by Jenny Brown
Then she made her way to the cupboard in the corner of the rented chamber and took out the pitifully small bundle that contained her things. She rummaged through it until she found the notes he’d given her in the coffeehouse. Holding them in her teeth, she retied the bundle. Then rising to her full height, with that warrior’s pride shining out of her burning eyes, she brandished the notes at him like a weapon.
“Take them back. I’m not what you think I am. I won’t let myself become it.”
When he made no move to take them, she flung them at him. Then she turned on her heel and made for the doorway. He prayed she would stop, that this threat of hers to leave him would turn out to be just another of her tricks, a stratagem to make him want her more so she could do the bidding of her masters. But she did not pause. She did not look back. She pulled open the door and flung herself down the hallway.
He galloped after her, rushing down the stairs and out into the street, where he nearly collided with Major Stanley, whose unsteady gait suggested he was far gone in his cups.
“A lover’s spat so soon?” Stanley quipped. “Well, no surprise. She’s a spitfire! When I popped my head in to bid her good evening earlier, she looked as if she’d have gladly torn off my ballocks. Probably for the best you’re quit of her. I trust she didn’t take anything of value when she fled.”
Only my heart, he thought. Nothing more.
Temperance slowed her steps. There was no more need for haste. He hadn’t followed her. He could have, but he’d chosen not to. He was done with her now. She could go as slowly as she chose; he wouldn’t come after her. He wouldn’t turn his glinting eagle’s eye on her or deprive her of her will with a command uttered in that harsh growl of his that cut through to her heart.
Why couldn’t she rejoice that she had regained her freedom? Why did she feel as if she had been abandoned? It was she who’d fled from him. And yet, with every step she took away from him, she grew weaker, as if her very life force was dependent on his presence. How could this be when he hated her, when what she felt for him could lead her only to her destruction?
The fog that curled around her smelled of the river, damp and dank. Its cold tendrils seemed almost alive, like malevolent fingers drawing her toward the banks. She looked ahead and saw the glint of the water far off at the end of the street. Its depths hid relentless currents as strong as the invisible undertow that pulled her back, even now, toward the man she must not let herself desire.
She couldn’t resist its pull any more than she had resisted him.
She let herself drift toward it, down the pavement, which led to a stone pier. It was one of the ancient stairs where boatmen had been landing their passengers for centuries. As she neared it, she smelled fish and refuse. The water shimmered ahead, its dark depths illuminated by the fitful beams of lanterns hung on the vessels that plied the channel not far from shore.
The night was still, and there was no breeze to ruffle the surface. But that smoothness was deceptive. Like herself, the river hid strong forces that once roused could sweep a palace off its foundations, sink an unwary ship, and drown the sailor who underestimated its power.
She walked out onto the stone pier and picked up a piece of broken cobblestone. She held it for a moment, feeling its weight in her hand. Then she tossed it as far over the river as she could. When it hit the water, it made a splash and vanished, leaving behind only a few circles that rippled out from the empty center before fading away, leaving no hint that anything had pierced the icy calm.
Snake had warned her she’d end up in the river. Would she sink like that, make only a few ripples as she slipped beneath the surface, and vanish forever when the ripples had faded out?
She took a deep breath of the cold moist air and shivered. The river called to her. Its calm was soothing. The tiny wavelets that murmured against the base of the stone stair didn’t pound like the angry breakers that crashed unseen on the shore hidden deep within her soul. She’d underestimated the power of the forces she carried within her. She’d thought she could control them, but she’d been wrong.
As Trev had shown her.
Another wave surged up and crashed against her heart as she recalled how he’d given her that key, taunting her, and daring her to take the freedom she’d always pretended was what she really wanted.
He’d known it wasn’t. He’d rubbed her nose in it.
It hadn’t been a hunger for freedom that made her give herself to him, any more than her yearning for liberty had driven her to smash her father’s window and seek out Randall. It had been fury at her father that had driven her into Randall’s arms, and when she’d been forced to face the truth about him, that selfsame fury had made her throw herself at yet another man who didn’t want her.
Rage washed through her, rage against herself. She couldn’t stop herself. She’d do it again. Revulsion choked her.
She was covered with filth, sticky with the seed Trev had left behind. She must get rid of it. The river must wash it away. She stripped off her shoes and stockings and started down the stair. When her foot slipped on the damp mossy stone, she caught her balance and continued down.
The frigid water splashed against her foot, so cold, it made her startle. But she didn’t care. She must wash away the traces of what she’d let him do. She scooped up handfuls of water and splashed them against her thighs, but the water dripped through her fingers before it could do any good.
It was no use. A handful of dirty water couldn’t wash away her shame. An ocean couldn’t drown out the voices that murmured she would go back to him, or someone else just as heartless. She’d keep on doing it, as long as the hot blood pulsed throughout her body, because she could not stop herself. She couldn’t fight it. Her nature was just too flawed.
But there was a way to drown out the voices. She drew back as the revelation hit her, fighting it, even as it whispered its seductive message in her ear.
She need not give herself to him again. She need not fight her craving. She need no longer fear the uncontrollable anger that made her take so many unforgivable steps.
She need only take one more step, then another, down into the icy water. The river would numb her pain. Only a few more steps, and the current would take her. She need only make one more flawed decision, act on it, and it would be too late. She would no longer have to fight against herself, for the current would sweep her away, and she would find peace at last.
It would be so easy to give in, to give up, to give herself over to the flow.
She took a step into the water, searching for the courage to commit one more rash act. After so many, it should be easy. She cursed the cowardice that made her waver. She need take only a few more steps, make one more bad decision—and it would be her last.
Chapter 13
“Temperance, stop!” His voice. And the thud of his boots pounding against stone. Had he come to save her or to gloat?
His tall figure loomed over the head of the stair. He was bareheaded, his close-cropped raven curls haloed by wisps of river mist. In the gloom, his eyes were hidden by the shadow of his brow, but even so, she saw the shock that twisted his features.
He seized her in his strong arms and pulled her up the stair. She couldn’t have resisted him even if she’d wanted to. Whatever he was, she couldn’t stop herself from clinging to him as he dragged her away from the water, in whose icy depths she had come so close to losing her life.
He held her in a strong grip, as if taking no chances that she would break away and run back to the treacherous stair. But she had no wish to break out of his grasp. She nestled deeper into the comfort of his arms though it made no sense that it was he who offered her comfort, when it was he who had made it so necessary for her to find it. But she was beyond making sense. She clung to him as she would have to a floating spar had she cast herself into the river.
“Thank God, I was in time,” he said.
“You were too late. For if I can’t stop myself from wanting you, I had far better
sink beneath the waves and have done with it.”
“Do you hate me that much?”
She stared at him. “Hate you?” Tears sprang to her eyes. “If I did, it would be so much easier. I would be safe and could live on happily without you, instead of yearning for what it is impossible to have. If I hated you, I wouldn’t care that you have contempt for me—or that I am so degraded, that even though you hate me, I found such pleasure with you.”
“I don’t hate you,” he said stroking her hair gently. “Though it might be better for me if I did. We are two of a kind. You know I speak the truth.”
She did. But it was a terrifying truth. He’d shown her all too clearly what she was and what she wanted for her to take any comfort from the knowledge that they were made of the same essence.
“If we are two of a kind, that is all the more reason to fear you, for it ensures that the rage that drove our coupling will destroy us both.”
“There is more to us than our rage,” he whispered. “You didn’t deserve what I did to you though it’s too late to undo it.”
“It wouldn’t matter if you did. I took such pleasure in it. How can I go on, knowing I cannot stop myself from giving myself to men who care naught for me?”
“I care for you. But I have given you no reason to believe me. I won’t waste my breath on making pretty speeches. I’ve lost the right to ask you to listen to me.”
What he’d said was true. She should stop her ears and shut out his words. She shouldn’t let him fool her with his soft tone or the way his eyes seemed to hint that he was as wracked by agony as she was. If she let him keep talking, she knew where it would lead. He’d use his power to wrest from her whatever it would be he wanted next.
Then, as if again he heard her thoughts, he said, “I am as frightened as you are. And in as much pain.”
It was a shocking admission, but the torment in his deep-set eyes left her no doubt he meant it. “We are both warriors,” he whispered, “and we have been drawn into a battle we can neither of us win. But I don’t know how to end it.”
“But it must end,” she said. “Or we’ll end up like the scorpion that stings itself to death. The rage that rose within me to meet yours was too strong. I won’t survive it if I give myself up to it again. I must find something besides my rage to keep me alive. I must leave off battling you. But how? I can’t surrender. Not to you, when you have such power over me.”
“We can neither of us surrender.”
A light flared in a window high above them, outlining the long harsh plane of his face and the high cheekbones, above which his restless eyes glistened. He turned and paced along the pavement, his hands clasped behind his back.
Finally, he spoke. “When a battle has raged for many hours, with neither side able to claim the victory, the parties may choose to meet under a flag of truce. Hostilities cease. A soldier’s sacred honor forbids that he take advantage of his adversary while the truce prevails. Will you accept such a truce from me, Temperance? Will you trust me that far?”
“How could your sacred honor extend to dealing with a creature like me.” Her voice was heavy with irony.
“What kind of creature do you refer to? A strong, courageous woman unlike any I’ve ever known before? I should have no honor left if I couldn’t offer it to you.”
She considered this. “If I took you up on it, what would happen during our truce?”
“Negotiations. It is the custom for each of the adversaries to tell the other what they must receive in return for ending combat. Each may demand only what the other side can give up without losing so much that battle would offer them more.”
She considered his words, turning the idea around in her mind, looking for flaws. But she could find none. They had reached a stalemate. The choice he offered was fair.
“What, then,” she said,” would you demand of me to end our war?”
He balanced on the edge of her question, knowing nothing but total honesty would do. “You must tell me the truth about why you came with me,” he said. “I know you’re hiding something. I thought I had found out what it was—that was what drove me to take you with such cruelty. But I fear I was wrong. And if I was—” A look of agony swept over his features. “For God’s sake, Temperance, tell me what you’ve been hiding. Whatever it is. Only that can give me peace.”
The set of her jaw told him she didn’t want to give him what he’d asked for. Despair washed over him. Perhaps Fanshawe had been right about her. Perhaps she was exactly what he had thought.
But he could not make himself believe it. Her act of desperation argued against Fanshawe’s theory. And even if she were completely innocent, why should she trust him with her truth after what had taken place on the narrow mattress in her lodging chamber?
He forced her to meet his eyes, and when she tore them away a moment later, he let his sixth sense probe for what lay behind them. Fear, yes. And distrust. But if that was what kept her from responding, he was on familiar ground. Battling armies always distrusted each other, and he’d been well instructed in how to negotiate with a suspicious foe.
“It is not a one-way exchange,” he said. “I will give you something, too.”
“What?”
“Whatever it is you need in return for the honesty I demand of you.”
“If I told you the truth, you wouldn’t believe me. So what’s the use? When it has mattered most, no one has believed me.”
“Perhaps I will be the first.” His expression softened. “You aren’t a liar, Temperance, though you have taken delight in telling the truth in a way that led me to jump to false conclusions.”
He stared down at his hands before continuing. “That is your pattern, isn’t it? You did it when you hinted at how you would reward me for saving you from the shoemaker. You did the same thing when you let me convince myself your Lady Lightning was a bawd. You tell the truth, expecting it to be misunderstood, and when you are, you make the most of it.”
He paused, struck by a sudden insight. “What did you tell your father when he found you with Randall?”
“That he had kissed me against my will.”
“Did he believe you?”
The misery in her eyes before she dropped her gaze confirmed his suspicion.
“He failed you badly. He should have protected his child from a seducer.”
“He had his reasons. I had lied to him only days before— a stupid lie, the kind children tell to avoid a beating. I said the dog broke a valuable vase, when I’d knocked it off the chimneypiece with my own clumsiness. My stepmother had seen me do it, and told him. So he knew I was a liar, and when I told him what had happened with Randall, he wouldn’t believe me.”
“Tell me what happened,” he said.
She did not answer immediately but twisted her hands together and took a few steps away from him down the pavement. He followed her.
Finally, she said, “When I invited Randall to meet me behind the stables, I expected no more from him than the kind of love talk I’d read in novels. He was a hero to me, a Man of the People. But when he got me alone, it wasn’t talk he wanted. He ripped my gown, grabbing for my breast, and thrust his tongue down my throat. I fought him, for I knew better than to give in.”
She bit her lip. “I was so glad when my father came upon us. I thought he’d come to save me. But all he’d say was ‘once a liar, always a liar.’ He said I must have wanted it or I wouldn’t have met a man behind the stables. He called me a dirty slut.” Her face was bleak. “All the effort I’d made to try to be good meant nothing to him. He wouldn’t believe me.”
“So you struck back at him by making his words come true,” Trev said. “You let Randall have his way with you despite how much it hurt you.”
She nodded imperceptibly. “I did it to strike back at my father. I couldn’t stop myself.” She was shaking now, and in her eyes he saw the pursuing furies. “I cannot bear it, that this is how I am.”
“You’d been betrayed by the person you t
rusted most, the one who should have listened to you and taken your part. He should have seen who you were, and protected you. Of course you were filled with rage. What else could you have felt?”
She shrugged, unwilling to answer.
He pressed on. “Did you feel better when you made his accusation true?” He paused, struck by a sudden insight. “Is that why you steal, too? Because it hurts less to be accused of a crime you’ve committed than to be accused of a sin when you are innocent?”
Her angled brow rose sharply over her almond-shaped eyes, heightening her look of surprise “I—I don’t know. It’s possible.” Her voice trailed off.
He came to a decision.
“I will believe you, Temperance,” he said. “I will, upon my sacred honor. I will hear you out and not judge you. I will listen until I understand what you have to tell me. And I will keep my opinion of it to myself. That is what I can give you in return for the honesty I am asking from you.”
He waited for her reply, but before she could give it, a large figure carrying a lantern loomed out of the darkness. It was one of the private watchmen the rich hired to keep women of the town and homeless beggars from their doors.
“Move along, there,” he called, waving a heavy staff.
“Come on,” Trev said, reaching for her hand. “We’ll continue our conversation elsewhere.”
She snatched her hand away. “I won’t go back to that room with you.”
He had no more desire to return there than she did. “I wouldn’t ask that of you. Not now. But I don’t know where else we can go this time of night.”
“I do,” she said. “The Rat and Castle stays open all night long. ’Tis where all the cracksmen meet, and those on the prigging lay, and the beggars who’ve had a good night of it.” There was no disguising the challenge in her look. “Are you brave enough to join me there?”
“Try me,” he said.
She’d feel safe on familiar territory. But would she use that safety to slip away from him again? She might. He could not dismiss that possibility. But she had the right to. He had given her no reason to want to stay with him and done all too much to make her wish to flee.