The Art of Ruining a Rake (29 page)

Her eyes were wide as saucers.

“I need you.”

She pulled away so hard, he had no choice but to let go. “Why must you say such things?” She scrambled to the far side of the bed and cradled her hand as if he’d scorched her. “The more I resist, the more you ‘need’ me. Your vacillating feelings are tiring—”

His bark of disbelief cut her short. “You weren’t resisting me a moment ago. Did it dampen my enthusiasm? No, I wanted you. When you laugh with me and flirt with me and make me think, ‘Perhaps this time she’ll love me,’ I want you. If one of us is shilly-shallying, it’s
you
.”

She grabbed a pillow and clasped it to her chest. A lock of hair fell across its embroidered cover. “Very well!” A single tear streaked her cheek. “It
is
me. I
am
the problem. I can’t control myself when I’m with you. I forget I even want to. Look at me!” She spread her arms. “I’m wild with lust when I’m near you!”

He almost shouted with laughter. She was adorably befuddled, and it wasn’t because of him
.
Not that he was perfect, or even close. But it wasn’t entirely about
him.

She hugged herself again. “It’s not funny. I
can’t
love you. You make me too impassioned. What if I—what if I hurt you?”

“You won’t,” he assured her, resting his forearms on the side of the bed. She did love him. He wanted to crawl beside her and snuggle her close, warm and right where she belonged. “You’ll love me forever.”

Another tear fell. “There
is
no forever. Don’t you see? I’m… My mother’s daughter. Cut from the same horrible cloth.”

The wind was knocked so completely out of his sails, he could hardly breathe. “Your mother’s daughter?” he echoed stupidly. Of all the reasons he’d thought she scorned him, this had never occurred to him.

Her expression was so bleak he couldn’t mistake her meaning. Yet she whispered anyway, “She murdered my father. And then herself.”

Roman sat back on his heels, stunned.
She murdered my father.
The simple statement fought through his jellied thoughts, disjointed and terrifying and awful. He didn’t know what to say. How did one comfort someone who believed herself capable of killing anyone, let alone himself?

 
He could tell her that her fear was unfounded, to start. Lady Trestin had shown signs of madness even before she’d horrified everyone with her misdeeds. But he bit his tongue. One didn’t speak ill of the dead.

He wondered how much she knew about her mother’s lunacy. He hadn’t known, himself, until near the end. The day he’d encountered Ashlin’s mother at the foot of Brixcombe’s cliffs, she had been sitting cross-legged on the beach, stripped to her shift. The hem had been soaked to the knees. She’d been singing. Not a demure hymn, but a tavern ditty, the vulgar couplets lost to the wind.

He’d been five and twenty. She’d been Ashlin’s mother, Roman’s own mother’s close friend. He’d hesitated just yards from her, not wanting to leave her alone, yet unsettled to find her there. A lady of forty years didn’t belong in her shift on the beach.

She hadn’t seen him at first. He’d been too transfixed, too stunned, to interrupt. She was a handsome woman, but on this foggy mid-morning she was lovely. Her bare hands were splayed over her knees. Her wet, nearly translucent shift clung to her legs. Black strands of hair whipped wild around her shoulders like tentacles and her face was ethereal white, her lips tinged purple with cold. She reached out toward the sea, then suddenly turned to him. “His name is Ezra,” she’d said quite clearly. “The house was my clue.”

Roman blinked, bringing himself back to the present. A cold foreboding ran down his spine. Good Lord, he’d almost forgotten that encounter entirely. It felt like a dream. Or a nightmare.

It had ended as a nightmare. No wonder Lucy was scared.

“Lucy.” He spoke her name quietly. Waited for her to look at him with large, frightened eyes. “Ashlin worshiped your mother. Yours and mine were like sisters. But she was stark raving mad. You needn’t fear you’ll repeat her mistakes.”

“She
went
mad,” Lucy said fervently, “because my father made her so. She loved him. He loved her. Yet they couldn’t… They weren’t
right
for each other.”

His heart twisted. He’d had her in his grasp, but she was slipping. He tried to keep hold of his frantic emotions, tried to listen calmly. “How so?”

She shook her head and looked at the pillow in her lap. “I was there. The first time he—when my father found her. With Mr. Fraser. Do you remember Mr. Fraser? He was one of the groomsmen. I wish I didn’t recall him so clearly, but I’ve never forgotten his face.”

Foreboding filled Roman. It wasn’t too difficult to imagine the starkly beautiful, darkly melancholic Lady Trestin taking lovers. “I don’t recall the man, but go on.”

Lucy stared at the embroidered flowers on her pillow, her head bent so he couldn’t see her face. “Naturally, you wouldn’t. You’ve never liked horses. But I did. I was just a child at the time, no more than nine or ten. I heard my mother ride into the stable. I gathered up my sketchbook to go to her. One of my pencils fell into the hay.” She paused, still staring at the pillow. “By the time I found it, she’d dismounted. I heard Mr. Fraser in the entry, taking her horse. They were laughing, but I didn’t find it unusual. She often laughed with the servants. I started toward the door. Then I saw
it.”

Roman didn’t need her to explain what “it” was. Her beloved mother, making love to a groom against the tack room wall.

“They hadn’t even bothered to hide,” Lucy continued in a wavering voice. “My father entered while I was standing there. I saw his face the moment he realized…” She clutched the pillow tighter. Her eyes were unblinking, her tears brimming. “He said he’d never forgive her. To this day, I don’t know why she—why she strayed. I’m sure she loved him. He loved her, too. One affair was all it took to break everything. Their marriage, their hearts. My mother’s mind. He began keeping mistresses shortly thereafter. I don’t know what she did. She was never the same, and then she…” Lucy’s ragged exhale broke his heart.

He didn’t speak at first. He was terrified of saying the wrong thing. Adding to her fear instead of abating it. “We won’t end that way, Lucy.”

Her dark eyes rose to meet his. “Yes, we would. I’ve already wanted to. I’ve felt it.”

His heart stopped. His mouth went dry. It must be Barton-Wright. “Who? When?”

She looked at him unblinkingly, her tears strangely gone. Slowly, mechanically, she repeated herself. “You. I’ve already wanted to kill you.”

His lips parted, but he didn’t have the ability to speak. Thank God. Thank God she’d only been
angry
with him. For one dreadful moment, he’d thought she’d meant she wanted to lie with someone else. He clasped a hand to his chest, exhaling hard. If she’d wanted to take someone else as her lover…

He’d have broken.

“That first night,” she continued, perhaps mistaking his relief for revulsion, “the first time we were together, I felt it. I’d been lying to myself. I
had
thought we had a chance. I’d begun our flirtation with the intent of seducing you, but I’d told myself a lie. I’m not a stupid girl, but I was ever so stupid about you. I loved you. I’d wanted—I’d
hoped
—to marry you. Until I discovered the truth. By day, you were my admirer, my funny rogue. By night—” She laughed sadly. “You weren’t mine at all.”

He couldn’t move. His muscles locked him in this reckoning, forced him to face it head-on. “I
was
yours,” he started to say, but he’d promised himself: no more lies.

“I wish I had been yours,” he said instead.

She brushed aside the confession, treating it as another meaningless platitude. “By the next morning I was sick with jealousy. Jealous of myself,
as silly as it sounds, and jealous of the other women you’d no doubt given yourself to whilst we were playing our little game. Oh, I’d known better than to trust you. But thinking you are disloyal and experiencing it are very different things.” Her fingers curled into the pillow in her lap. “I hated you in that moment. I wanted you to die.”

“But,” he managed to say past the obstruction in his throat, “you didn’t hurt me. Not physically, at least.”

She looked straight at him. Not through him, but at him. As though wanting him to know her violent fantasies were lucid. “I
wanted
to hurt you. I wanted you to die. My hands…my face, my body… I was numb with fury. I wanted to strangle you. I
saw
myself stabbing you. All because you’d lain with
me.
Not another woman. Me. Just the thought of you doing what we did with someone else turned me into a—” Her tone grew more insistent. “A
monster
.”

He should have been horrified. Instead he felt horri
ble
. He’d done that to her. These appalling admissions were his fault because he’d caused her distress. Not intentionally, but all the same. He’d been every bit as awful as she’d supposed, perhaps worse than she could even imagine.

And yet, he truly had wanted her.

“Lucy,” he said softly. “I’ve changed.”

She shook her head. “Even if I believed you,
I
haven’t changed. I can’t promise not to do my worst. I’m too jealous for my own good. It’s in my blood.”

He balled his hands in frustration. The chasm between them felt wider than this bed. He’d never stray again. But how to prove he didn’t
want
anyone else? Not in a darkened corner, not in dalliance. No one who wasn’t her.

She shook her head vehemently as if coming to a conclusion. “I should never have propositioned you. We can’t be lovers. You rouse my passions, and I don’t say no. I’m like my mother. I have no control. You were right to—to stop.” She looked down again, defeated. “I fear this this thing we have between us will ruin us both.”

Roman contemplated the crown of her bowed head. Nothing he could say could fix this. Not now, maybe not ever. But one thing he’d heard her say made all the other terrible things just a bit more bearable.
I loved you.

He climbed onto the bed and made his way to her, closing the distance between them physically, and kissed the curve of her cheek before she could protest. Then he sat so they leaned shoulder-to-shoulder against the wall.

He found her hand beneath the pillow and threaded his fingers through hers. “I didn’t stop because I don’t believe in us.”

“But you did stop.” She tried to avoid handholding but he held tight. After several fruitless tugs, she gave up. “Why haven’t you run away?”

He made his voice light. “It’s much better here. I get to be near you.”

She hesitated, perhaps not wanting to relent so easily. “You’re scaring off my fickle swains.”

He couldn’t care less about those foppish friends of his right now. Lucy was all that mattered, all that would ever matter.

“I am?” He shifted his shoulders more comfortably against the wall. A pleased smile turned his lips. “Good.”

Chapter 15

THERE WAS SOMETHING liberating about telling one’s lover she anticipated causing his violent death and having him be at peace with it. Lucy almost felt buoyant. Roman had taken it very well, all things considered.

He might have laughed at her or tried to argue her out of her fear. Suppose he hadn’t believed her, or had told her she was foolish? She wouldn’t have been able to look at him. Any attempt on his part to discredit her trepidation would have built a wall between them.
 

Instead he’d accepted her deepest, darkest secret with a surprising amount of understanding. They had sat together for half an hour or so after, his smooth, lulling voice distracting her with an account of a young, rash viscount who’d done something ill advised on a wager.

Too soon, it seemed, her maid had knocked to announce dinner. Roman had risen and Lucy had come to her feet behind him. Strangely enough, as he’d cupped her face with one hand and bussed her cheek, then made her a fine bow and quit her bedchamber with a promise to visit on the morrow, she’d had the sensation he was relieved to have it all out, too.

She stood in a stunned state as the door closed behind him. If only her sister hadn’t gone away! Lucy had the sudden urge to scrutinize Roman’s extraordinarily calm acceptance of her fears.

But her dear sister wasn’t a few doors down. Lucy couldn’t climb into bed beside her and unburden her heart.

That didn’t stop Lucy from wanting to review every kind word and gentle touch Roman had used to comfort her. It didn’t stop her from recalling the warmth of his arm pressed against hers, or the scent of his citrus soap mixing with the lavender fragrance spritzed onto her pillows. It certainly didn’t muffle his deep, carefree laugh as he’d described Viscount Kinsey struggling up a spindly tree that could barely hold his weight.