He could feel the pull between them, like the most powerful of magnets coursing through him, drawing him to her. He wondered if she felt it too, if the reason she had come to him and kissed him that night was because of its pull.
Come to me, Belle.
Anna Newton came to bathe him again, but she was quiet and unaccountably polite and did not try to seduce him with her experienced hands, a fact for which he was happy. This time, she allowed him to remove Hercules’s shirt so he wouldn’t freeze after the fact. And afterward, he was treated to a generous meal of sausages, ham, and eggs, which he devoured. The food gave him much-needed energy—energy with which to think of Belle.
Come to me, Belle. Please, come to me.
Later that night, the door swung open, and one of the ladies entered the cellar. His heart sank. He could tell by the footsteps that it wasn’t Belle. It was Lady M.
“Good evening, Leo. I fear you have only me to visit you tonight, for Mistress Jane and Miss Juliette have prior engagements.”
Prior engagements? Where was Belle off to? A soiree? A ball? The theater? Would the women spread rumors about her while the men conspired to get her into their beds?
His heartbeat raced; knots of tension formed across his shoulders and down his back. A primitive reaction. He wanted nothing more than to be with her, to protect her from other men’s wicked thoughts.
Good God, what if she encouraged them? What if she agreed?
No. Not Belle; never Belle.
Yet she had gladly gone along with his scheme to debauch her. Then again, he had not really schemed. He had been driven by something powerful, something outside himself. As had she.
He didn’t respond to Lady M.
“Now don’t become sullen and silent with me. You’re like a schoolboy at times. Act your age, Leo.”
He didn’t answer.
“Ooh, we are not progressing. Not at all. We are taking backward steps, not forward steps. At this rate, we’ll never see the end of you.”
“Stop,” he gritted out.
“The man speaks. And he is not a child after all, is he?”
“No.”
He heard her riffling through the pages of the book. “Did you read it a second time, Leo? Are you ready for another?”
“I did. I am.”
“And what did you think on your second perusal?”
“Belle is nothing like the witless women the author describes.”
“Isn’t she?”
“Not at all.”
“How old is your Belle, Leo?”
“She is close to me in age. Twenty-six in a few months, I believe.”
“Is she not on the shelf, then, in the eyes of society?”
“I don’t give a damn what the eyes of society see.”
“Well then, what do you see?”
“Take this damned blindfold off, and I will tell you.”
***
Anna used a cucumber to assist in educating Isabelle on the finer points of seduction.
“It is a man’s most treasured possession,” Anna said, grinning. “Treat it as the most beautiful, wondrous thing you have ever beheld, like a piece of delicate crystal or a coveted gem, and he will never forget you, or forget wanting you.”
Isabelle peeked through the fingers hiding her face. She’d only ever felt that particular part of Leo deep within her, and imagining doing other things to it with her hands and mouth made her feel oddly exhilarated and terribly afraid. She wanted to do this. She was curious. But though she lacked inhibition when she was in bed alone, she would be far too shy in the presence of a man.
“It is also quite a delicate, sensitive thing,” Anna continued. “You must not press too hard with your teeth, or he will screech and jump through the ceiling.”
Despite herself, Isabelle laughed. “It is more sensitive, than, say, an arm? If someone bit my arm, I would be inclined to jump through the ceiling.”
“Oh, it is much more sensitive than an arm,” Anna said gravely. “It is more like the tips of a woman’s breasts or that secret bump between her legs. Do you know of what I speak, Isabelle?”
Isabelle flushed. “Yes.”
“It is like that, but larger and sensitive all over. But the most sensitive part of all is the very tip. If all else fails, explore it with your mouth, and you will make him mad for wanting.”
“Och. I can’t do it.”
“Of course you can,” Anna said tersely. “Now watch me.”
She rounded her lips over the cucumber and proceeded to take it deep into her mouth. Isabelle covered her eyes again and groaned.
Anna did not speak, her mouth being full of cucumber. Isabelle peeked through her fingers. Sensuously, slowly, Anna withdrew the thing. When it was completely out of her mouth, she licked its top and then ran her tongue over her lips as if she had just tasted the most delectable dessert.
Isabelle would never, ever be able to do this.
“This is much, much too far out of my depth, Anna. Please. I cannot. How would we ever arrive at such a point where this became a possibility?”
Anna laughed. “Oh, you are such an innocent soul, Iz. Touch him through his trousers, stroke him, then unbutton them and crawl down. Start off slow, exploring, enjoying, with your hands, and then slowly bring your mouth to it.”
“I would be too afraid. What if I did something wrong? What if I hurt him?”
“Short of biting him or pinching his skin, it would be difficult indeed to hurt him.” She came close to Isabelle and cupped her cheeks in her hands. “You will enjoy it. You have a delicate nature to begin with, and I’d wager it would be impossible for the likes of you to hurt him. Me, on the other hand”—she grinned—“well, that would be another matter altogether. But you are gentle, and you will only succeed in teasing him to oblivion, into rapture. He will choke on his own lust. Trust me. I have a great deal of experience in these matters.”
Isabelle eyed her warily. No doubt Anna did have experience in these matters. And of course Isabelle wanted Leo. Wanted him desperately. She wanted to learn all the things she had wondered about for so many years, about men’s bodies and her own.
In the end, it wasn’t the carnal aspects of the plan that disturbed her the most. It was that she was to be the instrument of revenge.
She could not conceive of betraying her friends. And yet, the idea of deliberately hurting Leo pained her. She didn’t know why—he had laughed at Susan, abandoned Anna. He had hurt them, and no doubt he had hurt many other women as well. For their sakes, she should be impatient to wreak their vengeance.
Susan was right. It was time to make Leo understand exactly what he had done. It was the only way to cure him. It was the only way to finish it. It was the only way to set him free.
Yet, even knowing all that, the thought of hurting him killed something inside her.
***
Susan and Anna had given Isabelle exact instructions for her first meeting with Leo, had even made her rehearse what she would say and do, but it felt so wrong. Not to mention dangerous. She could destroy everything tonight, with just one misstep, one word said incorrectly. And everyone knew her clumsy way with words. It was a miracle Susan had entrusted her with this.
She passed Pierre with a tight smile and a nod, opened the door, and walked into the cellar for the first time since the night she had kissed him.
Leo was sitting upright in a wooden chair, one of the two the servants had brought down to the cellar. His hands were bound behind the chair and tied to the chair back. His clothes were the same as those she’d seen on his first night here—tight black trousers and the white shirt with the open neck. Bare feet, hands, head. A sardonic tilt still lingered about his lips, but it seemed less cocksure than it had the first time she had seen him.
He raised his head but did not speak. His body bristled with wariness.
“Good evening.”
She stood by the door and watched him as he identified her voice. His lips parted, then pressed toget
her. The small amount of color remaining in his face leached away.
Even in his pallor, he remained a handsome man, appealing in a roguish, piratical sort of way. His nearness made her insides turn molten and her skin prickle, and she took a deep, careful breath to combat those unwelcome sensations.
“Belle.” His voice sounded hoarse. “I’ve been waiting for you. What kept you?”
“Other duties.”
“I have waited a long time, Belle. Seven years. What ‘other duties’ could have kept you away for so long?”
She said what she had rehearsed with Susan. “I’m here against the wishes of the lady.”
He cocked his head. “Is that so?”
Tentatively, she approached the chair. “I cannot untie you, for I am informed that you might try to flee.”
“I would never try to escape from you.”
“And I may not remove your blindfold, for I fear that you might use whatever you see against me.”
“I would never use your face against you, Belle. You must hear what I have to say. I need you to understand—I thought you were dead. They told me you had died. The grief—I was sick with it. I—”
“Stop it!” she burst out, fighting a sudden gush of tears.
He stopped midsentence, his lips parted. “Very well.” He bowed his head. “I’ve been asking for you. Why did you finally decide to come?”
She breathed a silent sigh of relief. Good. Back to the script. “I couldn’t stay away. I needed to see you again.”
“Why?”
“I think about you all the time.”
His head snapped up, his brow furrowing. “You do?”
She took another step toward him. “I have not had another man since…since…” Susan had instructed her to say more, but it sounded indelicate, and she could not force the words past her lips. She hoped he would understand, that he wouldn’t force her to say it.
He did understand. He inhaled sharply, and something resembling a groan resonated in his throat. “Is that true?”
“Aye.”
Susan had told her it heightened a man’s desire to know he was the only one who’d had a certain woman. Yet admitting it to him… Well, it was painful. It felt akin to admitting a great weakness.
“I have not been so loyal,” he said gruffly.
She was quiet.
“And you loathe me for it.” His voice was hollow.
Aye.
“Nay.”
His expression sharpened, as if he could see through the blindfold, and she recoiled, fearing he might somehow discern the lie.
“I wouldn’t have expected to be so easily forgiven.”
Here was where the script became more difficult.
“There are some ways in which the male flesh is weaker than the female’s,” she said. “I can’t blame you for actions you haven’t any control over.”
He pursed his lips, then opened his mouth as if to argue, then stopped himself and said something she suspected was entirely different from what he had originally planned to say. “But your friends would not concede that point, I’m afraid.”
“I doubt they would,” she agreed.
“So now that you are here, now that we have spoken, what are your intentions?”
“I wished to see you.”
“Is that all?”
“Aye.”
He spoke softly. “I would like to see you, too.”
“Nay.”
He released a breath. “Will you stay, then? Talk with me?”
“I will stay for a short time.” She went to the chair across from him and lowered herself into it.
In a nervous gesture she had never seen from him, he ran his teeth over his lips. “Tell me what happened. It’s all such a mystery to me.”
“Do you mean…after?”
“Yes. After I went down to Cambridge.”
“Your brother—the earl—he found a letter you’d written to me. You’d left it in our secret spot.”
“By the standing stone,” he said.
“Aye. I never read the letter. No one ever showed it to me. I assume it…must have been…ah…rather explicit…”
“It was.” His lips tightened to a flat line, and he didn’t volunteer any more.
“My da was…furious, to put it mildly. He didn’t want to lay eyes on me after he read that letter. I was too much of an embarrassment to him. He sent me away to England. Northumberland. My aunt agreed to take me in.”
“I tried to find you. John said you’d died in a carriage accident.”
“My da told me…he said…that you didn’t want me.”
“That wasn’t true,” he said, his voice low but harsh with contained anger. “My brother lied to me. He was so convinced I must marry into the English aristocracy, he fabricated that tale of your demise.”
“But it doesn’t matter, does it?” Isabelle closed her eyes. If he’d truly loved her, he would have found the truth for himself. He wouldn’t have become what he had.
“It does matter,” he said, and she opened her eyes to see his shoulders squared and his jaw tensed.
There was no point in arguing. Neither of them could take back all the years. Leo could not take back all he had done.
“I’m sorry, Belle,” he said softly. “If I’d known you were alive, everything would have been different.”
“Would it?” she asked. “Or would it have been worse? Would you have made me fall harder, only to leave me later on?”
He shook his head sharply.
“That is what you’ve done with others,” she reminded him. “Mistress Jane and Lady M.”
“They weren’t you,” he said.
“There is nothing special about me, Leo.”
“That’s not true,” he growled. “You cannot believe that. You were always shy, Belle. But shyness doesn’t equate to ordinariness.”
She knew that. But her ordinariness had been proved to her in other ways.
“You were so beautiful…so guileless. I never met anyone like you, before or since.”
She sighed.
“It’s the truth,” he said.
“I’m not the same woman you left, though.”
He didn’t answer, just pressed his lips together.
“I’m older. Wiser. Less liable to act on impulse.” And far more insecure in her own skin.
He nodded. “I believe that. But I also believe you’re still essentially Belle. The same Belle I once knew.”
She shook her head, then, realizing he couldn’t see her, whispered, “Nay.”
“You know how I have spent the last seven years,” he said. “But I have no idea how you spent yours. Will you tell me?”
“Aye.” And she did tell him, about how she’d moved between her two aunts in England, depending wholly upon their charity, until her father had died. At that point, she’d returned to Scotland, to her old house, which had been inherited by her father’s younger brother, Ewan.
She told him about how she no longer felt at home in Scotland, how she had spent her time essentially adrift between Uncle Ewan and Aunt Una in the Highlands, Great-Aunt Mary in London, and Aunt Flora in Northumberland.
“The best times,” she told Leo, “were when I went to the village at home. The villagers have forgotten my disgrace—or they choose to ignore it. I knit stockings for the villagers every year for the winter. I wrap them up in little packages and give them to the bairns for Hogmanay.”
He smiled. “Leave it to you to keep my tenants’ feet warm.” Then his smile faded. “I certainly haven’t.”
They sat for a moment in uncomfortable silence. Then, she asked, “What of you?”
“What about me?”
“Tell me how you have spent your time.”
“You know, Belle.”
“Only the bad parts.”
He shrugged. “That’s all there has been.”
“That can’t be true.”
“It is,” he said quietly. “I spend my life in an attempt to avoid
living.” His lips twisted cynically. “The past several days, down here in this cellar, have been the most alive I have been in seven years.”
Her eyes smarted at that. “Have there been no joyful moments?”
“None that I remember.”
His words rang with honesty, and her heart clenched in sympathy. She knew what it was to live a life in which joy was an elusive thing, difficult to catch and impossible to hold on to.
“Why?” she asked, but deep inside, she already knew.
“Because the one thing I lived for died,” he said in a voice so low she had to strain to hear. “I thought you were gone forever, and you’d taken the part of me that was capable of goodness, capable of love, with you.”
“I didn’t,” she whispered.
“But you did, Belle. I…” His voice cracked, and he tried again. “I…loved…you.”
She closed her eyes. She’d loved him, too. So much.
“To lose such an essential part of oneself…” He shook his head. “I couldn’t recover from it.”
She gazed at him. She wanted to remove the blindfold, to search his eyes and somehow glean the level of honesty in his words.
But she couldn’t.
Still, something in his words lit a spark of anger within her. He was, essentially, blaming his behavior for the past seven years on her “death.” He wasn’t taking responsibility for actions and choices that were clearly his own.
She shook her head. “So, because you felt your life was ruined, you thought it acceptable to ruin the lives of others?”
He froze, as if in surprise. “God, no…”
She studied the top of his russet head, the slump in his shoulders. “Then what?”
“I wasn’t thinking. I know what I have done is unacceptable. Unforgiveable.”
“Aye,” she agreed.
“I am attempting to offer you some insight…and yet there is no insight. The truth of it is that I am a bastard.” His lips twisted. “Perhaps that’s all there is to it. Your ‘death’ brought out my true despicable nature. And now that I know you never died…” He shook his head. “I see things more clearly.”
“Do you see them more clearly because you know I am alive, or because you have been given so much time to think about your actions while you’ve been here, unable to…to…cavort?”
The Sweetest Revenge Page 17