by Eve Silver
Unreasoning anger, as usual.
He mastered it quickly. Long years of practice had taught him the way of it.
“I could easily have called out had I felt the need,” she said coldly.
“Who would have heard?” he asked.
“Mr. Water,” she said. “Do you not hear him on the other side of the wall?”
Griffin blinked at her reply, and only after a few seconds did he hear the sounds of someone tossing things into a cart, the thud of wood on wood distinctive.
“I am not a woman to intentionally put myself in harm’s way, Mr. Fairfax. Nor am I one to succumb to another’s will without a fuss.”
She took a deep breath, and he thought she would flay him with her words. Instead, she wet her lips, stared again at her wrist, ran the tip of her index finger over the base of her thumb. He found her actions sensual.
Innocence held a powerful allure.
Flashing him an unreadable look, she sank her teeth into her lower lip, gave her skirt an irate twitch and stepped the rest of the way around him. She stalked to the stone bench on the verandah without looking back, retrieved her ecru bag, then strode on toward the garden gate. There she paused, and he saw her shoulders stiffen, her body tremble just a little, and she ran her fingers along the inside of her wrist once more.
Her actions gave her away. She had liked it, his tongue and teeth on her skin.
In that instant, Griffin found himself wishing that he could rip both his anger and the stain of his crimes from the black, roiling void of his soul, that he had something better to offer her than what he was.
“Miss Canham,” he called. She froze, her back to him, one hand resting on the iron grillwork of the gate.
He had tantalized her, but he had also distressed her. A part of him was glad. He wanted her to be wary, careful. His actions ought to have done more than cause her distress; they ought to have terrified her. But they had not. He thought of the irate way she had flicked her skirt, and he was puzzled... intrigued.
From whence did she draw her courage, her strength? ‘Twas a well of great depth.
“My apologies,” he said, and meant it, but not for the reasons she likely imagined.
Not for the fact that he had detained her, touched her, tasted her in a way most sensual.
No, he was sorry that he would not be noble or kind or good, that he would not be able to stay away from her.
He was sorry that he was not, at his core, the man he was on the surface, a man without demons and ghosts and dark secrets.
She yanked open the gate, and the hinges gave a strident cry in protest. A wasp buzzed by her cheek, and she waved it away, then again and again, but it came at her once more.
A few steps and he was by her side, his hand shooting out, faster than hers. He closed his fist, leaving the wasp trapped inside. A sharp flick of his wrist and fingers, and he set it free to fly off in the opposite direction with an angry buzz.
Beth spun to face him, lips parted, eyes wide.
“You did not kill it.”
He studied her, intrigued. “You are pleased by that. Pleased that I let it live, that I set it free.”
“I am,” she said. “To kill it would have been a simple matter. A sharp swat and the danger is gone. But to control the urge, to risk a painful sting... well, there is valor in that.”
The way she looked at him, bright and honest. Bloody hell.
“Valor.” He shook his head. “You choose to label me as something I am not.”
Her pretty lips compressed in a tight line, then released. She opened her mouth. Closed it. Looked to the ground.
He wanted to kiss her in truth, to pull her hard against him and drag the pins from her hair until the wild mass of her curls tumbled free. To gather the golden strands tight in his fist. To put his mouth on hers, push his tongue inside her, rough, ungentle, to kindle a flame in her blood that matched the burn in his own.
The tiny sample he had stolen when he pressed his lips to her wrist, his teeth to her thumb, was not enough; it had only whetted his appetite, stirred the beast to life.
“There are rumors...” she said, hesitant, pulling her gaze from the ground.
Of course there were. “Yes,” he agreed.
“Do you know what they say?”
She was brave; he had known it all along. And she liked to seek answers, to solve puzzles. Here was most definitely a puzzle. Rumors branded him a killer. Her own observations might suggest to her that that he was not.
“The rumors?” He inclined his head. “Yes, I know what they say.”
Her knuckles had gone white where they yet clutched at the gate.
“Whom—” Just a single strangled word. She could not manage the rest of the query. He could not blame her.
“Go on, now,” he said softly, reaching around her to pull the gate all the way open, then resting his splayed fingers at the small of her back to give her gentle direction. The contact and the urge to slide his hand lower, to the tempting curve of her bottom, made his groin ache.
She took a handful of steps, then stopped and looked back at him over her shoulder, her blue eyes bright and intent. She held his gaze, waited, waited.
Her sharp, shaky intake of breath almost stayed his next words, then he thought, Tell her and be done with it.
Tell her all? No, not yet. But tell her part. She would only hear it elsewhere if he did not. Still, he found himself reluctant to offer the ugly truth.
In a low, emotionless voice, he said, “My wife, Miss Canham. The rumors state that I killed my wife.”
o0o
That night, Beth unlocked her chamber door and stepped inside. Already confused and dismayed by the events in the garden, by Griffin’s touch and the press of his mouth to her wrist, she had been further confounded by his quiet admission. What was she to make of that? Of his assertion that he had killed his wife?
Only, that was not what he had said.
He had not admitted murder.
He had admitted only that the rumors claimed he had killed her.
Griffin Fairfax was full of contradictions. A puzzle. Recollections and images teased her: his expression as he looked at his daughter, filled with such bewildered yearning. His movements as he caught the wasp, then set it free. The sound of his voice, warm and seductive, then coldly emotionless as he unveiled the darkest of his secrets.
My wife, Miss Canham. The rumors state that I killed my wife.
Rumors. Rumors.
They hung about him like a choking miasma.
Was that his darkest secret, then? That there were suppositions and whispers that dogged him, or was there a darker secret still, a truth she could not wish to know?
Had he killed his wife?
The part of her that was her father’s daughter looked to the rationality of that and decided that if he had, he would be incarcerated now. The part of her that was purely herself was disinclined to believe his guilt.
With a sigh, she turned, locked the door behind her and took the key from the hole. She paused, took a long, slow breath, and forced herself to bury the urge to fling open the portal and free herself from this confined space. The time she had spent with Griffin Fairfax had befuddled and confused her, a situation that boded ill for her continued emotional constraint. In this mood, she was acutely aware of the small, restricting box her chamber had become.
She knew herself well enough to recognize the danger signs.
For a moment, she simply stood in place, then she moved into the room, set her candle on the small table, and crossed to the bed. There, she reached for her pillow, intent on retrieving her nightdress.
She froze.
Someone had been here, touched her pillow, moved it.
Her hand trembled as she reached out and clasped the edge of the pillowcase, gingerly dragging it to one side. Her nightdress was there, folded yes, but not the way she had left it. The hem faced the head of the bed rather than the foot.
She was ever meticulous in he
r organization. She would never have left her nightdress so.
Who—
Alice?
No. The maid came only once each day, and Beth had been here early this morning when Alice came and went. There would have been no reason for her to return, to touch Beth’s things.
Spinning, she went to her wooden keepsake box, a treasure that her father had gifted her with in a better time. She lifted the lid, and then exhaled in rushing relief. It was there. The small pearl brooch that had belonged to her grandmother and passed to Beth was still there.
Which implied that her clandestine visitor was not a thief, for the brooch would have been easy pickings.
Slowly, she made a circuit of the room, noting details. Strange, how she imagined she could hear the sound of her father’s voice, patient, calm, cataloguing each finding.
It appeared that nothing was taken, though many of her things had been disturbed.
Oh, the evidence was subtle enough. A few hairpins turned the wrong way. Her brush shifted a hair’s breadth to the right so it no longer lay perfectly aligned with the edge of the table. Her small pile of handkerchiefs, folded neatly in her press, rearranged so the top square had its edges misaligned.
In all likelihood, most people would have noticed nothing amiss. But Beth was not most people. From the earliest age she had been determined to maintain order over the small things in her life because so many things were beyond her control. Large things. Frightening things.
She closed her eyes as memories crept forth, rank and ugly. With a shudder, she thrust them aside and focused her thoughts on the question at hand.
Who had been in her room, touched her belongings?
With nervous energy, she ordered and tidied every article of her clothing, aligned her brush and comb and each and every hairpin, smoothed the bedsheets until they were free of any crinkle or crease. Finally, she prepared for bed.
As she slid between the cool sheets, restless agitation left her hot even in the chill of the autumn night, and she knew her suspicions of an intruder were only partly to blame.
She could find no peace because he had kissed her.
Griffin Fairfax had kissed her. Not the sort of kiss she had innocently dreamed of in the past, as girls were wont to do. Not a soft, safe brush of warm lips on her own. No, his had been a kiss of decadence and magnificence, a kiss meant to lure desires she had never imagined she possessed.
The recollection made her anxious, uneasy, her limbs liquid, her senses flooded with awareness. His mouth had been warm on her wrist, the damp trail of his tongue drawing a flood of heat, the sharp press of his teeth sinking into her flesh leaving her weak and panting.
A shaky sigh escaped her. She brought her hand to her mouth, dragged the base of her thumb back and forth across her lower lip, recalling every nuance of Griffin’s touch. Inexplicably, she wanted him to do those things again, to her wrist, to her mouth. She wanted him to press his lips to hers, just as he had on the skin of her wrist, to stroke his tongue over her mouth, to bite her lips as he had her thumb.
She felt such wanting of him, such yearning.
She was afraid and enticed and confused. She needed to be free of it, free of such dangerous desire.
But a part of her wished to be chained by it.
With a gasp she flung herself from the bed and began to pace.
Spinning sharply, she strode to the window and yanked back the heavy draperies. The back garden was a mass of shapes, slate and pewter and black, washed in paler gray moonlight. She raised her eyes to the moon and the onyx sky.
In London, her family would see that same moon. That same slice of beautiful moon.
She took some comfort in that, in the familiarity of her thoughts of them and her memories of home. She thought of her mother, humming softly as she prepared a meat pie with rich gravy. She thought of her brother’s laughter when he won at chess. She thought of her father... but, no, to think of him as he was now—trapped in a wheeled chair and a body that did not do what he wished—was a road too painful to travel. Instead, she thought of him as he had been years ago, taking her hands in his and dancing a jig while they laughed and laughed.
She missed them horribly, and longed to write a letter home. Well, that was out of the question. As the recipient, her mother would be expected to produce the postal rate of three pence, an amount she could ill afford. But, oh, to be able to unburden herself, to pour out the details of her long journey, her arrival at Burndale, the experiences she had had since coming here.
Her encounters with Griffin Fairfax.
She shook her head. Perhaps she would not wish to share every nuance of those encounters.
Closing her eyes, she imagined his face, his windblown hair, the lean, hard line of his cheek. The way his eyes lit with a secret amusement that lured her into a feeling of kinship. The way he moved. The way he smelled.
Her skin heated and her eyes popped open, the wayward turn of her mind leaving her confused and dismayed.
Worse than her unfortunate and inappropriate attraction was the fact that she liked him, enjoyed him. Not only his physical allure, though that certainly swayed her. She found him fascinating and frightening and reassuring all at once.
Earlier, in the garden, when he had put his mouth on her, tasted her, she ought to have been terrified. She shivered.
Yes, that is what he had done. Tasted her.
And instead of feeling frightened, she had been tempted. Enthralled.
Beth rested her forehead against the cool glass. The quiet wrapped close about her, smothering her like a shroud. In that instant, she found the silence awful and she longed for the street sounds of home. Not the loud cacophony that always boomed outside their horrible little flat, but the softer sounds of the house in south London. The morning call of the milkmaid or the baker. The wheels of a carriage and the hooves of horses ringing on the cobbled road.
Here, there were no such sounds, and no familiar city sights. There was only the sky and shadows and the black shape of the trees in the distance. For an instant, the moon hung bright and clear, and then the wind moved the clouds across its face, leaving the view beyond her window murky and forbidding once more.
Beth wrapped her arms tight about her waist.
Old fears blended with the new, and suddenly the room felt close, stuffy, the walls moving in on her until she thought she would be crushed. The suddenness and strength of the assault was overwhelming, far stronger than it had been in many years.
The box was tight, barely big enough to hold her, and she pressed at the lid and sobbed until her throat was dry and sore. Dark, so dark. Please... please... Someone come. Someone save me.
Trembling, battling the horror of her memories, she stared out at the night, pretending there were no walls, no darkness. Pretending she did not feel the bite of ancient terrors.
Suddenly, a flicker of movement in the garden caught her eye. It took a long moment for her to decide if something was there in truth, or only in her mind’s eye. She shifted to one side, peering through the glass, trying to see beyond her own reflection, but in the moments that followed she saw nothing out of the expected.
She had almost convinced herself she had seen nothing in the first place, that it was only her anxious nature that conjured ghosts and goblins, when the shadows changed once more, and a dark shape separated itself from the trees beyond the wall.
Broad of shoulder and narrow of hip. A man.
His hair was dark, or mayhap he wore a dark cap. The contrast made his face pale in the night, tipped up toward her. But he was too far away for her to see his features clearly, which meant he was too far away to see hers. With a gasp, she drew back.
Mr. Fairfax? She could find no reason to think so, other than the wayward meanderings of her imagination.
The man stood frozen in place, his face turned to her window. Watching.
An ugly swirl of fear uncurled in her belly.
She was about to move away, to draw the curtain, though it
would mean she would have to burn a rush light the whole night through, when she caught sight of someone moving swiftly across the back garden.
The moonlight illuminated the figure but a moment, and Beth saw it was a woman, garbed in a dark cloak with a scarf or hood pulled over her hair. Her stride was confident, her form lean and tall, and though Beth could see nothing of the woman’s features, she recognized her as Miss Percy.
How odd. What could Miss Percy seek in the late hour of the night, slinking about without lantern or light? Did she go to meet that man who lurked and... watched?
Peering into the darkness, she squinted against the night. She could see the heavy hedge of the back garden, a dark, blocky shape, and beyond that the outline of the trees, black against a blacker sky. She searched for the man she had seen earlier, but he had melded with the night and she could see him no more.
Then she thought she did glimpse him, almost obscured by the trees, the pale shine of his skin, the glint of his eyes, looking not at Miss Percy, but at Beth.
A fist closed about her heart, tighter and tighter still.
Was he the same man she had sensed watching her on the road? In the garden? Who was he? What did he want?
Had he been here, in her room? Had he touched her possessions? Or was she allowing her anxious nature to spin fancies and fears?
He stepped back, his form blending with the other shadows of the night.
Miss Percy had reached the hedge now. She paused, looked cautiously about, drew her scarf closer about her face.
And then she too was swallowed by the darkness.
Chapter Twelve
Stepney, London, January 15, 1813
Ginnie. Dead. Oh, God, she was dead, torn and cut, her blood a dark, glistening pool. Henry wanted to touch her. To gather her in his arms and keep her safe, hold her safe. Too late. Too late.
Who had done this? And why?
Why? Why? Why?
Sam Loder stared at him in mute sympathy, his normally ruddy color gone to ash.
“Henry,” he said, his voice gruff. “This is no place for you now.”
No place for him.
He swallowed and almost choked on the mad cackle that ached to spring free of his chest.