The Firebrand (32 page)

How could she be so foolish? She used to believe in the value of pure honesty, yet here she was, a willing partner in a dishonest marriage. Telling herself it was for Maggie's sake did little to help, particularly at this moment. Flustered, she took a deep drink of champagne. He watched her with an expression she couldn't quite read. His intense regard caused a phantom warmth to rush over her skin.

"It's absolutely delicious," she said.

"Is it?" He moved in close, then hesitated as if he might change his mind.

She didn't want him to. His proximity heightened the pleasure of the champagne. "Yes," she whispered.

"Let me taste." He took the glass from her. Totally unprepared, Lucy felt liquid slosh over the rim as he set the flute aside. Bending low, he kissed her, his tongue searching for the flavor of the champagne she had just drunk.

Lucy gave a small, involuntary moan, giddy with a surge of wicked sensuality.

He lifted his mouth from hers and she instantly felt bereft. He had some uncanny power over her, forcing her into an unwinnable war between desire and reason. There was so much she wanted from him, but she knew the price would

be her free will.

"You're right," he said. "It's delicious." He handed her the glass again, and drank from his own. He seemed perfectly calm, but she could see the pulse leaping in his neck. Perhaps Grace was right after all, and he was not so self-possessed as he seemed.

Trying to regain some sort of balance, she glanced at the bottle. The label read Sire de Gaucourt Grand Cuvee, 1870. Lucy gasped. "This is it, isn't it?" she asked.

"This is what?"

"The rare champagne you bought when Maggie was born. The one you drink on each of her birthdays." What had this day been like for him, six years ago? she wondered. Had he paced the halls, wrung his hands, stayed up all night listening for the sound of a newborn infant's cry? Had he held the baby while his heart filled up with love? Had he kissed his wife and told her he was proud of her, that he loved her?

He picked up the bottle. "You can't imagine what I'm feeling right now, Lucy." The way he stared at her as he spoke made her whole body tingle. "I cannot,"

she admitted. "Why don't you tell me."

"I'm not used to this," he said with rough-voiced candor. "I've grown accustomed to being alone."

"As have I," she said. She understood all the things he would not say—he wasn't used to closeness, to having a daughter who adored him, to having a wife again. Discomfited, she lifted her glass. "Here's to you. You'll drink this on your daughter's wedding day after all—"

He didn't give her time to finish, but took away her glass and kissed her again, hard, pulling her up against him so that she felt his shape against her thighs. He was impulsive, aggressive, yet curiously unsure of himself, and for some reason that complicated her feelings for him. She had the sensation of drowning in some viscous substance—honey, perhaps—and a sudden panic shot through her. She was sinking, disappearing, turning into a slave to this man.

Pushing her hands against his chest, she leaned back and studied his face, the scarred cheek and the trim moustache, the eyes with their unknowable depths.

"Is something the matter?" he asked.

"I have no idea." She moved away and tried to organize her scattered thoughts. The moment of connection had disturbed her deeply, and she didn't like feeling so vulnerable. To distract him, she asked, "Did you have something to do with Sarah Boggs's husband being sent to work camp?"

"He was owing on some debts," Rand said. "He was sent up for failure to pay."

"I see." She clung to a familiar thread of righteous resentment. "So a man may beat his wife and walk free, but when he defaults on a loan, he's a criminal."

"You said he was a menace to his wife." With a sharp movement, Rand tossed

back his champagne. "I merely found an expedient way to separate him from her."

"I'm sure that's appreciated," she said grudgingly, "but it only helps on& woman. Liberalizing the divorce laws wouk* help ten thousand women like Sarah Boggs."

"And ten thousand who are nothing like her," he said, his voice taking on the chilly, quiet tones of suppressed anger. He poured himself more champagne and took a drink. She felt both his anger and his desire rippling over her.

Lucy stepped back, wanting to scream in frustration. Her body hungered for this man with a need that burned hke wildfire, but he had the politics of a troglodyte. "We can't seem to have a single conversation that doesn't turn into a quarrel," she said.

He stepped closer, and dear Lord, he smelled like heaven, of the summer air and champagne and...just him. "Then we probably shouldn't talk at all."

It took every shred of her willpower to duck down and step away before he could pull her against him. "I can't do this," she whispered, wanting him so badly she shook with it. "It's not right. We'd be no better than animals, ruled by blind instinct rather than a true meeting of the heart and soul."

"Blind instinct is agreeable to me." "Well, not to me."

"Then what is it your heart and soul need?"

She ignored his sarcasm. "I suppose you could start by telling me about your mother."

A flash of fury banished the passion from his gaze and his fist tightened on the champagne flute. "You've been gossiping with my grandmother, then."

"Not gossiping. She was trying to help me understand why you're so bitter, so rigid in your opinions about a woman's place."

He finished his second glass of champagne and set it down too hard on the table. The delicate stem snapped, and Lucy winced at the sound. Rand scowled down at his cut hand, then negligently wrapped a handkerchief around it. "She had no idea of commitment, of permanence, of obedience—"

"Obedience," Lucy said. "She was a woman, not a hunting dog."

"She left like a prize bitch abandoning her litter," he shot back. "A woman who becomes a mother is bound by every law of man and nature to serve her family."

"It's frightening," Lucy whispered, "how much you oppose freedom for women. Will you oppose it for your daughter one day, too?"

"I'll raise Maggie to accept herself as a woman rather than try to imitate a man," he said, unwinding the handkerchief to check the cut. "What is it you find so fascinating about a man, Lucy, that you aspire to be one?"

"I aspire to equality," she said.

"You want equality?" he demanded. "Fine, then I can give you equality." He took a fat cigar from the inner pocket of his waistcoat. "You should learn to smoke. All men do."

"I choose not to adopt your bad habits." Watching him rewrap his cut hand, she was reminded of a wild, wounded animal that would attack even someone trying to help. She amazed herself by wanting to help. He was angry, intractable and insulting. He showed no comprehension of her needs, her desires. His manhandling had the most peculiar, unsettling effect on her, and her reluctant fascination was growing harder and harder to deny.

She forced herself to meet his challenging stare, but when she saw the anger burning in his eyes, she did something she rarely resorted to. She retreated from the argument.

"Thank you for the champagne," she said, then turned and hurried out of the room.

"I did it, Papa," Maggie called, seated proudly in her pony cart. "I drove Roy all the way down to the esplanade and back, all by myself."

Rand beamed at her. "You're an expert driver already. Bring him 'round to the carriage house, now, and we'll give him some water and a rest."

She clucked at the pony and concentrated on guiding him to the head of the drive, where Rand waited. It was a perfect Saturday afternoon of sailing clouds and dazzling sunshine, the lake a shifting, crystal mirror of the summer sky. Maggie helped him put up the pony and cart, laughing as Roy dipped his muzzle into the watering trough.

As they worked, Rand watched Ivan and Silky from the corner of his eye. The dog lolled on the lawn, seemingly unaware of the cat slinking toward him through the shadows. The sneaky feline had lost all fear of her nemesis. She crouched, her emerald eyes held in a trance by the mastiffs swishing tail. Then she pounced, sinking her claws into the tail.

Ivan leaped up and spun around in a clumsy counterattack. Rand noted that the dog took soft-mouthed care not to injure the cat, even when she batted at his nose and sidled away, far enough to be out of reach but close enough to hold his interest.

"I want to ride my bicycle now," Maggie announced. "I want you to ride with me."

Rand scowled. He'd been dreading the request. Maggie had wheedled him into

borrowing a large bicycle from Dylan Kennedy, and he had made a few attempts on it, but he regarded the contraption as a bone-crushing menace.

"Maybe another time," he said.

"Now!" She grabbed his hand and sank to her knees. "Please, Papa. Mama's busy with her old march, and you were so busy at the bank this week, you didn't play with me
one time."

"How about a game of catch?" "Bicycles," she said. "Please."

He knew there was no point in arguing. Maggie could be as intractable as her mother when it came to getting her way. The fact was, he'd idly promised Maggie he would learn to ride, and he'd run out of excuses.

"Only for you," he muttered. "Hurrah!"

Within minutes, Maggie was rolling happily along the broad pathway while Rand stood holding his machine by the tiller-bar, regarding it like a matador with a mad bull. "Get on get on get on!" Maggie yelled.

Gritting his teeth, he rolled the cycle forward, resting one foot on the mounting-peg and propelling himself along with the other, but he resisted getting on.

"Swing your leg over," Maggie called, turning and gliding back toward him. "It's easy. Mama says it's easier than mounting a horse."

"Mama says, Mama says," he grumbled. But the thought of Lucy provoked him into swinging his other leg up and over the saddle. He promptly fell off on the other side, banging his elbow on the hard ground. A strolling couple at the lakeside paused to watch.

Maggie rode in a wide circle, roaring with laughter. "Try again, Papa. Try hard!"

On the third humiliating attempt, he landed on the skinny seat. He was drenched in sweat and out of patience, but Maggie was so thrilled that he forced himself to press at the pedals. Every wobble and movement of the cycle went against all nature and instinct. When the thing leaned one way, he wanted to steer the wheel in the opposite direction, but each time, it resulted in a spill. Only his laughing daughter prevented him from wheeling the contraption down to the lake and pitching it to the depths.

He managed a few wavering rotations of the wheel, but had no control over his direction. "Faster, Papa, it's easier if you turn fast," Maggie advised.

He discovered that he had no choice. He had to speed up, or topple. As he rode boldly forward, he was glad Maggie was out of earshot, for he had nothing good to say about wheeled contraptions, staring pedestrians, hot summer days or women who bought bicycles for their daughters.

"Look at you, Papa," Maggie said. "You're riding! You're riding fast!"

He was. Somehow, he had gained his balance and was actually rolling along at a good clip. Even the merest pebble or rise in the terrain intimidated him, but before long he learned to control the steering. He found a smooth rhythm, and laughed aloud with his success. Now he understood the appeal of this bizarre sport. It felt like flying.

"All the way to the end of the lane," Maggie directed, rolling past him. "Let's dismount on the grass there."

"I'm an expert at dismounting," he assured her, and demonstrated with a loud crash. Maggie followed suit and tumbled across the grass to him in a fit of giggles.

As he watched his little girl, dappled by sunshine as she lay in the soft grass, he felt himself approaching that shining state of happiness that had always eluded him. This was the way things should be, he reflected. There was only one thing missing from the picture. But Lucy wasn't likely to join them, not after their spat on Maggie's birthday. He'd been on fire for her that night. He'd dared to touch and kiss her with the seductive command that had been so easy for him before the fire. The moment hadn't lasted. His wife's quicksilver temper and his own stony reserve had doused the brief passinn.

"You did wonderfully well," Maggie declared. "Did I?" He inspected his shirt, torn at the elbow.

"You have a scrape," she said with grave concern. "When we get home, tell Mama to put Pond's Extract on it."

Lucy would probably delight in telling
him
where to put the Pond's Extract, he thought.

"I came to say goodbye." Dressed in a white gown decked with red and blue rosettes and ribbons, Lucy entered her husband's room through the door that divided it from hers. That door had remained shut since the morning after their wedding, but today she felt brazen and self-assured.

He hadn't finished dressing, and his robe gaped open. She focused on the flash of bare chest, but he tugged the robe closed and turned his back on her. There was something almost furtive about the movement, and her confidence faltered a little.

"Goodbye," he said, and walked over to the washstand as if she weren't there. While he stirred shaving soap into a lather, she glanced down at the book in her hand.

At last, at long last, she'd found a copy of the works of the late Pamela Byrd. Lucy had stayed up past midnight reading the book. In searingly honest prose and poetry, Pamela Byrd had told her story. She had written of her ordeal as the object of an arranged marriage, likening herself to a bartered bale of wool,

submerged and boiled in toxic dye in order to change her character, twisted into taut threads and woven into an unrecognizable pattern. It was a painful portrait of a fragile woman wed to a rigid, autocratic man who controlled her with threats only hinted at in the yellowed pages of the book. Lucy felt as though she'd unlocked an ancient and baffling puzzle.

Rand would have been too young to understand his mother's turmoil; all he knew was that she had left. She had spilled agony, fear and outrage into her writing, taking refuge in doses of ether and laudanum. According to a biographical note in the book, she'd died less than a year after leaving her family. Lucy had wept for her, and now she was bringing the truth to Pamela's son. Lucy knew what she was risking by giving him the book. He would either thank her for it, or condemn her for stirring up bitter memories and exposing his late father's cruelty. But she had to try. She couldn't bear another day of this icy truce.