Perilous Pleasures (14 page)

She met his eyes for the first time, those eyes as gray as thunderheads yet soft with a gentleness so at odds with the terrible thing he'd done. But what he said was true. He, too, must live his life now without any hope of love bound to a woman he loathed. Such was the final price this Dark Lord of his had exacted of him, and he had chosen to pay it.

Despite herself, she felt a surge of compassion for him. He was a titled lord. A man of wealth. He might have wed any woman who caught his fancy had that been his pleasure. And even if he'd only been a nobody like herself, with his good looks and powerful frame, he need not have settled for a woman with her ravaged features. What woman, no matter how beautiful, would have been able to resist those gold-flecked eyes of his, had they been turned on her filled with love?

And yet he had wed himself to her, with her ruined face and her charmless disposition. What could have possibly made him willing to sacrifice so much for whatever it was his dead teacher had offered him? But she made herself stop thinking like that. Why should she feel pity for
him
? Whatever his reasons for marrying her had been, he'd had a choice, while she'd been given none.

“You did a fearful thing,” she said. And it was true, for he'd made her wed him when he knew he didn't love her. But she couldn't bring herself to say those last words out loud.

“I did,” he agreed, “and I won't deny it. But I wasn't entirely selfish. I gave you something in return. Don't you remember? When I used the spell to make you want to wed me, I also pledged that I'd give my life to protect you and that I'd do all that I could to give you happiness. I'm a man who keeps his vows, Zoe, as you have good reason to know.”

Did
she remember? Vague rustlings in her mind, like mice in the wainscoting. In her mind's eye rose the image of his face lifted to hers in supplication. Was
that
what he'd told her, that he would give his life to protect her? Was that what had made her yield?

It was.
She fought back tears as the full memory of what had happened came flooding back to her. He
had
sworn he would protect her. She remembered his voice, now, low and resonant, pleading with her to have him. She remembered the joy that had filled her as he'd vowed he would give his life to keep her safe. Oh yes. That was the magic he had worked on her—to find her weakest point and offer her what she'd never had before. Protection. Care.

The thought was too painful to be borne.

She didn't need protection. She'd done just fine with no one's care. She'd taken good care of herself until now and she'd go on doing it. She needed no one—not her careless mother or her father, the duke, who had refused to visit the daughter he'd abandoned, even once.

She twisted away from Ramsay, pulling her body as far from his as was possible within the confines of the cramped post chaise. She grabbed her undamaged thigh, clinging to herself for comfort, feeling the flesh sting as she compressed it through the rough fabric of her gown.

Ramsay drew a sharp breath. Then, oh so gently, he covered her hand with his much larger one and stroked it tenderly, as if trying to enchant away its rigidity. A current began to flow between them as he touched her. Much as she wanted to tear her hand from his, she could not. He'd made her his. He'd made her
want
to be his. His magic was too strong. It was too late.

Finally, he spoke. “Give me a chance. If you truly can't bear to stay wed to me, in a year and a day I'll send you away with whatever reward you will accept from me. I won't keep you with me against your will.”

She couldn't reply. All her attention was still concentrated on the waves of longing that rose from where his fingertips had touched her. She forced herself to shake her head no. She must not give in.

The look of sadness that swept over his features at her rejection made it even harder to remember why she must not stay with him. He sighed, and his eyelids dropped. Then he said, “If you really can't bear it, our marriage can still be undone. It wasn't consummated. Whatever my sins might be, I didn't force myself on you.”

She thought of the unspotted sheet. He told the truth. But she couldn't praise him for that, not when he made it so difficult for her to resist his haunted eyes.

“You cut into my body without my knowledge,” she said harshly. “Why
didn't
you take me in the same way and make it impossible for me to leave you? Or did you secretly hope that I
would
leave when I learned what you had done, so that you could have the credit of fulfilling the Dark Lord's wish without the burden of a life spent married to Isabelle's daughter. Yes. That must be it. Had you really wished to marry me, you would have consummated our union while still I was under your spell.”

His long, strong fingers tightened against hers. “I don't want our marriage to be undone, and not just because of the Dark Lord's wish. I felt no regret when I bound myself to you. Far from it. I wed you gladly. Whoever bore you, you are nobody but yourself. Your honesty and courage make you the equal of any woman in the realm. But surely you know me well enough by now to know that I wouldn't take your maidenhead by force, even if it meant losing you. I pledged to make you happy and I will keep that pledge.”

He turned away and stared morosely out of the dust-streaked window of the chaise for a moment, thinking. Then, after taking a deep breath, he said, “If you can't be happy as my wife, I'll set you free, no matter what it might cost me.
Is
that what you want?”

Now it was his turn to wait expectantly for her answer. And now it was she who couldn't speak. Surely there was but one course open to her now—to take the freedom he'd just offered her and ask him to annul their marriage. Then she could return to London. She need never see him again, never fear that his probing glances would uncover the shameful longings she felt for him.

But her treacherous memory repeated the words he'd just told her.
He'd felt no regret in binding himself to her. He'd wed her gladly.
How she wanted to believe these were words of love. How deluded she would be were she to do so.

It
must
be his spell that made her want to cling to him, as her body tingled with the yearnings his gentle fingers were awakening as he stroked her hand so innocently. It must be the spell that whispered that what he'd offered was enough—that she must rejoice in whatever he could give her. What else could it be? She was a practical woman, a courtesan's daughter. She knew better than to let herself believe in love.

But even so, she wanted to be his wife
.
Without love. Without any hope of it. Not with her mind, which fluttered weakly like a bird shot in midflight, but with her soul that he'd entangled in his spell. She couldn't break it.

She cleared her throat. He swiveled toward her, his attention utterly focused on whether she would take the freedom he'd just offered.

If only she could spend the rest of her life gazing up at his beautiful, ascetic face that made such a contrast to his muscular frame. It took everything she had not to seek the shelter of his arms or fall sobbing against his broad chest and give in to him. But if she did, she would live out the rest of her life in agony. He couldn't love her.

“How
can
I choose,” she answered, “when you've made me want you so, with your enchantment?”

His face tightened. “You're right. I won't press you for a decision.” He released her hand. “Just promise me that you won't try to run away from me again. If you want your freedom, tell me and I'll grant it. You must never again put yourself in peril because of me.”

“And if I don't want my freedom?” she said, hearing her own voice echo within the closeness of the carriage. “If I would remain your wife? What then?” Her voice trailed off.

His eyes lit up. “Then I'll accept your sacrifice with gratitude.”

“My sacrifice? In wedding you?” She stared at him. He
was
mad. “It's no sacrifice for me to remain your wife. Just think, my mother will be over the moon. She'd have been delighted had I merely become some nobleman's toy. Can you imagine her joy on learning I have become my Lady Ramsay? She will insist that you address her as
belle-mère.
”

He froze. His sharp intake of breath sounded through the confines of the post chaise. She'd done what she had to and reminded him of the price he'd pay for her capitulation. She should rejoice that it had worked and that he no longer gazed at her with the warm look of love that had so tormented her.

But somehow, she could not.

Chapter 10

W
hen they stopped at the next inn to change horses, Ramsay asked Zoe politely if she'd dine with him. But she'd had time to recover some of her composure in the intervening hours and wasn't impressed by his civility. If he thought he could convince her to give him the rest of her life in return for a few sweet words, he'd soon learn of his mistake.

The innkeeper led them to the sparsely furnished private chamber, where they would dine. They seated themselves facing each other across the small square table that stood against one wall of the small room, and a waiter brought in a platter of meat, some crusty bread, and newly churned butter. No sooner had he left them alone than Zoe broke off a large piece of the bread and busied herself with tearing it into the smaller portions that befit a lady—until she recalled that she hadn't chosen to become Lady Ramsay and seized a large piece and stuffed it into her mouth.

Lord Ramsay's eyebrows rose. She regretted their situation was not more public so that her bad manners could further embarrass him. She attempted to tell him this, but her attempt to talk while chewing made her choke and cough. When at last she was able to speak again, she snarled, “You see, I'm not a fine lady!”

“I never imagined you were. But what has that to do with anything?”

“Because you made me your wife. Your lady wife. Surely you can see how wrong it was.”

“Why? Because you chose just now to chew your bread like a cow with a particularly choice tussock of grass?” He smiled. “I've observed you enough over this past week to know you have excellent manners when you choose to use them. Mrs. Endicott did her work well.”

She contemplated what was left of the chunk of bread before tossing it back onto the platter, feeling something of a fool. What had she meant to prove with that gesture?

“I see no reason why you won't make me a fine wife,” he continued quietly. “You are, as you have told me more than once, supremely practical. You won't demand that I behave like a lovelorn lad. You won't look askance at my medical studies. And since you move in no social circle, I shan't have to waste my time attending frivolous social occasions, but can get on with what truly is valuable in life—”

“Which is?” She interrupted his cold-blooded recitation.

“—using my powers to help those in need.”

She took a deep breath. Could he really expect her to stay married to him when he made it so clear how little he valued her? “What compelling arguments you make. I would seem, indeed, to be the perfect wife for you. Invisible, unloved, and a social outcast. I'm astonished you didn't add to the list of my virtues that I may die in childbed after giving you an heir, so that you needn't be troubled with a wife at all.”

“Surely you don't think I would wish such a thing?” The shock in his eyes was real.

“No, I suppose not. It would reflect badly on your skills as a healer.”

He sighed. “I would never wish you dead, Zoe. And not just for reasons of pride.”

“Surely not for reasons of love. You've just assured me that it is because you need feel nothing for me that I would make you a perfect wife.”

“I didn't think you'd want to hear words of love from me.”

“Of course not.” She shrugged. “Who knows better how unlikely it would be to find love in marriage than a harlot's child?”

“Don't refer to yourself like that!”

“Why, because it makes you remember who it is your teacher bid you wed? Your loathing of me adds luster to the fealty you've shown to him. You may take pleasure in that.”

“I don't loathe you,” he said quietly. “Do you loathe
me
, Zoe?”

In the silence that followed his question, he took a bite of meat off his knife. The roughness of the gesture fit well with his homespun dress and flowing hair. How little of the elegance he'd displayed in her mother's drawing room remained now that he'd returned to Scotland. The image rose up in her mind of how he'd looked when he'd returned from tending the cottar's child with the blood dried on his sleeves. Perhaps he didn't want a lady wife after all.

“I asked you, do you loathe me?” His tone was more insistent this time.

She couldn't answer. She wished she could tell him she did, for she ought to loathe him. He'd kidnapped her from her mother to take her to some barbaric island where even he didn't know what her fate would be. He'd tricked her into marriage. But the way he was watching her now, his gray eyes soft, warm, and lustrous like the feathers on a dove's breast, made it impossible. She'd never been able to lie. It was yet another of the reasons why her mother had despaired of her future.

Frustration welled up in her. “I don't know
what
I feel for you.”

A
dam's heart sank. What had he been thinking when he'd made her wed him? How could he have ever expected her to think she could find happiness with him? She couldn't stand the idea of staying with him. He must let her go.

He was about to reply when a horn blared out on the road leading to the inn. It must be the mail coach announcing its arrival. Without thinking, he reached into his pocket to consult the time. As he pulled out his watch, a look of confusion washed over Zoe's features, which only the moment before had been filled with haughty rejection, and almost at once her look of disturbed dismay was replaced by one of yearning—a pained yearning, as if she was expecting to be slapped.

He looked around the parlor, wondering what could have further perturbed her, but saw nothing. Then his eye followed hers to the golden disc of his watch.
Of course.
He'd made it trigger her desire to be his bride. He jammed the watch back into its pocket. But it was too late. The damage had already been done.

Her deep brown eyes were no longer filled with yearning, but reproach. “What did you do to me?” Her voice was strained.

He could barely answer. “You have every right to hate me.”

“Oh, but I
don't
hate you. As well you know. You made
that
impossible with your spell. I wish I could hate you, oh my husband. Hatred I could bear. Hatred would be easy compared to this!”

He made no reply, letting her anger rain down on him as he deserved.

“You've meddled with my soul. I have no choice but to love you.” She pounded her fist on the wooden tabletop. “You must remove the spell. The feelings you've forced on me are unbearable.”

“You can't bear to love me?”

“I cannot.”

Her words cut him to the quick. Yet they confused him. She spoke of love, but love had played no part in the spell. He hadn't asked for it; he hadn't expected it. Indeed, it hadn't occurred to him that she need love him at all. He'd only made her want to marry him, so she would agree to become his wife and dwell with him for the year and a day the Ancient Ones had decreed would somehow give him his Final Teaching,

But still, when she'd stated so baldly that she couldn't bear to love him, the pain that shot through him had been almost unbearable.

He reached across the narrow table and took her face between his palms, turning it gently toward his own. “Why can't you bear to love me, Zoe? Am I that difficult to love?”

She twisted her face out of his grip. “Difficult to love? You?”

He let his arms drop. “Of course you can feel nothing but contempt for me, given the circumstances under which we met. And even if I hadn't been such a brute to you, since my sister's death I've lost the art of being gracious. I've forgotten how to talk to a woman. No woman could love the man I've become since Charlotte died.”

She twisted away from him. “You don't understand. It doesn't matter how you treat me. With the spell you've put me under, I would love you if you were Bluebeard himself with a string of murdered wives. You're too
easy
for me to love. It's
that
which torments me.”

He studied her face as he would an ancient inscription, as if the anxious tilt of her brows was the key that would let him translate its hieroglyphics and show him his fate. But the secret that would make all clear was hidden from him. He couldn't understand her. “If I'm not repugnant to you, why is it so upsetting to feel love for me?” he asked quietly.

“Surely you must know!”

“But I don't.”

“Because your magic makes me want to cling to you and gaze into your eyes like a schoolgirl in love with the hero of a great battle.”

“But I've married you, so why is that so terrible?”

“Because you don't love me,” she whispered. “And
I
don't have the magic to change that.”

He stopped, confounded. Truly the Dragon's Cave would have been easier than this.

But this was the labyrinth he must tread, and he must tread it carefully or lose all. He could feel her deep brown eyes drilling through him, awaiting his reply. At last he said, “Would it be different if I were to love you, too?”

Their eyes met across the table. He felt the jolt he always felt when they connected. Then she turned away.

“I don't know. It doesn't matter. You
don't
love me. You never will. You enchanted me only to serve your teacher.”

“That isn't true.”

“Surely you won't pretend you did it for love?”

What could he say? He
had
married her at the Dark Lord's command, but it was a command he'd been all too willing to fulfill, for he had wanted her—he'd been consumed by his wanting of her—and was consumed by it still. And not just because of the way her tall, slim body felt crushed against his own—though he wanted that more than he could let himself admit. There was so much else he wanted from her, too: to bathe himself in the comfort she could give him, to follow it to its source and exult in that jolt he felt every time their eyes met, to merge himself in her and find in her cool and practical strength the balance to his own intemperate imagination.

But was that wanting love? He didn't know. The only love he'd ever known was for his sister, Charlotte. Whom he would be betraying if he spoke words of love to his new bride.

He bit his lip, unable to speak the words that filled his heart. But he must say something. Hesitantly, he forced out the words. “Forgive me, Zoe. What I did was wrong, but I was telling the truth when I vowed I would give you happiness.”

“Then remove the spell!” As she slammed her fist on the table, the crockery clattered. “How can I ever be happy when I don't have command of my own heart? You must remove it!”

He breathed out slowly. There was no alternative.

A
s Ramsay stood and stepped away from her, relief swept over Zoe. It had been so hard not to throw her arms around him and clasp him to her breast when he sat so close, when the sweet smell of his breath intoxicated her, when she felt herself go limp inside, hearing the pleading in his melodious voice, when the softness of his lips, so tantalizingly close, beckoned like the gate to faerie land.

But she'd found the strength to resist, and make him understand, at last, the wrongness of what he'd done. Now he'd free her from the unbearable desire that filled her and from her yearning to remain his wife.

He paced away from her, then turned and stretched out his arms in a gesture of invocation. His homespun sleeves fell back, revealing the blue serpents that twined around his forearms, their bodies forming that elaborate braid. Seeing them, Zoe felt as she had when he'd shown her the ancient knife—and knew herself to be in the presence of something ancient and not entirely benign.

She stood, as if in homage to it. His eyes met hers. Golden flecks sparkled within their grayness like rough jewels embedded in granite. Power was building up within him. The power that let him do his magic. She called out to him, “When you enchant me, give me one last wish, as magicians do in fairy tales.”

“What would you have me do?”

“Make me beautiful. Can you do that with your magic?”

“You are already beautiful to me. Your soul is radiant.”

“Don't lie to me. I know what I am.” She gestured toward her ruined face.

“I, too, know what you are,” he said softly. “And I am helpless before its power.”

He reached her with three long strides. As he pulled her to him, his long hair brushed her cheek. His arms drew her close, locking her inside the circle of his serpent-wreathed embrace. His lips came down on hers, strong and demanding. His tongue thrust against the softness of her mouth, filling her with intolerable longing. She wondered if he'd claim her then and there and make their bodies one. And she knew that if he were to do so, she wouldn't stop him.

She wanted him. She wanted the life she felt pulsing in his lips and the strength that coursed through his arms. The blood pounding in her loins clamored for their joining. As he pulled her close, invisible serpents rose within her spine to meet his, ancient and implacable. It was only the spell, she knew it, but it didn't matter. Nothing mattered now but him and the union that would make them one.

But after a moment of unbearable sweetness, he let his arms drop and freed her from his embrace. “You need no magic to make you beautiful, nor to make me want you beyond bearing.”

She gasped. “Are you enchanted, too?”

He nodded. “It is said that a spell misused will rebound on the one who worked it. Perhaps that is the explanation. Or perhaps you have a magic all your own.”

As he stepped away from her, the air pulsed between them. With every new inch that separated them, she felt her need for him more strongly. Too strongly. She was mad to let herself love him this much, knowing he could never truly love her. If she gave in to the passion that possessed her now, she would find herself trapped in a marriage that could never satisfy her.