“Oh, that’s smashing,” he said. He slid his hands into his pockets, looking down his nose at her, his smile taunting. “Trying to help—out of the goodness of your heart, I suppose? Yes, that must be it; what other reason could there be to risk yourself so carelessly? I thought to have information from him.” It was an unkind imitation of her voice; he made her sound like a whining child. “And what cause for your great bravery, Gwen? Love of the Ramsey lands? But what care have you for some no-name estate? Not even entailed, you noted. Was it a concern for Lord Weston’s name, then? A chemist’s daughter would appreciate the importance, no doubt.”
The boor. “I have told you my opinion of sarcasm,” she said hoarsely.
“No matter,” he said. “It’s a trick question, anyway. I’ve already told you the answer: you have no notion of your own worth. And so you trade on other people’s idea of what matters.”
She stepped back from him. “You are a boor!”
He laughed. “Your curses are pathetic. Call me a bastard. That would serve.”
“Very well, you bastard, if we’re talking of worth, what about your own opinion of yourself? Why are you here? A man pulled a gun on you, very well might have killed you, and for what? For your brother’s sake?” Her own laughter scraped her throat. “Lord Weston does nothing but complain and disown you. If he sold the lands, let him deal with your sisters. Or let them buy back the land, if they love it so! Why must you solve the problem for them?”
His face went blank. An indecipherable emotion passed over his face. Slowly he sat onto the bed.
“Oh, Alex.” All the fight went out of her. Everything—fear and adrenaline and anger—seemed to coalesce and transform into a great rush of agonized tenderness that made her knees fold, leaving her sitting, trembling, on the bed beside him. Wanting to touch him. Not daring. “I do not mean it, of course. You help Gerry and the twins because you love them. Exactly as you should.”
The moment the words were out, she felt a curious chill—as though some strand of ice in her gut had been delicately plucked, sounding a premonitory note whose vibrations spread through her whole flesh.
She could not love Alex. She had known him too long. She knew all his faults. She even knew what he would say next—some dismissive, cynical remark that would shame her for introducing the idea that love might provide any motivation for him whatsoever.
Instead, he stared fixedly at the blank white wall and said, “I never wanted any of this.”
She hesitated. “Yes, I know.”
“I should have turned back for Lima at Gibraltar.”
“Probably.”
“England has never given me any reason to stay.”
At that, she snorted. “You love your family. You do. Just because your brother may have made a mistake . . .”
He fixed her with a long, strange look, during which time his chest rose and fell on a deep breath—once, twice, like a man gearing himself up for a long, breathless dive.
“Let me explain something to you,” he said.
Slowly she nodded.
He angled his body toward hers slightly, as though preparing to tell her a secret. Instead, in a calm voice, he said, “You speak of love, Gwen, as if it’s something that should hold a person down.”
Her lips parted on an unvoiced syllable. Yes, she wanted to say. Love should hold you. It should bind you.
But she did not speak, because with a sinking feeling, she suddenly divined the direction of his thoughts.
And, indeed: “I suppose that’s what love properly is,” he continued with a rueful half smile. “But you must understand—sometimes it feels indistinguishable from cowardice.”
Here he lost her. “It takes bravery to love,” she said. “I see no cowardice in being beholden to a person.”
“Yes, well, perhaps you wouldn’t,” he said softly. “Here’s a tale. Part of it you know. I had terrible asthma as a boy.”
“Yes,” she said slowly. She knew it through Richard, and of course his sisters, who forever feared that the childhood ailment had wrought some lasting weakness in him. Gwen had never understood such worries: Alex was the most vigorous man she knew.
“Terrible fucking disease,” he said bluntly. “I would wish it on no one. What can you count on, if not your own breath? And there were no identifiable causes for it. I never knew when it would strike—one moment I would be well, the next, flat on my back on the floor. Then there was only one question: where was the medicine? Sometimes it was in my pocket, and sometimes, it even did the trick. But sometimes it was fifty yards away—or, worse yet, only a few inches past my reach—the nitre paper and matches on the table above me, and me staring up, unable to do so much as lift my hand or call out, my only hope that someone . . . a maid . . . someone would come by.”
He took a deep breath. “I remember—” He exhaled, and she did, too, through a throat that felt tight. “I remember those waits,” he said quietly. “Every one of them. Suffocating, helpless as an infant. I was not calm, Gwen. I never mastered that art. I was terrified. I always knew that this would be the time when no one came.”
She blinked, and flinched as she felt a tear fall free. She reached up to shove her hair out of her face, but really to wipe the tear. If he saw it, he would not appreciate it.
“I had no choice but to depend on others,” he said.
“I know.” Her voice betrayed her. It sounded full of gravel.
He glanced at her, light blue eyes penetrating. “The memories do not upset me. Perhaps I should have said that beforehand. I am sharing them by way of explaining something to you. After a few frightening episodes, my parents set someone to follow me about. Room to room, house to lawn, lawn to house. A bloody ear pressing to the door of the water closet. No woods for me; the pollen was suspect. No dogs, no horses; dander might trigger an episode. Other boys of my age played rough; I was kept to the company of my sisters, and of Gerard, when his self-respect could permit him to play with a cripple.”
“Alex,” she breathed.
“That is only the word he used,” he said evenly. “I did not agree with it, of course. But all this care did not prevent the attacks. And so the doctors began to speculate that the asthma was a product of nerves. Off I was sent to Heverley End. Nobody else around. My parents hoped that solitude and a strict schedule would heal me. I was taken for daily walks. Fed and lectured and taught. Cleaned and put to bed. I was ten, eleven, during that time. Like a beast tethered at the end of a chain. But at least I felt safe. There was no chance that an episode would find me alone on the floor, inches from the medicine. All that ailed me was my own loathing. I was glad, for a time, to be a tame little pet.
“That didn’t last long, of course. I was growing. My lungs began to catch up to my limbs. I grew bolder and decided I wanted to go to school. I begged and argued and pleaded and demanded to go. They refused. Out of love, no doubt. I threw fits. I ran away. They caught me and locked me inside my rooms to keep me safe. Out of love, you understand. They fitted up Heverley End like a prison, with locks that kept one inside. And even then—even then—I knew that their decisions, and the restrictions they placed upon me, seemed necessary to them. Because they loved me. They were keeping me alive, they thought. And I have never resented them or wished them ill for it. But it took some very spectacular threats to finally win the right to go to Eton. And I still find it very difficult—so difficult, Gwen—to think of love and concern without thinking, first, of how very many ways one might suffocate.”
She sat very still as he let silence fall. His words were heartfelt. They sounded a death knell in her heart.
God above. Her bad taste in men was endless.
Finally, she managed a smile. “But how good you are to your family, despite it. The twins adore you. You’ve never denied them anything, Alex.”
“It’s easier not to deny them,” he said with blunt precision. “They ask only small things because they are afraid, I think, to ask for more. Which speaks well of their
perception but not so well of me. And perhaps it also speaks ill of me that I humor them because I am afraid that if I did not deliver on their requests—holidays, and gifts, and the occasional appearance at their dinners—they might grow angry enough to demand the larger things. My company. A presence in their children’s lives. Commitment.”
He spelled a vision that exactly matched her fantasies. “Would that be so awful?” she whispered. “Do you not . . . lose something by holding yourself so apart? Will you not come to regret it, ever?”
“Ah.” He gave the barest ghost of a smile. “And there is the question I have never allowed myself to ask. I tell myself I want nothing more than what I have. But”—his smile sharpened into something distinctly unpleasant—“it comes to me now that this is exactly the philosophy I railed against as a boy. I accused them of entombing me to keep me from the tomb. Trapping me in that sad little house on the coast because it was safer than the risk of sending me to school, of letting me actually live.”
He looked directly at her. “Avoiding a risk because it might cost,” he said. His eyes searched hers, intent. “It’s a sad calculation to make for love’s sake, isn’t it? It means putting love in service to fear. That is what I always objected to. And yet here I am, doing the same. I think it’s high time I stopped.”
Slowly, she nodded. “And this . . . is why you’re helping Gerard?”
He laughed, a short, startled sound, and then tipped his head, studying her with those beautiful eyes of his. “I wasn’t speaking of Gerard,” he said. “Far from it.”
She frowned. And then a frisson went through her, and she slowly sat back from him. If he was no longer discussing Gerard . . .
“At any rate,” he said, “it’s a hard habit to break. I developed a policy, once my lungs righted themselves. You will have noticed it, throughout the years: I vowed not to depend on anyone. To take great pains, in fact, to avoid any situation in which that might be required of me. Richard . . .” He smiled a little, a painful smile. “Richard was an exception. And it did not encourage me to try again.”
“Yes,” she said. “I know.”
“You do more than know,” he said gently. “You do the same.”
The comment startled her. She tried out a puzzled smile. And then, because his regard remained on her, unblinking, she said, “No, Alex. You’re wrong. I’ve depended on so many people in my life. Goodness—I thought to wed, twice! I have never turned away from anyone.”
“Of course you do. You’re doing so right now. You’re lying even to yourself.” Lightly, so lightly, he pressed his knuckles to the space between her breasts. “Who are you in the dark, Gwen?”
That touch, so light it was barely a breath of sensation, seemed to pierce her like an anchor. She stared at him, this wicked man, traveler of the world, her brother’s hero and her brother’s downfall—and her own downfall, so she’d hoped. “I don’t understand what you mean,” she said, although the strange lick of fear that moved through her betrayed it for a lie.
“Gwendolyn Elizabeth Maudsley,” he said softly, rolling the syllables in his low, smooth voice. “She is your secret, I think. She is the person you keep hidden from the world. I wonder, do you even know her yourself? Not when you walked to the altar, but in the night—some night when you’re all alone—will you look into the mirror with honesty?”
Her heartbeat was quickening. He was right. A month ago, this question would have made no sense, because she would not have let it make sense. And certainly she would not have been able to answer it as she did now:
“Yes,” she said.
A smile touched the edge of his mouth. “And who will you see?” he murmured. “Would Elma know her? Would Belinda? Would Richard have done?”
No. They would not. But . . .
You would know her, she thought. You, Alex.
The revelation flashed through her, bright and hot and transformative as fire. Perhaps he saw its effect, for his knuckles skated up to brush her collarbone, light as a feather, warm as a breath. His eyes followed the motion, an arrested expression on his face, which her fevered brain interpreted as tenderness, awe, the look of a man who felt amazed by the privilege to touch her.
Alone in the dark, she realized, she became the woman she was with Alex.
I trust only you and the dark always to look at me so honestly.
The idea unfurled through her like a slow, sweet poison, collapsing her thoughts and better intentions, dissolving her nerves and fear and longing into a hot, formless appetite for the whole hot press of his body against hers, atop hers. Into hers.
“There’s nothing in you to be ashamed of,” he murmured. “Never let the world tell you otherwise. Never let it trap you into hiding again. That would grieve me, Gwen . . . inexpressibly.”
She caught his hand in her own. His pulse hammered beneath her thumb, news that gladdened her in a fierce, elemental way. He was not unmoved. He was not unmoved in the slightest. “Alex,” she said.
“Gwendolyn Elizabeth Maudsley,” he said, and kissed her.
Chapter Fourteen
It was the slowest, sweetest kiss. It carried her back toward the mattress like a warm wind, and the mattress caught her, soft as a cloud, as he came over her. She twined her hands in his hair and shut her eyes, and he lowered himself against her so his chest brushed hers. His mouth charted every inch of her lips, leisurely and thoroughly, before his tongue gently pressed for entrance. She opened her mouth and he deepened the kiss, his broad palm sliding up her waist, her ribs, the side of her breast, her throat, until it cupped her cheek, large and warm, a gentle reminder that he was here, all of him, as his mouth alone made love to her.
In the darkness behind her eyes, the world contracted to this: the sheets that crackled with starch as she restlessly stirred; the light scrape of his teeth, the quest of his lips and tongue; the brush of his chest against hers. She groped blindly up his back, feeling across the muscled expanse, the sharpness of one shoulder blade, the path of his spine, which swept her hand into the small of his back, the perfect place to press him closer to her. His body came fully against hers, and with a start she remembered the rest of him, so much taller and broader and harder, pressed against her now, over and around her. Her breasts ached; she shifted restlessly against him, and his hands slid down to her sides, over and over, steady and soothing until his knuckles brushed the sides of her breasts, a touch light enough to be accidental, but not soothing at all.
Her eyes opened just in time to catch the flutter and lift of his own long lashes. They stared at each other. The silence seemed too full to break. His eyes were the shade of high alpine lakes, the color of water in spaces close to the sky; so close that she could see the flecks of gold scattered through them, secrets that so few people would ever know.
Her impulse was to shove off his jacket. To strip away his shirt. Her brain bade her press herself against him, to act quickly before he changed his mind again.
Her instincts held her still. She did not move. Some defiant impulse made her turn her face away. If he wanted her, he would have to prove it.
He smoothed his hand over her hair, pushing it away from her face, and kissed her jaw. His mouth moved down her throat, and he licked her once, where her throat joined her collarbone. A shuddering breath escaped her. She wanted to move. Her fingers curled into her palm.
His hands slid around her waist. He pulled her up and she set her face into the darkness of his throat, breathing him, her fists at her sides as his clever hands unlaced her gown.
The corset gave his fingers brief pause. “My God,” he said. “What is this?”
A giggle escaped her, scratchy and startled. “The Pretty Housemaid.”
He gave her a look through his lashes, extreme skepticism, his brow quirked. But when it came off so quickly, he leaned into her ear and growled, “Always wear that corset,” and then he was lifting away her chemise.
She was naked. Utterly bare. She felt the blush move across her skin; the air
seemed painfully cool in comparison, brushing like another touch across her breasts. He went still, briefly, and then she felt the hot rush of his exhalation across her shoulder.
“Gwen,” he said. The softest thread of sound. “You are . . .”
When he did not go on, the possibilities began to penetrate her daze. She was—naked, yes, but what else? Too round? Too full? Too long in the waist? “I’m what?” she whispered.
His hands moved slowly over her waist, one finger tracing a slow line to her navel, up her abdomen, to her collarbone. “You’re the palette from some pre-Raphaelite’s dream,” he murmured. “Cream and strawberry and scarlet. You are . . . beyond my imagination. It’s a wonder you can be touched at all.”
She stared at him. His words were so far removed from her worries that for a moment, they did not seem to address her concerns in the least. And the next moment, as they turned in her brain, they seemed to reassemble her expectations entirely. Round, full, long-waisted, what matter?
His lips dipped to her skin now, tracing the same path that his finger had made, slowly wending upward. As his mouth reached hers again, he cupped her skull in one broad palm and laid her back onto the bed, kissing her as he lowered her onto the pillows. She had accused him—as a show for Barrington’s guests, but with a ferocity that had felt, suddenly, all too genuine—of treating her like a wind-up doll. His hand at her head brought the comment back to mind. She crossed her arms over her breasts and immediately he drew them apart, placing them gently but firmly at either side of her torso.
For some reason, his decisiveness made her breathless. She tested it by looking away.
One long finger touched her jaw, nudging her face back toward his.
He met her eyes and smiled just a little: a knowing smile. A shock went through her, hot and delicious. He understood exactly the game she was playing.
He held her eyes as he lowered his head. And then, as his mouth closed on her nipple, her own lashes fluttered shut. With his free hand, he brushed a delicate path down her side, his thumb finding the crease between legs and torso, tracing it lightly, over and over, as the languid pleasure in her began to sharpen and solidify. His fingers slipped lower, drawing intentions on her inner thigh, turning to scratch lightly down the length of her leg. Her control broke; with no conscious design, she bent her knee, rubbing the sole of her foot against his clothed calf.
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