Devil in My Bed (23 page)

Her words seemed to fall upon deaf ears. Aidan seemed unable to fix upon anything but her marital state.

“You were married, all that time we were having an affair? What were you thinking to lead me on so?”

She blinked in surprise at the question. “Oh, Aidan, I wasn’t thinking. Neither were you. We lived those days very carefully not thinking, I suspect. It was time out of time, secret and not quite real.”

There was little argument he could offer there. “And what of the last few days, what have they been?”

She gazed at him for a moment. “A gift,” she said simply.

His eyes narrowed. “A parting gift?”

She flinched then, very slightly. “If you insist.”

“Divorce him,” he said abruptly. “Cut him loose and marry me.”

She shook her head. “You don’t want that sort of scandal, Aidan. You and I might somehow survive it, but what of Melody?”

“Yes, what of Melody? Are you saying you would rather be a fugitive from your husband than stay here with your own daughter?” He folded his arms. “I don’t believe that for a moment.”

Oh, yes. That. Madeleine wavered in her determination. God, how could she tell him? What a heinous thing she’d done, to make Melody believe such a foul lie. Sickened by her own actions, Madeleine pressed a palm to her belly, to her tragically unused womb.

“Melody—Melody isn’t my daughter. I’ve never had a child.” She shrugged helplessly, her lips twisting in sympathy as he drew back from her. “It must have been another of your lovers.”

He flinched as if the blow was physical. “Other lovers . . .” He shook his head slightly. “You lied?”

She spread her hands. “I felt I had to. That horrible little man, Critchley, had come to blackmail me. He wanted—I knew he wasn’t going to stop unless I disappeared again.”

She trailed off. He was gazing at her like a stranger—a revolting, possibly mad stranger who related a tawdry tale he didn’t want to hear.

Oh, my love, would you have helped me if you knew the truth? If I had reached out to you that day you came to my house, would you have given me shelter? Or would you have assumed some nefarious plot on my part and walked away again?

“You aren’t her mother.” Aidan stopped, unable to say the words. Clenching his jaw, he swallowed and forced himself to stop—now and forever—stop being such a gullible, fantasizing idiot who didn’t want to face the truth. “Therefore I am not her father.”

Madeleine’s eyes widened. “But I thought surely you—”

He stopped her words with a violent shake of his head. She wasn’t Melody’s mother. That meant he wasn’t Melody’s father. Once again he’d trusted her and once again she’d broken his heart. The life of possibilities he’d found had been nothing but another lie.

A ghost of a laugh broke from his lips. “Do you know, when I first saw you I thought you were as fragile as a china doll. I worried that I would break you if I touched you, yet I couldn’t bear not to. Now I see that was an illusion. You are steel and stone and pretty paint, and I’m a fool.”

He lifted his gaze to meet hers. “There was only you, M—” His throat closed against uttering her name.

He gazed at her, unable to hide the starkness of his pain. Father and husband no more, nor would he be, ever. He might as well deliver the killing blow himself.

“From the first moment I saw you fleeing down that street, there has only been you. Ever.”

Pulling breath into his aching chest felt like inhaling fire. “You are the only woman I have ever loved or ever will love . . . and I now wish to never set eyes on you again.”

“But—” She reached out to him, her dark eyes wide and pleading.

“Go away, Madeleine.” He turned away, twisting violently from her toward the wall. His voice cracked.

“For God’s sake, have you no mercy in you at all?”

Madeleine ached all over. So cruel her lies were, however necessary they might have been. And yet she could not give him his wish, not quite yet. “Aidan, as hard as that was for you to hear, there is more.

Please let me finish.”

More? The only thing more she could do to him would be to kill him.

She took a breath. “This man—”

“Your husband.”

She nodded. “I married a monster,” she said quickly, desperately. “He imprisoned me in his house, he watched me every moment, he beat me—” She swallowed hard. “He isn’t an ordinary sort of bad. He isn’t simply brutal or unfair. He is evil—” Her breath caught. She pressed a hand to her throat and continued. “And now he knows I have some tie to Melody, and to you. I fear he will retaliate against you for sheltering me!”

The husband did not concern him. The man’s very existence had already slain him. “I’m quite sure he could do no more damage than you have done.”

She lifted her chin. “No, you’re right. I never should have loved you. It was only bound to hurt us both.”

The breaths she took didn’t seem to fill her lungs. “I’ll go away. I’ll stay away this time, if you promise me one thing.”

“I hardly think—”

“Get Melody out of London. Immediately.”

He frowned. “Melody needs to wait here for Jack. He is certainly her father.”

She shook off his objection. “If you ever believe one thing I say, believe this—anyone connected to me is in danger, especially someone weak and vulnerable.”

He stared at her pitilessly. “Is this more of your theatrics?”

She closed her eyes. “Just . . . take her somewhere. To your house. To a hotel. Anywhere not connected to Brown’s!”

Deep blue eyes, icy as an arctic sky—God, had she ever seen eyes so cold?—met her anxious ones. “Yes, if that will make you leave. So leave.”

Still she hesitated.

“Now.”

Madeleine took her spencer and reticule from where she’d deposited them on the chair. “I’ll . . . I’ll send someone for my other things tomorrow—”

His fist hit the wall with a sickening thud that she felt to her bones. She knew he’d never strike a woman.

However, she feared that in a battle between Aidan and the wall, the wall might do him some harm before it came tumbling down.

She gazed at his broad back, regret searing her heart as she watched his shoulders heaving slightly.

Live on, my darling. Love someone worthy someday. Be happy, if you can.

Her eyes filling, she fumbled for the door handle behind her. Letting herself out quietly, she shut the door carefully. He must have heard the click anyway, for another thud resonated though the walls.

A single low sob tore from her throat before she could catch it, but it rose alone in the empty hallway.

She had no right to tears. She alone had created this mess with her cowardice.

In penance, she intended to board that ship to Jamaica first thing in the morning. She only hoped it would draw the danger away from Brown’s and all who dwelled there.

“Wilhelm isn’t going to be pleased,” she murmured to herself as she turned automatically to check the street from the window at the end of the hall.

As she approached, a shadow moved in the embrasure. “Oh, no, my dear,” said a silky voice. “Quite the contrary.”

Madeleine froze. No. It couldn’t be. Not here.

Wilhelm moved forward into the dim light shining from the hall sconce. He smiled at her fondly.

“Wilhelm is going to be very pleased indeed.”

With horror, Madeleine realized that in her desperate confession to Aidan, she had neglected a vital bit of information.

She had not spoken the monster’s name.

She had not a breath of time to cry out before his fist rose to strike her into darkness.

She was gone. Had she simply walked out the front door? It didn’t matter. Let the staff at Brown’s apprehend her and throw her out. What did he care?

Aidan clenched his throbbing fist but didn’t vent his pain with another blow to the wall. The last thing he had the strength to do at this moment was to explain to his daughter why there was a hole in the wall.

Not your daughter.

He leaned his forehead against the cool plaster but the wall had given him all the solace it was capable of. He was all alone in his grief.

Alone. What a surprise.

Colin was going to crow over this error, Aidan was sure. Then again, even the ever-cynical Colin had fallen under the witch’s spell in the end.

It didn’t really help to know they had all been fools this time—he, Colin, Melody.

Oh, God, what am I going to tell Melody? Sorry, dear child, it was a nasty trick. No mother, no father.

You’re just a little foundling after all. Oops.

He who’d been determined to spend his life in bachelorhood had risen to the occasion and become a father and a husband-to-be. And now it was over. She’d left devastation on so many levels that he felt numb from it.

The last time, he’d had Jack to help him regain his sanity. In that case, madam, I have had my fill of harmless fun. Good-bye.

The following hour, the following week, the following month—now, those were darkly clear in his memory, as if seen through a smoke-blackened glass. The cost of every continuous breath was so high that he barely spoke. The effort to dress, even with his valet’s help, drained him so that he rarely went out. His appetite deserted him until his suits scarcely fit him anyway.

Jack was the one who brought him back. Jack’s grief over Blakely’s death and his guilt for inheriting had drained what little was left of him after he’d nearly died in battle as well. Colin and Aidan had put their own concerns aside and had shelved their long-lived enmity in order to help Jack survive that black time.

Moreover, Jack had begun to respond somewhat normally again—until the girl whose memory had sustained him in wartime had refused his heartfelt proposal and had him cruelly thrown out of her house.

That had nearly put an end to the Jack they’d known. In the dark months that followed, both Colin and Aidan had been called out to rescue their friend from drunken brawl after drunken brawl. It seemed that if there was a self-destructive bottom to unending misery, then Jack was determined to find it.

Finally, they’d managed to dry him out long enough to remind him of his obligations to the people on his family lands. Serious and distant where he’d once been jovial and animated, Jack had agreed to continue walking and talking and breathing. About anything else, he’d made no promises.

Aidan, by helping Jack, had learned to do the same.

His heart had begun to mend. Mend but never be like new again. He’d tried to flirt, to chase Madeleine from his thoughts with new assignations, but nothing ever came of it in the end. Aidan had no longer seemed to have the ability to adore anyone and he’d refused to inflict himself on any woman heartlessly.

And yet, this time he’d fallen hard and completely. It was not because of Madeleine’s charm or beauty, though she possessed those in plenty. It was something new and altogether terrifying and thrilling. A resonance of souls, perhaps. A fitting together of pieces long sundered.

Not only had he let down his guard and let himself love a woman who could tell such horrible lies, but he had fallen in love with a child who would never be his. He had set aside every defense he had to open himself to both Madeleine and Melody and yet, here they were, sundered again.

And to think it wasn’t her lies that had ripped them apart—it was her truth.

She’d fought so hard to keep her secrets. Now he knew why. He knew what she would lose if she told him the truth.

She would lose him.

Which he’d known, somewhere deep inside. He’d known that Whatever it was she had locked away behind those dark, troubled eyes, it would cost him just as much as it would cost her.

Which is why you didn’t press her harder, of course. A man doesn’t hurry his own execution, does he?

How bitter to realize that some things were, in fact, insurmountable.

Pain—streaks of pain like fire-tipped lances shooting through her head. Through the throbbing Madeleine somehow knew that opening her eyes would only make it worse. Light would pierce her vision like darts. She lay as still as possible, for she knew if she rolled over the severity of the headache might make her vomit.

How did she know that?

Oh, yes. That’s right. I’ve been beaten before.

The comfort of that recognition was almost enough to relax her and send her back into the throbbing fog, until she traced that thought back farther.

Pain. Beating.

Wilhelm.

Wilhelm finding her. Wilhelm in the club, horribly close to Aidan and Melody. No. It was a nightmare, just like before. Just another monstrous dream.

Fear gained supremacy over the pain. Wake up. Wake up!

She opened her eyes. That’s when she knew that monsters were real. She knew because she was looking at one. Leaning nonchalantly in the doorway with his arms folded, Wilhelm smiled fondly at her.

However, his eyes were icy. He was very tall, and lean, and handsome enough if one didn’t know him.

Madeleine knew him all too well, so the flash of white teeth did nothing to reassure her. He was just as likely to bite as to smile.

He cast a hinting sort of glance about the room, then gave her a what-do-you-think lift of one brow.

Warily pulling herself up to sit, Madeleine blinked away another surge of pain and looked about. She was in a long narrow room with a window on one end wall and the door Wilhelm guarded about halfway down one long wall. The room was mostly empty but for a few odd bits of furniture. The ceiling was slanted and that meant . . . her thoughts came so slow through the pain . . . it meant the room was in an attic. That was slightly better than a cellar, but she couldn’t quite think of why.

She looked down to discover that she was awkwardly sprawled upon a nest of blankets piled upon a bare, unpolished wooden floor. Some were rough wool and some were silk coverlets. She blinked at them owlishly for a moment, trying to collect her thoughts.

There was light coming through the window, though the panes were very dirty with soot and city grime.

It was day . . .

Hadn’t it been nearly evening by the time she’d brought Melody home from the park?

The park. Critchley. Wilhelm . . . in Brown’s? She couldn’t think.