Lady in Red (11 page)

She took her time, savoring the mouthful of delicious food, astounded that anything could taste so absolutely wonderful.

“I was glad to find you in the library,” he said abruptly.

She took another bite, having the sudden bizarre desire to ask if there would be dessert. Feeling lighthearted, she asked, “Were you afraid I’d run off?”

His lingering silence surprised her.

She set her fork down. “You were.”

He studied his plate, taking a large piece of salmon. “Frankly, at first, when I found your room empty, I was afraid.”

How impossible that seemed. Edward Barrons, afraid? Surely not. “Why?”

“You seem to be running from something or someone.”

She was about to take another bite, but a moment of dread killed her appetite. “Edward, can’t we simply just be here together for the moment?”

He leaned forward. “Yes, Mary. But you did ask.”

“I did,” she admitted, kicking herself.

“I still would like to know who you truly are.”

She looked away. Here it was again. How could she make him understand she had no wish to discuss it? “Please, Edward.”

His lips pressed into a line for a moment. Then he nodded, but there was a determination in his gaze.

He wasn’t going to let it go, she realized. She had to say something to stop him. “It’s difficult when everything seems to be ruled by my past. When I think about it, I feel imprisoned. So I have no wish to share it.”

“And you like to live in the present?”

She gave that a moment’s thought. She’d been forced to live in memories for so long, what else could she say now? “Yes. I prefer it.”

He gave her a most serious look. “Then perhaps you’d like some apple tart?”

A stunned laugh bubbled out of her. Was he truly teasing her? And was she enjoying it? To her shock, she was. “How did you know?”

“What?”

She shook her head at his purposeful obtuseness. “That I longed for dessert.”

He widened his eyes. “Magic.”

“Oh, Edward, you are such a contradiction.”

He shrugged easily. “I’d hate to be boring.”

“I don’t think anyone could ever accuse you of that.”

He placed his arm on the edge of the table and angled his body toward her. “Now, what makes you say such a thing?”

“You’ve taken in a woman like me. How many men would do that?”

“Not many, I grant you.” He took a bite of asparagus. “But most people aren’t worth knowing, wouldn’t you say?”

“I really don’t know.” And she didn’t. Her recent experience with people was limited to the cruelest of the cruel, except for Yvonne and Edward. “Perhaps we’ve simply been speaking to the wrong people.”

He gave her a surprised look. “You’re right. There must be whole groups of interesting people hiding about somewhere.”

“Edward,” she moaned, exasperated. “You’re not nearly as jaded as you pretend.”

His teasing expression faded. “I’m not jaded.”

“Then what are you?”

“Disappointed.”

“Oh.” That had to be worse. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. I feel as if things are about to change.”

“Why . . . ?” She widened her eyes and laughed. This time, it wasn’t exactly warm. “Because of me?”

“Because of you.”

He stood and, much to her shock, bent forward and placed a soft kiss on her temple.

Instead of recoiling, she leaned into it. The gentle pressure, the care of it—it nearly undid her.

A look of longing softened his features, and her heart felt a pang. She wanted to tell him not to put hope in her. That she wouldn’t be able to fulfill whatever it was he needed. But for now, that hope in his eyes was enough to give her hope, too. It had to be.

“Shall we read after dinner?”

She gaped at him. “I beg your pardon?”

“I vote for
Pride and Prejudice.
I shall read to you and do all the voices.”

The idea of this man reading all the voices of the Bennet sisters, Caroline, and Lady Catherine seemed too absurd. “Even Mrs. Bennet?”

He gave her a mock scathing look. “Especially Mrs. Bennet.”

She nodded happily, unable to reply, unsure why. And then it hit her. In this moment, she was enjoying herself. For the first time in years.

“Now, dessert,” he declared as he strode to the bellpull.

This was only the beginning of their time together, she realized. She’d never imagined that she might like any man again. But she did. Oh, how she did.

Punishing wind whipped down the empty road, blowing the last of the winter leaves along the edges of the well-traversed path. The narrow dirt footpath was lined with grass, waving, silvery gray under the relentlessly cold wind. The only things unyielding, unmoving were the headstones standing upright and the angel-flanked family crypts that reached over the hill and wound under the old, bent, skeletal oaks.

The folds of Mary’s heavy velvet cloak beat against her frame, battering her like angry wings. Water stung her eyes. Not tears of grief, as perhaps they should have been, just a natural reaction to the stinging chill. She had spent the better part of the week recovering. Edward had always been at her side, plying her with good food, reading, caring for her in a silent yet determined way.

After all the pleasant time they had spent together, she had not expected him to betray her by investigating her without her consent. She should have known better. She should have remembered that he was a man who always got what he wanted. And if she wouldn’t tell him what he wished to know, he’d find it out some other way.

Though she hadn’t acknowledged it, she’d seen it in his eyes that night in the library.

She lifted her chin, clinging to defiance. “Yvonne told you?”

“She gave me the name of this place, yes, but that is all she would reveal.”

“Why are we here?” Her words flew upon the air, stolen from her lips before they’d even left her mouth.

“You know why, don’t you?”

She did. It was to see something she had no desire to see. The world was so much clearer now that she’d significantly reduced her laudanum intake. The doctor’s orders had been plain. Little by little, she’d weaned herself off . . . And the reality was, without the blunting effect of her drug, she’d begun to feel her circumstance with a glaring intensity.

As comfortable as she had been with Edward, she couldn’t escape the fact that she was ruined and her father wished her dead. At any moment, someone might come to try to force her back to that place. “I want you to take me from here,” she said through clenched teeth.

Edward didn’t look at her. Instead, he looked out to the sea of cold stone monuments. “Not yet.”

“Why?” But she knew why. And he had to know, too. It would be so much easier if they could simply talk things over. If she could feel
relief
by telling him about her past. But the trust in her soul had long since scattered like the lifeless brown leaves caught in the grass.

And Edward was testing that trust by forcing her to come here. The contradiction in him was impossible. Over the last days, he’d made her feel as if she might be leaving the past behind, but clearly his motivation for keeping her—for learning about her past—was why they were here.

It unnerved her to not understand what he truly wanted from their alliance.

“Come.” He held out his hand, the perfect gentleman.

She shook her head, unwilling to take his offered arm. Unwilling to have that close intimacy again when she was so frustrated at him. At the moment, she couldn’t accept the care of a man determined to thrust her into the pains of her past against her wishes.

It was horrifyingly laughable, really.

Falteringly, Edward lowered his hand back to his side.

When she looked into his beautiful black eyes, she knew it wasn’t she he truly desired. How could it have been? She’d been wrong to think he’d ever taken interest in her secret self, locked up in such a hidden and far-off place, longing to be saved and loved.

Indeed, the more she reflected, the more laughable it became. She would have laughed, too, if she’d had the strength. For a time, she had thought she was truly beautiful in his eyes. But as they began the slow walk down the path through the cemetery of bone and rotting flesh, she knew with utter certainty that what she had seen in his gaze was hope that she could save
him.

What a fool she’d been.

Her heart should have been immune to it, but as her fingers ached to slip into his strong grip once again, she found her heart cracking ever so slightly. A crack to add to a thousand others. Another one to ensure she kept her distance from the world.

Her soft, new kid slippers glided with ease over the rocky soil. She glanced at Edward from the corner of her eye. Anticipation gleamed in his black stare. And hope. More hope. It was surprising in some twisted way to give him that. “Do you know what you are doing?” she demanded.

“I know
exactly
what I am doing,” he said evenly.

But he couldn’t. He only thought he did. A man of such natural arrogance, no doubt, was always certain his feet were upon the right path. She, on the other hand, had learned how easy it was for the path to slip away and to find one’s self stolen away to unknown places and unknown routes filled with danger.

He stopped in front of a large crypt of Connemara marble, swirling green and white stone married to granite angels. It rested under a tall oak, the knobby branches reaching out to shelter it from summer sun. In winter, its long, outstretched limbs hung ominously bare over the crypt.

Mary stood quietly. She couldn’t bring herself to move forward and trace her gloved fingertips over the smooth marble or the words carved into it.

Esme Genevieve Darrel
Duchess of Duncliffe
Beloved wife and mother
A diamond seized from this world too soon.

1830–1862
With her mother lays the pearl of the world
Mary Elizabeth Darrel
1847–1862

She’d never been to the grave. Now, standing only feet from her mother’s remains, she once again wished tears would come or some rending pain would finally pull her apart. But nothing happened. There was no overpowering, soul-searing moment, only the sound of the wind whistling through the trees.

Edward stared at the crypt for several moments. Then his piercing gaze turned toward her. “I don’t understand.”

“Don’t you?” She had known he wouldn’t find what he was looking for. There was so much more.

He let his attention wander from her to the crypt. “No.”

“Read the names,” she said tightly.

He scanned the words. There was a single beat of silence before he said, “Mary.”

“Lady Mary Elizabeth. Yes.” Her eyes locked on the crypt until they burned.

Only the slightest exhale revealed his shock. “You’re the Duke of Duncliffe’s daughter.”

“I am,” she confirmed flatly.

“I . . . went to your funeral.”

“Did you? How kind.”

He turned to her, his shoulders squared and his gaze snapping with a hundred unspoken questions. “I don’t—I don’t know what to say.”

A mocking smile forced her mouth wide. Even though she knew it was a grimace, the way her lips pulled against her teeth, she couldn’t help herself. How she wished they could go back to his town house and sit and read. But Edward seemed consumed by the need to know what had nearly destroyed her. As if that might help her. “Imagine my position, then . . . if you don’t know where to begin.”

He shook his dark head, disbelief turning his sun-kissed skin pale. “What happened?”

“I died.” It was so easy to push him. She realized it was cruel of her to find it almost enjoyable. But she’d been punished for so long. Even he was pushing her now, though he didn’t realize it. “Yet, somehow, I stand before you.”

“A miraculous incarnation, then, for you appear to have restored your fleshy envelope.”

“I am reborn, you see.” Her fingers curled as the slickness of the keeper’s blood seemed to slither beneath her gloves, drenching her palms. “Out of blood.”

“Make yourself plain, Mary. You didn’t die—”

“I did worse.”

“Worse?” he echoed blankly.

She turned to look at him, her skirts rustling over the dead leaves. It was finally here. She could no longer avoid the truth. Then what? Would he turn from her? She swallowed, gathering her courage.

“I went mad.” She shrugged, desperate not to appear broken. “I still am.”

“I beg your pardon?” It was amusing to see realization dawn on him in stages. At first, complete confusion, twisting his brows and opening his mouth in consternation. But as he stared at her, his face began to ease into understanding, then anger.

“He— Papa claimed I was mad. He kept saying I had to be sent away because I would become like my mother. That I would become a whore.” Her voice tapered until it was a choking pain in her throat. “A defiant whore.”

This time, as she looked at the incredulous man who had brought her to her own grave, a laugh did ripple from her throat. It was high and loud, piercing her ears with its sharpness. She clapped a hand over her mouth and swallowed the sound. She drew in a slow breath and lifted her gaze to his before she lowered her hand. “And we all know where lunatics go, don’t we?”

“An asylum?” The word dropped from his mouth like a stone. “Is that where you’ve been?”

“It’s not what you imagined, is it?” She took a step toward the crypt, the hem of her cloak skimming along the wintery ground. She lifted her hand and placed it over her mother’s name. The eternal cold of the stone seeped through her glove, penetrating her fingers, chilling her with the harsh finality of death.

She’d known for a very long time that her mother was dead. Esme Darrel had breathed her last at the bottom of her own stairs. Now she was moldering all alone, with not even her daughter’s body to keep her company.

His voice cut strong through her reverie. “Mary, you’re not mad.”

“No?” Sometimes she wondered. Between the opiates and the months upon never-ending months locked away, she’d
felt
insane. Felt herself slip away until all she’d longed to do was scream. Scream until she had no voice left. Scream until she did indeed go mad with no reason left to comprehend her wretched situation. Her own mother had been murdered. And her own life? It was but a bleak span of nothingness. “How can you be so certain?”