Lord Lightning (17 page)

He walked over to the window, and threw back the heavy drapes, letting the sunshine flood into the room, while he thought out the rest of what he would say. He had flattered her a bit about something he knew she prided herself upon—her candor. Now what to do next?

He cast back to other scenes like this with other women, trying to recall what had worked to keep their interest. Perhaps he could appeal to her feminine need to change him. Women always wanted to change him, and as different as she might be from other women, Eliza had already shown quite a taste for doing
that.

At length he spoke. “You say that you have become tired of playing the role of my mistress after three short days,” he said plaintively, with just a hint of a sigh in his voice. “Consider this, Eliza. If you feel like that after playing a role so briefly, can you imagine how I must feel, condemned
for the rest of my life to be Lord Lightning? I have been playing him, without a break, these fifteen years.”

Eliza said nothing, but he could see he had caught her attention. It was working. As sure as you could catch a trout with a wriggling worm, you could always catch a woman with the suggestion that you needed her help to change.

“It is only with you, who see beyond the surface, that I feel my true self emerging,” he added. “It frightens me, Eliza, but with your help, perhaps I can break free.”

She made no reply, but merely regarded him steadily with those clear, green eyes.

“You say that I need a real mistress, but I would trade a dozen real mistresses for what you’ve given me. Don’t you see? You’ve offered me something rare. Something no woman has ever before given me.”

“And what is that, Your Lordship?”

“We are long past the point where you should be ‘Your Lordshipping’ me,” he said with an edge of irritation in his voice. “My Christian name is Edward and I would be honored if you would address me with it.”

“Edward,” Eliza said slowly, as if tasting the syllables. He could sense that the intimacy of saying his name was working its expected magic on her. This was easier than he had thought it might be. Now on to the next step.

“You’ve offered me your friendship,” he said at last. “And your friendship is robust and challenging.
I’m not used to having a friend who speaks her mind so forcefully, who chides me for my faults and calls me to account for my deficiencies. But even so, I’ve come to see the value of such a friendship.” He let his voice drop for maximum effect. “Please, Eliza. Don’t take it away from me. Not now, when I’ve only begun to appreciate it.”

He stopped his pacing and returned to where she stood. He reached out for her hand and took it gently in his own. How strange it was that though he had already taken so many liberties with her person, he had never before done something as simple as take her hand.

He held it in his for a moment, wordlessly enjoying the feel of her small but strong fingers as they rested against his own, and feeling, too, the involuntary quiver that ran through them. His plea had disturbed her. He could see it in the flush that crept up her graceful neck. Perhaps she was reconsidering her decision. He must keep on talking and not give her time to think. “You also acted the part of a true friend to me last night when you pointed out that I’d treated Mrs. Atwater with indefensible cruelty—perhaps more than you know. The world only saw Lord Lightning displaying his usual disregard for convention, but you saw more—and forced me to look at what I’ve tried to keep hidden, even from myself.”

He paused for effect. What woman could resist an apology coupled with an assurance of her superiority? All that was left to seal her to him, for now, was to share a confidence with her. Women
loved to be the repositories of such confidences. It made them feel special and trusted. Fortunately, he had just the confidence to share with her. His voice dropped to barely a whisper. “My cruelty to Mrs. Atwater was all the more inexcusable because I have reason to suspect that it is she, not the woman who calls herself my mother, who actually gave birth to me.”

“But how could that be? Your Lordsh—Edward—” she gasped. “Surely if you had been illegitimate you could not have inherited the title.”

“I fear it is precisely
because
there was no one to inherit his title except James, who was a sickly child and not expected to live—a title that meant more to him than anything else on earth—that my father prevailed upon my mother to pretend that his bastard was her own child.”

“But would it not be a crime, to pass off a bastard as legitimate to preserve a title?”

“It would. Hence if he and Lady Hartwood colluded that way, no matter what their subsequent feelings for each other, everyone involved would have had every motivation to keep it completely secret.”

“So you are only guessing, then. But what gave you the idea?”

“Many times during my childhood I heard the servants gossiping. They said that after my mother bore James, the doctors told her that it would be very unwise for her to become pregnant again, as delivering James had almost killed her. But with James so sickly my father needed another
heir. Does it not stand to reason that if my mother couldn’t give him one he would find someone else who could? Did you not notice how similar to my mother Mrs. Atwater was in her coloring and her looks? If my mother was to claim the child as her own, who was to know the difference?”

“And you believe your mother went along with this?”

“Unwillingly, I wager, but her pride in the title was, if anything, greater than my father’s, since she had paid a heavy price—a huge dowry—to acquire the right to bear it. But Eliza, think! If I wasn’t foisted on her in that way, what other explanation is there for her lifelong hatred of me?”

What explanation indeed? He was trying to ensnare her by sharing a confidence, but the suspicion he had confessed to her was real enough. It had haunted him all of his life.

Eliza’s look of concern deepened. “But if that were true, then the date and time you gave me for your nativity would most likely not be correct. You would have had to be born somewhere else and then brought secretly to your mother’s bedroom after the birth.”

She paused for a moment, deep in thought, then shook her head. “The horoscope I erected for the date and time you gave me fits your character too well for you to have been born at some other time. It describes your conflict with your mother as perfectly as it does your need to play childish pranks and your explosive, Uranian nature. Had you been born a few hours earlier the Moon
would still have been far from Mars, nor would Uranus have stood at your midheaven. The planet that tops the chart describes what the world will think of us, and your Uranian nature matches the birth time you gave me too perfectly. Even an hour earlier would not describe the same man. So it’s likely you were born when your mother says you were. It’s only because of how painful the relationship has been between you and your mother that you’ve taken comfort in the thought that you might be your father’s bastard.”

Had he really taken
comfort
in that thought? Her claim surprised him. He had always kept his fear secret out of shame that he might indeed be an imposter. But it struck him now how little pleasure he would take were he to find proof Lady Hartwood really was his mother. In fact, the thought was horrifying. But of course, Eliza had no proof.

He felt his brow furrowing. “What if your astrologizing is wrong? If I were Mrs. Atwater’s child it would explain so much: The way my father never intervened when my mother took out her anger on me. The way he would do anything—even ruin the family—to placate Mrs. Atwater. If I really were her child and he had illegally put me in a position to inherit his title, imagine the power his mistress would have held over him.”

As he spoke those words, he realized with horror, that in sharing his suspicion with Eliza he had just transferred that same power to her. With what he had just told her, she could expose him to
the world. She could ruin him. He must have gone mad to trust her with a secret so important!

But Eliza appeared oblivious to his gaffe. She cocked her head in that charming way she had and said, “Perhaps if I could examine your mother’s nativity, or that of your father, I might be able to determine the truth of the situation better.”

“Perhaps, but you just said you would be leaving me,” he said in a hollow voice, relieved that she betrayed no hint of recognizing the power he had just given her and remembering why it was he had trusted her with so important a confidence. It was essential now that he use it to bind her to him. So he fixed her with his most languishing gaze and adjusted his features into that look women found so hard to resist, the hurt, Byronic look they always fell for. He let his eyes grow soft and let the hurt flood up into them, gazing into her eyes as if he was showing her his soul.

It was only a stratagem. It was only a trick intended to reinforce the careful groundwork he had prepared for her seduction. But as his eyes locked with Eliza’s he felt a sudden loss of control, as if the soul that shone through her flecked green eyes grappled onto his, tore through his ruse, ripped open the tightness that bound his heart and freed within him some spring of inner vitality. He felt his heart pound and sensed her responding with shock to the honesty of what coursed through both of them. They stood together, their eyes joined, feeling the electricity throbbing between them. When at last he couldn’t
bear another moment of what she had exposed in him, it took all his strength to tear his eyes away. He stepped back, shaken to the core, praying that she would not leave him now.

Eliza was no less perturbed.

If only he had upbraided her, or scolded her, or made her the target of his cynicism. All that she could have withstood, but not the look of agony that had filled his eyes, the real agony that had been so close to the surface throughout his transparent attempts to manipulate her. Oh, he was still acting. He was playing yet another role as he tried to convince her to stay with him. But it was not an act that he needed her. It was not an act how desperately he wanted her to stay.

She must not give in to him! She must make herself turn away from that teasing smile of his, no matter how beautiful it made her feel. She must remind herself how dangerous beauty was to a woman alone and unprotected. She must not let herself become dependent on the electricity she felt in his presence even if it made her feel as if she were alive for the very first time. She must be strong. She must push him away and respond to his enticements with coldness. She must gather herself up and sweep out of the door. She must give him no hint of how hard it would be for her to leave him. He would only use it against her.

He was only pretending. He was a rake, a man who toyed with women. If he needed her at all, it was only to satisfy a momentary surge of lust
or because her show of independence challenged him. If she gave in to him now and stayed with him, if she chose to nourish herself on the crumbs of passion he scattered before her, she would end up as doomed as her own poor mother.

What could she look forward to if she stayed with Lord Hartwood except misery? Even if he never again touched her, her heart was becoming more bound to him with every moment, every word, and every gaze. And not just her heart. What his kisses had stirred within her body, the sleeping genie
they
had aroused—she did not dare to let herself remember. But she was no longer the naïve innocent she’d been when Lord Lightning had taken her to his town house. She no longer dreamed that if she gave herself to him, his passion might lead him to love. As much as she sensed him wanting her, she also sensed he did not
wish
to want her. Eventually he would triumph over his need for her. If she stayed with him he would soon tire of her. And when he did, how could she go on, transformed as she would be by what he had taught her to desire?

Perhaps when he claimed he couldn’t love, he was telling the truth. Perhaps she had read into his chart what she had wanted to see. Uranus at his midheaven was glorious, yes, like lightning on a summer night—but dangerous and unreliable. She could no more depend on him than she could on her poor obsessive father.

But even as she stood there, struggling to find the words to tell Lord Hartwood that it was no
use, that her mind was made up and she must leave him, the words wouldn’t come. If only she hadn’t gazed into his eyes and seen what she had seen pulsing there. If only he wasn’t clinging to her hand as if she was all that stood between him and the fiery pit. If only she herself didn’t want to stay with him so badly.

If she were wise she would leave him without a single backward glance. But she could not.

“Will you give me one more day?” he begged softly. “That’s all I ask. After that you are free to go.”

A single day, when so much could happen in just a single hour? But still, she felt her head nod and was unable to stop it from doing so.

At her wordless capitulation, his grip on her hand relaxed.

“But I shall need some time to myself, Edward,” she added. Time to calm herself, time to look once again at his perilous horoscope and learn how she might yet escape.

He let go of her hand. Now that he had got what he wanted, his face had relaxed and a hint of humor quirked up his lip again. “That’s a reasonable request, Eliza. We’ve been very much in each other’s pockets these past few days. In any event, some long neglected business must take up my time today. You may make yourself at home in the library or take a stroll with one of the maids—though please, do something about replacing that—that—” he stammered, until giving up on finding a word to describe her old gown,
he simply pointed at it with a barely suppressed shudder.

And with that he bowed to her, so very gracefully, the wounded boy replaced once again by the worldly man of the ton, and turning on his impeccably polished heel, he strode out of the library leaving Eliza to wonder how she would survive.

T
he house felt strangely empty with Lord Hartwood gone. Eliza retreated to her small attic room, but the day, though overcast and rainy, was a warm one and the room most uncomfortably hot. Her mind was so perturbed she could find no pleasure in the study of the astrological charts that were usually so comforting. Even so she forced herself to spend a good hour reconsidering the chart she had drawn up for his nativity.