The darkness dissolved. Her soul found her body. She embraced a physical man again.
It was not a normal kiss that he gave her then. She could not name how it was different, but it moved her so profoundly that her eyes burned.
He moved aside and held her in a silent peace. She lay with her head against his chest while his arms embraced her closely. The heart beneath her ear sounded very familiar, as if she listened to her own life pulse. His mouth rested in a long, unending kiss on her crown.
There were no questions now. There was no confusion.
They went for a long walk the next morning. They strolled through the formal gardens where an army of men tended to rosebushes and other plantings, and past fields being prepared for a kitchen garden. Finally they reached some woods.
“My cousin Caroline will be getting married. I had to meet with her intended, after you left me that day she and Hen intruded.”
It charmed her, how he shared this family news. It fit the morning. Last night a deeper understanding had developed between them. Although born of passion and her decision to go to him, it affected more than their physical intimacy.
“Is he worthy?”
“He appears earnest. My aunt is happy because he has nine thousand a year. Already the house is calmer now that it is settled.” He shrugged. “It was not a duty that I wanted. I am not even her guardian. Hayden is absorbed by his family, however, so I agreed to do it.”
“Caroline was probably very grateful.”
“She kindly offered to spare me, as if she knew my inclinations better than she has cause to.”
“I think she may have better cause than you can guess. You touch the world, Christian, even if you do not want it to touch you.”
She received a sharp, thoughtful look for that, but his expression quickly softened. “At least I am confident that it is a good match. He loves her so much that he will not mind when she reveals her true self. She has been hiding that, due to her mother. She is not nearly as vague and unformed as she appears.”
“Perhaps she has already revealed herself. Maybe that is why they are in love.” She could not resist poking him, literally and otherwise. “You once more are uncommonly sure of your opinions—that they are in love, that Caroline has been hiding. Would that every girl had a cousin so definite about her future happiness.”
He reacted more thoughtfully than her playful tease warranted. He strolled on, pensively.
He drew her to a spot where the treetops broke to allow sunlight to filter down. He stopped there and took her in his arms.
“I do not merely think my opinion of that match is accurate. I know it is.”
“Just as you knew Alexia would give birth to a boy?”
“This is different. That involved events. This is only about the feelings of two people. I told you last night that I would like to explain some things. This is one of them.”
He appeared so serious. So.…vulnerable. That was an odd thought to have about this man of all men, but it entered her mind despite his stern expression. She dared not make light of whatever it was that he thought he now revealed, even if it was probably nothing more than a man's excuse for his presumptuous arrogance.
“Then explain it, Christian. Right now I understand nothing.”
“I will try, although I never have put it into words before.” A frown formed. His attention turned inward, as if he sought a means to express something impossible to articulate.
“My perceptions are better than most when it comes to people, Leona. I realized this difference when I was around twelve years old. Until then I assumed everyone could be very sure of another person's intentions and feelings, and I did not understand why people acted as if they were not.”
“It could be that others did not assume their perceptions were accurate, as you do.”
“You are not hearing me, perhaps because it is too strange a thing to fathom,” he muttered. Then he spoke firmly. Almost angrily. “I do not assume. I know. It is just there. I have only to pay attention to be very sure. Even when I don't pay attention, even when I take pains not to know, it is in the air waiting for me to recognize it, like a soundless noise.”
He watched to see her reaction. She tried to keep her expression impassive. He described something bizarre, yet it was clear that he truly believed he possessed this ability.
He shook his head in exasperation. “Now you think I am mad too. It was a mistake to speak of it.”
“Not mad. Not at all. It is just—are you saying that you read others’ minds? You know their thoughts?”
“I know their emotions. My interpretations of the reasons for the emotions, and the thoughts that accompany them, can be in error, although with experience they rarely are now.”
He released her from his embrace and took her hand again. They returned to the canopy of treetops.
She knew that he had confided something very important. If he had never voiced it before, there was a reason. His reference to madness distressed her. He always joked about that rumor. Now it appeared that there was something in him that made him wonder if it were true.
“You realized when you were twelve, you say. It must have been frightening, to see a difference in yourself at such a young age.”
“It was hell,” he snarled. He took a deep breath and controlled whatever memories her question evoked. “However, it was also a relief. It explained many things. I was able to avoid misunderstandings after that. With time I learned that this sensibility is unusual only in its degree. I realized that almost everyone possesses it to some extent. I just do more than most.”
“Still—I do not comprehend what you describe, Christian. I would like to, if you are willing to attempt to explain it further.”
“I would if I could, Leona. I am at a loss about how to, however. It would be better to forget I spoke about it at all.”
They could not do that now. He must know that. “Do you feel what others feel?”
“I do not speak of sympathy, but empathy. Have you ever passed a funeral carriage, and sensed the sorrow of the family inside? You do not share the sorrow, but you know it is there and feel its presence. When Isabella came to you the other night, did you not sense her fear even before she spoke or you saw her expression?”
She began to see what he meant. Sometimes another person's emotions were in the air and one could not avoid recognizing them.
It was that way with him, sometimes. Certainly she possessed a heightened sensibility when it came to his desire. It affected her physically, and was almost tangible between them. Even his darker moods—she did not have to see anger in him to know when the storms gathered. She had sensed them even before she entered his bedchamber last night.
The implications startled her. “If it is always there for you, then whenever you are with someone their emotions are present too.”
“Yes.”
When he was a child, he would have known his parents’ feelings toward him. Not just the loving ones, but the angers and disappointments, and the indifference, if it existed. As a young man, he would have sensed every girl's reaction when he met her, and every friend's truth or falseness.
Even now, with his family, with his peers, he would know more than they might want. More than he might want.
“At first it sounds wonderful, to have such insights. However, I can see how it can be a curse,” she said. “There is some usefulness in how people often pretend with each other. I am not sure we could all live together without some dissembling.”
She thought about being able to sense anyone else's emotions at any time. It would be horrible if she could not choose to be spared. It was a wonder he had not gone mad after all.
“There is power in it, of course,” she said. “Dan gerous power, if one was of a mind to use it.”
He barely hesitated, but the pause was still there. “Yes.”
“There could also be pain, I would think.”
The pause stretched longer this time. “Yes.”
“In part. I suspect that I would have had a low tolerance for society's games even if I were the most normal of men, however.”
Except that he did not entirely withdraw. She could not ignore what that meant.
“Forgive me for now contemplating the extent of my disadvantage, Christian. I am remembering every emotion I have experienced while near you. I am trying not to resent that you did not give me fair warning. I think that a stern scold is in order.”
“Some people are immune. More guarded perhaps. You are one such person. I do not intrude on your soul, Leona. I swear that I have never had that ability, or that temptation, with you. Not now. Not in Macao.”
It was one of her appeals, she suspected. Perhaps her only appeal. Most people yearned to know the minds of their intimate friends. Easterbrook probably found ignorance a respite and relief.
“Have you ever misused this? I can think of ways one might.”
“I confess that it has allowed me to have my way with women very easily.”
“I suspect it still does. That was very bad of you. They did not stand a chance.”
“I like to think that any sins that resulted from knowing their pleasures too well were forgiven by the pleasure itself.” He did not appear the least contrite. “And I will admit that I won more money at gambling than I ought when I was at university.”
“As with the last, this was wrong but hardly dan gerous.”
“The more sinister temptations I managed to thwart for the most part, and now I avoid them.”
But they existed. Of course they would. It would be difficult not to exploit such an invasive advantage. The struggle against that lure might be the worst part of this odd aptitude that he professed.
“Mostly now I use it to indulge my curiosity about people. Especially if I feel obligated to make a judgment about them.”
“Such as the young man asking for Caroline's hand?”
“I think that I can be excused there. My cousin's future happiness was at stake.”
“But you do not have such an advantage with me, you said. Not at all?” Of course he did not. He would have remained silent otherwise. And he had sworn. But.…
“If I did, I would know if you are thinking I am some unnatural monster right now, Leona. Or worse, pitying me for having an incurable affliction.”
His suggestions horrified her. She wished that he could read her emotions just this once, so he would know for certain that she did not harbor such reactions.
“I do not find you unnatural. I know you are not at all mad either. I am glad you told me. I understand
Edmund much better now, and Easterbrook too.” She laid her hand on his face and peered up at him. “Nor do I pity you, but I suspect that this was a terrible curse when you were young, and still a bad one even now, when you so admirably accommodate it. I do not think I could live with this.”
He held her hand to his face, then turned to kiss it. He closed his eyes and his mouth pressed her palm for a long while. “I trust you to keep this to yourself, Leona.”
“Does no one else know? Not even with your brothers?”
“They would not understand.”
Yet he had thought she might. He had trusted her with this secret. He had risked that her reaction might be horror, or mockery, or even fear.
She reached up with both her hands and cupped his face. She lowered it so she could kiss him. She made very sure that it was not a kiss of pity.
Desire sent its rivulets down her body. They stayed like that a long time, sharing the mutual fire that needed no special perceptions to recognize in each other.
CHAPTER
EIGHTEEN
Leona never mentioned the conversation in the woods again. Christian saw her contemplating the revelations sometimes, however.
A question would enter her eyes and she would try to guess what he was perceiving. It happened once when a servant entered a chamber where they sat, but mostly she checked to make sure that he was not knowing too much about her.
He did not blame her for wondering about him, no matter which way that wondering went. It moved him that she had at least tried to believe him, and had not judged too harshly.
His contentment deepened over the days because of it. The peace he knew in her presence increased tenfold now that he had confided in her. He had never realized how much the secret itself created an isolation even when he accepted the company of others.
He would have preferred to stay in the house with her. His bed would have been his particular choice of location. He knew better than to do that. He was not such an idiot that he would turn a sojourn of pleasure into a hell of imposition.
He made an effort to keep her from being bored. During the next two days she joined him while he rode through his estate.
He veiled his ignorance of the improvements his land steward had wrought. The tenants that they passed in the fields were not so accomplished at pretending that his inspection was a regular occurrence.
“They are gawking at us,” Leona said after an hour of suffering wide-eyed stares.
“That is because you are so beautiful.”
They paced their horses past a group of farmers sitting to their morning meal. Leona slyly watched them out of the corner of her eye as she passed.
“It is not my face that astonished those men,” she said. “They squinted at you very hard before their mouths fell open.”
“It is possible that they first mistook me for Hayden. We look much alike.”
“And the gape-mouthed reaction when they realized you were not he? You do not attend to this estate, do you? Not at all.”
“Hayden deals with the land steward. He took it on when I traveled, and proved so talented that there was no reason to have him stop.”
“I am sure that he executes the duty superbly. However, the land is yours. The lives of these people depend on you. I think it reassures them to see you take at least a tiny interest in the estate today.”
Her voice remained sweet, even speculative, as if she voiced a passing thought. He heard a scold anyway. When they passed the next field, he felt obligated to acknowledge the way work stopped. He made a display of looking over the crop.
A lad no more than twelve grinned and waved in response to the lord's moment of attention. Leona waved back. The boy's father waved now too. Christian felt Leona's rein slap his leg. He lifted his hand.
“See? They are very happy to see you. They will talk about it for days.”
He could imagine what they would say. These good people did not populate London's drawing rooms, but their gossip was much the same.
Two days later Leona accompanied him to the village of Watlington. They visited the shops and Leona bought some pins at a mercer's. Christian examined the shelves while she completed her business.
“That shop appeared to interest you,” she said when they were out in the lane again.
“I have not been in it since I was a boy. Much has changed.”
“You do not visit this village now, do you?”
He could not remember when he had last, except for the Bradwells’ wedding. “Not often.”
“It is like your attendance at parties and dinners, or going to the park during the fashionable hour. Your normal habits do not include these things.” She tugged gently and surreptitiously at his cravat. “Even this. You had little cause to wear one a month ago.”
“You are worth a cravat every now and then.”
She smiled at him, and her eyes reflected the day's sunshine. “I am flattered that you think so. You honored me with your pursuit, to a degree that I did not understand. All of those crowds—it was unpleasant for you.”
Not too unpleasant. Not as much as he expected. Even now, on this market day in Watlington, as bodies jostled by, the curse affected him much less than in the past.
Her presence beside him made the difference. His attention had little
time or room for anyone else. Whether they conversed or he daydreamed about the nights past and those to come, she created a place of freedom and calm in which he tasted a normal life.
“I am not sacrificing myself, if that is what you assume,” he said.
“If you sacrificed a little, I would not feel bad. You have been teaching me some very wicked things, and you should pay a little something for my shameful compliance.”
“Whatever you want is yours, Leona, whether you comply or not.”
She blushed prettily at first, then a shadow entered her. She turned her attention to tucking the pins into her reticule. “I may ask you to be true to your word someday, Christian.”
Most likely so. He might regret this impulsive offer that was born of a desire to shower her with gifts. Happiness was making him stupid.
She smiled a very private smile that made him more stupid yet. “The compliance has not been without its own rewards. You owe very little on the account.”
The flattery pleased him to a ridiculous extent. As they strolled on his mind naturally contemplated what other compliances might be obtained.
PDF
She was wrong, of course. He already owed her more than he could ever repay, and it had little to do with pleasure. Worse, she had already warned that when she called in the note, his cost would be the loss of her.
Having abandoned good sense, Leona did not go in search of it for a week. She ruefully acknowledged to herself that Easterbrook kept her in such a sated daze that she could not have found good sense even if she tried.
The erotic lessons grew bolder, but each one seemed the most normal and natural thing to learn. She became accustomed to his quiet voice guiding her. Normally she would be so crazed that the suggestion did not shock her at all. He knew how to ensure she would want what he wanted. He had learned what gave pleasure all too well.
The morning after their sixth night at Aylesbury, they sat to breakfast in his chambers. She wore nothing more than her nightdress and he lounged in hastily donned trousers. The servants served the meal as if both marquess and mistress were dressed for a promenade on Birdcage Walk.
The Sins of Lord Easterbrook Page 20