Lady in Red: A Novel of Mad Passions

by Máire Claremont

  A sad smile turned his lips. “Oh, yes. I was married once, you know.”

  She gasped.

  “Hard to imagine, isn’t it?” he quipped, but there was a darkness now to his light eyes. “She died sometime ago. As did our daughter.”

  “You make it impossible for me to hate you.” She breathed.

  “Well, I am ever fractious.”

  “I never realized.”

  He shrugged. “We all are walking through fire, Mary, but I’m not sure you should expect Edward to put yours out. Or that you can put his out.”

  “Why are you saying this?” As quickly as she’d felt for the man, she suddenly felt hollow, as if he’d stolen all her air.

  “Because I don’t wish to see either of you hurt. All his life, Edward has run from his pain, pretending he doesn’t feel it. But he does. Until he stops, he will never let anyone close, because letting someone close means facing yourself.”

  He paused, as if considering how much he should say. “It’s why Edward and I don’t call each other friends. He’s always there for me and I for him, but he never tells me about his inner life, his broken recollections. We don’t share those kinds of things, because he can never let anyone see him. He’s been trying to escape himself since his father died. Do you understand?”

  “Oh, god,” she whispered. She did understand. Edward had briefly told her things, but then he’d always grown silent, as if he’d regretted sharing anything about himself. Her fingers itched for the laudanum bottle and she realized that she, too, wished to run away from her pain. “Can’t we stop? Running?”

  “I can’t answer that.”

  She squeezed her hands into fists and sucked in harsh breaths, desperately trying to quell her panic. “I’m helping Edward run from his pain, aren’t I, instead of facing it?” She fought back a sob. “That’s why he needs me. To run.”

  “Easy, easy,” Powers soothed, stroking her back in small, repairing circles.

  “I want that laudanum so badly now.”

  “It is only what is natural to you. For years now, you have had laudanum in you. For happiness, for sadness, for pain, for nothing, you have had laudanum. Why should you be different in this harsh moment? Or the moments that will follow? Rome was not built in a day, my darling.”

  A half laugh slipped past her lips, despite the apprehension thudding in her heart. “No. No, it wasn’t.”

  “You are worthy of love, Mary. Never forget that.”

  She pressed her forehead against his shoulder.

  “Do you hear me? Only you can give yourself that worth. No one else—not Yvonne, not I, not even Edward. Only you.”

  After a long, calming breath, she tilted her head back. “I hear you. And thank you.”

  “You feel better?”

  She gazed at his face. What she saw was a hard man, brittle, near broken, who deserved to be free of his suffering as much as anyone she had ever known. “I don’t feel quite so alone in my weakness.”

  He smiled, but there was an aching sadness in it. “You aren’t alone, Mary. You will never be alone because I am just like you and you are just like me. No matter our external differences, we are driven by the same mad need.”

  To her own shock, she hugged him tightly, briefly, savoring the moment, savoring this first friendship since her imprisonment. “And together we shall triumph over it.”

  “Exactly,” he confirmed, though his eyes had flared at her embrace.

  “Thank you.”

  “There is no need for thanks. For you help me, you see.”

  She dropped her hand away from his face. “You are quite the puzzle.”

  “As are you, little dragon.”

  She looked askance, ashamed she had almost forgotten Yvonne. “I still need what I came for.”

  He arched a brow. “And that is?”

  “Headache powder.”

  Powers nodded, turned, and went to the medicine chest. He rummaged through it, then slipped a bottle out, holding the brown glass aloft.

  She slipped it from his fingertips, her heart pounding hard at her narrow escape.

  Carefully, he stepped back from her. “Now go. Think not overlong on this small event and be kind to yourself. No one deserves it more.”

  She took a few steps to the door, but then she paused and looked back. He was returning the laudanum bottle to the medicine chest. “You deserve it, too, you know. Kindness.” She worried her lower lip before adding, “I hope you allow yourself to have it.”

  He nodded, but there was more pain upon his features as she turned from him and went in search of Edward. Her heart lamented Powers’s sorrow with every step. She wished she had known from the first moment of their acquaintance that Powers had not just been some indulgent lordling but one who had also been hurled through hell’s barbed gates. But now she did . . . Now she had a friend.

  It was the most remarkable thing in the world.

  Chapter 19

  Edward glanced up from his reading and his heart leapt against his ribs. He could scarcely believe his eyes and didn’t dare blink lest the apparition vanish.

  Mary stood in his doorway in a silk dressing gown, her short curls teasing her pale face. She’d slept beside him the last few nights, but virtually fully clothed and not under the covers.

  The sight of her standing there, clearly naked under the light silk, claimed his reason and he immediately said the most ridiculous thing: “Where have you been?”

  He nearly bashed himself for the possessive note in his voice. What the hell was happening to him?

  Clearly, she had happened to him, awakening feelings he’d never had, nor had to contemplate. Something had occurred to him on the beach earlier. Before, he’d cared about her, needed to help her. But tonight? He felt the need to own her. And that was bloody terrifying. He’d seen where that emotion led by his parents’ example.

  Mary strode into his bedchamber like a goddess deigning to visit a mortal. She was indeed Calypso, before she’d been cursed. Everything about her was perfection. That jetty hair he so adored had taken on a luster that gave her a pixie air. Taken with her vivid amethyst eyes, still slightly too large in her slender face, he was nearly breathless. It didn’t help that her only covering was a lush, sapphire robe dripping with black webbed lace. The rich fabric skimmed her form like a constant lover. The lover he so desperately longed to be.

  “I might ask you the same,” she returned throatily, a gamine grin on her face. “You were gone for most of the evening. You missed dinner.”

  Edward shifted uncomfortably in his chair by the fire. There was so little between them and yet so much keeping them apart. “I went for a very long walk. Besides, I couldn’t find you after our ride.”

  God, he sounded like such a child. Why was he being such an ass after such a perfect day?

  Fear, he immediately realized. Fear that, now that he cared, she might abandon him. As others had done.

  “Did you look for me? Was I so difficult to find?” she teased.

  He wished to accuse her with a vehement yes, but even he couldn’t bring himself to play the complete fool. He’d had this conversation at least a hundred times, but in the past it was always he who had been the one to slip off. It was a deeply unpleasant sensation to realize he had become that thing he so loathed: a harpy. “I supposed you needed your own time,” he acceded grudgingly.

  She nodded absently, listening but not truly hearing as she took slower, more purposeful steps into the room. “But I wasn’t really alone. I had a chat with Yvonne and then . . .”

  Her pale leg emerging from the fold of the gown nearly consumed his brain and it was all he could do to recall that he was irrationally irritated.

  He was half dressed. His shirt open. And though she’d seen him naked, this seemed far more intimate, with her in such deshabille.

  He swallowed, trying to think of something to say. “And you saw Powers.” It was the first thing to come to mind, and the most possessive.

  He
shut his mouth immediately and looked away. Christ. He sounded like a shrew. A male shrew. How perfect. But he couldn’t help it. He knew Powers’s talents and manipulations so well. Fool though he was, he couldn’t quite dismiss the possibility that Mary might transfer her allegiance if she deemed it favorable to her cause. Such thoughts gave life to painful recollections. Recollections of his own tainted past.

  After all, she was not with him for affection. He had to remember that or he’d be completely lost.

  “Edward?”

  “Hmm?” His focus slipped away from the memories that had been dormant so long, and he returned to the woman before him.

  “I do believe you have a touch of Othello about you.”

  He folded his arms over his chest, wondering how she could make light of him at this moment. “I’m not going to strangle you, if that’s what you are suggesting,” he drawled.

  She paled, her entire body drawing up.

  “Forgive me,” he quickly begged, desperate to go to her but unwilling to give her reason to fly. Horror washed over him at his own thoughtless cruelty. “You know I would never—”

  “Do I?” She took a step back. Anger, not fear, blazed from her as her fingers came up, clasping her robe tighter about her petite form. “From what I have seen of men, they are capable of a great many things. My father never raised a hand to my mother until after they’d wed.”

  After such a perfect day, why did he and Mary suddenly feel like opposites? How could he have allowed his own personal fears to endanger the one thing he desired above all? He swallowed back that painful proposition, not allowing it to take root, for it felt like a mocking truth echoing within his skull. “Mary, sweetheart . . . You know me. You must be aware, I would never hurt you in any way.”

  The tension slipped out of her slowly and her hands fell back to her sides. “I am slowly awakening, Edward, and in truth I don’t know you. Not truly. You must admit you keep a fair bit of yourself secret from the world, including me.”

  He ignored the veiled invitation to confide in her. He wouldn’t open himself to perusal. Not to anyone. He’d tried it once with her, admitting his mother had never loved him. He’d immediately regretted it.

  But that didn’t mean she had not seen inside him for the man he was. Or maybe she did see. Maybe she saw that futile boy and then the even more futile man he had grown into. “I know this is difficult. I wish I could speak more, but I can’t, Mary. I can’t.”

  “I understand,” she said wearily.

  Frustrated anger at himself pummeled through him. Could he not give her what she so needed? Had this all been for naught and now he disappointed her? “I’m not sure you do.”

  “Oh, Edward.” She sighed. “I am trying, but if I never know what you are truly feeling, how can I entirely understand? Perhaps you don’t wish me to. Perhaps you would rather push me away.”

  Perhaps he was pushing her so that he would never have to speak of his experiences. He was meant to be helping her, not the other way around. “I am just a man, Mary, and right now a rather foolish one.”

  Mary groaned, half amused, half dismayed. “Oh, Edward. You are not just anything. You are far more and I wish to know it all.”

  Suddenly, as he stood before her, a terrifying dose of vulnerability seeped into him. He forced himself to stand there under her gaze, wondering what she truly thought of him. Fearing it. Surely, she could see what he truly was?

  A man who didn’t deserve love, who could at best hope to atone for his family’s past.

  She moved toward him, her hands slowly tracing along the tasseled belt at her waist. “You are more man, more fighter, more lover than anyone I have ever known.” With each phrase, she tugged at the belt, untying it. She lifted her eyes to his and deliberately opened her robe until the sharp contrast of deep velvet and white flesh was before him.

  Desire rushed straight through his veins and his breath froze. The soft swells of her breasts were taut and inviting. Pink nipples brushed teasingly against the velvet, twin hard points offering themselves up to his kisses. And below, her slender belly curved down to the soft thatch of dark hair covering the secrets a man treasured above all.

  Well, most men.

  For it was her trust that he treasured most, and at last—at long last—she was giving it to him. “What are you doing?” he asked stupidly, his voice rough.

  She raised her chin as she pulled the belt entirely free. “I am here to make love to you. After all, we deserve a chance to be together. To find something good in our trials.”

  To find something good.

  His fingers ached to reach for her, but he wouldn’t. Not yet. “You’re certain?”

  Hesitantly, she reached up and eased the robe from her shoulders and let it drop to her feet. Standing entirely naked, with nothing but the light of the fire upon her body, she gave a small nod.

  “Say it,” he whispered, wondering how he had been so blessed when the entirety of his life had been a graveyard. Here she was, offering him salvation in her trust.

  “I want you,” she breathed.

  A groan tore from his lips, and though he tried to slow his movements, he strode toward her, pulling her naked body up against his. Hot skin to skin, soft against roughness, rubbing and caressing—he couldn’t think of anything but giving her everything.

  Controlling his unruly passion, he tilted her head back and lowered his mouth to her neck. The pulse of her vein beat wildly against his lips. For all her bravado, she was afraid. Though he longed to make her his without delay, he would have to go slowly. Indeed, he wished to go slowly. There would be only one chance to show Mary that he was nothing like the men she had known.

  He still cradled the brandy snifter in his left hand. Carefully, he lifted it to his lips and drew some of the burning liquid into his mouth. Then he kissed her passionately, slowly, allowing her to adapt and open to him. The brandy trickled like honey, a sweet burning desire between them.

  She swallowed and licked at his tongue as if she wanted more. As if she would bind them.

  Quietly, he took her hand and led her to the bed. He sat down upon it and looked up at her wary face. “Our bodies were made for pleasure, not pain, Mary.”

  She nodded sharply, clearly doubting, even if she had kissed him as though no other man in the world existed.

  “It is only some who bastardize what is meant to happen in passion and pleasure.” He took another full drink of brandy, then placed the snifter beside his bed. Drawing her to stand between his thighs, he slid his hands up her back and offered his mouth up for her kiss.

  She rested her fingertips on his shoulders, then lowered her lips to his. The gentle touch of her tongue nearly undid him. He opened to her and let her taste the brandy again.

  The kiss turned from gentle to hungry, a give-and-take of tongue and mouth and soft gasps of pleasure. He stroked his hands up and down her back, then eased her down to lie upon the bed beside him.

  Gently, he stroked his palm along the side of her face. He had never felt this tenderness before, nor the longing to give all of himself so that she might have everything. Propping himself up on one arm, he allowed himself to take in her body. She no longer had the harsh edges and bones of a woman starved. Now she was soft, with the look of a well cared-for lady. He’d done that. Brought her back from the edge of pain to care. That was exactly as it should be. And that look upon her face, of wonder and determination? It was his—his to care for, and to ensure it was never replaced by fear again.

  After all these years of shouldering his parents’ scandal, of never believing himself deserving of intimacy with a woman like Mary, here she was, giving herself to him. And he was going to savor every moment.

  Mary didn’t understand the feelings racing through her. It was more than curiosity awakening every inch of her skin. Something was growing deep inside her. Those hot brandy kisses breathed life into her and now it was flowing through her breasts, making them tighter, fuller.

  He had y
et to caress her body, but just the spicy glance of his eyes was enough to give her this feeling of desire. It was unfathomable. There was a strange power in it, even though she was doing nothing but offering herself. He wanted to please her. Even without words, she knew it. It was the only thing that mattered to him, shining like diamonds in his usually opaque eyes.

  Mary lifted her hand to his hard face and stroked his brow. “Make love to me, Edward.”

  He said nothing in turn, but followed her request. Reaching back, he pulled his linen shirt over his head and let it drop to the floor. He placed his hand at the base of her neck, then stroked not down but up. His fingertips trailed over her chin, then teased her cheekbones. The featherlight touch traced her lips, then eyelids, each movement sure and full of tenderness.

  It had never occurred to her that such touches could awaken her. The core of her body grew heavy with fire. Her own breath quickened and she wound her hands into the soft sheets, half of her afraid of what he would do next, the other half sliding into what he was offering to her.

  He lingered, his mouth hovering above hers. “If I do anything you don’t like, anything that makes you uncomfortable, tell me and I shall cease.”

  She couldn’t bring herself to answer, so she merely nodded. His hooded lids were molten with desire. In the gentlest of caresses, he slid his fingers over her breasts. The faint touch sent shocking sensation through her. A thousand tingling points danced upon her skin and she arched under his touch.

  “Mary,” he murmured. “Open your eyes.”

  She snapped her lids open, not even realizing she had closed them. His black hair was right in her sight.

  “I want you to see me. To think only of me.” He traced his tongue over a taut nipple. “To know you are here.”

  A shuddering breath escaped her lips at his care and her hands shot up, winding into his jetty hair. He sucked and licked and kissed her breasts, teasing them to the point of worship. No one had ever touched her thusly. She didn’t want to think of what had been done. But certainly there’d been no reverence of her body.