Seduced by a Stranger

by Eve Silver

  He made no sense to her at all, and she had no idea how to address that. Such a strange man. Beautiful but troubled. Aloof. Cold. His appearance spoke of summer, his demeanor of winter. Yet somehow, she found him vastly interesting despite his odd ways.

  That terrified her, that spark of interest. She did not want to know him, spend time with him, feel fascination for him. Not for any man. But least of all him. He was too… much. Too complicated by far.

  “I do not know what it is you want of me,” she answered at last.

  He turned his face away, and she wished he had not. He was a most difficult man to understand, to read, and she wanted at that moment to see his eyes, to try to know his thoughts.

  “I want your company. Only that.” And as he said it, she believed him. For some inexplicable reason, Gabriel St. Aubyn wanted to spend time with her. How dreadful.

  She answered with unaccustomed honesty, braving much. “I do not want yours.”

  She might have regretted the words the second they were free, but he laughed, head tipped back, shoulders shaking. A short burst of genuine mirth. The sound danced between the graves, startling her. She had not expected any emotion from him, least of all unfettered humor. For an unguarded instant, he allowed a hint of surprise to reflect in his features and she realized he had not expected it, either.

  Then his gaze pinned her and he stepped toward her, all humor fading. “It appears we are at an impasse, Miss Weston, my desires in direct opposition to yours.”

  There was no question in her mind that this man had little interest in her preferences or desires. She thought of the story the maid, Susan, had shared that first night, the implication that he killed a highwayman and left the body by the road. It mattered not if she believed the truth of that. It only mattered that others thought it might be true, for something must have made those who knew him inclined to accept the worst. She thought that perhaps he was ruthless. Or perhaps he only allowed others to believe he was.

  A breeze kicked up then, catching her skirt and making it billow.

  “Do you think Madeline has succumbed to the same malady as your ancestors?” She steered the conversation to their earlier topic, more comfortable with a discussion of death and malady than any reference to St. Aubyn’s desires.

  “I do not know for certain that anyone succumbed to anything. Perhaps it was suggestion that laid the seeds of illness. Perhaps it is something particular to the St. Aubyn family”—he paused—“or to this place.”

  He did not believe that. She knew he only toyed with her, spoke in maddening circles to see what her responses would be. For some inexplicable reason, he found her entertaining. With a shake of her head, she tried a more direct question. “Do you believe she will continue her decline as they did?”

  “I think not, but there is no way for me to know for certain. Unless, of course, she dies.” He sent her a sardonic look. “That would close the matter.”

  “You think her mad.” Catherine stepped away from the old, cracked headstones, toward the newer one in the corner, the one that caught the sunlight and deflected it back in bright glory. The one that made her think of Mrs. Bell’s odd, circuitous revelations, and Madeline’s garbled talk of a dead woman drenched in blood.

  “I did not say so, though I cannot negate the possibility. I do know there is a vein of madness in our blood.” He strode forward only far enough to block her path as she inched toward the grave. “Mad as a hatter, or perfectly sane. She could be either.”

  She edged to one side and took another step, wondering what it was that he did not wish her to see. Wondering why he had brought her in the first place if he meant to guard his secrets. “Why have you not sent her away? To a madhouse?”

  His gaze chilled, winter cold. No, colder than that. Cold and dark like the earth that had buried her when she lay in her grave as a girl of eleven.

  “I have seen such places. I know more of them than I care to.” His tone was frigid. She felt the touch of it like snow on her skin.

  His answer only served to whet her curiosity. Almost did she press him, but in the end she decided that honey was better suited to catching this particular fly.

  “And that grave?” She gestured to the lone sunlit stone, abruptly changing the subject in the hope of catching him unprepared. “Who is buried there?”

  “No one whom you need concern yourself with.”

  Of course not.

  “Well, Sir Gabriel, I fail to see the purpose of this interlude. You have given me all manner of suppositions and queries to mull over in the dark of night, but you have given me no detail, no meat to chew on.”

  She had no idea what image her words conjured for him, but the look he turned on her was disturbing in its intensity.

  “The purpose?” he murmured. “To walk in the light.”

  “But we are standing in the shadows.”

  The intensity of his gaze made her breath catch. “Sunlight holds… memories for me.” He spoke utterly without inflection, but she was left with the certainty that those memories were not fond.

  She stepped back, immensely aware of him, his height, the breadth of his shoulders, his long, strong fingers. Retreat seemed the wisest option, and she took it, shuffling back. For each inch she ceded, he moved into the breach, stalking her.

  Enough. She had granted him what leeway a host deserved. More than what he deserved. She was done with allowing herself to be manipulated so easily.

  “Do you seek to frighten me away? Is that your intent?” She held her ground now, retreating no more. “You believe your tour of an ancient graveyard and your stories of some sort of disease or curse will send me running back to London with all haste? Or perhaps your intimations of unseemly interest in my person? Let me assure you, sir, they will not.”

  “Because you are so very brave?”

  “No, of course not. I am not brave at all. I am a coward to the tips of my toes. But I am also pragmatic. My decisions are woven and twined with my past, my admitted cowardice, and my follies. I shall say it, though I do not doubt you know it already. I have nowhere else to go.”

  The words hung in the graveyard, weighty and stark. St. Aubyn simply stared at her with his usual controlled mask, one she knew was a mirror of her own. Despite the import of the revelations she had shared, she allowed nothing of her true thoughts to leak into either her expression or her tone. St. Aubyn would know only what she permitted him to know. That was the best way to play the game. Lull him into confidence by offering mere snippets of truth.

  It would have been an easy thing for him to make inquiries while he was in London. Likely, he already knew the entire unpleasant story, and merely wished to ascertain the honesty of her replies. So she fed him a generous serving of the information that she suspected he already knew, trimmed of fat.

  “I am mercenary to the core, as you so politely pointed out earlier,” she continued. “Madeline’s invitation came at a most opportune time. Mrs. Northrop was put out with me and relieved me of my duties, declining my request for a character. I cannot return to London, for I have no resources, no place to go, no family to speak of. And then there is the question of the rumors that dog me like stink after a garbage scow.” She tipped her head back, until she could look in his eyes and read his expression, or rather the lack thereof. He gave her no inkling of his thoughts. “But the most important factor in my decision to stay is Madeline. She is my friend. I owe her my life.”

  “Why was Mrs. Northrop put out with you?”

  She opened her mouth to reply, then closed it, nonplussed. Of all the questions she had expected him to ask—about her, about Madeline, about the past—he had asked the one that she had not anticipated, the one that had no bearing whatsoever on their current discourse.

  Assessing the situation, she contemplated how much to reveal. She had learned that when mixed with truth, falsehoods were swallowed with ease. A measure of truth it would be, then, a stone skipping along the surface of her lies. She had no wish for anyon
e to look deeper, least of all a perceptive, predatory man with a blatant interest in her secrets.

  “Mrs. Northrop was involved in charitable work, and so I was involved, as well. Our time at Bart’s passed without difficulty, but when she turned her attention to the newly formed Society for the Care and Reform of Women and Girls, our differences surfaced. She was appalled and outraged when I behaved in a manner most unseemly.”

  The interest in his gaze sparked and grew.

  “Did you?” he murmured. “In what way?”

  “I had a”—she hesitated on the word friendship, for it implied depth of emotion and shared history, and she did not wish him to know of those, so she said instead— “an acquaintance with a woman she deemed unsuitable. A young woman I knew fleetingly in childhood, now a widow fallen on the hardest of times. She runs a school of sorts in a room in St. Giles.” And at night, she whored, because teaching in a stinking, crowded schoolroom in St. Giles did not put a candle on the table or food in one’s belly. But Catherine had no intention of telling him that. “We corresponded on occasion. Mrs. Northrop found out and questioned my moral fiber. In her opinion, it was one thing to offer charity to those ‘poor unfortunates,’ as she called them. Quite another to view them as individuals of value. It marked the end of my employment, and she declined to provide a reference, for she deemed me morally corrupt.”

  Ah, if Mrs. Northrop had only known the true depth of her moral corruption. The thought was darkly amusing. She lifted one hand, palm up. “Madeline’s invitation came that same day.”

  He offered a single nod, his attention focused on her face in close scrutiny. “But you would have come to her regardless,” he observed softly, the words precise and so true they made her ache. “Even if it had cost you your position, you would have left Mrs. Northrop at Madeline’s summons.” He reached out and touched the single strand of pearls at her neck—her mother’s pearls. Only by dint of will did she manage not to flinch away. “You would have sold an heirloom or something else of value to procure funds, and you would have found a way. You would have come because that is who you are.”

  She felt violated by the accuracy of his observations. He had spent a handful of moments in her company the day of her arrival and again this morning, yet he was so perceptive that he divined that truth. Or perhaps he merely guessed at it and waited for her to reveal all.

  “Yes, I would have come,” she acknowledged, a safe enough admission, given that he already knew she had come. “And even if I did have somewhere else to go, I would stay. She needs me.”

  “You honor your debts.”

  She stared at him, unable to fathom how he understood so much about her after such brief acquaintanceship. She did not feel that she could claim such depth of knowledge of him, and that was dangerous. He was dangerous.

  “What is the debt that you owe my cousin, Miss Weston?”

  “She never told you?”

  “No. Enlighten me.” He bared his teeth in a smile that was neither nice nor comforting.

  Catherine raised her chin and told him in the briefest possible terms exactly what had transpired that long-ago day. She left out the heart-pounding terror, the press of the earth on her chest, the certainty she would die. Instead, she used only the most simple and direct of terms to paint a picture of a child in distress and another who ran to summon help. To share more than that with this cold, enigmatic man went beyond her comfort.

  “She saved you, and so you rushed to her bedside with the intent to save her.” Stepping forward, he laid the backs of his fingers against her cheek. A gentle touch, all the power and dominance of his nature held in rigid constraint. His action was improper, imposing, too intimate for her comfort. She wondered if he was always so controlled, if there was ever a time he let loose the rigid hold he maintained. The mere fact that she devoted thought and curiosity to that left her confused and cautious.

  “You cannot save her,” he continued, and she wanted to ask why, to demand that he offer explanation for his assertion. But her mouth was dry, her tongue thick, the feel of his fingers on her skin too intimate to be borne.

  With a sharp exhalation, she reared back, only there was nowhere for her to go. One of the two gnarled trees was directly at her back. She had trapped herself without realizing it. Her heart fluttered and raced, and she looked about for an avenue of escape.

  As though he understood her anxiety, St. Aubyn dropped his hand and took a step away, offering her enough space to let her breathe, but not enough to allow her to bolt. She resented that he could read her emotions when she had no inkling of his. She resented it doubly that he seemed to outmaneuver her at every turn. In truth, she was not even certain of the layout of the game board or what pieces were in play.

  “I brought you a gift,” he said.

  “A gift? That is very…”

  “Kind?” he supplied with an ironic smile.

  She shook her head. “I was going to say improper. I hardly know you.”

  “Well”—he slanted her an unreadable glance—“it is a small gift.”

  Pressing her lips together, she stared at him, waiting. He reached into his pocket and withdrew an odd tin, oval at the top, long and narrow. The tin was painted red with a gold crest on the front. When he placed it in her hand, she studied it curiously.

  “How… interesting.”

  “So polite. But you have no idea what it is.”

  “No.” She shook her head, tracing her index finger over the crest. “What is it?”

  “The tin is incidental. It is what lies within that will capture your interest. I saw it my first day in London and bought it out of curiosity after watching its inventor carry out a fascinating demonstration. But by the time I was ready to begin my journey home, I had determined that it could belong to no one but you.” He paused, and she knew he was watching her reaction as he said, “It is a fire-making device, Miss Weston.”

  Her breath left her in a rush and something deep within her chest twisted in a tight knot. A fire-making device.

  Dear God. He knew.

  He had somehow ferreted out her secrets. How? Her limbs felt heavy, frozen, her thoughts muddy.

  By the time I was ready to begin my journey home, I had determined that it could belong to no one but you.

  She examined his words for hidden implications and found none. Calm settled over her. She was overreacting. He had been in London. He had heard the gossip. That was all he knew. Nothing more. Not the truth. He determined to give her this device merely to unsettle her, to tell her he had heard about the fire. Of course, everyone knew of it. It was in fact old and tired news.

  She was both alarmed and surprised that he had bothered to make inquiries about her. Their initial encounter had left her with the impression that she was almost beneath his notice—a circumstance she would have preferred.

  In knowledge lay power, and she had little knowledge of him. The scales were far from balanced.

  Careful not to betray her panic, she forced a reply, her tone flat. “How interesting.”

  “So you have said already,” he murmured and stepped closer to take the tin from her hands. She had not brought her gloves down to breakfast, not having anticipated a need for them, and so her skin was bare as his long, beautiful fingers brushed her own. His were hot. Hers felt like ice.

  “You see,” he said, carefully prying up the lid to reveal the strange contents, “inside each spill—”

  “Spill?” she asked, unfamiliar with the term.

  “These twists of paper.” He slid one free to demonstrate. “Inside the paper is a tiny glass vesicle that contains a drop of vitriol. The paper wrapped about it is primed with chlorate of potash, gum Arabic, and sugar. When you wish to have fire, you use these”—he withdrew a tiny pair of pliers from the tin—“to nip off the end and break the vesicle.” He did exactly as he described and Catherine gasped as fire bloomed.

  Fire. In a tin.

  Her vision narrowed until all she saw, all she knew was t
he red tin in his hand with its yellow-gold crest and the fire that danced at the end of the paper twist.

  He huffed a breath and the flame snuffed. She wanted to snatch the tin from his hand and snip the end of another match herself with the tiny pliers, to see if indeed each one had this wonderful capacity to burn with spontaneous beauty.

  “Why do you give me this?” she whispered, wondering anew exactly how much he had managed to discern of her secrets and how he had ferreted them out.

  “Because Mrs. Bell forgot your fire the first night you came to us.” He paused. “This tin makes you mistress of your own comfort.”

  Mistress of her own comfort. His motivations for even considering such a thing were difficult to comprehend. Her head jerked up. He was too close, his dark gold eyes intent upon her. And she knew he lied. His reasons were other than he claimed.

  “May I?” he asked in the quietest of tones, but she had no idea what it was he wanted.

  Then he moved closer still. Her breath caught, her heart tripped. Her head tipped back and she stared up at him, so close, the scent of his skin purely delicious, beckoning her to lean close and inhale. The intensity of his perusal seared her.

  “The first time I saw you, a curl had escaped your pins and lay across your shoulder”—he brushed his fingers along the curve of her collarbone—“here.” Slowly, he traced his fingers up the side of her neck to the base of her skull where she had pinned the mass of hair in a loose knot. “May I?” he asked again.

  She was beguiled. Every rational thought bid her step away, decline his request, flee this graveyard and not look back. Instead, she nodded, closing her eyes as his warm fingers slid free one of her pins and drew a lock of hair from the knot.

  Heat licked at her, and her breath came in sharp, shallow rasps. She opened her eyes to see him before her, head bowed, her hair lying flat on his fingers, his thumb stroking the gently curled end. Feeling as though someone unfamiliar inhabited her skin, she stood there, allowing him to pet her, wariness, perhaps even fear, leaving her lightheaded.