by Ingrid Hahn
Chapter Nineteen
Giles was shivering uncontrollably when the sound of steps approached. His damp lashes fluttered open. He’d been drifting in and out of consciousness. With the dark-gray cloud cover hanging low over the sky, it was impossible to ascertain whether he’d been lying there for minutes or hours.
“Look what you’ve done to yourself now, you foolish whelp.”
The duke came into view, his normally immaculate boots caked with mud, and the sweeping hem of his black greatcoat heavy with moisture. He came to stand over his son.
Giles set his jaw. He wanted to scream and rail against his father, beat the man’s face until it was utterly unrecognizable.
He had—himself, mere hours ago, when he’d still had the powers of levelheaded reason—told the duke that nothing the man did was Giles’s fault.
Didn’t matter what he wanted. None of it. Not anymore.
How bitter it was that Giles had to face the same thing now. It wasn’t just that he’d have to live with what happened. He had to live with knowing he couldn’t blame anybody but himself.
The duke bent, offering his hand. “Come.”
Giles glowered and squinted. The pain was so intense, it was affecting his eyes. What he could see in the focal point of his vision was slightly sharper, smaller, and more detailed. Like peering through a queer lens. Like his head was a grape about to split open under the pressure of two fingers.
His peripheral vision, conversely, was blurred and slightly…clouded. A fuzzy sort of…sort of halo had appeared around each object.
He rolled to his undamaged side and pushed up on his right arm. The left dragged uselessly, an all but completely dead appendage, heavy but searing with torment.
The duke bent and tried to take Giles by force. Giles jerked away. “Don’t touch me.”
But he was crippled and trapped. There was no place to go. No place to hide. And no way to fight. Silverlund grabbed his right arm and, with a grunt, heaved Giles to his feet. “And now, my son, you are in my debt.”
“Father.” Giles lifted his face to stare at the man earnestly. “Thank you.”
The duke rarely wore shock on his features. Strange that it appeared now. “What?”
“I was discharging my debt to you.” Speaking through the pain was no easy task. But if Giles did not, his father would see the extent of his injury. “You offered me assistance—unwelcome assistance, but assistance. I gave you my thanks. We are done.”
“Oh, but you owe me so much more.”
“And I suppose you’ll be in no hurry to let me forget it.” Giles could have used further aid as they started hobbling back in the direction of Glenrose, but he’d be damned before he asked for it.
“Mock me all you please, my boy. If you don’t yet understand that I won’t stop, then I’ll take pleasure in beating it into you. There are worse things than a dead horse.”
Giles almost stumbled. It had been an unspoken rule between them that no word about, in reference to, or even possibly pertaining to Icarus should ever pass between their lips.
Now the rule lay shattered. As useless as Giles’s left arm.
…
After a few days’ travel, confusion erupted all around Patience when she reappeared at home unexpectedly without her maid. She’d had the carriage let her out at the inn, leaving her trunk there temporarily to support the fiction that she’d traveled by post, and had walked the rest of the way in the fading light. It was the time of day when the streets were crowded with workers and tempting smells came from the stalls of the eel pie sellers.
She found her parents in the street about to take a brief stroll before their evening meal. Her mother’s shock quickly shifted to disapproval, her mouth pinching when Patience had explained where Frances had gone. “Well. She should have asked me. To think, she allowed my daughter to travel alone. Imagine the things that could have befallen you.”
“Highwaymen are a thing of the past, Mother. And I don’t think they ever accosted post coaches, did they?” Patience affected her best weary voice, all the while mentally chiding herself for having been so foolish as to forget an important detail. “I assure you, I was quite safe.”
“I think I can be the judge of what is and isn’t safe for you, daughter.” Her mother scrutinized Patience sharply, gaze climbing down slowly before wandering back up again. “Your cheeks look, well, a little hollow. You’ve been following a new reducing regime, haven’t you?”
Mrs. Emery’s mouth squeezed into a little smile.
That. Always that. Bristling, Patience pursed her lips. She didn’t want to be affected by such nonsense. But her mother’s comment cut a wound that hadn’t quite healed. She was beautiful now, quite independently of whether or not she’d caught the eye of the marquess. Then why was there a pang in her chest insisting it would have been preferable for her mother to have guessed Patience was no longer a virgin?
She needed rest and refreshment. A cup of tea and a little cake to settle her nerves.
Patience stuck her nose in the air, lifted her skirts a very respectable amount in order to take the steps up to the door, and swanned into the building. “No, I haven’t.”
From behind her came the soft murmur of her father’s voice. He bit out clipped words from between his teeth. “Martha, we just talked about this.”
Her mother snapped back, “I know, Charles, but—”
Thankfully, her mother’s voice went indistinct as Patience took the stairs up to their rooms.
Patience tried keeping her expression placid and serene while she gave her things over to the young girl working in Frances’s stead, but there must have been a crack. No sooner was the whole family in the doorway to the drawing room than her father gave her a significant look.
Mrs. Emery disappeared through the door. Ducking past, Patience’s father took her aside.
He cleared his throat and spoke in low tones. “My dear, are you quite well?”
Patience attempted a smile. But not too brightly nor too wanly. Last night, she’d had to wash the last of the mica from her skin. It had been bittersweet. She’d had to, but doing so had been like cleansing herself of him. It was too close to betrayal. “Tired from the journey is all.”
“I realize…” He cleared his throat again, withered old cheeks assuming a touch of red. “Well, that is to say, a father might not be exactly what a girl wants when she requires a confidant, but you know I’m always here for you, don’t you?”
“Oh, Father.” Patience kissed his forehead. Poor, dear man. He’d have an apoplexy if he had any inkling about the jewel Patience had in a secret pocket she’d sewn into her traveling dress. Where the jewel had come from. Or what Patience had done while wearing it.
…
A few days passed. The sense that she’d done everything wrong clung stubbornly like soot on white silk. Patience had left when the duke had commanded, storm or no. There hadn’t been time to bid the marquess farewell.
But the horse’s scream…
It had pierced her like a spear through her gullet. She’d gone cold. Her spine had straightened, and she’d all but pressed her nose against the carriage’s rattling windowpane. There had been nothing but thick trees and heavy rain.
She should have stopped.
She hadn’t.
Was it worse than having slipped away from the castle without a farewell to Giles? It seemed that way.
Patience stood at the tiny window of the room staring out. The rain that had plagued the last few days was no more than a drizzle.
Elizabeth sat at the writing desk scratching out the latest installment of their serial with the changes they’d earlier agreed upon. Countless times, Patience had considered confiding in Elizabeth. But every time she took a breath to speak, she was unable to form the words. Patience found her chair by the fire and tried to refocus on the book her friend had brought.
It was quiet company. Exactly what Patience required—not to be alone. They were close enough friends tha
t they didn’t need to be always chattering away.
A discreet knock came at the door, and Frances slipped in. “Time to make ready, Miss Emery.”
Elizabeth finished the last few lines, sanded and blotted, then rose, absentmindedly gathering the stray pages into a pile as she looked at Patience. “You’ll tell me everything, won’t you?”
For the thousandth time, Patience wished Elizabeth were coming, too. “It’s not going to be any fun without you.”
The trouble was, Mrs. Emery and Mrs. Wells, Elizabeth’s mother, were very different kinds of people. Elizabeth’s family had given up on the idea of her ever marrying and would never consider spending money on the appropriate clothing for her to “mingle with her betters,” as her mother might say, and Elizabeth (happily) spent all her own money on books.
“Don’t talk like that.” Elizabeth flashed a wide smile, her cheeks even rosier than usual. She had the unselfish person’s ability to be genuinely happy for her friends, even when said friend was getting exactly what she herself wanted. “I expect you to have twice the fun precisely because I won’t be there.”
They kissed one another goodbye.
At the bed, Frances laid out a gown for one final examination. Bless the woman, she’d endured a hellish tongue-lashing from Patience’s mother when she returned but had laughed about it in private later when Patience had expressed concern.
Frances fussed over the plain sand-colored silk Patience would wear tonight for Lord and Lady Reyne’s ball. A place Patience didn’t belong. Her mother had finagled invitations on the strength of her connection to the admiral—and she couldn’t wait to go. Lord and Lady Reyne was all she’d talked about the whole day long.
As for Patience…she could only think of him. “Is this the best we can do, Frances?”
“Miss?”
“I mean with my dresses. Isn’t there something prettier? A shining bronze silk trimmed with lace, perhaps? With ruffles along the hem?”
The maid’s worried expression suggested the woman wasn’t certain how to respond.
Patience sighed and tried to smile. “It’s all right. I’m dreaming a little. I know there isn’t such a gown, not for me, not now.” Probably not ever.
She had about as much interest in going to this ball as letting a drunk man drill into an aching tooth.
In her bedchamber with the insipid silk waiting, Patience rose. She had to stop feeling so awfully sorry for herself. She almost couldn’t stand her own company. A hundred cobwebs in her head had to be forcefully cleared. For that, she needed a distraction.
“Give me a moment, will you, Frances?”
The maid curtsied and left silently. Patience crept to the door, locked it, and winced when the bolt slipped into position. Then she sighed, a bit jealous, a bit foolish for being ridiculous. But really, even the door had it better than she did.
Feeling sorry for herself, well, that had to end now. All her wonderful memories would be hers forever.
Bolder than she’d ever been before the marquess, she took a hand mirror from the tidy surface of the dressing table, went to the bed, and pushed back the coverings. From a tiny slit she’d cut in the mattress, she withdrew the jewel. She stared at it a moment, considering. A quirked smile tilted the sides of her mouth upward. How had he known she’d enjoy such an unusual…thing?
Carefully, she eased her way to sitting and hiked up her skirts. Mirror in hand, she opened her legs…and took it all in. Her. Slightly strange, but pretty, hidden, as it was, in a tuft of curling hair. The thing itself, her quim, was intricate and simple at once, with a neat arrangement of symmetrical sides. The line standing proud at the top that was anything but decorative—a bit like hard cartilage under a protective hood, and what it did to her when she stroked it. Then downward to the plump outer lips and the delicate line of petal-like inner lips…
The last time she’d seen herself like this, Ashcroft was piercing her body with his own. He’d been huge, hot, and so bloody hard. When he’d slipped the shank of the jewel up her backside, she’d been thrust into previously unimaginable extremes of pleasure.
This time was hardly less potent. When she slipped the jewel into the puckered opening, she paused, her inner muscles clenching, belly going taut under the generous layer of flesh. The wrongness of what she was doing heightened the pleasure, pushing her so close to the brink, she could almost taste it. After several days without coming, her body was eager to resume.
Patience looked back into the mirror, staring with hooded eyes at her wet flesh. She dipped a finger inside. And moaned. She was tight, wet, and desperate for the intimate caress. It felt good. She paced herself, going slowly at first, easing in and out, in and out again, deepening her explorations slightly each time.
She worked harder, first and second finger cradling her pleasure point, and pushed thoughts from her mind. Sensation heightened. She brushed her hand up her body slowly until coming to her breast, kneading herself forcefully. Her hips rocked, her legs trembled as she pushed herself toward climax.
In a crash, she came. A quick tightening between her legs, then the pulsing release.
She relaxed, eyes fluttering open to stare unfocused at the plain boards of the sloping roof.
This was plenty enjoyable. Giving it up was unimaginable. The currents of desire ran deep. Maybe because there was so much more to her, she had stronger desires than other women.
But could a solitary act sustain her through a lifetime?
There was always the chance she could get married. Truth be told, she faulted others for judging her for her size, but she herself assumed nobody would be interested in a partner of her dimensions. Clearly, she’d been wrong.
Patience brushed her wet fingers back and forth over her lips. When would she again feel the press of a man’s mouth against hers?
Hang it.
In a flurry of determination, she pushed to sitting and righted herself, taking the jewel from her backside and returning it to the hiding place.
She didn’t want another man. She wanted the marquess.
Chapter Twenty
Not wanting to blink, Patience’s eyes had gone dry. Damn things ached from staring across the ballroom all night, and her vision was beginning to feel strained. Upon the first landing of the sweeping staircase where two sets of steps, mirror images, met to become one, Lord and Lady Reyne greeted the new arrivals.
The guests already crammed the ballroom, pressed from flushed cheek to wobbly jowl. Were there always this many people at a ball? Patience scanned the room. Her mother probably knew them all by name and report, having studied those gossipy scandal sheets religiously for decades. Patience herself occasionally glanced at them. When her mother wasn’t looking. That’s the only reason she knew Lord Reyne and Lord Ashcroft’s names were linked as friends.
As to Ashcroft, where was he? Wasn’t he coming?
If only Elizabeth were here. Even if Patience hadn’t confided in her friend, the presence of an ally would have done much to bolster her strength.
A name was announced, at the same moment as a loud laugh burst out too closely in the merry group next to her. A murmur went through the room. Patience snapped her gaze back to the hosts just in time to catch them exchanging a brief surprised glance. Lady Reyne schooled her features, then smiled graciously and curtsied.
Patience’s mouth dropped open. Silverlund.
For as long as she lived, he’d always be the man in the black greatcoat, barely distinguishable from the darkness of the night around him, with fire reflected in his eyes.
If the look the hosts shared when he appeared at the top of the first set of steps was any indication, he had not been expected. Patience set her teeth. What did this mean? Silverlund was far from unknown to mingle in Society, true. However, he kept select company. Most people weren’t good enough for him, and her recent experience with the man made it keenly obvious that he probably let everyone around him know exactly that in no uncertain terms.
A hand wr
apped around her elbow. It was her mother. “Come, my dear. Mr. Wilshire would like to dance with you.”
Patience’s mouth went tight. She’d forgotten about Mr. Wilshire. Her very own drink of cloudy water. “Pray tell the gentleman that I thank him for his regard, but that I have no intention of dancing tonight.”
Her mother’s face darkened, and she leaned in, struggling to keep her features if not cheerful, then at least placid. “No, Patience. You will dance with him.”
Patience kept her voice low. Whoever overheard them, overheard them—so far as she cared, they could. However, she would respect the fact that her mother would, no doubt, feel differently. “Mama, I do want to honor you, but I must be allowed to make my own decisions in such matters.”
“Decisions?” Her mother strained a laugh. A stray draft was toying with the long, blue feather emerging from her turban. When she continued, her voice dropped…and wavered a very small amount. “It’s only a dance, Patience.”
Patience turned her full attention upon her mother and broached the question at which she never before dared so much as hint, letting the words tumble from her lips before she lost her nerve. “Are you ashamed of me?”
The feather bobbed with the force of her head jerking upright in affront, and her mother went white before turning scarlet. “How dare you?”
How Patience dared was one thing her mother could never be allowed to know. She dared because of Ashcroft. Because he didn’t have to dare anything to be himself. He just was.
Before she could answer, however, the dreaded Mr. Wilshire bobbed through the crowd. He was a bit shorter than the average, requiring him to stand on the tips of his toes every so often to make sure he was headed in the right direction. What had made her father decide to make an alliance of any kind with this man? They’d met at a coffee shop, the kind Mr. Emery liked to frequent to pilfer newspapers for articles he could reprint. Patience used to believe her father had taken the odd Mr. Wilshire under his wing as an act of compassion. Now, with money muddling everything up and her mother pushing for marriage, Patience didn’t know what to think.