What a Lady Craves (28 page)

“Why …” She had to swallow and start again. “Why are you telling me this now?”

“Because one of you is gone, but the knowledge might be what saves you.”

What on earth? No, what the devil? What the bloody hell? Before she could summon an appropriate response, Satya padded off, leaving her more confused than enlightened. Had he just threatened her with that cryptic statement? Was he trying to warn her? What did any of that even mean?

Only one person might give her a straight answer to that question. Not only that, it was high time he told her the entire truth. And she wasn’t about to leave the matter until morning.

Henrietta was pacing before the door to Alexander’s bedchamber when much later he appeared at the top of the stairs. Through a narrow gaze, she watched him steal along the corridor using the overly careful gait of a man who had imbibed too much and was trying hard not to let it show.

A few strides away, his head snapped up and his eyes widened. “What are you doing here?” At least his speech was clear. “If someone—Has something happened?”

A sniff confirmed her suspicions. This close, she could detect a fine thread of brandy scenting the air about him.

Chin high, she stopped. “I’m not entirely sure. I know you trust the man, but Satya has been behaving very strangely. He came to see me tonight and said something quite odd. Are you completely certain it’s safe to leave him with the girls?”

“I trust him with their care no less than I would myself. I’ve explained how he came to me. And what the deuce did he say to you that’s got you so upset?”

“He made reference to your wife, and told me the knowledge might save me. I cannot work out whether that was a threat or a warning, but I think perhaps you can.”

Alexander slumped against the wall, and scrubbed a hand over his face, as if that might clear his thoughts. Then he looked up and down the corridor. No one in sight at this late hour, but she couldn’t blame him for not taking a chance at getting caught. Opening the door to his bedchamber, he ushered her inside. The latch clicked home loudly in the midnight silence.

His chamber lay shrouded in shadows. The day’s fire had burned to embers, casting a faint glow that allowed the furniture to appear as black shapes in the darkness. His hulk of a bed dominated the room.

She would not think of it. Yes, she was closed in with him alone, the very situation she’d intended to avoid, but she also needed answers. Even if he could not see the gesture, she crossed her arms.

“Tell me exactly what Satya said to you.” Alexander’s voice came from a few feet to the left. He, too, was keeping his distance.

“He said something about your wife, as if he was comparing me to her, and then noted how she was dead but I was still alive.” She could not bring herself to repeat the exact phrasing, not when it might bring confirmation of the truth from Alexander’s own lips. “And how am I to
take that?”

“As a warning.” Low and earnest, his reply rung with assurance. “Satya would never threaten you.”

“Why would he say something like that?”

“He means for you to stay away from me.
Me.
I’m drawing the danger that I thought I’d left behind in India.” A wordless, anguished cry emerged from the back of his throat.

“I don’t understand. Perhaps …” She hesitated, certain she was about to ask him to shed light on events in his past she’d rather know nothing about—his marriage foremost among them. “You’d better tell me everything.”

“It doesn’t matter what happened in India. We can’t do anything to change that. What matters is here and
now.
” The urgency behind his words rose with every syllable, until the hairs on her nape stood on end and gooseflesh shivered down her arms.

“Did … did something occur today?”

“I went to the village this afternoon, and in the excitement of my family’s arrival I chose not to alarm anybody.” The dull thud of his footsteps pulsed in her ears, closer, closer. “Tilly’s shop is locked up tight. No one knows where he is.”

“We knew something had spooked him.”

“Tilly, with all he’s seen in his life? It would take a lot to spook someone like that into leaving.
If
he’s left.”

More gooseflesh, an entire battalion of tiny bumps marched along her skin as if her body was a parade ground. “How can we know?”

“We can’t without trespassing. But there’s more. The servants here have noted nothing, but everyone I talked to in the village seems to have had a break-in of some sort lately. Nothing missing, mind you, but their possessions rifled through.”

She tightened her arms across her chest until she was hugging herself. “That means there
must
have been someone in my chamber the other night.”

“
Yes.
This is why I did not wish to discount that episode. You awoke before they could search your things.”

“So someone is looking for something.” A few more pieces clicked into place. “Something from your cargo. It couldn’t be that box I found on the beach, could it?”

“I think so, but I’d be damned if I knew why.” A frustrated outrush of breath accompanied his words. “The jewels have a certain value, yes, but most of their worth is personal. They’re definitely not something to chase halfway around the world.”

Personal worth.
She tried to thrust that thought aside as mere hurt and consider the broader implications, but the faceless image of Marianne kept intruding. She couldn’t ask him to clarify his meaning, however. Not unless she wanted to risk learning his exact feelings for his wife. Good Lord, would she ever be ready to face the worst of those possibilities?

“Do you see my dilemma?” Alexander went on.

“No, I can’t say that I do.”

“I
ought
to leave, you see. If whoever is behind the deaths of Marianne and her father has followed me from India, I need to lead them away from my family. But how can I do that to my girls when they’ve been permanently separated from their mother? How can I put them through that? But I’ll have to, won’t I? There are too many people in this house I care for. My daughters, and now my mother and sister have turned up. Even my aunt.” A pause. “And then there’s you.”

That revelation struck her like a blow. Her knees buckled, and she staggered back, her rump striking a hard wooden board. The foot of his bed. “Me?”

“Do you not know what it would do to me if you were hurt—again—because of me?”

She could not credit the anguish that lay behind that statement, but did she want to know the answer to his question? Part of her—a cruel piece of her spirit, perhaps the very piece that led her to take the position with Lady Epperley in the first place—perked up its ears. The rest of her stood firm.

“I could not bear it. I could not live with myself.” In one stride, he closed the distance between them, and gripped her upper arms, his touch warming her far more than anything else since they’d entered this room. “I’ve put you through too much already.”

The force behind his words reached directly into her chest, took hold of her heart, and squeezed like a vise. She ought to raise opposition, ought to duck out of his near-embrace, away from him, and out the door, but her feet were rooted to the spot.

“Please, let us not speak of it again.” Her voice rang weakly in her ears. “There’s no sense in going over the past once more, when you cannot tell me everything. And I should go. It would not do for anyone to find me alone with you in your bedchamber.” She hitched her shoulders, but his grip held.

“Wait. Stay this once.” Utter, utter temptation.

Good Lord, how could she resist? But she must. “You cannot be—”

“I swear I will not touch you. In the morning, I will remove the danger from you, from the rest of my family, by departing. I will leave my daughters to my mother’s care, and they’ll be safe. You all will. It’s the only way. I would ask these two services of you: Explain to my girls
why I had to go, and stay with me now.”

Her instincts told her to flee to her chamber and lock the door behind her. She owed Alexander none of this. She might manage to make his daughters understand, but with his second condition, he asked too much. “The first I can do. But why, for the love of God’s green earth, ought I remain here with you?”

“Because it’s the chance we never had eight years ago. It’s a chance we
should
have had. And perhaps, in the few hours left to us, we might come to an understanding.”

Understanding. They’d had that once. A perfect complicity of mind and body and heart. In the years since, she’d never found the like again. A keen pang thrummed in her chest, a sort of desire, but not for the mere physical. She yearned for Alexander—all of him, the way she remembered it.

But perhaps she hungered for a past that had long since slipped beyond her grasp. Should she try to recapture it, or was she opening herself up to more pain when he left again? Her fear vied with the hunger inside, but dear Lord, she remembered the joy, the buoyancy, the soaring sensation that accompanied her every movement when she thought herself in love.

And if she could relive that, just for a few hours …

She shouldn’t wish for such a thing, but the devil knew she’d always had difficulty saying no where Alexander Sanford was concerned. And so she said nothing, but remained where she stood, trapped between him and the bed, and waited for his next move.

The night settled about them in silence. Henrietta tried to pierce the darkness with her eyes, but failed. With both the fireplace and window behind her, the blackness was too absolute, the hours before morning endless. But the lack of sight heightened her other senses. She was all too aware of the steady rhythm of Alexander’s breathing. In, out, slow and steady and dependable.

If she didn’t have to look at him, she could almost pretend … What? That the past eight years hadn’t occurred? That they’d stolen off from some ball for a little time alone to act on their feelings? That they were still in love—or at least that she still loved him?

Perhaps she still did, even now, and that was why she could not bring herself to leave. Without the evidence of his sins before her face, she couldn’t call a single one to mind. Not now. For what was he guilty of? Wanting to help his family so that he had no choice but to go to India? Not a sin there.

All his actions since that time had emanated from that single point. So, yes, he’d become a father to children he clearly loved, children whose mother was gone. Children she’d grown to
care for, as well. His girls had worked their way into her heart, each in her own unique way—Francesca through her boundless joy and Helena through her quiet hurt. But that hurt would heal, and she’d grow into a strong, beautiful woman. How Henrietta wanted to witness that process.

Stop.
She had to stop thinking along these lines. Until he declared himself, there were no guarantees of any future between her and Alexander once the danger had passed.

“You’ve grown quiet.” Alexander’s voice rumbled out of the darkness. “What are you thinking?”

Lord knew she could ask him his feelings straight out, but she’d done that once. If he had not answered that question yet, well, that was as good as a clear reply. “What is there to do, but wait?”

“We could find something to pass the time.” The heady scent of brandy enveloped her. He shifted, and ran his hands the length of her arms, up, down, leaving a glowing tingle in their passing. “We could talk, as friends. Without the battle between us.”

“What have we to say that hasn’t already been said?” Besides the matter of his proposal, but she knew it was useless to probe there. His dead wife was like an elephant in the room—she took up all the space, but courtesy dictated no one mention the obvious.

“What made you decide to become a paid companion?”

If she thought he could see her expression, she would have glared. “No one else offered to marry me. I should think that much was clear.”

“Why wouldn’t they?”

Good Lord, what was his problem? And he voiced the question as if the response weren’t completely obvious. “Why
would
they?”

“You’re asking me that in all sincerity when you completely captivated me at eighteen?”

“Apparently, you were alone in that regard. And I clearly did not captivate you enough, if you could run off to India and forget me within a year of your arrival.”

He shifted again, hovered closer. His hand slipped down her arm, encountered hers, and his fingers twined about hers. “Whatever else happened, you must believe me when I tell you I never once forgot you.
Never.
”

So fervent, those words. He must believe them. For some reason the thought caused her throat to tighten. “Even when you were in bed with your wife?”

There, she’d said it, and made the challenge as ugly as she could. He would retreat now. He had to. If he managed to find the words to counter that accusation, her heart just might break all over again.

But his fingers did not untwine from hers. They tightened, rather, as if he were loath to let her go. “Even then.”

She’d expected an argument. She’d expected excuses. When a man wished to lie, after all, he tried to bury it under a mountain of words. This was no lie. It was the stark truth.

She tugged at her hand, but he refused to release her. “Don’t.”

“Don’t what?”

“Don’t make it worse. I lived through the heartache once. I cannot bear to live through it again.” She hated the wobble in her voice.

“Why should you have to live through more heartache?”

“Because you are not really offering me anything, are you? You’re just reminding me of what might have been, and it’s gone now.”

“Who says it’s gone?”

“I do.”

“Why?”

“Damn it all, I loved you once.” Tears pricked at the corners of her eyes, and she swiped at them with her free hand. “I cannot let that happen again.”

“And if your feelings were returned?”

A wild urge rose in her to laugh in his face. “You never loved me. If you had, you wouldn’t have married another. You wouldn’t have left in the first place!”

The vehemence with which that last accusation erupted shocked even her. She’d known at the time why he’d left. She’d
understood.
She’d assured him of that much. Why should such resentment come bubbling forth now of all times?