Beloved

by Stella Cameron

  “You are somebody.” He gripped her hand on his shoulder. “You have not been dealt the finest of cards, Ella. But you are the finest of women, a prize any man would be proud to possess.”

  “Any man but you,” she said, taking her hand away. Moving beside him, she idly picked up a brass box from the desk. “Make your list, Saber.”

  He looked at the box and had to restrain himself from taking it away. “That will make your fingers dirty.”

  Ella opened the lid of the box and gave a short laugh. “Why, a button collection. I had a button collection when I was … My mother collected buttons and gave them to me. I loved them then, before I was old enough to know that they had been lost from the clothing of people who visited that house.”

  “Don’t… Ella, don’t speak of that.”

  “It doesn’t hurt anymore. It’s over.”

  Was it? How could such a thing ever be entirely over? “Where did these come from? They appear… military?” Saber could not look at the buttons. He began to write. “They are military. More mementos.”

  “Quite the collector,” she said. “I had not known that side of you. They all appear… Most of them are the same in design.”

  “Are they?” All cut from the coats of dead men, all men under Saber’s command. “I can’t even remember where I got them now. I should have Bigun get rid of them.” Never. He would keep them as long as he lived.

  Ella snapped the box shut and set it down. “I hate London.”

  “I am not fond of it myself.”

  “Then why are you here?”

  Because here he usually found anonymity. “It is what I’m accustomed to.”

  “What of Shillingdown? Who cares for it?”

  “My estate commissioner.”

  “You do not like your estate?”

  His estate reminded him of his need for a family, for a wife, for children to carry on when he was dead. The only wife he would ever want was Ella, and he could not have her, even if he could forget the past—his own, and hers.

  “Saber?”

  “I like Shillingdown well enough. I’ll return there in good time—I visit occasionally.”

  “Kirkcaldy is the closest I’ve come to having a home.”

  “A beautiful estate. You like living in the lodge?”

  She actually laughed. He’d forgotten how her laugh had the power to make him smile. “I adore the lodge,” she told him. “You did not visit, but it is quite the most wonderfully eccentric building in the world. Papa and Mama love it too, and we are so close to the castle and to Arran and Grace and their children. Oh, yes, I do love living there.”

  “And Edinburgh? Do you like to visit that fair city?”

  “Yes. Charlotte Square is always filled with visitors and music.”

  “But you have not met some young buck who could capture your heart? And keep you happily living in your beloved Scotland?”

  “No.”

  He should not feel relieved by the promptness of her response.

  “I spoke to you once of Papa and the way he rescued me— and Max.”

  Saber bit back the impulse to tell her he didn’t wish to discuss that issue again. “I remember.”

  “You know, I was offered at an auction in that house. The house where my mother and my uncle had a room.”

  “You don’t need to speak of it.”

  “When my mother was younger, and there was not enough money, she had been…I believe she did some work at the house.”

  She was offering him honesty without any notion that he already knew a great deal about her early years—and guessed the rest.

  “I was paraded before a lot of people—”

  “No, Ella. Do not say more, little one. You were cruelly used.”

  “We have both suffered, Saber. Could that not be reason for us to draw close together? To comfort and heal each other?”

  So sweet. So ignorant of the nature of the man at her side. In a rustle of silk, she knelt by his chair. “I should like to comfort you, Saber.”

  “Thank you for your concern.” He could not relent, even for an instant.

  One of her cool hands settled on his cheek, caressed his neck. She said, “There is something you’re not explaining to me, isn’t there? Something you think I should not care for?”

  Tenderness rushed through him. He covered her hand and turned his mouth into her palm.

  “I could not help myself.” Her voice shook. “There was nothing I could do but stand there and allow them to stare at me with only—”

  “No! No, Ella, I cannot bear it. I cannot bear it for you.” Or for himself. One more cause for shame—he could not obliterate what she had been from his mind and pretend she was untouched. Poor child, that she had been. Poor, helpless child. They could not bring each other happiness. He could bring no woman happiness.

  “Is it that? Is it my past that makes you shun me?”

  “No!” He lied, and yet he did not lie. “You think you know me, Ella. You don’t. If you did, you would not want me.”

  “I want you no matter what you are.” She rested her face on his shoulder. “I know what you are, Saber. You are a man. Good and bad. Strong and weak. Brave and afraid—like any man. But you are more than the rest to me.”

  She spoke, and with her words, touched his heart—or whatever there was where his heart was supposed to exist. “How I would like to accept what you seem determined to give.”

  “Then do it,” she whispered, turning her face up to place a lingering kiss on his jaw. “Do it, Saber. Take me for your own.”

  Take her? He clasped her head, held her cheek to his neck. He breathed in her scent of wildflowers, and new-mown grass beneath the sun—and wind on her Scottish moors. And he knew the sweetest cut of all. To love and be loved, yet to be denied.

  Saber held Ella’s face between his hands and looked down into her eyes, eyes the same color as the deep russet silk pooled about her legs.

  Her soft lips parted.

  He watched her lips, the glimpse of white teeth.

  Ella lifted her chin.

  Saber felt her breath on his face.

  Her eyes drifted shut.

  He flinched at the rapid thunder of his heart and rested his jaw atop her head.

  She trembled.

  “Ella. One day I will find the strength to make you understand.”

  Her hands folded around his wrists. “Why can’t we just be us.”

  “Oh, but we are just us.” He released her and stood up. “That’s it, y’see. We are us, the sum of what we have been and have become.”

  She remained at his feet, holding his wrists. “And what we’ve become is good, Saber. It always is, because we learn from it.”

  Gently, he raised his arms until she was forced to let go. “True for you, sweet one. But there are those for whom the result is not good.”

  Her hands came together as if in prayer. “You are good. We will be good together. You told me we would always be together.”

  “I told you that a long time ago. Before I became what I am. And you do not want to know what that is, Ella.”

  She pressed her steepled fingers to her lips. “I do know. You are…You are the best man in the world.”

  Shaking his head, he backed away. “No. No, Ella. I am the worst. What I have become, you cannot even imagine. What I have become—”

  “Saber!”

  “Don’t you know what I’m telling you?” he shouted, and hated himself for the shock on her face. “I am not … What I have become is unspeakable. I cannot even be called a man. I no longer know the nature of my life—or my living death!”

  He left her.

  Chapter Eleven

  Ella remained where Saber had left her, crumpled beside the chair at the secretaire.

  She could not imagine what he’d become? He’d become something unspeakable? Not even a man?

  “Why did you leave me?” she asked the air where he had been. “Why won’t you listen to me? Why won’t you
let me listen to you, really listen to you?”

  Where she rubbed her silken skirts, her moist palms left marks.

  He no longer knew the nature of his life? Or his living death? Because he was scarred?

  Ella flattened her lips to her teeth. He made her angry. She would like to follow him to his precious hiding place and demand that he open his heart to her.

  Not again. She must not allow herself to run after Saber again. If he did not want her, she must accept his wishes.

  And if she accepted those wishes, she would accept no other man! She got to her feet. No other man could ever be what Saber had become for her. And she did not care what everyone else wanted for her. What they thought she wanted for herself.

  Fie! Great-Grandmama Franchot wanted Saber to help find Ella a husband? What bitter irony.

  Ella went closer to the fire. Her body was cold, yet she still felt Saber’s warm chest on her cheek and the texture of his coat, smelled his clean masculine scent.

  He had pressed his mouth into her palm. She looked at the place. When he’d brushed his lips over her skin, there had been an expression of longing on his face, longing, and struggle within.

  It was because her childhood made him angry that he would not let her speak of it. What he didn’t know was that much as she detested her past, she feared her present more. She feared her present if the scrap of chiffon meant someone had indeed recognized her and intended to make her secrets public.

  Why would anyone do such a thing, other than to victimize her, to control her?

  If she told Saber her fears, what would he do? Tell her family to take her away from London? Tell them that he would be what they wanted for her, a loving husband? That he would protect her from vicious tongues?

  She turned her head sharply.

  Fool. If he wanted her, he could have her. He did not want her.

  Ella picked up the reticule he’d given her and sat on the ebony chair to wait for the coach to come for her.

  Saber would return before it was time for her to go back to Hanover Square.

  Coals in the grate snapped. Flames wound up the crooked chimney, red and purple and blue.

  From somewhere came a creak. She stared at the door. The house pressed in around her, heavy, still, and silent.

  Mr. Bigun might have forgotten all about Papa’s request and gone to bed. The servant might even have left the house altogether.

  Saber was in the house. Ella could feel him.

  He had gone away because he was troubled. But he could return at any moment. Surely he would not simply leave her alone here.

  A long case clock ticked in a corner.

  The flames shrank a little lower.

  Saber would come back.

  Ella’s next breath quivered into her chest. He would come to her and she would be glad.

  But…He was right, he was not the same.

  She drew her bottom lip between her teeth and slipped to sit far back in the chair. Saber would never do anything to hurt her.

  “Oh, come back,” she said.

  “Where are you?” Saber was not the same.

  Brave Ella was frightened.

  “Get out, Bigun!”

  “The young lady has already left, my lord?”

  “I told you to leave. Now.”

  Bigun produced the small bottle he seemed always to carry somewhere about his person, and poured a measure of brown liquid into a glass. “Drink this, my lord, and lie down.”

  “And sleep?” Saber laughed. “Thank you, Bigun, but no. In that direction lies only disaster. Go to your own bed.”

  “Your family does not appreciate you, my lord.”

  “What?” Saber swung from looking through his bedchamber window at the dark roofs of the stables behind the house. “What in God’s name are you jabbering about?”

  “They treat you badly.”

  “I have no idea what you mean. My family has not been part of my life in recent years because of certain misunderstandings.”

  “And now they think of you as someone who has no life of his own, master.”

  Saber shook his head shortly, and winced at the pain in his temples. Ella was alone and confused in this house—in his house, where she should never have to feel anything but comfort.

  “Perhaps I have done some good in that area,” Bigun said. The sound Saber dreaded started, very low, very far away, but growing louder and closer.

  Hoofbeats.

  “Now they will know that you are in demand, too. And perhaps the young lady’s ardor will return.”

  He squinted at Bigun. “Speak plainly.”

  Bigun looked pained. “I am plain. Invitations, I told them. Proposals of marriage. It is known that nothing makes a commodity more precious than scarcity.”

  Saber went to the chest beside his bed and slid open a drawer. The emeralds in the handle of the dagger shone dully. “You talk nonsense, and I have no patience for it now, my friend.” The dagger had severed the threads that held the buttons.

  “Not nonsense at all. Now they will think of how many females desire you, my lord.”

  He glanced up. “Was that what all that invitation and proposal rubbish was about?”

  “Not rubbish. A calculated move on my part, master. And I saw the young lady’s face. She was jealous at once. The old one will think about it and come to the appropriate decision too.”

  The dagger had been in his hand, retrieved from a fallen enemy. He’d seen a bare arm upraised, a similar dagger clasped in a strong fist.

  “Oh, yes, the old one will stop, and cast about, and say, Saber is receiving proposals of marriage. He does not have time to waste on lists of suitors for Ella. And then she will—”

  “Please go away.”

  “Drink the potion, master.”

  “Leave me.”

  Bigun, the glass in one hand, turned down Saber’s bed. “Miss Rossmara’s head has been turned by the attention she has received at her first event, master. But now, because of Bigun’s ploy, she will want you even more than she did before.”

  The Indian’s voice droned and blurred.

  That strong arm had descended, and another Englishman’s last scream split the air. Saber scrambled after the assailant, grabbed his arm, tore at him. He held the wrist where the Englishman’s blood trickled from the killing knife, and stared into a foreign face.

  Young. Younger than Saber by far. Like the lad he had taken to safety.

  Bigun’s voice ceased to form words. “Go to your bed,” Saber told him, forcing himself to walk to the door and open it. “Thank you for your efforts. Most… Most inventive. Good night.”

  “The young lady?”

  “She is safe. Her father will return for her.” Perhaps by then he could hope to have collected himself.

  Bigun held up the glass. “Drink—”

  “Leave it. I’ll drink it in good time.”

  Bigun hovered a moment longer, then did as he was commanded.

  Saber waited for the sound of his servant’s slippers to recede before lifting the dagger from the drawer. The three emeralds in the hilt shone mysteriously.

  Hoofbeats.

  He was awake and hearing the horses—just like the last time when exhaustion had claimed him after too long a fight against sleep.

  How could he subject Ella to this?

  Even if he could push the acts she had been forced to perform from his mind and take what she offered him, how could he ever take her to his bed knowing she might see what he had become?

  His mind was changed forever.

  Ribbons of color wound about his brain. Pain and horror sickened him. He closed his eyes and saw a gush of bright light—and the light pierced his head.

  He sweated and tore, gasping, at his neckcloth—and slipped to his knees beside the bed.

  Aieee!

  The face of a youth. Saber had hesitated.

  Hoofbeats.

  A second, surely only a second of hesitation. But a rearing animal caught Saber�
�s shoulder and the dagger had flown to the shredded earth.

  And in the heartbeats that followed, that youth with cold eyes and white teeth between snarling lips, had driven his weapon into the breasts of two more Englishmen. Two more had died.

  The boy’s laugh jarred Saber. He shuddered, and lunged for the dagger. Words he did not understand streamed from the mouth in the blood-spattered face. The moment Saber’s fingers would have closed upon the dagger, the stranger reached it first and snatched it up, and slashed at Saber’s face.

  “Stop it, stop it!” Saber stumbled to his feet and staggered to lean against the wall of his bedchamber. He could not bear the memories.

  The dagger tore his face, his neck. And then he fell, tried to turn and grab the boy’s legs. But the blade descended, plowed through his back, and rose. Again it plunged, again and again.

  All pain, all blood. Face-to-face with a dead Englishman in the mud. A man as young as the stranger Saber had thought to spare.

  He had betrayed his own. Mothers and fathers had lost sons. Wives had lost husbands, children their fathers, brothers and sisters, their brothers—because Saber had failed them all.

  He had been attacked with the knife that would have saved the lives of comrades. Attacked and left for dead.

  The coals were all but spent. Sparks crackled where flames had curled.

  Ella shivered. An hour had passed since Saber left her. Fifteen minutes had been spent before that and after the dowager and Papa’s departure. So much time remained before she could hope to be taken home.

  On an upper floor something thudded.

  Ella held the reticule tightly against her stomach. She was safe here. Nothing would ever happen to her in Saber’s house. He would not allow it.

  Footsteps, heavy and slow, sounded on the stairs leading down to the vestibule.

  She wetted her dry lips. Of course. Saber felt guilty at having deserted her and was coming to ensure her comfort. He would be angry at Mr. Bigun for allowing the fire to burn so low.

  The footsteps met the flags in the vestibule. Heels clipped on stone.

  Ella rose and moved to stand behind the chair. Her eyes strained against candlelight burning low in the vessels offered up by Saber’s statues.

  Her heart rivaled the crack of shoes on tile. Her heart beat much faster.