Bound by Your Touch

Bound By Your Touch

Meredith Duran

Prologue

I
n the garden beyond the window, afternoon sunlight spilled like honey over the graveled path and the lilac blossoms trembled in the breeze. Inside the drawing room, her own limbs felt not much steadier. Only the sight of Georges reflection in the glass gave her courage. This urbane, dignified man had forgotten to leave his hat with the butler. Now he clutched it before him, like a shield against his nerves. No doubt his anxiety appalled him. He often said that a politician was nothing without his composure. But she would also be an asset: when his voice failed, she would speak for them both. "I love you," she said.

Her first reply was the faint creak of shoe leather as he stepped immediately forward. "I beg your pardon?"

The window reflected her growing smile. As a small girl, she had dreamed of this moment. Later, when the mirror had proved that she would not grow into her mothers beauty, she'd begun to wonder. Perhaps she would never find a husband. Her bookishness, her eccentric interests, would not recommend her.

But then she'd met George. Awkward with trivial conversation, embarrassed to debut at such a late age, she had dreaded the Hardeys' ball. In his arms, though, dancing felt easy.
So this is why girls like to waltz,
she'd thought. They'd talked through supper, and George's questions were thoughtful, substantial.
Your wit is an education for me, Miss Boyce. I'd not realized that cleverness could coincide with such feminine graces.

She turned now, feeling weightless with the premonition of joy. He stood next to a bouquet of yellow roses that he'd sent only yesterday. Against the rich mahogany of the chiffonier, they glowed like pieces of sunlight. Indeed, everything in the small, airy salon seemed gilded to her—the pale walls and chintz upholstery brightening and clarifying before her eyes, the cool air sparkling, perfumed with the roses' scent. Here was the moment she would always remember. "I said that I love you."

He took a sharp breath that sounded like a gasp.

In the hallway outside, the grandfather clock began to gong. It was an old piece, and she'd always detected a note of boredom in its low, slow chimes, as if it were tired of its duties, fed up with their curiosity about the time. She had confided as much to George last month, and he had laughingly called her his clockwork philosopher. Her smile wanted to widen now in reference to the joke. But the muscles in her cheeks disagreed, and her eyes were telling her something. They noted the heightening color on his cheeks. The tightening of his brow. What was this? Would he not speak? Would he only stare?

A dray rumbled through the back street. It set the tea tray to rattling, and this seemed to startle him. His lips twitched, convulsively. Then his shoulders squared. "Miss Boyce," he said. Five minutes ago, he had called her Lydia. Running a hand over his moustache, he shook his head. "My dear lady. I am so sorry. If I have misled you in some manner . . . believe me, it was not my intention!"

She put a hand on the back of the chair she'd been sitting in earlier. She had served him Earl Grey; their cups still sat on the center table, her spoon slumping at an indecorous angle from the saucer. /
have a question of great import to discuss with you,
he'd announced, and she'd leaped to her feet like a jack-in-the-box, at once so elated and overwhelmed that tears pricked her eyes.
Misled
her?

"I—" No, her voice would not work properly. She swallowed. "I do not... understand."

"I am mortified." He extracted a handkerchief to blot his forehead. "Please, Miss Boyce. I am—
abjectly
apologetic."

A strangled sound escaped her. He was—
Why was he here, then?
Dear God!
Misled her?
This was impossible. What of all his tokens of regard? The roses. Yellow, yes, but one could not read so much into flowers. Their drives through the park? Every Thursday he had driven her through Rotten Row for six weeks now! And only yesterday, as he'd helped her from the barouche onto the gravel, he had pressed her hand and smiled into her face very intimately, as if his thoughts were as warmed by their touch as hers were. She had not
misread
him!

"You must speak plainly with me," she said haltingly. "We have become . . . close, these last weeks—"

"Indeed." His hands worked convulsively on the brim of his hat; it would never recover from this crushing. "I have formulated the highest regard for you, Miss Boyce. So much so, that—" The color in his cheeks now faded entirely. "My fondest desire is to have the honor of calling you my sister-in-law."

A muted gasp. Sophie. That would be Sophie watching through the keyhole. "Your sister-in-law," she whispered.

"My sister-in-law," he confirmed.

Her body prickled with cold, as if thrust into a winter lake. Sophie.
Sophie,
of course. Sophie had always accompanied them on these drives through the park, on their sunny strolls. But no one had ever guessed—he'd never hinted—his eyes had only been for her! It had not been Sophie whom George asked to dance that first time! It had not been
Sophie who
received his flowers after that ball!

But it had been Sophie who insisted on coming with them during their outings. Sophie who had touched his elbow when Lydia felt too shy to do it. Sophie who had leaned past her to laugh at his every joke.

God in heaven. Sophie would not refuse.

She let go of the chair and stepped back. "It is not quite the done thing, is it?" Her voice sounded terribly dry; she did not recognize it. "To propose to the younger sister, when the elder is yet unwed?"

And there came the color again—a flush, she thought now, of offense. "It has troubled me. But with your father in Egypt, I did not know to whom I should apply. I wired him two weeks ago, but haven't received a response."

"Two weeks?" He had been nursing designs for Sophie for two weeks? When he had come to the charity bazaar to buy the shawl she'd embroidered
(the perfect gift for my mothers birthday; I believe that I have told you how much she admires you)
he'd been thinking to marry
Sophie.

"Indeed," he was saying. "That's why I wished to speak with you today. Your sister informs me. you are something of the . . . the
manager
in familial matters. Not," he added quickly, "that I find it anything but admirable, the competence with which you have assumed this most strenuous role, at your tender age and experience. Why, I cannot imagine what a toll it must take on you, managing your fathers affairs—"

But a fresh and dreadful thought had occurred. Sophie had told him? "My sister—she
knew
that you hoped for this conversation?"

A brief silence. His eyes dropped. He was seeing the illness of it, himself. "Yes."

So there was the root of her premonition: a premonition of shame, and hurt, and rage. For she could not deny Sophie this match. It was brilliant. George—
my George
—was the heir to a barony, to a fortune. No one could hope for better. But to think—to think that her sister had
betrayed
her this way! Sophie had known exactly what she believed and hoped with regard to George. Sophie had listened in smiling silence to her confidences, had all but encouraged her to flirt, all the while
knowing
where his true affections lay!
Not with me. Not anymore.

The truth spun around and around in Lydias mind, like a riddle whose key eluded her, although, by all appearances, everyone else had solved it two weeks ago.

Dear God. I am a fool.

Lydia looked to the door. Why was Sophie at the keyhole? To watch her sister make a terrible idiot of herself? For that was what she had done. He'd begun to make his declaration—his declaration of feelings for
Sophid
—and she had jumped in with her own
I love you!

Stars above. If only Persephone would share the joys of the earth swallowing her! She had never misjudged anyone so badly. She, who prided herself on her powers of observation!

Alas, the earth did not open. Only silence filled the space of the parlor. With each passing second, it seemed to gather weight and density. Soon it would become unbreakable. But her mind felt limp. Papa was so far away. To whom would she turn when she left this room? Papa would not be waiting to hug her, to tease her, to remind her of the many reasons a gentleman of sense would be glad to have her to wife.
You are my pearl, Lydia. Promise me that you will never waste your time mooning over swine.

She must speak For in a few moments she would begin to cry, and she could not bear George to witness that.
That
mortification was beyond her power to endure.

She drew a breath. Even in the depths of her horror, she knew exactly what she must say—those powerful, meaningless words that would bring this misery to an end. There was always a script. She knew how to read the lines well enough. And George was waiting for them. He expected them.

No doubt, she thought with a sudden and foreign contempt, he believed they
meant
something.

Lydia lifted her chin. "Let me be the first to offer you congratulations." Her voice would not break. She dug her fingernails into her palms. "I know that you will be
very
happy, indeed."

Chapter One

Four years later.

In this new electric light, the white marble blinded. James Durham propped his elbows on the balcony, laced his hands together, and stared down into his foyer. It had been a bit dramatic, he supposed, a bit too
Grecian,
paving the foyer with flagstones. At the time, he'd considered it the epitome of pure aesthetics. Now it nauseated him. Too much white: a funeral shroud of a foyer. Silent but for the buzzing of the lights, like vultures in the distance. He felt dizzy. His mouth was dry. It would be so easy to trip over this rail. One careless movement, a sweet swan's dive downward, and the floor would not be so white anymore.

His breath left him in a shudder. He stepped back, and his head seemed to soar from his shoulders. Good God. He was never trying another of Phin's little concoctions.

Hmm. That resolution felt . . . familiar. As if he'd made it before. Several times, in fact. How hopeless he was. He laughed softly. Yes, how predictably, tediously hopeless.

"Sanburne!"

The word came spearing through his consciousness, scattering the fog. With a start, he realized it had never been silent. Music, laughter, high-pitched squeals were spilling down the stairs. Yes—
that
was right! He had twenty-odd guests above; there'd been a party afoot since last evening, and he was the host. "Bloody hell," he said, and the astonishment in his voice sounded so queer and overdone that he had to laugh again.

"Sanburne!"
It sounded very close now, this shrill cry, which might or might not belong to Elizabeth; he could never be sure without looking, not in this state.
Then look up, you idiot.
Yes, excellent idea. In one moment, he would.

"Sanburne, have you gone
deafi"

With an effort he raised his head. It was indeed Lizzie; she appeared to be floating down the staircase. Magic? But no; if there were any magic in the world, it would not reside in Elizabeth, no matter how she might need it. Poor, luckless darling. He walked toward her with sympathetic intentions, intending to take her hands, for she looked distraught, her once-rakish coiffure now slipping over a tear-filled eye.

But walking proved beyond him. He tripped over the first stair and sat down. The impact astonished him. What
had he
been thinking, not to carpet the place?

He shook his head and reached for the banister. Before he could pull himself up, Lizzie was at his side, her skirts—stained by something; wine, smelled like— bunching around her calves. "Sanburne, he—he's got a w-w-woman—" She sobbed a breath that brought her d^colletage into his nose. A bit of caviar had gotten lodged in her neckline. He brushed it away. Most mysterious. What the hell were they doing up there?

"He's got a woman on his lap! One of your maids! Fondling her right in front of me!" Elizabeth's fingers fastened onto his upper arm, digging for attention. "Do you
hear
me? Are you awake?"

He was curious about that, too. "Are my eyes open?"

She made a noise of exasperation, then took his chin in her grip, yanking it up so their eyes met. "They are open," she said. "Behold: it is I."

"It is you," he agreed. "Your eyes are particularly lovely when you've been crying, my dear. So green.
So
much lovelier than white."

The comers of her mouth began to tremble. "Nello s got one of the maids," she said.

Something . . . insistent there. He did not like her look, suddenly, but he could not break from it. It made the world around him take on weight. Stairs, his house, a party. For one last second, the giddiness remained. And then his mind clicked, gears grinding. "One of the
maids,
did you say?" He pulled himself up by way of a baluster. The first step was the hardest. Damn Nello for a tosser; he always made a scene.

"Wait!" Elizabeth came scrambling up behind him. "James, you wont...
hurthim,
will you? He's just a bit drunk, is all. Or whatever it is that Ashmore gave him. I didn't mean to start a fight!"

"Of course you bloody did." He said it without rancor as he mounted the staircase. The drug was still coursing within him; he felt incapable of dividing his attention. Nello! Chap knew the rules. One couldn't break host s rules. Deuced poor taste!