The Lie and the Lady (42 page)

“What has you laughing?” he asked.

“You,” she said softly. “It's funny.”

“What's funny?”

How could she explain? That she was perhaps for the first time fully aware of all her contradictions? How was it possible that she could be burning for him, and be silly with him at the same time? How could he have introduced her to worship but leave her feeling not as if she stood on a pedestal, but as if she'd finally landed on safe ground?

“Just, everything.” She sighed, wrapping her arms around his neck. “Being here, with you. Everything.”

“And that's funny to you?” His forehead wrinkled in the dark. His body tensed next to her, becoming very still.

“Yes,” she replied. “I don't laugh very often.” It was true—not honest laughter, at least. She had to be too careful for that. “And the fact that I can—that I am—is funny to me.”

“Let me see if I have this straight.” His brow unfurrowing and a half smile turning the corner of his mouth up produced a sight Leticia had never seen and that nearly stole her breath—a dimple in his cheek. “You are laughing, presumably because you are happy, a fact that strikes you as funny because of its rarity, making you laugh more.”

She nodded once, and smiled at him brilliantly. Openly. Without any calculation.

“Well, then,” he growled, his hand reaching between her thighs and causing her eyes to go wide. “Let me see if we can make you laugh again.”

23

T
urner woke up with the sun to the smell of Leticia in his bed, but not Leticia.

Last night had been a dream. So much so that he thought he'd actually dreamed it. He'd woken himself up in the hours before dawn, relieved to find his arm slung over her warm body. Still in a half-sleeping state, he pulled her tight against him, kissing her neck. She responded unconsciously, turning to him, threading her hand into his hair and pulling his lips to hers. By the time he'd slid back into her, they were both fully awake and panting, the intensity of the feeling only matched by its rightness.

But now, with sunlight painting the walls of the tiny office morning pink, something was deeply wrong.

She wasn't in his bed.

She wasn't even in the room.

Her silk and lace dress—the only thing they had been careful about last night except each other—was still slung over the chair in front of his small desk. But the other garments—her chemise, her corset—were missing.

He found his trousers (inconveniently missing two buttons—they had scattered on the floor somewhere) and pulled them on before bursting out of the office door and into the mill itself. It was quiet, except for the sound of a breeze whistling through the tower of the mill. Turner knew that sound. It was the sound of the door to the balcony on the fourth floor being left open.

He climbed the spiral staircase two at a time, reaching the fourth floor landing in no time at all. There he saw Leticia, standing in the balcony doorway, wrapped in the blanket that had been so quickly forgotten the night before, and staring out at Helmsley.

“Here you are,” he said, letting a lazy smile spread across his face. Then the chill hit him.

“It's brisk out here,” he said, rubbing his naked arms.

“It's getting cooler. The days are getting shorter too. Soon enough you'll be inundated with fresh grain.”

“Luckily not on a Sunday,” he said, coming up behind her and wrapping his arms around her body.

“Yes, Sunday,” she said, seemingly realizing. “People will be headed to the church soon.”

The church. Where she was supposed to be married today. Was that wistfulness he heard in her voice? Regret? No, it couldn't be. Not after the night that they had shared. Because there was absolutely nothing to regret about last night—it had been everything that was right. So instead he kissed the top of her (extremely disheveled) hair and whispered in her ear.

“Are you going to share that blanket, or are you coming inside with me?”

“I'll come inside,” she said with a smile, still staring out at the horizon. Then she turned and they both walked back into the mill. “I just wanted to see it one last time.”

“See what?” he asked, as he closed the balcony door.

“Helmsley,” she said as she descended the staircase.

It took him a few moments of shock to move again. By the time he caught up with her, she was already on the ground floor, crossing into his tiny office.

“What do you mean, ‘see Helmsley one last time'?” he asked.

“Helmsley was almost home. I grew rather fond of it.” She threw off the blanket, and picked up her lace gown, grimacing. “Oh, I had forgotten about the pins,” she mumbled to herself as she stepped into the gown.

“It still is your home,” Turner said, leaning against the doorway. “You're staying here.”

She stopped struggling with the buttons at the back and grew very still. Her eyes refused to meet his, instead finding the pallet, rumpled from their cramped and glorious sleep. “No,” she said quietly. “I cannot.”

“Why?” he bit out the word. He'd had her. Finally. And he didn't mean carnally, although their night had certain qualified. But he'd had her—she'd finally let down every wall and let him in. It was where he belonged.

And now . . . now she was leaving? To hell with that.

“John, you do understand that last night . . . it was the only night.”

“No,” he said, his eyes becoming fierce. “I damned well don't understand that. What the hell are you talking about?”

She looked up at him then, her eyes wide with disbelief. “Because . . . I left Sir Barty.”

“I know, and you came here.”

“To warn you about Blackwell.”

“You could have done that in a note.” He crossed his arms over his chest. “You came here to be with me. You rescinded your good-bye, and you cannot give it again.”

“John, I can't leave Sir Barty to be with you,” she said, exasperated. “Don't you see? Blackwell is going to tell everyone about you and me because of that ledger page. If we are together, it will just make everything worse!”

“I disagree,” he replied, the syllables falling from his mouth like weighted stones. “I want you, Letty. I've wanted you for a year. I want you as my wife, and I want you in my home, in a proper bed and to wake up to you every day.”

“Your business would never survive it. Sir Barty and Margaret would suffer. And I'll be the center of a scandal that I can never outrun . . . Now can you please help me with my buttons?” she said, frustrated.

“Not on your goddamned life,” he spat, crossing his arms and blocking the door. There was no way she was leaving. If he had to keep her naked and in his cot, then so be it. But he didn't approach her. The fire in her eyes banked to cool ice, warning him away.

“Fine,” she said, reaching behind her, bending her elbows awkwardly. “I lived without a lady's maid long enough, I can do it myself.”

Oh hell. He swore under his breath and crossed the room to do up her buttons. He didn't want her to leave, but he also didn't want her to dislocate anything in the attempt. “I think that the only way to overcome any stupid scandal—and it is stupid, unbelievably so—”

“It's only stupid to someone who's never had to live through one before—”

“Is to stand together against it. To be together. You love me, I love you, and everyone else will have to adjust around us.”

Her buttons done, he spun her around and saw a spark of hope in her eyes. But then it became banked, squashed by fear.

She pulled away from him and shook her head. “You've never heard people whispering about you as you walk past them. You've never dealt with outright scorn for daring to exist.”

She began to play with her hair, smoothing it into sections, twisting them up into a simple, sleek bun. It infuriated him that she could care so much about her appearance right now. As if she didn't look goddamned perfect with her hair a mess and tumbling about her shoulders, and now the Letty he knew had to go hide behind the countess again.

“That's not what this is. These are old arguments. The truth is that you're still scared, Letty.” He lingered on her name, making her pause for the briefest of moments as she searched the floor for her hairpins. “You're scared of being a miller's daughter again, a miller's wife and not a countess. You're scared that you're going to go back to being insignificant. And you are scared to death of being in love with me. Not because I'm not an earl. But because how you feel about me is something you cannot control.”

He knew he'd struck a nerve with that last one. Her cheeks flushed red, livid and frightened. Then, she rose. He watched her straighten her spine, the way she always did when she transformed herself into an imperial goddess who could deflect cannon fire.

“Don't tell me what I'm frightened of,” she said, her voice ice. “You're afraid of everything. You're someone who could not confront Ashby for five years, could not confront Blackwell about your suspicions about him. You couldn't even confront Mrs. Em when she went around town telling everyone your mill would fail, your mother and I had to—”

“What did you say?” he interrupted suddenly.

“I said you're scared—so desperate to succeed you get in your own way at every turn—”

“No, not about me. You said I couldn't even confront Mrs. Em?”

“Yes.” Her brow came down, and her hands stilled on her hair. “Mrs. Emory. Oh God, she's going to have a field day with this news, Helen will have to work so hard to—”

“Letty . . . Leticia. You didn't say Mrs. Emory. You said Mrs. Em.”

“Yes . . .” she said slowly, blinking.

“
Mrs. M
,” he said, practically knocking her over as he crossed to the desk, rifling to find the ledger page he had tossed there the night before.

“Mrs. M?” she said, her mouth dropping open like a fish. “You think Mrs. Emory is . . . Mrs. M?”

“The page you stole—it was the first page with an entry of Mrs. M, correct?” She nodded as he found the page and unfolded it in a rush. “What's the date on it?”

She came and leaned over his shoulder, pointing to the date in the top corner. “Here. See, it's about seven years ago. And Mrs. Emory does not have a seven-year-old. That, I am certain Helmsley would have noticed.”

“Oh, I'm not so sure about that,” Turner said, his brain turning over the date. “Helmsley can be utterly blind when it wants to. Myself included.” Two steps later he was at his shelf, pulling a leather-bound ledger of his own from the middle of the pack.

“What is that?”

“One of my father's ledgers, from when he ran the mill. This one from seven years ago.”

“They didn't burn in the fires?”

“No, my father kept his office in the house, where my mother could double-check his numbers. Aha!” he cried, flipping to a page.

Since his head was still in his father's ledger, he didn't see the look that Leticia shot him, but by the way her hands landed on her hips, he could imagine it. “Why did you cry ‘Aha'?”

“Because I think I just put the pieces together. But is it enough?” He rubbed his chin in thought. “To hell with it,” he said. No more being frightened. He was going to have to bluff, and bluff wildly. But if his guess was correct . . . “I suppose we are going to find out.”

“Is what enough?” Leticia asked. “And enough for what?”

“Our conversation about your living situation will have to wait.” Turner threw both the stolen ledger page and his father's ledger onto the desk, and found his rumpled shirt in the folds of his pallet. He did up the buttons as he picked up his evidence. “Right now, we are going to be alarmingly late for church.”

She was so stunned by his proclamation, he was three steps out into the mill yard before he heard her.

“
CHURCH
?”