Desired

by Nicola Cornick

“Teresa?” Owen’s voice was soft. Tess blinked, forcing the images back in the dark recesses of her mind. She trembled.

  Owen slid the ring onto her finger. It felt too big; her hands were very cold and she was still shaking. She did not really understand why she should be nervous, not when she had done this three times before and could recite the words of the wedding service in her sleep.

  The service over, they all went out of the church and into the snow. Tess was feeling colder and colder, shivering beneath the beautiful golden cloak that covered her matching gown of gold tissue. She had thought when she set out that she looked very fine, her hair dressed with pearls, her cloak trimmed with white fur. Now, though, the clothes could provide physical warmth but not the usual confidence that fashion gave her. She could feel her assurance leaching away and was baffled and angry with herself. She should be happy. She had achieved her marriage of convenience; Julius and Sybil were safe, and Owen had promised that he would protect her from Sidmouth’s investigations. But then she watched Joanna slide her hand through Alex’s arm and press her cheek to his shoulder in a little caress. She saw Merryn slip her hand into Garrick’s. And she felt a sting of tears.

  Something of how she was feeling must have communicated itself to Owen, for he covered her hand briefly with his gloved one.

  “All right?” he murmured. His head was bent close to hers and his touch was reassuring. Tess wanted to cling to him. She nodded, even though she was lying. Owen smiled at her, the warmth lingering in his eyes. His lips brushed her cold cheek and she jumped.

  “Rothbury!” Lady Martindale claimed Owen’s attention abruptly and Tess felt lost again, adrift from the others, lonely and frighteningly alone.

  Back in the gloomy house in Clarges Street a wedding breakfast had been set up in the dining room. Houghton and the rest of the servants were lined up in descending order of precedence, like the other statues in the hall, to welcome their new mistress.

  “I look forward to your improvements to this museum piece, Lady Grant,” Lady Martindale boomed as she sailed through the statuary of the hall like a galleon negotiating a reef. “When will you start work?”

  Tess swung around on Joanna, who was looking slightly embarrassed.

  “You are going to be decorating the house?” she said.

  “Lady Martindale suggested it,” Joanna murmured, “but of course I was going to speak with you first, Tess.” There was a note of pleading in her voice, an apology Tess did not want to hear. All she could think was that Lady Martindale had not chosen to speak to her of the plans—had not, in fact, acknowledged her in any way since the engagement had been announced—but that she had been quick enough to approach Joanna on a project.

  Perfect Joanna who had everything Tess wanted…?.

  Another sliver of ice pierced her heart. The thought, so instant, so instinctive, frightened her. She did not want a marriage like Joanna’s and she especially did not want a child of her own, not with the process one had to go through to get one. She had what she wanted. Yet even as she framed the thought she knew she lied. She wanted what Joanna had, yet she was so fearful of it too. She wanted to be cherished, she ached to be loved in every sense, but the chasm of fear that was Brokeby’s legacy to her seemed to yawn at her feet, taunting her that she would never be whole again.

  Her gaze sought out Owen, who was across the other side of the hall chatting to Garrick and Alex. Tess wanted to draw reassurance from the sight of him, but she was starting to feel so odd and disconnected from reality that it felt as though he was already slipping away from her. She put a hand out to steady herself against one of the pieces of statuary, which promptly swayed and almost toppled over.

  “Probably drunk,” Lady Borough said loudly. She was deaf and seemed to assume everyone else was too, judging by the way she shouted. “Or pregnant with Justin Brooke’s child. Did you hear the latest on dit? Mr. Melton celebrates Rothbury’s wedding by exhibiting some more nude portraits of the bride. To think the Rothburys have come to this—”

  Lady Martindale, clearly neither as deaf nor as vulgar as her sister, hushed Lady Borough, but the damage was done. There was an odd, heavy quiet in the hall as everyone fell silent. The servants stared at the floor, frozen into immobility.

  Tess felt a huge burning wave of shame start at her toes and work its way up her entire body. She knew that everyone was looking at her. Merryn looked stricken. Joanna put out a hand to her but Tess could see the pity in her eyes. It made her want to scream. She looked at Owen again but he seemed so far away from her, across a vast expanse of marble littered with those hideous busts of dead Roman emperors. She knew that she had to get away. She headed for the door, past Lady Borough, ghastly old gossip, past Lady Martindale, past Lady Hurst, who was saying plaintively, “What did you say, Amelia? I can’t hear you!”

  Owen was calling her name but she ignored him too.

  Then she was out in the snow and running down the street because she realised that if she needed somewhere to hide, to be alone, there was nowhere for her to go now. Her bags had been brought over from Bedford Street that very morning; she was Lady Rothbury now. She had no other home but this, and the house in Clarges Street was no refuge, full as it was of people who either scorned or pitied her.

  But really there was only one place to go, a place she should have gone a long time ago. She had tried to ignore Melton’s paintings, tried to pretend that they did not exist because they had belonged to that dark and shameful and utterly repugnant place that she only ever visited in her deepest nightmares. But now she knew she would finally have to see them. She would have to confront them and the damage they had done to her life. There was no other way she could go on, not if she was to have a future that was different from the past.

  Suddenly she saw very bright, very clear, exactly what she had to do.

  She jumped into a hackney carriage and set off for the Strand, still in her golden wedding dress and with the snow settling amongst the pearls in her hair.

  THE SNOW LYING IN THE backstreets off the Strand was not white and pretty. It was a dirty grey, melting, mingled with the rubbish and slops. It fell from a dark grey sky. Night was already closing in.

  In the chaos that had followed Tess’s abrupt departure from her own wedding celebrations, Owen had not known where to look for her. He had had visions of accosting every passerby and hackney-carriage driver and asking them if they had seen a woman in a bridal gown running full tilt down the street. Then Joanna had taken him aside.

  “I think you will find her at Melton’s studio,” she had said. She was distressed, visibly shaking. “Poor Tess, she has never said a word about the exhibition—” she paused and shot Lady Borough a furious glare “—but I know it hurt her deeply.”

  So here Owen was in this shadowy, insalubrious corner of the Strand, where London suddenly seemed a great deal more shabby and shop-soiled than it did in the glittering ballrooms of the ton.

  The door to Melton’s art studio stood ajar. As Owen paused on the step, someone opened a window above and the contents of a chamber pot rained down onto the snow beside him.

  “He’s not open yet!” a female voice called. “Come back later!” A woman was leaning over the sill above, chamber pot dangling from her hand and the neck of her dirty white nightgown drooping open. Her hair was a wild tangle and she looked as though she had only that moment arisen from her bed.

  “Here for the exhibition, are you?” she said, looking Owen up and down. “You and all the other bucks in town.”

  A sudden loud crash from inside the building distracted her attention and she withdrew her head hastily. Owen heard her swear. Ignoring the instruction to come back later he pushed the door wide and stepped into the hall. He was instantly assailed by two unpleasant smells, cabbage and paint fumes, both of which stuck in his throat. The hallway was dark; he could dimly see a bare staircase rising to the first floor.

  He had not expected Melton’s premises to be quite so ramshackle. A fresh w
ave of anger assailed him that the artist should not only debauch Tess’s reputation by exhibiting such lurid paintings of her but that he should do so in such unsavoury a setting. He knew this was ridiculous. Clearly it would be no better for nude paintings of his wife to be exhibited in Buckingham Palace. Yet it seemed just another sign of disrespect for Melton to hang them here in the backstreets and invite every lecher in the ton to come and view them.

  From above came the sounds of raised voices, Tess’s words sharp and clear.

  “You have one chance, Mr. Melton. I ask you to act as a gentleman and remove these offensive pictures from exhibition. If you do not do so I shall do it for you.”

  And the artist’s tones, oleaginous, gloating. “My dear Lady Darent, you should be proud to display such luminous beauty—”

  “Lady Rothbury,” Tess corrected. “It is my wedding day, Mr. Melton, as no doubt you are aware.”

  Owen paused as he heard Tess claim his name as her own. An unfamiliar emotion made his heart clench. He set his foot to the bottom stair just as there was another crash from the room above. He heard Melton’s voice. “Lady Rothbury—” And this time the gloat had gone and there was an edge of fear in it. Owen raced up the stairs and flung open the door of the exhibition room.

  He had not been sure what to expect. He had thought to visit the exhibition himself before to see what all the fuss was about, but it had made him feel too voyeuristic and too much like all the other rakes of the ton who lusted after Tess. He had wanted the real Teresa Darent, the one he had started to know, not the fantasy version with the painted smile and the tempting body. Now, though, as the naked images of Tess surrounded him on every side Owen was struck momentarily dumb, utterly overwhelmed by the collision between fantasy and reality. There was Tess reclining on a red velvet couch, creamy skin illuminated in the pale lamplight, a little sensual smile playing about her lips and gleaming in her half-closed eyes. There was a painting of Tess from behind, leaning over the back of the same couch, all voluptuous curves and tumbling hair. And—dear God—there was Tess lying on an enormous bed, arms stretched wide, thighs parted, her lower legs entangled in the sheet, the lazy look in her eyes indicative of the fact that she had been pleasured to within an inch of her life. Owen felt his body harden in sheer visceral response to the image and hated himself for it. In a flash he imagined all the other men who had stood there feeling as he did now and he felt sordid and furiously angry.

  A palette of paint whizzed past his ear to splatter with an almighty crash against the enormous painting to his left. In it Tess was lit from behind in ethereal white light. She was actually wearing some clothes in this one—a long transparent white robe that only served to emphasise the lushness of the body beneath with its beautiful curves and angles. The picture showed her nipples rosy-pink through the fine lawn and the shadowy triangle of hair at the juncture of her thighs.

  Red hair. Owen was really struggling now.

  Another palette thudded into the wall, liberally splashing both Owen and the painting. The transparent white robe was now a gown of many colours, the picture despoiled beyond repair.

  The artist was wailing. “Lady Rothbury! I beg you! No…”

  Owen regained the power of movement just in time to avoid the final pots of blue and green paint that hit the portraits to his left, one after the other, with the precision of bullets. Colour splashed like blood, coating the pictures, the walls and the floor, running in rivulets down the paintings until they were nothing but an unrecognisable blur.

  Owen doubted that Tess had even registered the fact that he was there. Her glorious golden wedding gown was smeared with paint, as were her hands. She had taken her cloak off so that she could throw more accurately, and the violence of her actions had loosened her hair from the pearl pins so that it fell about her flushed face in soft waves. But it was the look in her eyes that made Owen catch his breath. He could understand why Melton was afraid. Not even in battle had he seen such utter concentrated fury in anyone.

  Tess dropped the last of the empty pots and turned back to the artist’s easel. There were two paintings left undamaged. She picked up a knife. Owen started forwards. Paint was one thing, a knife quite another.

  “Teresa,” he said.

  Tess ignored him. She spun around on Melton and Owen heard the artist give a little whimper. But she ignored Melton too. Slash went the blade across one canvas, so violently that the frame splintered and the portrait came away from the wood. Owen felt his heart lurch. He heard Tess make a little sound, half satisfaction, half sob. She raised the knife again and cut the last remaining picture from top left to bottom right. Owen could see her hand shaking now. There was a cut across her palm, the blood red amidst the green and blues of the paint. He put his own hand on her wrist and she dropped the knife with a clatter on the bare boards of the floor.

  “That’s enough now,” he said very gently.

  The dark inward gaze of her eyes faltered then. She looked about the room, from canvas to canvas, paint-spattered and slashed. Her breast heaved suddenly with a huge sob, and then she was crying as though her heart would break. Owen grabbed the cloak and wrapped her in it, swinging her up into his arms. On the floor Melton was almost crying too, cowering and scrabbling amidst the overturned pots and fallen frames.

  “You were lucky it wasn’t you,” Owen said grimly.

  “Yes, my lord.” The artist’s eyes were wide and terrified.

  “Leave town,” Owen said. “And don’t ever come back. And if I hear that you have ever displayed a single portrait of my wife again—”

  “Yes, my lord,” Melton said, before Owen had even finished the sentence.

  Owen nodded. He turned his back on the ruined studio and went out, carrying Tess as carefully as though she was brittle china. He could feel her shaking with grief and reaction. Her face was buried against his neck. Her hair tickled his throat. He carried her to the waiting carriage and placed her gently on the seat, climbing in after her. He took her hand and examined the cut to her palm. It was not deep but it was bleeding slowly and he ripped a strip of material from his sleeve and bound it about her hand.

  She did not speak one word. After a while her trembling started to abate a little, and a while after that Owen felt her body soften and relax in his arms. She opened her eyes, blinked and sat up.

  “Owen.” She sounded exhausted. “You came to find me.”

  Owen smiled at her. “Remind me never to get in your line of fire,” he said.

  Her face lightened into a smile but it faded almost immediately. A little frown dented her forehead between her brows. “Yes… Did I…did I really do that? Destroy Mr. Melton’s exhibition?”

  “Yes,” Owen said. “You obliterated it. Do you feel better for it?”

  Tess sat up straighter. “I should have done it years ago,” she said.

  “Why did you not?” Owen asked.

  The light died from her eyes. “Because I wanted to pretend it did not exist,” she said. “I tried to disregard it. But today—” A little shudder ran through her. Her voice shredded, turned thin. “Today when I heard Lady Borough…”

  Owen was shot through with a bolt of protectiveness so powerful that he felt physically shaken. “She should be ashamed of herself for speaking like that,” he said gruffly.

  “No,” Tess said. “I am the one who is ashamed.”

  “Don’t be,” Owen said. He saw the single tear that escaped from the corner of her eye to slide slowly over the curve of her cheek. She was trying so hard to hold the tears in check.

  “You don’t know,” she whispered. “You don’t understand.”

  “You can tell me if you like,” Owen said. “But not now. Don’t think about it now.”

  She nodded. Her shoulders had slumped again and she looked so frighteningly pale Owen thought she might faint. He remembered that she had not eaten all day, that she had run out before the wedding breakfast. He drew her gently to him and after a moment she relaxed against his sh
oulder, her eyes closing. She stayed like that, tucked into his side, until they reached Clarges Street.

  “We’re home,” he said softly as the carriage drew to a halt.

  Tess was so stiff as he helped her down from the carriage that she almost stumbled and fell. Owen put his arms about her to steady her. She looked like a fairy princess in the golden cloak and gown with the snow settling on her hood and swirling around her. A very woebegone princess, he thought, paint-spattered and dishevelled. A wave of emotion swept through him, tender and protective. On impulse he leaned forwards and kissed her gently. Her lips were cold.

  “Come inside,” he said softly. “Come to bed. Let me hold you. I’ll make everything better, I swear.”

  He kissed her again, still careful to be gentle.

  A shiver impaled her. For a moment he thought her trembling was from desire and that the high emotions of the day had made her turn to him for love and comfort, and he felt inordinately glad. His body surged in reaction to the quickening response he felt in hers, his erection hardening.

  Tess made a sound of distress and wrenched herself away from him. She cast him one horrified look, then turned, tumbled up the steps of the house in a welter of golden gauze and disappeared inside. The door slammed behind her with so much force that the house shook. Owen stood still, the shock driving every last vestige of lust from his mind.

  That went well.

  Tess had not been nervous. She had been frightened. She had been scared and repulsed and horrified. No woman, Owen thought ruefully, had ever responded to his kiss with quite such repugnance. It was far, far worse than the first time. No woman had ever run from him in terror before.

  The footman was still standing on the pavement, his face studiously blank. The horses shifted, snorting and stamping in the snow.

  “Thank you, Cavanagh,” Owen said to the coachman. “Pray get the horses into the warm.” He ruefully reflected that he was turning into the perfect aristocrat, able to ignore the most outrageous things going on under his nose and carry on as though nothing were amiss. The footman held the front door for him and he followed his wife into the house. He was relieved to see that the wedding guests, with great tact, had taken themselves off. The house was empty and quiet.