Edith Layton (27 page)

“Why should I want to be?” she demanded. “They used you. You were only a boy. A big boy, but not an adult, and drugged and drunk, to boot. As for that, Alasdair, you may know more about flesh than I do, but even I know that we control our bodies only by the
most severe discipline of our minds, and they took yours away from you that night.”

He shook his head. “Kindly thought, valiantly said, but you owe me nothing, Kate.”

“Well, you owe me a wedding night, and a lifetime together,” she insisted.

She was both frightened and angry, afraid of losing him, angry that he wouldn’t see the truth, and that truth was that she loved him. He’d been brave, but what had happened during his sacrifice was so long ago it was nothing to her, whatever it meant to him. She was so sorry for him she wanted to weep, but knew that would only convince him he was right. This sad, exhausted man wrung her heart and won it even more surely than the cool composed Sir Alasdair St. Erth had done. This man was like that poor abused boy again, she realized, once again sacrificing his body and his heart for someone he loved. That heart was hers, she knew it. Now she had to win it back. Reason wouldn’t do it.

Although she’d expected that this night he’d lead and she’d follow him into bliss, now she saw the tables had turned. She’d little experience at lovemaking, except with him. She was still shy, even in front of him. But he needed her, and she realized she had to show him how much she needed him. His grief was beyond words, they’d do her no good.

She put both her arms around his neck. His arms, reflexively, went round her. She didn’t give him time to think of what he’d done, she lifted her lips to his. He didn’t move. She sighed against his mouth and placed hers over it. He didn’t open his lips. She touched the seam of those warm lips with her tongue, and pressed herself against him. He didn’t respond. It was like kissing his portrait.

She paused, hurt and confused. Didn’t he want her? But then she realized she hadn’t shown him anything but willingness. He needed more. He’d always courted her, how did a woman go about seducing him? She couldn’t. She could only show him what she needed. He’d always responded to that.

She shrugged the coverlet from her shoulders, so she was entirely bared to him. Then she lay her head against his chest, her hand over his heart. “I love you, Alasdair,” she said softly, “And I want to stay married to you, and bedamned to my cousins! Should I spend my life only remembering you with regret because of them? Please, don’t let them win again. I want you. I didn’t marry you mainly for your flesh. But, oh my, Alasdair! I was
so
looking forward to it!”

Her head moved as his body jerked. And then he was laughing, her head bouncing against his chest. “God, you are amazing.” He laughed again.

She sat straight up, nose to nose with him, delighted with herself, grinning at him.

He gazed at her. Her face was flushed, and she looked triumphant, devilish, unutterably seductive, her head thrown back, her small arched breasts bobbing with her laughter, her slender white body rising from crimson satin, offering itself to him. And best of all, and most of all, her eyes filled with humor and love, and perfect fellow feeling. It was, all at once, too much for him.

“Kate,” he said, dragging her close, holding her near, “be sure. Are you sure? Decide now. I’m a man. But still too weak to resist. Because it’s my heart, my mind, and my flesh that longs for you.”

“You’re my husband,” she said simply. “And I will have you!”

Her wedding night was everything Kate expected and nothing she was prepared for. Her new husband didn’t lead her, and she didn’t follow him, they simply tried to devour each other.

When their kisses became too heated, they tried to get closer and stoke up their fires. She was already naked, and they both found his clothing ridiculous, cumbersome, unendurable. He groaned as he dragged his shirt over his head. He shucked off his shoes, pulled off his breeches and hose. She found herself helping him when he got his leg tangled in his smallclothes as he tried to kick them away. Then he carried her to his sumptuous bed, placed her in the middle of it, and with a smile that nearly broke her heart, followed her down to lie with her there.

There was just enough light left in the sky for them to see each other, and it thrilled them.

He’d never seen her entirely naked before, and the loveliness of her body overwhelmed him.

She’d never seen his body, but she knew he’d be powerful and beautiful and she wasn’t disappointed. He wore his skin as other men wore their finery, and with good cause. He looked magnificent to her. She couldn’t be afraid of the astonishing size and shape of his arousal, because she knew she was the reason for it, and exulted in it.

But they couldn’t look at each other for long. They had too many other things to do. They kissed as though the air around them was too thick to breathe, and they could only survive if they took it filtered through each other’s lips. He buried his hands in her hair, tasted her, stroked her, and caressed her as she clung to him. She murmured her love, and tried to discover every part of him she’d never been able to touch before.

She’d have been willing to go on like that all night, because she didn’t know how much more there could be. He did, and there was only so much he could bear. He paused, finally, his great chest heaving as he gasped for breath. He’d moved her to ready her, preparing her for a long time, or so it seemed to him. But a minute was too long tonight, and he could no longer play. He reared up on his elbows.

“Last chance,” he said in a grating whisper. “You can still deny me.” But his hand didn’t leave her breast, and his body was still a sweet weight on hers as he watched her breathlessly.

She smiled up at him. “No chance,” she said, and managed a smile. Which was difficult, because there wasn’t blood enough left in her head for her to think, much less speak. It had all retreated to every sensitive part he’d set afire with his breath and lips and tongue, and was pooled there, making her itch and ache and yearn.

He kissed her again and then, with a great sigh, brought his body to hers and made them complete.

She was ready, and yet surprised. She’d expected pain. There was some, of course, he was a very big man, and even with all her expectation, still she was untried. But she was too thrilled, relieved, and amazed to mind. Because there was something else, too. If not rapture, then surely a rapture of the mind, a feeling of wholeness, relief, a sense of utter victory.

He was lost, entirely. So excited and delighted at being irrevocably one with her at last that his troubled mind left his troublesome body as it took them both flying, into ecstasy. He plunged on, reveling in being with her, mind and body, finding this mating so glorious he found oblivion too soon.

She lay back when he collapsed beside her, a little
confused at the storm that had overtaken them, a little sensitive and more sore, and filled with questions about how to make it better next time. But that could wait. She was amazingly happy. She was at last his wife.

He pulled her close as soon as he gathered his wits together, rolled over, and rested on an elbow so he could look down into her face. “Did I hurt you? Did I please you at all? It must been like bedding a thunderstorm for you. Damn, I’m sorry. I never meant to have it this way, I wanted to lure you and lull you, and make slow sweet love to you.” He saw her confusion, and added, ruefully, “Yes, I can do it that way. I should and will. We can slow it until it feels like honey dripping down a jar. Kate? Will you say something, please?”

She smiled. “It was fine, I’m very happy.”

He groaned. “
Fine
? Lord, that’s the last thing a man wants to hear about his lovemaking.”

“Glorious?” she ventured.

“What a liar. I’m going to have to make an honest woman out of you. Only not just yet, for your sake and mine. But later, I promise you.” His expression became still. “Kate? Thank you.”

She smiled and kissed him, a kiss of peace this time, a kiss to nourish, not excite them. They lay there entwined, letting a serene silence settle over them, feeling love and gratitude too immense to put into words, along with an overwhelming sense of rightness. They didn’t need to speak. They knew each other’s minds. More than their bodies had met tonight. They were one.

“Wife?” he finally said into the utter darkness, when their bodies had cooled and their pulses were steady again.

“Yes,” she answered. “It’s time. Now. Tonight, as they asked. Only I must go with you.”

I
t was late that night when the butler admitted Lord and Lady St. Erth to the Scalbys’ house. The pair were dressed soberly but correctly, and were as grave as visitors to a house of death.

“If you will come this way,” the butler said. He led them through the dimly lit house and so didn’t see the lady slip her hand into her husband’s, or his close tightly over it. But then the elegant couple walked so close together no one could have seen that they held hands like children as they went through the silent house to the grand salon.

The salon was huge and furnished richly, but only glances of muted crimson and brown were picked out by the firelight, because the only other illumination was a single candle in a glass on a table. A tall gaunt lady sat in front of that table, her profile and outline all that could be clearly seen. A heavyset man sat in the chair by the hearth, but he didn’t turn his head from
the play of leaping flames as the butler announced his visitors.

“My, how you’ve grown,” the lady said, as Alasdair and Kate stepped into the room.

Alasdair nodded and answered coldly. “It was inevitable.”

“You are now as you were then, though you’ve matured, but so I’d expected you to. I meant your lady,” Lady Scalby corrected him. “Come closer, cousin, and let’s have a look at you. They say you’ve become a beauty.”

“They say a great many things, cousin,” Kate snapped, staying where she was.

“Oho. Vexed because we missed your wedding?” the lady asked. “Our gift will more than compensate you for that.”

“I want no gifts from you,” Kate said angrily, but Alasdair’s cool voice rose over hers.

“Cut line,” he said impatiently. “You asked me to come here. Here I am. You know what night this is, so I assume you’ve something important to say.”

They saw the lady’s head dip in a nod. “Yes, to business, then. It’s not your wedding I wanted to congratulate you for, though of course you have our felicitations. Cleverly done. Revenge must be extrasweet in this case. No, I wished to salute you for something else. You’ve done a fine job, Alasdair. You’ve got us, you know. But of course you do. You’ve been working at it for years, hiring spies, paying off servants, romancing past lovers, promising anything to anyone who dealt with us and could tell you about it. At first, when we heard of it, we thought you were merely annoying, then amusing. But as the years went on, we realized you were spinning a tight web around
us. We took to hiding our activities. It didn’t help. You found a great many things that would harm us, but our one misstep will utterly ruin us, and doubtless you intend to use it to do so.”

“Never doubt it,” Alasdair agreed.

“But why?” she asked, her head moving slightly forward. “Why do you despise us so much, pursue us so relentlessly?”

“You really have to ask?”

“Someone saw us that morning!” she muttered. “Didn’t I tell you so?” she asked her husband angrily.

The man by the fire growled what might have been agreement.

Alasdair grew very still.

“So that was it. So, we were craven,” she said, turning to Alasdair again. “But surely that needn’t account for such vengeance? We didn’t want our names in a scandal, can you blame us? Certainly, we
should
have told someone your father was dead. But what difference would that have made? He was past help. We’d our reputations to consider.”

Kate felt Alasdair’s hand spasm closed over hers, though he moved no other way.

“We went in to say good-bye,” the lady was saying, “to tell him his debt was paid, as we promised you. But he was slumped over his desk, awelter with blood. Obviously, he’d put that pistol to his head. It was ghastly…well, I’m sure you know. So we ran. That was cowardly, but not criminal.”

Kate bit back a gasp of surprise. Alasdair remained still, but his nostrils flared.

“You may say the debt that caused his suicide was our fault,” Lady Scalby added harshly when he didn’t speak. “But we only introduced him to gaming. As for our other pleasures, he could have said no.”

“He was already dead?” Alasdair asked, unable to conceal his shock. “You never told him about our bargain?”

“Of course not. We’d neither the chance, nor the intention,” Lady Scalby snapped. “We said we would not. We have our honor,” she added, sounding genuinely affronted. “What?” she asked suddenly. “Did you think we murdered him? Is that it? My dear sir, how bizarre. Why should we have?”

Alasdair remained silent. Kate knew that wasn’t what he’d thought, and hoped this venomous woman never guessed what his real fears had been, lest she use them to her advantage.

Lady Scalby shrugged thin shoulders. “I imagine his trip to cozen a loan from his old friend was unsuccessful. Pity he was so hasty, because in a few moments he’d have heard his debt was already paid and his rash act unnecessary. He’d just committed it, or so at least, we surmised from the state we found him in, and the smell of gunpowder. The room was still blue with it. If we’d been less discreet, we wouldn’t have had to run. But our other friends didn’t know of our financial arrangements, we thought it prudent to keep them unaware of it. We’d slipped in to say farewell, tell him he was debt-free, and tear up his vouchers. Instead we found chaos, and ran. So why punish us for what we didn’t do?”

“And what you did to Alasdair was nothing?” Kate demanded, so angry she was shaking.

“’What we did to Alasdair’?” Lady Scalby asked slowly. “Oh, child, that was just a bit of advanced education for a young man. I doubt he remembers much of it. Did he tell you about it?” She sighed. “How unexpected. Do you remember it so fondly?” she asked Alasdair.

“Enough,” he said absently, obviously still thinking about what she’d just told him.

“Well, that’s just what we didn’t get,” she retorted, swinging her long neck so she could stare at Kate. “Your husband showed great promise. But between one thing and another, he soon left us, if not in body, then in mind and spirit. We were devastated. Especially my poor husband. He never got what he’d anticipated, and had to give up, because your Alasdair was simply passed out, nothing could revive him. Which was a pity, because in those days my dear Richard hadn’t yet acquired a taste for such a treat.”

“Quiet,” Alasdair said, his voice clear and contained again. Kate noticed he stood taller, too. “From your own lips you damn yourself. You and your husband aren’t fit company for worms now, much less the society you infected. Why did you ask me here tonight? What was the reason for your untimely summons?”

The lady hesitated. They saw one of her long fingernails scratch at some invisible spot on the shining tabletop. “As you’ve probably guessed,” she murmured, “bringing your bride here quite spiked my guns, as Richard would say. I’d thought she wouldn’t know about our little party that night. I’d hoped, rather. Because then we might have made another bargain, you and I. My silence, for yours. I’d thought you’d want to keep your bride ignorant of it. You have either a marriage of the minds, or have taught her to pursue what we tried to teach you.”

Alasdair stepped forward. She raised a hand to stop him from speaking. “I neither know nor care,” she went on. “But I have nothing to negotiate with now, do I? Still, now that you’re here, relieve my curiosity. If it wasn’t your father’s murder you suspected us of, what
on earth caused you to seek our ruin so relentlessly? We kept our bargain.”

Kate held her breath, hoping Alasdair wouldn’t give her any further ammunition by letting her know it was that bargain itself that haunted him.

“I, too, wanted a trade,” Alasdair said. “My father’s ruin for yours, lady. You won’t hang, you’ve too many connections and probably more people you can ’negotiate’ with. That only buys you so much. You will have to leave England, though. But tell me something, too. Why should you care? For that matter, why did you stay here awaiting my vengeance? You’ve spent your lives roving in pursuit of pleasure.”

“You see, we’re old now, Richard and I,” the lady said. “I find I wish to die in peace in my own land, and not among strangers. And there is the Name of course. It seems all we have left. So I am reduced to begging, I suppose.”

“In vain,” Alasdair snapped. “The game’s up. I’m done with it, and you. It wouldn’t have profited you to murder me either. Even if your minions had been successful, my death would have released the papers I’ve collected about you.”

The lady looked up. “My minions? Many things I’ve done, sir. But I do not stoop to murder. And,” she added with a dry chuckle, “Credit me with knowing that it would have done no good.”

Alasdair nodded. It made sense. Lolly had been his enemy, but he’d been seeing this woman and her husband behind every misfortune that befell him. For too long. It was time to end that too. “Even so,” he said, “now that’s not necessary. I’ll send on the information. I suggest you prepare to leave town and the country, if not the entire Continent.”

“Nothing I can say will change your mind?” Lady Scalby asked. “If I fall, be sure I will try to drag you down into the mud with me. You, too, have a name to consider, and now a wife and possible children to think of. Do you want the world to know what you did that night?”

“I don’t think you’ll tell anyone!” Kate said angrily, before Alasdair could answer. “It would only turn opinion against you. Because it was a vile thing to do. He was only a boy. And all he did was to comply. What you did was to instigate, and that’s very different.”

“And if he found pleasure in that compliance, no matter who instigated it?” the lady asked slyly.

Alasdair paused. “I thought you said there wasn’t…”

“Indeed,” Lady Scalby purred. “I only wanted to make you consider what people would say about what happened.”

“Nothing did.” Kate cut in. “Don’t you see?” she asked Alasdair, urgently tugging on his sleeve. “She’s reading your reactions. She’s desperate. She saw your distaste at what might have happened. She’s inventing now. If she’d known what you thought, she’d never have told you what she did before. She spoke truth then—you’ll never hear it from her again.”

Alasdair nodded. He touched a hand to her cheek. “Wise wife of mine,” he said with a true smile. “Of course. And do you know? I find it doesn’t matter anymore. Isn’t that astonishing?” he asked with wonder. “But it’s so. You showed me there’s more than revenge in my life now. I stepped back from vengeance for only a little while, and now I find I can’t step back in.”

He paused, his eyes searching Kate’s. “What do you want me to do?” he asked her.

She was startled, then suffused with joy. He was turning his life’s work over to her. She considered it seriously. Then she smiled. She knew the best answer for him, and herself. “Let it go,” she told him. “Finally, just let it go. It doesn’t matter anymore.”

Alasdair nodded. He tore his gaze from her and looked at Lady Scalby. “I have a care for my wife, more than I care about what happens to you, or myself, for that matter. I’m not noble enough to love my enemy and don’t believe I’ll ever be. But I can sacrifice vengeance for the sake of my love. So yes, I’ll let you go. Die here, or live here for all I care. But never think all my work was useless. Without it, without you and what you did, I’d never have met Kate.
That,
my lady, would have been my greatest tragedy. Be damned to you then.

“One thing I don’t understand,” he added suddenly. “Why does
he
say nothing?” He motioned to the man by the fire. “You asked me here, begged, lied, and demeaned yourself. Why is
he
silent?”

Lady Scalby’s laughter rang out. “Did you want to hear him beg? He can’t. I will show you what he can do, though, if you wish. Richard!” she said loudly. “Richard!” She huffed with impatience when the man didn’t so much as turn his head from the fire. “Food!
Eat,
Richard,” she shouted, “
Eat!
”

The man gave a guttural groan, his hands clutched at the arms of his chair. He rose with an inarticulate cry.

Kate took an involuntary step toward Alasdair. He stepped in front of her, his fists balled. The man ignored him, he turned toward his wife, growling.

The lady picked up a bell and shook it. The door to the salon swung open, and a huge man in livery stepped in. “My husband wishes to feed,” Lady Scalby told the servant. “Take him and see to it. Then put him
to bed. Good night, my dear,” she told the man as the servant took his arm and led him from the room.

Alasdair and Kate stepped back to let them by. They stood arrested as Lord Scalby passed, staring at his empurpled face, rolling eyes, the thick lips wet with drool, as he shambled away on the arm of his keeper.

“A little something he picked up on our travels,” Lady Scalby said in a brittle voice. “A souvenir of past delights. I told him and told him to stay within our class for his sport, or at least to inspect the treats he bought before he sampled them. But in time, he grew bored with that. Rash fellow. As to that, it started as a rash, can you believe it?” she asked conversationally. “Then a sore, then many sores, then…but any medical manual can tell the course of the thing, can’t it? One day he lost his balance, then he began to lose little things. He lost his temper frequently, and then he lost his entire mind. Now he remembers nothing but rage and hunger. Syphilis is an interesting disease, is it not?” she asked Alasdair. “You were far, far luckier than you knew that night. I was not. As for me, why, my husband was most generous.”

She picked up the candle and held it close to her face.

Alasdair winced. Kate looked away. She’d heard sermons on the rewards for evil living and the miseries of those afflicted with the pox. Nothing prepared her for the ruin she’d glimpsed. It was as if every evil thing Lady Scalby had done had been imprinted on what had been her face. Kate glanced at Alasdair, wondering if this was what he’d looked for in his dreams. Surely it was a more fit punishment than any he could have imagined.

Lady Scalby laughed. “So sorry to disappoint you, but if you sought utterly to destroy us, you are a little too late.”

“In this, you win,” Alasdair said, bowing. “Congratulations. I couldn’t have done more. Indeed, I doubt even I’d have done as much.”