by Christi Caldwell, Eva Devon, Elizabeth Essex, Anthea Lawson
“I do not...” He grimaced, hating to put her in the same ranks as the servants who pitied and feared him. “Take advantage of those in my employ.”
Those full bow-shaped lips, swollen from his kiss tipped up at the corners. “Lucas,” she began. “I am a woman grown. Seven and twenty years. I assure you, I know my mind and would not hold you responsible for a kiss that I wanted.”
A kiss that I wanted...She desired him. It was a potent reminder that he was very much alive. A wave of hunger for her, unlike any he’d known with any woman before her.
Then reality slammed into him, cold, uninvited, and unwelcomed. For the truth remained: he was a monster, terrified to step outside these chambers. He could never be more...for her—or anyone.
Footsteps sounded in the hall and he gave thanks for the interruption. With several, long strides, Eve strode over and pulled the door open. A young boy held forward the tray with Lucas’ evening meal. Periodically, the child stole glances over her shoulder. Fear gleamed bright in his eyes as he hurriedly backed out of the room.
This is what I’ve become. A man to inspire fear in boys and girls.
Balancing the tray, Eve drew the door closed with her spare hand. She carried the tray over to the rosewood game table that had been set up almost a year ago as a makeshift dining table. He frowned. “I eat at the nightstand.”
“Yes,” she said as she strolled away from that tray. “Which I expect is deuced uncomfortable to eat in that reclining, sideways position.”
Yes, it was. Lucas eyed the food a long while, warring with himself. When he’d been taken prisoner from the fields of Talavera, the French had forced him into a small Spanish cottage in the countryside. If he’d made so much as a sound or movement out of place, they’d beat him. He still bore the marks of those torturous beatings on the skin of his back. From that moment, he’d learned to love silence. It was safe.
“The night before every battle, I would sing.” At that quiet, unexpected admission, Lucas shifted his gaze from the tray to Eve’s solemn face. “I would sing the same song, In the Merry Month of May. After I sang, I would pray the same prayers, with my appeals to God, using the same words every time. I feared if I deviated, in any way, death would come.” She stared through him, lost in a world only she could see, a world that he had also known. “Sometimes it did,” she said, a haunting quality to that whisper. “Sometimes, the men who became like brothers and friends, died on those fields. Sometimes, they lost limbs and were carried from the fields, back to England.” Sadness spilled from her expressive eyes and his stomach muscles knotted at her pain.
And he ached to stave the flow of words and end the barrage of nightmares that would always exist for her. If he were that same man, he could call forth those soothing words. “It is death and dying that haunts you,” he said softly.
“It is,” she agreed. “Many of them also lived, Lucas. Those men will carry different scars with them, but they lived.” Eve gestured to his bed. “Sitting in a certain bed, in a certain way, in a certain room, will not undo what happened to you. Nor will it prevent other bad things from happening, to you or anyone.” Her quiet pronouncement cut him to the quick. Words that saw more than he himself had in his entire year of being home. “But do you know what, Lucas?” she asked, meeting his eyes.
Unable to speak, he managed to shake his head, hanging on her every word. Fearing that if he made even a single utterance, she’d stop and this bond between them would be shattered, and he would return once more to the solitary figure, without a soul he could connect with.
“If you spend the remainder of your life in this room, nothing good will happen to you, either,” she said quietly.
The clock ticked loudly in the quiet that descended. I should tell her to get the hell out. Send her to the devil as I would anyone else.
In the end, the decision was made for him. Eve gathered her dust cloths and left, closing the door silently behind her. With her words clamoring around his mind, Lucas stood frozen as the seconds melted into minutes.
Then, swallowing hard, he picked his way slowly across the room. Stopping at the makeshift dining table, he stared down at the contents of the silver tray.
And then, he sat.
Chapter 6
Everything had changed.
The role of servant and employer, and angry lord and lesser lady, had blurred so distinctions were stripped away. Now Eve and Lucas existed as woman and man, who’d known one another’s embrace, and more, words and secrets she had shared with no other.
The following week, as Eve moved around Lucas’ chambers, straightening the darkened space and dusting the now gleaming furniture, he sat observing her with an intensity that left her breathless. In their frank talk, their souls had bonded, in a kindred connection she’d never known with another.
Pretenses gone, he no longer lay in that broad four-poster bed but rather sat in the King Louis XIV chair. A chair better suited to a formal parlor than bedchambers. Eve turned down his coverlet for the night, the striking intimacy of her being here heightened in ways it hadn’t even after that first kiss. She paused at his nightstand, that same leather volume in the precise spot it was every day.
She picked it up and studied the gold letters emblazoned upon the cover. But for the times she dusted the copy, it remained there. Why did Lucas keep a book, he’d no intention of reading?
“It was my favorite title,” he murmured.
In the week they’d known one another, their thoughts had moved in harmony. “I was always fascinated by Caesar’s devotion to Cornelia. He’d forsake a fortune and defy a consul, remaining married to her, despite opinions.” It was devotion, better reserved for fiction than real life.
Lucas started. “You know the work.”
At the shock coating that statement, Eve lifted her shoulders in a small shrug. “My mother died when I was born. My father was the only company I knew. He served in the military. Every aspect of his life and mine, because of it, connected to those pursuits. The only books we had were those of the great commanders and leaders.” She motioned to the pile at the front of the room. “When I was a young girl, I’d read through them and...” Her cheeks warmed.
“And what?” he pressed, folding his arms at his broad chest. Her mouth went dry. Standing as he was, Lucas exuded strength and she ached to slip into his arms once again and know that vitality.
“And I’d seek the stories contained beyond those military feats. Who were those men?” she asked, approaching him. “What did they dream of beyond war and what would they do once returning home? Whom did they love?” her voice trailed off on those silly, girlish musings that had traipsed through her mind while pouring over those books. Those dreams had carried into womanhood, when she’d hoped for love. A husband. A family of her own.
“Those were the only books I read,” he said quietly. “Only I, as only a foolish young man could, dreamed of battlefield glory.” Odd, they’d been born to different stations and, yet, they’d both poured over those same works, taking from them their own visions of a future. “When I returned from war, my rooms had been arranged precisely as they’d been when I’d left. And my mother and sister lovingly filled it with those same books that held me riveted as a boy and inspired me as a hopeful young man. Of all the titles in our great library, these are the ones they delivered to me.”
Books of war, and triumph, and great glory. “They could not know,” she said gently. How could anyone ever know unless they suffered through the hell of war?
“No,” he agreed. “But the longer I was home, they ceased to see their son and brother and all looked upon me as an oddity, until it became easier to shut myself away.” He laughed. It was a harsh, empty sound. “It was as though they believed if I read the books I once loved and donned the same garments, that I could somehow be the man I’d been before.”
She knew what it was to earn the horrified looks of all. To the world, she’d ceased to exist as anything more than an extension of her father
’s crimes. Not unlike this man, she’d found her peace in hiding. It was a crime that a man who’d valiantly fought for his King and country should impose exile upon himself. Yet, he’d left his bed—for her.
Eve fanned the well-read book and lingered her gaze on one bent page. She worked her gaze over the words inked there, settling on a single sentence in the middle.
“...For my part, I had rather be the first man among these fellows than the second man in Rome...”
“I am the spare.”
She looked up and her heart raced. He stood but a handful of steps away. How was it possible for a man of his size and strength to move with such a stealthy grace?
“Richard is heir to an earldom,” he went on to explain. “It is why I had a commission purchased.” And in the end, he’d returned a man battling monsters. Her chest tightened and she fought the urge to rub the pain there.
“Is that truly why?” Knowing him just a short while, she no more believed that than he himself did.
He chuckled. “No,” he conceded. “Aidan is the youngest, impulsive brother, and Theodosia...my sister, well you’ve met Theo. She is the hopeful dreamer.” A grin turned his lips, and this was real, and easy, and not at all the hard-mocking sneer that had met her a week earlier. Lips that had covered her own. Lips that she wished to know once more. Her heart sped up and cheeks afire, she looked again at the book.
To give her fingers something to do, Eve picked up the small, aged leather copy and turned it over in her hands. “And what are you?” she forced herself to ask, needing a glimpse of the man who’d rushed off to fight.
“Me?” He quirked a black eyebrow; that slight arcing so enticingly wicked. “Why, I was the honorable one. The one who ran off to defeat Boney’s forces all on my own.” Lucas gave his head a sad shake and a midnight curl fell across his brow. “And they all expected I would return the same man who left them.”
Her fingers twitched with the need to brush that silken strand back. “I never knew a brother or sister. As I mentioned, my mother died when I was born. You are fortunate to have siblings,” she murmured. “They know you’re the same honorable man who left them.” Even if Lucas didn’t see it himself.
“They pity me,” he said, perching his hip on the bed post. A little fluttering danced in her belly. How had she failed to note the intimacy in visiting Lucas in his chambers? In talking to him of one another’s pasts?
“They love you,” she countered. She’d spent her life an only child, more often than not forgotten by her father, until she’d become of political use to him as hostess. She thought of the Duchess of Devlin and the pain in her eyes. “They might not know the books you once read bring reminders you don’t need...” Leather tome in hand, Eve motioned to the door. “But then, how can they know who you are now or what you’d care to read if you do not let them back in?”
Lucas had locked himself away in this room; shutting his family out. Shutting the memories of all that was once good, out. Shutting out the entire world. He deserved to live. Even if he believed himself unworthy of that gift.
Holding his gaze, she walked with slow, deliberate steps to the drawn curtains.
“What are you doing?” he rasped, as she reached for the fabric.
“I’m letting the night in,” she said softly. “Because until you confront the night, you can never greet the day.”
A sharp cry burst from his lips and he raced across the room just as she tossed the gold brocade open. “Do not—” Lucas’ entreaty swiftly died.
The moon’s soft glow cast a shimmery white glow upon the hardwood floor, the pale light glancing off the polished mahogany furniture.
She braced for his stinging diatribe.
Instead, a long silence filled the room, punctuated by the loudly ticking clock. Lucas’ gaze remained riveted on the crystal windowpanes that revealed the English countryside, awash in moonlight. “I had forgotten how beautiful it was.”
She struggled to hear that faint whisper; words spoken more to himself. Unable to confront the depth of emotion parading over the chiseled planes of his face, Eve stared out at the countryside seeing it also through new eyes. For nearly two years, she’d buried herself in whatever work she managed to secure, before her identity was invariably discovered. She’d lived, not unlike Lucas, as a shell of a person who’d ceased to see the world around her—the shimmering white light of a full moon’s glow. The emerald green of the rolling English countryside. The countless stars glittering in the night sky.
Lucas slipped his hand into hers and gave a slight squeeze. No words were needed. And though it was the height of folly, with every moment spent with this man, he cast a greater and greater hold, making her wish for things that could never be.
Eve battled down the panic roiling through her belly. There would be time enough for worry, later... For now, in this instant, there was only them.
Chapter 7
In the days that passed, all the haunting legends about Castle Rayne had receded. During the days, the manor had come to feel more like a home than any of the others Eve had known as a motherless girl, forced around the Continent by her father.
Until the night sky crept in and darkness descended over the countryside.
As a girl, Eve had come to appreciate that there was no such thing as true silence. For even in the absolute absence of sound, there remained the sharp hum of quiet. There were branches that struck lead windowpanes. Winds that howled across the countryside. From somewhere deep within Castle Rayne, there was a distant bang, followed by more quiet.
Eve swallowed hard. For all her bravado and mockery of the tales of ghosts, she drew the covers tight to her chin and stared wide-eyed up at the ceiling. It is just my imagination. There are no such things as ghosts or curses...well, mayhap there are curses, but there are certainly not ghost—
Thump.
Her pulse pounded in her ears and she yanked the covers over her head. Once more, the loud midnight humming served as the only sound as she stared into the inky blackness.
You are a twit, Eve Ormond.
With a sound of disgust, she tossed back the coverlet and scowled at the plaster ceiling of the modest chambers she’d been afforded. If her departed father could see her hiding under the covers like a scared girl, he’d have delivered one of his military lectures about courage and pride. All rubbish when coming from a man who’d betrayed his country, but still, it would be deserved coming from anyone.
She did not cower in her rooms like a scared child. Having walked the bloodied battlefields to tend dying and injured men, she’d developed a toughened skin. Or she’d thought so. Despite the whispering of the handful of servants inside Castle Rayne and Captain Lucas Rayne’s own taunting a few weeks prior, there were no ghosts.
Thump.
Her pulse jumped. There was, however, that odd thumping.
Eve briefly contemplated her white coverlet and then, with a sigh, she swung her legs over the side of the bed. She’d been brought up to fear nothing and no one, and the longer she remained in her chambers with that odd distant noise from deep within the manor, she’d remain sleepless. She shivered as her feet collided with the stone floor.
Before her courage deserted her, Eve hurried across the room, gathered her white wrapper, and made for the door. Fingers on the metal handle, she paused. Captain Lucas Rayne doesn’t want a soul wandering about past the midnight hour. Mrs. Bramble’s earlier warnings whispered around the chambers of her mind. “Well, Captain Lucas Rayne does not leave his chambers,” Eve muttered under her breath. Squaring her shoulders, she drew the door open. What there was—
Creeeeak. She held her breath as the hinges, in desperate need of oiling, groaned in protest. Then, slipping out into the darkened halls, Eve carefully picked her way along the stone corridors. The handful of lit sconces cast an eerie glow off the walls, with ominous shadows set to dancing.
What manner of hell had Lucas known that he’d prefer this cold and barren home? Devoid of all cheer and
warmth, there existed nothing but darkness and fear. She squared her jaw. And she would not allow herself to be victim to the same.
At the end of the corridor, Eve stopped, her ears trained for any hint of that earlier rhythmic thumping. Then she heard it. From deep within the castle, the haunting strains of a piano. She clutched the sides of her wrapper, as fear lapped at her senses. Her breath came hard and fast, filling the corridors, and she cast a quick, desperate look back at her rooms.
The playing took on a frantic rhythm, drawing her forward. Eve hastened her stride, until she sprinted down the halls. With each step, the sound and fury of that playing soared to a crescendo pitch that blended agony with desperation, in a maelstrom of emotion that left her breathless.
Eve skidded to a stop outside the room from where the music came. She eyed the arched doorway with a lion-headed handle better suited to a dungeon. All the earliest warnings on her first days here came rushing back...of ghosts and curses and haunted souls roaming these halls. With tremulous fingers, she pressed the handle and peered inside the darkened quarters. She blinked, attempting to adjust to the dimly lit space...and then her gaze landed on him.
Lucas?
She froze, attempting to make sense of what her eyes saw. Surely she imagined him before her now. For the haunted man she saw daily did not leave his chambers. Only, there could be no imagining the long, midnight strands that shook under the fury of his movements.
Her heart froze and she gripped the edge of the doorway, breathless. The piano, long in need of tuning, did little to detract from the effortless command of those keys. A haunting melody soared as Lucas stroked the keys, coaxing each chord, each note, until they blended together in a heartbreaking symphony that brought her eyes closed. His song, one of agony and hopelessness, climbed upward, until her chest ached for peace from the torture played.