“Look at me, Liliiana!” he roared. “Look at me! I am blind! I cannot ride that stallion any longer—surely even you can comprehend that!”
The rustling of her skirts and the sound of her falling to her knees in front of him startled him. He flinched when she put her hands on his knees and instantly pushed back into the chair in a futile effort to get away from her touch.
“Oh Adrian,” she moaned sorrowfully. “You can’t ride him the way you did, but you can still ride! Don’t you see what you are doing? You are giving up, surrendering to this tragedy and allowing it to drain you of all will to live! I can’t sit idly by while you allow this sorrow to swallow you whole,” she said, gasping on a sob in her throat. “I don’t care that you despise me! I will fight you until you realize you are no less a man for your infirmity! You can live, Adrian, as you did before, and there is nothing to stop you but your fear!” She made a soulful sound that gripped his heart. “Perhaps you can’t see the sun, but you can still feel it fall down around you and know it is there. It’s still there, don’t you know? The sun is still there!” Another sob escaped her throat, and she buried her face on his knees.
Stunned, Adrian sat perfectly still as her tears seeped through his trousers, awed by how her weeping seemed to fill the black space around him. What sort of woman was this? What sort of woman would remain with a shell of a man when he had granted her freedom? What sort of woman would place his sorry life so far above her own?
It moved him—jolted him, really—and he lifted his hand, slowly extending it until he found her head. Gently, he laid his palm on her head and caressed her hair; desperately wishing he could see that mass of curls again and the dozen shades of gold that caught the sun and refracted its brightness around her.
But he would never see it again.
“Lilliana, please listen to me.” He spoke earnestly; the Princess had to understand how hopeless it all was. “I appreciate what you think you are doing, I swear it. But you must understand that I will never be the same again. I cannot provide for you now. I cannot guarantee your safety or protect you from harm. I have ruined your life in more ways than one, and I am asking … no, I am begging you to please release us both from this nightmare and go home. I can never make you happy—go home to the Grange, to Benedict. Go home, Lillie, and leave me to my hell.”
A long moment of silence passed before her head lifted beneath his hand, and he had the unearthly sensation that her gray-green eyes pierced his heart. “How can you say you are less a man?” she murmured tearfully.
“Because it is plainly true,” he said patiently.
All of a sudden she moved and surprised him by placing her hands on his shoulders, effectively pinning him to the chair. “What are you doing?” he exclaimed.
She answered by pressing her lips to his, by crawling onto his lap when he tried to wrench free. With her hands she caught his face, holding it with remarkable strength as she kissed him, her lips sliding across his, her tongue darting delicately along the seam of his lips. A fire lit his belly, and fearful of it, Adrian tried to push her off his lap. But she was amazingly strong and continued to kiss him, fighting him every step of the way.
Liquid fire ran through him like a sieve. Her lips, her scent, the press of her breasts against him as he tried to dislodge her—all of his animal instincts and raging desires were suddenly alive and gathering in his groin. He fought her—or at least he thought he did, but his arms were somehow around her now, crushing her lithe body to him, eagerly devouring her lips. He sucked at them, tasted the saltiness of her tears on them, and greedily filled her mouth with his tongue. She responded by pressing her body tightly to him, wriggling against his rigid arousal, caressing his shoulders, his arms. His hand found her breast, and he cupped it, reveling in its weight against his palm. He wanted more, and searched for an entrance to her warm flesh through the fabric of her gown.
But suddenly, it was over. She abruptly lifted her head and left him panting. “Can you still honestly say you are less a man?” She slid off his lap. “If you want me, come here,” she murmured hoarsely.
Adrian unsteadily wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. He wanted her back in his lap, her soft, plump lips on his again, but felt helpless to find her and draw her near. Even if he did manage to go to her, it was pointless. “It won’t change anything,” he said bitterly. “I am still blind. I am still unable to ride Thunder, or see to my business, or to travel freely in this world. I am still sentenced to a life of darkness and this estate. You, on the other hand, can have everything I cannot, the freedom to do all the things I cannot. Do not be a fool, Lilliana. Take it!”
That was met with complete silence. He turned his head in the direction of the sideboard, then the opposite wall, trying to catch a movement, any sound at all. And then he heard her walking away, away from him, and strangled on the urge to call her back. “I will leave,” he heard her mutter, “when the moon turns to cheese!” With that, he heard her yank the door open and shut it resoundingly behind her.
A fierce headache began to press behind his eyes. The tantalizing feel of her lingered in his arms and that incredible kiss still burned with a heat so strong that it alarmed him. He thought of her tears on his knee and tried to imagine how her eyes had looked. Damn it, why couldn’t he see her eyes? Why hadn’t he looked at her, really looked at her, even once, so he could remember? And he vowed, then and there, if he ever saw again, he would not squander the chance to look into her eyes. Not a single chance.
Lilliana spent the next morning with Hugo and Maude removing the thick velvet cords from dozens of drapes hanging in the west wing. The servants watched her covertly, exchanging curious glances as she went from one room to the next with a bundle of cords in her arms. They soon gathered in the kitchens to speculate as to what her ladyship was doing now. A footman hypothesized that she was systematically destroying the house in retaliation for Lord Albright’s cruel treatment of her. A maid shook her head to that, insisting that Lady Albright had lost her mind to grief—which prompted a spirited debate over which Albright was actually the more demented one. After all, the cook loudly insisted, his lordship had tried to take his own life.
Max listened quietly to their talk, then slipped out of the kitchen, unnoticed.
He smiled when he entered the front corridor. His lady was a clever one, he would give her that, he thought appreciatively. In the east wing, she had strung the cords along the wall from one end of the corridor to the other, just where the wainscoting met the wallpaper. The string of cords disappeared around the corner and up the great staircase. She was working at the very end of the corridor, bent at the waist as she tried to fasten the cord to the wall.
Max walked briskly down the length of the corridor. “Lady Albright?”
Her head snapped up, and she straightened quickly, the better to glare at him. “Don’t you dare,” she said in low tones, “don’t you dare tell me to leave him be.”
She had a bright, almost wild look in her eye, and Max quickly flung his hands up, palms outward. “No, milady.”
Her suspicious gaze raked over him before she turned back to her chore. She was exhausted, Max realized. Her hair was a mess, curls springing out in every direction. Her gown was covered with vertical lines of dust from where she had held the old drapery cords against her. Her slender fingers were rubbed almost raw from laboring to tack the cords to the wall.
He reached for the cord, holding a hand up in peace when she whirled around, prepared to do battle. “I should very much like to help you,” he said calmly, and pried the cord from her fingers. Her shoulders sagged—with relief and exhaustion, he thought—as he went to work on the cord, smiling to himself.
When Max finally returned to the kitchens—having seen to it that all the cords were hung to her satisfaction—he informed the witless staff that she had strung the cords as guides so that his lordship could walk freely. That earned him several looks of surprise—and a few tenuous grins of approval.
She heard Adrian before she saw him; his displeasure flowed freely as he walked down the corridor. He appeared with his hand clamped firmly on Mr. Lewis’s shoulder, his face dark. “Good afternoon, my lord!” she said brightly.
“What havoc do you wreak now?” he drawled, shrugging Mr. Lewis off once he had found a chair and had eased himself into it.
“I am reviewing the books,” she said pleasantly. “Mr. Lewis thought to invest in a new roof for the Barneses’ cottage, and when he mentioned it, I thought I should have a look at the expenses first.” Mr. Lewis grew white as a sheet at that bald-faced lie, and began shaking his head, drawing his hand across his throat, mimicking a cutthroat. Lilliana glared impatiently at him. “Thank you, Mr. Lewis. Lord Albright shall be quite safe for a time, I promise.”
“You have no business prowling through the books,” Adrian said tightly. Mr. Lewis cast her another pleading look, and with her hand Lilliana shooed him away. He backed up slowly, his teeth nervously nibbling his lip.
“Well, as you won’t, I thought someone should do it,” she responded amicably. Mr. Lewis rolled his eyes in mortification and quickly disappeared through the door.
Adrian sighed wearily. “Now I know you are mad. Exactly how would you expect me to look at the books?”
“Obviously, with help,” she said, unable to hide the twinge of exasperation in her voice. “But as you haven’t shown the slightest interest in your affairs, I feel duty-bound to make sure everything is in order.”
“Get up from there and send for Mr. Lewis,” he said sharply.
Lilliana defiantly opened the ledger. “Aha. I see here that you expended fifteen pounds for paraffin oil and beeswax. My, that is awfully expensive, isn’t it? Do we need beeswax? Ooh, and here is another five pounds for tallow … I can plainly see I shall have to cut that expenditure in half. I’ll just draw a line through this figure—”
“Lilliana!” Adrian exclaimed, and miracle of miracles, he came out of his seat, standing unsteadily in the middle of the room. “Please put it down. You don’t know what you are doing,” he said anxiously, and shoved his arms out in front of him as he took a step forward.
“Oats? What need of oats do we have? I shall draw a line through this too.”
“If you want Thunder to eat, you will not touch that entry,” he breathed. “Please put the ledger away—” He knocked into a low ornamental table and cursed under his breath, but caught himself with his hands and straightened slowly, inching carefully around the obstacle.
“The footman’s liveries are a bit worn, I think. I shall order some bolts of fine English wool cloth. Ten bolts, I should think, and two competent seamstresses. Honestly, I’ve no idea of the cost! I suppose I could enter a guess for now—”
“Lilliana!” Adrian cried, and lunged forward, taking several steps until he had found the desk. He gripped the edge of it tightly and leaned forward. “Put the ledger down,” he said, carefully enunciating each word.
Lilliana couldn’t help it; she smiled happily at the muscle jumping in his clenched jaw. Thunder had not worked. Her kiss had not worked, but at last she had found the one thing that could bring him to his feet. Why hadn’t she thought of his affairs before? “Why?” she asked flippantly. “You can’t see it,” she said, and eased back, waiting for the explosion she was sure would come.
Adrian dropped his head between his shoulders in an apparent attempt to contain his anger. When he at last lifted his head, his hazel eyes looked tired. “Did you write anything? Did you make any mark at all?”
“No. But if you will tell me what to do, I will be your eyes.”
He groaned and squeezed his eyes shut as he pushed himself from the desk. “You are going to send me to an early grave, you know that, don’t you?” he muttered.
“Better there than this state of helplessness you insist upon,” she said, her smile deepening. He shook his head, and with his hand felt for the edge of the desk. Carefully, he came around it to where she sat.
“Fetch a chair, or would you have me attempt that, too?” he asked dryly.
Her heart soared. Lilliana sprang to her feet, pulling the chair out so he could get into it and eagerly rushing to pull another around beside him. With his hand he felt for the ledger; his fingers traced lightly down columns he could no longer see. “What have you got?” he asked.
“Several invoices, it would appear—”
“Read one to me.”
“To the sale of one hundred pounds of raw oats, five pounds, six pence.”
Nodding, Adrian pointed to the ledger, “There is a page labeled ‘stable.’ When you find it, you will notice there are four columns.…”
And for the remainder of the afternoon he talked her through the books, guiding her to enter the expenditures, review the revenues, and balance the accounts. It was the most blissful afternoon Lilliana had spent in her life. At long last she felt needed, as if she was really contributing something of value. Adrian sat calmly beside her, smiling faintly when she picked up the accounting techniques he explained to her. Not once did he raise his voice. Not once did he show her any disdain. He was pleasant, almost relaxed, and she felt keenly the sense of companionship she had longed for.
She watched him closely, free to marvel at his handsome face and the square cut of his jaw, the thick hair that brushed well below his collar. He was truly magnificent, she thought dreamily, a veritable god—something she had lost sight of several weeks ago and something that made her tingle to observe so unabashedly. When Adrian asked her to send for Max and tea, she happily obliged, hoping the magical moment between them would go on forever.
But nothing lasts forever.
Max arrived before she could ring the bellpull, announcing guests. Adrian stiffened instantly in his chair. “Who?” he asked bluntly.
“Lord Kealing, my lord. And … and Lord Benedict,” Max said reluctantly.
His expression melted to bland, and Adrian motioned to the chair next to him. “Move this. Have tea brought after you show them in.” As the door closed behind Max, Adrian asked quietly, “Lilliana? How does he know?”
She cringed. Of course she had not written his family, not without his permission. And she had only lightly suggested Dr. Mayton do it. “I … I don’t … Perhaps Dr. Mayton?”
Whatever he might have thought of that died on his tongue, because Archibald Spence, Lord Kealing, stalked into the room at that very moment, Benedict trailing behind. Lilliana had not seen Lord Kealing in many years; his angry countenance surprised her. Benedict smiled nervously at her, but his attention was quickly on Adrian, who rose slowly, his knuckles white as he gripped the desk, the only outward sign of uncertainty that showed. “Father, you will forgive me if I do not come to greet you,” he said blandly.
“Bloody hell,” Lord Kealing whispered. “It is true.”
“Unfortunately so,” Adrian responded with a smirk. “I don’t believe you have had the pleasure of making the acquaintance of my wife. Lady Lilliana Albright,” he said.
To Lilliana’s great surprise, Lord Kealing did not even look at her. His face reddened as he glared at Adrian. “I was given to understand that you blinded yourself by attempting to blow your fool head off!”
Lilliana gaped at him in shock, but Adrian merely chuckled. “Rather sorry I missed, are you, Father?”
“You won’t stop until you ruin everything around you!” Lord Kealing spat contemptuously. “I knew your recklessness would ruin you in the end, and I was right! Look at you now! Useless to your wife, to your title! Is this how you would honor your grandfather? Is this what you would do to me in the end? Heaven help me, the expense I will incur in taking your foolishness to the
Court of Faculties and Dispensations—”
“Lord Kealing!” Lilliana interjected, horrified by his ignominious words and posture. But Lord Kealing did not seem to hear her. Benedict responded with a weakly imploring look that made her stomach knot in revulsion.
“The burden now falls to me,” he went on. “What more would you do to me?” he bellowed.
“Father, please,” Benedict tried lamely.
Across the room, Adrian laughed softly. Lilliana jerked her gaze to him; he was standing with his arms folded across his chest, glaring in the direction of Lord Kealing so sharply that for a moment she thought he could see his father. “Father, only you could take a tragedy such as this and make it seem willful on my part. I did not ask you to come here. I do not ask anything of you. Whatever scheme you may have concocted is pointless.”
“Pointless, is it?” Lord Kealing bellowed. “I will not allow my name to be scandalized, and as much as I wish it were untrue, your name is tied to mine. How many lives will you ruin before it is all said and done? One would have thought Phillip’s murder was enough—”
“Father!” Benedict cried. “Please! Be civil! Come, sit near the fire. Lilliana, is there perhaps a bit of whiskey about?” he asked nervously, and grabbing his father’s coat sleeve, forced him to turn around and walk to the fire.
Lord Kealing went, but he was not done. “I don’t want any whiskey, Ben,” he muttered. “I don’t intend to stay a moment longer in this house than I must.”
“You already have,” Adrian said indifferently.
“Unfortunately, Albright, I have a duty to assess the damage to Longbridge. You may deserve to rot, but he was Benedict’s grandfather, too, and I will not allow you to ruin his legacy!”
“He has not ruined Longbridge!” Lilliana gasped with outrage. “He has done nothing but improve it! It was in horrible disrepair when we came, but he has—”
“Lilliana,” Adrian gently interrupted, “save your breath.”
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