Lord Lightning (25 page)

“Has he got her with child?” Eliza demanded.

“Oh nothing like that. The damage is only to her reputation. But people are talking, and my friend has unwisely given them something rather juicy to talk about, though he has not, in fact, violated her. My friend is not utterly lost to honor. Indeed, it is because he still has some shreds of honor left that he wonders if he must marry her.”

“Well, the answer seems perfectly clear to me,” Eliza said forcefully. “Such a marriage would be a terrible mistake. Were there the possibility of a child, marriage would be a necessity. It’s not right to bring a child into the world knowing it will have to live with the shame of bastardy. But if
there’s no possibility of a child, the woman would be a fool to marry such a man simply to stop wagging tongues. Why should she condemn herself to spend a lifetime with a libertine, simply because people with nothing better to do might gossip about her?”

This was not what he had hoped to hear.

He tried again. “What of the injury to my friend’s honor? If he doesn’t offer for her, he must go through life burdened with the reputation of being a man who has ruined a woman of good birth.”

“I cannot see why that should matter to him,” Eliza retorted. “If he’s as great a rake as you say, I would assume he’s already ruined his share of less fortunate women. Why should one more matter just because she’s of gentle birth?”

“Your aunt
did
fill you up with radical notions,” he observed. “But surely you know society takes such distinctions seriously. My friend hasn’t ruined a servant girl, but a woman of his own class.”

“I see,” Eliza said in that tone that meant she didn’t. “But I still cannot comprehend why that should condemn the lady to a lifetime chained to a rake.”

Worse and worse! Still, he could not give up. “There is some possibility that the lady might be fond of him, but the devil of it is that my friend is not certain of her feelings. And he has his pride. He does not wish to offer and be rejected.”

“What a loathsome man!” Eliza said firmly. “To think of his own pride at such a moment.”

Edward sighed. This was not turning out at all the way he had hoped. “I think you’re being too hard on my friend. At least he is trying to do the decent thing. Indeed I’m rather proud of him. I wouldn’t have expected him to do it.”

“Well,” said Eliza, softening, “perhaps I am jumping a bit too hastily to a conclusion. My aunt always warned me that doing just that would be my downfall. And if she were here, I know she would tell me I must not assume that everyone thinks the way that I do. Just because
I
would not like to be forced to marry a rake to please some foolish idea of propriety, it does not follow that your friend’s lady might not be very glad to have him make her an offer.”

Edward found himself speechless, but Eliza did not seem to notice. Instead she asked, “I don’t suppose you know when your friend was born, do you?”

“No, I’m afraid your astrologizing is not an option here; there is no way to get any birth information about the couple.”

“Well, there is a way of casting a horoscope that could be helpful, even without birth information. Have you got your watch?”

Edward pulled his gold hunter out of its pocket, wondering what Eliza was up to now.

She consulted it, made note of the time, and then explained there was a kind of chart she
could erect whose purpose was to answer a specific question. That kind of chart required nothing except knowledge of the time when the question had arisen.

With little else to give him encouragement, Edward urged her to draw up the chart, hoping that whatever she saw in it might support his cause. So Eliza went upstairs, fetched her flowered satchel, and then, when she had returned to the library, settled herself at the desk to begin her calculations.

As she worked, he strolled over to see what it was that she was doing. He looked over her books, one of which he recognized as being a table of latitudes designed for the use of mariners. Then she made numerous mathematical calculations, the purpose of which he could not begin to guess.

As he watched her, he realized that if he had paid a little more attention to how she constructed her horoscopes when he had first met her, he might have avoided mistaking her for a woman of the lower classes. Clearly she was a very competent mathematician, which implied a degree of education no woman of the lower classes could have received. This discovery only depressed him further. He cursed the lamentable self-absorption that had led him to miss so important a clue.

At length, Eliza looked up and announced that the chart was finished and she would now have to ask him some questions to make sure it would serve their purpose and answer his question.

“Ask away. I am at your service.”

Eliza took a deep breath and began. “The Ascendant describes the questioner—you—well. It is in Aries, which shows a fiery, energetic man prone to anger. The subject is marriage, which we place in the Seventh House. Libra lies on the cusp of that house, so the lord of the matter is Venus, goddess of love, which confirms the suitability of the chart to a question concerning a marriage. All this suggests that the chart is indeed fit to read.”

She paused for a moment, then turned back to the chart. “Looking now at the Sun which is co-lord of the querent, we see it lies in the Sixth House, the House of Duty. That, too, fits. The Moon co-rules the question and it lies in the First House and has just made an aspect to Venus, planet of love, which fits again. The question is definitely one of marriage.”

She looked up at him and smiled a warm, delighted smile. “Edward, I am
so
glad you asked me to do this chart for you, for it does suggest that perhaps I was too hasty in my original judgment. I asked you many questions but forgot the most important one. You told me that you thought the lady might be fond of him, but you said nothing of your friend’s feelings. Does he perhaps love her, too?”

“I couldn’t say,” he said quietly. “My friend did not confide in me that far, which is understandable, given what the world knows about my feelings about love.”

“Then there is your answer, for clearly he does. This chart reveals their marriage would be a
matter of love, not merely one of propriety. But to get our final answer of whether it will actually take place we must look at the next aspect that will occur between the lord of the questioner, Mars, and the lord of the question, Venus. The relationship between the two will give us our answer about whether they should marry—”

Eliza paused abruptly. “Oh no! I have muddled it.”

Edward’s hopes which had been on the rise, deflated. “Why, what is wrong?”

“You
asked the question, so the ascendant describes you, but I forgot that the question was about your
friend’s
marriage, not your own. So I must read the chart for the friend, not you, and that changes all the houses! She leaned her head against her hand. “It is so vexing! I am never sure whether a friend is a Third House relationship or an Eleventh House one, so I am in doubt as to which planet to assign to your friend. And now I am reminded most forcibly why it is I don’t like casting this kind of horoscope. There is far too much to remember!”

She cocked her head up in that endearing way of hers. “Perhaps you can help me decide which house to use for your friend. Is he an older, serious man?”

“No, I should say he was quite frivolous,” Edward replied.

“Is he fond of talking?”

“Quite.”

“Then the Third House must describe him, being ruled by Mercury. But Mercury is afflicted on this chart by Mars. Is your friend prone to speak without thinking?”

“At times.”

“Or perhaps it is that he is prone to speak falsehoods, especially where women are concerned. Oh, of course,” she added, answering her own question. “That must be true, as you already told me he is a sad rake.”

He was glad Eliza’s eyes were on the chart and could not see his struggle to maintain his composure. But he also found himself gaining a new respect for Eliza’s abilities. He had not expected the chart to reveal quite so much of the truth.

Eliza pondered a little longer then said, “It is, after all, as I had thought. When we ask the question about your friend, rather than yourself, his marriage would be described by the Ninth House whose lord, Jupiter, is in the Tenth. That means that the marriage would indeed be only for the sake of reputation.” She pointed her pen toward the paper. “And the outcome is clear, too. Mercury’s next aspect will be a square with Jupiter.”

Edward interrupted, “The outcome is clear to
you
perhaps, but I am at sea with all your houses and lordships. What is the final judgment?”

“Why just what I told you before. Your friend should not marry the lady. If he does, only problems will ensue. But I am so glad I caught my error in time! Had I continued to read the chart
as if the question was about you instead of your friend I should have thought it a love match and one I should have recommended.”

Edward said no more. He had learned a valuable lesson about attempting to manipulate Eliza with the stars. But as he sat in silence while Eliza packed her books and charts back into the flowered satchel, he realized that his clumsy appeal for help had not, after all, been a waste of time. She
had
told him what he needed to know.

She believed that a marriage would only be justified if there was the possibility of a child. And in saying that, she had, unwittingly, shown him exactly what it was that he must do if he were to gain her assent to the proposal of marriage his honor required him to offer her.

So that was that.

He rose abruptly and strode over to the armchair where Eliza had seated herself after finishing her consultation with him. “It’s getting late,” he said. “I’ll help you bring your things upstairs.” Then he snuffed the candles, all except for one branch, which he picked up with one hand. Wordlessly he reached his other hand for hers, knowing, sad rake that he was, that her response to this simple gesture would dictate all that came next.

If she did not take it, the path ahead was uncertain, but if she did—all would move in the direction his ludicrously rejuvenated sense of honor decreed it must.

He gazed into her eyes, remembering the power of the kiss they had shared in the moonlight. Had
it just been the power of the waves that had moved her then, or was she almost his? As he waited, an overpowering longing for her swept through him. He dragged himself back to rationality. It was she who must be swept away, not him. And indeed, he sensed her even now teetering on the edge of making her decision. His hand lingered just out of her reach, then brushed against hers. He willed her to take it, feeling his need for her welling up inside again. At last, she gave him her hand. He squeezed it gently, letting all he felt for her flow into the softness of her touch. Then she stood up.

The kiss had not been just a trick of the moon.

A
s she let Edward lead her up the stairs, Eliza wondered at the calm with which she had behaved throughout the past hour. For upstairs, in the same room to which he was leading her, lay that poisonous letter she had buried at the bottom of Violet’s trunk—the letter she had found on her bed when she had gone upstairs to change her rain-dampened clothing. Immediately upon seeing her father’s seal on its cheap paper, she had known she would have to leave Edward immediately—and she must do it without giving him any hint of why it was she was leaving.

Her father could sniff out money like a bloodhound. Hadn’t he managed to show up on her doorstep only days after the solicitor had handed over her Aunt Celestina’s carefully hoarded bequest—despite his having let years go by in which she
hadn’t heard a single word from him? And now he had tracked her down again, writing so coolly that although word had come to him that she had given herself to Lord Hartwood without benefit of marriage, he would leave it to others to judge her, for he was on the brink of an enormous breakthrough. The potential for gain was immense—but only if she convinced her wealthy protector to make a heavy investment in his doomed and damnable scheme.

Her father hadn’t changed. She knew he never would, but still, the truth slashed through her like a knife. She must leave Edward now, before her father could make his way to Brighton. There was no alternative. She would not let Edward become yet another victim of her father’s obsession. She couldn’t bear watching his regard for her turn into contempt and then disgust.

She wondered how she had managed to converse so coolly with Edward tonight after reading that poisonous letter. How had she been able to discuss Miss Austen’s book and advise him on his friend’s predicament? She must be as good an actor as he was, for she had carried it off so well, without ever letting him suspect that her heart was breaking with every word he spoke to her and every liquid glance of his warm brown eyes.

Her sadness had made her stupid, of course. How else to account for the mess she had made when reading that chart for his friend? But he had not noticed. Sometimes his self-absorption came in useful.

But no matter what she felt. Now that her father had tracked her down, she must leave Edward, though it would be so hard to do so. Though it would be intolerable.

Perhaps that was why she had dressed herself in the most scandalous of all of Violet’s garments, the peach silk dressing gown. And nothing else. She was no longer the innocent she had been when she had first opened Violet’s trunk. She knew very well the response such a garment would provoke in him. But as she had tried to accept that she must leave Edward forever her sadness had turned to hunger and something fierce had risen up within her and declared that if this last night with him was all she had left, she would enjoy it to the utmost.

She would open herself to life. She would give herself up to what he had made her yearn for with all the teasing foretastes of joy he had given her already. Not just the pleasures of the body he had awakened her to, but the rest of it: The way he listened to her and valued her opinion. The way he respected her intelligence and brought out in her the playfulness she had so long suppressed. He had given her so much. Her heart swelled as she remembered the way he had shown her how much he needed what she alone could give him, no matter how hard he might try to hide it behind that ironic façade. Perhaps it was fate that the book he had bought for her spoke of the regrets of a woman her own age who had turned away from love. She would not make that mistake.