A commotion sounded from the hallway, raised voices and running feet. Susan, looking flustered, skidded to a halt in the doorway. A woman darted around her and rushed into the room. “Lydia!” Ten years ago her hair had been brown, not gray, but Rachel knew who she was. “Oh, gracious, oh, my heavens—what’s happened?”
Sebastian glared at her. “Who the devil are you?”
“Lord D’Aubrey, I sincerely beg your pardon! I’m Margaret Armstrong—Lydia is my niece.” She put her arm around Lydia’s waist, mumbling, “Oh dear, oh dear.” Lydia was still breathing hard, still glaring at Rachel with loathing.
Sebastian moved between them, blocking Rachel’s view. “I’d advise you to take your niece home, Mrs. Armstrong. At once.”
“Yes, of course. I’m most terribly sorry, my lord, but—Lydia hasn’t been well. Please forgive this intrusion and this unfortunate—incident—”
“It isn’t my pardon you should be asking,” he cut in coldly. “It’s Mrs. Wade’s.”
Lydia had begun to move toward the door, but she stopped at that and twisted around. “Beg her pardon? Beg that murdering whore’s pardon?” Nothing but Sebastian’s hard body prevented her from renewing the assault. When he advanced on her, she snarled at him but gave ground, muttering something low and vicious.
“Lydia, come with me, for pity’s sake,” Mrs. Armstrong pleaded softly, pulling on her hand. Finally Lydia went.
Sebastian followed them out into the hall, pausing in the doorway to throw a glance back at Rachel. She pushed away from the curtained window, against which she had all but collapsed, to show him she was all right. He sent her an indecipherable look, then went after Lydia and her aunt.
Her knees wouldn’t stop shaking. She crept to the sofa, holding onto it like an old lady while she sidled around and lowered herself to the cushion. Her cheek still smarted and her chest ached, as if the muscles were bruised. It would have been a comfort to press her face into the padded arm of the sofa and burst into tears. She conquered the urge by squeezing her eyes shut and gritting her teeth.
She’d forgotten about Susan. The maid appeared at her side, hands fluttering, her kind face pinched from shock. “Ooh, ma’am, how horrible. I never, I swear I just never in my life. Are you all right?”
“Yes.”
“Can I get you some water or anything? Something like brandy, maybe, or—”
“No, nothing. Thank you.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. I would just like to sit here a moment. By myself. Thank you,” she said again.
Susan dithered for another frustrated minute, sighed, and said, “Well, all right, then, ma’am,” and left her alone.
She felt as if she’d been in an accident. No, worse; an accident was impersonal, a mere catastrophe, while this—this was an encounter with hate so intense, she could still feel its blistering heat. The dreadful isolation of prison had had a compensation: it had kept her safe from all but the most generalized contempt, expressed in a hundred small ways every day by guards and warders, even other prisoners, until it numbed and deadened the senses. But she wasn’t inside gaol’s protective egg any longer. She was an orphaned fledgling, limping through the tall, dangerous grass of the real world. And she had a powerful enemy.
At a sound, she lifted her head from the back of the sofa to see Sebastian across the room, watching her. Wordless, he crossed to the side table, which served as a liquor cabinet, and poured wine into a glass. She was surprised when he brought it to her rather than drinking it himself.
Out of politeness, she took a small sip. “If you don’t need me right now,” she said, handing the glass back, “I would like to go to my room.”
Ignoring that, he sat down beside her, frowning. “What was that all about?” She flinched when he lifted his hand to her face. His eyes darkened. “Did she hurt you?”
“No. I’m fine now.” But he touched her anyway, gently, his palm cool on her stinging cheek. She held perfectly still.
“What did she say to you?”
She took a shuddery breath. “What you would expect her to say. She thinks I killed her father. Excuse me,” she mumbled, standing up. She couldn’t stay here any longer; his hovering concern confused her, made her feel worse, not better. “I would like to go to my room, my lord. May I?”
He sat back, dragging his hands from his knees to his thighs, his long legs spread. “Yes, go,” he said, sounding angry.
They stared at each other. What was he looking for, she wondered, what did he expect? Did he think she would confide in him now? Trust him—let him comfort her? She had no intention of showing him anything.
“Thank you,” she said, barely courteous, and hurried from the room. She couldn’t wait to be alone.
***
She stayed in her sitting room for the rest of the day, brooding profitlessly, languishing. Susan came with a tray at dinnertime, but she sent her away, unable to eat anything. After that, no one bothered her.
The house grew quiet. Around ten o’clock, the solitude she’d craved earlier began to oppress her, and the night to come yawned empty and endless, probably sleepless. Pictures from the long day floated past her mind’s eye as she lay in bed, drifting in and out of half dreams . . . Lord D’Aubrey’s ebony walking stick swinging in a wide, arrogant arc ahead of his fine leather boots . . . banks of wildflowers on either side of the red clay lane that dipped and rose, shaded by oak branches . . . her own face in the mirror in Miss Carter’s shop, looking pretty and almost young . . . Sebastian’s expression of appreciation, almost . . . admiration, and then a surprised sort of gentleness. . . .
Honoria Vanstone’s high, strident voice, the accent artificially genteel, disturbed the dream; she came fully awake, remembering the last time she’d seen the mayor’s daughter—a week ago, when she and another lady had crossed to the other side of the narrow High Street in a pointed and deliberate snub.
To soothe herself, she thought of Anne Morrell. An image of her kind gray eyes came on the fancied odor of lilies and fresh moss, turned earth and clean wind. Won’t you call me Anne? Rachel’s heart fluttered, as it had this afternoon, with hope and gratefulness. Then her thoughts tapered off and her mind began to float again, the events of the day gliding farther and farther away beyond a thickening blanket of drowsiness.
Without a warning, not even a second’s uneasiness, the blackness shattered in a burst of light, and a vision of a grave marker’s sharp marble point stabbed into her brain like a thrusting sword. She shot up in bed, eyes wide and darting, scouring the room for a glimpse of something real, something solid to dispel the violent image. Scrambling out of bed, she rushed to the window and threw back the curtains. Starshine glowed on the flags of the empty courtyard. She pressed her forehead to the glass, shuddering, whispering, “No, no, no,” to break the silence and lessen the horror, to reclaim herself.
She lit a candle and carried it into her sitting room. Gradually its comfortable ordinariness calmed her: she touched the objects on her desk, her pens and her ink blotter, the pretty quartz stone she used for a paperweight. She opened her accounts ledger, and the neat, orderly lines of figures soothed her. Everything was up to date; she had no bills to pay, no letters to write. And no book to read. She didn’t want to sleep—didn’t want to dream; if she were going to get through this night, she would have to have a book.
The library was in her wing, across the stone corridor from the chapel. It wasn’t cold, but she pulled her wrapper tighter around her shoulders anyway, shivering a little because of the quiet, and the lateness of the hour, and the shadow-corners her candle couldn’t penetrate. A week ago she’d made another midnight visit to the library, but Lord D’Aubrey had been there; she’d seen the yellow light from his lamp spilling out into the hallway. She’d spun around in a panicky half circle and hurried back to her room, unnoticed.
Thank God, tonight the high
-ceilinged, musty-smelling room was deserted. She reshelved her old book and began searching for a new one—never an easy task in this disappointing library, and one best approached with low expectations. She found all five volumes of Dwight’s Theology, and mentally cringed at the realization that she’d actually read two of them, Dwight being considered a very improving author at Dartmoor Prison. She’d read Horseley’s Biblical Fragments, too, and Bingley’s Animal Biography, and most of The British Essayist.
Eureka, she thought wryly—a book published during her own lifetime, although just barely: Swallow Barn, by John P. Kennedy. “Sketches of Plantation Life in the American South,” the title page promised. Sighing, she carried it to the window seat, where there was an overhead niche for her candle, and began to read.
Sleep was a wily enemy. After ten minutes, she had to get up and walk around the room to wake herself up. Drowsiness returned the second she sat down and reopened Swallow Barn, whose lifeless, turgid prose killed any interest she might have had in the author’s subject. By concentrating fiercely, she fought her way to Chapter 3. Two pages later, sleep crept up from behind and swallowed her.
As always, the dream’s approach was slow, insidious, deceptively innocent. She was standing in the middle of a room she didn’t recognize, waiting for something. The dread only began when she realized she had to wait, that she wasn’t allowed to move. Then she wasn’t standing anymore, she was sitting on the edge of a high bed, her legs dangling over the side. She was naked, and the sight of her own white thighs terrified her. Now she recognized the room; it was her husband’s bedroom, and everything in it was sharp-edged and nauseatingly familiar. She wanted to bolt up from the bed and run, but she wasn’t allowed to move. She had to sit and wait for him, sit with her legs apart, just so, and her hands clasped behind her neck. It was the “first position,” the least degrading, but already she was trembling, the breath backing up in her lungs.
She heard a noise outside the door, and she began to cry—silently; if he heard her weeping, he would punish her. A dark shape appeared in the doorway. She knew it was he, but the real terror didn’t begin until he stepped into the light. Then her fear rose higher and higher in layers until she was full, she couldn’t hold anymore. His wine-colored dressing gown sickened her, but she couldn’t look away from its silky, shiny surface. It was cold to the skin, she knew that, and when he moved it made a rustling sound that brought bile up in her throat.
He was holding something in his hand.
Helpless, heart-pounding panic engulfed her. She started to sob, feeling like a child when she begged him not to—please, oh, please, please!—but he never stopped moving toward her, gliding toward her in the obscene dressing gown, endlessly nearing, his face stern and patient, his arm outstretched to show her what he had in his hand. The moment stretched into madness and just beyond, and then her courage failed and she began to scream.
***
Sebastian saw the pale glow of a candle above the window seat, flickering in the air currents, barely illuminating something dark and slumped against the paneled wall. He didn’t know it was a person until he heard a choked-off cry, a sudden, guttural huff that made the hairs on his neck rise, and he didn’t know it was Rachel until he went closer and saw her fall forward over her knees, curling up tight, pushing her hands into her dark hair.
Alarmed, he set his candle next to hers. He said her name, but she was crying and she didn’t hear. There was a raw, bottomless agony in the sound of her weeping that he literally could not bear. He touched her lightly, and she lifted her head. When he saw her face, he had to turn away. He went to his desk and got a handkerchief from the drawer.
Sitting down next to her on the padded window seat, he pushed the cloth into her hand, and she buried her nose in it. Her narrow shoulders were shaking; he stroked her softly, feeling her intermittent shudders. “Why are you crying?” No answer. “Why?” She muttered something he couldn’t understand. Taking her by the shoulders, he made her face him. “Tell me why you’re crying.”
“Dream,” she got out, clearly this time.
“A nightmare?” She nodded. “What did you dream?”
She shook her head and kept on shaking it. She wouldn’t tell.
“You’re all right now.” He had wanted to hold her today, give her some kind of comfort after Lydia Wade had abused her, and he’d been angry when she wouldn’t let him. He circled her with his arms now, pulling her against him. She allowed the intimacy, but she didn’t relax, wouldn’t lean on him. He could smell her clean hair; he could see the candlelight glittering on the silver Streaks, turning them golden. Her tears kept coming, but the helpless sobbing seemed to be over. She was wearing a cheap cotton robe of indeterminate color, the material stiff, not soft yet from wear or washing. It only reached to her knees, but under it she had on the long yellow nightgown he’d once seen folded at the bottom of her bed. How slender she was. How compelling her sadness and her brittle vulnerability. How incredible that he’d kept his hands off her this long.
She dropped her head, and he could see the white nape of her neck, the little bump that was the first vertebra of her spine. He brought his lips to her temple, letting strands of her hair tickle his mouth. Soft. Through the arm he had around her, he felt a new awareness slowly seep into her body. She didn’t move, but the softness retreated; he could almost hear her hoping against hope that she was mistaken, that this wasn’t the inevitable moment she must know it was. He thought of prolonging her uncertainty, keeping her on this exquisite edge a little longer. But either sympathy or impatience made him end the suspense by drawing her closer. “Mrs. Wade,” he said quietly. “Mrs. Wade, I think it’s time.”
“Time.” The word came out on a wispy breath. He saw deep resignation in her wet-silver eyes. Which, wasn’t quite the same as acquiescence, but for now he deemed them close enough. If there was dread there as well, he chose not to notice it.
“Past time.” He tipped her chin up, so she couldn’t look away while he slipped his other hand inside her nightgown and caressed her soft round breast.
How like her not to give him the satisfaction of reacting. Her lips flattened slightly; the slow slide of his thumb across her nipple elicited a tiny gasp, nothing more. But she was twisting his wet handkerchief in her lap with both hands. She tried to dip her head, but he kept his hand under her chin. Searching her lovely, tear-streaked face, he asked, genuinely curious, “What is it you hope for, Mrs. Wade?”
“I hope . . .” She licked her salty lips. “I hope to be able to bear it.”
She didn’t mean only this. She meant her whole life. Her fatalism had the usual effect of making him want to take her, and making him want to set her free. His baser side won, as it had been doing regularly of late. He bent and kissed her, scraping her bottom lip into his mouth with his teeth.
Her eyes glazed. She made a low-pitched sound in her throat that set him on fire. “I don’t want this.”
Did he hear her right? Any resistance, even this weak, whispered one, warred with his image of her as a hopeless stoic. Before anything as subversive as his conscience could surface, he said, “Do you think I could let you go now? I’m afraid it’s not possible.” And it wasn’t.
Her lips curled in faint but unmistakable derision. “A condition of employment?” she asked, with a sneer in her low voice, her face turned away.
The phrase nettled him; he thought they understood each other well enough by now that such labels weren’t necessary. But he answered without hesitation, “Precisely.” And then for some reason he added, “There’s no need to be afraid.” He slid his hand under her knees and rose from the window seat, holding her in his arms:
He didn’t go far, only to the leather couch in front of his desk. She was disturbingly light, and as stiff in his arms as a sack of sticks. He set her on her feet, because it was easier to undress a woman when she was standing. The candlelight was dim here;
he could barely see her. That must seem like a blessing to her. To him it didn’t much matter; he would see her soon enough, and often enough, in as much light as he wanted.
Her silence and her manner—completely withdrawn—suggested that their first time together was not going to be particularly transcendent, and that his best course would be simply to get it over with. That was one way. Another would be to exploit her provocative unwillingness, use it to heighten his pleasure—and hers, too, if she would let it. For the hundredth time he wondered what her husband had done to her. Since he didn’t know and she wouldn’t tell him, it seemed he had no choice but to enjoy her in any way he liked.
A cold-blooded resolve, but he didn’t stick to it for long. Because what he would have liked at that moment would have been to say, “Take off your clothes,” and then watch her—himself fully dressed, of course—while she stripped for him. She would tremble and blanch, she might even refuse, and he would find her resistance a potent aphrodisiac. But even as the libidinous image took shape in his mind, his hands went to the collar of her modest night robe, and he began to undo the buttons himself.
But he couldn’t deny himself the pleasure of watching her face while he undressed her, even though it would’ve been kinder to hold her close, let her bury her head against his chest, eyes shut tight to deny what was happening. She was unique among his current female acquaintance in that her mind fascinated him every bit as much as her body. He felt a compulsion to know what she was thinking while he seduced her.
But it wasn’t to be. Except for anxiety, her colorless eyes gave away nothing, not even when he pushed the robe over her shoulders and began to unfasten her flannel nightgown. The buttons stopped at her navel; he opened the gown slowly, baring her breasts a little at a time. He thought she was blushing, but in the pale light he couldn’t be certain. “Very pretty,” he murmured, meaning everything about her. She shut her eyes; his appreciation meant nothing to her. He put his fingers on her nipples and pinched—lightly; enough to startle, not enough to hurt. He gave her credit for her sangfroid: she never moved. He increased the pressure playfully, then not quite so playfully. Her lips trembled.