Perilous Pleasures

by Jenny Brown

  She certainly wasn’t about to trouble Lord Ramsay with it, not after their latest discussion. She could only imagine his reaction if she were to test his chastity further by demanding he examine her naked thigh.

  She’d just decided to ask the maid for a bit of whiskey with which to cleanse her wound further when she heard a sharp cry coming from outside. She dropped her skirt and turned toward the window where she saw a woman dressed in the hooded red cloak of a cottar’s wife running toward the inn, wailing and stumbling in her haste.

  “Ashford’s bull. It’s gored our Neddy. My sister’s boy!” The woman’s hair had fallen out of her cap and her eyes were maddened with fear. “He was a-teasing it in the pasture—heaving rocks at it—and it got loose.”

  As Zoe hobbled toward the inn’s front door she almost collided with Ramsay, who’d sped from his chamber at the woman’s cry. He muscled through the crowd that was assembling around the woman on the muddy street, calling out, “How badly is he hurt?”

  At first his question elicited only a flood of tears. With a look of annoyance, he strode over to the cottar’s wife and commanded, “Save your tears for later. What kind of shape is he in?”

  The woman regarded him with a look of fear, but his imperious tone had had the effect he’d intended. Between sobs she gasped out that the bull had gored the child in the belly.

  “Is he alive?”

  The woman nodded, “Aye, they took him to his mother’s cottage. But he’s in such agony. His guts is all torn out.” A flood of tears drowned out the rest of what she had to say.

  He cut her short. “Has someone called the surgeon?”

  The woman’s expression grew desperate. “T’aint no surgeon to be found here. Only old Landis, what sees to the cattle. And he’s off to the market today. Oh, the poor boy!” Her voice rose in a wail.

  “I’ve some skill at surgery,” Ramsay said. “Take me to him.”

  The woman examined his greatcoat and well-made boots with suspicion. Clearly he bore no resemblance to any medical man of her acquaintance, “We can pay but a shilling,” she whispered. “We bain’t not rich folk. But if you can save my sister’s boy—”

  “I need no payment.” He released her shoulder. Brusquely he said, “Wait here while I fetch my things.” He turned back toward the inn.

  Brushing past Zoe, who stood transfixed at the doorway, he said, “It sounds like a severe injury.” He pinned her with his steely gaze. “I’ve no choice but to leave you alone while I see to the child. Remain here. Don’t run from me again.”

  “And if I do?”

  He sighed. “The boy may be dying while we stand here squabbling.” His long ascetic face had gone pale, making the eyes seem brighter. Then, before she could react, he leaned over and brushed her forehead with his lips, resting them against her skin lightly and letting them linger.

  The skin burned where he’d touched her. Was he truly a wizard? The touch of his lips, even so chaste a touch as this, seemed to have torn away her ability to defy him. He needn’t worry that she might run away, when his kiss made her long for him to enfold her in his arms, though she knew that it was his devotion to his calling that shone in his face, not any love for her.

  She fell back from him with a soft gasp. “I’ll wait for you here,” she murmured. “I hope you can save him.”

  “I hope so, too.” His eyes met hers for another moment and filled her again with that mixture of joy and anguish that only he could provoke. Then he whipped around to rejoin the boy’s aunt, who stood wringing her hands in the middle of the street. Her last view as he vanished around a corner was of him striding alongside the cottar’s wife, his long legs taking one step for every two of hers.

  It was late that afternoon when he came back. Zoe was seated by the window watching for him, when she saw him walking back toward the inn, alone. One look told her that it had not gone well. He walked slowly with his broad shoulders slumped. His hands were covered with dirt almost to the wrist, and the cuffs of his homespun shirt were streaked and stained with the same substance.

  She stood to greet him, but he brushed past her without a word, stopping only to hail a waiter and command him to bring a basin of water. When it arrived, he began scrubbing his hands, over and over again, for a good ten minutes, until she began to wonder if he would ever stop. It was only when she saw the water in the basin turn a darkish red that she realized what was on his hands. Blood. The boy’s blood.

  “Were you able to help him?”

  “No.” His tone was bleak. “He’s dead. I didn’t have the power to heal him. He was eleven. His mother’s only son.”

  His eyes met hers just long enough for the look in them to tear at her heart.

  They were interrupted by the hostler. “Goody Mosely wishes a word with you, Your Lordship.”

  “Goody Mosely?”

  “The boy’s mother.”

  “Send her away. She can have no further need of me.”

  But before the hostler could bar her, the woman pushed past him and ran to Lord Ramsay. She looked much like her sister, save for the look of dull despair in her reddened eyes. When she neared him, she held out a shilling piece toward him as if offering food to a wild animal.

  “Keep it,” he snapped. “I didn’t earn it.” He turned to escape the woman but at the last moment he stopped and after digging into his pocket pulled out his own purse. He fumbled with it and pulled out a fistful of sovereigns. “Here,” he said gruffly. “To pay for his funeral.”

  The woman examined the gold pieces, looking stunned, and then scrutinized his face as if searching for signs of madness. Finding none, she stuffed them into her pocket and fled.

  His curtness to the grieving woman shocked Zoe. Must the Dark Lord’s heir be a stranger to all human emotion? And yet, gruff though he’d been, he’d also been so generous.

  When he’d dried his hands, Ramsay tore off his filthy shirt, and donned one a servant had brought him. Then, without another word, he strode out of the inn.

  He’d left her alone—again. And this time he hadn’t made her promise she would wait for him. Surely, it was time to make her escape. There was no reason to stay with him any longer. She’d be mad to wait meekly for his return. He was almost certain to blame her for his failure to save the boy. He’d already told her she’d weakened his magical powers by assaulting his chastity. When he came back, he would rage at her or devise some terrifying punishment.

  But she couldn’t abandon him now, fool that she was. She’d seen anguish in his eyes when he’d washed the boy’s blood from his hands. He’d wanted to save that stranger’s child so badly.

  The world was very wrong to think she’d been granted good sense in the place of good looks. A sensible woman would have already left Lord Ramsay without a backward glance. But she couldn’t find it in herself to do it.

  She settled herself in a chair in the parlor to wait for him, but, as the minutes turned into hours, and he didn’t return she began to worry. Had he changed his mind after all, and gone on alone with his journey, abandoning her here to keep himself safe from the assault of her dubious charms? But no, a quick check reassured her that their post chaise still stood in the courtyard.

  So he must still be somewhere in the area, avoiding her as he dealt, alone, with his pain. But try though she might, she couldn’t free herself from the feeling that she must find him, that some catastrophe threatened the two of them, which made it essential that she not abandon him. She sensed him out there, desperate and bereft—and calling to her for help.

  It could only be wishful thinking. She must be the last person on earth he’d want now. And yet, like a sleepwalker, she saw herself get up and fetch her bonnet. Then, ignoring the pain in her thigh and her lame ankle, she set forth into the twilight to look for him.

  It took a while to find him, but as she approached a tumbledown cottage a good half hour later, Zoe sensed Ramsay was nearby, though peer as she might through the fading light, she could see no trace of him.
It was only as she came around a curve in the road by an old stone byre that she saw the flash of something golden glittering in the wan northern light. She hastened toward it. And then she saw him.

  He was sitting by the byre, huddled into a ball, with his knees drawn up to his chest. He looked like a small boy, despite his height, and was holding his bronze knife before him, staring at it as if it alone could save him.

  She’d never before seen him with any look on his face but anger or disdain, or, at best, a mild, distant amusement. But the man before her was not the man she’d known until now. The pain on his face was so strong that, without thinking, she walked over and gently put her arm around his shoulders, as she would have done had he been one of her pupils at school who’d just received some dreadful news from home.

  He twisted out of her grasp, his face livid. “Don’t touch me! Haven’t you done enough damage to me already? I couldn’t do anything for the boy but watch him die. His guts were spilling out and I couldn’t even still his pain.”

  “If it was like that, then no one could have saved him.”

  He turned his tortured face to her. “The Dark Lord could. I saw with my own eyes how he breathed the life back into the body of a drowned child. And I might have saved this boy, too, if I hadn’t betrayed what he taught me. But I squandered my strength, and when it was needed, I failed. I’m cursed, Zoe. I was a fool to think I could ever become like him.”

  He looked as if he might give way to tears, and again she felt the irrational need to enfold him in her arms. But she made herself resist the impulse, knowing how much he feared her touch.

  She took a step back. “Don’t send me away. Truly, I only meant to comfort you.”

  “I don’t deserve comfort,” he said bitterly. “I know what I must do to justify my life, but I can’t do it. There’s no reason why I should keep on living.”

  “Do you really think you’re worthless because you couldn’t save a dying boy?”

  He nodded, his face a mask of misery.

  “Then I, too, must be worthless.” she said softly. “For I’ve never saved anyone from dying and likely never will. Indeed, I’ve never done more than wash off a child’s cut. Does that make me worthy of contempt?”

  “It’s different for you. You’re a woman.”

  “Why should that matter?”

  “Because it isn’t a woman’s role to protect others. It’s a woman’s role to be protected.”

  “If I’d looked to anyone for protection, I shouldn’t have survived my childhood. You’ve seen how well I’ve been protected.”

  That got to him. He looked up, his long russet hair framing his beautiful eyes.

  “But of course,” she continued, “you’ve made it very clear you don’t think of me as a woman.”

  “I think of you as a woman all the time.” His upper lip quirked into a bitter half-smile. “But I mustn’t let myself respond.” The bronze knife twisted in his hand. The golden metal seemed almost alive.

  “I must be chaste.” His voice was a mere whisper. “If I don’t stay chaste, I’ll never earn the Final Teaching. That woman’s son would have lived if I’d known the things the Dark Lord knows. He would have lived! Would you have me give that up just to satisfy my appetites? To be merely a man as other men? Surely you couldn’t respect a man who would be so selfish.”

  “Oh, I could respect such a man well enough,” she said sharply, “if he offered me that protection you seem to think is a woman’s due. I’ve never known it. But I’m only a courtesan’s daughter, so I don’t expect men to be as gods. It’s no wonder if I should prefer a man who offered me his kindness to one who could raise the dead.”

  “Unless you, too, faced death—while he stood by helplessly.” His eyes locked into hers. “Then you would hate him. As the boy hated me in his last moments. As Charlotte must have done.”

  As he whispered his sister’s name, Zoe felt an unworthy burst of envy for her, dead so long, and yet so well-beloved. He’d been so loyal to her. No one would ever speak of Zoe with such yearning. No one would ever reproach himself for letting her down.

  But this wasn’t the time for self-pity. “You did your best,” she reminded him. “Can’t you forgive yourself for being human?”

  “I can’t forgive myself for being an animal.” He stabbed the bronze knife savagely into the hard-packed soil. “When you touched me just now, it wasn’t comfort I wanted from you, even knowing it was my lust for you that made me useless to the boy. I’m cursed. I’ve known it all my life. Why do you have to tempt me like this?”

  “Tempt you?” Zoe shot back. “You’re impossible! I didn’t tempt you. I reached out to comfort you. You looked like a child who’d hurt himself, a small and helpless child who had no mother. I could never resist helping anything motherless.”

  “Oh, but I have a mother,” he said quietly. “Though no female weakness ever inclined her to comfort me when I cried.”

  “Not even when you fell and hurt yourself?”

  “Especially not then. She’d beat me if I cried, telling me it wasn’t manly.”

  “How monstrous! Even my mother would kiss away my tears—if she was there to see them.” She bit her tongue, wishing she hadn’t mentioned her mother, knowing how much he hated her.

  But he ignored it. He waved his hand dismissively. “Women are allowed tears, but a man must be strong. My mother only did what was proper. My father died shortly before my birth. He left her the entire burden of turning me into a man.”

  “And that was how she did it? By teaching you that a man must not show pain?”

  “Of course. A man must hide his pain and carry on.”

  No wonder he needed to be like a god! Only a god could bear to live with every human feeling bottled up inside. “Was anger the only emotion she permitted?”

  He opened his mouth to reply but stopped before the words came out. He thrust his bronze knife back into its sheath, stood up and stalked away. His boots rasped against the hard-packed farmyard earth. Then he turned and faced her. “Perhaps it was. I’d never thought about it. Anger is manly.”

  He was thinking about it now. She took a step toward him. “Your mother was wrong. Even a man needs comfort now and then. It’s for that comfort, you know, as much as for the slaking of their lusts, that men turn to women.”

  “It is?”

  “Yes,” she said. “It is. A courtesan’s daughter hears much about such things. But perhaps your mother, being a lady, and innocent of the ways of the world, didn’t know that.”

  Chapter 6

  They returned together to the inn, where Ramsay paused only to order her a good dinner before barricading himself in his chamber without speaking another word. The next day, they resumed their journey, turning off the Great North Road at Newcastle and riding west on the old Roman Road that ran along Hadrian’s Wall and passed through windswept moors and barren uplands. After their confrontation in the farmyard, Lord Ramsay chose to spend the long hours of their journey riding with the postilion. During the few periods when he did ride in the chaise with her, he stared moodily out of the window.

  But there was no repeat of the rudeness that had marred the last day they had traveled together. If anything, he seemed to be going out of his way to be overly polite. He helped her in and out of the carriage—touching her gingerly on the sleeve with his gloved hand. When they stopped, he made sure she had a comfortable room and tipped the inn’s maidservant well to ensure she was taken care of.

  Zoe could tell he was still struggling with the incomprehensible physical attraction to her he had so crudely demonstrated in the chaise and reproached her with in the farmyard. She didn’t fool herself that it meant anything. He’d said himself his passions were strong, and he’d been celibate for much too long. She knew full well that to a starving man even turnips are a feast.

  But it disturbed her to think he might be driven by something akin to the desire that made her want to stroke the stubble that gilded his austere cheeks, to r
un her hands down that muscular chest of his, and to feel once again the excitement that had filled her when she’d lain pressed against his naked body. She didn’t underestimate its power. He was right to fear it, and she did not doubt that if he were to give in to it, it would end in disaster. He already hated her for being the child of the woman who had murdered his sister. He’d hate her even more if he let her steal from him the powers that meant so much to him.

  She mustn’t let it happen. There was no reason to give herself to him. If he gave in to his lust, it wouldn’t satisfy the hunger that tormented her. Far from it. It would destroy her to satisfy her body’s hunger without a deeper union of the soul. That was what Ramsay had made her hunger for. And that he would never give her.

  So she must force herself to go back to thinking of him as the angry man who had wrested her from her mother. The rest of what she felt for him—that sense that the two of them were bound by something greater—was only a delusion of the kind that tormented foolish virgins who gave themselves to a man for the very first time. It was the virgin’s sickness—whatever Zoe might have thought she glimpsed with him in those rare moments when he’d seemed to open his heart to her.

  It would soon pass. Her mother had told her it always did—and that it would pass more swiftly if she took care not to give in to it. Still, when Zoe thought he wasn’t looking, she’d steal glances at Lord Ramsay’s handsome features. Though all too often, just when she thought him unaware of her scrutiny, their gazes would meet and lock together, and then, embarrassed, they both would turn away.

  The second day after her ill-fated attempt at flight, they crossed the Scottish border and passed through Gretna Green, though they didn’t alight in the town so famous for runaway marriages. Then they turned westward. The road was much rougher now that they’d left behind the smooth gravel of the coaching road. Despite the chaise’s being sprung in the most modern manner, its continual jolting made Zoe’s wound ache. When they finally stopped to change horses and refresh themselves, she examined it, only to find that it had opened and was weeping a bloody discharge that had soaked through the bandage. No wonder it throbbed with the dull relentless pain that seemed to beat with her anxious pulse.