Abigail Jones (Chronicles of Abigail Jones #1) (18 page)

Compassion moved me to speak lightly. "As my aunt always said, we must all be good at something."

There was a pause—and then a sound was startled from him, like a dove from a darkened belfry. "I suppose we must thank Aunt Agnes once again for her pearls of wisdom." Though his voice was somber, it was not quite so grim as before. "I spent my time indulging in aimless sexual pursuits, more or less sleeping my way across Europe. Eventually, I ended up in Florence. I suppose tales of my wildness preceded me; I found myself flocked by willing
signoras
, even a
contessa
or two. Without thought or feeling, I availed myself of those pleasures."

My Italian was limited, but I knew enough to ask, "You ... dallied with
married
ladies?"

"They suited my purposes. Being versed in the sexual arts and bored with their marital beds, they were only too happy to take on a young English lord for a lover. But do not endow me with a conscience where I have none, Abigail," he said sharply, as if reading my thoughts. "The reason I stayed away from the innocents was because the prospects of inexperience and marriage held no appeal for me."

"Oh."

"Not, at any rate, until I saw her."

The grim set of his jaw was back; beneath my skirts, I felt the quivering stiffness of his thighs. And I knew what was to come next. I knew he was summoning up the strength to speak of the woman above the mantel, whose heavy-lidded eyes I could feel watching us, taking everything in beneath the disdainful sweep of gold.

I wanted him to tell me; I dreaded what he might say.

"You met your wife there, in Florence," I said neutrally.

A muscle worked in his jaw. His eyes smoldered with the force of what he held back. His grip on my waist tightened so that I could feel the shape of his five fingers through the layer of my stays.

"Was she as lovely," I blurted, gesturing to the woman in the gold frame, "in person as in her portrait?"

"That is not her," he said flatly. "I killed her years before that portrait was painted."

TWENTY-TWO

The aftershock of his statement reverberated in the quiet. For an instant, I felt nothing. My body recovered first; it catapulted out of his lap, stumbled several paces to behind the settee. My hands steadied against the wood frame as thoughts exploded to life. He'd killed her. What Mrs. Beecher had said was true. I could not have believed her, had he not just confessed it now himself.

My eyes latched upon his face. He remained seated, his face hewn in severe lines.

 How could you do such a thing, Hux? And why? There must be some explanation
—

"It was an accident," I said suddenly. "You did not literally mean to say you killed her."

"I killed her as surely as if I had strangled her with my bare hands," he said.

A moan broke from my lips.

I jumped at the knock on the door. Spinning around, I saw Maggie entering with a tea tray.

"Good afternoon," she said, "I thought you'd be ready for yer tea seein' as ye missed lunch. Not much fer cookin', but I did scare up a few things from the pantry. Plenty o' cheese, and I toasted the bread. Found some apples, too, which I cut up in nice, neat wedges."

Setting the tray on the coffee table, Maggie turned a beaming face to Hux. He was white-lipped, his gaze upon the dying flames of the fire. The maid looked to me. I tried to summon the approval I knew she was seeking. My entire being felt frozen, incapable of responding to anything for the shock running through my veins. After an awkward moment, she bobbed a hasty curtsy and mumbled, "Ring if ye be needin' anyfin'" before scurrying off.

The creak of the door closing prickled my senses; I experienced the sudden impulse to follow Maggie. To leave this room, this place—this man whose ravaged face filled me with fear and yearning in equal measure. I wanted to run away; I longed to be closer. So I stayed as I was, caught behind the settee, trapped by own indecision. My eyes strayed to the door as it clicked shut.

"Go, if that is your wish." Hux's words rasped through the silence. "You have heard and seen enough—nay, too much already. I will not stop you, Abigail."

"Now you say that?" I cried. "After all that has passed you think I can leave you? Leave without knowing the truth of what I saw last night and of this ... this
deed
you have just confessed to committing."

Hux rose to his feet. His gaze flicked to my hands, and his mouth twisted. I realized how tightly I was gripping the settee, how tense the play of knuckle and bone beneath the fragile skin.

Swallowing, I called upon my inner resources. "'Tis too late now. You must tell me, Hux. About your wife."

He came toward me. I felt the instinct to run—away or into his arms, I did not know. I no longer knew where safety lay. He spared me from making the choice. Walking past me, he went to the cabinet, which held a tray of spirits. Uncorking a crystal decanter, he splashed amber liquid into a glass. He downed the contents in one swallow.

Wordlessly, he raised the glass at me. I shook my head.

"Liquid courage," he said mockingly and poured himself another shot. He drank that, too, before continuing. "Her name was Isabella Del Blanco. We met at a masquerade in Florence. She was the young widow of a wealthy merchant and the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. I still remember the dress she wore that night: layers of white and gold that floated around her. I thought her an angel descended into our midst."

He was looking at me, but his eyes had that distant focus again. I knew he was seeing his wife as he had that first time. Reliving that moment forever imprinted upon his memory.

"I had to know her. But she was surrounded by admirers, and I—so used to the attention of the fair sex—I could not get her to notice me. So I bided my time. I waited until I saw her slip out to a balcony, and I followed her there. I pressed for an introduction. But it turned out she knew me already—she had heard of my exploits from her friends, she said, and she wanted to know if the rumors were true."

"Rumors?" I could not help but ask.

A dull flush spread over his cheekbones. "About my ... stamina. 'Twas a trifling matter, grossly exaggerated." He cleared his throat. "At any rate, she seduced me that night. Then and there, on the balcony overlooking a piazza brimming with revelers, she took me as no woman ever had. I had thought myself experienced in carnal arts, but she overwhelmed me completely—with her beauty, her lack of restraint. I had never felt this way with another woman. The next morning, I asked her to marry me. Within a week, we were wed by special license."

My heart seemed to have taken residence in my throat. I could not speak for its thudding cadence.

"For that first month, I thought I had found happiness at last. What man could not be happy, having won such a prize for his wife." Bitterness honed the contours of his face. "My nights were spent in passion, my days accompanying my new bride wherever she wished. Everywhere we went, I noticed the covetous looks of the other men, and bloody fool that I was, it made me proud.
Look all you want,
I thought,
but she has chosen me. She is mine alone now
. How wrong I was."

He paused to take a gulp of his drink. I thought I saw his hand shake as he lowered the glass. "It didn't take long for the gossip to reach my ears. At first, I ignored it. I told myself that the wags were jealous of our happiness. Eager to destroy what they themselves did not have. But as the weeks went on, I found myself noticing things I had not before. Small things—a look that passed between Isabella and another man. The way his hand might linger at the small of her back after the dance had ended. Signs that could mean nothing ... or everything."

"You believed she was having affair," I said.

He raked his hand through his hair. "The possibility began to torment me. I demanded to know the truth; she laughed at me and called me a fool. But I could not shake the suspicion. Once planted, the seed could not be eradicated. Its roots dug into me, its thorns shredding any pretense of happiness. I felt myself changing. With other women, I had not doubted myself; I had not known the pain of insecurity. But my thoughts became obsessed with Isabella. I went with her everywhere. I challenged men to duels over the slightest provocation—the way they smiled at her or looked too long at her décolletage. Each minute I agonized, I cursed myself for being a fool, yet I could not stop. So under her spell was I that when my own parents died, I could not bear to leave her to attend their funeral."

It was hard for me to imagine Hux as anything but dominant and supremely confident in his masculine appeal. What had his countess done to him, to bring about this change? Did she not know the suffering she had caused him?

"She knew," he said, reading my expression correctly, "and she delighted in it. In leaving me on tenterhooks, never knowing if my wife was with another. There was never any proof to confront her with—just the suspicion that became like a madness eating at my soul. The more I raged at her, the more her power over me grew. She drew upon my anger, as if it were her lifeblood. Even when we were making love, she taunted me, laughed at me. The passion between us became a darkness I could not escape. We ... we did things to each other, Abigail. Things which to this day shame my soul."

He broke off, his hair turbulent black waves around his pale face. Even his eyes lost their vibrancy, iced over by hatred and pain.

"What happened next?" I asked quietly.

"She became pregnant. She was so delighted at the prospect that the hope in me renewed. She spoke of having a daughter, a beauty like herself. I did not care about the sex of the child. All I wanted was a fresh start for us—no more jealousy, no more lies. I took her out of Florence, into the countryside where I rented a villa overlooking fields of grapes and wildflowers. There was temporary peace as Isabella spent her energies designing the nursery, and I let go of the past, focusing on the future. On the child we would bring into this world."

I remembered Mrs. Beecher had told me the countess died in childbirth; my heart seized in anticipation. His next words, however, delivered a shock.

"She gave birth to a healthy babe. A boy. I named him John. He had the same steady, loving disposition as my brother."

"You had a son?" I gasped.

Hux looked at me. I knew that expression: he had worn it that night I spied upon him in the gallery. The lines of his face contorted with unspeakable grief.

"I loved him," he said in a low voice. "I loved him as I had never loved another. Those first weeks, I stayed with him every day in the nursery. I dreamed of a future for him—all happiness and no suffering. I was going to protect him, Abby. It was my duty to see him safe."

I had a sudden notion about what had happened. It was a ghastly thought, one beyond comprehension.

"Something was wrong with Isabella. Not physically, for she had risen from childbed within a week, but with her—her mental state. Her attitude toward John was unnatural, disturbing. She refused to touch him, to see him; she left his care entirely to the wet nurse. When I confronted her, she accused me of failing her, even in this."

"Because she wanted a daughter," I said, chilled with disbelief, "and not a son?"

Hux nodded. "I could not understand it, her coldness. She was seeming less and less ...
human
to me. 'Twas as if she was transforming in front of my eyes. She allowed her hair to grow untamed; her eyes lit with a wild fever. She disappeared for days on end. Rumors began again, this time about her behavior with the local lads. I could not stop her, and I stopped caring. She had killed my love for her, and in its place I had another—more intense and true than any I had felt before. I spent all my time with John."

"On the eve of my son's sixth month in this world, I came home from riding to an empty house. None of the servants were present, which was odd. A strange panic overtook me. I cannot explain it, but I knew at that moment something was wrong. I ran up the stairs, toward the nursery on the second floor. The door was open. The crib empty. And there, by the open window, Isabella ..."

His words choked off as he hunched over the table, gripping its edge. Going to him, I placed a gentle hand on his back; the muscles were rigid and quivering. He turned suddenly to me, crushing me with the force of his embrace, his need. I let him. Wrapping my arms around his waist, I pulled him with me to the floor. We sat with our backs against the cabinet and held onto each other in silence. His hands clutched mine fiercely.

"She had John dangling out the window." His tone oozed pain like a raw, festering wound. "She held him there with a hank of her hair wrapped around his small neck. She was like the demon you saw last night, only far more powerful; her eyes blazed with fire, her hair rising like a thousand arms, lashing out as I tried to reach my son. He was crying, he was so afraid. And I could not get to him."

Helpless to do anything else, I touched a hand to Hux's face. Wetness slid over my knuckles.

"
What good is a male brat to me?
she said.
If you want him, then here he is.
I struggled to get to my boy, shouted for her to stop. But it was too late. She released him, flung his tiny body down to the stones below. Despair and wrath beyond words possessed me. I went out of my mind. I tore past her battalion of hair, through the spears of her laughter, and my hands closed around her ivory throat."

"
Who are you
? I yelled.
Why do you torment me so
? I backed her against the ledge of the window, bent her over the precipice where she had cast my love. A smile spread across her lips, red and poisonous as the first apple. In a voice that shook my soul, she told me at last who she was. Who I had married and bedded with."

I waited, my chest pulsing with agonized expectation.

Hux drew a shuddering breath. "She told me she was Lilith, the Mother of all demons. And then she flung herself over the edge."

*****

Lilith.

The name released a deafening roar of sounds and images in my head. Flashes of my lifetime coming together in one sharp focus: the singing demon of my dreams, the whispering presence in my visions, the coiled smile of the painting. Everything familiar at once. The pull I felt on my mind and flesh, the one I could not escape. All my fears, asleep and waking, merged into a sudden evil truth.

"Abigail."

Someone was shaking my shoulders. I heard my name repeated—Hux's voice—and I snapped back to reality.

He was looking at me, his eyes bright with concern. "Ah, my poor darling. You have suffered a shock from the burdens I have heaped upon you. Come, you must drink this."

The smell of the brandy turned my stomach. "No spirits. Please, I—I'd rather have some tea."

I let him lead me to the settee. I needed the time to collect myself, to steady my reeling center. I took the cup and saucer he offered. The brew was no longer hot. I sipped at it, willing the familiar smoky taste to calm my unsettled nerves. But the cup continued to clatter in my hands.

"I am a brute to do this to you." My gaze lifted blankly to Hux. Sitting beside me, he was studying a point in the distance, his jaw harsh-set. "I vowed not to let harm befall you, Abigail, yet time and again I have failed to keep that promise. Because of me, your life was in danger last night. Because of me, you sit there, beset by horror, your innocence torn to shreds."

"I am not as innocent as you think," I managed.

"Are you not?" His lashes lowered, shadowy fans against the pallor of his skin. "Do you think me mad, Abigail? I would not blame you. The story I have told you—it reeks of lunacy, does it not? How many times have I thought myself insane—how many times have I wished it. Better to be mad, I told myself, than to look evil in the eye."

His words were an eerie echo of my own thoughts. Yet he was not mad—and neither was I. What ...
was
I? My heart ticked faster, and urgency pitched my voice. "How can I think you mad after seeing what I saw last night? Tell me the rest, Hux. What happened to Lilith? How does this all connect to the events in the tower room?"