by Lisa Valdez
“Yes”—her fingers tightened on his shoulder and her eyes closed briefly—“and I loathe the horrible circumstances that are forcing us apart. With all my heart, I do. But, Mark, knowing them changes nothing.”
She’s going to lock you out of her life. Terrible foreboding crept across Mark’s skin. It made him want to claw out of it. “How can you say that? How can you say that when you know I only want to be with you?”
“Do you think I don’t want to be with you?” Her eyes welled with tears. “Do you think this isn’t destroying me?”
He clung to a shred of hope. “Then don’t throw us away. I’m going to have the letter soon. I can feel it, Passion. And then this whole charade of lies can end.” The music played on. “I want you. I need you.”
She lowered her eyes again. “What we want is no longer relevant. Despite what we want, despite the letter, my cousin will be ruined if you leave her. I cannot be part of that.”
Mark tried to breathe. His chest was so tight. “I told you everything. I told you everything, trusting that you would understand. Trusting that you would want to thwart Lawrence’s vile evil as much as I. Trusting that you would not abandon us.”
“I can do nothing else,” she whispered.
“And when I get the letter? What then? You will still refuse me?”
She looked at him. “Get the letter if you can. You should have it, Mark. But your having the letter will change nothing for me. The dice was cast when the engagement was announced.” She shook her head. “If you abandon my cousin to shame, I will never see you again.”
The music swelled. His head was aching. If he could just breathe. “You say that now, in my arms. But how will you bear the nights and days?” He drew her closer as he whirled her across the floor. “What will you do when your body cries out for satisfaction? Now that you have found pleasure, it will pursue you, burning and relentless.”
Anger and anxiety pumped in his veins. “What will you do? Find someone else? No one can satisfy you as I do. No one.”
“I know,” Passion gasped. “I know.” Her eyes were full of anguish. “But shall I weep for joy and cry out my pleasure in your arms while my cousin sobs into her pillow in shame because the Earl of Langley has thrown her away?” Mark’s heart pounded with fury and fear. He grasped at a final, weak straw. “I’ll send it out that she left me.”
“Stop!” The word came on a choked whisper. Passion’s lip trembled as she looked at him. “No one will believe that, Mark. And what of Charlotte? There is no excuse you can give her that would not be the worst rejection.” Tender misery dimmed her eyes, yet her body leaned into his. “There is nothing to be done. Nothing.”
He stared into her tormented gaze, and a sharp pain cracked inside him. He winced as it sundered his gut and fissured down his limbs. His head throbbed and Passion blurred for a moment before his stinging eyes. “Why did you come here tonight?” he managed. “Why?”
“To tell you these things.”
“Here?” His voice caught. “On a goddamn dance floor?”
“Where else, Mark?” Her eyes implored him for understanding. “Where else? My window is locked. And so it must remain.” Her fingers tightened around his. “I thought it best…”
He squeezed her hand—her hand, which belonged in his. How could she do this? How could she? “You thought it best? I do not. I thought when you heard the circumstances, when you had time to consider them, you would recognize the injustice of what you demand of me. I thought you would realize the impossibility of parting.” He blinked. “Instead, you denounce us. And you sentence me to as horrid and indifferent a marriage as your own. Why don’t you tell me how to live with that, Passion? Because I don’t know how.”
Her frown was pained. “Charlotte will care for you, if you let her. She wants to care for you.”
The music was ebbing. “1 do not want her care.” He felt sick—sick and angry as something horrible and inexorable washed over him. “I do not want any of this.”
“Mark, I—”
“Say nothing more.” He shook his head. “You have punished me enough. I beg you, say nothing more.”
As the music came to an end, Mark held Passion a moment longer, felt her a moment longer, before bowing over her hand. He didn’t want to let her go, didn’t want to release his hold on her. If he did, something calamitous would occur.
Tucking her arm in his, he walked slowly back to their party. He moved as a mourner in a funeral procession, briefly holding back the inevitability of looking into the cavernous depth that is the final farewell. But with each step he took, he felt more and more as if he were marching toward his own tomb.
He saw their faces—his mother, Lawrence, Charlotte, his brother—participants all, knowing or unknowing, in his demise.
And yet he kept walking, deeper and deeper into the shadow they cast, until it covered him completely. Cold gloom seeped through him as Passion’s arm slipped from his, and as her fingers slid from his sleeve, happiness and hope were extinguished.
Everything went dark.
The funeral was his own.
Passion stared at the unfinished image of her cousin upon the canvas. The late morning light in Aunt Matty’s sunroom was dimmer than usual, and rain splashed the windows. She could hear the drops hitting the glass with an ebbing and flowing intensity.
Perhaps it was the gray light of the day that seemed to bring Charlotte’s gray eyes to life. Perhaps it was the dim mood of the weather that enhanced the subtle sweetness, sorrow, and uncertainty that they reflected.
Passion looked at the brush in her fingers. Or was the credit all her own? Had the pain of her shattered heart moved her hand and guided her strokes to a new depth? Was it her own sorrow and uncertainty that allowed her to capture her cousin’s poignancy so well?
She closed her eyes.
Or was it love?
“Passion, darling, you have a visitor,” her aunt called.
Passion’s eyes flew open at the tone of her aunt’s voice. It was someone unexpected.
Mark?
As she stared at the entrance to the sunroom, Aunt Matty stepped in, followed by none other than the Countess of Langley.
Passion stiffened with dislike. She’d seen enough of the countess the night before to form an ill opinion of her. Still, she stood and met the countess’s chilly gaze. The woman strode past Aunt Matty, who remained near the door with a cool expression of her own.
“The countess would like to speak with you privately, my dear. Shall I have some refreshment brought?”
Passion looked at Mark’s mother. “That depends upon how long the countess will be staying.”
“Not long” came the cold reply.
Passion nodded to her aunt, who scowled at the countess’s back. “Then we shall require nothing. Thank you, Aunt Matty.”
Passion waited for her aunt to close the double doors of the sunroom before removing her painting smock. Then she indicated a chair. “May I offer you a seat, Countess?”
Mark’s mother sat with an elegant swish of violet satin.
Smoothing her own gown of pink, black, and cream-striped silk, Passion took the chair beside her. “To what do I owe this surprising visit, my lady?”
The countess’s beautiful but cold green eyes held her. “I came to warn you.”
Passion folded her hands in her lap. “Warn me? About what?”
“We are women who take our pleasure, Mrs. Redington. Let’s not pretend that we don’t understand each other.”
A pang of genuine loathing reverberated through Passion, but she kept her expression blank.
The countess looked incredulous. “I saw your face when you were introduced to my son at the Lawrences’. Fortunately, Matthew and I were the only ones who saw you. And then there was last night. Do you think it isn’t obvious to me?” She raised her perfectly arched brows. “You’re my son’s latest fuck.”
Passion’s stomach clenched at the woman’s word
s, but she remained impassive. “You said you were here to warn me, my lady. Are you going to do so?”
The countess smiled. “Don’t try to act unaffected, Mrs. Redington.” She leaned forward. “I told you. I saw your face.”
Passion couldn’t quite manage a smile of her own.
“Really, Mrs. Redington, I admire your gumption in embarking upon an affair with a man about whom you obviously knew little. But in the end, it wasn’t very smart, was it?”
“I’m going to ask you to leave,” Passion said, “so if you have anything of purpose to say, I suggest you do so now.”
The countess leaned back in her chair. “Stay away from my son and your cousin.”
“I will not.”
“What do you mean, you will not?” She frowned. “He’s having a difficult enough time accepting the loss of bachelorhood without your stirring the pot. And I am trying to do you a service as well, Mrs. Redington. You don’t know my son the way I do.”
Passion shook her head. “No. I do not. And you do not know him the way I do.”
The countess leaned forward again. “You listen to me, you little tart. My son has never fucked one woman for more than a few months. Soon he will lose interest in you completely. Your time is short.” She lifted her chin. “You mean nothing to him.”
No. The word echoed in Passion’s head. Though he, himself, had said similar words when they first met, now they sounded hollow and false.
She remembered the way he looked at her, the way he touched her, the things he had said to her on their final day together. She remembered the tears that had welled in his eyes the night before.
He cared about her.
Deeply.
“Let’s not pretend that we don’t understand each other, Countess,” Passion said with sudden strength. “You’re here because you’re worried that Mark will not lose interest in me. You’re here because you have no idea what is between your son and me.” Passion nodded with clear conviction. “You’re here because you are afraid of what you cannot understand.”
The countess laughed, but Passion could hear the strain.
“Really, Mrs. Redington, you’re very amusing. I’m here to save us all, your nitwit cousin included, from the public humiliation that would befall us should your nasty little affair with my son get out.”
Passion stared. How incredibly staggering that she could speak of nasty little affairs when she had embroiled them all in the consequences of her own.
“I feared that you would not see reason, Mrs. Redington,” the countess continued. She opened her purse. “So I am prepared to pay you.” She held out a cheque written for five thousand pounds.
Passion did not move a finger. “Do you know, Countess, you remind me a great deal of Abigail Lawrence.”
The cheque fluttered in her hand. “What?”
Why did she feel so serene in the face of this bribery? “Yes, it’s true. You and she both try to bend people to your will. Doesn’t it become tiresome, always forcing people’s arms behind their backs?” Passion’s frown deepened. “And what will happen when you no longer have the strength, or the beauty, or the power to get what you want? How will you live?”
The countess snatched back her hand and stuffed the note into her bag. “I see you cannot be reasoned with.”
“On the contrary, I can be reasoned with. I just cannot be bought.”
The countess’s face twisted into an unattractive sneer. “If you don’t stay away, I’ll tell your simpering little cousin you’ve been fucking her fiancé.”
Passion felt no fear. “Blackmail, Countess?” She shook her head. “Oh, you really are another Abigail Lawrence.”
The woman’s eyes narrowed. “Just what do you know?”
Passion ignored her question and kept her voice even. “Now you listen to me, Countess. I have promised my cousin that I will stay by her, so she might better tolerate your loathsome presence. I have promised myself that I will help your son, in any way I can, to accept my cousin.” She leaned forward. “So, if you want this marriage to proceed as planned, then you stay out of my way.”
The countess stared at her incredulously for a moment. Then a smile spread across her face and she burst into laughter. “You’ve left him!” she exclaimed. “That’s why he was so incredibly awful last night!”
Passion’s pain flared anew.
The countess leaned back in her chair and held her hand to her chest as she chuckled. “You know, he left right after you. But not before laying into all of us. I was sure you had begged him to dissolve his engagement.” She shook her head and looked gleeful. “Well, if this isn’t the perfect turnabout. It’s high time he was the one walked out upon.”
How could a woman, a mother, be this hateful?
She smiled at Passion. “In a way, I actually predicted this. Though I didn’t really believe it at the time, I told him you would tire of him.”
Passion wanted to slap the smile right off her face. “Why would you say something you didn’t believe?”
The countess leveled her eyes on Passion. “To punish him, of course.”
“And why must you punish him?”
“Because he is his father’s son, and he has been punishing me for a lifetime.”
“Really?” Passion’s throat tightened. “A lifetime? How does a babe punish his mother?”
“I’ll tell you how,” she snapped. “By stealing her youth. By making her grotesque with fat and discomfort until she is forced into confinement. By making her shriek with pain while he forces his overlarge body from hers. And then, by crying, and crying, and crying.” Her voice rose with each repetition. “By clinging to you and clawing at you, when all you want is to get away.” Her gaze grew distant. “When he could walk, he began to chase after me. I would run away. And then, when Matthew was born—my darling, easy Matthew—he tried to get between us. Hold me, Mummy. Carry me, Mummy. Kiss me, Mummy. Me! Me! Me! The brat. I sent him away and told him that until he learned to say ‘please,’ I would do nothing for him.” She closed her eyes and her frown deepened. “Then it was please, please, please—all the time please. I came to hate the word.”
Passion blinked back her tears. “It must gratify you, then, that he never says it now.”
“Doesn’t he?” The countess looked at her. “You weep for him. But you should weep for me. A woman’s youth is fleeting, Mrs. Redington, her beauty brief. Once it is gone, it cannot be reclaimed.”
“Neither can childhood.”
“I tell you, I was not ready to be a mother!” the countess snapped. She squared her shoulders and took a deep breath. “Besides, he doesn’t even remember his infancy. I, however, remember the theft of my youth—only too well.”
“He doesn’t need to remember. Your dislike and disdain for him is clear. In one evening, I could see that you favor Matthew over him.”
“And what of his dislike and disdain for me, Mrs. Redington? He is rude and insufferable, yet you say nothing of that.”
“You began it, Countess. You are his mother.” Passion’s voice caught in her throat. “All a child ever wants is love.”
“You weren’t there. You don’t know how it was—his father always trying to foist him upon me, when I had my hands full with Matthew. My dear, Matthew, who was easy and sweet-natured from the beginning.” The countess raised her chin. “Matthew is my son. The son I chose by my own decisions. For that alone, I will always favor him.”
Passion shook her head. “Would that Mark had been able to chose a mother as you chose a son.”
The countess’s face became a cold mask. “I must be going.”
“Yes, you must.”
She stood, but Passion did not stand with her. The countess left without another word.
Passion broke into sobs.
Why? God, why?
Why must she be the one to punish Mark yet again?
In the wet stillness of his garden, Mark stood by the fountain and blinked back the cold rain tha
t drenched him. He stared at the statue of Aphrodite. He had chosen her for the loveliness of her face, the grace of her figure, and for the way her hair fell down her back in waves.
The workmen had come that morning to begin digging the pipes. He had sent them away. He no longer wanted it connected.
But rain had filled the shallow tiers and so it appeared to run nonetheless. Water fell from the top to the middle and then from the middle into the bottom. Would it overflow?
It didn’t matter.
Lifting his hand, he looked down at the brass hairpin that lay in his palm. Water splashed upon the small seed-pearl flower that decorated the top.
He had handed Passion the pins, one by one, as she had coiled her beautiful hair at her nape. He had watched her place each one, had smoothed an errant strand.
He had laughed with her. He had detained her with kisses and caresses.
That day had been the happiest of his life.
Water fell from his palm into the fountain.
Every man ought to have one truly happy day. Just one.
His hand trembled.
It was over. Done. Finished.
He closed his fingers around the pin.
A murky chill ran through his veins.
He had lived without happiness before. He could do it again.
He could.
He blinked back the rain and let the small bit of bent brass fall into the fountain.
He turned and forced himself down the path. He watched the rain spatter the ground before him.
He had lived without her before. He could live without her again.
The pain would pass, and all would be as it was.
Rain ran into his eyes. His legs shook and slowly stopped moving.
The heavy drops pelted him. Thunder rolled somewhere far away.
Lies! All lies!
Nothing would ever be as it was before.
He turned and hurried back to the fountain. The rain fell so hard upon the water that he couldn’t see anything beneath. Where was it? He thrust his hands into the chilly pool and felt for the pin.
Nothing. Where was it? Where?
His heart pounded, and a choked grunt escaped him as he felt across the smooth bottom. What if it had fallen into one of the drains?