George? That was the name of Cyril’s lover? And, what was worse, she was kissing him? Having first smacked him with that ewer? She must be because that was Cyril’s voice and it didn’t come from beneath her. Shock raked her scalp. She looked down to see if Cyril spoke the truth.
He did.
“Oh my God, what have you done to him? Can’t you leave any man alone?”
She dropped her jaw open. What? From him who obviously couldn’t either? To bite her lip in that second was almost more than she could bear. Was she the only one here with any iota of self-awareness? Well?
“Always thrusting yourself, flaunting yourself like a tart.”
“Cyril. “ She cleared her throat. Truth to tell she’d have taken his eyes out otherwise. Her nails or a shard of porcelain would more than do the trick. “This is not how it looks. I thought . . . I thought it was you.”
“Me?”
“Well . . . yes.”
After all? George? Why on earth would she hit George? Kiss him either?
“You mean you wanted to hit me?”
What? She really began to think there was no way out of this. None whatsoever. Especially when the light in the drab arc of the doorway illuminated cheekbones that might have come straight from these hideous portraits in the hallway. When he might have been a portrait himself. To say so would be a calamitous mistake. One to add to the many she had made since finding herself back here. Somehow she licked her lips, found her voice.
“Cyril, I just wanted to escape. Is that so unreasonable?”
“By killing George?”
She prayed for various opportunities and capabilities here, including strength. Was the man insane? As for thrusting herself at men. She had never thrust herself at men. “By kissing him. Cyril, you do not understand the terrible predicament I am in. Anyway George isn’t dead. He just groaned.”
“No. You are right and I do not want to understand it.”
He lunged, just when she thought he might leave, although why she thought that when George lay groaning on the floor was beyond her. Only that she did and now Cyril had hold of her wrist. If she did not tell the truth, or at least part of it, she was doomed. She was probably that anyway. That there was no guaranteeing she might get anywhere when she kissed him, was not something to think of here. Freeing herself from this mess was what mattered here.
“Cyril, you’re right but please God, you must understand it. I only want to get back to Sin. That is why I was kissing George.”
“What?” His gleaming eyes said telling the truth was a huge mistake. “Malice, I know I left you all these years ago but what you have fallen to is ridiculous.”
“Excuse me?”
No really. She had worn kid gloves with Cyril when she should have removed them long ago and smacked them over his face. If she did not keep her temper though she was lost.
His mouth dropped open.
“My God, George? You wanted to sin with George?”
“Don’t be anything short of foolish. Sin is who I want to sin with.”
“What?”
This was exasperating. As if it was not bad enough that Cyril’s jaw had dropped, George chose that moment to woozily raise his head off the rug.
“Sin?” Cyril lowered his voice a notch. “Who is Sin?”
She swallowed. And yet, if she said so, then she would be locked up in other than this place and this place was bad enough. Imagine being shackled in a strait jacket, her arms pinned to her sides, kept in some filthy cell where rats gnawed her toes. She could, which was why she couldn’t. Speak that was. Certainly not about Sin. No. She convinced Cyril to kiss her, then hopefully the rest would take care of itself.
“Cyril, let me help you. Let me help George.”
His eyes darkened. “You can’t help me. I only wish.”
Was this really what it had come down to? Herself helping someone as badly off as herself? While all the time her own hopes and dreams sailed further from her? If they weren’t gone already?
A man who had tormented her for almost as long as she could remember? And yet her heart did tear. For all he had done to her, for all she craved here, pity, stronger than love, than hope, shone its beam across her senses, illuminating some darkened corner of her soul.
“Yes. I can help you.” They had been bound together for so long by dictates that no longer mattered, how could she not when these dictates had damaged them both? My God, the man who had tied her to trees, reduced to a petulant wreck? “And I can at least help you get George off the floor. I’m sure he would like that.”
“If you’ve killed him . . .”
“I haven’t killed him. He is moving and he needs our help. I could take his feet.”
“Why should you, Malice? Why should you do anything for me?”
“Because I want to help you, Cyril. That is the truth. Now—”
“By nearly killing George?”
She huffed out a breath. She supposed he would say that. What he was living with must scare him half to death.
“George shouldn’t have been in here, should he? Now—”
Of course he didn’t move to help, although she gripped George’s ankles.
“That’s because I can’t let you out of here.”
“I’m not asking you to let me out. I’m asking you to take George’s shoulders, then I want you to kiss me. Or at least let me kiss you. Then I can get out of here. Believe me, Cyril, it is the truth. Think of what happened the last time. Now please . . . So I can get back to Sin. My Viking lover.”
“Your what?”
Now, she really did risk everything. But why not when the beans she would spill on him, if he didn’t believe her, or refused to help her, would be mountainous? Was, or wasn’t this her chance to stand at his side and show him she also had secrets? Ones he might conceivably be locked up for were she to reveal them?
“But Malice, that sounds just like the title of that book in Aunt Carter’s—”
“I know how it sounds. You would not believe me if I told you the half of this, the quarter, the eighth even. But when I kiss you I’m not here anymore.”
“Then, where are you?”
“Viking Norway.”
Very well. Norway . . . yes. Viking . . . no. Now she lay with her arms constrained, her jacket arms wrapped round her back actually, in this horrible brick-built you could not have swung a cat with these same arms in cell—a mouse either—she saw that. She saw the folly of standing at Cyril’s side and showing him she also had secrets now too. She would just sooner swallow a Norse dragon than admit the pity was she hadn’t seen it then. That she should have shut her lips with nails. That Cyril was probably going to keep her here forever in this place where cold lay on the bricks like a sheen and her teeth chattered to the sound of rats gnawing their way along the corridors at night, was something she could not bear to think.
Not when she lay in a place where sun kissed her skin. It did, didn’t it? And her limbs were infused with a feeling so warm, it was like melting honey on her skin. She heaved another straggling breath into her fluttering lungs. He moved closer.
Partly it was her own fault. Need she forget that everything had spiralled from her control since the possibility of ruining Cyril beckoned? She’d allowed hurts to rise like monsters in a millpond, destroying the calm she’d lived with for years. So now Cyril had sewn this up very nicely, hadn’t he? Why hadn’t she realized that he would have her declared mad and locked away?
She would not allow herself to dwindle from this moment, the one she was dreaming of. This time she could not give up. This one she must hold to. For all she could not reach it. Touch it. Lying here could only imagine it. Closer. Those sensuous lips on her own.
If she imagined . . . If she tried hard enough . . . If. If. If. He
was here somewhere. Having willed herself into this place where waves lapped on the shore, she was determined to stay. If. If.
She jerked upright. A key scraping in the lock when it wasn’t feeding time wasn’t just unexpected, it drove every if from her mind. Light—a great deal more than tiptoed through the foot square window—shafted through the open door. Who had come to peer at her now? Whoever it was she couldn’t let them see her lying here like this in desolation so dark, only with the greatest of efforts was she able to imagine Sin Gudrunsson at all.
“That’s fine.” A cultured voice spoke. One thing was for certain. It wasn’t Sin Gudrunsson. “I can speak with her alone. I am sure she will not attack me.”
Not attack? When short of biting Cyril Hepworth’s face off, what could she do, trussed like a turkey though? Never had she felt more at a disadvantage. Look at him in his elegant coat, the beautifully tied cerise cravat. As for that stupid hat, she would sooner see a Viking helmet than that chimney-pot of a thing almost striking the roof of her cell. But she wasn’t going to, was she? No. What she was seeing was Cyril. No prizes for guessing why. Although really, when he probably didn’t even need her consent now she’d no doubt been declared ragingly insane, why bother coming here? Unless it was to gloat?
“Are you sure about that, my dear husband? This could be at your peril.”
The door scraped shut. He sighed. Then he set his cane with a clink against the wall. “While I am not pleased to find you more reasonable, Malice, we do need to talk.”
Really? And he was the most reasonable person she had ever met? Would it help to say it took one to know one though? If she could wipe that stray tear from her eyes, she’d do it. But even that was denied her. As for talking . . . whatever he wanted, she was not going to give it to him.
She knew the truth of his world. This was the earth’s end she had walked to in hers. And no matter how hard she strained against these confines she couldn’t burst them. Even her belief about kissing one man to escape her situation had been destroyed. Do that in here and she would look even more barking.
“Oh, we are all very reasonable in here, Cyril. Don’t you know? That is why I’m a grand duchess. And you . . .”
“Look.”
As if the place was not cramped enough, he loomed over her. She would sooner swallow the damned walking stick though than make room for him on the bed. As far as she was concerned he could stand there. She would have the stinking, stained, straw pallet to herself.
“I’m not going to pretend I have never found you anything other than difficult. You have never not annoyed me and I should never have agreed to Aunt Carter’s terms and conditions.”
Well. She must say they were speaking frankly. She knew exactly what he found her. Fury rose that there had been a time she had found him different. What she hated most though was the thought that flared. Good God, was it possible Sin Gudrunsson thought the same about her and that was why she was here and not there?
Even before she’d discovered Cyril with George, even before she landed back at Haggersly Hall, Cyril was no longer any kind of tiny thrill in her blood. If only it suddenly didn’t seem to her that in these seconds as the Reindeer skimmed closer, she had somehow failed to echo in Sin Gudrunsson’s.
“Oh and you were such a piece of cake.”
Cy lifted his hat off his head and set it on the mattress. Wait till the bedbugs infested that. Then they would infest his hair. It was just as good as biting his face off. “But I did agree. If you must know I didn’t know what to do. It is only now I see . . . I see certain things about how, about why, she wanted to put us together. It . . . it guaranteed your future.”
Her future? She dragged up her chin. After all the years of bows and arrows, this frank discussion, no doubt to now guarantee his, was the very last thing she wanted. Next would be the whores. Why he’d felt the need to humiliate her on their wedding night. Well, she didn’t want to hear it. Not when she had no doubt where this was leading. To her signing divorce papers. What a great shame her hands were already pinned to her chest.
“And your reputation, Cyril. Let’s not forget about that.”
“Absolutely. The thing is I had to knock you down. I might as well be frank. These lies you always told—”
“What about them?”
How had they gotten onto this? Oh yes, because she had forgotten to kiss him.
But she couldn’t kiss him, could she? Because the reason she couldn’t would, in all probability, be with Snotra by now. Anyway, these other times there had been heat. One she could neither invoke nor pretend to now. Not when he had locked her up in here.
“What about them? Malice, your version of the truth has always been economical to say the least. Lies about this. Lies about that. That you were a witch’s daughter. That your mother was the Queen of Sheba and your father the king of the Romany Gypsies.”
“It was the Hungarian ones actually.”
“That—”
“—I wasn’t lying. It was what my mother told me once about him and I’m not lying about Sin.”
“And I am not going to marry Grace.”
What?
For a second disbelief hung in the air with her breath. He had raised his voice. Now he lowered his gaze. What was this? In all the years she had known him, she couldn’t remember seeing him so unguarded. His shiny black boots may have been polished to perfection, that lock of hair dance across his forehead, the same as always, his mouth never turned down like this.
“I . . . I’ve called it off.”
“You’ve what?”
He edged his tongue forth to moisten his lips. “You were right. It was the wrong thing to do. I can’t marry her. Anyway, she’s impossible.”
“Well, I have no doubt it takes one to know one.”
“Malice, I have come here bearing the hand of friendship—”
“You have come here bearing a set of divorce papers which you hope I will agree to in order to deal with a pile of debts, that if you do not pay—”
“Oh, do not let my debts worry you.”
“They don’t.”
Why bother being amicable? She was never getting out of here.
“I know. I know I must pay them.” His shoulders sagged. “And I will think of something. I always do. Look, the fact is you’ve cried wolf more times than I care to remember.”
“And you have treated me very badly. When I think of the quarter of the things you have done, as a boy, as a man—”
“But you did disappear. You vanished from right under my nose. Twice. Is . . . Is it that you really do go to— Well—”
She skirted her gaze sideways. “Get out. You’ve had your fun. As much as I’m willing to suffer at my expense. Do you hear that noise? That screaming down the corridor? I listen to that all day, every day. Every night too. Sometimes I think it’s myself back at Carter House with a live mouse down the front of my dress. Put there by you.”
It didn’t matter how unguarded he wanted to pretend he was, this was all at her expense. She was never likely to escape from here. She was halfway to perdition, stripped bare of everything save her memories of Sin and their passion. She’d sooner hold onto them than listen to this.
“But I’m only asking.”
“And I’m telling. So if you think you can bring everyone in here to laugh at me like people have done my whole life, the woman who goes to—well, never mind where I go, you can’t.”
“Malice, I swear I never meant to. I never meant any of these things. And I can make it up to you if you’ll only let me.”
“Well, here’s the thing. After taking Aunt Carter’s teapot and putting me in here there’s nothing—”
“Because you were different. So different from these other damn wallflowers, the village children too. And I was furious when Aun
t Carter made that will.”
“Not half as much as I was. Half as much I will be too if you don’t get out of here.”
“Well, I will Malice, but the thing is, she knew. She knew about me.”
“She . . . what?”
And had made that will despite it? Malice gasped. The walls swung about her. She breathed heavily down her nose. What she was expected to swallow in that second was so impossible, so extreme, she thought she would burst with the effort of trying.
“And I think . . . I think she knew about you too.”
“Me? What could she possibly know about me?”
And yet?
“The fact is I feigned ignorance that day the will was read. I mean, she had mentioned something of the sort to me. I just didn’t think she’d do it, but she said you had to be safeguarded.”
“I don’t believe this.”
“From ever falling in love. From kissing . . . From anything like that.”
Oh my God. Now what she swallowed wasn’t just a lungful of dust motes. It was the knowledge that what she’d suspected in her wildest dreams, was true. A good job she was in here. It was the kind of place she’d be incarcerated in otherwise.
“May I?” He tweaked the knees of his breeches and indicated the mattress.
“Did she say why?”
“She said you were too like your mother and grandmother for your own good. Some kind of awful family trait you needed to be protected from. She said you would be safe with me.”
But she hadn’t been safe with him. She hadn’t been anything. Except perhaps nasty. Look at that business with the foundling. And while she had slept with Sin Gudrunsson because she cared about him, because he inhabited her, hadn’t she also been trying to take him from Snotra?
THE VIKING AND THE COURTESAN Page 26