Lord of Fire (24 page)
Authors: Gaelen Foley
“Everyone?”
“Mother, Papa, Phillip, Nanny Peg.” She shrugged. “It was my last birthday before my mother got sick.”
Sensing the carefully controlled grief in her voice, he snapped his head up. “What happened to her?”
When she glanced at him, her sad, faraway smile twisted his heart. “She was a vibrant, active, beautiful woman, thirty-six years old, but one day, she got a cough that grew worse and worse, until a few months later, she couldn’t even walk up a flight of stairs without gasping for breath. The doctors did not know what to make of it. First they thought it was consumption, then pleurisy, though she had none of the other symptoms of either disease. Finally, they discovered it was a concealed tumor in the breast that had spread into her lungs. There was nothing they could do. They gave her hemlock for the pain. It only made her sicker.”
“I am so very sorry,
“Me, too. She was a woman of humor and grace to the very end. I still remember sitting on her bedside, reading the Society column of the
Morning Post
to her. She would make jokes about the ton and tell me how grand I would be when I made my debut.” She paused. “My father died two years later in a fall from a horse he should not have been riding, over a jump he should not have attempted, especially after drinking an entire bottle of blue ruin.”
Lucien stopped and stared at her. She flicked a hesitant glance over him, as though uncertain whether or not to say more.
“Go on,” he urged her softly.
“Papa fell apart after she died. They had been very much in love. I think he was glad to go. I miss them so.” She looked away. “I can still see all of them when I look at Harry—in his eyes. I am so glad I have him, Lucien. I would do anything for him.” Her voice broke on her final words, and tears welled in her eyes.
“I know you would,” he whispered, pulling her brusquely into his arms. He held her hard for a long moment while the brown, dead leaves scattered around them on the breeze. Closing his eyes, he pressed a fervent kiss to her hair.
Something profound changed inside him at that moment, as he held her. He wasn’t sure what it was. One second he was praying for some way to take away her pain, and the next he felt as though a sledgehammer had just knocked a gaping hole in the biggest, thickest wall that he had built around his heart. Light poured through—aching, nourishing light.
He pulled back from her a small space and captured her delicate face between his hands, lifting her gaze to his. With his thumbs, he wiped away the tears that had rolled down her cheeks.
“If you ever need anything, anything at all,” he whispered fiercely, “I want you to come to me. Do you understand?”
“Oh, Lucien—” she started, trying to pull away.
He held her in a firm, gentle grip. “I mean it. You don’t have to be alone. I am your friend, and I will always be there for you. And Harry.”
“Why?” she whispered with a shaky trace of defiance. “What do you care?”
Her question reminded him anew that she was still nowhere near trusting him. He shook his head, his slick eloquence failing him once again with her. “Because I like you,” he said simply.
“You barely know me.”
“I know enough. You don’t have to believe me right now, Alice. In time you’ll see it’s true. Come,” he said gruffly, forcing himself to release her from his embrace after a moment’s awkward pause. He was shaken by the ferocity of his desire to protect her from all harm. “We’re almost there.”
Still reeling with his astonishing vow,
They came out of the woods onto a dirt road that curved toward a cluster of five or six cottages a short distance away. The smell of a welcoming hearth fire carried to them on the wind, which had picked up and went whisking through the branches. They had been shielded from it in the woods, she thought. Holding down the checked cloth that covered the basket to prevent it from blowing away, she glanced at the leaden clouds rolling in from the west, then noticed the restlessness of the crows that flapped across the sky, which had turned a bleak whitish-gray.
“We shan’t stay long,” Lucien murmured. “It looks like rain.”
She nodded. Arriving in the quaint hamlet, Lucien led her to a charming wattle-and-daub cottage with a thick thatched roof and neat white shutters. He let her in through the waist-high gate and escorted her up the walkway lined with chrysanthemums. He knocked on the door but did not wait to be admitted. Instead, he opened it and leaned in, glancing inside. “Mr. Whitby?”
“Ah, young Master Lucien,” said a weak, wobbly, and very proper old voice from within. “In here! Do forgive me, I must have dozed off.”
Trying to peek in behind him,
“I am sorry to wake you,” he said fondly.
“Not at all, dear boy, not at all.”
“Your books have arrived, and,” Lucien announced, “I have brought someone to meet you.”
“Oh?”
He opened the door wider and stepped aside, passing an elegant gesture before him, inviting
“Mr. Whitby, may I present Miss Alice Montague, the daughter of Baron Glenwood. Miss Montague, it gives me great pleasure to present to you the hero of my wretched boyhood,” Lucien said sardonically, “my most esteemed tutor, Mr. Seymour Whitby.”
curtseyed to him. “How do you do, sir?”
Through a grave effort, leaning on his cane, Mr. Whitby doddered to his feet.
“I am so pleased to meet you, sir,” she said warmly.
He lifted his chin and peered sharply at her through his spectacles. The flat line of his mouth slowly pulled into a heartfelt smile. “La, child, you are as kind as you are pretty. May I offer you some tea? I am afraid at the moment my housekeeper is at church, but I think we can manage—I say, do shut the door, Master Lucien.”
“Sorry,” he mumbled with a boyish smile, shoving the door closed.
“I have been trying to teach the lad that for twenty-five years,” Mr. Whitby told
chuckled and cast Lucien a smile, quite beguiled. The old gentleman adjusted his gnarled fingers over the head of his cane.
“Mr. Whitby had the unenviable position of tutoring me and all of my brothers before we went off to school,” Lucien said.
“What a task that must have been!” she exclaimed.
“Hercules had his twelve labors; I, my five young Knights.”
She laughed, charmed. “Well, I shall be most keenly interested to hear some of your tales, but do please sit down. I think some tea would be lovely. You must allow me to prepare it. I insist. We’ve brought muffins and a sponge cake to tempt you with, and your pupil has brought you some books. Here, why don’t you take a pillow, Mr. Whitby? Lucien, hand me that cushion from the couch.” He quickly did so. She put the pillow behind the old man’s back as he eased down once more into his chair. “Are you near enough to the fire? Lucien, move his chair.”
“Oh, dear, I’m sure I don’t wish to be any trouble,” Mr. Whitby protested, clearly delighted by her fussing over him.
“Not at all,” she scolded gently.
Lucien caught her gaze for a second and sent her a deep, soulful look of appreciation before moving to do her bidding. He slid his old tutor’s armchair nearer to the fire, then pulled the cushioned ottoman closer and sat down on it, shuffling out the books. As the men began to discuss the books,
“Wasn’t that wind fierce last night?” Lucien asked the old man as she came back out into the parlor to fetch the tea caddy.
“Why, it blew one of my shutters off the house,” Mr. Whitby declared.
“It did? Where?”
“Right there, off the parlor. Mrs. Malone leaned it against the side of the house this morning.”
Lucien stood. “I’ll go rehang it.”
Mr. Whitby protested at his offer, but Lucien waved him off.
smiled at him in approval. “Tea will be ready soon.”
“I’ll be back in a trice.” He sent her an answering smile over his shoulder that warmed her to the core, then closed the door firmly as he went out. She became aware of the blush in her cheeks and the faint smile on her lips only when she noticed Mr. Whitby studying her.
“Well, this is all very curious,” the old man said, peering over the rim of his spectacles at her.
“What is, sir?” Trying to hide her embarrassment, she busied herself with the task of laying out the sponge cake and muffins.
“Master Lucien has never brought a young lady to meet me before.” He lifted his bushy white eyebrows and regarded her expectantly. “Has he asked you yet?”
“Pardon, sir?”
“Has he offered yet? Proposed, my girl?”
stared at him, taken aback. A jolt of tingling wonder shot through her body. With a tremble, she dropped her gaze, her blush deepening. She dared not explain the strange circumstances that had brought her into Lucien’s company. “Mr. Whitby, Lord Lucien and I are little more than friends.”
He snorted. “Then you haven’t noticed how he looks at you. Miss Montague. Surely you have not allowed his wily ways to confuse you?”
She looked at him, then smiled with a reluctant sigh. “Everything he does confuses me.”
“I will concede the lad has difficulty being straightforward at times, but that is only because he has never been quite sure of his welcome in the world. It is this old business of comparing himself to Master Damien,” he said in answer to her questioning look. “He never quite felt up to par, especially having been so ill as a boy, while Damien enjoyed perfect health.”
“Lucien was ill?” she asked, taken aback.
“Why, yes, he’s lucky to be alive. Did he not tell you?”
She shook her head, wide-eyed.
“Dear, me. He would call me a meddling old fool for speaking of it, but between you and me, he was afflicted with childhood asthma. For much of his early years, it prevented him from keeping up with Damien and the others. He spent a good deal of his time alone—or, in any case, with me. He never learned quite how to fit in, at least not comfortably. But I’ll tell you one thing—he got a jolly lot of reading done as a result. He was three years ahead of his classmates in his studies by the time he went off to