by Lisa Cach
“My God, Paul, you must be joking,” Nathaniel said, genuinely astonished. “You do not believe that superstitious pap.”
“Do I not? I have been spending time at the inn in town and have heard all manner of ills spoken of that girl. When I see my friend poised to repeat the very errors that drove him from London, why should I not question but that something unnatural is afoot?”
“Miss Bright is nothing like Laetitia.”
“No. At least Laetitia was somewhat civilized and had a brother to defend her, for all the good it did either one of them. She also understood her place.”
“And what place would Miss Bright’s be?”
“Amongst her own kind, and well you know it. You cannot bring common girls home for dinner, having them think they have as much right to sit at this table as you or I. You would never dare such a thing in London.”
“You think you are so superior to her that you cannot share a table?”
“I am not judging her as a person, Nathaniel,” Paul said, lowering his voice and taking on a pedantic tone. “I am judging her as your society and mine would. What favor are you doing her by bringing her here and making her sit down to eat with you, waited on by those she knows as her equals? If we were anywhere but where we are, and I were anyone else, you would not have done it. Our peers would humiliate her, and her friends will hate her for the favors you show her.”
“She has no friends. If anything, it will help her to have these petty-minded villagers know she is in my favor.”
“And when you tire of her? What then?”
Nathaniel clamped his jaw tight, the heat of anger on his cheeks. “There will not be a repeat of Laetitia, do not worry yourself on that score.” He pivoted on his heel and strode off down the hall.
He found the stairs down to the kitchen, his boot heels making a racket on the hard stone steps. He slowed when he heard Valerian’s voice, and the answering laughter of a man. He had not quite believed her threat to go eat in the kitchen.
He came around the corner, observing her for a moment. She had a tart crust in hand, and was feeding it to the turn-spit dog. The cook—he could not recall his name—was eating one of the tarts himself, noisily sucking out the filling.
“My lord!” the cook gasped upon seeing him, inhaling a piece of fruit in the process. He coughed grotesquely, spitting bits of crust into the palm of his hand.
Valerian turned, and he saw the delight fade from her face at sight of him. For an instant he saw himself through her eyes, a finely dressed aristocrat with boorish friends, standing in the kitchen like a peacock in a hen coop, lording himself over the lowly, mundane birds. He felt out of place and unwanted, and then he saw the vulnerability in Valerian’s eyes, and the rest did not matter.
He went to her side, ignoring the surreptitious glances of those still present in the kitchen, and the continued hacking of the cook. “Come,” he said, his voice low enough to reach only her ears. “Let me take you into the garden where I can apologize for Paul.”
She flashed him a look that said Paul was not the only one at fault. “And for my own behavior,” he added. He bent his head closer to hers. “Do not—”
He was interrupted by a low growl, and he raised his head. The turn-spit dog, its face a mish-mash of black and white spots, was glaring at him with evil yellow eyes. He looked back at Valerian in time to see her smile at the beast’s disfavor. He took her hand, and dragged her only half-resisting from the kitchen, away from the eager eyes and ears of the staff.
The moment they gained the garden she pulled her hand from his and kept walking, tramping down a gravel path. He followed a couple paces behind her until they were out of sight from the house, hidden behind hedges and shrubberies, and then stopped her with a hand on her shoulder.
“Do not touch me!” she snapped. “You have no right.”
“Valerian, I am sorry. Sorry about the way Paul treated you, and sorry that I did not immediately defend you. He was wrong to have been so rude to you.”
“And you were wrong to have asked me to eat with him. My lord.”
“Valerian—”
“Yes, I should call you by your title, for there is no use in my imagining any deeper intimacy between us. Mr. Carlyle did me the favor of pointing out the difference between our worlds. I have no place in yours, none at all.”
“There is no law against befriending one another. It is not as if we were being married, for God’s sake.”
“No, it is not, is it?” Her voice took on a false puzzled tone. “Just what are we to each other, Nathaniel? Do you want me as a mistress? A friend? You will have to explain it to me. I fear I have no experience with any of this.”
He was silent, searching for words to explain that which was not clear even to him.
“You do not know what you want with me, do you?” she snapped.
“I cannot categorize you, if that is what you are asking,” he said, still searching for his own understanding, for an explanation he could give himself for why he could not stand the thought of breaking off their acquaintance. “But God knows I want you.”
“For what, Nathaniel? Am I a friend to have lunch with, or a woman to seduce with a silver bracelet? What do you want from me?” she cried.
He grasped her face between his hands and slid his fingers into her bound hair, abandoning the effort at thought for that which his body already knew to be true. “This,” he said, and bending down he captured her lips with his own. She resisted for only a moment, then her mouth softened, and her hands came up to rest lightly, uncertainly on his chest. He deepened the kiss, moving against her mouth, dipping the tip of his tongue gently through her lips, allowing the intensity of his feelings to speak to her through his touch.
When he finally lifted his mouth he could feel her shaking, her hands tightly clenching the cloth of his jacket. “This is what I want,” he said.
“I see,” she whispered, her blue eyes enormous as she looked up at him. “This, and nothing more.”
His heart protested at that. Nothing more? Yes, he wanted more. He wanted to climb behind those brilliant eyes of hers and learn the mind inside. He had jested that he was the mysterious one, but she was the true enigma. A beautiful, isolated woman, living a life of magic, conflict, and kindness. He could not name what he wanted from her—no, not wanted, but needed from her. He could not name it, but he knew it was there.
But he did not know how to say that, hardly knew how to think it, and knew only how to ask for that which was obvious and physical. “We can share this together,” he said, feeling the inadequacy of it in his own heart.
“And that is all,” she said softly.
He heard the question hidden in her statement, that asked if she was no more than a body to him. He knew she thought that the physical would satisfy him, as it had satisfied countless men who dallied with those beneath their station, and he could not bear it. He wanted her to know more of him than that, to understand that he wanted to protect her from himself at the same moment he wished to possess her.
“Shall I tell you why my family has banished me from London? You will understand better Paul’s hostility.”
She blinked at him, pulling back slightly at this apparent change in topic. “Yes, of course.”
He led her to a stone bench, sitting beside her with her hands in his. “You may hate me when you have heard the whole sorry tale.”
“I do not doubt I have already imagined and accepted worse.”
He took a deep breath, and felt it shudder in his chest, dreading this baring of his soul. There was no one with whom he had shared the entire story, start to finish. “It was a year ago when it began. One of my friends had befriended a young lawyer, Lawrence Mowbray. He met him in a tavern, they got drunk together, they liked each other. Lawrence became somewhat of a regular with our group, no matter that his family was just barely respectable.
“Lawrence had a sister, Laetitia, seventeen. She was lovely, with pale blond hair and soft brown eyes
. She looked innocent as a fawn. Underneath, she was anything but. She was a passionate young woman, with a will that would brook no opposition. She took a fancy to me, and maneuvered Lawrence into asking me to escort her to a party one of her friends was having.
“I confess I was only too happy to oblige. I knew she wanted to impress her friends with me, an older man, a member of the nobility. I enjoyed it.” He snorted in disbelief at his own overweening pride. “And on the ride home from the party I found that she was not at all unwilling to express her gratitude in a tangible form. So I took what she offered. I debauched her.” He paused, letting the phrase hang there in all its shame.
“And our liaison began. I thought I was clever, and careful, and while some suspected my intentions towards Laetitia were not honorable, there was no proof to the contrary. Lawrence, the foolish man, thought I was enamored of his sister, and even joked that we might someday be brothers-in-law. His friendship with our circle had given him false impressions of the possibility. He had no notion of what I did with his sister in private.
“Laetitia was largely unchaperoned, her mother dead and her father either working or drinking—and as she ran the house, what servants there were would not speak against her, for all that they might gossip amongst themselves. It was not difficult for her to arrange times when we could meet in private.
“She was less certain than her brother of the constancy of my affections. She would bring up the topic of marriage, indirectly, and watch for my response. However carefully I thought I answered, she would sense the truth that I had no intention of speaking for her, and she would fall into what I can only describe as a raging depression. After one such conversation, she cut her wrist with the glass from a broken mirror. On another, she tried to eat poison. If I had not been there, she might have died, or seriously harmed herself.
“Then she told me she was pregnant. I was appalled. I offered to pay for the care of the child, send him away to be raised in the country, but she would not hear of it. I was at a loss for what to do. She had worn me down with her hysterics, and I was beginning to hate her. But she carried my child, and if I abandoned her she might hurt not only herself, but the babe. I resigned myself to staying with her at least until the child was born, and then trying again to persuade her to some other goal than marriage to me.
“She hid the pregnancy up until the fifth month, when she miscarried.
“Well, there was no hiding that. Of course a doctor had to be called in. When Lawrence discovered what had happened, and who the father was, he demanded I marry Laetitia. I refused, and he challenged me to a duel. I could not refuse. What little honor I had left made it imperative I give the man the chance to avenge himself and his family.
“I had no intention of trying to kill Lawrence in the duel, or even wounding him. I chose swords, with the thought that he could beat out his fury on me, spill some of my blood, and we could both retire from the field.
“But I had underestimated his anger. He would not stop with a show of blood. He wanted me dead, and he fought for it. I confess I was not so noble as to stand still for my own slaughter. When a man comes at you with death in his eyes, you fight for your life, thoughts of honor and good intentions long forgotten. I have spent time in the army, and know that well.” He paused, and stared into nothing, seeing again the blood on his sword.
“I killed him.”
He was silent for a long moment, then looked at Valerian, and saw that she watched him, face expressionless, waiting for his next words.
“Laetitia still wanted me, even after that. I told her no, that I would see her well settled with a husband of her own rank, and offered to settle a sum on her. But she wanted me.”
His voice went flat. “We were in a carriage, arguing over it as we always did, she was alternately weeping and yelling. The carriage slowed in traffic while crossing a bridge over the Thames. She opened the door and leapt out, then ran to the low wall and climbed up on the stones. She threatened to throw herself off.
“People turned to look, staring at the shrieking woman, but kept their distance. I went after her. She saw me coming, and put out her hand to stop me. I stopped, not wanting to force her into action. If she wanted to talk from ten feet apart, so be it.
“And then the wind caught at her skirts, billowing them against her legs, a great gust of wind that felt as if it had traveled the whole length of the river to reach her. I lunged for her, but I was too late. She fell.
“It took three days for her body to float to the surface and be retrieved. Her father never recovered from the shock.”
He fell silent once again, and when he resumed his voice was more matter of fact. “By now, of course, everyone knew my part in the sorry affair. My friends knew, my relations knew, bare acquaintances on the street knew.
“My parents and grandparents, the uncles and aunts, they all came together. This was a scandal such as the family had not faced for decades. Laetitia may not have been of their circle, and they would have done all in their power to prevent a marriage, but she had been no street prostitute either. This was a disgrace that had cost two people their lives, and ruined the health of a third.
“My family banished me to Raven Hall, more than one of them having visited it in the past, and knowing how remote and, by their reckoning, desolate it was. I was not bound to obey—I have money of my own—but spending time in Cumbria seemed a small penance for what I had done.”
He met her eyes and could read nothing in them. “It is as terrible as you imagined, is it not? You can understand now why Paul views you as such a threat. He does not want to watch me make the same mistakes twice.”
“So where is the difference between what you did with Laetitia and what you wish to do with me? Why do you pursue me, when you know what havoc you wreaked on her family?”
How could he explain the difference, when it was so unformed a feeling that he could not describe it even to himself? Laetitia had been young and selfish, attractive to him through her beauty and his own vanity. He had never truly cared who she was inside. They had been shallow pleasures he had with her, pleasures of the body but not of the soul.
“I can give you honesty from the beginning,” he said. It was not much, but it was all he could offer, and was more than he had given Laetitia.
“Does that honesty extend to my family? Will you tell my aunt what you wish to do with me, as you did not tell Laetitia’s brother?”
“I think she already knows.”
She was silent, eyes staring unfocused at a distant point. He waited, dreading what she might say. At last she returned his gaze. “Give me time to think.”
He nodded once, curtly, although his heart cried out that he should not let her leave him, even for a moment. Let her decide while his arms were around her, while he kissed her weak with passion, and made clear thought impossible.
But still, her response had been almost more than he had hoped for. “As you wish.”
Chapter Nine
“And to think I went to them for help. I can hardly believe myself,” Gwen ranted. “The scheming witch. I probably gave her the idea. How old is she now? Too old. Too desperate. She is man-hungry, that is what she is, and all the time standing there like butter would not melt in her mouth, with her aunt telling me not to cheapen myself. A pair of whores, they are. Well, I will not let them have you, Eddie, you can count on it.”
“Huh?” Eddie was drawn from his lewd thoughts by his name. Gwen had been yakking non-stop for the past mile, and he had long since ceased to listen. He shifted his grip on Valerian’s clamming shovel, and wondered if Gwen would finally let him touch her breasts when this was through.
“At first I thought you preferred her to me, can you believe that?” Gwen angrily tore a handful of leaves from a branch crowding the path and ripped them into little bits as she tramped down the narrow trail, Eddie in tow. “But then I heard Mrs. Torrance talking with my mother. Strange things have been happening of late,” Gwen intoned darkly. “ ‘Ti
s most likely the three of you were lured to her. She used the devil’s own wiles, and drunk as you were you had no defenses. She made easy work of you three. Another reason not to drink so much, Eddie.”
“Uh-huh,” he grunted, his eyes on her backside.
“She needs to know that I am the one you want, and that I know what she is trying to do. She will not dare continue, if I threaten to expose her.” Gwen stopped suddenly, and Eddie bumped into her. She turned around, her cheeks flushed, and leaned against his chest. “I am the one you want, right?”
Eddie looked down the top of her bodice at the valley between her breasts. His mouth went dry and he felt himself harden. “Yes, Gwen.”
“They were lying to me, telling me not to give myself to you,” she said, and rubbed against him. “They wanted you for themselves. But I know better now. Do you still want me, Eddie?” she pouted up at him.
“Yes! You know I do.” He could hardly keep from grabbing her and grinding his hips against her soft body.
“Tonight, I will sneak out of the house—”
“Tonight?” He could hardly believe his good fortune.
“That is . . . if you will tell her to leave you alone. Tell her that I am the one you want, not her, the old hag, and that you know she put a spell on you. Then I will make myself yours, truly. Will you tell her, Eddie?”
In the quiet forest, with her pink lips wet and parted, her belly pressed up against his erection, he would say yes to anything. He could even begin to believe anything. “She has been sending spirits to me in my sleep,” he told Gwen. “They fondle me.” He would not add that he woke sticky with spent pleasure, vague images of plump thighs and breasts flitting through his mind.
Gwen smile up at him. “Would it not be better to have me fondle you?”
His eyes widened as she slipped her hand between them and rubbed her palm against the ridge in his breeches. His hips thrust against her hand, and he pulled her into his arms, pulling up the back of her skirts until he could hold the cool soft mound of her buttock. He moved his hand over the giving flesh, kneading it, then sliding his fingers down to where the tips could brush against the furry wet heat between her legs.
