Passion

by Gayle Eden

  PASSION

  Gayle Eden

  Copyright 2011© 2013 Gayle Eden

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior written consent of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  The right of Gayle Eden to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  First Ebook Publication 2011

  First Edition

  All characters in this publication are purely fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Published at Smashwords.

  Smashwords Edition

  Introductions…

  When I was a child, my mother sewed brightly colored skirts and shawls, between her shows at the theater. She told me, whilst weaving gold and silver thread in and out, that my future was as the blend of yellows, crimsons, sapphires, black, and rich purple—that no matter how dark it seemed, I was to remember that the gold and silver held everything together. A pure heart shed many tears, she said, but good fortune had no value if one did not experience the struggles.

  I would cling to that wisdom, for five long years after she died, in the squalor of a back alley, her sadistic patron having isolated her from friends, forbade her to work, and over time, robbed her of jewels and riches—of esteem and security—then put her to service his cronies for a roof over our heads.

  When she discovered he had plans and arranged the down payment to set me up for an acquaintance— we fled with only the clothing on our backs. She fared worse on the streets, far worse. We had to constantly hide from men he sent out to find us. Abuse did not begin to describe the depravity of those who used her—and, those who resented our encroachment into their territory.

  It was a living nightmare. What horrors did not happen in the rank alleyways, were done in tunnels and chambers below the city streets. He drove us to the depths of hell, and she protected my life with her own, gave up any semblance of dignity or fear of danger, on the promise from me that I would leave, go to my father, and plead for his help.

  I clung to her story, to all the wisdoms she would mutter even with feverish lips—when fate held me in the grip of darkness. Yet, when she died, I put her on a cart with paupers, and as it went away, I hugged my ragged coat to my too thin body and felt a rift in my soul. Her voice would not come to me again for many years.

  I slept, that night, not in the stews, but further up-town, just across from a familiar mansion. I clutched not my mother’s fevered hand, but a dagger she had stolen and given me to wear, which was like a hand to me—so oft had I held it—and used it. I hummed not the songs she taught me, but chanted a much sweeter refrain— Revenge, revenge, revenge.

  Aptly appropriate to the world I was familiar with, it was no angel who gave me the means to gain it, but a dark wraith I recognized—a figure that had haunted the dank and reeking passages, rasping a name, calling for her, had anyone seen her, stopping at every huddled figure, every grunting, writhing creature, searching seeking, and asking.

  I remembered the sight of that long, dark coat, fanning out like wings, and the sound of his boot heels as he strode through refuse and puddles, times in chilly rain, when he stood under the scant shelter across from where I had huddled—the fog drifting thick. Yet his dark eyes under the brim of a hat piercing through both. I remembered—when a woman was found dead, washed ashore the Thames. Oh, the crude and cruel jests amid chatter on the streets to cover the terror too, that a killer was loose.

  Suzette, that was the name he called, the name, sometime later in the papers. However, when he should have stopped, he still came, though rasping her name no more, He was still restless, driven, and perhaps haunted. He walked in the darkness, and moved amid the shadows. The thieves, whores, and street urchins began to whisper that he had killed the woman himself and was demented by it.

  I never believed that. I suspected who had done it because of a small mention in the papers of something the woman wore—a ring—belonging to my mother.

  The night I saw the man seemed fated. He paused just under a lantern to light a cheroot. The mist of a fresh rain dotted his pitch hat and longish hair. Shadow and light struck on a fierce and hard visage, a mark I was familiar with, for I bore it on the inside of my own, if not outward.

  I knew how to make myself invisible. Yet, he blew out the flame and spoke, offering condolences for my mother. The knife was visible in my hand, as I stood, my back against the brick still in the alley entrance asking how he knew these things. He answered not as I expected, by way of the streets on his haunts—or of a whore’s death in the papers, but by revealing that she had asked a favor of him and told him much of our past. I was not trusting. Yet he called me Tara. My mother’s pet name for me, and he knew who my father was. I informed him I wanted nothing from the Duke. To which he replied, he knew exactly what I sought, for we wanted the same things—revenge. Stunned, confused for a spell, I considered fleeing.

  As if reading my mind again, he laid out his plan to me. I listened with some awe and not a little fear, for it required I go with him that night and trust him, not only with my life, my goal, but give him years in which to train and tutor me, to build upon a fantasy sure to lure the monster with envy, lust, and greed. It required that I put my trust, my life, my passion for justice, in his hands.

  I did.

  I was sixteen years of age.

  Many years after I entered that old stone mansion, too dark, too empty, too cold, to be called a home, I was so occupied with his stringent instructions and following his commands, learning from books, papers, rags, and his constant drilling into my head—that I forgot my mother’s words about balance and hope.

  My body fleshed out, matured, and grew healthy again. My world was split between dark and light, with glimpses of myself, shadows of my mother in my black hair with its burgundy lights, and the fullness of my curves. Though my eyes were brandy instead of her own deep brown, I had gypsy skin and naturally red lips, a perfectly straight nose.

  For the plan, I enhanced the exotic whilst polishing the aristocratic blood in me. I was partly what I was born to be, and part (his) creation. I became the lush and rich jewel, the sultry and exotic flavor, and scent, in a house of shadows. Like its master, it remained distant, aloof, intensely dark, save for the spaces I inhabited, the textures, hues, sounds that I was to absorb.

  I felt more than was told, when the time was ripe to move. I was aware that the enemy was ensconced in his mansion, and I knew he had begun following him at night to mark his routines and patterns. By the end of the week, we had attended a race, a play, and been seen in public together.

  I was twenty years old the day we stopped rehearsing and stepped out to begin our performance. By nightfall the first day, whispers began about the dark male and his exotic mistress.

  In contrast to his severe black, I wore a peacock blue silk gown with a bodice low enough to display my generous breasts, and snug enough before fanning out at the knees, to mark every line of my waist, hips, and my backside. My hair was up with just a jeweled comb in the center twist, one blue and silver feather behind it, to contrast with the sheen. My pumps were velvet with silk bows, and had tiny diamond heels. My gloves were silver satin. My aim was to inspire envy, to turn heads, to draw attention, interest, curiosity, and make men want me, make them talk of me in their clubs, gambling halls, card rooms, or out sporting.

  I received no praise though I knew I had exceeded my own expectations.
I expected none from my tutor. He had shown me only two sides of himself—the man who kept his word—and the ruthless taskmaster. The rest he closed off as much as he closed himself in his chambers for hours on end.

  The hour was coming when our prey would take the bait, and be lured into our trap.

  Revenge had nurtured me, driven me, sustained me, and created the woman I now was. As it put the glitter in my sultry eyes, guided the sensual movements of my stride, and bade me lift my head, smile mysteriously—it had honed the darkness in my counterpart—given him an enigmatic and dangerous air, and made his tall, broad-shouldered, lean gracefulness, seem a kind of intensity, fitting his fierce black eyes and over long raven mane. His mouth hinted at sensuality and cruelness, his flaring nostrils at raw sexuality, and dark distain, and rasping voice, at bedroom whispers and explicit dominance.

  Thus, as the night arrived when I at last saw the author of my nightmares, the demon of my hell, looking at me across the floor at a posh and popular gaming hell, I felt a surge of victory inside of me, unlike anything I had felt before, a kind of mouthwatering anxiousness to sink my nails into his flesh and make him bleed. I also felt the energy wafting from the man beside me—the knife’s blade of cold and lethal steel that I understood about him now—having found the papers report of his wife’s butchered body….

  I turned to him, playing my part as mistress. I teasingly slow, ran my folded fan up the arm of his jacket, leaning in to whisper, so that the bodice of my crimson and black gown was strained and offering, to ask if he felt as excited as I, at the attention we were getting?

  He leaned to me, lips grazing my cheek, my ear, and rasping, yes, he could almost taste the victory…

  We looked at each other as we had made a habit in public to do, building that fantasy of helpless smoldering attraction, sexuality, and intimacy…something dangerously wicked and explicit.

  I heard my mother’s voice after so many years.

  It shook me to the core.

  I was so close to avenging her, so close to extracting payment for those hellish years that I had watched my mother degraded and dying—years—I fought to survive on the streets.

  However, something else quickly rose too—a realization, that I was also losing my heart to a man enshrined in torment, my partner in revenge. Even knowing, If not for that bond, that dark breath that sustained us, I did not expect, either of us would survive this deadly game.

  Gabriella Druitt, daughter of “The Gypsy”-Natasha Druitt, bastard of His Grace, David Bordwyc Duke of Coulborne.

  * * * *

  I had shaped a house of desolation behind a façade of my aristocratic family. I made a bargain with my wife, the late Duchess of Eastland, whom I wed, as most do, in an arranged union when I was but twenty-two, and she twenty and eight.

  Impeccable breeding on Matilda’s side, lofty, haughty, distant, and hypocritically judgmental, (I say this because Matilda’s own mother was known to have kept a lover most of her life. Not that I blamed her, the whole of that family were stern and harsh. I found Matilda’s abhorrence of anything resembling affection, sinful). However, they were lofty to the point that most feared the Lombardi’s. To the very end, Matilda ruled supreme in society, if not through commendable characteristics, through her sheer power and influence.

  But, the agreement, ah yes, that selling of our soul…

  I fathered a child by my lover, a son, who was born after my first-born and heir, Jules. A year after my second son, Blaise.

  His mother named him Raith.

  Because Raith’s mother was a highborn woman, I begged Matilda to go away with us and return, claiming the child as her own, to let him be raised in our household. Matilda’s first response was—better to drown the mutt than have to feed it, to provide for it. However, I begged—on my knees—a sight she relished, I am sure. She acquiesced. It was not, I told myself, as if Matilda reared our children herself, her social life was too full for that. We had nursemaids, tutors, later there would be school.

  Nevertheless, for my weakness and love of the child and his mother, she made me pay a price. For his presence, we all felt the coldness. Though his mother returned to her father in Spain, having been visiting with a diplomat brother I was well acquainted with, Matilda still made her name a curse in private—and made her brother’s wife so loathed in society, she managed to destroy the entire family with little more than a whisper.

  Matilda is dead, buried—with all the pomp and somber honor that was required for one of her rep and birth. It is perhaps too late to ever breathe, feel lightness, or wholeness of life again. Though I do not know how, something in me says that I must at least make an effort.

  I am packing for my London townhouse, having put myself in self-imposed exile for two years, which most will take as mourning, such a good actor was I in public.

  My eldest, Jules…I bestowed the Earldom on, thus he is styled Jules LeClair, 4th Earl of Stoneleigh. He escaped this wretched house and survives in his own way. The last of the Lombardi’s died a month after Matilda, and he inherited double the riches he already possessed. By all accounts, Jules garners certain awe in high circles for being the seed of two such powerful bloodlines. Like all of my sons, he is a stranger to me. And why not? I am a stranger to myself.

  My second son, Blaise, Viscount Roche, I have only just heard, is being forced to retire from the Royal Navy…Another wound, God’s mercy. This one could be mortal from the accounts sent to me from Lord Percy at the war office. Part of me is glad he will not war again. He has escaped death once more, and has already given eight years to the crown.

  Raith… I have no notion of where my youngest is, though I suspect his brother Jules may.

  My—our—secret was no secret to those under our roof. Bitterness was served abundantly. We tasted it daily from Matilda, who could not stand to look at Raith—and, from myself, who dared not show favor to the boy.

  Raith was called Lord Montovon from his sixteenth birthday when his blood uncle arranged, through a solicitor and myself, to bestow upon him Montovon abbey in Cornwall, and a property somewhere in London. (He is also the heir to Spanish titles when his uncle passes.) Something he does not know. Something—I’d planned to tell him when he was twenty.

  Matilda was so enraged at the inheritance—in hopes, no doubt, he would resent both his lack of title and fortune as the youngest, and either get himself killed in a war, or take himself to some obscure foreign outpost, and die of fever—Her desired wish for most young men she considered rubbish.

  However, that was the day she told him the truth, in my absence. The day the servants told me that she lied…lied foul and cruel, about his mother, about myself to drive him away emotionally, and sever any bond he may have felt with me—or his brothers.

  Worse has happened. I have now discovered, an event kept from me for six bloody years, much to my pain—and my fear. The mysterious missive informs me that Raith was wed several years back, and that his wife was found dead, slaughtered, washed up on the banks of the Thames a short six months afterwards—and that he has been waiting and weaving his web for six years to snare the man who did it. I go with the knowledge that I have three sons, shaped by my weaknesses and Matilda's harsh aloofness, brothers who were raised in a barren and loveless home—shaped, twisted, by the hypocrisy we kept alive.

  I know what an impossible dream my heart wants to ignite. There is no salvaging at this late date—and yet again, my heart cries… I must try.

  His Grace, Artis LeClair, Duke of Eastland.

  * * * *

  A soft tic, a ding of the bells, tolls on the hour and chimes on the half. A man could set his clock by my tightly kept schedule whilst in town. I ride in the park early, breakfast at my club afterwards. Subsequently, I attend some gathering, a formal lunch, a musical and afterward supper. At night, it is the balls and theater. Generally, it is the same, save for weekend races or some royal command attendance.

  I stand today in front of the mirror, whilst my valet s
lips another richly tailored coat on me. His almost feminine hands will brush invisible lint from the shoulders. He will check the flawlessness of my cravat, adjust the emerald pen that does not need it, and give the skirt of the waistcoat a tug before standing back and eyeing his handiwork.

  I stare sightless into the mirror, never having to check, aware that Randolph would never allow me to leave my chambers in less than perfection. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I recollect how it used to annoy me when the Valet did that extra smoothing down of my straight shoulder length black hair, or when he brushed a hand on my jaw to assure he had shaved it smoothly. I used to feel vexed, when after tucking my shirt into my snug black trousers, he would erase any wrinkles with his small hands.

  Now it exasperated and sardonically amused me. I watched him polish my boots again with his own handkerchief, then fuss around before looking upwards. He was a foot shorter than my six feet two. I could feel his eyes checking every brow hair before he made a sound and moved away.

  I caught some glimpse of the humor sparking in my green eyes before I turned away to collect my cape and gloves. It turned grim enough by the time, I was below in my study—and handed a pair of missives by the butler.

  For the first time in ages, my schedule slipped my mind. His Grace, my father, was on his way to London. I had not paid any heed if his townhouse had any activity about it. It was a street up from my own, and even had I, we were not on informal terms. I certainly showed him respect when we were in attendance at some gathering. Nevertheless, it would be a stretch to call anything between us, warm.

  I tossed the missive aside and heeded the other.

  It—took the strength from my knees. I leaned against the desk. I read the words twice before they sank in. With utmost care, I laid it on the desk and stood, taking myself to the decanter with little memory of walking, or pouring a whiskey and drinking it down. It took another, before I could pick up my cape and gloves and leave the study.