by Lisa Bingham
“In the original sketches, she was holding the family dog. After her death, the artist revised the composition.”
A sober-faced child sat in the arms of his mother, seeming to cling to her as if bidding her to stay. Ethereal hands held him still. Sullivan’s hold unconsciously tightened around Chelsea’s as she continued in a near whisper.
“It is said that the artist painted her face a half-dozen times, using the line and pencil drawings done months before. The earl was never pleased with the representation. He said she had grown more beautiful while carrying his son. So the artist finally left her features completely in shadow—unpainted. I’m told that the earl hung the portrait in his own private chambers, and that for him he saw Lucrece’s face undimmed by time.”
Chelsea’s voice had grown husky in telling the story, and Sullivan became quiet and introspective, wondering at the empathy she displayed for a stretch of canvas covered with daubs of colored oil.
“Richard?” She spoke slowly, as if she needed to impart the meaning of each word. “Richard, that baby is your grandfather.”
The pang of surprise shouldn’t have occurred. He should have anticipated what Chelsea would reveal. But the sight of that chubby, wistful boy had seemed unreal to him until that instant. The two-dimensional faces took on new meaning. They stretched from being impersonal representations of people long dead to …
Family.
Chelsea led him to the next frame. Sullivan felt as if he’d been punched in the stomach. He lifted a hand that shook, ever so slightly. His father’s face. It wasn’t exactly as he remembered it. A little younger, rounder, more innocent. But the brown-black hair and slender features were so familiar. He saw them echoed in a slightly diluted fashion in the mirror each morning.
He touched the canvas, nearly expecting to encounter flesh and blood. This was the face that had haunted Sullivan’s dreams and filled him with untold regret. This was the reason a burning fury filled his heart day after day. Judging by his father’s deathbed confessions, Richard Albert had been crushed by his enemies, his name dragged through the gutter. He’d been exiled from his homeland, then left to rot on some godforsaken island. From the moment Sullivan had heard the half-whispered tales, he had vowed to avenge Richard Albert’s honor.
“Richard? You recognize him, don’t you? He looks quite a bit like you, the same mouth and jaw. Your grandfather was quite striking.”
Sullivan shot her a quick glance. Grandfather? This wasn’t his grandfather, this was his …
“This is your father.”
The next portrait was so exact, so lifelike, that Sullivan was thunderstruck. He understood the discrepancies he’d noted in the representation of the first figure. It wasn’t age that had caused the subtle differences, but an entire generation. The image was younger than Sullivan remembered his father being, yes, but it was accurate down to the very last detail.
“Your mother.”
Before he could assimilate the avalanche of emotions that threatened to bury him, Chelsea held the candle higher.
“You have her eyes.”
Sullivan had never seen his mother. Much like Lucrece, she had died in childbirth after bearing her husband a son. Sullivan Arthur Cane.
Cane. How ironic that the name Sullivan had honored from birth, the name he had fought to uphold, had been one his father had adopted, not owned. A title Richard Albert had used to protect his family from discovery, while all along his father had been a Sutherland. A Sutherland.
A vise seemed to squeeze around his throat. The air he drew into his lungs scraped like sand against the obstruction. Rupert had told him their mother was beautiful, but Sullivan’s childish imaginings had never come close.
She was so young in the picture—little more than sixteen, he’d wager. Soft brown hair had been drawn away from her forehead and cascaded down her back in a riot of ringlets. A sheer scarf had been wound, à la française, around her tight bodice, and billowing skirts spilled to the ground. But it was the laughter that lingered in her ice-green eyes and the saucy tilt of her lips that held him captive. No wonder his father had never really recovered after her death.
Chelsea lowered the candle again, throwing the painted face into obscurity. But she didn’t move away. Instead, a sadness stole into her expression.
“You come from a long line of distinguished people, Richard Sutherland. You should feel very proud of your heritage. Each succeeding generation has built upon the legacy and made it better. But when your father was slandered and sent away, the title was passed to a cousin. It nearly killed your grandmother. She never gave up hope that her son would be found. When that sailor came with a snatch of your father’s letter and your portrait, she didn’t know if she had the strength to hope, but she intensified her search.”
Her grip tightened, becoming nearly painful. “I can’t destroy that. I can’t allow anything to harm your campaign to regain all that belongs to you.” She turned to him with barely submerged despair. “But I’m not very strong. Not as strong as I used to think.” Her words dropped to a whisper. “Help me to be strong.”
Sullivan remained motionless, knowing that she thought her confession had been utterly private and that he hadn’t understood. But, heaven help him, he had.
Briefly, Sullivan wondered what would become of them all if he were to join league with Chelsea Wickersham, her servants, and Dowager Lady Sutherland. In order to do so, he would have to admit his Sutherland lineage and take a stand to defend it instead of leaving Chelsea and her allies to fend for themselves. It would mean ultimately exposing the Sutherland brothers. It would mean embroiling himself in a thirty-year-old deceit. He might sympathize with the dowager. He might even pity her. But she was nothing to him but a name. He owed her no loyalty that might endanger his brothers. They didn’t belong here. They had no desire to take upon themselves the same titles that had ultimately killed their parents.
On the other hand, in denying such a task, Sully would risk losing this woman. He didn’t know why such a thought made him panic. It wasn’t as if he’d known her for any great period of time. But he would be a liar if he professed to be unaffected by her presence. She touched him in myriad ways. The paradox of her personality only heightened her effect on him. He wanted her. He wanted to know everything about her. But he feared disappointing her.
Cupping her jaw, he tried to avoid seeing the earnest entreaty reflected in her face. He tried to ignore the vulnerability and think only of himself and his brothers. But in the space of a single evening, she had slammed a door of selfishness in his soul and forced him to look outside his own small immediate circle of concerns.
He thought of Richard. He’d sworn to protect him—would protect him, with his very life if necessary. Surely there was some plan that could help them both.
An acrid defeat tainted his tongue. No, the only way to come to Chelsea’s aid was to expose Richard’s identity. That was something he could not do.
I can’t help you, please don’t ask me.
He wanted to say the words aloud, but he couldn’t. Not because he shouldn’t reveal that he spoke English, but because he knew the sounds would never push free of the obstruction lodged in his throat.
He touched her jaw, resisting the intoxicating reaction he experienced when she melted into him, her lashes closing in delight.
A curious wonder flared. A spark of need ignited. He wanted more than that simple exploration of her cheek. He yearned to hold her, kiss her, absorb her into his very being.
Her eyelids flickered open, and she must have seen a portion of his thoughts, because she clutched his wrist to push him away, then paused, then clung.
He didn’t understand all that he saw in her face: hunger, pain, fear. But he understood the wanting. The hunger that overflowed and spilled into every facet of her being. Her posture lost its rigidity, her lips parted in invitation, her grip became a caress.
Sullivan savored the moments as they beaded tog
ether like rain on a spider’s web. He absorbed the texture of her skin against his, fine to coarse, smooth to rough. He reveled in the scent of her hair, the slight gasping puffs of breath she made against his chest.
She didn’t release him, but rather followed each step with a counter of her own. Like some intricate ballet, they drew together, shifted, touched, retreated, until Sullivan thought their movements more closely approximated dancing than evasion.
He indulged himself in each of her reactions. He brought her close enough so that the fabric of her gown whispered against his legs. She smiled, a delicate flush tinging her cheeks as he parted his legs and tugged her against him. Briefly, hip nudged against hip, then she side-stepped.
When she would have freed herself from his grasp, he held tight. But soon he realized that she didn’t wish to escape him. She moved to the desk and set the heavy candelabra on the far corner. Then, turning, she toyed with the buttons of his shirt.
“I don’t want to want you,” she whispered. The words held both pleasure and pain, regret and joy. “Until now, my life has been all I thought it could be. You spoiled all that. You made me long for more. You made me yearn for things I can never have. But not without endangering us both.”
Sullivan frowned, wondering how she could possibly believe that what blossomed between them could be wrong. He had lived long enough in this world to experience the allure of women, the lust, the friendship, the rejection. But he had never felt the potent combination of desire and possessiveness, passion and confusion that he felt now.
Chelsea closed the gap, standing so near that the folds of her skirts flattened between them and the shank buttons at her breast rubbed at his chest. Lifting on tiptoe, she smoothed away the creases of tension.
“Shh, shh. Don’t worry about me. I know I’m flirting with disaster. I know I should storm from this room and never return. I should leave you to your life, your family, and your future. But tonight I’m lonely and just a little sad.” She explored his chin. “I know I’ll come to regret this evening more than I’ve rued anything I’ve ever done. But I’ve lived with regret before. I’ve learned to survive it.” She approached for a kiss. “I just don’t want to be alone. Not tonight.”
The pressure of her lips against his was questioning at first. When he parted his mouth in reassurance, she kissed him with the fervor of a woman denied. Tongue clashed with tongue, warm, wet, and willing.
Greedily, she fought to absorb his very being into her own. The buckle of her gown dug into his flesh, she grasped at his shirt, taking great handfuls of linen, then continuing to seek for satisfaction.
Lifting her high in his arms, Sullivan returned each caress with one in kind. Never had a woman been so responsive, so alive, and yet so utterly fragile. Her desperation touched an aching chord, making him wish he could wrap her in lamb’s wool and protect her, even as he wished to initiate her to his flagrant need.
When he began to tremble, not from carrying her but from the overwhelming need to deepen these delicious sensations, he set her on the desk. Lifting her skirts high about her knees, he stepped between her thighs, damning the flounces and frilly underthings that bunched between them, preventing him from finding the bare skin he craved. Seeking solace, he cupped her buttocks, then mapped the delicate line of her spine and caressed her shoulder blades.
She was so beautiful, so astonishing. How could he have ever doubted that she was the fiery temptress who lingered on the fringes of his consciousness?
She broke away, trailing kisses down his throat. Grappling with the fastenings on his shirt, she tore them free, then continued to press tormenting caresses down his chest. Finally, dragging the fabric from the waist of his trousers, she wrenched the garment off his shoulders, imprisoning him in the sleeves.
Gasping, she watched him, wildly, daring him, inviting him to follow her lead. Then she bent forward to circle one nipple with her tongue before following the line that dissected his torso, down, down, ever down …
Tearing free, Sullivan stopped her mere inches from his navel. His heart pounded, his flesh seemed on fire. His mouth closed over her own, hungrily, passionately, no holds barred. The desk beneath her creaked as he tried to press forward. A pen fell to the floor, the inkwell, then, jarring free from its foundations, the candles.
At the clatter of brass to stone, he felt her pause. Her hands curled into his back. Her face buried in the hollow of his neck.
He could feel the intensity of the embrace they’d shared melt into the darkness. Below them, one candle fought to survive amid a puddle of dark ink. It sputtered and choked, throwing a spasmodic light.
Chelsea did not grow rigid and unfeeling. Sullivan had to give her credit for that. But when he tried to comfort her, she did not renew their embrace. A sadness had settled over her, an overwhelming regret.
“I can’t.” She clutched at his shoulders, once, twice, then released him. Easing from his arms, she slipped from the desk and peered around her as if she had forgotten where she’d been. At long last, she saw the portraits.
Walking forward, she touched the unpainted face of Lucrece Sutherland. He heard the ragged tempo of her breathing, and knew it was not just the result of their mutual desire. The weary set of her shoulders and the droop of her head spoke of a silent, overwhelming pain.
She took a step back, another, then retreated toward the doorway. “I’ll leave you with your kind.” Her skirts whispered of her shame and her untold longing. He thought she would disappear without another word, but at the doorway she turned.
Her hair had come loose from its pins and tumbled down her back, warm, alive, beautiful. The placket of her bodice hung open, exposing smooth, creamy skin and a hint of tatted lace at the yoke of her chemise. Ink and wax spattered the hem of her gown, but she didn’t appear to notice—or if she did, she didn’t care.
He took a step as if to follow her, but she shook her head, a small smile lifting her lips. But it was not a gesture of happiness, more a gesture of farewell.
“Good night. Lord Sutherland.”
Sullivan stood for some time, waiting, hoping she would return. She never did. So he scooped his shirt from the floor and went in search of a rag to clean the dark stains of ink that bespoke the intensity of their clinch, all the while feeling the gazes of his ancestors looking on.
Chelsea was unaccountably weary as she climbed the staircase and made her way down the corridor to the last door at the end of the hall.
Why had life taken such ironic twists? How could fate offer her hope with one hand, then snatch it away with the other? For years, she had been denied friendship, companionship, and love because of her past association with Nigel. She had battled to deny urges ingrained in women since the beginning of time. She had lived her solitary life—quite comfortably—with only a few regrets. Just when she was about to reverse the tables and fight to prove her worth, she was shown in a single fickle turn of fortune’s wheel how little one sweet moment of revenge meant compared to a lifetime of loneliness.
Letting herself into her room, Chelsea closed the door with more care than the action deserved and leaned her forehead against the jamb. She was beginning to believe that her burgeoning feelings for Richard Sutherland were not going to be transitory. Until now, she could pass them off as an aberration or poor judgment. But she feared that the yearnings she experienced could no longer be classified so simply. Lately, she depended far too much on seeing his smile and spending every minute of the day in his company. It didn’t seem to matter that he couldn’t converse with her. It didn’t seem to matter that he dressed like a savage and had the manners of a heathen. He made her feel good. He made her feel needed.
He made her feel whole.
You can’t have him, she told herself for the thousandth time. But the threat behind the phrase was beginning to lose its sting. The issues had not changed, nor had the circumstances. She couldn’t escape the fact that he was titled while she was not. He was her pupil whi
le she was his teacher.
But matters of position and tradition paled against her overriding concern. Chelsea Wickersham was not who she appeared to be. She might find a way to flaunt convention and encourage a relationship with her student, but she would never be able to outrun her past or the very real demons that pursued her. Every hour of peace she obtained was borrowed from a lifetime of regret. To draw him into her world would destroy him.
She couldn’t do that. As much as her body throbbed for satisfaction, as much as she longed for the succor of his presence, Chelsea had experienced the agony of being denied a future. She couldn’t force the same emotional and physical exile upon anyone else. Least of all a man who filled her with passion and tenderness, desire and love.
Regret knocked at her heart. Turning, she tugged at the buttons of her bodice and slipped the garment from her shoulders, dropping the boned article on her bed.
Sweet, gentle Smee had already turned down her covers and fluffed her pillows. The sight caused a reluctant smile to flicker at the edges of her lips. He and Greyson never ceased to watch out for her. Like a pair of aged fairy godfathers, they saw to her welfare in a thousand different ways.
After flinging open the windows to allow the murky breezes to flood the room, she crossed to the armoire and withdrew her carpet bag. Biddy would understand why she would abandon their plans in midcourse and run away. Chelsea only prayed that the old woman could find someone else to help her. Although Chelsea knew her actions could delay Richard’s return to society—perhaps even endanger them—at least this way both of them would be given a small measure of peace. These forbidden feelings would be stopped before they became overwhelming.
Chelsea stepped into the bathing room where Greyson had spread perfumed towels over the floor and had left a kettle of water on the fire. Stripping off the rest of her clothing, Chelsea quickly washed in the shallow footbath, then drew a batiste wrapper over her naked body. She would leave on the morrow. After she had found a way to notify Beatrice of the change in plans.
