The Dark Lady (11 page)

There was but one choice. And she would now take it.

She fingered her shift. There was no chance of going out thus. Even she knew she looked worse than a street urchin grown to adulthood.

Eva closed her eyes for a moment, wondering whether she was truly going to do this. She opened her eyes and walked to the bellpull by the small fire, purpose in her step. Freedom only moments away.

England
Three years earlier

L
ord Carin’s labored breath drifted through the room, a grim harbinger of death. Ian clenched his teeth, willing back tears. He wouldn’t cry. He’d been taught long ago that gentlemen didn’t allow such indulgence, but, God, it hurt so bad he felt certain his entire body might fracture under the pressure.

The man who’d become his father was but a shell of the big, larger-than-life lord who had shaped his destiny. The old man’s beard, now white, matched the transparent hue of his skin. Lord Carin’s eyes stared, vague from the laudanum poured down his throat to ease his suffering.

It had come on fast, this illness. Less than three weeks had passed since his decline had begun. And now his big body had wasted away, barely taking up any significant space of the ancient oak four-poster bed. The curtains were drawn, bathing them in darkness.

“Ian?” the old man rasped.

Ian swallowed in a deep breath, then crossed to kneel by the bed. They’d been warned Lord Carin would begin to call them in. To make his peace. He’d called Ian first.

The bed shifted slightly under Ian’s elbows as he leaned forward. “Lord Carin?”

The old lord turned his head, the slight move a painful effort. “You’re a good boy.”

Ian’s heart warmed at the kind words. It was all he’d longed for since his parents’ death, this man’s approval and love. And Eva, but she belonged to Hamilton. “Thank you, m’lord.”

Carin nodded slightly and reached out slowly, his swollen hand shaking. “Good boy, indeed. The son I wish . . .” Carin closed his eyes, his paper-thin lids twitching ever so slightly.

“Please, my lord,” Ian whispered. “Don’t trouble yourself. You’ve been a father to me. More than I—”

“It was a damned mistake,” the old man cut in abruptly. Ian stilled, his breath catching.

Lord Carin’s eyes snapped open and his gaze was hard as he glared at Ian. “I love you, boy, and it has been the greatest mistake of my life. Loving you.”

Ian shook his head, shocked. “Sir?”

“I—” Lord Carin drew in a gasping, haunting breath, as if one foot were already in the next world. “I have ruined Hamilton. Ruined him by loving you more.”

Ian couldn’t reply. The words hit him, hard slashes to his soul. How had he done such wrong? For, surely, this had to be his fault. This sudden censure. “I only wanted to please you.”

“And you did. You always had to be better than Hamilton. Always. And I c-couldn’t help admiring you.”

Ian’s hands pressed into the counterpane as the meaning of those words became clear. Was it true? Had he tried to come between father and son, not even realizing it?

“You’ve seen the man Hamilton is becoming. Shallow . . . unkind.”

Ian had seen it. The last months had been difficult, their friendship stretched after the incident with the horse.

Lord Carin glanced to the door. “Call in Eva.”

Ian hesitated, but then stood and went to the door. He peered out into the dark, quiet hall, where Hamilton, Thomas, Eva, and the doctor stood.

The awkward strangeness of it seemed to fill the large space, the four of them standing silently in the corridor, waiting, unsure. “Eva, he’s asking for you.”

Her face, always pale, shone nearly translucent in the low light and a track of tears glimmered on her cheeks. She nodded and moved forward. The swoosh of her skirts rustled through the booming silence. He waited for her to pass, then closed the door behind them.

She lingered for a moment on the edge of the room, but after a moment she fearlessly approached the bed and knelt. That peaceful beauty of hers lightened the room. Then she smiled, even through her sorrow. “My lord?”

“Darling girl.” Lord Carin breathed.

She caressed his arm, bent, and pressed a kiss to the top of his hand.

“Ian,” his lordship said, his voice still commanding despite its weakness.

Ian knelt beside Eva, careful not to crush her gown.

Lord Carin looked first at Eva, then at Ian. “I have loved you both well. You were the brightest, the best, outshining my own children—”

“My lord—” Eva began.

“No,” Lord Carin said roughly. “To my shame it’s true. I failed my sons. You two were so easy to love that I failed to labor for my sons. I gave you all my love and left them in the shadows and I cannot die in peace knowing what I have done to them.”

Eva frowned, her brow furrowing with distress. “I would not have you die so.”

“Then promise me something.” Lord Carin’s gaze burned with desperate fervor. “Both of you.”

Ian had never thought to shirk from anything Lord
Carin might ask, but suddenly he felt his future in the balance. Yet there was nothing he would not do. Not for the man who’d given him everything. “Whatever you wish.”

“Hamilton is going to India. Joined the Khyber Rifles.”

“Yes.” Ian knew this. Everyone did. Despite being the eldest son, Hamilton was to go two months after his wedding to Eva. It was largely hoped that service in such a prestigious corps would set him to rights. Lord Carin had pulled in many favors to buy his son’s commission in that hallowed group of men.

“I’ve arranged for you to go with him, Ian. An officer in your own right. And I want you to help him.” Lord Carin shifted on the bed, suddenly agitated. “You must. You must put your own pride aside. Help him become the man he was meant to be. Hamilton must . . . must find himself.” Lord Carin’s hand shot out, grabbing Ian’s. “Swear you will do all in your power to save him.”

Ian stared at the man who could have been his father and felt a roar of anger and helplessness charging up his throat. He swallowed it back. He owed this man so much. But more than that, he loved him. And if he had indeed stolen Hamilton’s place, the least he could do was help him now. “I promise.”

Lord Carin nodded, his body relaxing. “And you, sweet Eva? You will be a good wife to Hamilton. You will marry him, and shape him as only a good wife can?”

She paused for a moment, her gaze flying to Ian. But that resolved look didn’t linger. Her spine straightened. “I shall do my duty, my lord, and be the best of wives.”

Ian fought the burning urge to shout no. But Eva had been on this path her whole life. She’d made her choice, and no matter what he said, nothing would change that. Not even if he told her what had happened with the horse. She’d chosen her duty, and so he couldn’t tell her. Ever.

He wouldn’t ruin her marriage before it had even begun.

Lord Carin rested his head back on the pillow. Peace eased his features. “Thank you, my children. Now go. I love you both. And I am sorry that I have failed you. I never should have loved you above my own children. I should have loved you all equally. If I had, I would need not ask such things of you now.”

Ian looked down on Eva, her face smooth and unreadable as a statue. She didn’t love Hamilton. She couldn’t. Oh, she could never be his . . . But somewhere deep in his heart, Ian had always secretly hoped that a corner of her heart was just for him. Even if she had to do her duty, fulfilling a promise made long before to marry Hamilton.

Duty was a hard master.

And this promise made on a deathbed was even harder.

“Send in Hamilton and Thomas,” Lord Carin said on a sigh.

Eva rose, her skirts rustling. She left without a backward glance for Ian or for Lord Carin, but given the straightness of her spine, Ian knew, her heart wept for what she was losing: her father figure and her independence.

Ian stood for one long moment in the room, suddenly feeling as if his childhood was racing away from him, that all the days of summer were fast slipping away and that a very cold winter was about to sweep him up. But like Eva, he knew his duty and his duty he would obey.

England
The present

Mrs. Palmer stared down at the blank sheet of cream-colored parchment sitting next to a letter from Lord Thomas Carin warning her about the arrival of a cousin
who would insist on seeing Eva. The letter explicitly stated she was not to permit such a visit.

The foul note tainted her usually meticulous world.

She’d been outthought—outmaneuvered—by a bastard of a man who had led her a merry dance. She drew in a sharp breath, desperate not to let her calculations fall to baser emotion, emotion that would cloud her vengeance.

Her fingers inched toward the quill, half ready to write the necessary letter. A letter that would make her look an incompetent woman.

Rage, an emotion she’d known full well since she’d been a little girl, threatened to break free of its carefully built prison. That rage howled for blood and punishment at her humiliation.

She smoothed her fingers over the parchment, ensuring there were no wrinkles in its surface. Feeling the thickness of it soothed her for a moment, gave her purpose. She was going to hurt Eva Carin for this. She was going to make Eva pay in blood and flesh and terror for disturbing her carefully constructed world. And then she’d deal with the bastard who’d stolen her away. Perhaps there was a room here in the asylum she could find for him, until a hole could be dug out back with all the other holes that had been dug over the years.

It was a fantasy, of course.

Viscount Blake couldn’t be killed so easily. But Eva could. Her destruction was surely the best way to pay back the high-and-mighty lord who had so played her for the fool.

But first, she had to write the letter.

She jerked her hands back from the parchment and eyed the quill as if it were a mortal enemy.

It was almost impossible for her to admit, but she had made a mistake. A significant one, which was even more
infuriating because she did not make mistakes. She was an impassable gate through which lies could not slip.

Lord, she should be, for she was a prodigious liar herself. A creator of ephemeral and delicately spun half-truths to ease the minds of her clients who, though brutal, longed to believe they weren’t quite as inhuman as they indeed were.

Monsters, the lot of them. Men who ruined the lives of their women. But she had got the better of them. Finding a place of power over even the most powerful. Yes. She was untouchable. Or at least she had been, until the man who had come to collect Lady Eva Carin had sneaked under her gate. His lies had seemed like perfect truths to her well-trained ears, and now . . .

She ground her teeth down, her gaze blurring.

One hundred guineas seemed an insubstantial sum in the wake that had been left behind Eva Carin’s abduction.

Her very safety was threatened. The asylum was threatened. And she had not outlived her own brutal husband to be destroyed now by a laudanum-addled woman and her brave, but no doubt hypocritical, white knight.

There was nothing for it but to let loose her dogs. She shoved the blank parchment aside, not yet ready to set pen to paper and write Lord Carin that his ward was missing. Oh, no. Mrs. Palmer rose, heading for the door. That was something she could not yet confess.

There were other avenues she could first pursue, crueler, more permanent avenues, before she took that humbling step. And pursue them she would.

A
fter having sent Digby to buy a simple gown and a pair of traveling boots for Eva, Ian had tromped around in the muddy snow for an hour. It had taken that long in the insidious cold to ease his grating frustration and return to the inn. He was uncertain whether he would ever adapt to England’s climes again after being so long in India’s heat.

He clapped his frozen hands together, desperate to invigorate his blood flow.

The inn’s sign, a Viking helm, swung in the chill breeze. He headed toward it, easily avoiding the shouts and wavings of the Yorkshire hawkers. The local street vendors certainly could have learned a thing or two from the far more determined bazaar tenders of Calcutta.

After all, he’d yet to have something living shoved directly in his face.

Ian stopped a few feet before the entrance of the inn and stared up at the windows. Despite his frigid limbs, he didn’t go directly in, because something entirely foreign held him back.

Hesitation.

Seeing Eva consumed by the need for laudanum had nearly undone him. It was only going to grow worse. And he would have to watch, unable to do more than simply take care of her physical symptoms. For the longer she
went without drinking the stuff, the more she’d rail, until she was finally free of it.

He’d been hard with her today. But his dear Eva had not even seen the lengths he’d go to keep her safe, even if it was from herself.

Finally, a flower seller stepped in front of him, her tattered skirts sweeping against his leg. Her worn face became hopeful at his slowing. She thrust a bouquet of bedraggled white and red flowers before his face with her mittened fingers. “Blossoms, sir?”

No
played at his lips, but he gave pause. When was the last time Eva received flowers? He thought back to the filthy yard of the asylum. Eva deserved beauty in her life. Nodding to the seller, her lips blue with cold, he reached into his pocket. “I’ll take the lot.”

The woman, her gray bonnet bound about her head with a thick brown scarf, blinked at him. “Th-the lot, sir?”

He nodded and pulled two sovereigns out. The coins clinked as he put them in her gloved palm. “Here.”

A ridiculously brilliant smile pursed her chilled lips at so much money for a bunch of buds. The grin bared chipped and browning teeth. “Thank you. Thank you, gov.”