Wicked Nights With a Lover (24 page)

“There must be something I can do. Some way …” Marguerite shook her head fiercely, feeling the dangerous burn of tears in her eyes. She flattened her free hand on the top of the table. “I can’t go. Not yet. Can’t you give me more information about this accident so that I might prevent it?”

Madame bowed her head over her hand yet again. “Let me have another look.”

Marguerite held her breath while she looked her fill, Madame’s thumbs exerting the slightest pressure into the base of her palm. “It’s misty, but I see a carriage, wheels turning, rolling so fast … horses scream. It’s raining. Thundering.” She nodded her head gravely, her brow creasing. “Yes. I can see you there.” Madame flicked her gaze up to Marguerite’s. “Dead.”

She shivered almost like it was the first time she ever heard the news of her death. “Can you see where I am?”

“No,” she said with a sharp shake of her head. “But you’re filthy. I see mud. You’re lying in mud. Covered in it.”

“Brilliant,” Marguerite muttered. “I need only stay indoors when it rains and after it rains. This is England.” She shook her head. “I shall never step outside again.”

Madame chuckled.

Marguerite scooted to the edge of her chair. “Can you not see anything else? Please. A hint of where I am?”

Madame went back to examining her hand. Closing her eyes, she dropped her head with a great exhale and pressed their hands together, palm to palm.

Her voice washed over Marguerite. “There’s someone with you. Over you, shaking you, holding you. A man with gold hair.” Her lips twitched. “Your splendid specimen of a husband, I gather.”

“Ash,” Marguerite sighed. She shouldn’t have felt relieved, but she did. She wouldn’t be alone. No matter what happened, it wouldn’t be so bad if he was there. “Can you see no more? A carriage accident? In the rain. That is all?”

“Marguerite,” Madame said, shaking her head, the tone of her voice unsettling, like she was about to impart something grave. “You’re happy now, aren’t you? Unlike the last time I saw you? You have a lightness. A glow.”

Marguerite thought of Ash and nodded. “I am happy. Yes.”

“Then be happy.” Madame fluttered a hand as though she spoke of a mere nuisance and not her life. Her death. “Stop worrying about what I see. Perhaps it will come to pass, perhaps not.”

“Yes.” Marguerite nodded slowly. Hadn’t she thought that same thing before? That she should live like each day was her last. With no regrets? Shaking her head, she rose to her feet, that single-minded purpose filling her, consuming her. She looked around at the shabby little parlor overflowing with knickknacks as if she didn’t know what she was doing here. “I must go.” To Ash. To the life awaiting her.

Madame smiled approvingly. “Good girl.”

“Good-bye.” She hastened to the door, calling over her shoulder, “And thank you.”

Leaving Madame Foster’s shop, Marguerite no longer felt a burning conviction to escape the specter of death. Everyone died. If she happened to die sooner rather than later, so be it. She would be certain she lived a lifetime in the time left to her, however many days that numbered.

Descending the steps of Madame’s stoop, she buried her hands deep into her muff. A lone female, dressed like Quality, she earned several stares and tried not to fidget beneath the scrutiny.

She spotted the hack across the street, glad to see the driver had waited as she asked. He leaned against the side smoking a cheroot. Nodded in her direction, he put out his cheroot, moving toward the carriage door. Looking both ways, she proceeded across the street, mindful of the puddles.

And that’s when she saw him.

Ash, riding hell-bent down the middle of the street for her. He held her transfixed, a prisoner of his black-eyed gaze. A chill rippled over her. She had never seen him look quite like this. Not even when he chased her down in that field. Satan himself couldn’t look so wicked.

Dear heavens, how would she explain her presence here, outside Madame Foster’s shop? She sent a guilty glance over her shoulder, eyeing the narrow shop squeezed between two buildings, its crude wood sign swinging over the door.

He’d think her mad if she confessed the truth to him. Declaring everything to the understanding Grier was one thing, but her jaded, rough-edged husband was another. Even worse, what if he truly believed her? Could she abide to see pity, perhaps even fear, in his gaze when he looked at her? She shuddered. Absolutely not.

She couldn’t tell him the truth.

He was closer now. She could see the light glittering off his dark pupils. The hard press of his mouth. The tiny tick near the corner of his eye. The stark whiteness of his crescent-shaped scar.

Her breath froze, her heart stilling at the cold fury in his face. He
knew.
Of course. How else did he come to be here? Grier had told him. She had told him everything.

Dread sank in her belly, as heavy as stone. Her heart wasn’t the only thing frozen. Her legs were locked immobile. Her feet didn’t move, didn’t budge, had become great leaden weights where she stood. She opened her mouth, but no words fell. She didn’t know what to say that could make him understand … to make any of this seem less absurd.

Then his face changed. Altered in a flash. Became something terrible and fierce. Harsh-cut lines, his mouth open, gaping.

“Marguerite!” Her name tore through the misty air, a horrible broken sound. He wasn’t looking at her, but somewhere beyond her.

She turned.

It seemed she moved slowly, but she was sure she did not. She was sure she whipped her head around on her shoulders swiftly—in perfect time to see the phaeton bearing down on her.

A thought skittered across her mind, irrational, dim.

Not a carriage.
It was a phaeton.

Madame Foster had been wrong about that.

The phaeton’s driver was laughing, his ruddy, jovial face turned on his companion beside him. Glancing ahead, he saw her. His eyes flew wide and he jerked on the reins with both hands, dropping a bottle from one hand. It seemed to bounce, skip in the air, its amber contents spraying out into the rain.

Rain. It had begun to rain some time during the last few moments. The pound of rainfall filled the air, like the steady distant roar of a faraway beast. Only it wasn’t far. It was on top of her, soaking her to the bone.

The driver fought to bring the speeding horses under control. Their eyes rolled wildly in their heads. They screamed, clawing air with their hooves high above her.

Bile rose high in her throat. She lunged to the side. Her heel caught. She fell, splashed in a puddle with a jar hard enough to rattle her teeth.

Wet, cold,
covered in mud
—Marguerite suddenly felt removed from everything, outside herself looking in.

She threw her hands before her in a feeble effort to protect herself, scooting backward, using a rut for leverage. Hooves crashed down beside her, shaking the ground, vibrating up her body. She rolled, shrank away, trying to avoid those glinting hooves dancing violently around her, crashing in every direction.

She cried out when one hoof grazed her shoulder. She didn’t have time to recover from the pain before she was struck again. Agony exploded in the side of her head. Darkness sucked her down, pulling her in, under …

Then there were hands. On her, over her. Beneath her arms, hauling her from the tangled fray of horseflesh and cutting hooves. She blinked past the black, emerging through the gray and breaking into misty-hued reality.

Voices clamored around her, congesting the air and adding to the buzzing pain in her head. An incessant clacking noise filled her ears—her chattering teeth, she realized. The more she tried to still her jaw, the harder her teeth chattered.

“Marguerite, can you hear me?”

She winced. “I’d hear you in China,” she muttered, her speech slurred.

She tried to touch her head where it throbbed, but she couldn’t. The effort to lift her arm was too great.

The rain had abated to a slow, freezing drizzle that penetrated her clothes, sank into her with a bone-deep chill so cold it burned.

“Marguerite!” Ash loomed above her, the sound of her name an angry bite on the air.

She lifted her head sharply, pain hissing past her teeth. She fought it, swallowed down the discomfort, the bile that rose up in her throat as she glanced down at herself. Cold and shaking on the ground. Wet. Muddy.

Just as Madame Foster predicted.

“Marguerite? Do you know where you are?”

“I haven’t had the sense knocked out of me, if that’s what you mean.”

“No, just trampled by horses,” he replied dryly.

“You’d think you’d sound a bit happier and not so cross with me. I’m not dead,” she snapped. And she realized with a start that she wasn’t. She wasn’t dead.

A jolt of energy shot through her. She forced one elbow down in the cold sludge, propping herself up. Ash quickly moved to help her. Sliding an arm beneath her, he pulled her to her feet. When her legs gave out, he swept her up into his arms, his face stark, a tangled blend of concern and anger.

“I’m fine,” she said with a breathy gasp. Better than fine. She was wonderful, even with her body battered and broken and aching.
She was alive
… and going to stay that way for a good while.

He adjusted her in his arms, his movements gentle. “We’ll see about that.”

He strode toward the hack, his every step jarring, shooting pain through her body, but even that could not stop the smile from curving her lips. Her fingers smoothed over his shoulder, relishing the strength there, the rippling power beneath the fine fabric of his greatcoat. At their approach, the driver scurried to attach Ash’s mount to the back of his conveyance.

Calling out directions to the driver, Ash settled and arranged her on the squabs like she was an invalid he must treat with care for fear of breaking. Missing his arms around her—the strength and comfort—and loathing the way his dark eyes skimmed over her, like she was something broken, she straightened on the seat, inadvertently bumping her tender head into the carriage wall. A cry slipped past her lips.

She could cope with his anger, preferred it even. Let him be mad. His solicitous pity she could do without.

He didn’t miss the sound. With a curse, he glared back over his shoulder as if he would vault from the hack. “I’ve a mind to take a whip to that bloody driver. Was he blind—?”

She reached for his hand. “But I need you here. With me.”

He dragged his gaze back to her. “You could have gotten yourself killed,” he growled.

“But I didn’t,” she said, her voice gaining strength. “I won’t.”

He looked at her intently, his gaze drifting from her face, scanning the length of her shivering body. She could well surmise his thoughts. He was thinking about why she’d come here … wondering if she might not have been correct to believe the predictions of a diviner.

“It’s over,” she said, happy relief swelling her chest. For nothing else mattered. It was over and they could be together without fear of tomorrow.

He shook his head, clearly not understanding.

She clasped his warm hand, not realizing until that moment how cold she was, her fingers wet icicles. “You know why I came here …”

He nodded tightly, his dark eyes intense, accusing. The hard cut of his lips sent an uneasy trickle down her back. “Madame Foster, yes, I know. Grier told me.”

“Madame Foster saw me like this.” Marguerite waved a hand over her body. “In the rain, covered in mud.” Her words rushed loose in a babble. He had to see, had to believe … “There was a carriage, and rain and thunder and then
you
over me.” She gestured between them for emphasis.
“This.
This is what she saw happening. She didn’t read the situation correctly. She thought I died. Don’t you see? It’s happened. And I’m still alive.”

Ash dragged a hand through his hair, pulling at the long ends.
“If
I’m inclined to believe some fortune-teller—”

“I didn’t believe her at first either, but everything she says always comes to pass.”

“So,” he said slowly, air exhaling from his nose as though he was grappling for control. “You think this woman can truly see into the future? That she foresaw what happened just now—” he cut himself off, his beautifully carved lips twisting.

“You have to admit it’s more than coincidence. How else could she relate so many details?” She nodded, then stopped, hissing at the fresh pain it produced in her head. She pressed a trembling hand there, fingering the goose egg.

He scooted closer, removing her hand and gently testing the knot with his warm fingers, his voice distracted as he muttered, “I only care that you no longer believe you are going to die.”

Disappointment surged through her. “You think I’m mad then. That I can’t be right about this?”

“Sweetheart, I’ll believe anything you want right now.”

“I am not a little girl with fanciful notions that must be indulged.” Bristling, she glared up at him through her lashes. “I’m not daft, Ash. I’m quite serious—”

“I know you are,” he snapped, “as much as I’d like to pretend otherwise. I can’t fathom why you’ve let some charlatan’s tales guide you in your dealings with me, Marguerite. I credited you with far more sense.”

She sucked in a breath, glaring at him, unaccountably hurt. “I’m not foolish,” she whispered, her voice low and wounded. “And you needn’t scold me like a child. I’m full-grown.”

He rubbed a hand over his forehead, looking suddenly weary, but still angry. She marked that at once in the flexing of his jaw. As though he ground his teeth together to cling to his composure.

“I don’t want to argue with you. I’m still trying to rid my head of the image of you falling beneath those horses …” His voice faded and he sighed deeply, raggedly, pausing as if words were elusive, beyond him.

Her chest felt tight and prickly, watching him.

She’d never seen him so …
affected.
He swallowed, his throat working. “When I thought I lost you … I don’t want to ever feel that way again,” he said thickly.

Is that what worried him? She reached for his cheek, hoping to reassure him. He turned his face away and her fingers only grazed his jaw. “You won’t. I promise.”