His words wrapped around her, easing her out of the shock of his original question.
His face went grave. “It isn’t that you have a tail, is it?”
For a moment she stilled, then guffawed, her fingers going to her mouth as she laughed. “No. I am happy to report I am without tail.”
Her hand fell away from her lips, her head shaking. “And I don’t have an explanation for you. I searched for an answer to that same question for a very long time and never found it. For far too many nights even after my husband died.” Her shoulders lifted, stiffening. “I tried. I tried to give him an heir. Tried to satisfy him in bed. Satisfy him in life. But it was never more than cold. In the dining room. In a carriage. In the bedroom. Cold. Perfunctory.”
“For the amount of fire you have lacing your blue eyes, burning in you, I find that hard to believe.”
She looked out the window, her hands running along the tops of her thighs. How had he just managed to get her to admit to that? To the very true nature of her marriage that on all accounts to anyone peering in, had been a grand success. Worse yet, she felt her mouth opening with more words. “I was docile then. Doing what was expected of me. Trying to figure out what more I could do to please him. To make him love me. From the moment I could walk I was in training to be the perfect wife of a peer. Manners and French and party planning and witty banter on all manner of topics. But the one thing I wasn’t taught was how to make a man love me. And I never did discover that secret.”
“Yet at some point you left docile behind?”
“I did.” A smile came to her face as she watched a grove of ancient oaks pass by. “The fire in my eyes only came about a year after he died and I stumbled upon the realization that I could do anything I wanted—within reason of course. I was no longer constrained by a husband or the title. The cousin that acquired the earldom had little concern for me other than making sure my thirds was in order and the dower house was adequately updated. Now I only hear from him once a year, if that.”
“Every dowager should be so lucky.”
A soundless chuckle bubbled up through her throat and she nodded, glancing at him. “Exactly. So I learned I could talk with whom I wanted. Go to London and stay with friends. Attend the opera or parties or balls that I chose—ones that were actually interesting to me. I could go and bury myself in Lord Kallen’s Roman baths and excavate and get completely filthy from head to toe and stay down there, day after day, and no one said a word. It was all my own choice. Before that I had done nothing but acquiesce to my husband’s wishes—how he desired me to spend my time.”
Her gaze moved to the window. “So it was a beautiful thing, realizing all of that. The first time I went to the opera with a friend, Lady Hewton, after the earl died, I bumped into an old acquaintance from my childhood, Mr. Drayson. He was the fourth son of a baron, so my mother broke our contact when I was twelve, lest I start to get designs on an illicit love affair with a boy so removed from a title. I hadn’t been able to have more than short greetings with him—and then none at all after I was seventeen and the earl locked me away as his very proper betrothed.”
The right side of her mouth lifted in a smile. “I’d always enjoyed Mr. Drayson’s company and he had always made me laugh, so I stood and talked with my friend for an hour—even as the next act had started. It was entirely wrong and I knew it. And just when I was to excuse myself to get back to our box, I came upon the realization that there was no one to admonish me. No one to tell me how I’d failed my husband, the title. How I put shame upon our household.”
“That’s a lot of detriment to defer from a simple conversation that lasted too long.”
“Exactly.” Her look went onto him. “The ton thrives on judgement and that was what I was shackled with. But I was struck at the opera house that none of it applied to me anymore. None of it. And I finally grasped what that meant for me.”
The miniscule smile from the morning resurfaced on Rune’s face. “So what did you do?”
“With what?”
“With Mr. Drayson. Did you excuse yourself to go back to your seat?”
A sideways grin came to her face. “Not exactly.”
His eyebrows lifted.
“I excused myself to go back to his townhouse. He wasn’t married at the time. And I certainly wasn’t.”
A snappy chuckle escaped his lips.
Her hand lifted and fell in her lap. “All of it was wrong. I knew it. But by the next morning, the next day—it didn’t matter. Society didn’t care on me anymore. I was no longer a threat to mamas with respectable daughters to marry off. I’d had my chance to produce an heir of an earl and I’d failed. I was used, tarnished goods.”
A frown set onto his face. “Not producing an heir with a man that wasn’t interested in you hardly seems like a failure.”
“It is. It was.” She shrugged. “I knew what I was supposed to be and I failed at it. It is an honest assessment. My choices after that failure were to be saddened by that fact or embrace the freedom of that fact. I ended up choosing freedom.”
“A finch out of its cage.” His miniscule smile reappeared and widened, actually turning up the edges of his lips. Breathtaking. Impish. She hadn’t thought he could be more handsome than he was, and then the man had dared to smile a real smile.
Everything in her told her to look away, to not meet his eyes.
But she hadn’t listened to common sense in a long time.
Her gaze lifted and locked onto his eyes, transfixed as the copper swirled into the green in his irises, glowing, almost smoldering. Her fingers tightened in her lap. “If I’m a finch, that makes you a hawk. Obnoxiously confident and strong. Deadly. And completely unapologetic.”
He laughed.
“And I can see you circling, eyeing your next prey.”
He stilled, his stare fixing on her. “So what if I am?”
“I am not your next meal, Rune. You offered to accompany me. Jules and Des thought it appropriate for some godforsaken reason—”
“You need to be protected.”
“What I need and what they think I need are two different things.”
“You need to be protected. You don’t have the slightest inkling what you’re holding onto.” His finger flicked out, pointing at the lump in the left-side pocket of her skirts.
Shifting onto her right thigh, she fished the Box of Draupnir out of the left side of her skirt. She flipped the box about in her fingers, staring at it. “And you do?”
“More than most.”
She swung the top of the box open and stared at the ring of entwined golden strands and the stark ruby set in the middle of it. The wood grew straight through the middle of the ring so there was no way to remove the ring, or so she assumed. Maybe that was just another secret of the box she didn’t understand.
Her look lost in the deep red of the stone, she attempted to feel something—anything—of its magical powers. A tingle down her spine. A dark shadow over her brain. She knew she was missing something when it came to the box. Everyone else claimed the air around them changed, that the box did something to them—made them want to possess it.
She felt nothing. An odd duck, as usual.
Elle swung the lid closed and held the box out to Rune. “So why don’t you take it and get it to its home?”
He visibly recoiled, his palms lifting to her. “It’s not my place to do so.”
“But what if I made it your place, entrusted you with it? If Jules and Des trusted you to protect me, I’m sure they would trust you to take control of the box.”
“Put the box away. I don’t want it.” His head shaking, Rune’s mouth had pulled into a severe line. “While you’re fearless when it comes to the curse, I have seen it tear down too many men. I will help you find the box’s origins, I will protect you until it is delivered, but that is all. I can never take possession of it.”
“So you’re afraid of it?”
He nodded, his stare not leaving the box she st
ill held up between them. “Aye. That I am.”
She withdrew the box, slipping it into her pocket, trying to ignore the cold shiver snaking along her spine.
That Rune had just reacted so strongly to the box didn’t sit well with her.
He knew so much more than what he was saying.
Which left her with one unsettling thought.
What had she gotten herself into with the box—with him?
{ Chapter 8 }
Rune stepped out of the south door of the Raplan dower house. A manor that loomed over lush, finely manicured gardens, it celebrated the symmetry and proportion of ancient Greek architecture, with its minimalized adornment that highlighted the impeccable red-tinged ashlar stonework.
Not modest, as so many dower houses were.
For as much as Elle claimed she was the ignored member of the Raplan family, she was still afforded luxury about her that most could only dream of.
Two days in the carriage with her and they’d stepped onto the Isle of Wight from the ferry the previous night without even a whisper of another ambush. To his own detriment, he’d grown far too accustomed to looking at her face in those days, watching the quirk of her mouth, enjoying the small, but unique, bump along the tip of her nose. She was damned entrancing and he’d let his gaze drift far too many times down her body during the long hours.
But he’d woken up clearheaded this morning, redetermined to get into the Roman baths, discover what he could about the origin of the box, and then he could move on from this place. From her.
He couldn’t afford to get diverted by thoughts of what he’d like to do to Elle’s body. Rampant, bawdy imagery like that was fine to pass the time when they were stuck in a carriage together, but those hours of leisure were behind him. Had to be behind him.
He inhaled. The air was thicker with the sea here, but not so close to the waters that he tasted salt on his tongue. He squinted at the sun poking through the hazy clouds streaming by. For as early as he’d arisen to write and send off a letter to London, he’d thought Elle would still be lounging about in her quarters, resting after their journey to the island.
He was wrong.
Elle’s housekeeper was quick to wrinkle her nose at his question as to Elle’s whereabouts. Apparently Elle had been out on the grounds for hours.
And so he trekked out on foot, searching the extensive estate. It held three ponds, numerous gardens and walking paths, and was lined with woods on the three sides that didn’t face the far-off sea. An idyllic, almost Eden-like retreat from the mainland and the exact opposite of London.
If he wasn’t careful, he could get lost here for years.
The thought popped in his head and it instantly irked him. Focus. Focus.
It took him another hour before he spied Elle on the southernmost end of the estate near the rowing pond. An open-air pavilion, lined on the pond side with six tall stone columns, sat at the crest between the pond and the land that stretched unencumbered to the distant sea. Rune paused beside a tree just inside the line of woods before the ground started to roll downward into the pond.
Standing alongside the water’s edge by blooming lily pads, Elle moved to the side of a tall, black Calabrese stallion, stroking its neck with a smile on her face. A smile that turned into a laugh as she looked up at the gentleman standing beside her and holding the reins of the horse.
Her lilting laughter tangled with the man’s deep chortle as the wind caught the sound and brought it to Rune’s ears. His stare went to the man. Dressed in finery that made his stomach twist, the man had a paunch and dark hair peppered with grey. Older, but not so old he wouldn’t think he could hold his own with someone as young as Elle.
What the blast was she doing with him?
Another laugh. More smiles. Murmured words and the man took a step closer to her.
A sudden thunder of hooves startled him and his eyes lifted past Elle to see a woman in a bright yellow riding habit bearing down on the two of them from the forest beyond the pond.
The woman yanked her horse to an abrupt stop just before trampling Elle. Her look pitched downward at Elle, haughty and disinterested at the same time. “Lady Raplan, when did you arrive back on the island?”
“Last night.” Elle’s hand drew long against the tall black stallion’s neck, her smile unperturbed by the woman’s sharp tones. “You are out for a long ride today, Lady Wrestnut? The horses look to be run through the paces.”
Lady Wrestnut pointedly looked to the man. “We were, until my husband saw fit to leave me in the plum orchard at Chestnut Abbey. Fit to leave me and find you.”
A choke bubbled up from Elle’s throat, her smile faltering as she coughed. “Oh, I do not think Lord Wrestnut had any inkling to find me. I just happened by as his horse was drawing water.”
Lady Wrestnut’s pinched face twisted and her glare bored into Elle. “Truly, Lady Raplan, such flimsy excuses, you don’t even try anymore. These games you play with men are far beneath the Raplan name and I have a good mind to write the earl about your behavior. Maybe he could have the good sense where other men fail and evict you from these lands.”
Elle’s head snapped back, her palm falling from the horse as her forced smile dissolved from her lips.
“Beatrice—”
“Hush, Horton.” Lady Wrestnut’s glare whipped to her husband. “I’m not interested in your words at the moment. Mount your horse this instant. We’re leaving.”
Elle stumbled a step backward as Lord Wrestnut awkwardly tipped his beaver hat to her and moved about his horse, gaining his saddle and quickly following his wife away from the pond and into woods that lined the edge of the Raplan estate.
Elle stood still at the water’s edge for a long minute, her shoulders drooping, her arms limp at her sides as she watched them retreat.
One minute, not a second more.
Her shoulders lifted with a slight shake of her head and she spun about, walking to the pavilion just up the hill from the edge of the pond and she moved inside, disappearing from view.
From his angle into the Palladian structure, Rune could see several plush settees lining the edges of the interior.
Two days ago she’d talked at length about the freedom being a widow gave her. Openly admitted to liaisons. And she’d said all those words without apology. Without caring on his judgement. He’d never seen such disregard for propriety so strikingly flaunted by a lady—a lady of the ton.
All that, yet he’d seen Elle’s eyes when that woman had cut her.
The blade of condemnation slicing across her face. How she had recoiled.
For as much as Elle cherished her freedom, it did come with a heavy toll.
Rune glanced over his shoulder. He wanted to get on with their visit to the Marquess of Kallen in order to gain access to his Roman baths and investigate the chambers that held the mosaics of the Box of Draupnir, yet he also didn’t want to interrupt Elle at this juncture.
Just as he was about to turn around and leave, he stopped, giving himself a shake.
Get the box to its home.
That was the goal.
Letting a little thing like witnessing an embarrassing scene alter him from that course was silly.
He turned to the pavilion and walked toward it.
Pausing by a column at the opening of the airy building, he watched Elle at the opposite side of the wide room that was lined with windows to cut the sea winds.
She stood with her back to him, her fingers entwined in the blue ribbon of her simple white bonnet she’d set on the ledge of a window. As she stared out at the distant sea through an open window, the breeze caught strands of her chestnut hair that had escaped from her chignon and made them dance. She had on a simple walking dress, light and airy, transparent white muslin layered over a deeper blue which made it look like she’d captured the movement of the sea on her body.
Hell, but he had to stop to look at her. She was beautiful, yes, but he’d never done that with any woman—never paused
to gaze at them from afar. He was always too busy, moving onto the next moment in time. But with Elle…any stolen moment he’d had during the last few days to stop and inconspicuously watch her, he’d seized the opportunity.
Ridiculous. Out of character. Unnecessary whimsy that had no place in his life.
Yet he couldn’t quite stop the urge to still his body and just stare at her.
Couldn’t quite stop his imagination from sprinting away from him, from creating a scene where he was dragging her skirts up, trailing his fingers along the smooth creaminess of her skin, setting his lips to the small divot just above her collarbone.
Pure frivolity.
His jaw shifted to the side and he moved forward to stand next to her, looking out at the distant sea.
“Damn, but you are stealthy.” She didn’t look at him, her gaze riveted on the far-off waters. “I suppose you saw that, didn’t you?”
His gaze shifted to her, studying her profile. “Lord and Lady Wrestnut? Yes.”
“So you heard it as well.”
“Aye.”
Her chest lifted in a deep breath and she gave an almost imperceptible nod. “I know you think me a whore. This, Lord Lockford in Charminster.”
“Is that not what you portray?”
Her gaze finally shifted to him. “Whatever you think I am, Rune, you’re wrong.” Her hands went onto the stone edge of the window-sill and she looked out at the sea. “But I have stopped caring on what others think of me long ago.”
Rune crossed his arms, leaning his right shoulder on the cool stone wall beside the window as he studied her. “That’s why you willingly—without a fight—take the ire of some old bat who needs to blame you for her husband’s wandering eye instead of blaming her husband? Unless the woman is justified in her ire?”
She gave him a withering sidelong glance. “Lord Wrestnut is entertainment, nothing more. He has always made me laugh and he is a lovable bear of a man. But yes, he does have a wandering eye. He is also double my age. There has never been anything more than open-air, public conversations between us and there never will be. As for battling Lady Wrestnut, it is not worth the energy. Futile. No matter what I say, I cannot change the course of her mind, and I accept that.”
The Soul of a Rogue (A Box of Draupnir Novel Book 3) Page 5