The Dark Lady (14 page)

Her arm refused to move.

“Eva?” Ian shot to his feet and crossed to the tub. “What is it?”

“My neck.” She breathed out as she struggled to keep her head above water. The pain wrenched the whole right side of her. She couldn’t move. Only her legs and eyes seemed to obey her commands.

Instantly, Ian knelt down beside her. “May I touch you?”

A strangled sound of frustration gurgled from her. The complete gentleman. Of course he wouldn’t touch her after this morning. “Yes.” She panted, the pain so intense she could barely speak.

His strong hands hovered, then brushed her neck. Easily, he worked the pads of his rough fingers against the strained muscle.

More pain twisted her arm and she yelped. “Ian . . .”

“Wait a moment.”

Then he dug his thumbs into the mass of muscle and rubbed them about. Eva nearly slid down into the tub as her entire body relaxed. She let out a relieved sigh. Very carefully, she looked up at him, afraid that the muscle would seize up again. “How did you do that?”

“I learned many strange and useful things in India. No doubt you pulled something fighting off those bastards. Sometimes it takes a while for muscles to spasm when they’ve been injured.”

He crouched down by the tub, his hands still resting
on her shoulders, now massaging gently. “Eva, how did you learn what you did?”

She glanced away, focusing on the fire, watching it jump and cast light and shadow throughout the darkened room. Trying not to think about the delicious and reassuring warmth his touch created or the way his voice surrounded her and filled her up with a warmth she hadn’t known since they had been sure of each other and inseparable. Good Lord, just the deep timbre of his voice resonated with such painful pleasure she longed to drown in it. “Learn what?”

“How to fight like that?” His voice was full of hesitation, as if he might not truly wish to know how she had become this creature. Despite his wariness, he gently stroked his fingers up into her short hair.

They both had changed so much, their paths diverging wildly. All because of Hamilton. It was still nigh impossible for her to understand how it had happened. How she had had so little determination to disappoint her guardian. How Ian had left. The painful thought squeezed her heart and she gasped against it, masking it with a hollow little laugh.

He had to be able to see her entire body beneath the warm water. Unless he was staring fixedly at the ceiling. She should cover up. Or roll onto her side. But she didn’t. For some inexplicable reason it felt completely natural to bare herself to him.

He wanted to know what had happened to her. She pressed her fingers into the sides of the tub. He thought he wished to know. But what if he left her again when he learned how far she’d truly fallen? He’d left her once out of his sense of right and good.

Her nails raked the tub and she clenched her hands into fists, wishing she could make all the pain and doubt
disappear. While it was true that men had treated her foully, she could not ignore the need to open herself to someone. To finally not feel so terribly alone. But could Ian be that person?

“Eva?”

“Hmm?” She could trust him. Couldn’t she? Or had she lost her ability to share herself inside the asylum walls? She didn’t know. Perhaps trust had been lost, just as so many parts of herself had been lost.

“Fighting?”

She blinked, trying to gather her thoughts. “Yes.” She leaned her head back into his hands and gazed up into his bright green eyes. “If you must know, not all the girls are nice in a madhouse.”

A dry laugh rippled from Ian’s throat, though only grim understanding filled his malachite eyes. “I imagine not. Tell me more.”

Eva frowned, wondering whether she should. She’d kept so much to herself for so long. To her shock she began to speak quietly. “Matthew was bad enough. But the other patients—they were either severely medicated or had finally gone mad with imprisonment.”

She forced her eyes as wide as they would go. She didn’t wish to close them and see the wild, almost doglike faces of the girls who had fought for position just like animals in a pack. “Frequently, it was a struggle for blankets. Mrs. Palmer never had enough. Or for food. And, well, whatever was in demand went to the most ferocious.”

“And you were fierce,” he said simply, his gaze unwavering and without judgment.

She’d had to be or else she would be dead. But no, she’d not been that tough. Not when compared to the brutal girls who would beat and cajole others into their submission. “I was strong enough to be left alone.”

“And Mary?”

A sharp stab of grief grabbed at her heart. What had happened to her friend? Mrs. Palmer had promised she would not be killed . . . but that left a myriad of fates for her friend to endure. No doubt Mary would have been drugged and locked in a small, dark room, lost. “She taught me many things. She’d been there for two years before I got there.”

“Good God. How old is she?”

“Eighteen.”

“Why would anyone put such a young girl in the madhouse?”

At that, Eva laughed. She couldn’t stop herself. Strong, capable Ian was in many ways innocent to the evils of the world.

She’d been innocent once, too. Innocent to the ways of the willful who would use their power to control everyone around them. She shook her head, not knowing how to sweeten her answer. “Because of families. A family might place a girl in the madhouse because she was pregnant. Or there was a botched abortion. Because she wanted to make love to the stable boy. Because she would not marry the man her father insisted upon. Because she followed politics or wished for independence. Because she had too many emotions.”

Completely silent now, Ian continued to work his fingers at her muscles. She could feel his frustration through his hands. She found herself adding, “Or because she did something truly unforgivable.”

“Eva,” he said gently.

She tried to pull away. “No.” A faint vision of a little boy bouncing on chubby legs filled her vision. She sucked in a sharp breath. She’d perfected keeping such thoughts away. And now . . . even with the small dose of laudanum she’d just taken, she could not fight it off. “I shouldn’t have said anything.”

“Yes, you should.”

He didn’t understand. He couldn’t. She pulled away from him, water sluicing down her back. “I cling to my life by a small thread, Ian. Knowing what I’ve done . . .” Her mind struggled for a moment. ’Twas easy to recall the mud and the screams. But there was something else. She frowned, struggling to remember through the haze of years of laudanum, of so much pain and so many unpleasant memories. What couldn’t she recall?

She glanced down at the water, seeing her face reflected up at her. “I don’t know.”

“Don’t know what?”

She slapped her hand down on the smooth, glassy surface, eradicating her reflection. “I can’t, nor do I wish to, bare my soul at this particular moment.”

Slowly, he lifted pain-filled eyes back to hers. Compassionate eyes. “It’s true, you know.” His voice rumbled softly in the quiet. “What they say.”

She eased forward along the tub and placed her hand on the rim. “What do they say?” she asked, her own voice a mere rustle. Matching his. Desperate for any change in their doomed conversation.

“The air is full of spices.”

She stared at him blankly, wondering whether perhaps he was being a bit barmy, but then . . . spices!

India. He was telling her of India. She clung to the chance to think of anything else besides the past and its torments . . . and the dreadful anticipation of knowing such thoughts would indeed drive her to madness. “Tell me.”

“I loved the air in a way I never knew one could love it. Cardamom, curry of every kind, wonderful smoky or fruit teas waft through the bazaars and street markets.” As he crouched by the tub, his brow furrowed in concentration. Carefully, he lifted his hand and tentatively held it beside her face. “May I?”

He wanted to caress her cheek. She eyed his hand. Masculine hands were brutal, killing objects. Ian’s bore the external signs of a man who could destroy with them. They were rough, patched with a hundred lines, nicks, and healed cuts. But there was a gentle gracefulness to them, too, in the way his fingers curved and his palm beckoned to fit itself to her. Putting her misgivings aside, she nodded.

Ever so lightly, he grazed his thumb over her cheekbone, then cupped her chin in his hand. “And the color, Eva.” He breathed.

His free hand came to rest on hers. His skin was so much darker than her own pale shade. No doubt he’d gained such color from the months under the Indian sun. It should have terrified her, that touch. But it didn’t. Instead, his touch gave her a sort of liquid calm, stilling the room about her, allowing her to focus on him and him alone. “I’ve known so little color,” she murmured.

His fingers curled around hers. “Women wear the brightest hues you can imagine.” He knelt by the tub, his eyes growing vibrant. “And fabrics are hung high above head and at every possible spot.”

He painted a veritable picture with his words, transporting her. She listened but all the while marveled at how much she enjoyed the feel of his protective hands upon her. “And?”

“Flowers fill the markets, bright yellow and pink. They string them and hang them. The very sky is perfumed.”

Eva ached to see something so beautiful. Surely, there in the midst of so much color and beauty one couldn’t feel pain.

Then there was this moment with him. How could she feel suffering right now? Here with Ian, who had rescued her. To her surprise, she didn’t suffer. For the first time in
years, her heart ached not with pain, but with need. The need for the comforting and consuming embrace of another.

His soft touch, compounded by the warm water lapping at her skin, left her hungry with want. “Do you remember your promise?” She whispered as if the words weren’t even her own. “To kiss me one day if I asked?”

His breath hitched in his throat. “Eva, I don’t think . . . after what happened in the alley.”

“You promised.” She swallowed. All she desired was to wipe away the memories of evil men. Surely, Ian’s pure kiss would do that.

For a moment, he hesitated, and then there was nothing in the world but them.

Ian’s lips came down over hers so softly she was unsure he had kissed her in truth. It was strange, unlike anything she could remember. Gentle and giving. She leaned in toward him carefully and allowed her shoulder to rest against his chest. Her wet skin rubbed against his white linen shirt, plastering it to his hard muscles.

The heat of his mouth was hypnotic, drawing her in like the moon pulls the tide. Still, after several moments, she drew back. There was no danger to him, only gentleness, the flicker of hope, and the soft glow of affection.

Perhaps Ian could never quite erase the past for her. Perhaps even worse, he wished to pull it to the surface, but that look . . . that look—which seemed to see her as the most beautiful woman in the world—nearly undid her.

Eva smiled softly up at her rescuer, and for the first time in a great deal of time, she felt that there might just be a bit of joy in the world.

T
here was no question. Ian had flung himself onto the bonfire of sinners. But he was bloody well going to make the most of his burning. With just the barest caress of her lips, Eva drew him further and further into her beautiful, broken heart. It was impossible to explain the way he knew she belonged to him. She’d always belonged to him.

Despite the past.

Despite his betrayals.

“Kiss me again?” he murmured. He trailed his fingertips along her delicate jaw, tilting her head back, feeling as though they were still bonded in a kiss, though their lips were no longer touching.

Good Christ, he wanted her kiss, but he would take no more than she would give. A kiss could do no harm, could it? Not when they both needed comfort.

Her lips parted slightly as she contemplated his request. Even now, her skin was flushed, from the bath or from his presence it was impossible to tell. She drew in a soft breath and lifted her mouth to his. Sliding his hand into her shorn black hair, he savored the glorious feel of her mouth on his.

A harsh knock rapped the door, shaking it on its hinges. “Sir!”

They broke their embrace, but neither of them moved
away. Their faces lingered close together, sharing breath and the first blazing tendrils of terrifying passion. A passion forbidden to them by their loyalty to the dead.

“Sir!”

The moment broke and Eva pulled back, her face ashen.

Regret for the loss of her touch and for the growing horror on Eva’s face snaked through his gut. Ian snapped his gaze toward the door. “A moment!”

This was not supposed to be happening. He was not supposed to be kissing Hamilton’s widow. Not after . . . How could Eva ever trust him if he behaved in such a manner?

“Who is it?” Eva demanded, her voice brittle.

“Mrs. Marlock, I think.” Ian grabbed his coat and pulled it over his damp linen shirt. With one last glance at Eva in the bath, he made sure she was decently submerged. The warm water lapped at her chin, and only her wary face and dark hair showed over the edge of the tub.

Smiling with an assurance he didn’t feel, he tried to convince himself that this sudden desire for Eva humming through his veins did not bode disastrously ill. He cracked the door.

Mrs. Marlock stood, a gas lamp in her hand. Her wrinkled face seemed to float in the darkness, reflecting the fiery yellow. “Oh, sir,” she hissed. “I thought it only right to warn you.”

The familiar feeling of impending danger rammed through him, dispelling any illusion that they were safe. “Warn us?”

She glanced right to left and she stepped even closer. “My friend Mrs. Levler, she runs an inn just two streets over. Well, she came over a quarter of the hour ago all in a bother.”

Ian nodded, barely able to stand the collection of words it took the woman to impart a small bit of information. “What upset her?”

Mrs. Marlock’s lips pursed. “I never saw such doings, if you ask me, but you’ve been a gentleman despite the carryings-on. And you’ve contributed handsomely to me and my husband.”