After the Kiss (35 page)

She had no intention of allowing Griggs to add drunkenness to the Beast’s other vices. But she was going to need the sergeant’s help. “Very well, Marcus.” She headed for the door.

“Eliza,” he said, settling himself in the thronelike chair.

She turned to look at him. “Yes, Marcus?”

“Don’t come back,” he said in a soft voice.

She looked into his face, realizing belatedly that she was not seeing the scars that ruined his beauty, only the expressions of agony and despair.

“I will bring Griggs when I return,” she said.

He closed his eyes and turned his head away. His right hand clenched the arm of the chair. His left hand twitched spasmodically.

Eliza was nearly running by the time she reached Griggs’s bedroom and pounded on the door. When he did not answer, she shoved the door open and was startled to discover he was not there.

She swallowed hard. Could she do this alone? Would Marcus hold still for her ministrations without Griggs to lend a hand? Should she bring Marcus the brandy, after all? She knew that was the way he had escaped the pain in the past.

But Eliza had seen her mother ease the ache in her father’s feet with hot water. Surely the remedy would work just as well for a hand.

She hurried back to Marcus’s bedroom, figuratively rolling up her sleeves. It was not going to be easy to convince him there was another way to allay his pain besides drinking himself into a stupor.

“Where is Griggs?” he said the instant she closed and bolted the door behind her. “And where is my brandy?”

“Griggs was not in his room, and—”

Marcus pounded the arm of the chair with his right fist. “Damn and blast! I forgot I sent him up to take care of the children.”

“What is wrong with the twins? Are they hurt?” she cried, hurrying to his side.

He shot her an angry look. “Reggie took one look at my face and screamed her bloody head off. I would not be surprised if she woke the entire household.”

Eliza stood stunned. She now knew the reason for his wrath. “She saw your face?”

His lips twisted bitterly. “She woke up when I was putting Becky to bed. You deceived me completely, Eliza. I believed the faradiddle you told me in the moonlight. It seems the scars are not bearable. At least, not to a child,”

“You cork-brained idiot! I told the truth! Waking up to find anyone—especially a long-haired, wildly bearded man—lurking in your bedroom in the middle of the night would be enough to frighten any child.”

“I tell you my face—”

“If you were right, I should be quailing at the very sight of you.” She walked right up and stood nose to
nose with him. “Do I look the least bit frightened by your bloody face?”

Marcus frowned, but whether at the blasphemy or her apparent lack of fear, she was not sure. Eliza watched as his lowering forehead squeezed the scars at the edge of his eye into a spray of white against the darker skin. There was nothing grotesque about it; the left side of his face was simply spider-webbed with very thin, very smooth white lines. She was itching to shave him, to see what his face looked like without the beard.

That would have to wait.

She left Marcus sitting where he was and crossed to the fire, using the iron poker to lift one of the handkerchiefs from the boiling pot. She let it drip on the stone floor as she made her way back to Marcus. She reached out to see if the cloth was cool enough for her to wring it out in her hands. She pulled it off, leaned the poker against the chair, and wrung out the handkerchief, letting the excess water splatter on the floor, where it ricocheted onto his boots.

She was reminded of the first night she had met him, the first time he had kissed her … at the well. So long ago. A lifetime ago. She looked up and saw Marcus’s eyes were focused on her. And that he was remembering, too.

She swallowed over the ache in her throat. “This should not be too hot,” she said, passing the kerchief from hand to hand like a hot potato.

He eyed her skeptically.

“It has to be hot to relax the muscles.”

He started to get up, and she put a flat hand
against his chest. “I will use force if I must, to keep you where you are.”

He lifted a brow. “You think you can?”

She picked up the poker and brandished it. “A lump on the head would work, I believe.”

His lips curled. “Very well, wife. Do your worst.” The humor disappeared from his face as a spasm racked his hand.

While his eyes were closed and his teeth gritted against the pain, Eliza wrapped the hot handkerchief around his hand from palm to knuckles.

“You’ll likely burn the thing to a crisp, and I can knock off the ashes and be done with it,” he said when he was able to open his eyes and study her handiwork.

She was already at the kettle retrieving another kerchief. “I think I can leave this one a little hotter and put it over the other,” she said.

Eliza watched the sweat pop out on Marcus’s forehead as she added the steaming kerchief to his spasming hand. Saw the bead of blood where he had bitten his lip through. Watched his right hand clench the arm of the chair and dig in until his fingernails left white crescents in the dark wood. His whole body strained to survive the torment.

“I cannot do it, Eliza,” he gasped between spasms. “I need something to dull the pain. This is not working.”

“It will,” she promised. “A little longer, Marcus.” She leaned over to kiss his wounded cheek above the beard.

Their eyes met—his shocked, hers compassionate.

“Why did you do that?” he asked, watching her face carefully.

“It is a bribe,” she admitted with a smile. “Someone told me once you can get almost anything with a bribe. Is it working?”

“It depends on what you want,” he said, his lips quirking.

“Another thirty minutes to see if this treatment will work. If it does not … I will bring you a bottle of brandy myself.”

Marcus looked at the ormolu clock on the tall chest. “Thirty minutes,” he agreed.

Eliza knelt at his side on the hard stone floor, her knees aching as she massaged his fingers.

“That is only making it worse,” he said through tight jaws, pulling his hand away.

“Let me try,” she said, holding out her hand until he laid his hand in her palm.

He turned his face away, tightened his right hand on the chair, and shuddered as another spasm racked his clawlike hand.

Eliza kept the handkerchiefs as hot as she—and he—could bear. She started at his little finger and worked her way to his thumb, curling the fingers forward and straightening them out. She massaged the joints. The space between his thumb and forefinger. The palm of his hand. His wrist. And back the other direction.

It took twenty-two minutes.

“I … I think the pain … the spasms have stopped,” Marcus said in wonder. He stared at his gnarled hand, which lay in her palm.

Eliza looked up at him, a relieved smile on her
face. “I am so glad, Marcus. Now that you know what to do, you can begin the treatment as soon as you suspect the muscles have begun to clench.” She curled his little finger almost all the way to his palm. “Do you see how flexible this finger is? I think they all might become so, if you worked with them.”

He pulled his hand from hers. “I can do this for myself now. Thank you.”

Eliza rose, keeping her gaze lowered, so he would not see how much his rejection hurt. “If you no longer need me,” she said, “I will go.”

“Eliza,” he said, his voice raw. “Don’t leave.”

She turned to face him, then opened her arms wide. “Here stands your whore, Marcus, whom you feel free to rape for your pleasure.”

He winced.

“I cannot live that life. I deserve much, much more. I will not stay tonight, nor will I come to this room again, unless you ask me here as your wife.”

“What does that mean, Eliza?”

“It means I want to be honored and respected. It means I want to share my life with you night and day. It means I want your love, Marcus, before I will give you mine.”

“I admire you, Eliza.”

She shook her head sadly. “It is not enough, Marcus.”

“I need you.”

“You need my body, Marcus. I want your soul to be the other half of mine, to fill an emptiness inside me. Until you want all of me, body and soul, you can have none at all.”

“I do not think I am able to love you,” he said, the words torn from him.

“Then I am sorry for both of us, Marcus. I will live my life the best I can without you—in the light. You may stay here in the darkness forever if you like. But you will be here by yourself.”

Eliza unbolted the lock and left the room, closing the door with a silent
snick
behind her.

“
Y
ou must tell Marcus, Eliza. He deserves to know.”

Eliza lifted her head from the chamber pot over which it had been bent for half the morning and wiped her mouth with a damp kerchief. “What purpose would that serve, Aunt Lavinia. Marcus has had six weeks to make up his mind whether to join me and the twins or stay where he is. Obviously, he has made his choice.”

“Perhaps knowing that you carry his child might change his mind,” her aunt suggested, knitting needles clacking.

Eliza crawled from behind the screen where the chamber pot was kept, across her bedroom carpet, to the chair next to the fire where her aunt sat knitting. “How long did you say this lasted for Mama?”

“A few months only.”

Eliza groaned. “I am not sure I will survive another month of this.” She settled her back against the chair, stretched her legs out in front of her toward the fire, and played with the peach-colored ribbon that hung down the front of her dress. “I want Marcus to come out of hiding because he loves me, not because I will bear him a child. Especially since producing an heir
was one of the main reasons he gave for wanting to marry me.”

“Piddletush!”

Eliza turned and stared at her aunt. “What?”

“The duke could have married any woman if he merely wanted an heir.”

Eliza made a face. “
Piddletush?
”

“Oh, that. Stumped you,” Aunt Lavinia said with a cackling laugh. “I made it up!”

Eliza smiled. “All right.
Piddletush
. If the Duke of Blackthorne did not marry me for an heir, why
did
he marry me?”

“If you have not figured that out by now, you are more mutton-headed than he is,” her aunt muttered, knitting needles clacking noisily.

“He wanted someone to care for the children?” Eliza suggested.

Her aunt scowled. “Why would a man who has remained a bachelor for thirty years
marry
to acquire a
governess
? He could have married any one of the previous six ladies if that had been his goal.”

“He was desperate,” Eliza said. “He had no other choice by the time he got to me.”

“He could have shipped the twins off to boarding school.”

“Marcus would never do such a thing! He
loves
those children.”

“Aha!” her aunt said. “Now we are getting somewhere.”

Eliza’s forehead furrowed. “Are you saying Marcus married me because he
loved
me?” she asked incredulously.

“
Loves
you,” Aunt Lavinia corrected.

Eliza gnawed on her lower lip. “Marcus does not believe he
can
love me. He told me so himself.”

“He may not
wish
to love you. But I promise you he is smitten.”

“How do you know?” Eliza demanded, hoping her aunt was right, but afraid to believe she was.

The knitting needles stopped clacking. “We are talking in circles,” Aunt Lavinia said. “The point is, what are you going to do about it? Mope around like a milk-and-water miss until your child is born without a father? Or do something to pry the duke out of that murky dungeon?”

“There is nothing I am willing to do, other than what I have done,” Eliza said firmly. “I will not plead or beg or demand or cajole. He is the one who must make the first move.”

“Stubborn mink,” her aunt grumbled.

“Very stubborn
minx
,” Eliza replied with a grin.

Aunt Lavinia harrumphed.

Reggie and Becky lay on their bellies listening to Eliza’s conversation with her aunt. Fortunately, the grate was under the headboard, where Eliza would never think to look. Eavesdropping had become absolutely necessary over the past six weeks. It was the only way they could find out what was going on in the house.

Ever since Reggie had woken up to find a bearded highwayman about to kidnap them out of their beds and screamed her head off—only to discover it was Uncle Marcus, of all people!—things had gone steadily downhill.

“At least now we know why Eliza has been staying
in her room every morning,” Becky said. “A baby,” she said dreamily. “Do you suppose she will let us hold it?”

“She will be gone before it is born if we don’t do something to help get them back together,” Reggie said. “Have you any suggestions?”

“ ‘Pry Uncle Marcus out of that murky dungeon,’ ” Becky suggested, in a perfect imitation of Aunt Lavinia’s voice.

Reggie glanced at her admiringly. “Very good. Only, how are we going to do it?”

“I know exactly how it can be accomplished,” Becky said. “But you may not like my plan.”

“Why not?”

“Because we might have to go hungry and thirsty for a little while.”

“How long?” Becky asked, eyes narrowing suspiciously.

“Not more than half a day, I would guess.”

“I suppose that would be all right. If you are sure the sacrifice will draw Uncle Marcus out into the open.”

Becky smiled. “Oh, yes,” she said airily. “It will turn the entire household upside-down.”

Marcus reached up to rub his hand across his smooth chin. He had been shaving himself every day for the past six weeks. He had gotten used to the feel of his face. He had even gotten used to the look of it.

He had woken up the morning after Eliza had left him feeling that he must do something to make amends. But the only thing she wanted from him was the one thing he was most afraid to give her. His love.

“You could shave off that beard of yours,” Griggs
had said. “Her Grace asked me for a kettle to heat water, and made sure your shaving kit was where you could find it, and a towel and looking glass. She wanted to see your face. I must confess I miss your beauty myself.”