The Wicked One (27 page)

"You called me Lucien."

She rolled over, using his arm as a pillow, and gazed up into his face.  Her eyes were glowing, her lips curved in a soft, teasing smile.  "Is that not your name?"

"I do not recall your ever having used it before."

"No."

She didn't need to tell him that she'd never before used it because to do so would be to discard yet another barrier she'd insisted on keeping between them; to use it would be to embrace an intimacy she was not ready to allow; to use it would be to imply friendship and trust when there was none —

But she had used it now.

He reached out and ran his fingers over the line of her jaw.  "Say it again, Eva.  I like the sound of my name on your lips."

"Lucien."

He couldn't help his spreading grin, couldn't help the sweet, all-consuming ache that threatened to overwhelm him.  Just the sound of his Christian name on her soft, sultry voice was enough to stir him back to arousal.  He stretched out beside her, his arm still under her head, and ran his fingers through a thick skein of her hair.  "You are making a mess of my heart," he murmured.

"Well, Duke, if that's all it takes, maybe you'll be easier to handle than I'd previously thought."

"You think so, do you?"

"Don't forget, I, too, like challenges."

They lay together, mutually enjoying this newfound peace, this lack of enmity and distrust.  For once, the beautiful slanting eyes that gazed up into Lucien's were not narrowed or flashing fire, but glowing with something that looked like hope.  The sensuous mouth was not twisted with contempt, but smiling almost girlishly.  He sighed as her small white hand — a hand that could fell a man twice her size with one blow, a hand that was as strong as it was feminine — came up to trace the bones of his face, the point of his cheek, the noble, sloping, nearly unbroken line of his profile.

"You still haven't told me," he murmured, still thinking about that hand as he enjoyed its gentle caress.

"Told you what?"

"How you rendered me senseless back in Paris."

She merely smiled.

He lifted a brow, waiting.

"Oh, very well," she said, and let her fingers drift to the sides of his neck.  "There are arteries here.  If you can find just the right spot and press gently, it produces a brief loss of consciousness."

"Ah, then.  Something you learned during your tenure in the Orient?"

Again, that slow, mysterious smile.

She traced his lips with one finger.  "I suppose I should apologize for what I did to you that night, but I really didn't dare to leave you, unguarded, with the aphrodisiac so near at hand."

"And I suppose
I
should apologize for making such a mess of your life back in France.  It was not very gentlemanly of me, though I do not regret the end result."

She ran her fingertip down the bridge of his nose.  "Yes — the end result.  I never knew you were baiting me with all your talk about 'the colonies.'  Never realized that your sentiments toward America are benevolent, and that you empathize with the struggles of my homeland.  All I knew was that because of you, I had to leave Paris, my ability to bring an end to the war between our two lands compromised.   But sometimes fate deals us a hand that's every bit as good.  I will welcome your intercession in Parliament, Lucien, to bring about independence and peace."

"And I promise you that peace between our two lands is something I will work most diligently for, my dear."

"Yes — yes, I think I believe you."

"You must trust me implicitly."

"I'm not very good at trusting people."

"It is a skill that will take practice, then."

"But I'm working on it, don't you think?  I mean, look at us, here and now, interacting as if we actually like each other, as if we're friends instead of wary enemies."

He smiled as her fingers traced the roughness of his jaw.  "My dear Eva.  I have never thought of you as my enemy."

She, too, smiled, and then looked away — but not before he saw the sudden, troubled confusion in her eyes.

"What is it?"

"Do you think your brothers — well, Charles in particular  — will ever forgive me for what I did to him the night of the robbery?"

"I am sure that if you ask his forgiveness, he will give it."  He smoothed her hair back from her face.  "Is it so very important?"

"Yes, it is."  She gazed up into his eyes.  "Because, you see, Lucien, I, too, want what my sisters-in-law have.  A happy marriage.  Cheerful, bouncing children.  A husband who lo —" She flushed.  "Cherishes and respects me."

He knew what she'd almost said.  "It is conceivable that love, given time and half a chance, may blossom between us, Eva.  But the trust must come first."

"Do you trust me?"

He smiled, his eyes very dark and deep.  "With my life."

She looked away, assailed by guilt.  How brave he was, willing to risk everything:  his heart, his pride, his dignity.  Was he that much stronger, that much more courageous, than she?  Why could she not reciprocate?

I can reciprocate.  And I can start right now.

"Lucien," she said, haltingly.  "Do you remember how you once asked me about my father, and about what he . . . did?"

"I do."

Eva swallowed.  Fear began to speed up her heartbeat, cause her palms to grow damp.  Trusting him — trusting anyone — was hard.  More difficult, even, than agreeing to marry him.  She wasn't sure if she could do it.

"Is there something you wish to tell me, Eva?

She took a deep, bracing breath.  "Yes."

His face lost its smile, became grave; he said nothing, just waited, allowing her the time she needed.  Finally, Eva shut her eyes and let her mind travel back over the years.

"I was the only child of a sea captain turned merchant," she began.  "We lived in Salem, Massachusetts" — she gave a nervous little laugh — "the witch town."

She waited for him to make a comment about
that
, but he did not.  He merely lay there beside her, watching her face, letting her tell this tale that had shaped her into the woman she had become.

"My mother was the youngest daughter of an English baronet whose seat is near Bristol . . . a thriving port, as I'm sure you know.  It was there that she met my father.  He was tall, charming, adventurous — and altogether off limits for a woman of my mother's noble blood.  Her family forbade her to see him, but of course, she did so anyhow . . . and soon found herself pregnant.  With me.  My father married her, her family cut all ties with her, and he took her back to America with him, where he became one of the richest men in Salem.

"My earliest memories are of my mother weeping as my father prepared for a sea voyage.  It was the same thing, every time.  The house would grow silent and still, the air almost brittle.  I would not dare to speak, but would stay out of their way, watching my father as he silently packed his trunk, watching my mother as she sat crying noisily, a handkerchief in one hand and a bottle of spirits in the other . . . looking for attention and never getting it.

"It was a grand performance, but he would ignore it.  Always.  And when it came time for him to leave, he would kiss her on the cheek — always formally, with no more feeling than if he were saying farewell to a dog — ruffle my hair in a pretense of affection, and that would be it.  Off he would go, plying the Orient or the Indies, returning weeks, months later with wondrous cargoes of spices, china, and other exotic treasures that made me ache for wanting to see and visit those same places."

She smiled sadly and, pulling a thick tendril of glossy red hair over her shoulder, began to plait it, needful of something to do with her fingers, her conflicting emotions.  "Oh, how I used to beg him to take Mama and me with him on his voyages!  But he never did, of course.  He'd just shake his head and say that the sea was no place for women.  Looking back, I suppose it was as good an excuse as any; Mama would not have gone with him even if he'd wanted us to be there."

She came to the end of the braid, combed it out with her fingers, began plaiting the skein of hair once more, tighter this time, neater, her movements growing more agitated.  "My father was favored with youthful good looks, wealth, and charm.  Too much charm.  The sort of charm that women usually find impossible to resist."  Her face grew shadowed.  "He was gone to sea a lot, but when he came back from a voyage, smelling of wind and sun and salt, he always had a trinket for me, a shawl of silk, a bag of fruit from some faraway port.  I loved it when my papa came home."  She swallowed, hard, staring at the three ends of the little braid.  "I loved my papa."

Lucien smiled gently; he could feel her pain as keenly as if it were in his own heart.  "Loved him, or worshipped him?"

"A little of both."  She looked at him then, chin high, making a vain attempt to maintain her pride — but he could see the suffering in her eyes, suffering that she was unable to hide.  "I loved him . . . but I never knew, until one horrible day, that he did not love me."

Outside, the wind flung sleet against the windows, the draft moving the heavy drapes.  Lucien pulled the blanket up and tucked it around his wife's bare shoulders.

"I could never understand why Mama was always so bitter and unhappy, her eyes full of poison, when she spoke of my dear papa.  I could never understand why she grew furious when I extolled his virtues, could never understand why she said the things she did about men, and always in a venomous tone, the words forced out between clenched teeth, her hatred so forceful it was often enough to drive me from the room."

"What things?"

"Oh, the truth . . . things such as, 'You can't trust any of them, not a damned one of them,' and 'Never fall in love, Eva, it will only break your heart,' and other such advice that I did, of course, fail to heed until it was too late for me as well.  But I will get to that.  What was I saying?  Oh,  yes.  I was saying how I never understood why Mama hated men so, why she was never kind to my father, why she loathed the idea of him coming home as much as she loathed the idea of him leaving . . . why she would invite the women of Salem over for tea, shutting the door so that I could not eavesdrop, even though I knew that behind that closed door she was maligning him in front of those harpies, playing the martyr with a vicious intensity that, at the time, I thought was largely undeserved.  Unfair."  She gave a bitter little laugh and wiped at her eye.  Wiped at the other.  "Oh, if only I'd known.  And on the day I turned nine, I found out."

Hot tears were spilling from her eyes, racing each other down her cheeks; wordlessly, Lucien touched his thumb to the damp tracks and gently wiped them away.  "You don't have to tell me if this is too painful, my dear —"

She shook her head, her eyes suddenly fierce.  "No — I have started this, I will finish it."

He leaned back, watching helplessly as she ripped the hapless little braid apart with trembling fingers and once more set to work on plaiting it.

"I could not bear to be in the house with Mama, could not bear to see her drinking, raging against my father, her fate, and men in general.  It was no more difficult for me to slip out of the house and, disguised as one of them, join the boys who used to gather around the docks, waiting for ships to come in, trying to absorb some of the sea's excitement, than it was for me to adopt the guise of a man some years later, fabricate references, and gain entrance into Harvard.  Though the lads of Salem knew me to be a girl and accepted me as such, at Harvard I had everyone fooled.  I was tall, athletic, quick — and, being something of a late bloomer, I looked the part in breeches and coat.  But those boys at the docks — they taught me how to fight dirty.  And those at Harvard" — she gave a contemptuous laugh — "they taught me how to fight like a gentleman.  Fools . . . for all their brains at that revered institution, nobody ever caught on that I was a woman."

She came to the end of the braid and began twisting it around her fingertip.  "But I digress.  One day, when I was at the docks with my young friends, a ship came in — I immediately recognized it as my father's.  I grew excited, as I always did when he returned from a long voyage, and ran down to greet him after the ship dropped anchor.  I came up short before reaching him.  Before he saw me."  She paused, her face very still.  "There — there was a woman there."

Lucien tensed, seeing the stricken look on Eva's face that must have echoed the one she had worn all those years ago.

"I had never believed my mother when she raged about men, had always defended my papa because I thought he was . . . different.  But there, all dressed in fancy silks and jewels that he, no doubt, had paid for, stood proof of my mother's convictions.  She was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen, a painted woman, and there she was, smiling a slow, seductive smile as she watched my father being rowed toward shore.  He — he got out of the little boat.  His face became animated and loving, the way it never did when he was with my mother, and he offered that . . . that woman his arm and led her off . . . while my world closed up around me."

Lucien ached for her.  Lamented the fact that he could do nothing to ease the misery in her eyes.  "He betrayed you," he said quietly.

"Yes.  He did.  And there I stood, humiliated, stricken dumb by the realization that my papa was unfaithful, not only to my mama — but to my belief in him.  It was too much.  I began to cry.  The boys who I thought were my friends laughed at me, told me my papa was 'acting just as he should,' and that it was time I faced reality.  I ran home in tears.  I burst into the house, found my mother with a bottle, and blurted out what I had seen . . . and it was then that she told me the truth.  That when she gave birth to me, the experience nearly killed her, and as a result the doctor advised her to never have any more children."

"Dear God," said Lucien, understanding making him want to gather this poor, still-hurting child up in his arms and comfort her.

"You're no dull blade, Blackheath.  I'm sure you can figure out the rest.  After I was born, my father was so resentful that my mother could not give him the boy-child he'd wanted, the heir to not only his name but his fortune, that he sought only to punish her for her failings.  He did it by taking mistress after mistress, flaunting them in front of her, sating the appetites that she could no longer satisfy.  And that's how I spent the rest of my childhood:  watching my father come home from sea to be claimed by a different woman every time, and listening to my weak, self-pitying mother's endless diatribes about the baseness and untrustworthiness of men while she drank herself closer and closer to an early grave."  She flung the braid aside, her eyes tragic, sullen.  "Eventually she got there, and put herself out of her own misery."