Tainted Love

by Louisa Trent

  Tainted Love

  Louisa Trent

  Published 2003

  ISBN 1-931761-74-X

  Published by Liquid Silver Books, imprint of Atlantic Bridge Publishing, 6280 Crittenden Ave, Indianapolis, Indiana. Copyright © 2003, Louisa Trent. 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, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author.

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  Liquid Silver Books http://www.liquidsilverbooks.com

  Email: raven@liquidsilverbooks.com

  Cover Art by John William Waterhouse 1849-1917

  This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents and dialogues in this book are of the author's imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is completely coincidental.

  CHAPTER ONE

  The year 1887. Bar Harbor, Maine.

  Lillian Hill peered out the open coach door, her hands clasped tightly in her lap.

  A green sweep of century-old pines partially concealed her view, but she knew that within the cloak of silvery mist the windswept antique waited for her, teetering at the precipice of a rocky cliff high above an unforgiving sea. Isolated. Lonely. Cut off from the town below by both geography and design.

  Lillian cherished that sad recluse of a bygone era. Loved every tarnished shingle, every distorted wave in the glass windows, every weathered slate on the rooftop, every buckle and heave in the fieldstone foundation--every unique flaw and imperfection--that makes a house a home. The cottage lived in her heart, resided in her blood, inhabited her very bones; the four walls and a roof were as much a part of her as her own name.

  When the tears started to well, she willed herself to composure. Useless emotion served no purpose. The lathered horses were growing restive, and the coachman, impatient to be on his way, had already deposited her valise upon the ground. Like it or not, it was time to face the past.

  Squaring her shoulders, she hopped out onto the winding curve of the pebbled drive, careful not to show even the merest hint of a well-turned ankle in her descent. With a dismissive wave at the driver, and taking her luggage firmly in hand, she started through the cottage's rose-covered front gates, her stride purposeful yet decorous.

  Mid-way through the latticework arbor, she took a surreptitious peek behind her. Seeing that the shabby carriage had bumped and groaned its way around the bend in the lane and had all but disappeared down the treacherous hill, she dumped her horribly frumpy, but oh-so-practical, black reticule back onto the ground.

  Next to go was her dull, navy-blue bonnet. This, she launched skyward. When the hideous hat landed, resembling a misshapen tulle toadstool on the drive, she kicked the flattened monstrosity out of sight, out of mind.

  Her practical dove-gray wrap followed suit. The mantle didn't fly nearly as high or get kicked nearly as far, though hers was a valiant effort, if she did say so herself.

  Inspired--well, actually, as rash as a case of poison ivy--she peeled off her tasteful but detested gloves. A toss later and the black kid decorated a nearby trumpet vine.

  Good heavens! She thought, inhaling the fragrant red petals of her grandmother's prize-winning American Pillar roses. Whatever would the good people of Bar Harbor say if they could see her now? Why, her actions were quite, quite scandalous.

  Though, not nearly as scandalous as the time she had danced naked outside under the moon.

  Now there was scandal! She still remembered how her tangled red hair had tickled her sublimely bare bottom, and how a pair of dark brooding eyes had made her flesh burn. She set out to tease the somber owner of those dark brooding eyes, and had succeeded admirably.

  Laughing in memory, Lillian spun in a giddy circle, just as she did back then.

  Crushed stones scattered under her eminently serviceable leather boots. A messy tornado of gray dust whipped into a billowing frenzy. The gritty cloud gradually settled, coating the homely bombazine skirts of her traveling gown.

  Lord, but she felt dizzy! The world really was going 'round much too fast, and she really was flying much too high on an air bubble of homecoming happiness. But ever mindful that a nice long, pointy hatpin waited in the wings to puncture her euphoria and drop her back down to earth, she said to hell with it, and spun all the faster.

  Her gaze bounced into her grandmother's gardens. With messy results. Her spinning blended the carefully arranged orchestration of harmonious hues into a discordant jumble. Not liking the muddy color mix one bit, her feet stilled. Once her equilibrium was restored, she identified each plant individually, finding not one, sweet, safe pastel in the bunch. None of those pale flowers for her grandmother! Oh, no. Pastels bleached out in the afternoon sun. Victoria Hill picked vibrant tones. Juicy colors. Sensual displays of plants that brought a blush to the observer's cheeks for having the audacity to stare too long. Spread before her like a sprawled lover was a sensory orgy.

  Sensual displays... Sensory orgy... Sprawled lover... Spread...

  Hisssss! The pointed hatpin began to do its work. Not a clean merciful pop, mind you, but a slow, flattening leak.

  Hisssss! Hisssss! Hisssss! There it went again. Like a hot air balloon losing its hydrogen, her homecoming giddiness deflated on a slow expulsion of flammable gas. Don't anyone strike a tinderbox near her!

  Much sobered, Lillian concentrated on the scene before her. She would do anything--anything at all--to bolster her small store of courage.

  The kitchen garden was much the same as she remembered; the pungent green scent of aromatic plants still filled the warm air. Her industrious grandmother had already harvested some of the herbs; these were hung upside down to dry from the porch rafters. The neat bunches, tied with brown-corded string, swung back and forth in the damp ocean breeze. Everything was all so familiar, yet achingly different too.

  Biting her lip so she wouldn't cry, Lillian recalled all those happy summer days spent churning up and planting this sun-kissed earth. The dark loam was so rich and fertile, anything would grow in it. On the left, dominating an entire corner of the garden, was situated a clump of woolly thyme. The invasive creeper had always been one her grandmother's most disobedient plants; the herb absolutely refused to be disciplined or contained. Given free rein, the ground cover took over everything, spilling out over the walkway, growing between the driest and most inhospitable cracks in the porous stones. Lillian understood. Once upon a time, she had been wild too.

  No more.

  Now she was as tame and as mannerly as the great drifts of lavender that softened the cottage's fieldstone foundation, and like those showy plants, she had become self-contained and self-consciously ornamental, essentially attractive and entirely useless--a damn fashion accessory draped around the arm of a certain wealthy and prominent Boston banker...

  Lillian glided to her knees and began to pull weeds. Faster and faster, she grabbed and yanked, the discards forming a wilted pile in no time at all. My, how good the sun-warmed soil felt between her fingers! Gardening was far more therapeutic than the laudanum her baffled physicians had prescribed to aid her troubled sleep.

  Soon Lillian had lost herself in the mindless occupation. Popping up long-rooted dandelions. Digging out stubborn crabgrass. All while carefully leaving behind fledgling seedlings--

  Volunteers, her grandmother called them--to grow on without competition. Nothing was better for the nerves than playing in the dirt. A pity, sunshine and warm earth didn't come in medicinal form...

  Suddenly, the distinct feeling that someone watched her from behind the trees threatened her newfound peace of mind. Was that the fall of a footstep she heard above th
e soothing drone of bees and birds?

  Her soiled fingertips fluttered as a shot of misplaced energy sent a zing up her spinal column. Her hands retreated up her thighs, leaving muddy skid marks on her gown in their wake. From the force of recently acquired habit, her hands finally wound up in her lap--a hard landing--and clasped themselves tight, much too tight, to mask any remaining unsteadiness.

  "Who is there?" she called, scrutinizing the dense cover of trees.

  "Did I frighten you?"

  At the sound of that warm and sensual voice, she jumped. At the sight of the man stepping out from behind his cover of new budded leaves, she trembled from head to foot.

  "Yes!" she cried. "You did frighten me!"

  Her answer was the first thing that popped to mind. Unfortunately, the spontaneous reply was also the truth, and the truth was not necessarily the best way to deal with Doyle Donovan. The truth would give this man too much power over her. Too much control.

  The truth might very well get her killed.

  CHAPTER TWO

  "I never meant to frighten you, Lily."

  Doyle's baritone rendition of her shortened first name started a raging turmoil in her belly. How was it that he could make two small syllables sound so utterly, shockingly, masculine?

  His voice, his rugged and careless good looks, had always attracted her. Dressed in a countrified tweed jacket and rough wool trousers, one would think him a common laborer, an Irish ditch-digger. Or perhaps some other poor immigrant lucky to have a day's pay lining his patched pocket. But appearances were deceptive. And wasn't she well acquainted with that particular homily! For in truth, Doyle didn't toil in the streets with a shovel in hand but behind a drawing board in an office, a pencil gripped. Educated at Yale, once employed by a prestigious New York City partnership, he worked as an architect.

  Credentials made him no less the renegade, not in thought and certainly not in behavior. He had never observed the social conventions of dress or practiced the affectation of toilette. Case in point: Doyle eschewed both haberdashers and barbers. His head was always rebelliously bare; his dark hair at least two inches too long for whatever the current whim of fashion. He was hatless today too, and his neglected hair cried out for a trim.

  Some things don't change.

  Like Doyle's smile, which still hung lopsided on his firm lips, a picture frame defying adjustment. His features, when analyzed separately, should not have produced a handsome impression. But he did make a handsome impression, all the same. His face was so much more than the sum of its parts; the depth of the man so much more than what was seen on the surface. How many times in the past had she asked herself why a face so lacking in symmetry was all the more attractive because of the crookedness? How many times in the present had she asked herself why it was impossible to forget a man who had so easily forgotten her?

  To hide the hurt of his heedlessness, Lillian dropped her gaze to the level of plant roots. Under the guise of restoring a stray wisp of hair to its rightful place within the tight confines of her chignon, she kept her eyes lowered as she murmured a desultory, "You didn't frighten me. Not really. I was only startled--that's all."

  He reached a hand toward her. "Allow me to help you up," he demanded, rather than asked.

  Some things don't change.

  Somehow, some way, she found the necessary fortitude to lift her chin. "No thank you."

  "Come now," he coaxed, hand still extended. "There on your knees, before a man's boots, anyone would think you were sucking cock."

  Lillian gasped, horrified. Not at his words, oh no. But at the very pleasant image that coarse phrase conjured up.

  Lest he know there was nothing, literally nothing, she wished more than to feel the hard thrust of his sex in her mouth, she had to do something, say something. But what?

  Perhaps she should jump up and slap his face. Done, of course, while uttering an outraged, 'How dare you, sir!' That would be a fine set-down, and no more than he richly deserved.

  On second thought, she thought not.

  In her present state of agitation, her shaking knees wouldn't allow for any jumping. As to outraged utterances ... she doubted her dull tongue could form anything sharper than an incomprehensible babble.

  So, what to do?

  Well, if not a disdainful slap, at the very minimum she must wear the stamp of tacit disapproval; otherwise, he might assume--rightly--that he had some affect on her.

  Hanging onto her reserve for dear life, she gave him a cutting stare from her kneeling position at his feet.

  At least, it was her best attempt at a cutting stare. For all she knew, she might have been making calf eyes at him while groveling at his boots.

  "I apologize," he said, her stare hitting its mark. "That remark was uncalled for. A gentleman would never have spoken such crudeness. It was your positioning that brought the thought to my lips, and a lack of restraint on my part that let it go. Please--allow me to assist you."

  Wasn't it so like Doyle to offer a straightforward acknowledgment of his shortcomings!

  Wasn't it so like her to try to mask her own!

  "You are far too kind, sir. Sad to say, I must decline your gracious offer of assistance. I would certainly not wish to sully you," she said archly.

  Praying her fingers wouldn't shake--and thereby give away her apprehension--she showed him her stained palms. "See? Quite filthy."

  His outstretched arm never wavered. "I do own soap," he quipped, as if soiled hands were of no import, when they both knew the dirt on her hands was not the washable kind.

  "All the same, I can manage very well on my own, Mr. Donovan." She regained her feet, albeit gracelessly.

  "Mister Donovan, is it? After all there is between us, you actually propose we return to the preposterousness of calling one another by our surnames?"

  "I think, under the circumstances, a certain formality would serve us both well. Proper decorum cannot be over-valued," she said primly.

  "You never observed social etiquette in the past!"

  "To my lasting detriment, Mr. Donovan." Her eyes slanted away.

  "Very well. If the lady insists, we shall play out this absurd charade."

  He bowed. "Miss Hill, I must say I am surprised to see you in these gardens again."

  In a flurry of nerves, Lillian felt herself blush. In the intervening years since leaving Bar Harbor, she had become somewhat of an expert at controlling her features. However, she had yet to master the hot blushes that gave her innermost thoughts away.

  Hoping to hide the flush with busyness, she wiped her grimy fingers on the finely twilled fabric of her skirts. "Surprised? I was only weeding."

  "Obviously. And that is not at all what I meant."

  Her mouth opened to protest his mocking tone.

  Only to snap shut again. What was the use of defending herself? They both knew she deserved his sarcasm, his derision, his ... loathing.

  "Go ahead," he prompted. "Say it."

  At his goading, tongue-tied changed rapidly to spite. "Nothing was ever obvious to you, Mr. Donovan!"

  Doyle's dark eyes turned to onyx. His pupils had always glinted like black jewels when on the edge of anger. Some things, like a man's changeable eye color, were difficult to forget no matter how hard one tried. And other things, like a wronged man's rage, were better left alone. Obviously, she had never learned that lesson.

  Much to his credit--and the assuagement of her trepidation--he banked his fury. "I don't know why you took me unawares," he said calmly enough. "I should have expected to see you at some point. For the past month, Mrs. Hill has talked of little else but your visit."

  Her grandmother was not supposed to tell anyone! Especially not Doyle. Why was he here?

  "Far better for us to have run into each other in private," she said with a feeble attempt at olive branch waving.

  "Why do you say that?" he asked, ignoring the weak peace offering.

  "W-w-why?" she stammered. "Well ... I suppose ... now that we are
reacquainted, we can be civil to one another ... should we happen to meet again ... by chance ... in public."

  Something flickered behind his dark eyes and he gave a harsh bark of laughter. "Do you really think we can be civil to one other, after all that has happened?"

  A nerve-driven retort moved to the outermost tip of her tongue; she willed the words to dissipate. "That is entirely up to you," she said coolly, pleasantly, her outward poise belying her inner turmoil.

  He spoke low. "You are just as beautiful as ever."

  Her hard-won composure slipped then, and she frowned, but she didn't look away. In horror, her eyes remained glued to his in a kind of macabre fascination. "Please. Do not..."

  "No cause for concern. I can admire your beauty as I would a work of art, distant and removed. Unlike the rest of your male admirers, I am immune to your charms."

  "How nice for you," she snipped with a show of her old girlhood defiance.

  She turned to leave then--to escape, actually--and when she did, the fingers of her left hand accidentally brushed his arm. It was only the briefest of contacts, and yet she was not left unscathed: her hands trembled all over again. And this time, her shaking had nothing to do with nerves.

  Doyle had always been able to make her tremble. At seventeen, she had been aware of him as a woman is aware of a man; the slow burn of carnal heat was all they ever really had in common.

  After that, her defiance died a quick death. No longer did she pretend to fearlessness, for she was afraid. Very afraid. Of him ... of herself.

  "If you will excuse me?" she whispered.

  "I won't stand in your way."

  She made to move past him, and stalled. Despite his words, Doyle most definitely stood in her way. Deliberately? Tauntingly? Was his silent stance threatening in some undefined way? Or, did he block her escape route simply because he had no place else to go?