger humming as its bound body madly attempted to tear free of his cage. Every muscle in his chest strained against his thin linen shirt, and his face drew into a hard mask.

  “Tell me,” he hissed.

  She sat quietly. Hating herself for using him so cruelly. But she couldn’t allow herself to be moved. Too much was at stake. Her brother’s safety, the viscount’s freedom, and the fulfillment of a purpose she’d struggled to meet since the famine.

  His harshness softened into a sort of desperation before he pleaded gently, “I beg of you. What has happened to him?”

  “He is ill,” she whispered, her throat tightening traitorously . . . because her words were very likely as true as they were manipulative. “It is just the few things I have noticed. A weakness, a tiredness in an elderly man such as your father has left his heart weakened. You can see it in the pallor of his skin.”

  Powers’s gaze traveled carefully over her face. “He never said such a thing to me.”

  “He would not, would he?” It was so simple to play upon the strange relationship of father and son. Yet there was nothing easy about it. “Especially given recent events.”

  Powers turned his face away from her, his gaze fixing on the ceiling.

  Another sharp, nasty little dagger of guilt chinked at the armor around her heart. “And he is most worried about you, which adds to his weakness.”

  “He needn’t be,” he said tersely. “I shall be well when these bastards leave off. After all, there’s not a damn thing wrong with me.”

  “You’ve a fine way of showing it, have you not?” She gestured to their surroundings. “I understand you were most . . . out of countenance when you were brought to this place.”

  “It was a mistake. Putting me here. I could have sorted myself out had they left me to my own devices.”

  She bit back the reply that according to the accounts she’d read, he’d been in no state to stand, piss in a pot, or make anything but wild conversation, and apparently, it had been the second time in only a few days that he’d been in such a way, which was why his father had brought him to this place. “But you are here. And the doctors are on the verge of declaring you incompetent.”

  His eyes flared as indignation heated his features. “They sodding well can’t.”

  “But they can,” she replied evenly. He had to understand just what a predicament he was in, and she had to lead him to believe marriage to her was the best way out of it. “If you continue in your present and often public displays in which you do seem quite mad to onlookers, you will be permanently locked away for your own safety, and then there is no heir for the earldom and no escape for you.”

  The fire sifted out of his gaze, and a muscle clenched in his claw. “And that is why my father is worried?”

  The note of regret that stained that simple question nearly reversed her tactic, but she’d already come too far to cease marching down this damning path. She’d not turn back for fear now. “It is not the only reason for his concern, but of course, as a peer, he is concerned for the lineage of such a prestigious family.”

  “And you?” he asked hollowly, his hands flexing and unflexing despite the bindings over his body. “Do you care?”

  “
About your lineage?” She pursed her lips as if considering. “No. I don’t give much of a tinker’s damn for your silly English traditions. But about your ability to live as a free man? Yes, I care very much.”

  He stared blankly before arching that one damning brow. “Do you think me a freshly born babe?”

  Her lips twitched at the very idea. Powers had no doubt been born domineering and dripping sarcasm the moment he had popped into the world. “Hardly, my lord.”

  “You want something,” he stated flatly.

  She nodded. Unsurprisingly, it appeared the best course had to be straight for him to follow her lead. He would sense it if she laced too much sweetness into her proposition. “I do at that.”

  “Out with it.”

  She cleared her throat, the words oddly discomforting. “’Tisn’t just for myself, you understand, what I’m about to suggest.”

  “How noble.”

  She bit the inside of her cheek, knowing this was much like ripping off a bandage that had stuck to a wound. She simply needed to do it quickly and with authority. “I should like you to marry me.”

  The silence that followed was punctuated by a mad cackle somewhere down the hall.

  Powers contemplated her, his face an odd mask of dispassion. “And they say I’m mad.”

  She couldn’t help but say, “They do indeed.”

  He blew out an agitated breath. “My good woman—”

  “Hear me out,” she said loudly, determined to cut him off and finish off her bargain.

  He attempted to inch away from her, a rather hilarious spectacle, given the narrowness of the bed and the tightness of his leather straps. “I’d rather bash my brains out against the wall.”

  Well, this was going splendidly. “Do you revile me, then? Find me repugnant? Repulsive?”

  That seemed to stop him, and he eyed her with a careful curiosity. “That is a great many R’s. Is your vanity wounded by my reluctance to tie myself to such as yourself?”

  Such as herself? It was extremely tempting to pursue that line of thought, but she was not leaping to that bait. “That you’d rather be judged mad than marry me? Yes, I suppose my vanity is a wee bit trampled.”

  He scowled. “You are an exceptionally beautiful woman, for which I am sure you are already cognizant.”

  Her cheeks burned. She was aware of how men watched her, their trousers bulging, eyes lighting with lust and superiority simply because they were men. Even as they admired her, they doubtlessly imagined her in a place of far less power than the place she’d managed to carve out for herself in this hard, male-ruled world. She’d done her best to avoid their unwelcome advances and kept to herself. It was imperative that she carefully cultivated a trustworthy, responsible reputation for healing in a world that generally expected women who ventured outside the home to be nothing better than whores.

  “Ah.” A slow sort of dawning amusement sprang in his eyes. “You are aware, then. So . . . why do you wish to marry a madman?” he intoned with exaggerated drama. “Tired of working your pretty little fingers to the bone?”

  The sneering note to his voice grated against every principle she’d managed to form over the last years, principles she was gleefully tossing to the wind for the sake of her future. No, not her future. The future of her brother and so many others that she would finally be able to truly help.

  She supposed she could have turned down the earl’s offer and thrown herself on the generosity of other lords she had helped, hoping to avoid a marital entanglement. But she needed aid immediately. The earl had promised it, and there was no guarantee that any other lord, no matter the debt they owed her, would be willing to assist her brother in such a state.

  It took a great deal of fortitude not to slap the ragingly arrogant superiority off his face. God, how she hated his immediate assumption that she would marry him for so little. Still, she refrained.

  For heaven’s sake, the man was strapped to a bed because he couldn’t care for his own safety, and he was attempting to make her feel inferior! So, she jabbed a little knife into that illusion of his that he was so much higher than she, clipping, “In truth, it was your father who has asked me to wed you. With much reluctance, I agreed.”

  Yes, the stabbing little phrase seemed to leech the disdain out of him for a brief moment before he said flatly, “I don’t believe you.”

  “He’s asked me to lend credence to your sanity so that you will be able to inherit and be forever free of the doctors.”

  “My jailer, not my wife.”

  “Aren’t they one and the same in any case?” she teased, hoping, despite the growing animosity, for a moment of lightness between them.

  He grew quiet and seemed to disappear to some far-off place. His face, so hard and strained, relaxed for a moment. A strange glossiness turned his icy gaze mirrorlike before he blinked and replied, “No. They are most definitely not.”

  The way he now looked at her, as if she’d just spewed filth on him, made her feel as if she’d suddenly revealed some secret part of herself that no person or ray of light had ever seen. Suddenly, she did feel ugly. She felt exceptionally low, lower than he could feel at this moment, despite his temporary committal to a madhouse. For at least he still had some hope in the state of marriage and faith in love.

  How remarkable. Because she most certainly did not. She hadn’t for almost her entire life.

  “I thought you to be at least a professional person, Miss Maggie, but I see that you are a preservationist in the end.” He attempted to shrug and then let out a growl of frustration when he could not. “Not that I blame you, my dear. Women seem to have little other course but to sell their slit in one way or the other.”

  Fury, an emotion she very seldom allowed herself to experience, crackled through her. How she longed to scream that she had made her entire life independent without the aid of men. That she had aided others rather than been a burden, but she choked the protests back. If he wished to think her a gaudy bird determined to catch a wealthy keeper, she would allow him to assume so . . . if it furthered her present cause. “Then can we not assist each other?”

  “You’re giving me damn little choice.”

  She fingered the buckle at his chest, letting her nail graze the cold metal binding the leather strap. So close to his linen-clad flesh. Flesh so hard it resembled stone. It was a most strange thing for her to do, and yet she did it anyway and kept doing it, letting her finger trace the metal clasp. “’Twasn’t I found wandering the streets of St. Giles out of my wits . . . five times in one week.”

  His lips pressed into a firm line. “The streets of St. Giles serve a very fine purpose.”

  Her mouth dropped open, attempting to understand how an educated man could ever say such a thing . . . But then again, the whorehouses of the East End were full of rich, titled, and educated men. “The transmission of the pox?”

  “Christ. Have you no imagination?” he bit out, impatience at her lack of understanding evident in his piercing stare. “Yes. The pox is rampant. But specifically, I refer to the ability to purchase the silence one needs from the never-ending voices screaming within one’s head.”

  Voices.

  She knew that those who experienced opium on a regular basis were wont to see and hear things . . . But he was taking the opium to escape the voices. She directed her gaze toward the gritty stone floor. It would take some time to break him of his addiction—if it could ever be done fully. While she’d been incredibly successful, she knew how many men returned to the call of opium, even after months or years of not touching it. Would she one day have to lock him in the attic, away from society and access to opiates? Giving him kind keepers and denying him the world he had so long known and ruled with his imperious demeanor because he could no longer function without his drug?

  Would she have the courage to do it? To watch him disintegrate if he chose pain
over healing?

  No. She wouldn’t. Because she wasn’t going to let that happen. She’d save him from himself and by doing so save so many others.

  His forehead creased with suspicion. “You wish to marry me.”

  She nodded. She wouldn’t plead with him. She had an insidious feeling this man wouldn’t respond to pleas or begging. “It is conducive to both our futures.”

  His brow smoothed out, and then the most ridiculously self-satisfied grin tilted his lips. “Then kiss me.”

  She shifted on the bed, yanking her hand away from the leather strap on his chest as if he were the devil and her hand the holy water. “I beg your bleedin’ pardon.”

  “Ah, the saint has a mouth on her. Then I ask her to use it in some other way than screeching—

  “I do not—”

  “Some way that might induce me to prove amenable to your nefarious plans.”

  “Hardly nefarious—”

  “Maggie.”

  She snapped her mouth shut, outraged at her own surprise. He had a reputation for woman-mongering. What a little fool she’d been for thinking she could keep this chaste for as long as possible or to think she could outwit him . . . But she would certainly keep trying until he was recovered, even though she knew that she would have to be intimate with him.

  “Are you a virgin, Maggie?”

  She blew out a harsh breath. She’d heard worse, but if he’d been a boyo on the streets, she’d have slapped him. “Don’t be filthy.”

  “It is merely a factual question, and the answer will assist me in knowing what to do with you. You are, aren’t you? I warrant you’ve never even had a kiss.”

  It galled her that she was so easy to read. “How do you know?”

  “You look like Mary, Mother of God. What with your luminescent skin and renaissance rosy locks. Surely, sin has never mortified your flesh. Though, I will be the first to say, soul damning as I’m sure it is, that there is nothing sinful about the use of our bodies.”

  He was wrong on one count. Kisses? She’d had a few. All of them forced on her in alleyways and stairwells by men too drunk or ignorant to realize she’d gut them with her penknife before she let them abuse her.