Lord Savage (10 page)

He turned his head slightly, regarding me with a sidelong gaze.

“It is only money,” he said, “and I would have thought that you, of all women, would
know that money doesn’t matter.”

I blushed, surprised that he knew that much of my background. He was right, of course.
If my life had taught me anything, it was that money in itself seldom brought happiness.
“But you did it for me.”

“I did it to keep you from falling into Blackledge’s brutish hands, yes,” he said.
“I would have done the same to preserve a good horse or hunting dog.”

“Ah,” I said, surprised again, but not as agreeably as before. I wished he would smile
at me as he had at the viscountess. “Still, I must say that you—”

“Mrs. Hart,” he said, cutting me off. “As boorish as Blackledge can be, he was correct
in one matter. You, as an Innocent, have no right to speak to a Protector without
being first addressed. Weren’t the rules of the Game explained to you?”

I nodded, trying to remember what Simpson had told me. “Yes, I suppose they were.”

He frowned down at me, and I thought how much larger, how much stronger, he was than
I.

“Recall that you are my Innocent, and I your Protector,” he said. “‘Yes, Master’ is
the proper response, and the only response that is acceptable. Do you understand?”

I hesitated. Much of the reason I had come to England—and most of the reason I had
come to Wrenton Manor—was to escape who I had been in New York. I’d thought I was
done with deferring to men, and now here Lord Savage was expecting exactly that of
me.

“Forgive me, my lord,” I began, “but I cannot see why I must—”

“Because in this place, you are no longer Mrs. Hart,” he said evenly. “You are only
an Innocent, and you know nothing. You must be led and guided towards the knowledge
of pleasure. You must trust me, or remain ignorant. Is that clear?”

It wasn’t, and as I stood before him, I felt nothing but confusion. I was desperate
to discover the kind of love and pleasure that the rest of the world experienced,
but I didn’t want to be ordered about like the lowest of half-witted scullery maids.
If I’d any sense, I thought, I would leave this place now, in my own clothes and on
my own terms.

And yet, and yet …

The longer I gazed up into Lord Savage’s pale blue eyes, the more I doubted myself.
This week might be a mere game to Lady Carleigh and her friends, but it felt like
much more to me.

What if this truly was the one path left to me? In the ways of pleasure, I was every
bit as shamefully ignorant as he claimed. That part wasn’t a game—that was the truth.
I knew nothing, really, nothing at all, while I didn’t doubt that he knew everything.

As if reading my thoughts, Lord Savage suddenly smiled: not a wide, fool’s grin, but
a small, secret smile for me alone, as if hinting at all we’d soon come to share if
only I’d agree to trust him, and obey.

“You will trust me?” he asked again.

“Yes, Master,” I murmured, this time agreeing.
“Yes.”

He nodded, clearly pleased, and pressed my fingers lightly to show his approval. But
when he lifted my hand to his lips, bowing over it with an unexpected, old-fashioned
air, I nearly gasped aloud. No man had ever made so romantic and courtly a gesture
to me, ever.

Of course I would trust him. How could I not, after that?

“Since you are now my Innocent, I will call you Eve, here in our little Eden together,”
he said. “You will answer to that, won’t you, Eve?”

It was the perfect name for an Innocent, even as it was also a variation of my own
name, Evelyn. I had never been called anything other than my given name, and I liked
the idea that Lord Savage would be the only one to use this one, a special little
endearment between us alone.

I nodded, then remembered how I was supposed to reply.

“Yes, Master,” I said. “That is, my name is Eve, Master.”

“Good.” He smiled again, and released my hand, turning away. Most of the other Protectors
and Innocents had already left the room. Lady Carleigh and her Innocent still lingered,
as she offered a few final orders to the servants who had appeared to put the room
back to rights.

Lord Savage beckoned to one of the maids.

“Show this Innocent to my rooms,” he told her. “Barry will tend to her.”

“Who is Barry?” I asked.

Savage wheeled around and frowned, his expression instantly as ominous as thunder.
“I did not address you, Eve.”

I blushed, embarrassed that I had already erred. This reminded me of the old children’s
game Mother, May I?, with much more at stake.

“Forgive me, Master, I didn’t mean to—”

“You are not to speak until I address you, Eve,” he said curtly, and turned back to
the maid. “Show her upstairs at once.”

He left me then, crossing the room to speak once more with Lady Carleigh. Though his
back was to me, his displeasure was apparent in the squared set of his shoulders,
and I felt disappointment well up within me—not with him, but with myself.

“I’ll show you to his lordship’s rooms, ma’am,” the maid said, still treating me with
the respect due to Mrs. Hart. “This way, ma’am.”

As soon as we were on the stairs and out of Savage’s hearing, I touched the maid’s
sleeve.

“Who is Barry?” I asked anxiously, fearing that the earl might be passing me along
to a different Protector. “I don’t believe I met any gentleman here with that name.
Is he another guest? What do you know of him?”

The maid smiled, but I didn’t miss the faint pity in her voice.

“Oh no, ma’am, Mr. Barry’s not a gentleman,” she said. “He’s Lord Savage’s manservant.
I expect his lordship will have told Mr. Barry to look after you until he joins you.
His lordship’s rooms are here, at the end of this hall. He’s such friends with the
Lord and Lady Carleigh that his rooms here are almost like lodgings, with everything
just to his liking for whenever he visits.”

She rapped on the door, and the manservant answered so swiftly that I suspected he
must have been waiting nearby.

“This is Mr. Barry, Mrs. Hart,” the maid said. “Mr. Barry, Mrs. Hart is his lordship’s
new Innocent, and his lordship says you’re to put her at ease until he comes upstairs.”

“Good evening, Mrs. Hart,” Barry said, opening the door more widely for me to pass
inside. He was a small, wiry man with wisps of graying hair over a mostly bald head,
and clearly proud of his impeccable manners. Not once did his gaze drop to my revealing
costume, for which I was endlessly grateful.

Curious, I looked about, eager for more clues to Lord Savage. To my surprise, the
rooms were lit not by gaslight but by dozens of candles, in wall sconces, in chandeliers,
and in candle stands, that cast everything with an antique light, full of mysterious
shadows.

“Is there no gas lighting in this part of the house, Barry?” I asked, keeping close
to the servant. “I would have thought Lord Carleigh would have had it installed here
as well.”

“Yes, ma’am, there is gas lighting throughout the house,” Barry said, answering one
question and no more.

“Then why not use it here? Why candles instead?”

The servant’s expression didn’t change. “It is Lord Savage’s preference, ma’am.”

I nodded, for there wasn’t much I could say beyond that, the perfect servant’s reticent
reply. But why would Lord Savage have such an outdated preference? I had always lived
with the newest and most modern of conveniences. In New York, even gaslights had been
replaced by electric ones. Why would a young man—for he could not be past thirty—wish
to use such an old-fashioned and inconvenient light?

Not that Barry would volunteer an answer as he led me down a short hall and through
a sitting room. The maid had been right: the rooms had the feel not of a transient
guest’s impersonal, if expensively appointed, quarters but of the more permanent lodgings
of an individual with very definite tastes, and the soft light and shadows cast by
the candles somehow made it all the more personal.

It was also clearly the place of a man with many interests that he avidly and actively
pursued. I saw that at once. Despite my father’s faults, he had worked ferociously
hard, and in these rooms I could see the obvious signs of a similar temperament in
Lord Savage.

There were newspapers and books everywhere, books that were read and marked, and not
simply for show. An oversize desk dominated the sitting room, and scattered across
it were notebooks and maps and the schedule booklets for trains and steamships.

Manly souvenirs of foreign travels decorated the rooms as well, from the stretched
zebra skin used as a rug on the floor, to a miniature pagoda carved from Chinese ivory,
to a white marble bust of some ancient Roman senator staring blankly from a column
out into the room. Father had kept these sorts of curiosities about his office, too,
the stuffed head of a moose he’d shot in Maine and a painted, feathered tomahawk from
a Plains Indian that he swore (to my horror) had been used for scalping.

But then there were other things here in Lord Savage’s rooms that would never have
found their way to Father’s office. Over the fireplace hung a large painting of a
woman sprawled over a daybed, wearing only a small diadem and bright jewels that glowed
against her pearly skin. She smiled shamelessly, proud of her nudity in a way that
made me blush for her.

That was only the beginning: the terra-cotta statue of a muscular, goatish satyr with
a nymph, their limbs intimately entangled; a small watercolor of two beautiful young
women lying together in a bed, kissing and fondling each other; and, most stunning
of all, an engraving of another woman whose head was thrown back in a frenzy of passion,
mating with the sizable swan clasped tightly between her thighs. It was not only shocking
to me but physically impossible.

But, to my astonishment, this engraving and the other artworks had the most curious
effect on me, making my heart race and my blood warm in a way that overwhelmed my
initial embarrassment.

It was much the same as when I’d first spied Lord Savage with the other woman in the
London garden, and I remembered how he’d told me that I must like to watch. I’d been
offended then, but now I merely wondered if he’d been right.

I’d come here to discover passion, hadn’t I? Perhaps looking at explicit pictures
like these were part of my discovery. Perhaps they were meant to be … inspiring. And
if the artwork affected Lord Savage in the same way, then it was no wonder that he
kept it here at Wrenton, where he came to participate in Lady Carleigh’s sensual games.

Yet, I forgot everything when Barry led me through the last door.

“His lordship wishes you to wait for him in here, Mrs. Hart,” Barry said. “Is there
anything else, ma’am?”

“No, Barry,” I said. “No.”

I could scarcely wait for the servant to leave. I was standing in Lord Savage’s bedroom,
and the excitement I felt was almost unbearable. Unlike the exotic, erotic clutter
of the sitting room, this was spare, even austere.

An enormous antique bed with elaborately carved posts dominated the room, the red
velvet coverlet, pillows, and canopy glowing by the light from the candles and the
fire in the hearth. Beneath my bare feet was an oriental carpet, thick and plush with
swirling patterns of crimson and blue.

There were no pictures on these walls. The room’s single ornament was the sweeping
view of the surrounding countryside visible through tall windows without curtains.
A single armchair near the window, two small tables flanking the bed, and a large,
framed dressing mirror were the only other pieces of furniture in the room.

I ran my fingers lightly over the velvet coverlet, trying to imagine Savage himself
lying against the piled pillows at the head of the bed. Before long, I wouldn’t have
to imagine, and a tremor of anticipation rippled through me.

Swiftly I drew my hand back as if it had been burned, curling it against my chest,
and retreated to the chair beside the window to compose myself. The view was lovely,
fields and ancient trees splashed by moonlight, and the dark blue skies overhead scattered
with stars. It could have been a warm evening at my house in Upstate New York rather
than here in—

“Are you stargazing, Eve?”

At the sound of Savage’s voice, I immediately twisted around in the chair to face
him. He was standing in the doorway to the bedroom, still dressed in his impeccable
formal clothes from dinner.

In the candlelight, he was all black and white, from his starkly white shirt and black
suit to his inky-black hair and the white teeth of his smile. It was more predatory
than humorous, that smile, and all that spared it from pure wolfishness were his pale
blue eyes with the thick, dark lashes.

He was such a striking, intoxicatingly male figure that all words and thoughts flew
from my head, and I could do nothing but stare at him.

“There’s no sin to looking at the stars, Eve,” he said. “Even a beggar may look at
a king, and the moon as well.”

Slowly he began to cross the room. He unfastened his tie, tugging it from beneath
the starched collar, and let it fall to the floor without a thought. He shrugged his
shoulders free of his coat and dropped that, too, followed by his white brocade waistcoat,
leaving a soft, costly trail of discarded black and white behind him on the carpet.

I made a gulping little laugh, so much like a nervous schoolgirl that I winced. “I’m
hardly a beggar, my lord. You know that. But the stars certainly are beautiful tonight.”

He stopped, and frowned.

“Oh, Eve,” he said softly, pulling the top pearl stud of his shirt to open the collar.
“You’ve forgotten again, haven’t you?”

“Forgotten?” I repeated uneasily, slipping from the chair to stand with my back to
the window. “What have I forgotten?”

“Who you are,” he said, sounding disappointed and almost sad. “Who I am.”

“Oh, that Game foolishness,” I said hurriedly, remembering now. “I didn’t think it
mattered when we were alone, my lord. I thought it was only for when we were downstairs,
with the others.”