by Eve Silver
He watched her for a moment, assessing, measuring. “I was on my way to make certain that Madeline took the laudanum Graves supplied. A night’s rest would benefit her.”
His solicitous concern for the cousin he freely admitted he despised seemed odd. She studied him, trying to judge his sincerity.
In the meager light of the moon and the single flickering candle, his hair was gilded, his eyes shadowed. But not so shadowed that she did not read the glint of desire that flared in their amber depths as he dropped his gaze to her lips, her breasts.
“I gave her a dose in a glass of Madeira,” she said in a rush, startled and appalled by the answering spark of attraction that flickered in her belly, sending hot tendrils snaking through her limbs. No. She dared not feel this. To give a man such power over her once more—
He kissed her.
There was no preamble, no sweet and tentative approach.
There was only the heat of his body and the strength of his hands on her arms, holding her as his mouth pressed to hers, hard, hungry.
For an instant, she responded. The silk of his tongue in her mouth, the mingling of breath, the scent of his skin, faintly citrus, filled her. There was pleasure here. Primitive, savage pleasure.
Oh, God, how long since she had felt this? Never. The truth of that was irrefutable.
She had never been kissed so thoroughly, so savagely. So beautifully. Whatever stirring of passion she had felt in her past, it was a mere prelude to the sensations that drowned her now.
With only a kiss he had found the part of her she thought she had killed. She had been wrong. Her passion was not dead, only sleeping.
Under the press of his lips and the stroke of his tongue she unfurled, the air around them so still it quivered, the storm inside her building until she kissed him back, open-mouthed and hungry. Her fingers twisted in his hair, tugging him down to her as she fed on his strength, his passion, the physical comfort of his hard body and sheltering embrace.
He protected what was his. Coldly. Ruthlessly. She had witnessed that with her own eyes.
He would protect her if she were his. And it was that realization that chilled her, drowning the sharp flare of her passion as quickly as it had come.
She would not do this. Would not put herself in this place. Would never again be any man’s possession. His property.
With a gasp, she turned her face away and pressed hard against his chest.
“Catherine,” he murmured, his voice low and rough, his lips moving against her throat. “I want you.”
I want you.
Memories surged. A man’s voice, hard with rage. I want you. Now. On your knees, my cat.
She felt sick. Dizzy. The room spinning. It was too much. Too many memories. Too many secrets.
Too many losses and regrets.
She worked so hard to hold them at bay, to cage them where they could not harm her anymore. But with a single kiss, Gabriel St. Aubyn freed them, freed the power of her sexual need, and other things. The need for closeness and comfort and human warmth. All things she no longer deserved.
All things she knew better than to imagine that this man, this particular man, could ever want or provide.
The tumult of her passion, too hard, too swift, died as quickly as it had swelled, replaced by a cold knot of dread. What would he do if she refused?
Break her fingers as that man had broken Peg’s? No. She could not imagine that of him.
Break her will, then, as Sunderley had tried to do in the end?
The thought made her ill.
With a desperate cry, she ripped herself from Gabriel’s embrace and backed away until she felt the cold wall against her back. Pressing her open palms against the wall, she stood there, panting, wishing he would go, just go. Uncertain what she would do if he stayed, if he bid her disrobe, if he ordered her—
Panic swelled, and she battled it with all she was. She would not succumb. She would never again be so weak and helpless.
And then it came to her, the knowledge of how she could deny him that power. She would initiate the interlude, get it over with, on her terms, and she would hold all emotion at bay, make herself safe.
He watched her with an expression that betrayed nothing of his thoughts. Was he disappointed? Angry? Not even by the faintest flicker of his lashes did he offer insight.
Feeling as though she was not at all herself, as though she were dreaming or had drunk a measure of Madeline’s laudanum, she stared past Gabriel’s shoulder, straight ahead at the looking glass above the mantel. She saw her reflection there, her expression blank, her face pale.
Gabriel wanted her? Well, she would let him have her. She would let him take her and then it would be over. The anticipation, the heartpounding lust. The terror that this act of physical joining would dissolve her, dissolve everything she had worked so hard to become.
She could participate in the physical without offering even a bit of her secret self.
She was stronger now, a different woman. Yes. The phoenix risen from the ashes. And she would do this, face this, and come away stronger still. Men did it all the time. Made physical use of a woman they neither knew nor cared about. She suspected many women did that, as well.
There was her answer. She would become one of those women. He would have her body but nothing more. Those were her terms. It was the most she could offer. And she did not dare examine too closely her reasons for even offering this.
Her anticipation had died with the abrupt slice of a guillotine. But neither was there horror of the coming act, and that was an improvement. She had thought never again to face physical intimacy without clammy palms and cold sweat and roiling nausea deep in her gut.
Reaching up behind her neck, she unclasped her mother’s pearls and laid them carefully on the polished mahogany of the table. Next, she tunneled her fingers into her hair, taking the few pins he had missed from the thick mass, setting them down side by side like little soldiers in formation. Another pin and another. Heavy hanks of dark hair tumbled down her back to join the ones Gabriel had freed earlier.
He was watching her. She did not look at him, but she could sense his eyes upon her.
She concentrated on each breath, slow and easy, the pattern of inhalation and exhalation relaxing her. She felt as though she was not there, as though some other person inhabited her skin and went through these motions.
The sexual thrill that had electrified her earlier had disappeared, swallowed by the wave of memories that sucked emotion from her, sopping it up like a bone-dry sponge. There was only the rushing of her blood—was it really loud enough that she could hear it?—and the veil that draped her, insulating her from what was to come.
She knew that only a moment past, she had been frenzied with the need for Gabriel to touch her, ached for the feel of his hands and lips on her. That was gone now, buried beneath the defenses she had taken years to build.
The defenses he had almost breached with a single kiss. She had known from the first moment she saw him that he was dangerous to her.
“What are you doing?” Gabriel’s voice came as though from a great distance, low, calm. She liked to hear him speak. There was pleasure in that, at least. She wondered if he would talk as he took her, whisper against her ear, cry out in passion. Or if he would be silent. She thought she might not be able to bear the silence, but she could not imagine him as anything but coldly controlled.
“Removing my clothing,” she replied, feeling numb and dead and removed, uncertain she could face this any other way. “Isn’t that what you want?”
Gabriel crossed the space between them then, and she forced herself to look in his face. His expression was blank. Distant. He stopped, not touching her at all, and their eyes met.
“No,” he said.
She glanced down, opened her fingers. The sound of the last pin dropping to the table was inordinately loud.
“I—”
“No,” he said again, cutting her off.
She
stared at the row of neatly arranged hairpins, using the tip of her finger to push one into place in the line.
“This is not what I want,” he whispered, stepping closer, until she could feel the hard, cold wall at her back and the heat of him before her, until he could lower his face to her hair. She heard him inhale, a long, slow breath, and it made her shudder. Not in fear. Not in revulsion. That realization surprised her, though it was tempered by the fog that had come over her, the ghosts of her past hovering, always hovering.
“If this is not what you want, then what is it you do want?” she asked, her voice breaking as the memories twitched in their chains, threatening to overcome her.
He lifted his head, stepped away, his jaw tight, his amber eyes chilled to ice. “Your placid acquiescence is… distasteful to me. To have you simply offer yourself—”
Again, she saw his jaw tighten, and she had the sudden, shocking insight that he was enraged, controlling the force of his anger by sheer will.
“You are angry at me,” she observed, deflated, a little afraid. How long would his wall hold before the storm tore free?
“I am angry at him, at whoever did this to you, made you so—” He made a slashing gesture, clearly frustrated by the turn of events and her response, showing the most emotion she had seen in the time she had known him. “Tell me his name. I will kill him.”
I already did. A harsh, choking laugh escaped her.
“Did he force you?” he asked deliberately, cadence and tone icily controlled.
Yes. No. The worst part is… no.
“Not in the way you mean. My parents were dead, the estate entailed. They left no separate funds for me, and there was no relative, no friend to take me in. A distant cousin I had never met, Jasper Hunt, became the new Baron Sunderley.” She swallowed, remembering the first time she had seen him, dark hair arranged in the current style, blue eyes catching the color of the sky. “He was so kind. Handsome. Young. He let me stay on, and with his mother living there as chaperone, who could say anything against his generosity?”
Strange how the words flowed so easily, how she trusted Gabriel to hear them, this cold, hard, enigmatic man. “I was desperately grateful. And he wooed me. Made promises any young girl would believe”—she cast him an assessing glance through her lashes—“especially a desperate young girl with nowhere else to turn. In the secret hours of the night, he came to me…”
Her words trailed away, the ease of her confessions suddenly constrained. She could not go on, could not bare herself so fully to his scrutiny. He stayed exactly where he was, unmoving, unblinking. Jasper had wooed her, and she had succumbed. She had believed his promises of marriage and a life together, and when he had begun to choose her clothing, the foods she would eat, the friends she would correspond with, she thought it only the interest of a prospective husband, as smitten with her as she was with him.
“I allowed him liberties. I allowed him to…” To do everything he did. To chasten her. To break her will. To turn her into a pathetic creature wholly under his control. But she said none of that, only pressed her lips together and shook her head.
Gabriel nodded slowly. She thought he would say nothing at all, that she had shocked him, though the very idea of shocking Gabriel St. Aubyn seemed absurd.
Then he spoke, his tone cool and remote as ever she had heard, but his words, oh, his words reached deep inside her and twisted her in knots. “Some people take joy in breaking others, take pleasure in the pain and humiliation of those in their care.”
She gasped, horrified that he saw so much, that he clearly suspected all the things she did not say.
Lifting his hand, he stroked her cheek. “I understand.”
Of course, he did not. Could not. What did a man such as Gabriel St. Aubyn understand of being broken . . . shattered? His stare dropped to her lips, and she saw his naked lust, knew he wanted her still, despite her strange behavior.
He lifted his eyes to hers once more, and when he spoke, his words were a rough whisper. “When we lie together, Catherine—and make no mistake, we will lie together—it will be because you want me. Because you are parched and I am water, because you are breathless and I am air. And until then, until you come to me with hunger and need”—he gave a dark smile—“I shall make do with my solitary bed.”
With that, he offered a shallow bow and left her there, alone and shaken, both grateful and bereft to see him go.
11
Catherine had no idea how long she sat in the chair by the window and stared out at the moon. After a time, she saw Gabriel ride away. She had chased him out into the night.
As soon as the thought formed, she squelched it. No. She would not take responsibility for his choices, his actions, his moods. He chose to ride out.
Lucky him.
A part of her wished she could do the same. Ride through the night with the wind slapping her face.
She shook her head. Her thoughts were in turmoil, even as they were wiped clean. She revisited every moment with Gabriel, then she thrust aside any thought of their time together. She did not recognize herself, as though his mere proximity was somehow transforming her, changing her. Freeing her? The thought terrified. She did not want to be free. She wanted to be the woman she had created, controlled, safe behind her walls.
She did not want to remember the wonder of his kiss, the feel of his mouth on hers, the passion that swelled, monstrous and terrifying and beautiful. He frightened her. He soothed her.
She did not want that.
Sleep seemed an impossibility, but she craved the normalcy of routine, and so she rose, removed her clothing, changed to her nightrail. She crossed to the washstand, used her tooth powder, washed her face and hands.
Turning, she spied Mrs. Northrop’s letter and the vile clipping she had sent. Rage and pain swelled and she wanted them gone, wanted them never to have been. She wanted to purge the pain of this loss, and all those that had preceded it.
Of course, that could never be. The holes in her heart, her soul, could never fully mend. But she could do something. Something symbolic.
Taking up the letter and the clipping, she fetched the tin Gabriel had gifted her with. She had used only a single spill, the morning he had given it to her. She had taken Madeline walking by the lake and showed her the wonder of this marvelous thing. Madeline had recoiled from the flames, but Catherine’s joy in the gift had not abated.
The lid pulled open with ease now, and she slowly withdrew a solitary spill and the tiny pliers. Her first attempt failed, for her hands were shaking, her breath too fast. But her second attempt succeeded, the snip of the pliers igniting a small, lovely flame. She stared at it for an instant, feeling the glow reach inside her, warming her, lighting her way. Then she held the flame to the edge of the papers in her hand. A swell of heat. Licking tongues that curled and twined. Hungry.
Almost did she singe her fingers, but at the last, she tossed the tiny glowing remnant into the fire that already burned in the hearth.
“Goodbye, Martha,” she whispered. “Rest easy.” Easier in death than she had in life.
There were no tears now. She had cried herself dry.
Crossing to the window once more, she took up her silver-backed brush and settled in the chair. There, she stared out at the moon and drew the brush through her hair in long slow strokes.
From the hallway came a sound, the faint clank of metal on metal and the shush of footsteps on the carpet. She paused in what she was doing, listening as the clanking moved along the passage in the direction of Madeline’s chamber, the sounds finally fading away.
With her fingers curled around the brush, she sat there a moment more, something gnawing at her, unsettling. And then she knew. The clank of metal on metal. Mrs. Bell carried a large ring of keys that made that exact sound when she walked.
What purpose did the housekeeper have in making a late-night visit to Madeline’s chamber?
Catherine set down the brush, rose, and draped a shawl over her s
houlders. She left the room, taking her candle to light the way. The hallway was empty now, but at the end, Madeline’s door was cracked open and a narrow shard of candlelight bled through into the darkness.
The murmur of voices sounded, one low and firm, the other higher, anxious.
Catherine stepped closer.
“Nnno,” Madeline’s voice was hazy, confused. “I had—” She broke off and exhaled a long, sighing breath. “Did I not have some? I thought I did.”
There came a tapping sound, like a spoon clinking against glass. “Drink it now,” Mrs. Bell said. “Your cousin was quite insistent that I dose you with your medicine.”
Catherine gasped and hurried forward, pushing open the door to reveal Madeline propped on her pillows, looking sleep rumpled and confused, and Mrs. Bell standing over her with a crystal goblet of wine. The brown bottle of laudanum was open on the bedside table.
Her arrival drew the gazes of both women.
“What exactly are you doing, Mrs. Bell?” she demanded, summoning her frostiest tone.
“Following instructions,” Mrs. Bell clipped out in return. “Sir Gabriel bid me see to Miss Madeline’s medicine.”
Catherine stared at her in confusion, a recollection of her discussion with Gabriel from earlier in the evening leaping to the forefront of her thoughts. She clearly recalled telling him that she had dosed Madeline with laudanum in a glass of Madeira.
But perhaps he had given Mrs. Bell his instruction before he had come to her chamber, before she had told him the task was already complete.
“When did Sir Gabriel give you that directive?” she asked.
Mrs. Bell’s eyes narrowed and her expression grew mutinous, her lips compressed, his nostrils pinched. Catherine felt certain it would be a battle of wits to gather what information she could.
Then the housekeeper surprised her, setting the glass down on the table and folding her arms across her belly.
“Perhaps if you tell me the reason you ask then I’ll know if I ought to answer,” she said.