Lord Lightning

by Jenny Brown

  “Of course.” She braced herself, expecting that he would tease her about it. Men so often found it ludicrous that a woman should find pleasure in the same studies that delighted them. But Edward merely examined her with a considering look and said, “No wonder you are so quick to stand up for your opinions. It cannot have been easy to pursue such interests in a country village. You must have been considered quite eccentric.”

  She met his eye and was again surprised at the kindness she saw in his gaze. “I suppose I was,” she agreed. “Though I tried not to think about it. Unlike you, I didn’t set out on purpose to earn a shocking reputation. Indeed, I should have liked to have been more ordinary—but not at the cost of crippling my mind. My aunt considered the prohibition against formal female education to be the second worst abuse against women of our age.”

  “And what, in her opinion, was the first?”

  “Why, the indissolubility of marriage. She considered the institution of marriage nothing more than a form of slavery and always urged me not to let myself become entrapped by it.”

  “And how did you feel about that? Did you wish to be rescued from domestic slavery?”

  “Well, not at first. I suppose I must have been as foolish as any other girl. When I was seventeen I developed a tendre for the curate’s oldest son and used to follow him about after church on Sunday. But when I got older, I realized that Aunt Celestina was wise to discourage me from thinking about marriage. I had no dowry and little else to attract a husband. Had I set my hopes in that direction I must certainly have been disappointed.”

  “Was there no one in your circle who valued your intelligence and wit enough to take you without a fortune?”

  “I had no wish to find such a man. I saw little in the marriages of my friends to make me disagree with my aunt’s belief that marriage was a trap for women.”

  “I might argue with you,” Hartwood said dryly, “except that you have just echoed my own beliefs about marriage exactly. But I shall not encourage your radicalism any further. I have already corrupted you enough. Let us descend the cliff path and complete your introduction to the sea.”

  Edward led Eliza down the narrow cliff path, warning her to take care at the steeper points. They had only gone a little way down the path when she accidentally slid several feet and he realized that her delicate silk slippers, designed for ladylike inactivity rather than hard use, posed a serious peril to her.

  He reached out to take her hand and held it tightly as they made their way down the cliff. Once again he was surprised by the pleasure he took in the feel of her small, smooth hand clasped in his own. He discovered, too, an unaccustomed pleasure in lending her his physical strength. There was something about Eliza’s indomitability that made it that much sweeter to take on the role of protector. The simpering misses of his acquaintance who bragged of their delicacy and fainted at the slightest provocation had never inspired in him the slightest desire to shelter them from harm the way Eliza did now. Perhaps, he mused to himself, it was because he knew if he had left her to make the climb alone, even in those treacherous slippers Eliza would make her way down the cliff undaunted and if she hurt herself, she would show the world no trace of her pain—no more than he would, himself.

  Their path led them to a sheltered cove, hidden from the rest of the beach by a projection of the cliff that loomed above them. “May we go near the water?” Eliza asked.

  “We can wade here. No one can see us because the cliff hides us.” At his reply, her face lit up with happiness like a child offered an unexpected treat, making her so beautiful, he could hardly bear to look at her.

  As Eliza bent over to remove her slippers and stripped off Violet’s ornate stockings, the sight of her trim calves and ankles stirred him more than made sense. He had already been nearly naked with her in bed that first night, yet the passion he had felt then was so different from the feeling that rose within him now as he caught sight of her five small toes wiggling delightedly against the shingle. He felt a sense of lightness, a happiness, he had never before experienced—never even thought he could experience. But at the sight of Eliza’s face, so filled with anticipation, he snapped out of his reverie. He stripped off his own stockings so he could lead her closer to the water, glad he had dressed in breeches rather than trousers. Then he took her hand and waded resolutely into the icy water, hoping it would cool the heat that was overpowering him.

  At the first touch of the frigid water, he felt Eliza’s grip tighten and saw how the cold made her nipples thrust up through the thin cloth of her dress. He noticed, too, how her eyes, reflecting back the color of the water, had turned the most astonishing color of green and how the chill had given the skin on her shoulders a rosy glow beneath her enchanting cape of freckles.

  Undaunted by the cold, she strode out into the water until it was nearly up to her knees. She reached down to lift a handful to her mouth to taste it. Then, making a face, she spit it out. Just then a sudden swell higher than the rest rolled toward them, and Eliza let out a squeal as she took the brunt of the wave, and the salty water drenched her to the waist.

  “I should have warned you,” he apologized. “The waves are unpredictable. I’m sorry your gown’s been ruined.”

  “My gown will dry. It’s worth the sacrifice of ever so many gowns to experience so intense a sensation.”

  He had thought it only Violet’s gowns that had transformed Eliza from the drab little creature he had found in the theater dressing room into the entrancing woman he couldn’t get out of his mind. But now, seeing her standing on the shore, with Violet’s brazen dress quite spoiled by the waves, he realized it was not the gown that had given her such appeal.

  He could not tear his eyes away from her. She might not be what society called beautiful, but he wanted her more than he had ever wanted a woman. He wanted to run his hands along the rounded buttocks revealed by the damp thin cotton that clung to them like a second skin. He wanted to cup her perfect breasts in his hand and nuzzle against them. He wanted to explore the fiery nether curls whose shadow he saw through the now-transparent fabric. He wanted to—but he made himself stop. What had come over him? He had gone far longer without a woman in the past without descending to such mawkishness.

  As she walked back out of the water, Eliza reached down, picked up a long strand of brilliantly colored seaweed, and draped it around her neck.

  “A mermaid’s necklace,” she explained. “Perhaps it has magical powers.”

  Perhaps it did. For surely she must have enchanted him, as mermaids do the mortal men who come within their sway, for him to feel so besotted with her. There was no other explanation for the way he found himself here fighting an almost irresistible desire to enfold her in his arms and truly make her his.

  As she wrung out her ruined skirt, the seaweed still wrapped around her neck, he was struck by the contrast of her enthusiasm now with the cool disinterest she had shown the night before when he had put around her neck a fortune in gold and jewels.

  “You will catch a chill like that,” he chided gently, fighting off the urge to warm her by taking her into his arms.

  “I’m fine. The sun has come out and it’s getting warmer. And anyway, I am used to withstanding chill. My aunt was not a believer in coddling children.”

  “No one has ever coddled you, have they?” he asked, softly, hoping she could not tell how hard he was fighting off the urge to become the first.

  His question made Eliza uncomfortable. The delight she had taken in sporting in the waves—and his unexpected kindness—had caused her to drop her guard. But she must not admit to having needs it would be dangerous to let him fill. “My mother coddled me,” she said. “But she died when I was only eight.” She paused as she struggled to find something else, safe to say, to dampen the emotion his innocent question had provoked in her. But his words had touched her too deeply. She was not sure she wanted him to understand her so well, so effortlessly. So found herself gabbling. “How often I wish I could sp
eak with my mother now, if only for an hour. There’s so much I’d like to ask her, so much I’d want to hear about her life from her own lips.”

  Edward’s dark eyes softened under their pale brows, which glinted briefly as a streak of sun broke through the clouds. “Your words point out to me my selfishness, without your having to utter a single word of reproach.”

  “What selfishness?”

  “The way I’ve been continually complaining about my mother, who is most definitely alive, when you have long felt the painful absence of your own.”

  She hastened to reassure him. “That wasn’t selfishness on your part. You have every reason to feel the pain of your situation. Though I lost her early, my mother loved me. I can still remember her hugs and kindness. She bought me a beautiful doll once when there was barely enough money in the house to keep us fed. She taught me how to love.”

  “Which my mother most certainly did not teach me. But you might well reproach me for being a spoiled, petulant, complaining boy.”

  “No. It isn’t petulance on your part that makes you feel so much anger toward your mother,” she said, hoping to drive the look of self-reproach from his eyes. “Her hatred of you goes beyond anything I’ve ever seen. I can well believe she isn’t your true mother. It is hard to understand how a mother could feel so much rage toward her own child.”

  His face lit up with an expression of hope. “Then have you changed your mind? Have you found something in your horoscopes to suggest she’s not my real mother?”

  She sensed how much the question meant to him and answered him carefully. “I don’t know. I spent much time considering it and looking at your chart, but all I can come up with is that there is something unusual there, though I cannot tell what it is.”

  “Then my suspicion must be true. She must not be my mother.”

  She was forced to correct him. “A horoscope cannot answer such a question beyond doubt. I wish it could, for it would be such a relief to you to know the truth. But given how important the question is, I don’t understand why you haven’t simply confronted Mrs. Atwater and demanded to know the truth. It must be torment not to know.”

  “Not as much torment as what I should feel if my suspicion proved false. It is bad enough to be Black Neville’s son and James’s brother. To know for a certainty that I am my mother’s son—I don’t know if I could bear it.”

  Again his face bore that naked look that was so at odds with his pose of cool unconcern. Eliza turned away and busied herself for a moment with wringing out her damp skirt, fighting the urge to respond to the pain she felt emanating from him with an answering emotion of her own. Whatever it was he wanted from her, it wasn’t that. It was her self-control that made him feel safe revealing himself to her. To let her own feelings peep out might damage the fragile bond that had begun to form between them. Better to maintain the façade of wry amusement he expected of her.

  She paused, trying to find a way to respond to his admission that would not imperil her own fragile control, then finally spoke. “I can understand why you might not wish to know for certain that Lady Hartwood really is your mother. She shocked me this morning with the intensity of her disgust for you and the degree to which she seems to have confused you with your brother.”

  “How so?”

  “She accused you of being a murderer, of going out dancing the very night you caused a woman’s death, when she, of all people, must know it was James who caused that poor girl to die. I cannot understand how a mother could say such a terrible thing about her own son, knowing it wasn’t true.”

  She had not even finished speaking when a startling transformation came over Edward’s face. His warm brown eyes, which had glowed with kindness a moment before, hardened. His mouth tightened. She cursed her thoughtlessness in turning the conversation, which had been going so smoothly, onto such a painful topic. But it was too late. His eyes shuttered, Edward demanded, “What exactly did she say?”

  “She warned me away from you, saying you were dangerous and that you had driven a poor deluded creature to her death.”

  “And did you fly to my defense and quote the authority of the Dog Star and the Pleiades to her?”

  “No. There was no need to.”

  “Thank God for that,” Edward said with bitter relief. “For had you done so, you would only have added to the contempt she feels for me.”

  “What do you mean?” she asked, frightened by the look of anguish that had taken over his face.

  “She was not referring to the woman James ruined,” Edward said, his voice as dull as lead. “I am guilty of what she accused me of.”

  “Of driving a woman to her death?”

  “Of driving a woman to her death and going dancing when the news of her death was brought to me.”

  “Oh no, Edward!” She gasped. He could not mean what he’d just said. But if he did—the kinder emotions she had been struggling against feeling the moment before were nothing compared to the crushing fear that gripped her now.

  “Your faith in me was misplaced.” He spoke in the same deadened voice. “She told you nothing but the truth.”

  She felt almost physically sick. It could not be true. She could not have felt such attraction to him if it were.

  As if responding to her unvoiced thoughts, his tormented face grew harsh. “Don’t waste your breath taxing me again with deceiving you,” he commanded. “I told you many times I was an evil man. It was you who wouldn’t believe me.”

  The sun came out from behind a cloud. In the stiff breeze from the sea the curling tendrils of his golden hair flared out around his head, glowing like the flames of hell.

  Could it be so? Could she have been so self-deluded?

  Fear wanted to answer yes, the fear that had controlled her throughout her life until this tormented man had shared some of his strength with her. Weakness chimed in, too, murmuring she’d fallen prey to a delusion just as Lady Hartwood had gloated that she had. But even as fear and weakness contended for her heart, wild courage rose up to meet them—the courage that had been growing within her with each passing hour she had spent in Edward’s presence—and protested it wasn’t true. Lady Hartwood could not be so right and she so wrong.

  Fighting the darkness closing in on her, Eliza shouted into the freshening wind, “Edward, I have been with you too long to suppose that you are that evil. You aren’t a wicked man. I won’t believe it.”

  He spun around on his heel to face her. “You must believe it,” he said, his voice desperate. “I caused a woman to die, just like my brother.”

  “But surely it was an accident.”

  “It was no accident. I tell you, Eliza. The woman died and I wanted her to die. I’m not the man you dream of. I am a cold, cruel man who cannot love, and my touch is deadly. You made me wish it weren’t true. You made me want to be the man you imagined me to be. But I am not.”

  He shook the sand from his feet and strode away from her back toward the path. For a terrifying moment, Eliza wondered if he was going to abandon her here on the beach. But as he neared the cliff, he stopped and waited for her.

  “At least I haven’t ruined you,” he said in a tone of detached satisfaction, his voice once again under control. He picked up his shoes and busied himself with putting them on. “Fetch your things,” he said, but the pain Eliza still saw in his eyes warred with the nonchalance he was trying to project. She struggled to hold on to the objectivity that was all that could save both of them now.

  “You must tell me what happened,” she insisted.

  “I cannot. I have vowed never to defend myself for what I’ve done. You need know only that I am not worthy of your faith in me.”

  He smacked his shoe sharply against his hand to dislodge a small pebble, refusing to meet her eye. “This morning I gave in to my own weakness and used my knowledge of how to manipulate women to trick you into staying with me. But you had the right of it when you told me you should go. Thank God you reminded me of what I really am, before
my weakness took complete control. You are not safe with me. My mother told the truth. I am dangerous. You must go away quickly before I harm you further. I will leave the money I promised you with my man. You may apply to him for it when it pleases you.”

  Eliza stood shivering in the cold wind, her fear contending with another emotion even more difficult to endure, for even as he condemned himself, she had heard it in his voice: He cared for her. And as her heart opened to the wonder of that knowledge she felt a strange mixture of joy and impending doom. How could she leave him now? She had fought so hard against loving him when she had feared he could not care. How could she leave him now when the agony in his voice told her it was his concern for her that made him condemn himself so harshly? It was not self-delusion to believe that he cared for her—cared so much that he was fighting to overcome the darkness within himself to save her. But that knowledge paralyzed her. What if his self-condemnation was true?

  She should flee. She should escape him while he gave her the chance, but she could not. The thought that she meant that much to him gave her the strength to make one last desperate plea.

  “You said you needed my friendship, Edward. If that was a trick you played on me, you have tricked yourself, too. For I will behave as a friend must behave. I will go nowhere ‘til you tell me the truth about the crime you accuse yourself of. I must judge for myself if you are what you say you are. You owe me that much. You must tell me what really happened.”

  The dark eyes glowed from beneath the pale gold thatch framing his face. “Go ask my mother for the details. She’ll be glad to tell you.”

  “Your mother hates you. I wish to hear the story from you and from you alone. And I will wait until you tell it to me.”

  “You’ll have a long wait ahead of you, for I’ve sworn not to tell it.”

  “Then you must prepare to add oath breaking to the long list of your sins. For I will not leave until I hear the story from your own lips.”

  He shrugged. His face had become a mask of torment that for once was not an actor’s mask. “How like a woman,” he said bitterly, “to refuse to leave me ‘til you’ve destroyed my happy memories of our time together and replaced them with one final vision of your face twisted in disgust, after you finally see that, just as I told you, I am an evil man.”