The Fifth Kiss (11 page)

The arrogant conceit of that last remark made her furious. “Perhaps not as much as you'd like to believe,” she retorted viciously.

“What?” An eyebrow rose sharply. “What do you mean?”

“Not everyone will be wailing, you know,” she went on, unable to control her tongue. “Your
son
will not be sorry to see you go.”

His eyes darkened, his jaw tensed, and she saw with cruel satisfaction that she'd made a hit. “Oh?” he asked, setting his glass down carefully. “Are you trying to suggest that there is some conflict between my son and me? I was not aware of it.”

“No, I don't suppose you were,” she taunted, turning to go.

“Just one moment, ma'am!” he commanded harshly, his voice stopping her in her tracks. “If you have something to say to the purpose,
say it
! I can't abide these womanish hints and innuendos.”

“Very well, my lord, since you ask so
nicely
. You have, with your usual sensitivity and tact, managed to disparage the boy's studies, uproot his routine, destroy his imaginary playmate, darken his good spirits, and threaten to force upon him a tutor and a course of study which are completely unnecessary and for which he is completely unready. In short, you've made him utterly miserable!”

He stared at her. “What sort of jibberish is this? Uprooted his routine? Darkened his spirits? Made him miserable? Have you lost your mind?”

“No, I've neither lost my mind nor my heart, both of which faculties I find no evidence of
your
having used in dealing with your son.”

Strickland clenched his teeth in fury. “By what
right
,” he demanded, his eyes turning icy, “do
you
venture an opinion about my dealings with my son?”

“No right, I suppose. Except that I love the boy.”

“What damnable presumption!” He fixed her with a look of frozen scorn. “And who are
you
, ma'am to wave your love for him in my face?”

“I'm his
aunt
!”

“And
I'm
his
father
!” His fury changed his icy glare to an angry, heated flash that seared her through. “
Love
!” he muttered mockingly, turning away in disdain. “You're merely using the word as an
exoneration
—a sentimental and mealy-mouthed excuse for interfering in matters that are not your concern!”

She felt herself waver against the force of his scorn. “Perhaps I
am
interfering where I shouldn't … but I've spent more time in Perry's company during these past few weeks than you've probably spent with him this past
year
! And therefore—”

“Confound you, woman, have done!” he burst out, wheeling around. “First you sermonize about my character as a
husband
and now as
a father
! Is there no
limit
to your effrontery?” He slammed his fist down on the table with such force that the glass toppled over, and the brandy seeped out on the papers and began slowly to drip down to the floor. “I don't need
you
to moralize about my conduct, ma'am! Do you hear me?”

“Yes, I do hear you,” she answered, a sudden awareness that he might be somewhat foxed making her strangely calm. “And so, I imagine, do the servants. Lower your voice, my lord. And stand aside, if you please. Let me mop up that brandy before it ruins the table and stains the rug.” She pushed him aside and, pulling a handkerchief from the bosom of her nightgown, began to wipe up the spill.

“
Hang
the table, and hang the rug!” He came up behind her and snatched the handkerchief from her hand, tossing the sopping square of lace-edged dimity across the room so precipitously that she gasped in surprise. Before she could recover, he seized a handful of her curls and, with cruel fingers, forced her head around so that she faced him. She gasped again, in shock and pain, finding herself staring up into his furiously burning eyes. “I want no help or advice from you on any matter—is that clear?” he demanded, spitting out each word with devastating precision.

But she couldn't answer him. She could neither move nor speak. His fingers held her hair in so tight a grip that the pain seemed to pull tears from the corners of her eyes. His arm was pushed against her back, inexorably forcing her body to twist around and fall against him.

“Is that
clear
?” he asked through clenched teeth, his eyes hotly angry and his mouth hard.

She made a frightened sound in her throat—a pleading little moan that begged him to let her go.

But he ignored it. “I hope you fully understand this, ma'am. I shall not permit any more of your blasted, infernal meddling,” he went on ferociously. “You are not to concern yourself with my life … or with the lives of the members of my family. Find yourself something else—something in your
own
life!—with which to concern yourself … instead of tampering with mine!” He glared down at her as if he would have liked to crush her in his hands. “Damnable spinsterish
busybody
!

She stared up at him dumbfounded, noting the fiery eyes, the taut mouth, the angry muscle working in his jaw. She could no more tear her eyes from his face than her head from his grasp. Yet she was no longer aware of the pain of her hair being pulled. She could feel only a pulse beating wildly in her neck, and a constriction in her throat as if her breath had frozen within. “Let me go,” she begged in a choked voice.

There was no sign that he'd heard her, although his eyes were fixed on her face with an almost unbearable intensity. His voice, harsh and threatening, lashed at her once more. “What you need,” he growled, “is a man—a husband—who'd beat you daily!
Daily
! Who'd bend you over his arm, like this, and who'd handle you as a wench
should
be handled—like this!” She found herself being lifted forcibly from the floor until her face was level with his … and his lips were pressed hard against hers.

How long she lay in his embrace she couldn't tell. Time seemed to freeze as her blood seemed to freeze. She felt no pain—only the pressure of his chest against hers, his arm against her back, his fingers twisting her hair, and his mouth on hers. She felt neither anger nor disgust. Instead, she seemed to be living through some sort of cataclysmic experience—like a driving storm or a tidal wave—which, while it filled her with the terror of imminent destruction, offered her also a sense of being completely, totally, shockingly alive. And she thought, wildly, as one does in a storm when surrounded by lightning and with the boom of thunder in the ears, that she would come through it—
if
she came through it—somehow
enlarged
.

All at once, the fingers in her hair loosened, and he let her go. As soon as her bare feet touched the floor, she fell back against the table, shuddering, stunned, and waiting for her whirling brain to steady itself. He was staring at her with eyes as dazed and shocked as hers. Then, muttering a curse under his breath, he swung himself around, turning his back on her. “Let that be a warning to you, girl,” he said hoarsely. “Stay away from me!”

“
W-Warning
?” she echoed stupidly, still shaken.

“Stay out of my affairs!”

She stared at his back while, all unaware, she rubbed the back of her hand over her mouth which seemed suddenly to have been spread with a burning and deadly poison. “Good
God
,” she thought in horror, “this is my
sister's husband
!” An overwhelming feeling of revulsion, which had somehow been kept at bay since the first moment he'd taken hold of her, came sweeping over her. “You …
blackguard
!” she whispered, appalled.

He turned to face her, lifting his hand in a gesture she couldn't read. He seemed about to say something, but changed his mind and walked unsteadily to the table, where he righted the glass, picked up the brandy decanter and poured out a generous drink. Leaning on the table with one hand, he lifted the glass with the other—unable to hide a slight tremor as he did so—and drank the brandy down in one gulp. “Go to bed,” he said quietly, not looking at her.

Without another word, she turned and ran to the door, her feelings churning inside her in chaotic confusion. Nevertheless, she was sharply aware that his eyes were on her. At the door, she turned and faced him again. “You
are
a blackguard,” she repeated in the same quietly horrified voice. “A decadent, villainous, devilish
monster
!”

Then she walked out, closing the door silently behind her. Standing alone in the hallway, she began to tremble from head to toe. There was no question in her mind that the words she'd just said to him were completely justified. He
was
a monster. Then why, she wondered, did she, herself, feel so dreadfully, frighteningly, sickeningly guilty?

chapter eight

Mrs. Joliffe tapped at Miss Olivia's bedroom door and, hearing a muffled “Come in” from within, entered briskly, threw open the draperies and said cheerfully, “Good mornin', Miss.”

The brilliance of the springtime sunshine that burst into the room and spilled across her pillows made Olivia wince. She sat up with a groan and shaded her eyes. “Is it very late, Mrs. Joliffe?” she mumbled sleepily.

“Almost ten, Miss Olivia,” the housekeeper answered with a touch of reproof.

“
Ten
? It
couldn't
be!” Olivia squinted at the housekeeper in disbelief.

Mrs. Joliffe smiled indulgently. “Everyone's breakfasted but you, Miss. Not that I'm complainin', mind. It won't be a bit o' trouble fer Cook to fix you some eggs and a nice pot o' tea. I wouldn't have waked you at all, except that it's been more'n two hours since his lordship left fer London—”

“His lordship's … gone?” Olivia felt a flush rise up her neck as the memory of the occurrences of the night before flooded into her consciousness.

“Afore eight this mornin',” Mrs. Joliffe said. “What with all that terrible business in London, he
had
t' go, y'see.
Terrible
business, that, wasn't it? An
assassination
! Never heard the like in all my days! But his lordship gave me this fer you afore he departed, an' I didn't know but what it might be important. I already waited more 'n two hours, and so I tho't I better wake you.” She held out a note.

Olivia felt herself grow pale. She took the note from Mrs. Joliffe and stared at it apprehensively. Most of her encounters with Strickland of late had been more than a little upsetting. What had the man in store for her
now
?

As Olivia peered worriedly at her name scrawled in a slanting hand across the envelope, Mrs. Joliffe remembered something else. “Oh, aye, I almost forgot. Here's your handkerchief, Miss.” She put her hand into her apron pocket and pulled out the freshly laundered square of cloth and lace.

The bewildered girl gaped at her. “My
handkerchief
?”

“Aye. Gaskin, his lordship's man, did it up for you this mornin'. I
told
him I'd do it with the reg'lar washin', but he said it was Lord Strickland's orders that he should do it at once.”

Olivia took it dazedly. “But, why?”

Mrs. Joliffe shrugged and went to the door. “Couldn't say, Miss Olivia. The ways o' gentleman ain't never been clear to me. Never been clear to me at all. Now, if you won't be needin' me, Miss, I'll be off to her ladyship.”

Still shaking her head over the strange ways of gentlemen, the housekeeper left the room. Olivia studied the handkerchief for a moment, thinking that the ways of gentlemen were strange to her, too—and then she put it aside. What an unfathomable person her brother-in-law was, to be sure. She turned her attention back to the note. Why had Strickland written to her? The letter must surely concern the scene they'd played the night before, but what could he wish to say about an incident which was best forgotten? Did the note have something to do with Perry? Would his lordship be so cruel as to order her to stay away from the boy? Or … had he written to her about … Something Else.

It was the Something Else which had kept her awake half the night, that had caused her to sleep in nightmarish fitfulness for a meagre few hours and that had made her awaken in sluggish thick-headedness, miserable and crushed with the weight of a barely explainable guilt. The Something Else was the most troublesome part of the entire occurrence in the library the night before. That Something Else was
not
the fact that her relationship with her sister's husband had gone from bad to worse (although she couldn't deny that the relationship was a problem); and it was
not
the battle that had been waged over differing viewpoints concerning Perry's happiness and best interests (although this was surely the most serious situation to have come up between Strickland and herself). No, the Something Else was a completely personal and probably trivial matter that she was ashamed even to
think
about: it was the fact that Strickland's kiss had upset her. The kiss had been the third she'd experienced, and it had overturned all her beliefs about love and passion—all the admittedly inconclusive theories she'd so carefully managed to accumulate.

The first kiss had been dull, the second mildly revolting … but
this
one had been nothing short of shattering. Were the sensations she'd felt during this third experience
typical
of the feelings which kisses inspire? Is
that
what kisses were
supposed
to do?

She rather doubted it. The experience had been too frighteningly intense. Nevertheless, there had been something profoundly exciting about it, and she'd realized at once that it was an experience she would want to seek again—a realization that had filled her with guilt. There was something decidedly improper about having been so stirred up by one's own
brother-in-law
.