Three Little Secrets (19 page)

Madeleine was quiet for a moment.

“Maddie, I don’t mean the boy any harm,” he finally said. “Look, you are quite right. It is none of my concern. Just…just take what I’ve said and do what you think best. If he has been tormenting the girl, make him stop.”

“It—it is not that,” Madeleine blurted. “Geoff would never torment anyone. Indeed, he is quite sensitive.”

“I know that, Madeleine,” he answered.

He watched her lick her lips uncertainly. “The trouble is,” she said. “Geoffrey is not…not quite well.”

“What?” The boy looked healthy as a horse to him.

“Madeleine, there is nothing wrong with Geoff.”

“But there is,” she countered. “It—it is just not the sort of thing one can easily see.”

“Madeleine, do not put notions in the boy’s head.”

She pursed her lips for a moment, and her eyes filled with pain. “Oh, you cannot begin to understand!”

“Give me the benefit of the doubt, Madeleine, before you decide that.”

“I am a
good
mother, Merrick,” she answered indignantly. “And you have not given me the benefit of the doubt. I
know
my son. I have devoted the whole of my life to him. And I know that something is wrong, and getting worse.”

“I am sorry,” he said. “You are right. I barely know the boy. Tell me what it is you think is wrong, and I shall listen.”

Suddenly, her look of stubborn resolve faded to uncertainty. “It is just that Geoff imagines things, and has strange notions.” Madeleine had lost much of her color. “And he suffers from melancholia, often severe. That is why, you see, we came to London. I did not come back, Merrick, so that we might quarrel. I never dreamt we would even see one another again. I—I just needed desperately to find help for my son, but…but in that regard, I have failed.”

There could not have been a less opportune time for his hip joint to seize up. But the sidesteps which the waltz required were exacting a price. The pain was sudden, and severe. Madeleine could not have missed the hitch in his gait.

“Merrick?” Her voice was sharp. “What is wrong?”

“I have to stop,” he gritted, a statement which was superfluous, since he already had.

He led her by the hand from the dance floor. “I need to speak with you in private,” he said. “Someplace besides this ballroom.”

It was, perhaps, a measure of her desperation that she agreed. “The yellow parlor?”

He closed his eyes against the pain, and shook his head. “No stairs. Not…for a bit.”

She nodded and left the room. Merrick followed her out into the corridor, struggling not to limp. There was a door opposite the stairs, not a grand door signifying a formal room, but a small, ordinary one. Madeleine pulled it open. The room was rather like a large butler’s pantry, with two walls of cupboards, and beyond them, a plain worktable with four stout chairs. There were no windows, but a sconce burned by the table, and along the counters, one could see the evening’s dinner service laid out in neat stacks, already washed, dried, and ready to be locked away.

Madeleine went in, and pulled out two chairs. “I think you should sit,” she said.

Merrick did not argue. He braced his hand flat on the worktable and eased down. The relief was immediate. She went to the door, and turned the key in the lock, then joined him. They sat facing one another, their knees inches apart in the narrow room.

“My leg is rarely this bad,” he said apologetically. “But sometimes it just seizes up. I apologize.”

“You do not dance often.” It was not a question.

“It shows, does it?” He smiled ruefully. “No, almost never. My sort of life does not require it.”

She regarded him solemnly for a moment. “What sort of life is that, Merrick? I—I cannot help but be curious, you see.”

He said nothing for a moment. “It is the sort of life I always expected to have,” he said. “More or less. It is a life of work and duty, not a life of social obligation—or rarely, at any rate.”

“I see.” She paused, as if hoping he would continue. He did not.

She looked about nervously and clasped her hands in her lap. “Perhaps we oughtn’t be in here.”

“We are hardly a pair of young innocents now, Maddie,” he said. “Besides, what would they do if they caught us? Make us get married?”

She gave a sharp bark of laughter, but there was little humor in it. A heavy silence fell over the little room.

“You wished to ask about Geoff,” she finally said. “I am sorry I was sharp, but I have told you all I know. I think perhaps the sooner we leave London, the better it shall be for him. I think he was more settled in the quiet of the countryside.”

“But what did you mean, Madeleine, when you said
melancholia
?” he gently probed. “Is he just unhappy sometimes? Boys often become moody at a certain age, you know.”

She held his gaze, her eyes wide and candid. “I know that, Merrick,” she said. “But this is a sadness which goes beyond that. And it is so hard to explain. He seems to think that he is—well, at
fault
. For everything, it sometimes seems.”

Merrick drummed his fingers on the tabletop for a time. “Give me an example,” he said.

Madeleine cut her gaze away. “Well—that poor Mr. Chutley,” she said. “He seems to have taken it into his head that he was somehow to blame for his death.”

“Good God!” said Merrick. “Nothing could be further from the truth. If anything, he saved me from taking a bullet to the head.”

“Just as I tried to tell him,” she agreed. “Mind you, he has not come right out and
said
he feels responsible. It is just that I know how his mind works. I have seen it over and over. And—well, he
cries
. Often—though he tries to hide it. Do you know, Merrick, how humiliating it is for a twelve-year-old boy to cry? It is a weakness which mortifies him.”

Merrick said nothing. He well knew what it was like for a twenty-two-year-old man to cry. He would not be too quick to shame poor Geoff. The boy would learn soon enough that his tears would bring him no comfort.

“Does he…does he pine for someone?” he asked. “His father, perhaps?”

Madeleine hesitated, then shook her head. A tendril of warm blond hair had slipped from its loose arrangement to tease at her bare shoulder. “They were not terribly close,” she said, still clutching her hands in her lap. “My late husband was very busy with his research. Geoff and his half brother are fond of one another, but Geoff was like this even in Yorkshire with Alvin. Indeed, he showed the signs of it in Italy as a small boy. I have always known that Geoff was…different. I thought, though, that he would outgrow it. He has not. Instead, it has worsened.”

Merrick was flummoxed. He believed her. Oh, Madeleine might be coddling the boy a bit, but coddling did not account for the things she described. “He just does not look to me to be an overly emotional boy,” he remarked.

But what the hell did he know? He had known but one child in the whole of his thirty-five years.

“What did he say to the girl, anyway?” he asked. “If you will tell me.”

Madeleine lifted one shoulder weakly. “It was nothing, really,” she said. “I suppose he meant to—to tease her, perhaps? They were playing cards, and he blurted out something about her father being…well,
dead
. He meant it, I am sure, as a joke, but it didn’t come out that way. He has been upset with himself ever since.”

“Children do have strange notions,” said Merrick. “Alasdair and I took many a sound thrashing for saying things we thought funny, when our mother did not find them nearly so entertaining.”

The pain in his leg was gone now, but there was still a strange ache in his heart. He felt sorry for Madeleine. Despite what the years had wrought, despite how she had abandoned him, it seemed he no longer had the heart to wish her ill. Certainly he did not wish the boy ill. He quite liked Geoff. They shared so many of the same interests. He had never before thought of children as appealing.

He took her hands in his, and leaned forward. “Maddie, I am so sorry,” he said, lightly chafing her hands in his. “I would never wish you unhappy. There was a time, perhaps, when I thought I did. Yet now that I see you so, I take no pleasure in it. But I cannot think of a damned thing I could do to help the boy. If—if you think of something—anything—you have only to let me know.”

“There is nothing,” she said sorrowfully. “And Geoff is not your responsibility.”

He gave a muted smile. “Well, all the same, you have only to ask.”

She tightened her lips, as if trying not to cry. It damned near broke his heart. It was time to get out of this narrow little room before he did something incredibly foolish. If Geoff was not his responsibility, God knew Madeleine was not. He rose, still holding her hands, and drew her lightly to her feet.

“I think, Merrick, that I shall go home now,” she said. “I shall find Helene and make my apologies.”

“I shan’t be far behind you,” he said. “I cannot think what I was doing here to begin with.”

He gave her hands another reassuring squeeze and let them go. She turned to step past him, and into the narrow passageway between the cupboards, and unthinkingly, he caught her shoulder.

Her gaze snapped to his. For an instant, they were frozen in time, and the years were stripped away. Somehow, he found his voice. “Maddie, I—” He shook his head, and tried again. “Good God, Maddie. I wish you had never come back.”

She was still staring up at him, looking terribly alone, her porcelain skin soft in the lamplight. “And I wish you had been not so kind to me tonight,” she answered. “Somehow…somehow, Merrick, it is easier to hate you from afar.”

“Bloody hell,” he said, suddenly wishing the world to splinters.

Her innocent gaze was still holding his. “God, what a mess we have made, Merrick. Of—oh, of everything, it seems.”

Like a fool, he stepped nearer. They were but inches apart in the little room. Her eyes were wide, tinged with pain and regret and some other emotion he could not name. He realized in some shock that he wanted to kiss her again, and he sensed, strangely, that she would not resist.

Dear God, it would be so wrong, so cruel to take advantage of her grief. But Merrick had never been known for his humanity. He lifted his hand, and slid it around her face in a smooth, hungry caress. Her lashes fell shut, feathering softly over her cheeks. On a breathless sound, she turned her face into his palm.

“Oh,
don’t,
” she whispered, her lips brushing feather light over his thumb. “Oh, Merrick. Please.”

Please
what? Oh, God, he was going to regret this. But he yearned to know what it would feel like to touch her again. Already the hurt and need and outright lust were twisting in his belly like a living thing. Driven by them, Merrick blocked out all else, and bent his head to hers, gently taking her mouth.

It was like an oil lamp hurled into a hearth of cinders. Heat and flame exploded, then roared to life, consuming them. Her lips seemed to swell and soften beneath his as he tasted her, his hands and his mouth greedy and urgent. She made a hungry, desperate sound in the back of her throat.

He was afraid to speak. Afraid to stop kissing her, for fear one of them might come to their senses. Instead, he let the kiss take them deeper as he gently probed the seam of her lips. On a soft groan, she opened for him, tilting her head back in surrender. Hotly, harshly, plunged his tongue deep, giving her no quarter. Giving her fair warning of his intent. But Madeleine did not back away. Thirteen empty years went up in flames.

He surged deep inside again on a shiver. Against him, Madeleine trembled with unmistakable hunger as he slid his tongue sinuously along hers, tasting and plumbing the depths he remembered so well. She pressed herself against him without hesitation, God help them both.

In his dreams, when he kissed her, it was a kiss of almost violent emotion; a carnal onslaught, as if he might release the demons of a dozen years by taking her harshly. This kiss was fierce and wild, tinged with regret, sensuous even in its sadness. He cupped her face in both his hands and kissed her again, turning his face to slant his mouth over hers as he remembered the hot rush of young love.

Madeleine’s eyes were still closed, but she was returning his kisses with an escalating hunger. She was starved for this; he sensed it, and urged it on. She pressed her breasts against him and let her other hand come up to slide beneath his coat, and then beneath his waistcoat, too, until he could feel the heat of her hand through the thin fabric of his shirt.

“Maddie,” he whispered, his mouth dotting kisses beneath her eye.

Her other hand fisted in his lapel. “Don’t talk,” she whispered. “Just…oh, God. Don’t stop.”

Merrick cupped her breast in his hand and listened with satisfaction to her little gasp of pleasure. Lightly, he brushed his thumb across the sensitive tip. She tempted fate when she urged herself against his palm. Somehow, he eased the fabric of her dress down her shoulder to reveal the swell of her breast, so plump and perfect he felt his knees go weak. The sweet, dark peak, however, was still hidden from his view. He tugged at the gown from beneath, and was rewarded.

She gave a sharp cry of pleasure when his mouth covered her. “Oh, God,” she whispered.

At her words, blood rushed to his head and to his groin. Her nipple hardened like a precious pearl between his lips. Over and over he suckled her, drawing the sweet creamy flesh of her breast into the warmth of his mouth. She had set her shoulders to the wall now, exposing herself fully to him. It was a position of total surrender.

He was going to give her what she begged for—here and now, in this narrow little room, and damn the consequences. Merrick’s hand eased down, cupping the swell of her buttock through the slippery silk of her gown. She made a sound of insistence as he circled and caressed her. In response, he lifted her a little against him, and let her feel his body’s urgency.

Her head fell back, her mouth open, her breathing fast and shallow. “Oh,” she whispered. “Oh, God, Merrick,
please
…”

Merrick felt her body go limp as she yielded to his hands and his body. She shuddered with desire now, so complete was her capitulation to her own needs. Madeleine—dignified, perfect little Madeleine—made not even a pretense of backing away. It had ever been so; Madeleine had always desired him, physically, at least, and she had never possessed the artifice to pretend otherwise.