Dark Season (13 page)

He had wanted to see how far she would go. How far she would take her little game. He had never expected he might push beyond his own limits.

He knew he really was damned. Beyond any dream of redemption. Because he wanted her there with him. Because he hoped she was damned too.

Isidore Blackwood’s presence invaded her. She felt the hard trunk of the tree against her back. She couldn’t sink into it. It wouldn’t give. His arms, his broad chest were just as hard, just as unforgiving. There was no way out. Warmth emanated from him, carrying that heady mixture that was his scent, musky and tantalizing. She couldn’t block it out. She could only shut her eyes and try not to see him. She tried to disappear. She had done this often. Floated somewhere, anywhere else. A dark, featureless place in which everything was absent. She’d escaped so much pain, hovering beyond it. She worried that sometimes not all of her came back. That she lost a little bit of her soul in the journey. But the alternative—remaining locked in her wracked body—was worse. It wasn’t only physical pain that sent her drifting. When word came that Robert had been found—on the pebble beach in Porlock—she had gone away for days. She didn’t need food, or sleep. Papa spoke to her, but she couldn’t hear him. Though, finally, Papa was why she returned. Why she ate, why she slept, why she spoke again and listened and pretended all of her was there.

She caught her breath and held it in. But he would not let her disappear.

“Open your eyes,” he said. His hands tightened, viselike, on her face, and his fingers pulled at her lids so her eyes watered and she saw smears of color. When he let them go, they stayed open. Instead of the nothingness, she saw him. His eyes—his eyes glowed a blue she had never seen. Like hellfire behind a stained-glass window. Where the light played on his face, she could see the fine grain of his skin, burnished bronze. Then the ridge of his brow pressed hard into her forehead, locks of his black hair stroked her temples, and she felt his breath blow hot across her lips. His lips came lower, closer, and suddenly they were on hers, between hers, pushing her lips apart.

She knew it was a kiss. She had read of kisses in novels. And she had been kissed herself—twice. The first kiss hardly counted. She’d been fourteen, walking her lamed horse through the fields with Mathew Sunderland, who had claimed it was no sacrifice as the riding party was an absolute bore without her. He was thirteen, and his kiss, brief and light, reminded her of when she was
very
young and used to kiss buttercups. The second was a proper kiss three years later, the musical professor Papa had hired for the summer taking a liberty. He was young and handsome—much to Papa’s chagrin—and, like a man in an opera, he sang every word, from “good morning” until “good night.” On his final day at Arlington Manor, he had wrapped her in his arms. His mouth felt warm and pleasant. She was worried that he would break into an aria afterwards and alert her papa that something untoward had occurred, but instead he bowed, so deeply and so dramatically she had to skip to the side, and trilled a simple “La!” She shouldn’t have allowed it, but she was curious, and she knew nothing more would ever come of it. Such a silly, strutting fellow, though his voice really was a fine instrument. The next morning he was dispatched to Hanover Square, and that was the end of that. Those were kisses, and this too was a kiss, but so different it shouldn’t go by the same name.

This was new. She had never known that a kiss could be so … powerful. That it could involve teeth, tongues, and burning breath. His tongue slipped over hers, stroked her, and she opened her mouth, released the air from her lungs, and pushed back with her tongue. She heard him groan, felt his suction on her lower lip. The rhythmic pulling sensation made something respond in her lower belly. It was something between a tickle and an ache and an itch that made her want to rub herself against his hard thigh where it nestled between her legs. The heat of their joined mouths was sinking through her, sending ripples all the way to her fingertips. His hands were on her head, on her back. Her own arms had twined around his neck without her knowledge. Her breasts crushed against his chest, and the tips felt like hot coals, hurt like hot coals would hurt embedded in her flesh.

This was pain, but she wanted it. She wanted to feel it. She wanted to feel every fiber of her body stretch and strain and fray. She wanted to keep every sense alive to it. She wanted him to feel it too. She wanted to
make
him feel it, for the pain to be theirs and not hers alone. She tasted his skin—pine, smoke, pepper—and the taste wasn’t enough. She wanted to devour him. His breath was coming harder, and so was hers, and she realized her eyes were closed again and forced them open. She wasn’t going away. She was staying. She was inside her body, and her body was thrumming, and the little moan that she gave was the sound. His tongue moved deeper inside her mouth, filling her, and she wanted to scream then, because she wanted more, and this wasn’t real. It couldn’t be real. This wasn’t for her. This heat of skin against skin, tongue against tongue. Now that she knew what a kiss could be, everything was worse. It wasn’t fair, that she could feel like this. Hot and yearning and alive. She shouldn’t want to melt into him. She shouldn’t want to feel his tongue filling her, to take it in, to swallow him. But her body was proving that it wanted. It could experience this other pain, this sweet agony that made the blood race through her veins. Her red blood with its dark cargo. Its taint.
Morbid material.

He pressed into her, curved over her, and her body was bending back like a bow. She wanted it to break in half. She wanted the tension to release so she could force herself to twist away. She didn’t belong in his arms. Resistance stiffened her limbs. She felt a bubble in her chest, a little hole, expanding. She was empty. She would stay empty. Nothing would ever fill the hole inside her. She was damaged beyond repair.

He was still kissing her, his eyes closed, kissing her lightly, his lips teasing hers, licking, tickling. She stared into the bronze blur of his skin, the dark smudge of lashes. Then his eyes opened too. Searing blue slits. He drew back with a ragged breath, gripped her shoulders, and looked at her. Isidore Blackwood. That brutal face still close to hers. The features so large, so strong. The most vivid face she had ever seen. But he was a stranger. A muscle in his jaw flexed as he clenched his teeth. What he found in her eyes made his eyes widen. He let her go, and she almost staggered. The air felt cold as it rushed to fill the void left by his body.
Empty.
She hugged herself to suppress a shudder. Her shawl was gone. Fallen to the ground. She bent to pick it up and shook it out, stalling for time.

He had seen something in her face that shocked him. A hint, perhaps, of the beast she could be, the beast she became.
Not even human.

She held the shawl in her hands, staring at the soft blackness. She wanted to hide in its folds. Make it into a black tent and crawl inside. She draped it over her shoulders. The copse was not so thick that she couldn’t see the open green of the park through the trees. She could hear the low roar of mingled voices, hoof beats, carriage wheels. The city that had faded away when the world condensed to lips and stroking hands was reforming around her. The world wasn’t her body and his, pressed together, moving as one. The world was out there, vast and terrible, and she was alone in its midst. Not a part of it. Not a part of anything. She had to remember what she couldn’t have, or she would want more. And that was a hurt she could spare herself. She must not want … more.

Now that he was out there, detached from her, a part of the world that she wasn’t, she could look at him. He stood a few feet away, the angle of the light casting one side of his face into shadow. She couldn’t read his expression. His chest rose and fell evenly, as though he hadn’t groaned in her ear, panted against her mouth. He hadn’t felt it—the dark need, the sweet, driving pain. He was unmoved. Disdainful. Judging her.

A kiss couldn’t be a revelation to him.

She realized her bonnet was askew and straightened it, tucking back the hair that had fallen from her bun with a savage motion that caused a sharp pain in her scalp. This kind of pain—simple, so different from the double-edged agony she’d just experienced—cleared her mind.

He had kissed her to be cruel. Shame swept over her in a wave. Shame and fury.

“Did that accomplish what you expected, my lord?” She met his eyes, his startling eyes, blue-black rings starred with paler blue. “Do you feel closer to Phillipa?”

“Not in the least,” he said, voice flat. He scrubbed a hand across his face. The creases alongside his mouth deepened. He looked almost haggard. She could imagine, suddenly, how he might look in twenty years if the care continued to eat at him: Lines etching the bold planes of face. Features even more marked. Nose like a blade. A grim face. Then his look softened, and the vision vanished. He was young again, and his stark beauty made her yearning a bodily ache. Dear lord, she would need to find new ways of ignoring her body. Her body was finding new ways to betray her.

“Miss Reed.” He searched the treetops. With his head so angled, he revealed the broad column of his neck, the shape of his chin, the rich red of his upper lip, the slight bump in the bridge of his nose. “I want to apologize for my conduct. That was … unkind. I should not have taunted you.”

And what of the kiss?
Suddenly she did not want him to apologize for the kiss. The taunts, yes. But his lips on hers …
Had the unkindness of the impulse been borne out in the act? Did he feel that the act had polluted him?
Could he … taste it … her tainted flesh? He had tasted … delicious. And she …
Am I foul?
Tears pricked her eyes. It must have been so different from kissing Phillipa. Phillipa’s lips must have been sweet.

“I have never been a bully.” He linked his hands behind his back and rocked on his heels, studying her. He looked boyish, ill at ease. Guilty
.
His mouth quirked with self-mockery. “I hate bullies.”

The old viscount. His father. She remembered the shadow that had crossed Mrs. Trombly’s face when she spoke of him.
A controlling man
. Watching the play of emotions on Lord Blackwood’s face, she suspected the old viscount had been rather more than simply controlling.

“This is a deuced odd situation. I’ve handled it badly.” He shrugged, still distant. A male voice boomed beside them, as though the speaker were standing right there, just through the trees. A flurry of “What hos!” followed, growing fainter.

She glanced about to locate the figures and saw slivers of masculine couture—tweeds and top hats—receding. No interruption forthcoming from that front.

She fidgeted, balling her hands in the edges of her shawl. “I cannot summon a spirit at will.”

Now the quirk of his lips turned sardonic.

“My dear Miss Reed,” he said. “I never thought you could.” He shrugged then threw his arms open in a gesture meant to communicate helplessness. Except he could not look helpless. The reach of his outspread arms was prodigious and only emphasized the breadth of his shoulders.

“This fashion for mysticism … Spirit-writing, table-tapping … ” He shook his head. “I’d like to see every table in England milled to sawdust.”

At this unexpected image, her lips curved. “And we all eat standing up? Even the Queen?”

He blinked at her, surprised, then grinned. A crooked grin that stole her breath.

“We would recline on couches,” he said airily. “As they did in ancient Rome.”

“Of course. Ancient Rome. How could I forget?” She was quite sure her own reading on Ancient Rome had never delved into recumbent eating practices. She found it difficult to imagine Lord Blackwood poring over a book. Papa was her template for the literary man: balding, stoop-shouldered, absentminded, gentle, shy, always a little bit rumpled. The tall, demonic viscount, with his fitted black suit and mane of hair—well, put a sword in his hand, he’d make war on heaven. But a pen in his hand … no, she couldn’t see it.

“But if destroying all the tables is meant to discourage the table-rappers … ” She hesitated. “Don’t you think they would find something else to rap on?”

“The tables are not the issue. Is that what you’re saying?” He sighed. “How clear-headed you are.” His voice was rich with amusement.

This easy, bantering tone. The sudden familiarity between them. It was a hint of what it might be like … if they were friends. She felt emboldened.

“You subscribe to a more rationalist view of the world, my lord?” His brooding mien did not bespeak a scientific bent. He cocked an eyebrow. She tried again. “You disapprove, that is, of mystical explanations for earthly phenomena? Or perhaps you are pious? You find spiritualist practices offensive?”

He thinned his lips. “I distinguish between parlor tricks and mystical experience. And I dislike chicanery. Too many weak-minded and weak-hearted people are made the worse for it. Should I meet a true enchantress, I assure you, I would not condemn her in the name of God or science. I have seen too many things that my understanding does not compass to refute the possibility of magic. But … to return to the matter at hand … ”

His face had set again in its hard lines.

“I know,” she said, chilled. “I am
not
descended from Morgan Le Fay. But I promise you I have no ill motive. Mrs. Trombly has been so kind to me … ”

“And you think the world is in short supply of kindness. So you said. You’re right, of course.” His air was bemused and tinged with self-reproach. “I do not think I have it in me to make the world a better place. But I will not make it a worse one.” He was serious, his voice low and husky.

“I don’t understand you, Miss Reed.” He said this reluctantly, as though it pained him to admit. “You experienced something at that séance, feigned”—she opened her mouth to interrupt, but he waved a hand and would not be stopped—“or authentic. Yet you tell me you have neither ill motives
nor
spiritual powers. This is what I don’t understand.” He pressed his fingertips together below his chin.