“And you are evidently quite deceived in my character if you think so.” Lizzie held her breath. There was a note in Nat’s voice she had never heard before, a mingling of tenderness and admiration and something else she did not yet dare name as love.
“Don’t say that,” Nat said again. He did not smile. “I saw you looking after Monty the night he returned so drunk from the Wheelers’ dinner.” His mouth set in a thin line. “I have often thought how little you have been spared by Monty and Tom-” His tone hardened still further, “And your parents. Things you should not have had to see or endure…All the people who should have cared for you and instead they hurt you and left you to fend for yourself.” His arms tightened about her. “It offends me deeply.”
“That was why you were always trying to protect me, wasn’t it,” Lizzie said softly, glancing up at his unyielding face. “Do you remember when I first came to Fortune Hall and Tom was always teasing me and you stood up for me even though I knew it irritated you because you were so much older and really did not wish to be bothered with a tiresome little hoyden…”
Nat laughed. “Even then you had more courage than either Monty or Tom. Do you remember when they made you walk along the edge of the battlements and you did it without a murmur, even though you were terrified of falling? And then Monty tried and almost fell in the moat?”
“Serve him right,” Lizzie said. “He always was a bully.” She sighed. “It was kind of you to tolerate me following you around like a shadow.” She turned within the curve of his arm and pressed her lips to the line of his jaw. “You are a kind person, Nat Waterhouse. You are always seeking to help people-” She broke off as she saw a flash of undeniable pain in Nat’s eyes.
“What is it?” she said.
“I don’t always succeed,” Nat said.
Lizzie frowned. “I don’t understand.”
There was silence for a moment. Held close within Nat’s embrace, Lizzie could sense tension in him and some kind of conflict, deep and painful. She pressed closer, wordlessly offering comfort with the warmth of her body and the touch of her hands and after a moment Nat let out a sigh.
“I had another sister,” he said. His voice had a rough edge. “Celeste had a twin. She died.”
Lizzie was shocked. In all the time that she had known Nat, she had never heard mention of another sister. He had not talked of her. Neither had his parents nor Celeste. Lizzie kept very still and quiet, waiting for Nat to continue, hoping that at last he might see her as a person he could confide in and draw strength from rather than another responsibility, another burden he had to carry.
“She was called Charlotte,” Nat said. “There was a fire at Water House one night when the girls were about six years old. I saved Celeste.” He cleared his throat. “I could not save Charley, too.”
“Nat,” Lizzie said. She could hear his pain now, as raw as when it had first struck. It was an echo in Nat’s voice and it was in the taut way in which he held her hard against him. “I had to choose,” he said. His voice was so low now that Lizzie could barely hear him. “I tried to carry both of them but they were terrified, too frightened to keep still. Charley slipped from my grasp. I had to let her go to save Celeste.” He shook his head a little, a lock of his hair brushing Lizzie’s cheek as he moved. “Even now I can remember the lick of the flames at my back and the heat of the banister under my hand and the smoke in my throat, so thick and choking. It was such a long way down the stairs…” He stopped. “I tried to go back for Charley but they would not let me. They said that I would die, too.”
Lizzie did not speak. She knew that nothing she could say could soothe him. There were no words. She held him close and felt the evening sun envelop them in its warmth and gradually she felt Nat relax a little as that unbearable tension seeped from his body and the tightness of his arms eased about her and he pressed his lips to her hair as though he would never let her go.
“I failed, Lizzie,” he said. “I never want that to happen again.”
“You saved Celeste,” Lizzie said, looking at him. “That was no failure.”
“Which is why I cannot-” Nat bit off whatever it was he was going to say and although Lizzie waited with unaccustomed patience, he did not speak again.
“You cannot…what?” Lizzie asked after a moment.
“Nothing.” For a moment Nat’s gaze was blind. “Just…don’t make me out to be more honorable than I am, Lizzie.”
He turned his head and gave her a lopsided smile. Despite the reassurance, Lizzie felt chilled. It felt as though despite opening his heart to her he was now keeping something back. A distance had opened between them. Perhaps, she thought suddenly, he resented the situation that his honor had placed him in when it had obliged him to marry her.
“That first night we were together,” she said, her voice falling. “When we were in the folly…It was all my fault. I should never have provoked you so.”
“You did not understand what you were doing,” Nat said, a little roughly. “I did. It was my fault, not yours.”
“I did know,” Lizzie said honestly. “At least I knew in theory if not in practice. I pushed you too hard. I did it on purpose. I always go too far.”
“You do seem to have a talent for it,” Nat agreed, but his voice was gentle. Out of the corner of her eye Lizzie saw his lips curl in a smile that made her stomach drop with longing.
“In my defence,” she added, “I had no notion that you had such an odious habit of losing your temper.”
Nat laughed. “You have known me for years, Lizzie,” he said. “You must have known I am notoriously short-tempered.”
“I never really noticed it before,” Lizzie confessed. “Oh, I knew that you could get angry with me sometimes, but I also knew that if you became all cross and stuffy with me you would come round eventually because-” She stopped. She realized that she had almost said:
“Because you loved me,” meaning it in the sense of the acceptance and easy tolerance that had characterized their relationship previously. She had taken Nat’s friendship for granted. With a pang of misery she realized how much she had lost when she had blown that relationship and all its certainties apart.
“Because we were friends,” she amended. She sighed. “Oh, Nat, I am so sorry. I have been so thoughtless and careless and as a result everything has changed and sometimes I wish-” The vehemence in her tone startled her. “I wish that matters were back the way they were before and we could have that uncomplicated friendship again.”
Nat loosed her and sat up, and she immediately felt cold as the evening breeze tiptoed gooseflesh along her skin. The sun was sinking now, pink and gold in the western sky, but suddenly the air was chill.
“Do you?” His voice was neutral, his expression unreadable. “We can’t go back, Lizzie.”
“I know,” Lizzie said. She clasped her knees to her chest, curling up for both comfort and warmth. “I know,” she said again. “It is merely that so many things have changed for me and I miss the old certainties.”
Suddenly she jumped to her feet, wanting to banish the blue devils before they spoiled the evening.
“There are some things that are the same as they were before,” she said. “I can still ride better than you.” She jumped up onto Starfire, laughing down at Nat as he scrambled to his feet. “I’ll race you back home.”
She won, but only just.
Nat kissed her good-night at her bedroom door that night. He trapped her against the panels of the door and held her with the press of his body against hers and she could feel his arousal and the control he was exerting over himself and the knowledge of her power was more heady than the best champagne.
“You’ll break first,” Nat said, against her mouth. “You know you want me and you have no patience to wait for the things you want.”
“I will not give in first,” Lizzie said. “You underestimate me. And you are cheating again,” she added, as his mouth trailed teasing kisses along the line of her throat. �
�You are not supposed to kiss me or even touch me.”
“I can compromise,” Nat said, easing back from her, “but only so far.”
Lizzie lay in bed and looked at the connecting door between their two rooms. She thought of the insight Nat had given her into his past and the terrible burden he carried about his sister’s death. He must know in his own mind that he had saved Celeste’s life and yet in his heart there would always be the reminder of the impossible choice; he could not have saved both girls at once and so he bore the guilt for the one he had failed. It seemed the most desperately, damnably unfair weight for a man to bear.
She wondered what else Nat had been going to tell her. Perhaps it had been something else to do with Celeste. Perhaps she should have pushed him a little, made him talk? But it had taken him nine years simply to tell her what had happened at Water House that night. She could not force him to confide more, not now when everything was so fragile between them. Despite Nat’s withdrawal she still felt a spark of hope that he was starting to see her differently. She did not want to spoil matters by giving in to her usual haste and impatience.
Lizzie stared hard at the connecting door. She knew it was not locked tonight and that it constituted the most terrible temptation but she had not come this far to give in on the first night. She could excuse herself, of course, if she did choose to go to him-she could argue that after Nat had laid his emotions bare she was offering him her comfort and love. Yet although she ached to be in his arms some spark of stubbornness held her back. They had started to build something different, something stronger between them. She would not undermine it now.
To her surprise she slept well and woke feeling refreshed and happy. Nat’s haggard face and surly bad temper at the breakfast table, in contrast, suggested that he was feeling neither.
“Did you not sleep well, my love?” Lizzie said, bright as a daisy, as she poured the coffee.
Nat scowled. “Not a wink.”
“I am sorry,” Lizzie said.
“I doubt you are,” Nat countered. He slapped his newspaper down on the table with unwonted force. “I am going out.” He glared at her. “Not because I want to, but to keep my hands off you, madam wife.”
He had thought that she would succumb. Lizzie felt hugely pleased with herself. “Be sure to be here later to escort me to the subscription ball,” she said sweetly, “or I may have to ask someone else.” She popped a cherry from the fruit bowl into her mouth.
Nat’s gaze dropped to her lips. He scowled. “I’ll be here.”
“Oh good,” Lizzie said and she tilted her face up for an oh-so-chaste kiss on the cheek, and smiled as her husband slammed out of the house in a very bad mood indeed.
“EVERYTHING ALL RIGHT, old fellow?” Dexter Anstruther asked mildly as Nat joined him at The Old Palace ten minutes later. “You look as though you had a rough night.”
“I’m perfectly fine,” Nat snapped. “Why is everyone so damnably interested in my welfare at the moment? First Miles, now you-” In truth he felt the complete opposite of fine. Hours of lying awake confidently expecting Lizzie to come through the connecting door had been superseded by hours of surprise and chagrin that she had resisted followed by hours of struggle to subdue his bodily impulses. If Lizzie would not weaken and come to him then he was damned if he would give in and go to her. She had wanted this ludicrous sex ban anyway and he was all of two days into it and feeling as primed as a callow youth with no self-control. It was ridiculous. It was embarrassing. He had gone for months without a woman before he married Lizzie and now he did not appear to be able to last a single day. She was driving him mad-in a different way from the usual.
Yet, despite his physical torment Nat found he had other images in his mind now, not simply the deeply tempting ones of making love to Lizzie. He remembered Lizzie in the river, laughing joyously with Alice as they destroyed Tom’s fine clothes, taking revenge on him on behalf of the people of Fortune’s Folly; he saw her racing ahead of him on Starfire, her hair flying in the breeze, skilful, fearless, the best and most breathtaking rider in the county. And he remembered Lizzie curled up against him on the picnic rug, his arms about her and his cheek against her hair as he did the one thing he had never imagined he could ever do and shared with her his deepest regrets and misery over Charley’s death. He had felt so close to Lizzie then, drawing strength and comfort from her instead of seeing her always as a duty, someone to be protected along with his parents and Celeste. His entire perspective had shifted in that moment as he acknowledged that Lizzie’s courage and generosity of spirit was not simply there for her friends or her unworthy brothers but that she had blessed him with it, too. It felt strange, it felt unfamiliar, but it was warm and loving and he had felt cold for so long…
“Dexter,” he said, shifting slightly in his chair. “This marriage business…Devilish tricky, don’t you think?”
“Devilishly so,” Dexter agreed, without a single betraying quiver of his lips.
“What’s the secret?” Nat pursued.
“Damned if I know,” Dexter said. “I’ve been doing it less than a year. Communication, perhaps,” he added thoughtfully. “Honesty,” he added.
Nat shifted again. Honesty…
He had not told Lizzie about Tom’s blackmail of him over Celeste. He had almost blurted it out last night when they had been so intimately entwined, heart to heart, but something had made him draw back. It was too soon. Lizzie’s emotions were so tangled at the moment with loss and grief that Nat was sure any further proof of Tom’s cruelty and vice could only make her feel a great deal worse. And though they were growing closer, he and Lizzie, talking and sharing secrets, he still felt that she had to be protected from Tom. He had to take care of her. He could not risk damaging the delicate, precious steps that he and Lizzie were taking. When she was stronger he would tell her. But he could not do it now. It would hurt her too much.
Nevertheless, Nat found that it made him feel uncomfortable to be keeping secrets from Lizzie, especially now when they were drawing closer in a different way that he could not quite define. The picture of wild Lizzie Scarlet that he had had in his mind for so long, Monty Fortune’s little sister, was becoming overlaid with another. Not the silken temptress who had seduced him that first night, nor the scandalous Lady Waterhouse who was the talk of Fortune’s Folly. This Lizzie defended the people in the village when Tom rode roughshod over their rights. This Lizzie had not run from him when they had quarreled so badly but had stood her ground. This Lizzie was a force to be reckoned with, growing to be a woman whom Nat could suddenly see would have all of Laura Anstruther’s impressive authority one day. This Lizzie was admirable and courageous as well as lovely and seductive…Again he felt an abrupt shift in perspective, as though he were seeing Lizzie with different eyes. The memories of nine years fell away and with that came an equally sudden and overwhelming surge of feeling that had nothing to do with wanting her in his bed but was a tangle of love and protectiveness and sheer blazing joy that she was a part of his life…
He was still gasping at the physical shock of it when there was a sharp tap at the door and Miles walked in. Nat jumped and became aware that Dexter had been watching him with quizzical amusement. He wondered what on earth had been showing on his face.
Miles’s news, however, gave him no further time to consider his feelings. “There’s a lead,” he said briefly. “An anonymous tip-off about the masked woman seen in the village on the nights that both Monty and Spencer were murdered. The message was left for me at Drum this morning. Dinmont said that a maidservant delivered it.”
“Anonymous?” Nat said, frowning. “That could be nothing more than spite.”
“I know,” Miles said, unfolding a note from his breast pocket and handing it to Dexter, “but even so, we cannot ignore it.”
Nat watched as Dexter read the note, glanced at Miles and then dropped his gaze to the paper again. There was an odd silence.
“What is it?” Nat said. “Who do t
hey say it is?” He had a strange premonition. “Not Lizzie?” he said. Shock, anger and protectiveness engulfed him, overwhelming in its power. He felt stunned with the force of his feeling for her.
But Dexter was shaking his head. “No,” he said. “It’s not Lizzie. It’s Flora Minchin.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
L IZZIE WAS CROSSING the street on her way from Chevrons to visit Laura and Lydia at The Old Palace when she saw the small crowd that was gathered outside Mr. and Mrs. Minchin’s townhouse. Previously it had troubled Lizzie slightly that she and Flora were such close neighbors now. They had never been friends-indeed, Lizzie had always thought that Flora was the most irritating pea-brained creature imaginable, a feeling she could now admit a little shamefacedly might have sprung from a certain jealousy. Even so, when she saw the crowd she almost hurried past. Then she heard the screams from inside the house, a sound that was easily defined as Mrs. Minchin having the vapors, and despite herself she paused.
“What on earth is going on?” she asked Mrs. Lovell, who was one of the many people milling on the steps outside.
“Flora’s the one who murdered Sir Montague and Spencer, his valet,” Mrs. Lovell said importantly, her face alight with excitement. She loved a good scandal. “She was the masked woman! Only fancy! They’ve come to arrest her now-Lord Vickery and Mr. Anstruther and your husband.”
Lizzie screwed her face up. “Flora a murderer? Don’t be absurd. She couldn’t kill a fly!”
Mrs. Minchin’s screams intensified, then one of the maids came running from the open door of the house wailing and wringing her hands in her apron. “Please will someone fetch the master?” she cried. “Madam is in hysterics and they’re taking Miss Flora away and I don’t know what to do!”
“Oh, this is ridiculous!” Lizzie hurried up the steps, grabbed the maid by the arm and hustled her back into the house, slamming the door in the faces of the avid crowd. Inside, the sounds of Mrs. Minchin’s screams were so penetrating that they echoed off the walls. “Get the stable boy to fetch Mr. Minchin,” Lizzie said in the girl’s ear. “Run along now. Quickly!”
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