Passion (3 page)

I am seated and he asks about the injury, I
inform him of it, detached, having repeated it many times by now.
The bandage comes off and I have enough hope left in me to pray
that I can see.

I cannot.

He probes and makes jests about my hair being
clipped. It is a wavy dark brown, and where I could once tie it
back, it has been cut to an inch. I respond, feeling the swelling
and stitching he is probing, feeling the dressing he replaces. He
tells me what I expect he will, that I could be blind forever, or
it could come back fully, partially.

I am asked questions, about my father, my
brother—Jules still inspires awe amid society I gather, and he
enquires if I have a place to stay. I have a house, so I tell him I
do. He calls another cab when we are done, and informs he will call
once a week, tend the wound, and check on my progress. He gives me
the name of a private house, a place where blind war veterans are
learning to navigate—to do all things blind, including ride. It is
run by the saint someone, sisters of mercy or whatnot, I bloody
cannot wait to attend, I think sarcastically.

My house—not as well addressed as my lofty
father and brother, is yet decent for a military man of rank.
Nevertheless, I suddenly did not want to exit the hack, knowing my
neighbors were military also and wishing to be spared the nightmare
of being led to the door…

A male comes to the hack and pays. His voice
was vaguely familiar.

The door opens and he takes my arm as I go to
step out. He says he is Ry, or Ryland, my cousin, who I do not
remember at the moment. As I enter the house, he is telling me he
has recently left the Army, and that my father sent for him since
he had not any set plans for his civilian life. I want to dislike
him but he is damned witty, a bit sarcastic, and he had released my
arm in the foyer, simply telling me where the stairs were, how many
steps. He informs me we are the same height and stride.

I make it upstairs. A young valet is waiting
to divest me of the uniform I will no longer don. My head throbs,
the salve on my lids does not keep my eyes from watering. I hear Ry
in the other room talking to me, but I am changed into trousers, a
linen shirt. I refuse a dressing gown.

Telling the lad to set me by the window, I
dismiss him after Ry brings me a brandy. I vaguely recall him now,
some summer he had visited and we had fished. I drink the brandy,
thinking of the Laudanum I will consume to sleep later. I am
listening to the street sounds, glad my cousin does not ask me
about the war, the wound, if I will ever see again. I figure he’s
father’s spy, but I do not really give a damn.

I can tell he is leaning against the
casement, listening to the sounds and watching the lamp lit street.
I think of the months I have been in hospital, probed, and prodded,
admonished by my superiors for refusing to resign the last time I
was wounded—knowing I should have. However, this has been my life
since I was old enough to know what I wanted to do.

I was not father. I sure as bloody hell was
not Jules. I did not much resemble my elegant, lean muscled
brother. Jules looked the Earl to his fingertips. He had that
aristocratic, high cheek boned face, the ice green eyes—the
personality to match them. I was six foot tall, too bloody
competitive in school and often in trouble for it. A scrapper, the
tutor called me. However, the head masters had not been so
indulgent. I was so used to being punished, deserving it. I did not
bother with an explanation.

The only time I had defied authority however,
was when a riding crop was employed to my back by a riding master.
I was sent down for it, but even that did not get the Duke’s
attention. The Duchess…Ah, yes, mother sent me to the vicar for an
additional beating, two nights of reciting scripture in the church,
and to my rooms without supper for three days. I did my penances
and went back to school. Age eventually took care of the
discipline, and a conversation with a history professor stirred my
interest in the military, and gave me direction.

I had light brown eyes and wavy dark brown
hair, and some of the most grueling work my first officers could
invent built my body from the bone out. They had mocked me, shunned
me the first year, and bloody dubbed me “lady LeClair” because of
my powerful father and lofty brother. I earned every drop of
respect I had gotten— and every promotion afterwards.

Finished with the drink, my cousin asked if I
wanted anything else. It was on the tip of my tongue to say yes. I
wanted a woman. I wanted to crawl between a set of warm thighs and
sink deep into a juicy sex, to purge my frustrations.

I was not ready for pity though. Not even
from a whore. I was not ready to find out if my cock would even
stand at attention. Trauma…that is what the surgeon said when I had
been caught cursing my flaccid flesh when one of the nurses had ran
her hand under my blankets.

I was not considered a lover beforehand. I
stuck to the whores, because the one woman I had had who was not,
called me a detached and cold bastard.

I was.

No, I said to cousin’s question. He started
to leave, but I heard him turning down the bed. He or the valet had
unpacked my bag. He cautioned me about the laudanum. I said
something but could hear him mixing it with water in the right
dose. He left.

I stood, fumbled around for my bag, managed
to get a cheroot lit, and seat myself again, without falling out of
the window. I smoked and mentally cursed. I had invented a few
since I discovered I could not see. I invented more after all the
well wishes, and pats on the back, from my superiors. I had a great
list of them now, knowing I would have Jules and the Duke on my
doorstep eventually. I did not dwell often on our years before
school took us away from Eastland Hall. When the Duchess died, I
was away from England, and left father and Jules to do what they
did best—pretend, for the ton.

I had not planned to ever leave the Navy. I
had not planned for this….the blindness, the end of my career, the
bloody likelihood that the Duke would now want to make a pretense
of fatherly affection. After all, I’d been listed as wounded in the
papers, and the men in hospital had read with great jesting the
long lines of my ancestry, of the Duke and Earl, and how I’d added
to the rich history of my noble family—(someone having dug up a
moldy old story of the Lombardi Duchess having a dead war hero in
the ranks) as if I’d joined and fought for that.

I made it to the bed and sat on the edge,
removed all but my trousers and drank the laudanum. Lying back on
the coverlet, I could hear my heartbeat, feel it in my eyes, like
spikes tapping the back of the socket.

When the drug went through my blood, I had
visions of myself dressed in formal clothing, all my medals pinned
obscenely on my lapels, being led around ballrooms by the Duke and
Jules, with my shaved head, wearing a bloody dressing. They were
saying repeatedly, my blind son, my blind brother. I was then
outside myself, watching as they led me to a nude beauty on a couch
and then they took away my clothing. There were hundreds of people
around as I crawled between her thighs…she was laughing.
Everyone... was laughing.

I was sick, appalled at my dream self, which
kept thrusting unresponsive flesh toward the woman. The laughter
grew to a roar. I could see my father and Jules dragging me off and
dressing me again, and they walked me out—every face wore
expressions of embarrassed pity. Poor blind man, they whispered,
poor impotent creature.

I awoke sweating. My heart was beating
louder, faster. I sat up, fumbled for the water left in the glass,
and drank it. Lying back, I wanted to rip the bandages off my eyes
and open them, but the salve had them shut.

My hands fisted. Suddenly, I surged up right
and reached for the bottle of laudanum.

A hand clamped on my wrist. I knew it was my
cousin and I roared every foul curse I could summon at him.

In the struggle, he took my hand and lifted
it then forced it to up to his face. I could feel him peeling
something back and then I knew I was touching a mass of scars.

When he dropped my hand, I sat on the side of
the bed, my hands over the bandages, head pounding with lust for
escape, for an end.

It was the beginning of a long night.

Among the demons and wraiths of the present
and the mocking, unknown future, was a strangely familiar and
wounding memory of boyhood needs—unspoken, unmet. I was aware in
the same distant way that Ry sat in the room and drank. The scent
of whiskey mingled with the scent of my sweat and the pungent smell
of the dressing over my eyes as it dampened with tears of
self-derision. I do not weep. I have never wept in my life.

Captain Blaise LeClair. Retired, Royal
Navy.

* * * *

I noticed Jules LeClair seemed—different—the
last I saw him. Sometimes I cannot take my eyes off him. He is
quite stunning for a male, that aristocratic face, long silken
black mane and ice-green eyes. Everything, his form, his height,
his movements, is perfection. Other times, I cannot quite decide if
I loathe him instead. I have known, the way one of high birth
always knows, that he observes me without seeming to.

I have likewise been aware of the
requirements, on the surface at least, to reach the status of
having the most powerful men of all ages want you for a wife. Many
things I learned as a child, but more after my father began taking
me out in society, short stints to show off my grace, charm, and
pretty manners. I was aware that my mother, Clara, loathed society,
and spent more time before her death at her seaside retreat with
her friends, than was ever spent under the roof with us.

I have strawberry blond hair, too curly for
my liking, although the maid does it up beautifully, and aqua blue
eyes—which I got from my father. I am barely five feet tall and
have an average figure, with a face some call appealing, although
it is a constant battle to keep freckles at bay. It is not my looks
though that attracts men like the, Earl of Stoneleigh, it is my
bloodlines and fortune—the fact that we have a few drops of royal
blood on my mother’s side. In a time where everyone scratches and
claws for the top, when connections are everything, and in a
society where power is envied, ‘tis an advantage.

I was taught not to express my opinions, to
obey rules, and that a high-ranking union, and a powerful husband,
was the golden ring—the pinnacle, of success. My past two seasons
have been enlightening, to say the least. As far as hypocrisy goes,
I have seldom seen more play-acting on the stage than is being done
at ton gatherings, and in the homes of the aristocracy. Of course,
one might say that my eyes have been opened, thanks to discovering
the root of my parents being strangers, and the fact that my father
had a young mistress and sired a daughter.

I have made a friend, a forbidden and
frowned-upon by some, young woman, named Harry (Lady Harriet
Brunswick.) I have no clue why I was drawn to so bohemian a
bluestocking, so shockingly independent a woman.

Harry, with her intelligent gray eyes and
cropped nut- brown hair, was the first woman I had ever encountered
who was independently wealthy at twenty and two, and impressively
educated, and brave—dear lord—she dares things that astound me.
Brought up by her widowed father and a succession of his lovers,
depending on where they lived—a diamond hunter she called him, who
took her around the world, and exposed her to other cultures and
lifestyles most only read about. She has, according to her own
admittance, taken on the task of broadening my mind as well as my
world.

She has certainly loaded me down with
numerous books and papers, which I have kept hidden. Exposing me to
physical sciences, philosophies, mathematics, and literary works
outside of those my “tutors” deemed fit for a young woman of my
status.

One can only deduce that she is so opposite
of me that I am fascinated by her. That, and the fact that she is
not in awe of me at all. She often laughs outright at me. She has
seen and done so much that she makes me feel ignorant. In fact, I
think that is why so many of the older women have a distaste of
her—for she makes us all look superficial and ignorant.

In any case, she helped dig up that old bit
of information about my father, and is doing the search for the
child this woman was supposed to have had. I have no notion what I
will do when she is found, but curiosity is eating me alive.

Time—yes, I am aware my hourglass is
draining. I sense that father is still pleased, full of pride at
the success I’ve had in society, at the invites I get to court (the
royals have taken to calling me cousin) and how so many of those
who matter say nothing but kind things of me.

I am, after all, a young woman, well trained.
We are all aware that two seasons are fine, but afterwards one
starts to count a woman’s single years and wonder. I would rather
not be wed to a man over forty, who I know will apply to my father
eventually. They lust for me as one does a virginal and pure woman,
something to plant their noble seed in. They would take my fortune
true, but their motives are clear in their eyes when they kiss my
hand, or dance with me. I do not know why that frightens me. To be
worshipped for one’s purity. However, it has something dark and
base under it, that though spoiled and treated well, I sense that I
would dread the begetting with them.

I think I must be daft to respond, at least
mentally the way I do to the Jules, also. It makes little sense to
me that I should care, since I have no say, and since I know well
what a ton marriage is. Yet I ask myself, is he as cold and perfect
as he looks? Is there anything behind the perfect beauty of him,
that flawless character? I don’t understand why I feel a kind of
loathing there too—for what woman in her right mind would not
simply be enthralled by his wealth, princely face, spotless rep,
his ancestors, bloodlines, or the sheer thought of catching his
notice?