“I know you can. I’ve seen that strength reflected in your eyes, but sometimes it is nice to have another to lean on. Sometimes, Isabella, it is nice to be needed, to offer comfrot and a shoulder to a soul in need. I want to be that person. That comfort. That shoulder upon which you may lay your head and rest.”
“I don’t think this is wise, my lord.” She swallowed and licked her lips, trying to be brave about this, even though what she was going to say was the furthest thing from what she wanted. “I think you should leave. People may talk, they might even see your carriage and realize that my uncle is out tonight. It’s…not done to be here with you without a proper chaperone.”
“I’ll not leave you alone, Isabella. I promised you that. I also promise that you’re safe from me.”
“My reputation—”
“Will come to no harm. I assure you. Come, is my company so very unpalatable that you wish me gone?”
With a flush, she looked down at her clasped hands, then back at him. “You know it is not. But—”
“But nothing, Isabella. I will stay and keep you company. Nothing more. Perhaps I have need of your company, as well.”
Something inside her fractured. No one since her mother had needed her, and hearing Black’s words, whispered in his deeply masculine voice, freed her. To be needed by someone like him was a balm to her soul.
“Is…is that true?” she asked, her voice quiet, almost hesitant. When he caught her chin on the edge of his fingers and forced her to look at him, she saw with clarity the sincerity in his eyes.
“Never have the words been truer, Isabella. Tonight,” he murmured, his eyes darkening, “I do have need of you. A need so great that I know I could never make my feet move to that door—even if you asked it of me.”
Her insides felt warm, and she smiled, relieved that he had refused her. “I want to give you my thanks, my lord. You’ve been very kind to me, and I’ve taken you away from your evening festivities.”
“Nonsense. Here, with you, is where I want to be.”
Isabella was flushing profusely as he led her to the salon. It was clear he had been to visit her uncle before, for he knew his way around the house without being shown. How had she never seen him here? she wondered.
“Now then, sit here,” he said softly, and helped her to sit on the chaise longue. The fire was laid in the hearth, and the roar and crackle of the flames instantly heated her chilled body. It was a wonderful feeling to be warm again. To feel safe. Highgate seemed far away now and that afternoon’s dream long gone. For the first time since leaving Black’s carriage after retrieving her medicine she felt at ease.
They sat in companionable silence while the parlor maid carried in a tea service, and passed a steaming cup of cider to her. Black refused a drink with a brisk shake of his head.
“I can ask the maid to retrieve the whiskey if you’d like. Uncle keeps it in his study.”
“No, thank you.”
“Something to eat, then?”
“No, I’m comfortable. And I will help myself later if I need anything.”
Silence descended once more, and sipping the warm, comforting drink, Isabella let the familiar taste of cinnamon and apples, with a delicate lashing of mulled wine, warm her insides and quiet her thoughts. It was really rather lovely sitting here in this cozy salon, which was the smallest of the public rooms in Stonebrook’s mansion, the firelight glowing and crackling while the autumn winds picked up and howled outside. She really should excuse herself and find a mirror. She probably looked a fright. Her gown was loose around her bodice and she was certain parts of her hair had come unpinned and were hanging loose. Except, she could not make herself move. The chaise longue was much too comfortable, and all too soon her eyelids began to close, only to flicker wide when Black’s voice disturbed the quiet.
“May I say that I’m thankful you wrote to me and requested I join you at the séance, Isabella.”
“What?” She was certainly wide awake now. “Wrote to you?”
“Yes. I received your note during dinner.”
“My lord, I realize that I might have acted…indiscreet in the maze last night, and this afternoon in the carriage…” She swallowed another gulp of her cider and tried to meet his eyes. “It may seem to you that I am rather…well…bold for a lady of my years, and perhaps I have been, but I may assure you, my lord, that boldness has not lent itself to writing you missives.”
His gaze narrowed, and something very dark and alarming glittered in his eyes. “You did not pen this note?”
Rising from his chair, he strolled to her as his fingers fished in his waistcoat pocket. Sitting down beside her, he handed her the missive. She opened it, read it and gave it back to him. Her hands were shaking and her mind reeling with the implications.
“I don’t understand this, my lord. I most certainly did not write that letter. Someone has forged my signature. Oh, I cannot believe it,” she began, her anxiety spiking. “Someone must have seen us today, in the carriage, or last night. Oh, what will my uncle say if he learns of my behavior—after everything he’s done for me?”
“Your uncle will say nothing, because he will not learn of anything that has transpired between us.” He placed his fingers on her chin and gently turned her head to look upon him. “And as to the message, I will discover who has written it. In light of what happened, maybe the missive was well intentioned, hmm?”
Oh, she didn’t want to think of those events tonight, when she had acted like a complete ninny with him. To be able to turn the hands of time back, she would not have gone to that ridiculous séance in the first place.
“I’m glad I was there.” His voice was deep and luring, and she gazed up at him as he brushed his fingers along her cheek. “The roses are still gone from your cheeks. Your skin so pale. I can still see you, struggling for air.”
She was positively humiliated by the memory. Her over active imagination, her irrational fears, had made her act like a silly chit straight out of the schoolroom. And in front of Black who was suave and worldly, and so in control of himself.
A sharp pang of disappointment seared her breast as he released her and moved away. Their intimate moment was broken, and she had been half holding her breath, hoping that Black would kiss her once more, as he had that afternoon in the carriage. The slight hum in her body that had been present in the cottage was now a very real, very live current of need. It took only his nearness to make it flare to life.
“Tell me, Isabella, do you know of something called the House of Orpheus?”
“No. Why?”
“Have you ever heard the name?”
“No. I have no idea who Orpheus is.”
“Was,” Black muttered as he returned the missive to his pocket. “Orpheus was an ancient Greek poet who descended to Hades and returned. His lover, Persephone, who was forced to spend half the year in Hades, is the symbol of rebirth for those believers who follow Orpheus’s teachings.”
“I’m sorry. I do not know much Greek mythology.” Her face flamed, and she knew the exact instant the roses returned to her cheeks. It was the moment she felt utterly humiliated in Black’s presence.
“Understandable. Mythology is not often taught to girls, is it?”
“No, I don’t think you understand, my lord. My education was rather lacking until my aunt sent for me the summer I was fifteen. I was tutored then, upstairs in the nursery. But my studies focused on more practical matters. Not philosophy or mythology. Before that, my mother taught me to read, but little else. Her attentions were focused elsewhere.”
Mercifully he did not comment on her lack of education or the embarrassment of not having benefited from any formal training. She didn’t think she could bear it if he did.
“Perhaps you’ve heard your uncle or…Lucy talk of Orpheus and his teachings?”
“No, I’m afraid not.”
“Mr. Knighton, then?”
Isabella shook her head, trying to understand what he wanted from her.<
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“You see, the wax seal on the missive, it contains a lyre and a set of laurel leaves and a six-pointed star. Upon the seal are the words The House of Orpheus. I think if I could discover this club, then it might lead me to find whoever sent this missive.”
“I can’t help you, but I can most certainly question Lucy or Mr. Knighton if you—”
He grasped her hands in his warm palms. “No, you don’t have to. Leave it to me. I’ll discover this House and the person behind the note. There is nothing for you to worry about, Isabella. Your reputation is safe. I won’t allow anything to happen to your good name.”
It was either the cider or the way Black was looking at her that made her feel entirely too warm. She was feeling a bit cup shot, as well. Her eyes were slowly closing and she longed to fall back on the settee and doze off. But that would be rude, especially since Black had condescended to stay with her until Lucy or Stonebrook arrived home. “You’re exhausted.”
“Mmm,” she murmured. “I did not sleep well last night, and this afternoon I had another dream.”
“Did you?”
Sipping again at the cider, she let the warm liquid soothe her insides. She really should stop drinking it, it was making her tongue loose. “I did.”
“And what was this dream about?”
She shouldn’t tell him—she never spoke of her dreams, especially those ones, but she was speaking of it before she could stop herself. “I am in a strange room—all alone.”
“Yes?”
“But there is a presence there. I can feel it. But it will not come out from the shadows but rather sits there, watching me.”
“Do you know where you are?”
She shook her head and closed her eyes. Exhaustion was taking over and she was hardly cognizant of what she was saying. “No, I’ve never seen this place before, but I think it is a man’s room. It feels very masculine. Like a library or study.”
“And you fear this dream?”
“Yes, because it is one of those dreams.”
He moved closer, took her glass from her hands and set it aside. The touch of his fingers against hers made her body heat, and she wished that he had let his touch linger longer. She wanted to feel his hand in hers. That afternoon he had been wearing gloves; tonight his hands were bare, and she had the shocking realization that she wanted to feel his hands on her.
“Why do you fear this dream, Isabella?”
She wanted to sleep, not talk, but Black would not hear of it. He kept prodding her until she answered.
“Because he is there, of course. Death. I feel him as I have always felt him. I haven’t dreamed of him in months. I thought I was cured, but then, this afternoon, the dream returned. It is him in the room with me. Him I feel watching me.”
“It is only a dream,” he whispered soothingly. “Go to sleep, Isabella. And have no fear that Death will come to mar your dreams, for I shall keep him away.”
SHADOWS FROM THE FIRELIGHT danced and flickered along Isabella’s décolletage and shoulders. Like a lover’s tongue, the forked flames licked their way across her skin, and Black found himself entranced by the erotic image—wondering what it would be like—after all this time—to feel his tongue gliding along her luminous flesh, just like the shadows.
Isabella feared the dark and shadows, two entities that bound him. He was at home amongst the shadows and mist. After tonight, he wondered if Isabella would understand that. Could accept it.
It had been years since he had made friends with the dark. In the end it had been the only way to bury his past. To grieve for what he had lost, and for what he had received, no matter how he had tried to refuse it.
Society thought they knew him, but the truth was, they didn’t know a fraction of what made up the Earl of Black. He had always thought Isabella a kindred soul. They had both been wronged. Both left alone to face the tragedies that had befallen them. He had believed that Isabella clung to shadows, just as he did. But he was wrong. Isabella was light. With her milk-white skin she was everything ethereal and he wanted to partake of it. But her response to his kisses was something altogether different. Sultry. Impassioned, dark and comforting, her passion was the sort that would encompass a man. Black wanted to bury himself in it, to feel his body encased by her response to him.
That afternoon in the carriage had shaken him to his core. There had been vibrancy—life—crackling in the atmosphere. The air had been charged, heavy, and he had sat there in utter silence, absorbing it. Never had he felt that static pull to another human being. It was Isabella who drew him. Like a moth to the flame, the tides and the moon, birth and death—they were intrinsically wound together, two spirits who had at last found their way to one another.
He was thirty-three years old and had lived long enough, had seen enough to know that what had happened in the carriage was beyond mere lust. That moment of silence, the hum that vibrated between them had been an omen, a whisper of what was to come. The kiss had been but a prelude, a temptation of what they would find together.
Isabella would fear it. Instinctively he knew that. She feared what lay between them because she felt it every bit as strongly as he. Her passion simmered too close to the surface; he had felt it, heard it begging to break free when he deepened the kiss and brought her body up against his. She hadn’t known what to do with all that desire. But soon she would. And soon she would have no regret or guilt about sharing it with him.
Inevitable. He had spoken the truth to her. It was unavoidable. A certainty that he would have her, that he would introduce her to the pleasures to be found between man and woman.
One did not have to know a person for any length of time to be convinced of this. He believed that you could live with someone for twenty years or more and still not know them. One glance at Isabella—the meeting of their gazes—and he had known what sort of woman she was.
A sigh escaped her lips and her head tipped back, her eyes shut. He studied the delicate fluttering of lashes against pale cheeks. There was no fear in her now. Just a languid warmth he felt as he reached out and skimmed the backs of his fingers along her cheek. He watched her lashes flutter, then her eyes open. She yawned, covering her mouth with her hand.
There was no fear in those eyes. And the slow smile she gave him spoke of a dreamy lassitude that beckoned him closer.
“Sleep,” he whispered as he took her hand and drew her down onto the chaise longue. She was malleable in his hold, and did not protest as he maneuvered her so that her head and shoulders lay on his lap. The silk of her gown draped over the settee. The firelight danced over the silk, making the dusky rose appear a pale copper. She was warm and soft in his lap, and her eyes closed, her lips parting on a slow breath.
“I shall stay with you, Isabella, and keep the shadows away.”
Instantly she was asleep, and he gave in to temptation and freed a loose curl that was tumbling from its pin. Her hair was soft, like corn silk. Rubbing his fingers against the golden strands, he watched them tumble from his hand, only to land on her exposed shoulders.
Running his index finger along her shoulder, he traced the outline of the delicate bones, the winged tip of her collarbone. Her skin was smooth, like a pearl, and the same color. The texture was indescribable—like cream—he thought, and wondered what it would be like to lap at her. To see her lush lips part in pleasure.
How he wanted to hear the sound of her pleasure, to listen as her passion escalated. Higher and higher he would take her, winding her up until she grasped at him, pleaded with him—until her pants turned from little gasps to moans, to the feminine cries of release. And then he would bring her to the peak, finish her, pull back just enough to watch her as he listened to her come for him.
She would be beautiful in her passion. Wanton. And she would be his. He would not wait much longer to claim her. Every cell inside him screamed that he must protect her, that she was in some sort of danger, but what, he could not imagine. Who would wish to hurt her? Nonetheless, he heeded his
instincts. They had always served him well. The one time he hadn’t, disaster had befallen him. A woman had died. A woman he should have protected. He would not make the same mistake this time. Not with Isabella.
He would discover the author of this missive, would guard Isabella—and he would make her happy. Tonight, after he left her he would go to Sussex, and together they would investigate this House of Orpheus. Whatever web was being spun, Isabella, and perhaps Lucy, too, were being caught up in the silk.
In his father’s time, the House of Orpheus had been an elitist occult club where secret initiation ceremonies and scandalous sexual rites had drawn the bored and debauched of London society. Black couldn’t help but fear the same could be said for this new club. If Lucy had been drawn into the seduction, how soon would it be until Isabella followed in her cousin’s footsteps? And if the club was connected to the missing relics? What sort of dangers were Isabella and Lucy involved in?
Gazing down at Isabella, he felt his chest tighten. She was so innocent, so afraid of the dark. He would keep her safe. He would not allow her to die. She would not become Death’s next victim. She would not, he reminded himself, become another Abigail Livingstone.
THROUGH THE HAZE of smoke, the man who called himself Orpheus lounged back on a pile of silk pillows, basking in his creation.
Surrounding him were his minions, these disciples who were bored and jaded, and willing to part with their money for a chance to join his club. The House of Orpheus… He smiled at the nonsense of it all. Fools, all of them. But for a taste of exotic decadence—for opium and absinthe, illusion and sex and the magical, mysterious ceremonies he staged—they paid him for a chance to experience his decadent, debauched world. A world where secrets were encouraged, and the dark and the occult were embraced. It was a world for the hedonist, and for those who felt the world above this club had nothing new to offer. It was sin and passion, darkness mixed with pleasure. It was ecstasy and power.
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