Veils of Silk (46 page)

When he touched her moist, heated flesh, she gasped and stiffened, shaken by her shatteringly intense response. It would take very little for her to reach that frightening crescendo of need that she had experienced once before, and which she now craved with heedless urgency.

It was that very urgency that jolted her back to awareness. Dear God, she was once again on the verge of succumbing to madness. With sick certainty, she knew that every time she surrendered, the madness would grow stronger, until she would be incapable of mastering it. Already she was near that point.

Passion. Blood. Disaster. The terrified child inside her thrashed out, futilely trying to twist out from under him as she cried in a suffocated voice, "No! This is wrong. I mustn't!"

Ian went rigid, his mouth still on hers, his fingers inside her. In a wanton, greedy corner of her soul, Laura prayed that he would ignore her protest and finish what they had begun. Later, after their mutual hunger was sated, would be soon enough to agonize about consequences.

But he was too strong for her. Groaning, "Bloody, bloody hell," he rolled
away and stumbled to his feet. Then he leaned against the wall, burying his face
against his upraised arm. He was shaking, but as Laura watched, his control clamped down. Inch by inch, the long line of his body became still and taut as marble. Without lifting his head, he said with lethal restraint, "You had really better explain what your problem is, Laura, because I can't bear much more of this."

She curled around herself, face flushed and breathing ragged as she tried to calm her outraged body. "I don't think
I can explain," she whispered.

He dropped his arm and pivoted toward her furiously. "You had bloody well better try! If this happens again, I'll end up either forcing you, or leaving you." His eye narrowed. "Or is being forced what you want? If so, you'll have to find another man to give you what you want, because it's not a game I'm willing to play. I have enough shame in my life already."

His anger was like a splash of ice water. Fighting the irrational, childish panic that had overwhelmed her, she pushed her trembling body to a sitting position and tugged her gown over her bare legs. In spite of her choking fear, somehow she must find the strength to tell him everything.

She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, then haltingly began in the most obvious place. "At Habibur's, I told you that it wasn't that I feared passion, but that I feared I would like it too much. That's the truth, Ian. For most people, I think desire is only part of life, sometimes welcome, sometimes a nuisance, but basically manageable. For my parents, though, passion was madness." She drew in a shaky breath. "It destroyed them, and I'm sure that if I allow it into my life, it will eventually destroy both of us, too. That's why a passionless marriage was the only kind that I dared attempt."

She didn't mention that that was exactly why she had agreed to marry Ian. She didn't need to. Ian's anger faded and he became very still, with a cool, hard clarity like black glass. "Ideas like that don't come from nowhere. Why do you believe that passion is so dangerous?"

Going back to her earliest nightmare, she said, "It began when I was four or five years old. My parents had gone to a ball. It was very late when they returned, but I woke up when the door opened. I got out of bed and went into the hall and peered through the balusters, thinking that if they were in a good mood, not fighting, I'd go down and see them."

She swallowed hard. "As the door closed behind them, my father said something I couldn't hear. My mother hit him. They began fighting like animals, tearing at each other with teeth and nails, making horrible, inhuman sounds. I was terrified." Her mouth twisted. "Now, of course, I realize what they were doing'. They were probably having a wonderful time, even though it looked as if they were murdering each other. But as a child, I didn't realize."

"You certainly should understand now," Ian said dryly. "A few minutes ago, we were behaving exactly the same way."

She flushed and dropped her gaze. "I know. That's why I became so frightened." She took a deep, steadying breath. "That night, I crouched on my knees and watched in horror, my hands locked around the balusters, convinced that the two people I loved most were going to kill each other right in front of me. When he dragged her to the floor and they began… began coupling, I got up and ran back to my room and hid under the blankets and cried. The next morning, I couldn't believe that everything was normal. My mother wore a high-necked gown and a satisfied expression, my father was in one of his most exuberant moods."

"It's not surprising that you were frightened and confused," Ian said soberly. "But surely that one incident was not enough to make you believe what you do."

Her hands knotted into fists and dug into the mattress at her sides. "There were other incidents. The worst was several years later, when… when my father died." Her throat closed, and she couldn't continue.

When the silence grew too long, Ian said, "You told me that your father committed suicide. Wasn't that what happened?"

"What I told you was the truth, but not the whole truth." For a moment she hid her face in her hands as she searched for the strength to reveal what she had never before spoken of. Raising her head, she said, "The day that he died, they had a ghastly row. They were in the drawing room, and I was reading in the library that opened off of it. The door was open so I could hear every word, but they didn't know I was there."

"You seem to have been unlucky in your eavesdropping."

Laura grimaced. "It was more that my parents were profligate with their emotions. Growing up in that house, it was impossible not to know how matters stood between them. If I'd been upstairs in my room, I'd probably still have heard every word of what they said—none of the servants were home that afternoon, so they saw no reason to be moderate.

"The fight was about the fact that my mother had just learned that Papa had been unfaithful to her. Not a real affair, just a quick tumble with a married woman in their circle. I think the woman must have wanted to make trouble, because she immediately came to my mother and tearfully confessed her sin.

"My mother became insanely jealous and confronted my father when she found out. She threatened to carve him up with a knife so he could never betray her again. Instead of denying her accusation or admitting it and asking her forgiveness, he stupidly tried to brazen it out, saying that the act had been meaningless and Tatyana was a fool to carry on so. After all, it was she whom he loved, so she should stop acting like a shrew.

"I couldn't see what was happening, but judging by the sounds, she threw the poker at him," Laura continued. "Then she said that if sex was so meaningless, she'd go and spread her legs for Count Vyotov, who'd been trying to seduce her for years. My father exploded, shouting that a man had the right to bed other women, but no decent woman could do the same. My mother laughed and said why should she be decent when her husband wasn't?"

Laura's voice cracked as the scene replayed in her mind, as vivid as the day it happened. "Papa called her a whore and hit her—I heard her scream and crash into a piece of furniture, then fall to the floor. Her voice dropped into a hiss, the most terrifying sound I've ever heard. She said she was going to leave the house that minute and go straight to Count Vyotov. Papa threatened to kill her if she tried to leave. She told him he'd better get a gun, because nothing but death would stop her."

Once again Laura choked to a halt. His voice deep with compassion, Ian said, "Did they get into a struggle where she accidentally shot him, and you've been concealing the truth all these years?"

"No, that would have been horrible but would have made a certain ghastly kind of sense," Laura whispered. "Instead, Papa said that he couldn't kill the woman he loved,but he would kill himself if she betrayed him. Cold as ice, my mother said it was a pity that he had valued love so little, for his infidelity had destroyed her love and he had no one to blame but himself. Then she stormed out of the house.

"I thought of going to my father, but he was in such a rage that I didn't dare. Instead, I slipped out the other door of the library and hid in my room, trembling." Forcing herself to continue, she said, "The rest is as I told you. I had almost convinced myself that this was only another fight, like all the others, and that the next day everything would be fine again. Then… then I heard the shot and went downstairs to the library. When I found my father's body, my first thought was that if I had gone to him, he would not have done such a thing."

"You mustn't think that!" Ian said sharply. "No child has that kind of responsibility for a parent."

"How could I not think it?" she cried in anguish. Wrapping her arms around the pain in her midriff, she tried to speak evenly. "But I didn't waste time on guilt then. When Papa fell across the desk, he had knocked his suicide note on the floor. It was in front of me when I walked in. I picked the note up and read it, and it was almost the worst part of all. He said that he couldn't bear Tatyana's unfaithfulness, and that he had killed himself to prove how much he loved her." Laura's voice took on the brittle edge of hysteria. "Can you believe that is what he said? He destroyed all of our lives and said it was for
love.

"Your father was suffering from a spell of madness," Ian said, his calm voice pitched to bring her back to earth. "He was a melancholic, prone to despondency, and what happened that day pushed him over the edge into suicidal despair."

"Oh, I don't doubt that he was mad that day," Laura said bitterly. "On the other hand, my mother was sane, except when she was in the grip of passion. Then she became as wildly unbalanced as my father. Though she didn't shoot him, it wouldn't have surprised me if she had. She was capable of it."

"But she didn't, and you are more like her than like him."

Ignoring his interjection, Laura said, "When I saw the note, I knew instinctively that it mustn't become public, so I hid it in my room. The official verdict was that my father had accidentally shot himself while cleaning his pistol, so that he could be buried in holy ground.

"Several days after the funeral, I gave my mother the note. It seemed that she should know—certainly the knowledge was more than I could bear alone. I think she had guessed why my father killed himself, but when she saw the proof, complete with dried bloodstains, she broke down, crying that it was all her fault. She hadn't gone to Count Vyotov that day, but to the house of a female friend. After she had calmed down, she came home prepared to forgive my father if he was suitably chastened. Instead, he was dead. She told me that passion was the culprit, that it was a viper that destroyed all that was good and true. That she would never let herself be ruled by passion again, because it was a form of madness."

"'You are not your parents," Ian said firmly. "Your mother married again, but there was no disaster the second time around."

"Tatyana had learned from what had happened. Also, my stepfather was too steady—too sane—to allow another tragedy. But that doesn't mean that I am a safe person." Laura shivered. "The blood of both parents runs in my veins, and I carry the seeds of violence in me."

"That would be a heavy burden to bear, if true." He shook his head. "Why are you so sure that passion will turn you into a madwoman? You have a temper, but I've seen nothing that suggests that you could be a danger to yourself or others. Pushing me off a dock was hardly a homicidal act."

She gave a twisted smile. "The proof is in the last of my nightmares. I've never told anyone this, but when I was sixteen, I became infatuated with a student at Haileybury College. Edward said that because my stepfather was one of his teachers, we must keep our feelings secret until he finished the course. I was stupid enough to think the situation was wonderfully romantic. Edward was the younger son of a viscount. Later I learned that his family had sent him to Haileybury in the hopes that India would cure his wildness. Or if not that, at least he wouldn't be causing scandals in England."

"He tried to seduce you?" Ian said, his face like granite.

"Yes, and very nearly succeeded." She stopped, hot color flooding her face as she remembered what easy prey she had been for a handsome face and sweet, lying words. She had melted like wax at his touch, bewitched by her discovery of desire.

In a torrent of words, she continued, "I fancied myself in love with him, and with the arrogance of a sixteen-year-old, I was sure that I knew exactly what I was doing. I was different from my parents—wiser, my love more true." She shuddered. "Even though I knew it was wrong, I finally agreed to meet Edward in the woods one afternoon, because I trusted him. That was when I discovered how powerful, how dangerous desire can be. All my judgment, all of my knowledge
of right and wrong, dissolved when he kissed me. I very nearly… let him have his way with me.

"Fortunately, before it was too late, I made some idiotic remark about how we really should wait until we were married. He was so startled that he blurted out that foreign-born dollymops like me were for play, not marriage."

Her voice failed again as the humiliation of that moment came back to her. "I realized immediately what a fool I had been. I don't know what he saw in my face, but he drew away as if I'd turned into a cobra. Then he stood and ran off. I never saw him again. I found out several days later that he had dropped out of Hailleybury. Not long after, I heard that he was killed in a brawl in London."

"Which the swine obviously deserved," Ian said grimly. "It was a horrible thing to happen to a young girl who gave her trust and her love. But the fact that you made a youthful misjudgment doesn't mean that passion will doom you."

"No. It was my response that did that." Her hands clenched, the nails biting into her palms. "At first I was numb. My main desire was to conceal what had happened from my parents, because I was afraid of what they might do. I had a horrible vision of my stepfather challenging Edward to a duel. Or, more likely, the possibility
that they might insist that he marry me.