The Dark Affair

by Máire Claremont

  She sighed. “I see.”

  Reaching for the imperious mask that was his dearest aid, he glanced at her through narrowed eyes. “I’m glad.”

  A brief emotion flickered over her face, unreadable but intense, before she locked it away. She shook her head. “Right. Time to move.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “No more wallowing in the darkness. You need fresh air.”

  “Am I a sheet in need of airing?”

  She slowly raked her gaze up and down his frame. “Yes.”

  The strong desire to roll back under the bedclothes and simply disappear into its welcoming embrace tugged at him, but he wasn’t going to give her the satisfaction of seeing him collapse. “Fine. I need clothes.”

  “I’ve laid them out for you.”

  “You’re my valet now?”

  “You don’t have a valet or I would have had him do it.”

  “Good point.” He hated having too many servants about. Knowing his comings and goings. Which meant he did that horrifying and ungentlemanly thing: he dressed himself and took care of his own things.

  Did she admire it?

  He frowned. He really shouldn’t care if she admired anything that he did, but . . . there it was. He cared. It was a rare feeling. One he didn’t wish to think overlong on.

  Blinking, he forced himself off the bed, waiting for her to offer assistance. When she didn’t, he fought momentary disappointment. He actually liked her insisting on aiding him. Which was perverse since he would have simply refused her help.

  His legs shook slightly. “How long have I been in bed?”

  “Well, we’ve been married almost seventy-two hours.”

  “Three days?”

  She gave a curt nod. “And you’re over the worst of it, the physical part, that is.”

  “How relieving.” And it was. Now he could start to rebuild his life and regain some control.

  He swung his gaze about, and there were his clothes laid out atop a high-back chair. Drawing in a steadying breath, he headed for them.

  He stopped in front of the chair and glanced down at the damnable nightshirt. He hated it with a passion. They always somehow managed to get tangled up when he slept, and now he was going to take it off.

  She’d seen him naked.

  He winced. He’d hardly been at his best form. In fact, he’d been an infant. A scouring sort of unpleasant shame hit him. Never in all his life had a woman witnessed him so completely exposed. But he wasn’t backing down, and she was lingering.

  Better to face it head-on. He reached down and whipped the damn linen shirt off.

  The rustle of skirts filled the room, and he resisted the urge to see if she was looking at him.

  “Am I offending you?” he inquired.

  “Hardly. Besides, I’ve a fine view.”

  He laughed a full laugh, and it shook him to his core. When was the last time he’d done that?

  “What?” she asked.

  “Did you just pay me a compliment?”

  “I—n-no.” More rustling of skirts filled the room, and he could hear her walking away from him, toward the window. “I meant the park,” she said, her voice a little higher than before.

  “Pity,” he replied, enjoying her embarrassment. At least he wasn’t the only one slightly discomfited by their strange relationship.

  She cleared her throat. “Do you need assistance?”

  “No need to make excuses,” he said, suddenly feeling lighter. He grabbed his trousers, tugging them on as quickly as he could. “If you wish to hold me in your lovely arms again, you’re more than welcome.”

  She made a decidedly skeptical sound. “You are exceptionally arrogant.”

  “Hopeful,” he corrected. “Hope” was not a word he’d usually use. In fact, it was a foreign emotion, but at present it suited. There was something about her primness, her determination to see him through this, and the way he clearly excited her despite her wishes, that intrigued him.

  “Well, you haven’t fallen over again, so you’re doing brilliantly without me.”

  “Ah. But I could fall at any moment. Surely you should stand closer. Just in case.”

  She snorted.

  Good Lord. Was that how he sounded all the time? Snorts and derisive sounds. She did in some ways remind him of himself. Capable, cynical, determined. But she’d retained some sort of innocence that he’d let go.

  He stuffed his arms in his shirt. Hurrying. Hurrying unfortunately meant going at a snail’s pace. His fingers refused to move as swiftly as he was used to, and he found himself having the sudden and profound need of a drink.

  A bad omen. Drinking, like opiates, was apparently now off his list of acceptable pursuits. At least for now. In his experience, one led to the other when one enjoyed the experience of oblivion.

  He shook his head, focusing on his cuffs and the simple gold links she’d chosen. It took him several moments to insert the small items and fasten them properly. He bit back a curse.

  God knew how long it took him to get his coat and boots on, but he managed in silence. Because regardless of the banter, he was aching. His muscles throbbed, and frankly, he felt as if he were going to come out of his own skin.

  At last he straightened, tugging on the greatcoat she’d set out for him. “I assume we are going out.”

  “Yes.”

  She was still staring outside, her elegant form silhouetted by the window.

  How he admired that ramrod-straight back of hers. It looked so small and delicate and yet so strong. He wondered if her shoulders had ever sagged with defeat. He couldn’t imagine it. “You can turn around, you know.”

  She stood still for another moment and then slowly turned. Her deep blue eyes wandered over his face before surveying his attire. She gave a curt nod. “Well done.”

  “I am nothing if not accomplished. I was able to dress myself at three years old.”

  A smile teased at her lips.

  “I’ve come so far,” he drawled.

  “You’ve certainly traveled a long road.”

  He sighed. “Now, why say something like that? We were having such a harmless chat.”

  “I’d say little is harmless with you, James.”

  He bristled for a moment, then forced himself to take a breath. His life was changing. Everything was changing, and he wasn’t going to be able to hold hard to those vows he had made so long ago. Not if he wished to get out of his most recent predicament. She’d have to call him by his name. And somehow, every time she said it, he wouldn’t be transported back to another woman. Another failure. He wouldn’t.

  She folded those beautiful hands primly before her.

  She did it so often, he’d begun to wonder if it was some sort of self-defense tactic. A protection, so to speak, from anyone who might penetrate that thick armor of hers. “Now that I’m presentable, where are we off to?”

  She smiled. “The park.”

  “Oh, God. I really am three again.”

  “In some ways, yes.”

  He groaned.

  “You have to learn how to live.”

  “I already know how to live, thank you very much.”

  “No . . .” Her smile faded, and that gaze of hers pinned him. “You know how to escape.”

  Chapter 13

  James clenched his jaw. This had been a terrible mistake. In fact, at present, he was tempted to turn, walk away from Margaret, and head to the nearest gin shop. But he wasn’t going to be a bloody coward. He was going to face this damned outing without the aid of any substance.

  Still, that didn’t mean life without his favorite things was going to be a bloody lark.

  Fortified, at Maggie’s insistence, with boiled egg, toast, and tea, things he hadn’t bothered with in years, he forced himself to actually lo
ok about.

  Hyde Park was everything he’d been avoiding for years. The walkways were full of young couples, the ladies in bright finery, their skirts swooshing like uprooted flowers as they made their way through the towering trees.

  Happy, animated faces surrounded him.

  Frankly, he wanted to scowl at each and every one. Well, not the ladies. The ladies he would simply avoid like the devil. He was not to be trusted around debutantes who’d never seen anything darker than the night sky from their chamber window. Likely, a foreboding growl would send them screaming.

  “Are you unwell?” Maggie asked.

  She’d kept pace beside him, walking from Hyde Park corner down to the long stretch along the Serpentine.

  “I am perfectly fine,” he gritted. Each word was a task. Each step arduous. Not because it was exhausting, but rather because he had been avoiding groupings of people for some time. At least, sober, socially acceptable people.

  “You’ve gone quiet.”

  He focused on the path directly in front of him, walling out the happy families. “One does not need to spout banalities at every moment.”

  “You were quite talkative in the house.”

  “The saccharine nature of all this is off-putting,” he finally said, which in itself was true, but not the reason he had gone quiet, as she put it.

  She lifted her gloved hand and gestured toward the people making merry in the most polite and cheerful way. “This bothers you?”

  He glanced down at her. A damned wide-brimmed bonnet of navy blocked his view of her face. Could she be serious? Did she enjoy these people running about, not a care in the world, when she knew what the world really was? “It’s all false,” he finally said.

  “False?” she echoed.

  “Their happiness.”

  “Now, why do you say that?”

  “Because nobody”—he looked around until he finally spotted a young couple gazing at each other, chattering away like two birds, and he pointed—“can be that happy.”

  “And why not?”

  “You know why not.”

  “Do I, now? I thought you believed in love and all that.”

  He stared down at his hard-as-nails Irish lass and wondered if she still could truly have a touch of the naïve about her. She was innocent in some respects, he knew, but this? “Surely, dearest Maggie, you are not foolish enough to believe that love necessarily means happiness. Love can be agony.”

  Her face paled and she looked away.

  “Ah. You do know. That’s why you were so skeptical and cynical when you proposed to me.”

  That already ramrod-straight spine of hers tensed.

  He wouldn’t be put off that easily. Not when she demanded so much from him. “How do you know?”

  “My history is hardly—”

  “I don’t think you’ve shared a single personal thing about yourself with me. And yet you’re always asking me—”

  “That’s different,” she cut it in.

  “How?” he demanded.

  She fixed her gaze on the towering trees across the park as she clearly searched for an answer. “Well, I’m your nurse.”

  “You’re my wife,” he reminded her softly. It was becoming easier to say. More natural. More . . . right.

  “Why do you wish to know?”

  His lips quirked into a grin. “Because I wish to know you’re human.”

  “Of course I’m human,” she huffed.

  He slowed his pace, turning toward her. “I don’t know. Sometimes I think you too perfect. An angel who is afraid to dirty her wings.”

  “That is absolute tosh.”

  But he wondered. She kept herself in such reserve, despite her easy banter. Truly, he knew nothing about her. “Are you always saving people?”

  Her chest rose and fell in a long breath. “Well, I wouldn’t put it quite like that. But I do help people.”

  “When was the last time someone helped you? Without expecting anything in return?”

  She opened her mouth, snapped it shut, and then looked away.

  He’d hit it, then. “It’s been quite some time, hasn’t it?”

  “It’s not important.”

  “Yes, it is.” He reached a hand out, careful of the fact they were in public, and lightly brushed his gloved fingers over hers. “It’s important to me.”

  She stilled, her bright eyes brilliant. “It was my parents who taught me that love didn’t mean happiness,” she whispered.

  He waited silently, knowing if he spoke, she might press those perfect lips shut and shove all her secrets back into the depths of her soul.

  Her throat tightened as if her voice strained. “They loved each other. They did. But the circumstances of life prevented their love from bringing them joy. My father begged my mother to get off her knees, to stop praying, and to go out to help the people. She was convinced the only way to end the famine was through pleading and supplication. God never answered her prayers. At least, not before she died.”

  Her eyes grew luminous and dark as a tortured sea. “I can still hear them screaming at each other. At my father futilely begging her, of her futilely begging God. Love was not enough to save them . . . or to make them happy.”

  “The world is often unkind.”

  She shook her head, as if she could free of herself of the memories. Whatever vulnerability had shadowed her eyes disappeared, and she gestured to the people about them. She smiled. “Perhaps they are untouched by the brutality.”

  “Can you think so?” Her sudden withdrawal from him burned. Where had she gone? The real Maggie, not the one she put on display. The one who had known pain and suffering. She was gone. She had shut him out. “Eventually, they will know it,” he snapped.

  “Or perhaps,” she ventured, her teaching voice returning, “they’ve simply found a way of surviving the unkindness of this world.”

  Any of his earlier sympathy and goodwill dried up. How could she do it? How could she mask her pain so easily, pretending she was perfectly at ease with the world? “Unlike myself, you mean.”

  “Now, why would you say that?”

  He let out a sigh. “Maggie, you’re about to drive me to drink.”

  “We can have tea, if you’d like.”

  Could she be serious? For a moment, he’d felt they were equal. Just two people sharing. “Your inference was clear. That I could learn from these idiotic simpering twits bounding about the park.”

  “I think you’re seeing yourself in everything I say.”

  “My God, woman. Who taught you to converse this way? You’d find the bright side of a coal mine.”

  “I’m Irish. It’s in my nature.”

  “Well, it’s in my nature to think all this is a farce.”

  She stared up at him, unyielding. “Why is this any less real than your pain?”

  That stopped him. Like being bashed in the head with a cricket bat. “I beg your pardon?”

  “Well, it sounds as if you’re trying to tell me the only thing that exists is pain.”

  He opened his mouth to reply but then stopped. He forced himself to look at the young couple passing and to think back. Once. Once, long ago, he’d known happiness. A fleeting temporary joy when he’d believed that the world held nothing but a glorious future filled with children and laughter.

  He let his gaze wander over the park. The green grass glistened under the faint sunlight. The towering trees had found their leaves after a long winter, their life undeniable. And sunlight glinted off the water. Why couldn’t he find happiness in this?

  It was beautiful.

  Perhaps he was the fool. Maybe Maggie had known pain and overcome it, just as these people had. Was it only he who dwelt in pain all the hours of the day?

  And just as he wondered, he spotted a young lady, perhaps thirty,
walking slowly, her full yellow skirts flirting with the slight breeze. She was laughing, watching a little girl run across the grass.

  That little girl darted back and forth, chasing a small black-and-white dog. Her long blond curls bobbed about her pink face. It was so pure, her joy. So pure . . .

  He took a step back, the air knocking out of his chest. “We have to go.”

  “What?” Margaret’s brows furrowed. “Why?”

  He shook his head and turned, striding away from Margaret. Striding away from that little girl and her mother.

  His throat clenched tight. The pain of it so intense he could barely breathe. He increased his pace, not caring. Not caring if he was a coward. Not caring if he was doing exactly what Margaret had done just a few moments ago. He had to shut out this pain.

  He’d been so certain that he could fight his demons long enough to find his independence.

  One walk in the park and that resolution was gone.

  There was one thing infinitely clear.

  He couldn’t do as Margaret wished. He couldn’t come back to life. Because life was a constant reminder of what he’d lost. His steps ate up the earth until he was back at Hyde Park corner standing at the intersection that led up Pall Mall.

  If he walked fast enough, he could outrun the sudden images of the little girl.

  “My lord!”

  That Irish lilt followed him, barely penetrating the sudden memories, which only she seemed able to unlock. He kept walking. Outpacing the laughter of his own daughter. A daughter who would now be old enough to be chasing her dog in the park. Who should have been full of joy. Not buried in the cold, unforgiving earth. Emotions welled up in him with such intensity the air began to go black.

  “Wait!”

  His heart pounded in his chest, but he stopped, having no idea what to do next. He whirled toward her, barely seeing.

  Margaret ran up beside him. “What happened?”

  He yanked his gaze from her face, unwilling to look upon someone who seemed to believe in him. “Margaret, what you’re asking me to do is impossible.”

  “It’s not,” she protested.

  “It is. Right now, it damned well is,” he hissed. “Unless you wish me running to the nearest opium den.”