The Wicked One (23 page)

"You do care, then," he said with a weary smile.

"Of course I do, you cretin.  Go ahead, then.  Tell me about your demons, and maybe, one of these days, I'll tell you about mine."

"Let us move closer to the fire, then.  I am cold."

The hearth was blazing, its leaping flames banishing even the winter drafts that snaked across the floor.  Their tea had gone chilly, so Lucien poured two glasses of wine from a nearby decanter, pressing hers into her hand before lowering himself to the rug once more.  She hesitated, then sat down beside him, cross-legged, stiff-backed, farther away than he would have liked, closer than he would have expected.

He ached to move up next to her.

Wanted nothing more than to lay on his back beside her, pillow his head on her thigh, and enjoy her nearness.

But no.  He would not take advantage of her like that.  He would not use this thread of caring compassion she had offered him in a way that would make her feel uncomfortable.

Instead, he drew up his knee and draped his wrist over it, the glass dangling from his fingers as he began to tell her about the dream.

She sat listening, never interrupting, never commenting, never mocking, never scoffing.  He told her everything — something he had not been able to do with his siblings, for he was the big brother, the leader of the family, and he had a place to uphold in the family hierarchy.  But he had no place to uphold with Eva.  He had nothing to hide, nothing to prove, no reason to hold anything back, because she was his equal, and he knew it.

At last he finished and, draining the last of the wine, held the empty glass in his fingers as he gazed unseeingly into the crackling flames before them.  "It's the same dream every night," he murmured.  "The first time I had it, I passed it off as nothing but a meaningless but unpleasant nightmare and promptly put it out of my mind.  But then it happened again.  And again.  I started having it every night, and soon sleep became something I began to dread.

"It wasn't long before I realized the dream would likely become reality.  I could not die knowing two of my siblings were still unmarried.  Given the love and happiness my parents shared within their marriage, I wanted the same things for my siblings.  Yes, I did orchestrate matters so Gareth, and then Charles, ended up in wedlock.  Then the dreams started.  Andrew had just met Celsie, and I took advantage of the situation.  I was abominable to them.  Beastly.  But I was desperate.  I succeeded, manipulating Andrew into wedlock as I had done with his brothers, until only my dear Nerissa remained."  He dragged a hand over his face.  "Everything you've heard about the whole Spanish estate affair is true, I'm afraid.  My motives were good; my methods were unforgivable.  I had hoped that absence would indeed make Perry's heart grow fonder . . . fond enough that he'd come back to England with an offer for my little sister.  I knew I was overstepping the bounds, knew that I was tempting fate, but I had beaten fate before and was determined to do so again.  I had a vow to fulfill; I had no choice but to get them together."

Eva felt his pain as though it were her own.  She looked at him, the noble profile painted in firelight, the stark face gazing unseeingly into the flames.  "A vow?  What vow?"

He turned his head and looked at her, and she saw past the arrogant, omniscient duke, past the Machiavellian monster, and into the man behind those silent black eyes . . . a man who was very different from what he would have others believe he was, a man with a soul so deep, a heart so worthy and true, she feared it was only an illusion, for men surely didn't possess such depth of character, such naked, vulnerable emotions as Blackheath was allowing her to see.

He turned his head and gazed into the flames once more, his face very still.

"A long time ago, when I was just a boy, my mother went into labor with her last child."  He stared unblinking into the fire.  "She had safely delivered the rest of us, but with Nerissa, something was wrong.  Her struggles, her pain, her strength . . . they were to no avail.  The midwife could do nothing.  My father was frantic.  He sent for the doctor, but even he could not help her, nor in the end, could he save her."  Blackheath set the glass down beside his knee.  "Sometimes, when I am alone and companion to only my memories, I can still hear her screams."

Eva sat unmoving.  The duke was still gazing into the flames.  His face showed such raw, naked pain that Eva instinctively reached out and took his hand, cold despite their proximity to the fire.

"You scoff at the love a man may feel for his wife, Eva, but my brothers are not so unlike their father.  He loved my mother more than life itself.  He loved her so much that every cry that issued from her poor, tortured body might have been his own, every tear that streamed down her cheeks might have been his.  He grew frantic in his inability to help her.  Frenzied.  He tried to escape, to flee the cries of pain that only emphasized his own helplessness, and so ran upstairs to the ducal apartments, high in the tower . . ."

Here, Blackheath stopped.  And Eva tensed, gripping his hand, dreading what he was about to tell her.

"I found him some time later."  Blackheath shut his eyes.  "Found him lying there on the cold stone stairs that led up to what are now my own apartments, his neck broken and the tears still wet upon his warm cheeks."

"Dear God."

"He must have tripped and fallen in his haste.  I knelt beside him and gathered him up in my arms, wiping the tears from my eyes with the inside of my elbow, telling myself that he was just sleeping — yet knowing by the angle of his neck, the blank stare in his eyes, that he was not.  I held him until he grew cold, held him until my nanny found me hours later, because I thought that as heir-apparent to a duke, I had all the power in the world . . . including that of holding the life within him.  But, of course, I could not do that."  He shook his head.  "Just as I could not hold the life within my mother when she, too, died, shortly after."  He gave a faint, distant smile.  "I was ten years old."

Ten years old.

Eva's heart constricted, and it was all she could do not to gather him — this man who had never finished being a little boy, this man who had been thrust into adulthood, into a dukedom, in the cruelest way imaginable — into her arms and comfort him like the mother that had been wrenched from him.  No wonder he was so controlling.  As a child, he had been unable to save his beloved father.  His mother.  No wonder he had tried to address the balance by imposing his will on everything else that surrounded him.  Dear God, could she blame him?

He was still staring into the flames, his eyes empty of expression, empty of everything but the memories that still haunted him.  She had not thought that he could own such terrible demons, could feel such anguish, could bring himself to share it with another person — let alone someone like herself.  But he had, and the knowledge humbled her, filled her with compassion and a strange sense of protectiveness toward him, toward what he had told her.  He was braver than she.  He was made of a stronger substance.  Tears filled her own eyes and she looked away, blinking, to hide them.

"Hell, Blackheath, you're making me want to hold you and cry my heart out for the little boy you were, the suffering you must have endured," she said shakily, trying to find firm ground beneath her suddenly tangled emotions.

"I will not stop you, should you wish to do so."

"You want me to hold you?"

He looked at her, unafraid to admit to such a humble need.  "I would like it very much."

She moved closer to him, closing the distance, and slowly, tentatively, put her arms around his shoulders.  They were so wide she could not contain them within the circle of her arms.  It broke her heart to think how small they must have been when he'd found himself with the weight of a dukedom, and the care of four little siblings, upon them.  She lay her cheek against his back, her heart aching in a way she could not understand.

"We laid them both to rest on the same day," he continued in that same flat, quiet tone.  "And as I looked at those coffins being lowered into the vault, I promised my father and mother that I would be the parent my siblings would never have.  I vowed that I would see to their welfare at all costs, that I would always take care of them, that I would put their happiness above all else — even the dukedom, if need be, because I loved them, and they were all I had left."

"But you went too far."

"Yes.  I was overzealous.  Arrogant.  I took my vow, and my responsibility, too seriously.  I may have triumphed where my brothers were concerned, but with my little sister . . . I failed."  He took a deep breath, let it slowly out.  "Instead of happiness, I have brought her only grief.  Instead of love, I have brought her only agony.  I have . . . destroyed her."

Eva held him within the circle of her arms.  "I wish I could take away your pain, Blackheath.  I wish that the little boy you were could have had his childhood."

"I do not suffer so much anymore, Eva.  It was all a long time ago . . . though it is still, after all these years, difficult to get past that spot on the stairs where I found my father.  Old memories never die, I guess."

"No," she said, remembering her own.  "They don't."

For a long moment, they sat there together, two souls that had come together in pain and sharing, her arms around his shoulders, the fire snapping with melancholy quiet in the hearth.

"I will help you find the truth about Lord Brookhampton," Eva said at length.  "But please, don't go to France.  It is too dangerous for an Englishman now."

"I must."

"Your life may be imperiled."

"What does that matter, when my days are counted anyhow?  No, Eva, best that I use whatever time I have left to undo the damage that I have wrought.  I cannot live with the knowledge of what I have done to my sister . . . what I have done to the man she loved."

"Oh, Blackheath . . . do not be so noble, it will be the death of you."

"My sister's grief will be the death of me.  I must do what I must do, Eva."

She shook her head.  "Listen to you.  Listen to us, sitting here like . . . like friends, instead of adversaries.  And look at me, actually grieving for the little boy you were."

"My dear Eva, it is not such a bad thing, to be in possession of a heart."

"Hearts are good for nothing; they only get broken.  Yet you — you don't seem to have any qualms about baring your own to me, when you know very well that I might happily crush it beneath my heel.  Why do you tell me these things, Blackheath?  I do not feel worthy of such confidences; I do not feel deserving of your trust.  I — I am confused and beset by guilt."

He unhooked her arms from around him just enough to turn and look at her.  His eyes were so deep and black, she felt she would never find her way out of those fathomless depths.  "And why is that?  Despite what you feel for mine, I have no illusions about the nature of your gender."

"I don't understand why you trust me so."

"I do not need your trust in order to give you my own.  That is not how life works, Eva.  It is only when one has the courage to give, that he — or she — will be in a position to receive.  I have given you my confidences, my trust.  I have received your compassion in return, perhaps even sown the seeds of friendship.  I ask nothing from you, save that you do not judge me based on your ill-conceived notions about my gender.  I ask nothing, except that you see me as an individual, and not just another male who deserves only your distrust, loathing, and contempt."  He smiled, and ran his finger down her chin.  "Despite all, I am not really the monster I would sometimes have others believe."

She looked away, tormented.

Oh, Blackheath . . . I so desperately want to trust you.  I want the same relationship with you as your sisters-in-law have with their husbands . . . I want your love, your admiration, your devotion — and the certainty that you will never betray me with another woman, tire of me when someone else catches your eye, cast me aside when I no longer amuse you.  But please — don't expect something I cannot yet give you.  And please . . . prove me wrong when it comes to men.

A lump rose in her throat, and she hugged him fiercely.

I beg of you, Blackheath, prove me wrong.

She looked into the flames, her eyes stinging.  And it was only when she felt his thumb on her cheek, gently wiping the tear away, that she realized she was doing something she'd never thought she'd do.

Crying.

In front of a man.

For some absurd reason, she began to laugh through her tears.  The world had been turned upside down.

Chapter 20

Many miles away, in her rooms at Rosebriar Park, Lady Nerissa de Montforte sat curled on a window seat.

She was alone.  From downstairs came the sounds of her family at dinner, laughing children, the distant strains of music.  How happy their lives were in comparison to her own.  She had no wish to join them.  Outside her closed door, she knew a dinner tray waited, growing cold as she sat here looking out over the darkening fields.  But she had no desire to eat.

Perry
.  A choking sob lodged in her throat.

She had never before thought of ending her life, but she was in such misery that the idea had crossed her mind several times since Lucien had left for the coast with Eva.  Life had been marginally more bearable with him here to hate — it had given focus to the heartache that had nowhere to go.  Rage was preferable to desolation; anything, in fact, was better than this mind-numbing limbo of anguish, this imprisonment in time and space and mood, this endless mental lethargy that provided her with only enough energy to summon her memories . . . to think of what might have been . . . and to weep.

Lucien.  Her brothers thought they had triumphed in forcing him to marry the beautiful American, but Nerissa had no illusions that the two of them weren't holed up in some cozy bed, doing the things lovers do.  She had noted the sensual tension, the heated looks that had passed between them.  She had noted Lucien's single-minded fascination with this woman he could not have.  Oh, he and Eva would not be looking for her dear Perry.  They would not even be thinking about him.  They would be too wrapped up in each other to pay Perry a second thought.