скачать книгу бесплатно
Was there a more painful phrase in the English-speaking world? Iain didn’t think so. He’d been hurt, his heart smashed open, bleeding, upon hearing those words. Now, hours later, he still bled, the severed vessels opening every time he heard that hated sentiment repeated in his turbulent thoughts. Even closing his eyes, he heard her, and saw her, too—the way she had stood up to him, back straight, regal chin tilted at the perfect angle to relay feminine hauteur. She had not been playing coy when she had told him that. She had been speaking the truth, a truth born deep in her soul. And hours later, the bleeding continued, and the pain of that reality shattered whatever illusion and pitiful hope he had been desperately clinging to.
Most horrible, for him, was the realization that he had not even known he’d been clinging to anything, much less hope. But comprehension had dawned the minute Georgiana had challenged him about regrets. It had been then that he realized he harboured the sentimental emotion.
For the first time in his life he had not run from the knowledge, from the feeling that made its presence known. He’d accepted it, and by the time he had arrived at the Sumners’ musicale, he had actually claimed it, welcomed it. But with that revelation, so foreign to him, and yes, terrifying to admit, had come the heartache of knowing that Elizabeth had washed her hands of him.
She didn’t want him. And he had never stopped wanting her.
“Miserable existence,” he muttered as he lifted the bottle to his mouth and drank heartily of the Scotch. He deserved no less, he knew. But somewhere inside him he had always believed that Elizabeth York understood him. Knew deep down the extent of his flaws and the defects of his personality. He had always thought that she accepted that about him, and had forgiven him his trespasses all those years ago, like the angel he not only thought her to be, but knew her to be.
But his angel had teeth—and claws—that had effectively eviscerated him tonight. By God, what had he been about, doing what he had? Demanding such things? He knew better than to let the years of hunger for her get the best of him. And they had.
He’d been in a murderous, incredulous rage when he’d first glimpsed Elizabeth standing beside the earl. A living, breathing darkness had blanketed him, and while he wished he could feign ignorance as to its cause, he knew better. The carpet had been torn from beneath his feet, and landing flat on the ground had winded him. A sort of red mist had gathered and clouded his sight: rage stemming from the shattered hope that one day he might find his way back to her.
It had always been a comfort to him—a perverse comfort, because he was a capricious man who took pleasure in such selfish thoughts as the one he had long clung to. In his mind, there was still time, still a chance that she might one day be his. Elizabeth did not go out in Society. She did not accept men’s arms and stroll about salons with them. In essence, there was no other man in her life. No golden male to rival Iain’s black soul. And the knowledge had always comforted him.
Selfishly, he wanted her to stay free of courtships and such. It gave him hope. And tonight, when he had been feeling strangely melancholy and … alone, he had needed Elizabeth. Needed for them to find their way to one another again. And that … Well, that had been all dashed to the farthest regions of hell.
Seeing her with Sheldon—the smile, that was not forced nor feigned—had ignited in Iain something unholy. Some damned monster that gnashed and snarled and struck out with huge, clawed hands.
She had been happy, and he had been more than unhappy to see her that way. Misery, the old saying went, loves company. Iain had believed that Elizabeth and he shared the same misery, the same unrequited longing. A love denied, but that would not die despite the cloying darkness that threatened its light.
But tonight had made clear that she did not share his misery. He’d been confronted with the fact that he was a fool. That he had taken the one thing in the world that had ever meant anything to him and tossed it away like a child’s toy, only to be outraged when another had come by to pluck it from the sand.
Iain had toyed with Elizabeth, cast her aside and left her to find her own way in the world. Sheldon, that bastard, had been the one to find her, to pick her up and marvel at the treasure she presented.
Love unrequited. Love denied—and spurned. Iain felt the stab of pain where his heart should be. Pressing his eyes shut, he sought to banish the sensation from his awareness.
If he were any sort of gentleman, hell, any sort of decent human being, he’d slink away with his tail between his legs and never look back. But he wasn’t decent. He had the pride of a marquis and a bloody Highlander. Everything inside him screamed to take what he thought rightfully belonged to him, honourable or no.
It’s only fair, you bastard, a taunting voice inside him jeered. You’re getting a taste of your own medicine.
And it was a damn bitter pill to swallow. One best diluted with a good single-malt Scotch.
“God save us, you’re foxed!”
Iain held up the crystal decanter as he studied Black entering his carriage. He didn’t have the patience for the earl, not tonight. Friends or no, he couldn’t stomach the earl’s happiness, which seemed to radiate from his every pore. “Good and drunk,” he replied in a slurred voice. “Thought I’d give that fat, pompous Larabie a bit of an edge tonight. Lord knows he’ll need one.”
“You cannot meet him like this. I doubt you can even walk.”
“I can, too,” he drawled, before taking another sip. Black snatched the decanter, spilling some of the amber liquid over Iain’s greatcoat, which was open, revealing his kilt and sporran. Black’s dark brows rose in question, and Iain gave a foul hand gesture that should have made him feel better, but only made him realize he was verging on pathetic.
Christ, he hoped he’d die tonight and save himself the mortification of living another day to lock eyes with Elizabeth York, the haughty spinster of Sussex. The angel of your very sinful dreams …
The Sussex Angel, she had been called then, the year of her come-out. She had been, too. From the first moment he’d laid eyes on her, he’d wanted her. Part of him wished to bask in her goodness, her innocence. The other part had wanted to corrupt her, to drag her from the light and immerse her in sin.
She was still a damned angel, even approaching thirty. How could she still possess those beautiful, artless grey eyes and that pure, pale flesh? She was fair and perfect. He was black and corrupted. And damn him, every thought in his head kept coming back to her tonight, and the realization that he had finally allowed himself to admit to something that she spurned. That she no longer desired. That would not fucking die!
“What the devil are you doing here, besides irritating me?” he demanded in a churlish tone. “Thought you’d be ensconced in your chambers, enjoying the virtue of your marriage bed with your lovely wife.”
“Don’t,” Black growled, “mock what I have with my wife. You will never understand the sanctity to be found in bed with a woman who is the other half of your soul.”
He wanted another drink, and to tell the pompous Black to go to hell, but he sneered instead. “No, in fact, I will not. I don’t have a soul, ergo there is no other half wandering about, waiting for me to get into bed. No arms waiting to hold me when I arrive home.”
“And whose fault is that?” his friend demanded.
“I’m done with this conversation. Why are you here, and not Sussex?”
Folding his arms across his chest, Black watched him through the dim shadows of the carriage’s interior. “Sussex sent a missive around. It was terse and to the point. He stated he couldn’t make it, and requested that I come to be your second.”
With Lucy Ashton. That’s where His Grace was tonight. Trying to get a hand up the beauty’s skirt. Thrown over for a woman and a toss, Iain thought, and grunted in amusement. Although he couldn’t reasonably think such a thing. Sussex wanted the lovely Lucy Ashton with a blind, consuming need. It left a bad taste in Iain’s mouth, knowing the determined duke would one day have her, and he himself would be forced to sit amongst those two couples and watch them, their sickening love cloying the air with an unfashionable and most disagreeable completeness. Especially when he knew he’d still be tupping whores, and longing for Elizabeth in the darkest, loneliest hours of the night.
“As your second,” Black continued, allowing his gaze to rove across Iain’s drunken form, “I must make it clear that you are in no shape whatsoever to meet Lord Larabie on the field of honour.”
“Honour?” he snorted, aware how disgust dripped like venom in his voice. “There is no honour in this match. I slept with his wife in the attempt to find out information about our enemy. There is no honour in bedding another man’s wife.”
“And yet you do it with alarming frequency.”
“I never pursue them,” Iain growled, focusing his gaze outside the window. “They come to me.”
“And that makes it all right?”
He shrugged. “I don’t expect you to understand.”
Leaning back, Black settled himself on the bench, stretching his long legs out before him. “I know why you do it.”
That caught Iain’s attention, as did the conviction he heard. “Like hell,” he growled, but Black only shrugged, then met his gaze through the moonlit shadows.
“You want to punish them. The wives, for pursuing you, for so readily forsaking their vows. And you want to hurt the cuckolded husbands by showing them how poor their choice in wife was. In a way, it’s a sense of honour for you, an absolution, if you will. Those that participate with you in the carnal act, in your opinion, deserve what they get, because they have been so dishonourable as to break their marriage vows in the first place. In your own way, you have a code of honour, and while you would never admit to it, you hold the vows of marriage as something sacred. I am correct, aren’t I?”
“You just said I would never admit it, so why bother to ask?” he grunted.
His friend grinned, making Alynwick want to plant his fist in his face.
“This bargain you have with Larabie’s wife is eating at your soul.”
“I know what I’m doing.”
“I don’t doubt it, but I do doubt that you realize what the cost of this endeavour will be.”
“I suppose my mortal soul and all that rot. God, Black, you’ve become an irritating pontificate since your short marriage. Sod off, and pass me my Scotch and the pistol.”
“You don’t have to do this.”
“If you don’t hand me that blasted duelling pistol, I’ll put the bullet in you!”
With a sigh of reluctance, Black reached for the wooden case. Iain couldn’t help but notice his friend had not agreed to the other request. The decanter remained out of reach, unless Iain was inclined to spring from the bench and sprawl overtop Black to reach for it. He’d rather be hung naked in the middle of Piccadilly than lower himself before his friend and fellow Brethren Guardian.
Grunting, he accepted the pistol. “It’s not loaded.”
“I know. I have visions of you tripping down the carriage steps, falling to the ground and triggering the blasted thing before we can get you to walk your paces.”
Iain glared at him. “I do believe I would have done better with some scoundrel from the East End as a second.”
“Then you should have procured one. As it’s one minute before the designated meeting time, I will have to do.”
“Bloody hell,” he growled as he stood to leave the coach, “what could make this night worse?”
The carriage door suddenly flew open, to reveal the glinting end of a pistol and a set of dark eyes blazing with hatred. Both were aimed at him.
“Oh, good evening, Larabie,” Iain drawled. “I see your wife is correct. You do have a habit of firing off early.”
Behind him, Black groaned. Alynwick grinned. If he was going to die, then damn it, he was going out with a bang, not as a self-pitying weakling.
“You think you are so amusing, Alynwick,” Larabie snarled, “but I will make you regret what you have done to me. I will take great delight in blowing you away.”
Alynwick flashed a wicked smile. “Now you really do sound like your wife. She said the very same thing to me last night.”
“NOW, THEN, YOU’VE GOT wind in those sails.”
Elizabeth paused on the landing of the curved staircase, her hand on her companion’s arm. Her fingers were trembling, and Lizzie knew it was not from exertion—she was bloody quaking with fury. “And what does that mean, Maggie?” she enquired coolly, which only made her longtime friend laugh.
“Oh, you’ve got his bluster, all right. Your father used to storm around like a ship in a hurricane. You look just like him, I vow.”
“Oh.” She hadn’t meant to be in such a foul mood upon entering the house. She thought she’d rid herself of the insolence and anger that had ruled her on the carriage ride home. Poor Lucy had been forced to sit in the carriage in complete silence while Lizzy brooded and her brother tackled his own thoughts.
And they both had the Marquis of Alynwick to thank for that.
“Come now, let’s go on up and you can tell me all about it. It can’t be that bad.”
Yes, it could. And it would only get worse, because Elizabeth knew she could not confide in Maggie. This was her secret. Her own scandal to bear.
All those years ago she could have confided in her companion, but hadn’t; she’d been too embarrassed at being so easily taken in by the marquis. So she had chosen to hide her shame, and to not think of how foolish she’d been.
In the ensuing years, she had been rather successful at forgetting her stupidity, her gullibility. But that had changed tonight, when Alynwick had cornered her, towered over her and turned her into a melting pot of heated flesh.
So much for the mature, controlled woman she had always believed herself to be!
“Now, then, what’s got you blustering?”
“Nothing,” she murmured as Maggie ushered her into her bedchamber. “I am just not used to Society, that is all.”
“Was it a trial, then?”
“That would be too banal a description. I felt …” Elizabeth struggled for the right word. “An outsider, I guess.”
“It will come,” Maggie said as she pulled the pins from Elizabeth’s heavy hair. “You’ve been gone from it too long, is all.”
“Apparently not long enough,” she found herself muttering, thinking of her run-in with the marquis.
“Perhaps if you shared your worries, that might help soothe them.”
Lizzy laughed despite herself. “Believe me, Maggie, there is nothing anyone could say to make me feel better. I never want to think on the matter again.”
“Well, then, there is no sense brooding over something you don’t wish to share. I can’t help you if you don’t want it. Now step out of that gown if you please, the buttons are already undone.”
Practical, strong Maggie. She knew how to get what she wanted from her charge, and it was not with cajoling. Normally, Lizzy might have indulged her companion’s curiosity, and even solicited her sage advice. But not in this. This matter must never come to light.
Stepping out of the gown, which pooled around her legs, Elizabeth reached for the bedpost she knew was directly before her, and held on. She was growing calm, as she always did in her room, where everything was as it should be. Where she could move about with freedom, knowing she would not trip over something and hurt herself, or worse, destroy some priceless family relic. In her room, she was not disabled. She was not an invalid. She was just plain Elizabeth York.
A thumping sound followed by a little whimper greeted her, and she smiled, closed her eyes and allowed the warm tongue awaiting her to brush against her cheek.
“Little mouse,” she whispered as she buried her face in her spaniel’s soft fur. “Still up?”
Rosie, her pregnant springer spaniel, whimpered as Elizabeth spoke nonsense into her long floppy ears. Adrian had bred her with another springer in the hopes that her offspring might prove as useful as Rosie herself. It was amazing, but true, that Rosie very often acted as Elizabeth’s eyes, guiding her away from furniture and objects in the way. It was Adrian’s hope that he could train the pups to help others like Elizabeth.
“That dog has been waiting for you on the bed for hours now,” Maggie said as she unlaced Elizabeth’s corset. “Poor lamb, she’s as big as a house and couldn’t manage the jump up by herself.”
“So you helped her, even though you think it’s sacrilege for an animal to be on a bed.”
“Or the settees, or that grand leather chair of His Grace’s,” Maggie reminded her. “Aye, I helped her. I couldn’t resist when she looked at me with those sad eyes of hers.”
“She is the most adorable and loving creature, isn’t she?” Elizabeth murmured as she released her hold on the bedpost and snuggled against her beloved pet. “Yes,” she murmured, “I love you, too, sweet.”
“I wouldn’t let her lick my face,” Maggie muttered, and Elizabeth could almost see her lips curled in distaste.
“Well, they’re the only kisses I am liable to receive, so I shall take them,” she teased, but Maggie merely grunted as she pulled the corset from Elizabeth’s breasts and tossed the silk-and-steel garment onto the bed. Her companion liked to claim that Rosie was a nuisance, but Lizzy knew she had a soft spot for the dog, regardless of what she wanted people to believe. Maggie might give the impression of being a commander, but inside, she had a very kind heart and a rather romantic soul. But she’d given it all up to stay and live with Lizzy. More than her lady’s maid and her eyes, she had been a substitute mother, a nurse and was now a treasured friend. Lizzy could not have gained any measure of independence if it had not been for her. People thought it a testament to Lizzy’s own courage and drive that she had accomplished so much despite her blindness, but really, it was because of Maggie’s strength, her untiring nature and unrelenting belief that Lizzy could succeed. She owed much of what she was to her companion, who had been with her since Lizzy was fifteen and Maggie barely eighteen. They could have been sisters, and despite the difference in their social status, got on as if they were family. At some point, Lizzy was going to have to once more bring up the topic of her friend living her own life. The trouble was, Maggie was every bit as stubborn as she, and would hear none of it.
“Now, then, you’re down to your chemise. Why don’t you sit at the dressing table and I’ll brush out your hair?”
With one last nuzzle, Elizabeth left the dog and turned, making her way across the room without assistance. She found her way to the table and slowly lowered herself onto the waiting chair.
“I met a gentleman tonight,” she said, trying to keep her thoughts away from Alynwick and what had transpired between them at the musicale.
“Did you now? Must be a handsome gent for just the mention of him put those roses in your cheeks.”
Smiling, Elizabeth flicked her hair over her shoulders. “I’ve blushed more tonight than I did when it was actually acceptable for me to blush.”
“Nonsense, ‘tis a woman’s right to blush whenever the spirit moves her. Nothing to do with age or steadfast sensibilities.”
“I allow it was rather nice,” she said, recalling how it felt to walk beside a man who was not her brother, or her brother’s friends. “Lady Lucy assures me that he is most handsome—and tanned.”
“Tanned?” Maggie mumbled. She had hairpins in her mouth again, Lizzy could tell. “What proper English gentleman allows his flesh to get tanned?”
“A perfectly improper one, I think,” Elizabeth answered, chuckling when Maggie gasped in surprise.
“And you, an innocent speaking like a coquette!”
How she wished she could see Maggie’s expression. In her heart she knew her companion was not shocked by her frank speaking, but was actually smiling. Maggie was not an old matron. She was in the prime of her life, and must occasionally think of the opposite sex.
