A Lady Undone (6 page)

Clare’s gaze grew steely. She lifted her chin. “I know you care for me, Uncle, in the only way you know how, but how far would you go to see I am looked after?”

Soames blinked. “I don’t understand.”

Wyndham shook his head theatrically, almost savoring the coming moment. “Your arrogance is quite astonishing. You demanded your niece receive some form of protection, and it was you she needed protection from, was it not?”

“Don’t be absurd.”

“Am I? Absurd? Or didn’t you send your man to the East End looking for someone who’d be willing to do a bit of rough work? If the Duke of Fairleigh had found a simple guard for her as you wished, you might have succeeded. Instead, he asked for my aid. Luckily, Fairleigh is clever man and wanted to know who wished to harm his wife’s stepmother. So did I. It was almost pitiable, your attempt to hide your role in all this.”

Soames faltered. “Nonsense.”

“Nonsense?” he challenged. “My informants were quite clear about the identity of the man soliciting the aid of a confidence man. It’s your misfortune that I simply know more ruffians than you. You see, it took me less than twenty-four hours to surmise it was someone close to Clare. After all, they knew the whereabouts of her chamber and they knew her schedule. Both things a family member might know. It saddens me, but when a woman is in jeopardy, the threat almost always lies in either her husband or her family. Now, Clare has had the misfortune of being threatened by both.”

“Clare, you can’t believe—”

“Can you truly deny it?” Clare demanded, her tone surprisingly calm. “Can you look me full in the face and deny you didn’t send your man to arrange it all?”

Soames started to protest, but his words sputtered out. “No. And I assume that the earl has sufficient witnesses. Otherwise he never would have come. Wyndham is also correct in that I assumed the duke would hire you a capable guard.” Soames glared at Wyndham. “Not some damned spy. With a guard keeping you away from the East End, the attacks would have ended. Clare, you must understand, I needed you to cease going there and you wouldn’t listen to reason. You gave me no choice.”

“Don’t you dare blame her Grace for your weakness of character. A man of honor would have stood beside her, aided her.”

“What?” Soames’s genuine horror tensed his features. “You would condone such behavior in a woman, tending to whores and women who don’t know their place?”

“Yes. I would,” he replied in the face of the other man’s poison. “Clare is the bravest, best lady I have ever known and her work only raises her in my esteem. Whatever Clare does, she deserves the support of those who love her.”

When he turned to her, Clare’s eyes were fixed, glossy with tears.

“I’m ready to leave now, Lord Wyndham.”

He held out his hand, and she took it, her delicate fingers trusting in his.

Still, before they could depart there was one last thing to be said. “Lord Soames, you are going to be watched. Anyone you see will also be watched. I have the means to ensure this, and if anything seems at all amiss, I will expose you to all of London for your nefarious behavior. Do you understand?”

Soames’s fingers gripped his brandy glass so tightly, it seemed possible the glass would shatter. But he nodded.

Without another word, he led Clare out of that house, away from her uncle and away from the cruelty of the men who should have been her dearest protectors.

They arrived back at the cottage in silence. Byron had offered to take her to Mary and Edward if she wished, but to her astonishment the only place she wished to be was there, in the hideaway that had given her her first taste of true happiness. And it was there that she might lose it all.

As she sat in one of the great old-fashioned chairs in the room where they had first made love, Clare hardened her resolve. She couldn’t lie to him, not when he believed in her so much. The pain of it was more than anything she’d ever known, for finally, she’d found love. It hardly seemed fair that she wouldn’t be able to keep it.

Byron entered the room, two glasses of red wine in his hand. “You need this, sweetheart. Your cheeks are nearly white.”

She took the offered glass and waited for him to sit across from her.

Once he sat, he gazed on her with such kindness she almost cried out.

“What is it?” he asked.

“There is something I must tell you.”

“Then tell it,” he said easily.

“You seem to think so highly of me.”

“Clare, I have seen inside your heart. It is pure—”

“I am a murderer,” she burst out.

He lowered his wineglass and stared at the deep red liquid for several long moments.

Those moments stretched into a horrifying eternity. He must hate her now.

“Your husband, I assume.”

“Yes,” she said, fighting back a sob. She started to place her glass down, ready to leave.

Byron looked up, his face hard. “Good.”

“What?”

“Good, I say. Clare, he was making your life hell. His first wife died in suspicious circumstances and what you said to Soames? I’m sure that was only half of what you endured. You survived, my love. You chose life, and I am so grateful.”

“I love you,” she said suddenly, the words unbidden but more true than anything she’d ever said.

“I love you too, Clare. I know you’ve been hurt by men, by your husband and uncle, but I hope you will consider that I am different.”

“I do,” she said, flying out of her chair and kneeling next to him. “You listen to me in a way no one ever has done before.”

“I always will, if you’ll let me. Spend the rest of your life with me, Clare, as my wife? I’ll sign away all my rights or live with you in sin if you insist, but now that you are in my life I cannot imagine it without you.”

“How could I ever deny you? You, who have brought joy into my heart. I’ve told you the very worst thing about myself, something most could never forgive, and you didn’t even flinch. If you truly mean it, then yes. Yes, please, let us spend our lives together.”

He leaned forward and yanked her into his lap. “Then, my love, we have both found our dream.”

“I never thought it possible,” she breathed.

He tilted her head back. “We must never give up on our dreams.”

Her lips parted in the smile that only he seemed able to evoke. “Never, I will never give up again.”

“Nor I, my love, nor I.”

Read on for a sneak peek at a tale of redemption and love,

Máire Claremont’s

The Dark Affair: A Novel of Mad Passions

Available from Signet Eclipse in March 2014

London

1866

Lord James Stanhope, Viscount Powers, was going to kill the ridiculous Irishwoman standing before him. In slow degrees. He was going to kill her for daring to mention his wife. For daring to even whisper his daughter’s name. He was going to rip her to bloody pieces for insinuating that he, the son of the Earl of Carlyle, was insane.

“My lord?” she asked, her voice rising above the howling, barking voices scattered through the warrenlike rooms of the asylum.

James blinked. The shadows of the cell’s single gas lamp danced over her. His mind abruptly skittered. Skittered to the swish and sway of her pressed grey skirts. The way they molded over her hips and the tiny form of her corseted waist. Astonishing. She was such a tiny thing. Barely coming up to his shoulder. Perhaps she stood as tall as his sternum. Perhaps.

Yes. One of the fairy folk.

He shook his head, but the motion felt as defined as movement through muddied water. What had he been thinking? Oh, yes. He’d been angry with the petite creature. Furious. But now? He swallowed, and the room swung on its axis and his body whooshed through the air . . . and yet he didn’t fall. He stayed upright on his boots, planted, despite the treacherous feeling of being adrift. He opened his eyes as wide as they would go and grunted against the unpleasant, rolling sensation. “What did you say?”

She stepped forward, her soft, crimson hair glinting in the half-light. “I’m askin’ only that you allow me to call you by your given name, my lord, not for the personal history of your opium exploits.”

Christ . . . the way her mouth worked as she spoke . . . Her rich, lilting voice sounded as if she were fucking every single word . . . Even her pink lips were lush. Soul-seducing erotic art. Gorgeous. Slightly pursed. Not for a kiss but in disapproval. He arched a single brow, determined to put her in her place. A damned difficult thing, considering he was the ward and she the interrogator. And the fact that his brain seemed entirely at its own command with very little rhyme or reason to his thoughts didn’t aid him.

He hadn’t taken any opium in days, but he still felt in the throes of it. It was most distressing. “Powers,” he said tightly.

She sniffed. That pert little nose, free of a redhead’s cursed freckles, tightened with her irritation. “That is your title. I ask again that you permit me the use of your name.”

In the shadowy light, her skin appeared translucent. He wondered if he reached out and put his hand on her, would it rest on mortal flesh? Or would it slide through her, ghostly female that she appeared to be? “My name was for one woman.” Why was it so hard to speak? He swallowed and slowly articulated, “And you are not she.”

She cocked her head to the side. Her curls, which had been smoothed back into a tight coif, slipped free at her temple, dusting her high cheekbones. “And you shan’t make me an exception?” She smiled. A pixie’s winning, devilish smile. “Lovely lass that I am?”

He smiled back. “I’d sooner rip your arms off.”

Her cinnamon brows lifted, a stunning imitation of his own disdainful gesture. “Indeed? And wouldn’t that be a great shame, fond as I am of my arms?” She licked her lips. Not a seductive gesture by any means, for there was nothing suggestive in her controlled demeanor, which exuded propriety from the tips of her booted ankles, up her charcoal frock, to the starched white collar ramming her neck straight. “Don’t you see? I wish us to be on equal footing. And if you are unwilling to be a gentleman, I shall have to be unwilling to be a lady.”

An image of her white body sprawled out naked on the stone floor flashed before him, her pristine grey skirts thrust up about her waist, white legs parted, stockings embracing her thighs. He was going to worship her. Bury his face into her sweet, hot folds. The desire that shot through him was so strong he could barely countenance it. Yet this woman, she appeared as marble. Perfect. Smooth. Pale as porcelain, yet hot. She wouldn’t be cold to his touch. Oh, no. She’d be wild and hungry and warm, opening herself to his tongue and caresses.

“How fascinating,” he said, finding his voice despite his strangely whirring thoughts and wondering if a woman such as she could ever possibly descend to his lack of gentility. “I’d love to see you not . . . the
lady
.”

Her cheeks flushed, yet all the same, her eyes narrowed around her startling gaze. Good Christ, her eyes were the wicked color of West Indies waters. Waters that had driven men to piracy. Perhaps her eyes would drive him to plundering. Whatever course, he was going to make those eyes heat with fire. And once the fire was lit, she would do whatever he bade. She would free him from this prison of madness. A prison he didn’t belong in.

“Your mind is in the same gutter in which you were found . . . James.”

James.

A pain so deep it lacerated his heart jolted him out of his swaying inaction. He darted forward, his long legs eating up the space, driving her backward without even touching her until she collided against the stone wall behind her. He thrust his hands out, slamming them on either side of her head against the wall. The frigid surface thudded harshly under his palms as he pinned her between his body and the stones. To her credit, she didn’t flinch despite the fact he towered over her.

The anger that had driven him forward kept him from weaving or losing his focus as he whispered out his warning. “Call me James again and you’re dead.”

Only his wife was allowed to call him James. Only his wife. And she . . . Sophia . . . Sophia was gone. Once there had been another woman—a woman just like him, lost on the road of opium—he’d thought might say his name. But that had been a mistake. She belonged to someone else. So no one would ever call him James again.

Certainly not this chit of a woman who dared enter his cell and treat him like an insect in a box to be speculated over.

“Luckily, I’ve secured my place with the angels and have no fear of dying.” Her chest lifted up and down in quick breaths, her corseted breasts pressing against the imprisoning fabric of her bodice, defying the calmness of her words. Her gaze locked with his eyes, strong, calm, unafraid . . . and intrigued. “You, on the other hand, seem bound for hell’s gate.”

“Hell and I are good friends,” he growled softly, letting his lips lower until he was but a breath away from her soft siren’s hair. “We’re always open to new members.”

Boot steps shifted on the other side of the bolted, thick iron door. His gaze twitched in its direction for a moment. The keepers had sensed his misbehavior. Ready to enter en masse and beat him into submission. Usually, it took at least three of them to subdue him.

Out of all the places he could have been sent to, this was one of the best. And yet it galled him he was here at all.

Even with his body so intimately close to hers, she didn’t call out for the keepers or order him strapped as the others had done. In the few days he’d been held here, the countless men his father had sent to reason with him had run within minutes, leaving him to be locked up with cuffs and manacles while he raged.

Why wasn’t she afraid?

And what the hell had his father been thinking to send in such a diminutive woman when he was in such a state?

Clearly, his father was desperate. Under no other circumstances would the old man have sent for a woman. And an Irishwoman, at that.

He let his gaze trail over her face, lingering on those plump lips. He couldn’t recall the last time he’d had a woman. Months, at least. He’d given them up long before he’d been put in this cell. He couldn’t stand the emptiness of those fucks. But this one . . . There was something undeniably unique, as if she might strike him with her governess’s stick and then kiss away his hurts.

She
tsk
ed lightly, ignoring his intimidation and attempts to shake away her poise. “What you are doing now? ’Tis only securing yourself in this place.” She glanced up, her gorgeous eyes darting about the dank cell, with its damp interior and inadequately proportioned bed. “Is that what you wish?”

He hesitated, considering her words. He wasn’t mad. He wasn’t. And yet his father had placed him here. For his own good, so the old man had said. A small, snaking voice whispered through his head that perhaps he
was
mad. Madder now than any mercury-muddled hatter. The thought shuddered through him, leaving him brimming with fury and pain that this had happened to him. “My wishes are not your concern.”

“Ah, but they are.” That careful gaze probed him without mercy. Pushing against his barriers, determined to breach him. “Without my say, you shall wither in these rooms.”

Who the hell did she think he was? He slammed a palm against the wall, unwilling to be handled. “You can’t keep me here.”

She blinked once but then cocked up her chin, defiant. “I can.”

He swallowed hard, his gaze momentarily swimming. The ability to focus his thoughts under her onslaught of information was unraveling. Quickly. The need to get rid of her, to make her leave so that a woman of such beauty and poise wouldn’t see him in such a disgusting state, sent him drawling. “Sod off.”

Apparently, the insult was of no new occurrence, for her countenance remained untouched. “Now, you’re not actually thinking such uninspired drivel assists you?”

How long had she been doing this that she didn’t care he treated her thusly? How many men had insulted her? Attacked her? Fucked her body in their mind? The very notion was galling to him. In fact, his insides tensed, burning with a sudden violence to destroy all those men. Even in his strange state. But he didn’t wish her to know that he cared. That he was capable of caring about someone else’s welfare. “I don’t give a damn.”

She tilted her head back, the tight weave of her locks bumping against the slick stones behind her. “I don’t believe that. Not for all the holy saints in the heavens above.” She hesitated. “You don’t know who I am, but I know you. You’re a good man. You don’t hurt women, my lord. The only person you hurt is yourself.”

He snorted.

“It’s the only reason your father convinced me to come.”

“More fool you.”

She pressed those perfect lips together before saying. “You’ve forsaken yourself and the man I know you to be.”

He sucked in a sharp breath, hating that he didn’t know what she was speaking of. “You know nothing about me.”

Her gaze softened. “I know you sent three thousand pounds to Ireland. To the west.”

Blinking, he thought back. It wasn’t possible that such a thing would make her think so highly of him, was it? “And?”

She sighed. “Do you know how many you saved? Just with those funds, you made it possible for my family to care for the starving.”

He yanked his gaze away from her earnest one. “It was only money.”

“It was everything,” she said firmly. “And I won’t let you forget it.”

“You don’t have the power to let me do anything.”

“There I must disagree with you. Your father has given me that power. For now.”

His fingers curled, nails scraping lightly against the unforgiving surface, desperately wishing to reach out and touch something as beautiful as her hair. How would it feel, to touch something beautiful again? To have something beautiful let him touch it?

The way she looked at him, as if he weren’t the very dregs of society, sparked something deep within him, urging him to believe. But he couldn’t. He’d gone too far down the road to ruin to ever come back.

“I can help you,” she whispered.

He flattened his palms, disgusted that he’d contemplated her under his touch or that she might indeed help him. He would never again deserve beauty or help. And because he had to convince
her
of that simple fact, he found himself lowering his head toward hers as he murmured, “How unfortunate for you to think so.”