by Gayle Eden
It had been clear in time that her mother and Raith had talked more than once. At first, it surprised her. However, she came to realize that Natasha was astute and knew the men of that world, and she discerned that Raith was born into it. She doubted that Raith was honest about his purpose in taking her in, but they, all of them, were bound by the darkest of passions, the hungers born from pain and torment. Trust was based on the contract itself, rather than each other.
Releasing a trembling sigh, she decided that whatever weakness made her eroticize that preparation and remember the intimacy with Raith personally—the pitch of his voice as he sat himself in shadow, herself in light—she’d have to live with it. Perhaps—it was the only normal part of the anomalous bonds they had forged.
She breathed deep, calming herself, forcing her mind to clear. Eventually she pushed away and wearily drew her bath. The maid came, but she sent her away. Gabriella wanted time to herself. Lazing in the water later, she rubbed her wet hands over her face, stomach still tense knowing the worst was to come. The scenarios, should something go wrong had been gone over and over, and yet….
Giving up attempts to relax, she arose and dried, drawing on a black silk robe and shaking her hair free after removing the pens.
When she entered the rooms, she went to the dressing table and combed her hair—muttering a mental curse as Raith invaded her privacy. She was in a mood, nerves tight.
Gabriella mused that should she ever do so to him, invade his privacy—he would likely respond with violence, although his anger tended to be wintry.
Placing the brush down, she tucked the wavy strands behind her ears and pushed the rest so that it fell mid back, taking her time to rise from the vanity chair whilst watching him go to the window and open it.
She examined his state of dress. He was in black trousers and boots, but his black shirt hung open. He smelled of whiskey. She gathered he had time to drink a whole bottle whilst she was bathing. She should have done that herself, Maybe it would burn some of the….
“Sit down,” his voice wafted over.
She debated a split second, in her own (mood,) before shrugging and walking to the bed and sitting against the headboard. Her robe parted at the calf. Gabriella folded her arms against her middle, watching him stretch his own arms to grasp the casement, whilst leaning and looking down at the city. She discerned he was more thinking than seeing.
Once more, her gaze moved over him instinctively, unconscious of tracing the lines of thigh and buttocks, taut hips that were clear in the snug trousers. The shirt was fine enough so that the shadow of his torso, ridged in stomach, fanning wider in the chest, was discernible. His hair was tucked behind his ears, throwing that hard jaw and profile into light and shadows.
“Have you the dirk you used to carry?”
“Yes.”
“Wear it on you.”
“I do.”
He turned his head, black eyes scanning her then looking so swiftly away that she assumed he was not pleased to have done so.
“If you…If he becomes violent, or you feel yourself in danger, use it.”
“I plan to protect myself. If I am not alive, then you would have to live with only the satisfaction of killing him and getting it over with. I’ll try not to cheat either of us of our goal.”
He turned, his hands dropping from the sill though he sat on the ledge. His shirt fell open more, resting at his sides. Glints of amber lamplight cast a sheen on his honed torso, polishing the skin that stretched over lean, carved muscle. It was his face though, that fascinated Gabriella because he made every effort still to not look at her.
She watched, counted the seconds a muscle ticked in his jaw.
“You must insist he not set you up in your own house, but reside with him…”
“I know the strategy, Raith. You will play the part of the obsessed and scorned lover, so that we may meet. I provide you with the information I gather. He will want to kill you—or rather arrange a convenient accident, because though you do not have a relationship with them, you are the brother of the Earl of Stoneleigh, and the Duke of Eastland’s son—he will want to be rid of you. But, he will not do it. He will feed off your envy and wish to parade me before your eyes. He will thrive off your jealousy.”
“Yes.” His teeth were set when he uttered that. Raith stood, restlessly walking to the hearth and then reaching in his boot for a cheroot case. He lit it from the fire, drew the smoke in, and released it, tensely. The firelight flickered yellow and red over the blue black of his hair, enhancing the fierce plains of his face. He was looking into the fire hypnotically.
What a beautifully fierce sculpture of torment, she mused morbidly. What a wrecked pair of souls we are.
Gabriella murmured, “Is this the time of year she died?”
“Was murdered,” he snapped frostily. Then, “Yes, three weeks from now.”
Ah, she thought, exactly the time he planned to have Stratton at his mercy.
Sitting up, she swung her legs to the side of the bed, one foot on the floor whilst idly fingering the robe belt. Half turned toward him, Gabriella whispered, “May I asked something of you?”
He tensed and slowly turned to regard her, his face and body like stone. Raith raised an inky brow over his cold eyes. “Now is not the time to confuse our relationship. As you say, we are tools for each other. I want nothing more from you. You should expect nothing more from me. I have made it clear that whatever wealth Stratton drained from your mother, will be yours.”
She did not know whether to laugh at him for assuming she wanted monetary compensation from him, or feel pity for them both—because they were so cynical as to expect the worse from people, even each other.
What she did was hold his gaze, “I was only going to request, that should I die, or disappear, should everything go wrong, will you have my mother buried on decent ground…with a marker?”
Raith swallowed. Gabriella saw the movement, her eyes scanning up and over that visage.
He stared at her intently for long moments, before finally nodding.
“Thank you.” She shrugged. Her smile turned a bit wry, watching the tension uncoil a bit in him.
“Should I embolden myself enough to enquire if you have a similar request of me? Any last words, for your father, or brothers.” God, she did not know what was wrong with her tonight. She was pushing it and knew it, and she had seldom spoken to him of anything beyond their mutual obsession with Stratton and justice for their dead.
“You know nothing of my family.” His nostrils flared.
“I know little, true. I know the Duke of Eastland arrived in town days ago after two years of morning.” She heard his snort but added, “And the Earl of Stoneleigh, Jules, is more popular in society than men twice his age. His fortune and looks apparently inspire awe amid his peers. I know—the Viscount, Captain Blaise LeClair has retired from the Navy—due to being wounded. Some rag reports that he is blind and in seclusion—-“
“Save your provocations for Stratton,” Raith uttered icily. “As I say, you know nothing.”
Provocation? Yes, she was pushing him, although had no sane reason why, save she discovered even females had their (dangerous) moods. “I assumed your icy character formed when you lost your Suzette. But now, I gather it was already—“
“Don’t speak of her!” Raith took a step towards her. His face a picture of chilly anger. “Do not probe that hell, Gabriella. You will regret it.”
“Is she of any more import than my mother?” Tara snarled, her body shaking suddenly, feeding off his own darkness. “At least Suzette died more quickly than the drawn out agony—“
He was across the room in seconds, his hands gripping her arms. Glaring down, Raith shook her twice with violence. “She was my wife, God damn you! Barely eighteen years old. He tortured her and then slaughtered her like an animal! She was my wife.” He rasped like burning coals, “And she died with the horror and terror burned forever into her eyes!”
Gab
riella tried to grasp his arms, her voice less forceful from the hell in his eyes, “Raith, I—“
He shoved her back so suddenly and brutal, that she landed on the bed.
The door crashed against the frame at his exit.
Laying there, panting, trembling, Gabriella finally rolled and buried her face in the coverlet, her fingers digging into it tightly. God. Oh God. What is suddenly wrong with me? I knew that. I knew what he saw from the papers. What is wrong with me that I throw that torment in his face? We are here, so close to finishing it, and suddenly, I lash out, I provoke and probe his worst pain. I do not know myself anymore. I do not know who I have become, or did not, until these moments….
She had not known herself still capable of tears, but she wept…Gabriella wept, most of that night.
She knew when he left and escaped into his shadows and hell. She did not want to think she may be mad from her own year’s long obsession, but she was what he had made her, what they created together. Perhaps…she was bound more to Raith LeClair himself, than she was that past now…
Upper Brook Street. London England.
His Grace Artis Le Clair, Duke of Eastland’s residence.
Jules arrived at his father’s mansion at the exact hour of the summons. Handing over his caped coat and hat to the butler, he headed towards the study, boot heels ringing on the high polished marble floor, whilst he was idly glancing around at the décor, nearly coming up short as it dawned on him that it had changed. Gone were the twelve foot gold edged pillars the Duchess insisted should line the grand entry. Instead, the green-papered walls were visible with discreet seating, a pair of emerald upholstered chairs and settee, near the far wall, facing a bank of windows.
Clusters of priceless art no longer hung in the short hall either. He frowned with some mystification before knocking on the folding doors. He knew Eastland’s fortune was secure, thus, he could only assume his father had other reasons for toning down the ostentatious décor.
“Enter.”
He opened the pocketed doors and stepped inside his father’s domain, the only room he recalled that his mother never entered nor touched. Here was a chamber that mimicked the Duke’s country house, one of wood-paneled walls, shelves of books, supple leather furnishings, and well-tread carpets.
“Your Grace.” He bowed, having reached the desk his father sat at, just beside the half-opened French doors that splashed a bit of rain in, no other lord would allow to ruin his rugs.
Artis set the pipe he had lit in a stand.
Jules' held his posture, hands relaxed at his sides and body straight under that dark-eyed scrutiny. Although they had not seen each other since the Duchess’s funeral—a strained affair to say the least, he could not say the years had been unkind to Artis, for he actually looked more…alive, than in the years before.
The Duke’s hair was silver, thick, worn tapered to the nape, his face bearing those aristocratic assets that all his sons got some component of. Save for the color to his skin, which attested to his years of rusticating, he looked the epitome of English peer in his wine coat, white shirt and buff breeches. The shorter colorful silk neck cloth—a dash of casualness the older gents indulged in during the earlier hours.
“How have you been?” The Duke asked.
“Well, your Grace.”
Those silver brows pulled down. Jules saw the up, and down look, his father gave him afterwards and raised his own sooty brow.
Making a short, snorting noise, his father waved a hand and sighed. “Sit down, Jules.”
Placing a hand on the back of a chair facing the desk, Jules stepped around it and sat. He attended his father, hiding his reaction to another silence whilst the Duke puffed his pipe and looked him over rather pensively.
The pipe emitted a cloud of smoke before Artis set it aside again, then leaned back, relaxed in his chair. “Have you seen your brother, Blaise, yet?”
“No. Your Grace.”
“Why not?”
The sharpness of that caught Jules off guard, but he supplied evenly, “I have yet to receive an invitation to the Viscount’s residence.”
Staring at him, Artis murmured, “Are you telling me that you’ve not made an effort to see your brother at all in—what, eight years?”
“I have seen him, Your Grace. On several occasions, years ago. We did attend several—“
The Duke shot to his feet, his hand rubbing his nape as he growled, “That’s not what I mean.” He strode to the French doors.
Having gotten to his own feet, Jules offered, “I take it I have displeased you, sir.”
“Can we not drop the damned formality, Jules?” Artis gruffed and glanced aside at him. “Sit down or stand if you like, but for God sakes, if we’re going to have a conversation, stop bloody Your Gracing me. I’m your father.”
Never having had a dressing down because he’d always been aware, thanks to his mother and others, of who and what he must be, nor having seen anything akin to affection, warmth, or anything else from the distant duke—
Jules held his stare through several tics of the clock, before he drawled with coolness, “You’ll forgive me then, if I need a moment to discern just what it is (that) suggests, by your definition. Unless memory fails me, and I doubt it does, there is nothing unusual in my…address to you. Nor, in the fact that any of your sons lack some sort of— intimate brotherhood.”
“Do not condescend to me, my boy,” the Duke retorted, not harsh but rather tiredly. He came to stand close to Jules and looked him right in the eye. “I know my failings and I know what I gave up and sacrificed and allowed to take place in your life, and your brothers.”
Discomforted and yet oddly held by the look on his father’s face, the words he was speaking, the last thing Jules expected was for the Duke to reach out and touch his arm.
He almost flinched from it, but his Grace was saying, “There’s no need for me to explain your mother, we all lived with her, but that doesn’t excuse my distance and lack of affection towards any of you. All that I can say is that I am sorry. I thought I did it for Raith…and I am sure you know that the Duchess was not his mother. I thought that was why— but I am not so sure that Matilda would have been any different had I never fathered him.”
Jules had no reply. He had found his way much too early in life, to his own island.
However, the Duke was persistent. He slightly squeezed with those fingers resting on Jules’s arm. “Explaining her doesn’t excuse me and my emotional isolation. I am damned sorry, Jules. More than you will ever know. I am proud of you. Proud, that despite the mess of a life I helped create, you turned into such a well-respected and responsible man. A true peer.”
Jules felt tension crawl over him. When his father dropped his hand, he made his way to the sideboard, pouring a brandy whilst his Grace fetched his pipe.
Brandy in hand, Jules sat on the edge of the desk, drinking half down, whilst watching Artis by the French doors.
“I went to see Lord Coulborne yester eve.”
Jules swallowed a mouthful. “Did you? I was not aware his Grace was a great acquaintance of yours.”
“We had reason to trust each other…years ago, and have found a comfortable friendship.” Those dark eyes considered him through a waft of pipe smoke.
The tension increased although Jules was hard pressed to define why. It was doubtless the blasted way his father scrutinized him…and his own anxiety over being blackmailed.
“He informs me you intend to ask for his daughter, Lady Caroline’s hand.”
“That was my intention?”
“Might I ask you to delay such a move?”
Jules stared at him sharply. “And why would I do that?”
Artis turned completely and uttered, “Because I want you to do something for me—for all of us, before you settle down into marriage and your own family.”
Jules cocked his brow.
“I want you to go see Blaise, and invite him here, and to find your brother, Raith.”
“Why—would you imagine I am interested in or care to gather your scattered flock? I don’t remember either male you speak of being particularly interested in being found—or being in my presence.”
Artis seemed to flinch. “Are you really as cold as you look, Jules. Are you as much like your mother as you sound at this moment?”
Jules straightened from the desk, finished the drink, and strode over to put down the glass. He had every intention of leaving, having recoiled from such a comparison.
“I have not dismissed you.”
At his father’s bark, Jules spun and eyed his sire with even frostier green eyes. “With all due respect, Your Grace. I am well past the age or inclination of needing your approval of my actions, caring of your suppositions of my character, or having an interest in any quest for mending your relationships—or lack thereof, with your sons.”
“As you say, Jules.” Artis nodded with more calmness than Jules expected. “I have only what you will indulge me. I begged only once before in my life, and that was to your mother—on my knees.”
Jules felt queasy imagining such a thing. His father, for all his faults, was a dignified man.
“Yes. I did that, so that she would allow me to have Raith, to raise him. It still was not enough. She made us all pay—made you, the innocent pay. Although as I said, I do not think she had the capacity to love or be affectionate to anyone. My sins did not help. My emotional absence—self-preservation, I thought it, did not help.”
Artis walked to the desk and deposited the pipe. He raked a hand through his hair, then let it drop, gazing at the desktop. He husked, “Do you know where he is, Jules. Raith?”
“I did, once,” Jules supplied tightly. “I knew that when he left home he found work in summerset on an estate there, and later on the docks, in Liverpool.”