Lord Lightning (20 page)

She found herself unaccountably moved at this confession. It was as close as a man like himself might come to a real apology. How tempting it was to think it sprang from some deeper emotion than his teasing tone betrayed. Was it possible she was not the only one hiding her true emotions?
It was a dangerous thought. She suppressed it. “Then I am greatly in your debt,” she replied, softly, “not only for the generous gift of the book but for your exercise of such self-control.”

“Well, don’t expect to see much more of it,” Edward added testily. “It required immense effort. I should have liked very much to kill Tam-worth for the insult he gave you.”

He strode a few more paces ahead of her before turning back to Eliza and asking in a plaintive voice, “Are you sure it would disturb you if I killed him?”

“Quite sure.”

“Then he shall go free, though he doesn’t deserve it.”

Again Eliza was touched by Edward’s show of consideration. But, though she knew she should let the subject rest, she couldn’t keep herself from reminding him that it was precisely to cause this kind of gossip that he had brought her with him to Brighton.

“You’re right,” Edward agreed, “but I’m beginning to regret I let you persuade me to include you in this scheme.”

“You are discovering that you do not like to be gossiped about?”

“On the contrary. I love to be gossiped about. It is my meat and drink. But I do not like to hear an innocent woman described in such insulting terms.”

Again she felt a treacherous warmth seep into her heart. His flippant tone could not disguise the
real concern he felt for her. And was it just concern, or something more? She felt a burst of annoyance as she caught herself once again wishing for what she must not allow herself to want, and as a result answered him in a tone that came out sharper than she intended. “It’s only talk, Edward. It can do me no real harm. I don’t know any of these people nor am I ever likely to see them again after I leave Brighton. Besides,” she added with the flippancy she would have very much liked to feel, “though I probably should not admit it, I took a certain pleasure in hearing myself described as an alluring vixen.”

Edward’s eyebrows rose and she allowed herself to savor the look of surprise he had not quite been able to suppress. But it was time to turn his thoughts—and her own—away from the scene that had just concluded. And so, upon noticing that the rain had let up, she took the conversation in another direction.

“If you truly wish to afford me pleasure, Edward, I must tell you I’ve been longing these past two days to get a closer look at the waves. I’ve never seen them.”

“You’ve never walked by the ocean?”

“No. This is the first time I’ve ever visited the seashore.”

Edward’s face brightened, “Then I shall take you to a place along the shoreline where I used to go in my boyhood when I wished to be alone.”

They boarded his carriage and rode some distance along the road that ran along the top of the
cliffs until they came to a deserted stretch where Edward told the coachmen to stop. He helped her out of the carriage and conducted her to an outcropping where a narrow path led down the side of the cliff to the beach below.

Standing at the top of the cliff, Eliza found herself looking out over an unbroken expanse of water that stretched to the horizon, its color a mixture of gray and blue under the cloudy sky. Above her, sea birds wheeled in the air, circling and then diving toward the water, their hoarse cries filling the air. She could have easily lost herself in the beauty of the scene, but Edward’s slightly amused voice broke into her reverie. “The prospect pleases you?”

“It does! It is so very rare that something one has read about in books lives up to the expectations one has formed of it. But the poets have not lied about the majesty of the ocean.”

Edward chuckled softly. “It is impossible to say too much about the beauty of the ocean. But poor jaded Eliza! In what have you been disappointed by the poets?” A look of mischief made his mouth quirk upward. “Surely not their praise of physical love?”

“Oh no,” Eliza replied without thinking. “If anything, Ovid underestimates the intensity of pleasure to be found in such experiences—” Then realizing the implications of her words, she stopped, embarrassed. She did not want him to deliver yet another lecture on how she must not fall in love with him.

But no lecture was forthcoming. Instead Edward
only observed in a bemused tone, “So you know your Ovid, too, as well as Aristophanes.”

“Of course.” She braced herself, expecting that he would tease her about it. Men so often found it ludicrous that a woman should find pleasure in the same studies that delighted them. But Edward merely examined her with a considering look and said, “No wonder you are so quick to stand up for your opinions. It cannot have been easy to pursue such interests in a country village. You must have been considered quite eccentric.”

She met his eye and was again surprised at the kindness she saw in his gaze. “I suppose I was,” she agreed. “Though I tried not to think about it. Unlike you, I didn’t set out on purpose to earn a shocking reputation. Indeed, I should have liked to have been more ordinary—but not at the cost of crippling my mind. My aunt considered the prohibition against formal female education to be the second worst abuse against women of our age.”

“And what, in her opinion, was the first?”

“Why, the indissolubility of marriage. She considered the institution of marriage nothing more than a form of slavery and always urged me not to let myself become entrapped by it.”

“And how did you feel about that? Did you wish to be rescued from domestic slavery?”

“Well, not at first. I suppose I must have been as foolish as any other girl. When I was seventeen I developed a
tendre
for the curate’s oldest son and used to follow him about after church on Sunday. But when I got older, I realized that Aunt Celestina
was wise to discourage me from thinking about marriage. I had no dowry and little else to attract a husband. Had I set my hopes in that direction I must certainly have been disappointed.”

“Was there no one in your circle who valued your intelligence and wit enough to take you without a fortune?”

“I had no wish to find such a man. I saw little in the marriages of my friends to make me disagree with my aunt’s belief that marriage was a trap for women.”

“I might argue with you,” Hartwood said dryly, “except that you have just echoed my own beliefs about marriage exactly. But I shall not encourage your radicalism any further. I have already corrupted you enough. Let us descend the cliff path and complete your introduction to the sea.”

Edward led Eliza down the narrow cliff path, warning her to take care at the steeper points. They had only gone a little way down the path when she accidentally slid several feet and he realized that her delicate silk slippers, designed for ladylike inactivity rather than hard use, posed a serious peril to her.

He reached out to take her hand and held it tightly as they made their way down the cliff. Once again he was surprised by the pleasure he took in the feel of her small, smooth hand clasped in his own. He discovered, too, an unaccustomed pleasure in lending her his physical strength. There was something about Eliza’s indomitability
that made it that much sweeter to take on the role of protector. The simpering misses of his acquaintance who bragged of their delicacy and fainted at the slightest provocation had never inspired in him the slightest desire to shelter them from harm the way Eliza did now. Perhaps, he mused to himself, it was because he knew if he had left her to make the climb alone, even in those treacherous slippers Eliza would make her way down the cliff undaunted and if she hurt herself, she would show the world no trace of her pain—no more than he would, himself.

Their path led them to a sheltered cove, hidden from the rest of the beach by a projection of the cliff that loomed above them. “May we go near the water?” Eliza asked.

“We can wade here. No one can see us because the cliff hides us.” At his reply, her face lit up with happiness like a child offered an unexpected treat, making her so beautiful, he could hardly bear to look at her.

As Eliza bent over to remove her slippers and stripped off Violet’s ornate stockings, the sight of her trim calves and ankles stirred him more than made sense. He had already been nearly naked with her in bed that first night, yet the passion he had felt then was so different from the feeling that rose within him now as he caught sight of her five small toes wiggling delightedly against the shingle. He felt a sense of lightness, a happiness, he had never before experienced—never even thought he could experience. But at the sight of
Eliza’s face, so filled with anticipation, he snapped out of his reverie. He stripped off his own stockings so he could lead her closer to the water, glad he had dressed in breeches rather than trousers. Then he took her hand and waded resolutely into the icy water, hoping it would cool the heat that was overpowering him.

At the first touch of the frigid water, he felt Eliza’s grip tighten and saw how the cold made her nipples thrust up through the thin cloth of her dress. He noticed, too, how her eyes, reflecting back the color of the water, had turned the most astonishing color of green and how the chill had given the skin on her shoulders a rosy glow beneath her enchanting cape of freckles.

Undaunted by the cold, she strode out into the water until it was nearly up to her knees. She reached down to lift a handful to her mouth to taste it. Then, making a face, she spit it out. Just then a sudden swell higher than the rest rolled toward them, and Eliza let out a squeal as she took the brunt of the wave, and the salty water drenched her to the waist.

“I should have warned you,” he apologized. “The waves are unpredictable. I’m sorry your gown’s been ruined.”

“My gown will dry. It’s worth the sacrifice of ever so many gowns to experience so intense a sensation.”

He had thought it only Violet’s gowns that had transformed Eliza from the drab little creature he had found in the theater dressing room into
the entrancing woman he couldn’t get out of his mind. But now, seeing her standing on the shore, with Violet’s brazen dress quite spoiled by the waves, he realized it was not the gown that had given her such appeal.

He could not tear his eyes away from her. She might not be what society called beautiful, but he wanted her more than he had ever wanted a woman. He wanted to run his hands along the rounded buttocks revealed by the damp thin cotton that clung to them like a second skin. He wanted to cup her perfect breasts in his hand and nuzzle against them. He wanted to explore the fiery nether curls whose shadow he saw through the now-transparent fabric. He wanted to—but he made himself stop. What had come over him? He had gone far longer without a woman in the past without descending to such mawkishness.

As she walked back out of the water, Eliza reached down, picked up a long strand of brilliantly colored seaweed, and draped it around her neck.

“A mermaid’s necklace,” she explained. “Perhaps it has magical powers.”

Perhaps it did. For surely she must have enchanted him, as mermaids do the mortal men who come within their sway, for him to feel so besotted with her. There was no other explanation for the way he found himself here fighting an almost irresistible desire to enfold her in his arms and truly make her his.

As she wrung out her ruined skirt, the seaweed
still wrapped around her neck, he was struck by the contrast of her enthusiasm now with the cool disinterest she had shown the night before when he had put around her neck a fortune in gold and jewels.

“You will catch a chill like that,” he chided gently, fighting off the urge to warm her by taking her into his arms.

“I’m fine. The sun has come out and it’s getting warmer. And anyway, I am used to withstanding chill. My aunt was not a believer in coddling children.”

“No one has ever coddled you, have they?” he asked, softly, hoping she could not tell how hard he was fighting off the urge to become the first.

His question made Eliza uncomfortable. The delight she had taken in sporting in the waves—and his unexpected kindness—had caused her to drop her guard. But she must not admit to having needs it would be dangerous to let him fill. “My mother coddled me,” she said. “But she died when I was only eight.” She paused as she struggled to find something else, safe to say, to dampen the emotion his innocent question had provoked in her. But his words had touched her too deeply. She was not sure she wanted him to understand her so well, so effortlessly. So found herself gabbling. “How often I wish I could speak with my mother now, if only for an hour. There’s so much I’d like to ask her, so much I’d want to hear about her life from her own lips.”

Edward’s dark eyes softened under their pale brows, which glinted briefly as a streak of sun broke through the clouds. “Your words point out to me my selfishness, without your having to utter a single word of reproach.”

“What selfishness?”

“The way I’ve been continually complaining about my mother, who is most definitely alive, when you have long felt the painful absence of your own.”

She hastened to reassure him. “That wasn’t selfishness on your part. You have every reason to feel the pain of your situation. Though I lost her early, my mother loved me. I can still remember her hugs and kindness. She bought me a beautiful doll once when there was barely enough money in the house to keep us fed. She taught me how to love.”

“Which my mother most certainly did not teach me. But you might well reproach me for being a spoiled, petulant, complaining boy.”

“No. It isn’t petulance on your part that makes you feel so much anger toward your mother,” she said, hoping to drive the look of self-reproach from his eyes. “Her hatred of you goes beyond anything I’ve ever seen. I can well believe she isn’t your true mother. It is hard to understand how a mother could feel so much rage toward her own child.”

His face lit up with an expression of hope. “Then have you changed your mind? Have you
found something in your horoscopes to suggest she’s not my real mother?”