Lord Lightning (15 page)

She paused, abashed. That much was true.

“If you cannot believe what I tell you now, we had best call off this farce,” he said, his voice dangerously quiet. “These are the facts: I never met the girl James ruined. Never. And if I had, I wouldn’t lie about it. Unlike James and my dear departed father, I do not hide my sins. What I have done, I have done in public for all the world to see.”

The passion in his voice caused Eliza to take an involuntary step backward. “But if you are innocent,” she asked, “why didn’t you defend that innocence when first she accused you? Why didn’t you refuse to take the blame?”

“And be the reason James lost his chance to marry his wealthy heiress and rescue our family from the morass of debt my father had plunged us into with the purchase of that damnable necklace? The damage was done. I did not wish to see my family ruined. Perhaps it was the wrong decision, but I was only seventeen when I made it. Besides, how could I prove my innocence? The girl was dead. James and I were the only ones who knew the truth of the situation. James had no compunctions
about lying—nor did my mother have any interest in establishing the real truth about who had ruined the girl.”

He let out a sigh. “All my life, my mother preferred to believe that it was
I
who was at fault in any situation, rather than her favorite, James. Even when I was a schoolboy she had me whipped for James’s misdeeds.”

“She did that?”

“Many times. One time, when I was but ten, James stole some firecrackers and set them off in church. He was thirteen, three years older than I, and he ran with a group of wild friends. But still, she blamed me. She whipped me until I bled and then kept whipping me. I still carry the marks of her switch on my back. I can show them to you if you think that I am lying about this, too.”

“That won’t be necessary!” Eliza protested, appalled. He must have seen the shock in her eyes, for the fury drained out of his own and when he spoke again now it was with a certain desperate sadness.

“You are right when you say that I turn everything into play. I tease my mother with these slight reminders of the way that she has treated me, though I know she will never admit to the truth. I brought you with me and decked you out in that accursed necklace to remind her of who it was who really ruined our family. I paid Mrs. Atwater to come to dinner for I wished my mother to remember that though I may be a libertine, the profligacy that ruined our family wasn’t mine.”

“And did you trick Mrs. Atwater, too, to get her to come tonight?”

“Damn it, Eliza!” he said, bringing his fist down onto the counterpane. “I made a mistake by not taking you into my entire confidence, but surely my hesitation was understandable. There was no need to trick Mrs. Atwater. She was quite happy to appear here in return for fifty pounds.”

“Then why didn’t you think your money would be enough to convince me, too, to assist you? You know me to have even more need for money than Mrs. Atwater.”

Lord Hartwood’s lip curled up in that maddening half smile of his. “You are no more like Mrs. Atwater, a woman bought and paid for ten times over, than I am like that vulgar button maker. I may not begin to understand what motivates you, Eliza, but I’ve seen enough to know that whatever drives you, it isn’t money. More like it is some wan hope of reforming me.”

“If that were so, I should find myself sadly disappointed,” Eliza replied severely. “You are as you will always be. That is the first lesson of character we learn when we study the astrologer’s art. Though the second lesson is that a person need not always express the lineaments of their nature in the lowest possible way.”

“As I do now?” His brow raised in an ironic question.

“As you do now. Whatever your feelings about your mother, Mrs. Atwater seemed to me to be a simple, kindly woman. It was cruel to force her to
exhibit her shame before the woman who of all people in the world must hate her most. Nor was it right to rub her nose in her son’s bastardy by harping on his resemblance to your father.”

“You have me there, Eliza. My treatment of Mrs. Atwater was quite wrong. Had I a conscience, it must trouble me now to remember that it was Mrs. Atwater, the person in the room who had the most cause to resent me, who showed me the only bit of family feeling I have experienced these past fifteen years. How strange to think that she still remembers me in my little sailor suit.”

His voice had grown wistful and a troubled look had returned to his brooding eyes. But only for a moment. Then that hard look surged back, and his voice grew harsh. “But I do not have a conscience, Eliza, as I have repeatedly told you. And you will not be able to reform me.

“Tax me with being childish all you want—blame Uranus or the Pole Star for my inadequacies. But you haven’t seen the end of my childish pranks. Far from it. Would it disgust you to learn that before setting forth on this journey I bought a box of firecrackers to bring along with me? Big, loud Chinese firecrackers? And that I plan to use them, too, before the fortnight is over.”

Eliza considered his words before replying. “Are they, too, meant to give your mother another sign that you have forgiven nothing?”

“How implacable you make me sound,” he said sinking back against the pillows so his eyes were shadowed from the candlelight. “But I brought
them only for sport. As you have so rightly explained to me, I think only of play.”

He let his finger trail lazily along the quilted counterpane on the bed. “But is it not a point in my favor that I should think of play at such a time? For when I stand in my mother’s presence, in my mind I am always eight years old and she is holding a heavy switch with that look of pleasure on her face that comes on right before she hurts me. Do you not think, my little seeress, that being the case, it is better—far better—that I should think of play when I must face her? Consider, for a moment, my alternatives.”

Despite her resolution to let herself feel nothing more for him, Eliza was touched. “Why then could you not simply have told me all this before?”

“And admit I was a coward?” Lord Hartwood’s lips clamped shut. “I’ve had enough of this discussion. You’ve been alone with me here in my chamber long enough to preserve my reputation as a libertine.” He waved one languid hand in dismissal. “Take yourself back to your chamber. Muss up your hair and crinkle your gown in case you meet any curious servants on the stairway. I shall see you in the morning—if you haven’t decided to leave me in a fit of insulted virtue because I twisted the truth to get you to be my accomplice.”

“I shall still be here in the morning,” Eliza assured him quietly. Then she pulled out the combs that secured the back of her new and fashionable hairstyle and grasped a handful of the sensuous
satin gown that enfolded her, crushing it until it bore the imprint of her hand. “And I thank you for telling me your story. It is a painful one and it must have been painful for you to share it. But hearing it has convinced me that you really do need my help.”

Lord Lightning’s eyes gave one last threatening flash. “Perhaps I do, Eliza. And I admit that I should miss you if you were to leave me now. But take care not to let your woman’s heart find excuses to fall in love with me. There must be no womanish softness toward me on your part. I am my father’s son and my brother’s brother, and that makes me a man whom it would be dangerous to love.”

“I shall keep that in mind, Your Lordship.”

“And so shall I,” he said softly to himself as she slipped through the doorway. “And so shall I.”

H
e’d been a fool not to make her his mistress. Had he done what he ought to have done that first night and not given in to mawkish sentimentality, she would now be firmly under his control. More important, had he made her his mistress, she would not hold the fascination she held for him now. Having had her, he would have satisfied his curiosity and begun the usual process of becoming bored by her.

But he had not, and so Edward found himself lying awake in his bed a good hour after Eliza had made her way upstairs, remembering the enchanting way her freckled cheeks had flushed in response to his gaze during dinner and the charming tendril of copper hair that had fallen forward and framed her honest eyes as she had upbraided him—and trying, too, with very little
success, to forget the intense surge of passion that had filled him as he had held her small but luscious body against his own in the hallway.

It must simply be thwarted lust. There was no other explanation for what he was feeling. And lust could be taken care of.

That woman at dinner, Lady Hermione, the one the earl had divorced, had sent more than one significant look in his direction. She’d let her arm brush against his leg at dinner, too, as if by accident and then made sure as she had chattered on about things of no consequence that he might overhear where she lived should he wish to pay her a call. If lust was the problem, it could be taken care of. He knew her type well enough to know how little it would take to bed her.

But that thought brought little comfort. He knew women of her type all too well, knew what she would say after she had sampled his amatory skills and how empty he would feel when it was over. He knew, too, how, within days, all her dearest female friends would get a detailed report about his performance. That was not at all what he wanted.

Nor did he want to find another Violet.

It was Eliza he wanted. Eliza who took his money only to save her books, who asked about his life instead of pouring out torrents of information about her own, who could not be tempted with the lure of marriage; Eliza who had, for a few brief hours, seen good in him where no one else
had done so, and, by so doing, caused him to act nobly.

Damn Eliza, and her idiotic claims. It had only taken her spending a second day in his presence for her to take his measure more accurately. She was already beginning to see him for what he truly was and had scolded him soundly. Well, he knew what he was and he’d warned her. If the worst he did to her was confuse her by twisting some words around, she should count herself lucky.

But it stung him that it had been a lie that had caused her to lose her respect for him, for it was not his nature to lie. He bragged that he did in public what other men kept hidden. It was a source of pride to him that he was not a hypocrite but displayed the ugliest parts of his nature proudly, no matter what it cost him. So why had he lied to Eliza? So she would agree to come to Brighton with him? By God, he had almost behaved as if he really needed her!

And that was not the worst of it. He could barely bring himself to remember the way that this evening had concluded. Had he really poured out his heart to her about his childish sufferings like an abused chimney sweep? He was disgusted with himself for having made such a craven pitch for her sympathy just because he could not bear her disgust at his behavior. He had never before told anyone what he had told her tonight about his mother’s cruelty. He had never before felt any need to justify his behavior. He was Lord Lighning,
fickle and unpredictable. Why should he care what a penniless nobody thought of him?

But he did not like to remember what he’d felt when he’d seen her begin to understand that, as he had maintained all along, he was not a decent man. And he had felt guilt, too, when she’d upbraided him about his thoughtless treatment of Mrs. Atwater, who must, in truth, be wishing by now that she had strangled him with the neck cloth of his little sailor suit.

Well, enough of that. He must pull himself together. He must extricate himself from the connection he had so carelessly entered into. There was no reason to give any woman such power over him, even so unusual a woman as Eliza. Tomorrow he would make it clear that she must give up the over-familiarity with which he had permitted her to behave. He must treat her like the servant she was and caution her to keep her moral judgments to herself. The intimacy that had grown up so swiftly between them—one oddly so much stronger than any he had shared with the women with whom he had enjoyed full sexual congress—must end.

Meanwhile, he must do something to take his mind off the piercing sexual need Eliza had ignited. He must find some woman who would ease it, and quickly. Lady Hermione was certainly not the answer, but as he drifted off into an uneasy sleep, his body still remembering the way Eliza’s soft, slight form had felt pressing so close to his own in the passageway and the surprising way
that she had responded to his brutal caresses, he thought perhaps a visit to that discreet establishment near the Steyne, which catered to fastidious gentlemen like himself, might be in order.

Eliza, too, was having trouble sleeping. The room assigned to her in the attic was hot and muggy, the bed narrow, and the mattress lumpy, but none of these would have kept her from sleeping had her mind not been in an uproar after her latest interview with Lord Hartwood.

Though she might have fooled him with her recent show of indifference, she could no longer fool herself. She could not trust herself to submit to any more of his embraces unmoved. Despite all his warnings, she was falling in love with him. Having schooled herself for years to be content with the spinster life her aunt had thought best for her, she had believed herself immune to male attraction and trusted herself safe in the company of a man famed for his profligacy. But now she knew better. Had she not recollected herself at the very end of that mortifying kiss she might well have allowed Lord Hartwood to throw up her skirts and complete her ravishment right there in the hallway.

A housemaid who exhibited such behavior would have been turned off without a character. When Aunt Celestina had discovered one of her dairymaids in just such a compromising position with the gardener, Eliza remembered well how the girl had protested in vain that the man loved
her. But Lord Hartwood had never given Eliza the slightest reason to believe he felt anything for her except, perhaps, a slightly amused lust. To him she was just an oddity—one more oddity in the life of a man notorious for his taste for the unusual.

How could she have let herself feel such unacceptable emotions, and for such a man? Her aunt would have been appalled. Unable to sleep, she searched through her flowered satchel for the current year’s almanac. Perhaps if she looked carefully at the planets’ current positions in the heavens she could find something new that would cast more light on what was happening to her.