The Dark Lady (21 page)

“The good I still see is why I have yet to act further,” Ian said roughly.

With that, Hamilton’s onetime friend, onetime brother left him on the floor covered in wine and indignity.

Something took root in Hamilton’s heart at that moment. A sort of hate that he’d never experienced. He hated Ian so much for his own weakness and for the fact that Ian had to be so damn good. Well, if Ian insisted Hamilton was a villain, then he would damn well play the villain. And no one would play it better.

England
The present

F
or the first time in a long time, the world was bright and absolutely, gloriously beautiful. Every hue of yellow filled Eva’s vision as she floated in the sleek warmth of beautiful linen. She hadn’t dared close her eyes, terrified that if she did she would awaken to the browns and shadows of the asylum.

She burrowed deeper into the luxurious covers. But the feeling of soft sheets and warm blankets didn’t fade. Indeed, she felt cocooned like some exotic butterfly. Not once had she allowed herself to drift into slumber. Not once through the wind-howling, rain-pounding night. Not once when she was surrounded by a waking dream.

The yellow silk walls glowed, even though the winter sun was veiled by unending clouds. Cheery white snowdrops and lavender crocuses, their throats teased with streaks of orange, filled vases on every possible surface that she could see. Even the walls were painted with white dogwood blossoms. Blossoms that seemed to float down from the crystal chandelier hung at the center of the ceiling.

Eva drew in a slow breath and drank in the soft scent of lavender. It was hard to trust. Perhaps she had paid for
her sins? But an insistent voice kept whispering over and over again that she should indeed still be with Mary. Thomas had made it plain that it had been her rash decision and hers alone that had led to the death of her son.

Footsteps thudded down the hall and lingered outside the door. Ian’s steps. She already knew their firm clip.

Anticipation mixed with a hint of wariness tingled along her skin. She never knew what to expect from him. Except that he would defend her until his death. Even if in the process he drove her wild with aggravation.

The heavy oak door creaked open, and Ian eased his large body into the room. No doubt, just as she did, Ian looked completely out of place. His black hair, overlong now, hung about his face in jagged waves. Dark shadows deepened the hollows of his defined cheeks, emphasizing his brutally green eyes.

Eva shifted on the bed, grabbing at the covers, suddenly aware she was nigh naked, her body barely covered with a thin chemise. Though he’d seen her thusly before, there had been an openness at the time between them. That openness had vanished somewhere on the brutal road between York and Blythely Castle. She cleared her throat before beginning: “I see you didn’t sleep, either.”

Ian’s eyes darkened with surprise as his gaze locked on her. His chest expanded in a large breath before he shut the door behind him and crossed to the bed. “You should still be sleeping.”

She arched a brow, feeling remarkably vulnerable in his home, under his linens. “As should you. Yet here you are.”

“A point to you.” Easing his big frame onto the bed, he sat like a gargoyle guarding precious secrets.

Immediately, Eva grabbed on to the thick coverlet so she wouldn’t roll toward his body.

He smiled briefly, a forced concession on his weary face. “I have not slept through a night for some time.”

Eva eyed him. What demons kept such a strong man from his rest? Did they torment him through the night as hers did? If so, she pitied him. Only the damned deserved the thoughts that kept her from slumber. “I suppose that is something we have in common, then.”

Despite her best efforts to cling to the mattress, his added weight to the feather bed sent her rolling toward him. Her hip brushed his thigh and her shift eased off her left shoulder, almost baring her breast. Eva quickly tugged the fabric back into its proper place.

“How do you feel this morn?” he asked, his voice as impersonal as a Bath physician.

“I—” In truth, she felt ill. Her stomach twisted and jumped as if a wild dervish. But she would not give him the satisfaction. She would not play into his ideas about her weakness. “I am well.”

A softer smile turned his lips. Slowly, he leaned forward. His long, strong fingers, a soldier’s fingers, reached out and brushed a lock of her hair back from her face. “Brave of you, sweetheart, but you look a trifle green.”

Nodding slightly, Eva dropped her gaze at his touch. God, he could be so tender. At this moment, she could wrap herself up in his strength. Yet, mixed with the passion in his eyes, it was there.

Eva sighed, her eyes wide as she stared blankly at the crisp white sheets. When he looked at her, he saw a damaged woman who needed to be saved. ’Twas heartbreaking to be relegated to such a creature when once she had been his equal. She turned her head to the opposite wall, pulling more firmly at the covers to twist her body away from him. “Well, Ian, we all know the cure for my ill humors, do we not?”

“Indeed, we do,” he said with a brittle cheer. “I need
your advice on running this blasted estate and I need you up and about to give it.”

The sheets and covers flew away from her body. With one quick move, Ian whipped them to the floor.

Advice?

Eva jerked back toward him. Her shift twisted about her body, exposing her legs all the way up to the apex of her thigh. “What—?”

“Get up,” he said, his voice still full with seeming cheer. The cheer a governess supplies before a mathematical lesson. “We begin.”

Eva narrowed her eyes, unsure of this new tack. The day before, he’d been as stubborn as a bull. Eva pushed herself up onto her elbows, her garment hanging about her shoulders, the thin string bow precariously tied. She pulled her bared legs ever so slightly toward herself. “What are you about? I thought I wasn’t to be trusted.”

A hot lick of defiance running through her was wonderful. She hadn’t felt so many emotions in an age.

Ian’s face tensed as he scanned her half-bared body. His gaze intensified with a curious expression until his eyes glowed the blue-green of a hot spring. “Perhaps, when it comes to your own health, no. But in regard to the running of the estate and the house? Who could guide me better?” This time, his voice was softened, reaching her on a whisper. “Would you deny me help?”

He eased back down beside her, his hand resting only inches from her body.

“I—” Eva buried her fingertips into the sheet as longing coursed through her limbs. God, she desired to reach out to him, to have him hold her as he had done before. Nor could she forget the warmth of his kiss. Had he forgotten? “Elizabeth would be best—”

“Elizabeth is skilled, but I’m afraid I’ll bark at her and
send her running down the halls of this castle. You aren’t afraid of me. You tell me exactly what I need to hear.”

Ian’s hand slowly slid across the bed toward her. She held her breath, every nerve aware of that rough hand that could stroke so softly. It would take only one touch. They would be in each other’s arms. They could leave the world behind if he pulled her to him. No, she wasn’t afraid of him. She never had been and she never would be.

A sudden flash of deep brown hair and blue eyes in a laughing face flashed before her and she gasped at the sudden pain. Hamilton. She had not truly remembered him so clearly since . . . Eva jerked her leg away from Ian’s touch. “Don’t,” she whispered, her voice ragged.

Every trace of desire vanished from Ian’s face. His hand curled into a fist as he rested it on the bed. He closed his eyes and the lids tensed, pain tightening his face. “I—I apologize.”

She had not thought of her husband. Not since she’d drowned in a sea of opiates. In these last days, Ian had been the center of her world . . . but now, as the laudanum left her, the world was coming back with an intense clarity of memory. It would only grow worse. “Ian, we—”

The door cracked open and Elizabeth’s bright voice cut off her words as did the pad of Falstaff’s paws. “Good morning, my dear—”

Ian’s eyes snapped open. With the speed of a wet cat, he sprang from the bed.

But not before Elizabeth had swished into the room, followed by her dog and a pert young maid. The older woman wrenched her attention from Ian to Eva’s barely covered form on the bed. She held up her ringed hand and waved brusquely at the maid. “Alice? Leave, now.”

The young maid glanced down at the pile of bright
fabric and crinoline in her arms. In a panic she simply set them down on the floor and scurried away, shutting the door with an abnormally loud bang.

Falstaff, on the other hand, circled over by the window and lowered himself with a great harrumph.

Elizabeth ignored the flurry of activity and stood with unapologetic authority as her verdant silk gown glinted emerald in the morning light. “Explain.”

Eva smoothed down her shift as quickly as her hands would allow. She had no idea what to say. Even she recalled enough about the rules of decorum to know that what Ian and she had been doing was completely unacceptable.

Ian turned his probing gaze on his aunt. “I am a gentleman, and that should be explanation enough.”

Elizabeth’s face set to unmoving stone. “I see.” She took a bold step toward her nephew, her stance just as arrogant as his. “And how am I not to assume that you are taking advantage of a woman in a precarious situation? Ian, you are here alone with her! She’s in bed, undressed, for the sake of all the angels.”

Eva squeezed her eyes shut against the simple yet ugly words. This was her doing. She was the one driving this wedge between aunt and nephew. Try as she might, she couldn’t recall Elizabeth once throwing angry words in Ian’s direction.

“Please.” Eva forced her limbs, still aching with the unforgiving ride and withdrawal from her drug, to the edge of the bed. Slowly, determined, she stood. “Ian deserves more respect than that.”

Ian’s rigid stance softened as he turned toward her. “Eva, you don’t have to—”

“No.” Eva shook her head, her own distress dissipating under the conflict between him and Elizabeth. “He has risked everything for me.” Her throat tightened.
With all the conviction she could muster, she swung her gaze to Elizabeth’s. “And he does not deserve your censure.”

The anger slipped from Elizabeth’s eyes, replaced by something unreadable. “That may be so,” she said softly, “but you and he cannot carry on in such an intimate manner.”

“And how should we carry on?” Ian demanded. “Should we be as strangers?”

The words hung in the room. That he had seen her at far worse. That though they were in many ways strangers, a long-forged bond ran between them.

Their eyes met and the whole world seemed to disappear. It was absolutely true. There was not a soul who could understand the way their lives had turned so furiously and cruelly. It mattered not that his dreams had died in India and hers in a small English village.

Only together could they mourn.

Eva took a step toward Ian. How she longed to place the past behind them. The terrible words of the last days. The memories of perfect summers with them all together. Ian. Hamilton. Eva. And the memories of their chance at happiness vanishing as each of them changed from innocent children to conflicted, disappointed adults. If she could, she would erase it all and start anew. In this moment.

But before she could take another step, Ian turned away. The openness about him vanished, the vulnerability shored up behind a wall of resolve. “You are ever right, Aunt. I have overstepped the bounds of propriety. See to Eva’s dress.” He moved brusquely to the door. “I am—I am going out.”

In a rush of boot steps, he was gone.

Eva sucked back the desire to cry. So long ago she had learned that crying did nothing. Now her traitorous body
longed for the release of hot tears. Standing by the bed, her feet bare, her white gown hanging loosely about her, she felt so small. So alone. Ian had rescued her. He had saved her from hell. But now she realized she had found another place of damnation.

The one he had clearly chosen to dwell in.

Oh, she and Ian were together in this fight. But there was someone else watching. Someone else making sure they remained strangers. Eva let out a harsh breath. Hamilton. Hamilton was compelling Ian down this path. Hamilton had been driving Ian away from her for years, and it seemed that even her husband’s death would not end his power over Ian.

Lord knew she should also be driven by thoughts of Hamilton. A good woman—an honorable woman—would have been, even if her husband had not been the most honorable of men. But as she stood in the wake of Ian’s coldness, all she could think was that he needed saving as badly as she. And Hamilton was dead. Nothing could be done for him. Wasn’t life for the living?

“Eva?”

The soft voice penetrated her reverie. “You shouldn’t be so harsh. He has already suffered a great deal. I think he will suffer more on my account.”

Elizabeth arched a silvering brow. “Indeed? If I am not harsh with him, dearest, who will be? You?”

A smile pulled at Eva’s lips. If only Elizabeth knew the words that had passed between them. The way they had exposed each other’s weaknesses without the least bit of mercy. The way he admitted fearing for his aunt’s feelings. “Yes.”

Elizabeth tsked as she bent, picking up white garments from the floor. “You two would defend each other to the devil.” She pushed her hand through the folds of
a painstakingly embroidered chemise, bringing it to Eva. “It was always the case.”

Falstaff lumbered to his feet, tail wagging, and he interjected himself between the two women, stretching his face out for an expected scratch.

Instinctively, Eva reached out, tickling the mastiff behind his ear. Falstaff thumped his tail appreciatively. “Really? I don’t truly recall.”

Elizabeth circled around the dog, rather than attempting to move him, and gestured for Eva to slip out of the thin gown that she’d slept in. As Eva pulled the fabric away and Elizabeth slipped the new garment over her head, the older woman rolled her eyes. “You two. Not even Hamilton could keep up with your antics.” She smoothed the white fabric down Eva’s form, just like the most detailed of lady’s maids. “And then, of course, you two thick as thieves would convince anyone you were as sinless as angels.”