“Then you may go to bed. I do not require your services tonight.”
Emma’s mouth opened to object—to remind her that the satin ball gown buttoned down the back, that she would not be able to unfasten the buttons by herself. She swallowed the objection. “Very well, ma’am.”
Elizabeth listened carefully, hearing the soft knock on Edward’s door, muffled voices, then absolute quiet. At any moment she expected her husband to barge through the connecting door; he did not. Either he did not care whether she was unconscious tomorrow morning—or Emma had not snitched.
A black wave of exhaustion washed over her. Shadows flickered on the walls, a skeletal hand here, a scythe there, death and deception everywhere. She turned the flame down on the gas lamp before taking off the cloak, the satin gown, the loosened corset. The top of the chemise was damp from her sweat. Unerringly, her fingers skimmed over the soft cotton, felt the silky flesh swelling above it, the hard nub of her nipples underneath it.
She had never dreamed that a woman’s breasts were so sensitive. Or that a man could give her a climax by suckling them.
Ramiel had said that marriage was more than words spoken in a church. Now she believed him.
What was she going to do?
She would not endure Edward’s threats on the lives of her two sons. Nor would she sit back and allow him to commit her to an insane asylum.
A woman’s choices . . .
But she had only one choice. And that was to leave Edward’s house, now, tonight, while she was still free to do so.
She had money. She had jewelry.
She was not a coward.
Elizabeth yanked out a velvet skirt and bodice from her wardrobe, struggled into them. Sitting in the armchair in front of the fireplace, she waited for the light beneath the connecting bedroom door to go out.
The banked coals emitted seductive warmth. It reminded her how hot Ramiel’s mouth had been. How soft the tips of his ears.
Memory rolled over her, drowning her in sensation, the sharp contraction of her womb when he had stroked the roof of her mouth, the pleasure-pain bite of his teeth sinking into her nipple, and the hot, wet suckling of his lips, his tongue, the surge of moisture between her legs when she had blindly arched into his mouth, holding him closer and closer until her body clenched in a flash of white light. A quiet peace had followed, then Ramiel buried his head into the crook of her neck, so like Richard . . .
I want you.
Elizabeth slipped into sleep. It was not her son who pursued her.
“Elizabeth . . .”
A feminine whisper invaded her dreams.
She didn’t want to hear it, to respond to it. She wanted Ramiel, the rasp of his voice, the stroke of his tongue, the vibration of his groan filling her mouth. Edward stared at the two of them from across the ballroom as they danced with her breasts spilling out of her satin ball gown; beside him stood the parliamentary member who had claimed him at the Whitfield ball and the golden-haired young man from the charity ball.
My lover is a fellow Uranian.
You said you did not have a mistress.
I don’t.
Ignoring the staring, condemning eyes, she threaded her fingers through Ramiel’s hair, soft as spun gold.
When you are ready for the truth, you will see for yourself who your husband’s lover is.
“Elizabeth . . .”
Sunlight stabbed her eyes. She rolled her head on the back of the armchair to escape it. A whoosh sounded between one heartbeat and the next, as if someone sighed or blew out a candle, and then Elizabeth was aware of nothing but Ramiel and the intimate bonding of a man suckling at her breasts.
“Mrs. Petre! Mrs. Petre! You must wake up! Please, Mrs. Petre!”
The bed shook underneath Elizabeth. No, not the bed. Her shoulders. Someone was shaking her back and forth, back and forth. She flapped a limp wrist in protest.
“Mrs. Petre! Please! Wake up!”
Elizabeth groggily opened an eye . . . and stared at Emma. Her hair straggled about her face.
Elizabeth had never seen Emma untidy.
“Tired,” she whispered. “Come back. Drink. Chocolate. Later.”
The idea of chocolate made Elizabeth’s stomach roil.
“Don’t let her go back to sleep. I’ll get her a glass of water. Is there a bucket in the WC?”
The darkness pulled Elizabeth down and down. It smelled faintly rancid, like . . . It dawned on her that Emma had two voices, one female and one male.
“Mrs. Petre. Drink. Mrs. Petre, open your eyes and drink.”
Emma’s male voice was very commanding. Something hard and cold pressed against her lips, clicked on her teeth.
“Drink, Mrs. Petre.”
Water. Icy cold.
Elizabeth suddenly realized what the darkness that weighted her eyelids smelled like. Gas. The water tasted just like the gas smelled.
Everything Elizabeth had eaten and drank the evening before rushed up into her throat. She doubled over and heaved.
“That’s good, Mrs. Petre. Get it all up. Emma, hold that bucket for her.”
The masculine voice sounded vaguely familiar. Just when Elizabeth was on the verge of identifying it, every muscle in her body seemed to convulse. She heaved until she felt as if she were regurgitating her stomach instead of its contents. Every time she thought she was finished, she would get another whiff of gas or taste it again on her tongue and the sickness would start all over again.
She knew where the gas odor came from. It came from the bedside lamp—which had been burning when she fell asleep.
She recalled a woman’s voice and the whoosh of a sigh . . . and knew that someone had blown out the flame in the lamp while she slept.
More exhausted than she would have thought it humanly possible to be, Elizabeth sat up in the armchair. The banked coals had long died. She was cold and her neck was cramped from sleeping sitting up. Her buttocks were numb, which was no doubt better than the pain she would otherwise have been experiencing, perched on a bustle for heaven knew how long. She wiped her mouth with unsteady fingers.
Emma knelt on the floor beside the chair. Her round brown eyes were guarded. Johnny the footman knelt beside the maid.
Elizabeth closed her eyes. “You blew out the lamp,” she thickly accused Emma, remembering everything, Edward stealing her notes, then ordering the milk dosed with laudanum that the maid had brought her.
“No, Mrs. Petre. I would not do that.”
Elizabeth forced her eyelids open. There was truth in Emma’s eyes. Truth . . . and knowledge.
She was too sick to be frightened, but she knew that neither condition would last long. “You know who did it.”
Emma did not answer. Elizabeth had not expected her to. Edward paid Emma’s salary, for all that she was Elizabeth’s maid. Just as he paid the salary of Mrs. Sheffield, the cook, and Mrs. Bannock, the housekeeper. Both women had been hired at the same time as had the abigail.
She shivered and hugged her body. Icy sunlight and February air poured in the open window. No wonder she was so cold. “Where is Mr. Petre?”
“Mr. and Mrs. Walters and he had breakfast together. They all left afterward. Mrs. Walters wanted to wake you, but Mr. Petre said to let you sleep.”
Her husband. Her father. It really did not matter which one plotted to kill her or what servant had carried out the order.
“Thank you, Emma. You may leave me now.”
“Shall I ring up the doctor?”
So that Edward could accuse her of being suicidal?
Perhaps he had not intended to kill her with gas. A woman who was both a nymphomaniac and suicidal would be an ideal candidate for bedlam.
“No, no doctor.”
“Shall I run you a bath?”
Elizabeth envisioned the countess’s Turkish bath. She had said Ramiel had one too.
“No. Nothing.”
She wanting nothing from this house. Not clothes, not jewels.
Emma ros
e with a creak of her knees. Johnny stayed where he was. “You cannot stay here, Mrs. Petre.”
A loyal servant.
“Yes, I know.”
She closed her eyes and clamped her mouth tightly shut, holding back a dry heave.
“Do you have somewhere to go?”
A hotel. Countess Devington.
Come home with me, taalibba.
“Yes.”
“Do you want Emma to pack a bag for you?”
He was on a first-name basis with her abigail. Perhaps Johnny was not as loyal as she had thought.
“No.” She did not want to take anything with her that had been purchased with Edward Petre’s money. “I just want to get up . . .”
Her legs were so shaky, she had to grab the footman to keep from collapsing back onto her bustle. Righting herself, she slowly walked down the hall to the water closet. Inside, she brushed her teeth and rinsed out her mouth, then leaned heavily against the sink, forehead pressed to the cold mirror above it.
Someone had tried to kill her . . . and had very nearly succeeded.
What would she tell her sons? That either their father or their grandfather was a potential murderer?
When she opened the door, Johnny waited outside with her cloak. Swaying slightly, she stood as still as she could while he tossed it around her. He was far too familiar for a servant; he buttoned the wool snugly about her neck.
“Who did it, Johnny?”
He concentrated on adjusting a black bonnet on top of her head. His skin was dark but without the golden tint Ramiel’s skin possessed. He tied the ribbons of the bonnet beneath her chin as if she were a child.
“I don’t know, ma’am.” He stepped back and produced her reticule from inside his black coat. “All I know is that it wasn’t Emma.”
“How do you know that?”
“She said you told her you wouldn’t mind her marrying. A servant don’t kill a good mistress.”
Elizabeth remembered relaying that piece of information to Emma. It had been later in the day after her first lesson, Tuesday. She also remembered the expression on Emma’s face when she offered to redress Elizabeth’s hair that should have hung down her back in a braid but that Elizabeth had carelessly left in a bun after visiting Ramiel, and then again when she retrieved her cloak that was still damp from early morning London fog.
Emma may not have tried to kill her, but she would lay odds she had been the one to alert Edward about her early morning jaunts.
“How is it that the two of you arrived in such a timely manner?”
Elizabeth watched with detached interest the dull red that spread over the footman’s dark face. “Emma’s room be above yours, ma’am. We were . . . together . . . and I smelled the gas.”
Together. No wonder Emma’s hair had been mussed.
The numbness of near-death burst in a pop of pain. Emma had found love . . . and betrayed Elizabeth because she sought it.
She would almost prefer Emma to be Edward’s lover.
“I have no doubt that Mr. Petre will provide Emma with a glowing recommendation.” She peered inside her reticule, spotted her change purse. “You will forgive me, but I am feeling less generous. Good-bye, Johnny, and I wish you the best of luck.”
“Where are you going, ma’am?”
Elizabeth stiffened her spine. “I appreciate your concern, but it really is none of your business.”
“Shall I have a carriage brought around for you?”
Either Tommie the groom or Will the coachman had told Edward of her visit with the countess. She did not want anyone in this household knowing of her whereabouts. “That is not necessary.”
The front door was left unsecured, as if the servants were deliberately occupied elsewhere so that she might escape unnoticed. The sun was bright, only faintly obscured by coal smoke. After walking six blocks, she spied a hack. It sped on by. Two more hacks passed her by before one stopped.
“Where to, ma’am?”
Straightening her shoulders, she looked up at the cabbie’s prematurely aged face and told him in measured, precise words exactly where she wanted to go. And prayed that she would not regret it.
Elizabeth fumbled inside her reticule; her fingers closed around two shillings. She rode the distance clutching the coins. The sickening smell of impending death followed her.
Her life would never be the same again, a voice inside her head warned. She would never be the same.
But she did not need her conscience to tell her that.
The hack jerked to a halt. Pushing open the door, she stepped out onto the cobbled street, stiffened her legs to prevent them from giving out underneath her.
She stared about her, the London landscape almost unrecognizable in the full light of day. The house was of Georgian design, the lines pure, speaking of an age less cluttered by minutiae than was the age of Queen Victoria.
Her heart lurched; the hack was leaving. Too late. She had made her choice; there would be no going back. She raised her hand and grabbed the lion-headed brass knocker. That, at least, looked the same.
The Arab butler who was no Arab but a European man dressed in a turban and flowing white robe opened the door. At sight of Elizabeth his head reared back.
“El Ibn is not here.”
Elizabeth felt like she had come full circle.
“Then I will wait for him.”
Chapter 19
Ramiel awoke abruptly, every sense in his body alert. Muhamed stood in the doorway of his bedroom. His face was shrouded in shadow.
“What is it?” Ramiel asked tautly.
“The woman is here.”
Air rushed into Ramiel’s lungs.
Elizabeth . . . here. She would not come to him in broad daylight unless she meant to stay. Especially after she had asked Edward Petre for a divorce.
He closed his eyes, savoring the feel of her presence in his home, anticipation rising, heat building—Ramiel threw the bedcovers back.
“El Ibn—”
The glint in Ramiel’s eyes halted the Cornishman’s warning. He cinched a turquoise silk robe about his waist. “Is she in the library?”
“Yes.”
Ramiel descended the stairs two at a time, barefoot, naked underneath the robe. He would shock her, perhaps, but it was a sight she would soon get used to.
Silently, he opened the library door, closed it behind him. He leaned back against the mahogany wood and watched her.
Elizabeth stood looking out of the bay windows. He had a curious feeling of déjà vu. She had stood thus when first she had braved his home, dressed head to foot in shapeless black wool, surrounded on either side by twin columns of yellow silk drapes and ribbons of gray fog. Now her hair glinted red fire in the sunlight and a gray velvet dress snugly hugged a proud back and curvaceous waist before bulging out in a curiously flattened bustle.
Electric awareness shimmered in the air like dust motes in sunshine. Between one breath and the next she turned, facing him.
He stared at the rhythmical rise and fall of her full breasts underneath the gray velvet bodice. Blood pumped into his groin at the memory of the taste and texture of her. Last night he had felt her heartbeat and had listened to the quickening rush of air inside her lungs as he had suckled her and brought her a woman’s pleasure.
He closed his eyes, suddenly overcome with a vulnerability that he had not felt since he was thirteen years old. Would she find him meritorious? Or would she be repulsed by the length of him, the thickness of him, the blunt reality of a man?
“My husband tried to kill me.”
Ramiel’s eyelids shot open. Behind her a sparrow fluttered against a windowpane, seeking impossible entry. “What did you say?”
“Or my father.” Elizabeth’s voice was tight, like stretched wire. “He could have arranged it. Two days ago I told my mother that I wanted a divorce and asked if she would petition my father to intercede on my behalf. Yesterday, when I got back from visiting with the countess—and you—he said he w
ould rather see me dead than have me ruin his and Edward’s political careers.”
Ramiel pushed away from the door, stalked her. Reaching out, he grabbed her shoulders, swung her around so that both of them were profiled by the warm rays of the sun.
Elizabeth’s face was ghastly white; her shoulders underneath his fingers trembled. She smelled of gas—her clothes, her hair, her skin.
Many Londoners perished of gas asphyxiation. There would have been no questions had she died, just condolences for the bereaved husband and father.
And with a single word she could have prevented it.
As he could have.
The fear and anger and guilt increased rather than replaced the heat that hammered through his body. “Why didn’t you tell me this last night?”
She looked up at him, pupils dilated, eyes black instead of hazel. “Edward was waiting in my bedroom. He had the notes that I took when I read The Perfumed Garden. He said he knew about our lessons. I thought he was going to commit me to an insane asylum. For nymphomania, he said. He had my maid bring me a cup of hot milk. It was laced with laudanum, and I poured it out of the window. I knew then that I would have to leave him. I changed clothes and sat down in an armchair to wait until he turned his light out—we have a connecting bedroom door, you see—but then I fell asleep and I heard someone whisper my name. I was dreaming about you and I did not want to wake up, so I turned my head away and then I heard a sound as if someone blew out a candle. The next thing I knew, someone was shaking me and everything smelled and tasted of gas. I did not think my father meant it when he said he would rather see me dead.”
Elizabeth’s lips trembled; tears shone in her eyes, hazel again instead of shocked black.
Ramiel had known that the potential for danger existed when Elizabeth told him some hours earlier that she had asked for a divorce. He had not expected any action this quickly. Especially since he had made it clear in no uncertain terms that he was aware of Petre’s secret life and would not hesitate to reveal it to the public.
“I smell of—gas. The countess said that you have a Turkish bath. May I bathe in it, please? Then I would like to kiss you and take you in my hands and pump and squeeze your manhood until you are erect. I want to kiss and suckle you there like you did my breasts.”
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