by Cecilia Gray
So much he had not shared in letters because he wanted to see the expression on her face. Not because he was curious about what the outcome might be. If anything, he knew how she would react. How strange this anticipation to prove himself right . . .
He was certain that her experiment was working, at least to some degree. He had been attending a play in the park—again, on her recommendation, to create new, joyful memories—when he’d stumbled upon an outdoor concert. The violin strings trilled with “The Soldier’s Adieu,” and he had stilled, expecting the crush of grief to weigh him down. But it had not come.
There were other feelings, as well. He recalled Lily’s smile with ease, the soothing timbre of her voice, even her perfume. But they were almost like a series of details, each received with a prick of pain now instead of a sledgehammer’s blow.
He imagined Dinah’s reaction. Of course she would demand he do better, and he nearly rubbed his hands in anticipation of what that might mean.
* * *
As happy as Dinah was to finally see Bridget and Sera, whom she had dearly missed while they’d been traveling on the Continent this past year, she was secretly eager to find Graham. She’d gone straight to the gardener’s cottage at the start of the fete and waited, missing the toasts entirely.
She’d felt put out, and while her sisters assumed it was because she had missed the words in her favor—which they felt compelled to relay in exhausting detail—that was far from the case. There was science to be explored!
Based on Graham’s correspondence of the past year, and his continued program of negative and positive reinforcements to replace his memories of Lady X, Dinah believed it was time to move on to the next phase of her research. Unfortunately, she needed to intercept him before that next phase occurred, else the results could be disastrous.
“We brought back lace from Belgium,” Bridget was saying. “The most delicate, intricate lacework I’ve ever seen. I’ve a shawl for you and a tablecloth for Father.”
“I will cherish it, I’m sure,” Dinah said, craning her neck.
“Are you expecting someone?” Sera asked.
“Ah, yes. I have invited special guests,” Dinah said. Guests she needed to intercept before Graham did. “I may have to attend to them. Do you mind if I take my leave and receive the lace later?”
“Not at all,” Bridget said.
Dinah hugged them both and whirled around—smack into Graham.
She’d forgotten how tall and attractive he was, and his face was even more handsome when he smiled.
“Miss Dinah,” he said. “I’ve been looking for you.”
“Dinah has some special guests attending today,” Bridget said. “She’s just off to greet them.”
“Really? Who?” Graham asked. “Might I have a word with you first?”
“A quick word, yes,” she said, walking briskly away from her curious sisters. “Is all well?”
He pulled her behind one of the archery targets that was no longer being used now that the sun was too low on the horizon for a good shot. “It is good to see you, Miss Dinah. You look well.”
“As do you.” She looked more closely at him. “You truly do.” Perhaps she should allow him to maintain this happiness. For the first time, she had doubts about proceeding to the next stage of her research. Was it too soon?
“I’ve wanted to thank you, Miss Dinah. Your correspondence this year has proven invaluable. I know I criticized your methods before, but to be honest, I don’t know if I would have come through this period without you. Can you believe it has been three years?”
Her stomach roiled at the sincerity in his expression. She should tell him her plan now. No, she should stop her plan. It would be awkward, certainly, but not worth the risk of him reliving any pain.
“Do you realize that we have never danced in the three years that my father has thrown the birthday fete for you and your sisters? In fact, I believe you have never danced at all. Would you do me the honor? I presume your dance card is empty. Shall we adjourn to the ballroom? They are playing reels—”
“Let’s go back to the cottage,” she blurted. She needed him away from the main ballroom. Her guests would arrive at any moment, and then it would be too late.
He gave her a curious smile. “Another surprise? More chocolate and wine, perhaps? I’ll assume you’ve found the most expensive bottle possible.”
She almost took his hand to urge him along with her. They crossed the meadow and were nearly to the pond when she heard Bridget calling her name.
“Dinah! Dinah! Your guests . . .”
She pretended not to hear. Just a few more steps and she could have Graham out of sight. But he had stopped. And judging by the swift intake of his breath, it was already too late.
Dinah braced herself and turned.
There came Dr. William Somerville, his wife Mary, who had assisted Dinah with her research. And more importantly, Dr. William Somerville’s physician colleague and his wife, Lily, who was unmistakably with child.
Lily held her hand over her rounded stomach. Her other hand shaded her eyes as she looked over the field, spotted Dinah, and waved.
Dinah faced Graham. His expression was taut, emotionless. Then he looked down at her with cold eyes and said, “Let’s greet your guests.”
“We don’t have to—”
“We shouldn’t be rude.”
He moved toward them quickly, and she followed a few steps behind. Mary Somerville initiated her greeting before they reached them by throwing out her arms and declaring, “Finally, another woman to whose discourse is worth listening.”
Dinah did not think that statement boded well for Lily, as she was certain they had arrived together. Nonetheless, she embraced her new friend and the other guests, as did Graham, who woodenly shook hands.
“If you’ll excuse me,” he said with a formal bow before turning on his heel and leaving.
Lily gasped, and Dinah nearly did, as well. It was the rudest thing she’d ever seen him do. Graham, of all people. She had injured him grievously. Lily frowned as she watched his progress back to the main house. She wished she could hear Lily’s thoughts, to understand whether she regretted her choices and why she had made them. Dinah certainly regretted hers. It took every ounce of willpower not to go in search of Graham and to, instead, attend Mary’s ramblings about the latest theories in London. Dinah was relieved when a short while later Mary and the others strolled away to watch the footraces.
She made her excuses and searched the ballroom desperately, but Graham was nowhere to be found. She made her way to the gardener’s cottage and then returned to the house to search the library and the salon. Turning up nothing, she went outside once more, to search the gardens around the pond. She even ventured into the stables, where she had a sneezing fit.
Within the half hour, sweat poured from her brow and her normally well-behaved hair was plastered to her face from the exertion. She returned to her room for a quick toilette. She sat at the end of her bed to cool down and think. It only took her a moment to realize where he might be.
How could she have so recklessly chased him down without considering the most logical location for a man in his condition? She nearly slapped her forehead at the simplicity of it.
There could only be one place a man in Graham’s condition would go, and she had no right to be there. But it couldn’t wait. She had to explain and beg his forgiveness.
She made her way to his bedroom on the second floor of the west wing of Woodbury Hall. Her feet made quick work of the steps, and she strode past the servants, certain they would forget her presence if she seemed to have a reason for it.
While she had never visited this floor of the hall when the family was in residence, she remembered Graham mentioning that the view from his window was exactly over one of the pond’s statues, and thus, she concluded his was the fourth door on the right.
She did not even knock.
He was lying upon his bed fully clothed. As she clo
sed the door behind her, he jumped to his feet and eyed her warily. “Get out,” he said, “before someone sees you.”
He’d pulled off his cravat and the top two buttons of his white linen shirt were undone, revealing his collarbone and a small expanse of his chest. Her mouth went dry, and her voice cracked on her words. “Please, let me explain.”
“You don’t need to explain. I know exactly what you were thinking. You thought that I had progressed to the next stage of your sick experiment.”
“It seemed logical,” she reasoned, taking another step toward him. “That we had to test your reactions. To see whether you would be immune.”
“Immune? To the love of my life paraded before me with another man’s child in her belly?”
She furrowed her brow. “The love of your life?”
“Are you really so dubious?”
“I just don’t understand what you could have shared in your short time together to create such a bond,” she said. “It has been years.”
“It must infuriate you, with all your ingenuity, not to understand something.”
“There’s no need to be cruel.”
“As cruel as you were, Dinah?” He had so rarely used her given name with such emotion before. “Could I ever be as callous as you? As unfeeling?”
With each angry word he flung at her, he took a step closer until she was forced to take a step away, until her back was pressed against the wall and he loomed over her.
His eyes roamed over her face and neck. His voice dropped to a whisper. “You keep insisting on curing me, but you have no real notion of the disease, do you?”
“Many doctors cure diseases with which they are not personally afflicted,” she said, aware of her heightened temperature, her pink cheeks. He was standing too close—it was too warm—she should push him away. Yet she didn’t.
His hand rested on her collarbone, and the strangest, dizzying sensation sparked from his fingertips and skittered across her skin. Her head fell back slightly, and she took in a breath.
“Ah, you see?” His lips quirked. “You are not so immune to passion, after all, are you, Dinah? I wonder how easy you will find it to forget once you’ve really tasted it. Maybe that’s what you need. A taste of your own medicine.”
He leaned in before she realized what he was doing, and covered her mouth with his.
Dinah had assumed a kiss to be a simple thing: two sets of lips pressed together. It was anything but. It was consuming, devouring, and elemental. She couldn’t breathe and so she gasped, and once she gasped, she felt his tongue, and then she could feel his hands roaming her neck and sliding into her hair and his chest pressed to her own and his hips anchoring her to the wall. She felt all of it and then some, a mysterious sparkle like stardust in her belly. She felt him in places he wasn’t even touching, like magic and alchemy. Of their own volition, her fingers clung to his shoulders, dug into the fabric of his coat. Her head slanted so their lips would press closer, and her mouth moved against his.
There was a groan—hers? His? Possibly both.
She felt she might faint as his head dipped to her neck and his lips pressed to her skin there. Her knees gave way.
“Shakespeare,” she blurted, remembering their word from long ago.
He wrenched away, moving across the room in a single breath. He stood there, his chest inflating and deflating, his eyes sharp and accusing on hers.
She touched her lips and watched his eyes darken again.
He took a step toward her, but then an expression crossed his face, something reproachful and angry. “Let’s see you hypothesize your way out of that.”
With that, he turned and left.
She must have stood there for an hour alone in his bedroom. It felt like a day as she waited for her breath and her sanity to return. But neither did so. By the time she left, her hands were shaking. When she went back to the ball, she had to sit in a chair like a matron. She watched him dance with several ladies, his head thrown back in laughter and gaiety, and felt something destructive and cold in her gut.
That he should use her so callously . . .
That he should seek to deliberately tease her after she had so generously offered to help him . . .
She was so focused on her growing devastation hat she did not notice that Bridget had appeared at her side.
“Are you feeling all right?” Her sister laid the back of her hand against Dinah’s forehead as if feeling for fever. “You look pale. Should I fetch someone? Is it the punch? I did think it tasted funny.”
“It is not the punch.” Dinah tugged her sister into the seat next to hers. “I have something important to ask you, Bridget. It’s important you answer—and honestly—and not ask any questions of me, do you understand?”
Bridget rubbed her hands together. “How mysterious.”
“Stay focused,” Dinah said. “You read those horrid novels, don’t you? Stories of love and passion?”
Bridget’s eyes widened. “And this grows even more mysterious. My dear sister, Dinah, what are you on about?”
“Nothing,” Dinah insisted. “I just have a question. Of all the novels you’ve read, the stories you’ve heard, have you ever actually experienced—” she dipped her head and lowered her voice “—passion?”
“Dinah? Have you—”
Dinah clapped her hand over Bridget’s mouth. “You promised no questions!” She glanced around to see if anyone had overheard, but the revelers were either dancing or gossiping or out on the terrace. She lowered her hand slowly. “Just answer the question.”
“To be honest,” Bridget said with a sigh, “I haven’t. I’ve wanted to experience it. I’ve read about it, and it seems so wonderful and all encompassing.”
“I had the exact opposite reaction to that assessment.” Dinah twisted in her seat to face the dance floor. Graham had crossed to the opposite end of the ballroom, where he was in active conversation with an older gentleman, as though he had not a care in the world.
How could he do so when she could barely stand?
The only reasonable explanation was that while she had felt passion, had felt fire, had felt, that he had felt . . . nothing.
“Dinah, are you sure everything is all right? Why the sudden fascination?”
“Just a study,” she said quickly, looking back at her sister and patting her on the knee. “Just one more question. Passion . . . can it be . . . felt by only one of the parties?”
Bridget sighed. “Unfortunately, yes. And most of the time, that is the case. Why do you think so many novels of it exist?”
Dinah wanted to be angry with Graham, but the memory of that first drunken night came back to her. His hand on her ankle. The sizzle up her leg. He hadn’t intended to inspire any passion in her then, but it had flickered to life only to be awakened, roaring, with his kiss just now.
Recalling the sensations caused the tumult to rise again in her stomach. She had to stop it before it overcame her.
She bade her sister good-bye and ran to the library. It was her duty to stop the sensations immediately. She would have to resort to the pain therapy she had recommended to Graham. She sat alone and pinched herself. With a wince, she pinched again.
But it did no good. She replayed the kiss in her mind. His mouth hot against hers. His tongue laving her mouth. His hands cradling her head. As much as she tried to will the feelings away, they only returned, more poignant than ever.
* * *
Lord G.,
I hope this letter finds you well.
* * *
Lord G.,
Please accept my apologies
* * *
Graham,
I had written to apologize, but in retrospect I am the offended party and demand an apology from you!
* * *
Graham,
I am so sorry to hear of the tragic news of His Grace and your brother Tom. I hope that if you are able to set aside my ill use of your feelings, you will know I am here, your willing servant and
friend, during this time of tragedy.
Dinah
Chapter Six
A funeral
March 12, 1820
London, England
Graham stood stock-still through the greetings of the mourners at the house—no longer his father’s home or even Tom’s, but Benjamin’s—and he sat solemn and quiet all through the carriage ride to the family cemetery and the burial itself.
He kept his thoughts occupied with things other than his father and his eldest brother decomposing in boxes beneath the ground. Instead, he focused all his energy on ire and judgment. On the furtive glances cast at Benjamin, now the Duke of Rivington. The return of his youngest brother, Gray, for the funeral.
Throughout the day, they had been approached by newly arriving mourners and the battle was alive in each one—how to balance the line between mourner and sycophant. How much respect was just enough while still currying favor with the new duke who should never have been. It was sickening and something to keep the wave of grief at bay.
But now that his family and their closest friends had returned home, now that the staff was openly weeping, and now that he had to really look at Sera—God, Sera, with her shocked eyes that seemed to see nothing at all—he felt his throat close.
His hands had never felt more present. Like large blocks of ice. He kept opening and closing his palms and realized he wanted to hold Benjamin’s hand—something they hadn’t done since they were children. They were orphans now. And while he knew no one cared for an orphan at his age, they were orphans, just the same.
How old was Sera? But nineteen? Her blank expression made her seem ancient.
The chaos in the house was quickly dealt with by Alice Belle. She sent home most of the staff, thanked the others for their service in this time of need, had supper prepared—something simple, she insisted—and bundled Sera off to bed.
Alice was so dependable in that way. He wasn’t sure what they would do without her. If Benjamin had any sense, he would marry her. She had taken care of the Rivington estates since before Sera’s marriage into the family, until her sister had been ready to take up the reins.