Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Epilogue
Books by Máire Claremont
Copyright © 2013 by Máire Claremont
Bard Productions All rights reserved.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are used fictitiously.
Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Book design © Delilah Marvelle
Cover design © Delilah Marvelle
Cover photo © Jenn LeBlanc
Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976,
no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed,
or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database
or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the author.
For my mother and father, who taught me that despite the fear, that first step onto the rainbow bridge is best met with love and peace in the heart.
And for you. Every day is an adventure full of wonder with you in my arms.
This book was created out of love and so many people have added their own experiences to it. My deepest thanks and admiration to: Delilah Marvelle for her advocacy, conversion skills, and beautiful cover design, Jenn Le Blanc for her stunning cover image and SO many tearful and heartfelt conversations, Joyce Lamb editor extraordinaire and contributor of a much needed copy edit, Eloisa James for being kind beyond words, Ashlyn MacNamara and Emma Locke who read the earliest version, Lindsey Ross who is a voice of reason and fantastic eye, Joanne Lockyer who added so many layers, and Kati Rodriguez who keeps me on top of things. Thank you all for being such beautiful women. I am so lucky to have you all in my life.
CHAPTER ONE
Beautiful ladies should not
consider the art of suicide.
-Ophelia’s Notebook
England
1859
Ophelia slipped her toes into the cold river, eyes firmly shut, and wondered what it would be like to drown. She took another step. The swirling water caressed her calf, seducing it with a thousand little shivers. She felt the folds of her deep blue skirts float out over the water, gigantic petals, dancing over the surface.
Drawing in a long breath, she took another step. She savored the chill water sliding over her bared skin, brushing her petticoats between her limbs. It was a magical feeling, being enveloped by the water.
Indeed, the beckoning river seemed to whisper her name. Perhaps it knew her. Perhaps she was the incarnation of a thousand other Ophelias, walking to their doom. One step after another leading them into the dark water that might carry them away from all the pain they had ever known.
She took another step then tipped back her head and opened her eyes to the late afternoon sun. The sweet-kissed rays of the orb so seldom seen in this part of the country flickered over the river. The spun gold of it touched her heart. She longed to smile, yet she could not. Her heart sat, rock-like, heavy in her corseted breast.
She gazed over the ancient weeping willows on the other side of the river. Their branches bowed into the water, teasing it with their supple, faded fall leaves.
How had God created such beauty in a world marred by the misery of humanity?
Likely, she would never know.
She need never know. Such things were beyond her ken. If she thought overlong on it, her mother’s illness would weigh her heart down and she’d come out for this long walk to escape the constant knowledge that soon her mother would leave her.
Ophelia forced herself to focus on the breeze flitting over her neck, playing with the stray curls from her coif. She longed to feel it all. To feel anything but the imminent horror of her mother’s lingering illness.
An illness that had slowly stolen her mother’s vitality and ensured that any dreams Ophelia had were but distant memories. For now. . . Perhaps one day.
She shook the traitorous thought away. To think of a time when such dreams might once again bloom was the cruelest betrayal to her dear mama. So, Ophelia stepped again, determined to feel. To feel anything but the vicious burden of mourning that anticipated her mama’s death.
“Seems a damned odd way to go water bathing.”
Ophelia froze, her heart slamming against her breast with alarm at the sudden intrusion.
“Are you water bathing?” he drawled, his deep voice skimming her skin.
She shivered. Surely those tones had come straight out of the sinful depths of hell? For that reverberating male voice was delicious.
She didn’t turn to face him. Not yet. She needed time before she attempted to answer his questions. Slowly, she traced her fingertips through the cool, rushing river and stepped again. She should be afraid, but after the last year’s trials, she refused to be daunted by a stranger’s presence.
“Are you a water nymph, then?” he asked calmly.
She ignored his whimsical supposition, focusing on the steady flow of the river. “You know, it’s quite preposterous,” she observed.
She’d come to the river with a purpose. And she might as well share her absurd test with him since he was so inquisitive.
“A water nymph preposterous? Do not disparage the little folk so.” The voice drew closer, as if he were standing directly upon where the water lapped upon the rich, earthen bank.
A slow smile, a ridiculous, almost forgotten gesture, pulled at her mouth. She could not recall the last time a person had made her smile. “I should never do such a thing, sir, but I do not speak of sprites, or creatures beyond the veil.”
Her skirts floated about her legs, making her steps more and more challenging. It was so tempting, to let her knees buckle, to slip under the dark water. To be purified. A baptism of sorts. If she just immersed herself, she would feel free again. Free of the bitterness of death. She, herself, could be reborn, even if so many others could not.
“Of what, then, do you speak?”
“The famous painter Gabriel Rossetti.” The name passed her lips like a devil’s curse. Somewhere in London, that man was reveling in the glory of his art with his friends, the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. A renowned painter, a genius, a liar. He was the leader of the most beautiful movement of artists England had ever known, and she yearned. Oh, not for the man. But for something. Anything larger than this little life she had been condemned to.
Still, that didn’t change the fact that Gabriel Rossetti was duplicitous in his claims to have saved a woman from the icy Thames. Yes. She was certain. From her test, the man had to be an out-and-out liar.
It would be absolutely impossible for a woman to be still in the powerful Thames to be painted. No. Ophelia refused to believe it and that the model had almost drowned there. The event must have occurred somewhere else, such as in a bathtub in an artist’s studio, not in a river.
There was a hesitation before the man agreed. “Gabriel is preposterous, I grant you, but hardly worthy of standing nigh hip-deep in fast-moving water.”
Another pause, filled by a heady breeze that raced through the towering oak trees on his side of the river. Rustling the leaves bent on dying just as all things seemed to do. “Would you mind turning to face me, or perhaps come out?” he
asked.
Did she dare?
She’d accomplished what she’d come to do, but could she turn to face the owner of such a voice? She frowned. It sounded as if he knew Rossetti, which was a cruel joke. Rossetti had seemed a mythic figure, painting madly away in London, creating glorious masterpieces. Someone she could only ever read about in the news sheets, now.
But this stranger had met him.
Had everyone experienced the world but she? But what if. . . What if the stranger was the answer to the prayer she had prayed upon a thousand bright stars?
That something, anything would happen.
Slowly, the bottoms of her feet carefully positioning on the smoothed stones below, she turned toward him.
The man. . . No, man hardly seemed an appropriate word. The descended god or fallen angel stood on the bank in careless splendor. His long, wavy dark hair brushed his shoulders and teased at the high shirt points that hung scandalously open, baring the flesh of his strong throat. A long black duster coat swung about his Herculean frame, adding to the air that seemed to proclaim he gave not one jot for the world. The bottle hanging from his fingertips seemed to suggest he had been escaping the toils of this world for some time. Just as she wished to do.
But his eyes. Oh. His eyes.
Two jagged, cut stones of pure diamond blue shone out from underneath his wide-brimmed black hat, staring at her as if he could hook her soul and pull it from her very body.
A strange, painful pull urged her to emerge from the river and give herself up to him as if he were indeed some sort of god to which she might offer sacrifice.
If the river had not awakened her body, those eyes did. Her skin ached suddenly, the flesh developing the most delicious tingle. It was absurd. She licked her lips. “Do you truly know Mr. Rossetti?”
“I do.” He lifted his bottle to his mouth and took a swig. He never took his eyes off her, as if he expected her to disappear into the air just as those fairy creatures he had earlier made note of.
She decided to verify the story she’d read in the newspaper. “Can he walk on water?”
Perhaps this man knew if the article held any truth in it. Had Gabriel Rossetti rescued the famous model, Elizabeth Siddal, from a horrid drowning death whilst posing for the now legendary painting Ophelia? She knew it was unlikely, but she had to ask.
As he lowered the bottle, he coughed. “Gabriel? Only if he’s the Antichrist.”
She scowled.
At her solemn censure, he smiled, a slow-burning smile. “No. Rossetti would sink faster than a stone.”
Her heart drooped a bit at the confirmation of her practical conclusion. “Then he didn’t save Lizzie Siddal from drowning whilst John Millais painted her?”
Dawning lifted the man’s brows like dark angels’ wings. “That? No. A marvelous bit of journalism meant to paint Rossetti as the hero he so wishes he was.”
“Ah.” Ophelia nodded. “I surmised as much.”
Just a few days ago, she’d read of how art’s most famous model, Elizabeth Siddal, had nearly drowned in the icy waters of the Thames all in the name of art. She’d been posing for Millais’ composition of Ophelia. The paper had claimed that Rossetti had stormed into the water and pulled her from a watery death.
All tosh, of course.
That dramatic article had given Ophelia pause, and she’d been unable able to ignore her doubts. At long last, she’d come to the river to check her theory. The way the river had tugged at her body, urging it downstream, had answered her query.
“It would be impossible for a model to remain in one place in the river long enough for Mr. Millais to paint her,” she said.
“True.” He eyed her and then the river. “So you aren’t trying to top yourself, then?”
“I beg your pardon?” she exclaimed, shocked he would give voice to such an accusation.
He shrugged, a seductively easy gesture given that raw power rippled from him. “You are standing nigh waist-deep, fully clothed, in a river. One might draw certain conclusions.”
“Do I truly look determined to die?” she countered, horrified anyone might think she’d so entirely given up. Surely he couldn’t see the darkness of her thoughts.
He bit his full lower lip. Considering. “No. But you must forgive me for saying that there is a decided air of sadness about your person.”
Her throat tightened, and she had to fight to speak. “Is there?”
No one had ever said such a thing to her. Everyone else had always said how well she’d borne up under such circumstances as she’d been handed.
“Mmm.” The stranger narrowed his eyes, studying her slowly from the top of her head to where the water lapped at the gown now plastered to her thighs. “It’s almost beautiful, your sadness.”
“Beautiful?” she scoffed. This dark angel called her beautiful? Where was the trick? She knew quite well she was only passing fair. Odd-looking might be the better phrase.
“I hate to admit the truth of it, but your soul resonates, my dear, with a melancholy that is quite seductive. If I were a better man, I should determine to save you.”
A delicious hunger to be a foolish young girl saved by this man danced through her head. How tempting it would be. How dangerous. “But you are not. . .”
“Would you mind getting out?” he said abruptly.
She’d longed to say, a better man? To hear him confess his wickedness. “Pardon?”
“You’re making me exceedingly uncomfortable.” He shifted on his booted feet impatiently, a stallion ready to bolt. “Given the autumn air which has come upon us and the setting of the sun, the water must be cold.”
“It is.”
His eyes widened. “And?”
She tilted her chin up, unsure if she wished him to disappear as quickly as he’d come and leave her to her reverie. No. . . That was not what she wished at all. “And what?”
“For you to linger, there must be an and.”
“It feels. . .” She glanced down at the river water swirling past her in its staid, ancient fashion, taking in her own shadowed face reflected by the water, then looked back up to her dark angel. “Well, it feels as if I’ve been embraced, if you must know.”
She searched for words, struck by the oddity of such a conversation. Where were the banalities that had filled her days, even while emotion had stormed beneath her plain words? She drew in a slow breath, then said, “By something rather eternal.”
“Oh God,” he sighed.
That brief, warm moment she’d felt in the hope of a familiar soul vanished under his condescending noise. “Now what?”
He shook his head, dark hair brushing his broad shoulders. “I left London to escape this bloody romanticism nonsense and now here you are, a walking manifesto of romanticism.”
“Just go then.” It was strange, the emptiness in her heart at his dismissal of her daring admission. “Leave me here. I was quite contented—”
“Don’t you dare lie.” That dark brow of his seemed to thunder now, all mockery absent from his person. A person which seemed to claim all the chill air around him. “That is not part of your manifesto, is it, Ophelia?”
“How do you know my name?” she whispered, buying time. Buying breath against the way his very gaze heated her skin against the chill water sliding past her to some unseen sea.
“My dear, what other name could you have, waist-deep in languid water, the name of John Millais just upon your lips?”
She gasped in understanding.
He meant the character. From Shakespeare. The young lady who drowned herself after Prince Hamlet forsook her. A smile parted her lips. An unbidden gesture that surprised her as greatly as her own silly fancy that he had somehow known her from some eternal moment though they had never met. “My name actually is Ophelia, if you must know.”
“Truly?” Now a smile, devilish and hot, played at his own lips. “You do not make jest of this poor mortal?”
“I do not, and from the cut of your clothes you
are no poor mortal, sir, but one of great esteem.”
He laughed. A booming, dark sound that should have shaken the trees and called Thor’s clouds to race in upon her. The only thing that shook seemed to be her usually fixed, analytical resolve when it came to the masculine sex.
“You are correct,” he said.
“Are you like Ophelia’s Hamlet, then? A prince?”
“Come away from the river, and I shall make myself known.”
“Ah, but he betrayed her in the end,” she countered. “I am most likely safer in the river.”
A distinctly sober look darkened his eyes. “Perhaps, but in betraying her he threw away any chance at happiness he ever had. For what? To avenge the death of his father? He should have chosen Ophelia.”
She was being pulled again toward this strange man. Her foot slid forward over the slick stones. She was determined to learn who he was, one half feeling mad like her namesake for feeling no fear of his presence and the other half terrified that he should evoke such feelings so quickly in her unconquered being.
“Good, my lady fair, give up your watery abode.”
Ophelia squared her shoulders, determined that he should know she was no foolish, wavering miss. “Oh, sir, I should never make the river my home. For unlike the lady of the story, I have not known what it is to live.”
CHAPTER TWO
Mysterious men are well and good
upon the page. They are not to be trusted in life
unless one is quite willing to risk their soul.
-Ophelia’s Notebook
Andrew Colton, Viscount Stark, clutching the bottle in his fist, stared at the incandescent fae woman in the river and didn’t know whether to curse the heavens or get down on his knees and thank God that his boyhood friend, the Marquis of Vane, had not been there to greet him when he arrived at the estate this morning.
Because if Vane had been there, Andrew would never have gone for such a long walk to fortify himself before their meeting. And he most certainly would have never come across such a gloriously odd sight.
Stunned by her immersion in the river, he lifted the bottle of gin and took a swig. It tasted foul on his tongue. Oh, not because it shocked his palate. He was far too inundated in a sea of abuses to be bothered, but because the woman in the river suddenly struck him as a tonic far better than what floated in the green glass receptacle favored by artists and the damned.
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