Easing onto the seat beside her, he reached out, forcing her to lean with him away from escape, to slam shut the coach door that the two of them had entered through. The carriage lurched forward. Ramiel let go of her wrist. Her body beside him remained stiff and inflexible.
“Where are you taking me?”
To hell.
“Where it all started.”
“You know where my husband and my father became lovers?” she asked bitterly.
He did not answer her right away. Instead, he studied the top of her bonnet. “This is the carriage in which I suckled your breasts until you orgasmed. I am the man who buried myself so deeply inside your body last night that you screamed. Then you took me into your mouth and made me cry out. Yet you still do not trust me.”
“You allowed him to abuse my son.” Her fear and shock metamorphosed into anger. She jerked her head toward him. “Why did you not tell me?”
He did not look away from the accusation in her gaze. “Would you have believed me?”
Yes. No. Ramiel could read the conflict in her eyes. Conflict . . . and suspicion.
“How is it, Lord Safyre, that you happened to be at Edward’s house at that precise moment?”
“Muhamed woke me with the news that you had left the house unescorted. I knew that you left either to return to your husband”—because I had frightened and disgusted you—“or you left to confront him.” Because I was afraid to tell you the truth. “Neither option was acceptable. So I came after you.” And did not catch you in time.
She turned her head and stared out the window, presenting him with the top of her bonnet.
Muhamed and he had discussed more than Elizabeth’s departure while they sat together on the driver’s box and sped through the streets of London. She would soon learn about the results of their conversation. But it would not come from him.
He briefly toyed with the idea of telling her, and if not telling her, preparing her in some way.
But there was no way to prepare her for what would come. The only thing he could offer her was the reaffirmation of their bonding. And hope that, in the end, it would be enough. As it was for him.
“Calling me by my title will not erase what happened last night, taalibba,” he said softly. “Nor will it lessen the pain of what you have seen. I took you like the beasts in the fields and I would do so again. Do not confuse el kebachi with your father’s and husband’s performance. Animals do not engage in what you witnessed today.”
She did not respond. As he had known she would not. But he wanted her to. He wanted her to turn to him and tell him that she would not send him away when the next hour was over.
Ramiel watched her watch the passing carriages and buildings. Surely she recognized key landmarks. Surely she realized that the truth had barely been scratched.
But perhaps not. He would spare her this too, but he knew she would not be safe until she experienced the final betrayal.
When the coach stopped, Elizabeth stared at him in surprise. “Why are we stopping here?”
Opening the door, he climbed out of the carriage and held his hand out for her.
She pressed her back into the leather cushion. “There is no need to tell my mother.”
Ramiel ached for her ignorance. “You do not have to tell her. She has something to tell you.”
“How do you know? My mother would not speak to the likes of you.”
Dark red splotched her white cheeks. Elizabeth’s politeness went deeper than superficial etiquette. She derived no pleasure in being rude.
“Come, Elizabeth.” He lowered his eyelashes, ruthlessly playing on her softness. “Or are you ashamed of your Bastard Sheikh?”
She reluctantly scooted across the seat and allowed him to help her down. “You are not mine.”
But he was. He had felt her womb contract against the palm of his hand and had known that she accepted him fully, bastard, Arab, animal, man.
Elizabeth stubbornly tilted her chin. She still retained enough innocence to defy him. “There is no need to accompany me.”
“There is every need to accompany you.”
“I want to be alone with my mother,” she insisted coldly.
But Ramiel was already striding toward the Tudor mansion. The fan window over the double doors was like a great unwinking eye. Twin white marble pillars guarded the entrance.
He tried to imagine Elizabeth growing up there and could not. A child should have been sucked up into the coldness and the corruption, but she had not been. It defied imagination.
An aged, stooped man who should have been retired long before opened the door. He squinted up at Ramiel with milky eyes. “Good morning, sir.”
“We are here to see Mrs. Walters.”
“If you will be so kind as to give me your card, sir, I will see if she is—”
“It is all right, Wilson.” Elizabeth stepped up beside Ramiel. “Is Mother home?”
The butler bowed. “Good morning, Miss Elizabeth. It is so good to see you up and about. Mrs. Walters did not tell me you had recovered from your ordeal. She is resting.”
Elizabeth’s lips tightened at the butler’s reference to the propaganda that had been fed not only to the papers but also to the servants. “Thank you, Wilson. You may tell Mother I will await her in the drawing room.”
“Very good, miss.”
Ramiel silently stepped aside for Elizabeth to enter first; he followed close behind her. The foyer was a small, square room; a door identical to the front door complete with a fan window and twin white marble columns opened up to a hallway papered with rose-patterned silk. The drawing room Elizabeth led him to was dark despite the sunshine outside. All the tables were dressed to conceal their legs. Every space was crowded by family photographs framed in gold or silver. A small coal fire burned in a pillared white marble fireplace. On the mantel a gilded marble clock ticked away the seconds.
Clutching her reticule, Elizabeth sat on a horsehair-stuffed sofa. Ramiel restlessly roamed the parlor.
“Please do not tell her about . . .” He could feel her gaze following his paces. “There is no need. It would only hurt her.”
Please.
How different the word sounded when a woman balanced on the edge of orgasm.
Ramiel walked toward the fireplace, behind the sofa where she sat, away from her eyes that stared at him as if he were a stranger. He picked up a silver-framed photograph of her sons, a recent one, he would guess. Phillip, the pirate, smiled into the camera; Richard, the engineer, studied it.
The doors to the sitting room abruptly swung open. Rebecca Walters was a beautiful, aging doll with her chestnut-brown hair only mildly streaked with silver and the faintest of lines fanning out from glittering emerald-green eyes. There was nothing of her in Elizabeth. Ramiel was devoutly glad.
At sight of Ramiel, Rebecca froze on the threshold. For one fleeting moment it was all there in her face. Shock, fear, icy frigid rage. The game was over. And she knew it.
She quickly recovered. “What is this man doing in my house? If you have no regard for your husband’s reputation, Elizabeth, pray consider your father’s.”
Ramiel waited. The French clock did not. Time was running out.
Elizabeth was an intelligent woman. Her eyes were open now. It would not take her long to figure out the truth. He had helped her, a little, by telling her that she did not have to tell her mother about Petre and Walters.
“How long have you known, Mother?” Elizabeth’s question was as dull as the rumble of the carriage driving past the Tudor home.
“I have no idea what you are talking about.” Rebecca returned accusation with scorn. “I will not have you defile my home by bringing this bastard into it. When you come to your senses, you may visit; otherwise—”
“I wondered why you never mentioned the rumors about Edward having a mistress. Now I know why. Because you knew . . . that my father and my husband are lovers. Your husband and your son-in-law. I saw them together today. Fathe
r likes dressing in women’s clothing. How long have you known, Mother?”
Rebecca stared at her daughter as if she were an impertinent dog that had nipped the hand that fed it. There was no remorse in the woman’s icy green eyes. No remnants of maternal affection for the daughter she had borne.
“I have always known, Elizabeth. I knew about Edward before Andrew brought him home to become your husband. It is a trial that the women of this family must bear. My father and my husband were lovers. My mother endured. I endured. Why should you not endure?”
“You.” Elizabeth’s back stiffened with shock. Ramiel’s fingers tightened around the silver frame. He had not wanted her to know. And she would not, if only she had trusted him. “Emma said you wanted to awaken me Thursday morning. It was you who whispered my name. You blew out the lamp.”
Rebecca’s unrepentant silence confirmed the question that was no question.
“Why?” Elizabeth’s agonized whisper ricocheted down Ramiel’s spine.
“You have auburn hair.”
Ramiel stilled. That was not the answer he had expected.
Another factor he had not considered. Rebecca Walters was insane.
And now Elizabeth would have that, too, to bear.
He walked around the couch, positioned himself to protect her if need be.
Elizabeth visibly struggled to understand her mother’s rationality, her face stark white underneath the brim of her black bonnet. “You would kill me because I have auburn hair?”
Rebecca’s green eyes glittered. “I would kill you for the sins of your father, that they not be passed on through his bloodline,” she said frigidly. “I would kill you because I have faithfully loved Andrew, whereas you would ruin his career and my good name,” she added bitterly. “I would kill you because you would not endure what I and my mother endured. By seeking a divorce, you belittle the suffering of all Christian wives and mothers,” she concluded venomously.
Rebecca’s rigid posture did not invite pity. Nor would Ramiel grant it to her.
He held out the framed photograph. “Did you try to poison your grandsons . . . because of the sins of their grandfather . . . or because they would not endure either?”
Elizabeth sprang up from the sofa in a flurry of black wool. “Edward did that. This has gone far enough. It is time to leave.”
Elizabeth was running, but it was too late to run.
Turquoise eyes locked with emerald-green eyes. “It was not Edward who tried to kill your sons, Elizabeth; it was your mother. She accompanied him that day. Heavily veiled. Perhaps she hoped Edward would be content to take the blame.”
“No. Mother would not know of a poison that . . .” Turned flesh into liquid desire. “She would not know of . . .” A need that killed.
“Spanish fly, Elizabeth. It has a name. A name that you are familiar with, are you not, Mrs. Walters?”
Rebecca let her silence speak for itself.
Elizabeth stared at her mother in growing horror. “Do you know how Spanish fly kills?”
“Yes.” Rebecca transferred her glittering green gaze to Elizabeth. A cold smile touched her lips. “Andrew took too much when he tried to get me pregnant with another child. He almost died. That is why I did not have any more children.” The smile abruptly faded. “Whereas you, you had two sons. You should have been content. I had intended to give the drug to you in a cup of tea, but you hid in the Bastard Sheikh’s bed. You always spoiled the boys; I knew that the basket in the foyer was intended for them.”
“Did you never love me, Mother?” Ramiel winced at the raw pain of Elizabeth’s plea. “Did you never love your grandsons?”
“No, I never loved you, Elizabeth. I always knew that whatever boy Andrew loved would one day be your husband and I would have to accept him in my home. That is the way of the Uranian fellowship. As for loving my grandsons . . . Phillip has auburn hair. And Richard refused to follow in my father’s footsteps. Would you care for tea?”
Ramiel felt the impact of Rebecca’s admission all through his body. Elizabeth’s rage, that a woman would knowingly support the abuse of her grandchildren. Her pain, at all the years of lies.
Lies which Ramiel had perpetrated.
He had told her that the Uranians were a fellowship of minor poets. He had not told her that the so-called poets were a group of educated men who in the Greek fashion took boys underneath their protection for the purpose of guiding their lives, advancing their careers, and sodomizing their bodies.
“No, Mother, I do not want tea.”
Elizabeth allowed Ramiel to take her arm. Rebecca stepped aside so that they could exit. She took the photograph of her grandchildren from his hand. Lowering her head, she ran her fingers over the glass front of the silver frame as if gathering strength from the photograph inside. “My father, being a literate man, allowed me to study classical Greek. Arabian philosophies, I believe, are also based on Greek traditions.”
Ramiel stiffened.
Rebecca raised her head. Malevolence shone in the depths of her emerald-green eyes. She would do anything to destroy her daughter’s chance of happiness. And she was about to do just that. And there was nothing that Ramiel could do to stop it.
“You are disgusted by what you have discovered today, Elizabeth. But pederasty is an ancient tradition. This bastard you rut with has lived in Arabia, where such things are looked upon differently than we do in England. Perhaps you should ask him about his preferences before you judge your father.”
Ramiel had never hit a woman. It took all his strength now not to strike the smug righteousness off Rebecca’s face.
He gripped Elizabeth’s arm and forced her out of the drawing room, out of the house that had never been a home. Grimly, he lifted her inside the carriage and sat opposite her.
“Have you been with a man?”
Her question was so predictable that it brought tears to his eyes.
He had wanted more from her.
He had wanted her trust.
He had wanted her to accept him as he accepted her.
He had wanted her to accept what he had been unable to accept these past nine years.
“Yes.”
Ramiel closed his eyes on a wave of remembered pain. He tried to cling to that. The pain was good; the pain was natural. But the memory of pleasure seeped through the crack of time as it always did. Along with self-doubt.
He had been asleep. Hadn’t he?
He had not known who fondled him. Had he?
All he knew for certain is that he woke on a surge of pleasure that erupted into blinding, stabbing pain. Jamel rode Ramiel like he was a woman while eunuchs held him down for his brother’s enjoyment. Afterward, Jamel had wiped himself onto Ramiel and jeered, “Not such a man now, are you, brother?”
When Ramiel had been thirteen, Jamel had taught him how to fight with a knife. Jamel had not lived long enough to brag about Ramiel’s “deflowerment.”
There was an Arabic word for what had been done to him, the rape of a man who has been rendered helpless by sleep or by drugs. Ramiel had not been able to tell his father that he had killed his heir because of dabid.
Elizabeth’s voice snapped him back to the present.
“. . . Then you are no better than my husband or my father.”
Ramiel had thought he was, buried deep inside her body. Now he did not.
Ela’na. He would not be blackmailed by a woman into having sex. Nor would he be reduced to tears by one. He had control of that, at least.
“Will you come home with me?” The question was dragged from the very dregs of his soul—if he still possessed one. It was the closest he had ever come to begging anyone for anything.
He needed her. He needed her to make him whole.
“No.”
Expectation did not cushion the pain of rejection.
“I will take you to the countess.”
Elizabeth looked like a statue. No, she looked like her mother. A woman who had lost all vestiges of innocence
and joy.
“Very well.”
Lifting up, Ramiel held open the trapdoor in the roof of the carriage and shouted for Muhamed to drive to the countess’s house.
The remainder of the journey passed in stony silence. When the carriage pulled up in front of the countess’s white brick mansion, Elizabeth wrenched open the door on her side of the coach.
Rebecca Walters had succeeded in her purpose. Elizabeth would not even accept his touch in the simple courtesy of helping her out of the carriage.
Elizabeth stuck one foot out, turned her head, and met Ramiel’s gaze with flat, lifeless eyes. “I wish I had never heard of you.”
Awkwardly jumping down, she slammed the carriage door shut behind her. The coach immediately jerked into motion.
Ramiel leaned forward and ran his hand over the place where she had sat. The leather was still warm. As he was not.
Elizabeth was gone, but he could yet do one more thing for her. He could help her son accept as a boy what Ramiel had not been able to accept as a man.
Chapter 25
Any moment now the dean would return to take Richard and Phillip away from Elizabeth and she could not let go of her babies. Harrow. Eton. They were different words for duplicate institutions that held innocent boys hostage to the teachings of corrupt men.
She gripped the leather-covered arms of the lolling chair and stared at the dark paneling behind the large glass-topped desk that the dean had vacated. Richard and Phillip stood on either side and slightly behind her, the first patiently waiting, the second restlessly fidgeting.
“We do not have to do this.” Elizabeth’s voice echoed in the cavernous gloom. “I will hire a tutor. Richard, you can still take your exams in time to enter Oxford this fall. Phillip, I will buy you a little dinghy. We can float it in the park every day after studies.”
Warm fingers enveloped Elizabeth’s hand. They were man-sized but baby-soft still. Her little boy was irrevocably gone and she could not, would not, expose him to any more danger.
She blinked, stared into solemn brown eyes. Richard knelt in front of her chair. His face was no longer gaunt and his black hair was glossy.
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