Addicted (30 page)

The euphoria of their coupling deserted her. Silently she answered him.
I wish you wouldn’t love me, Lindsay. It would make things so much easier if we could both just hate each other. But then we wouldn’t have this.

His arm reflexively tightened around her waist when she moved away from him. Grumbling in his sleep, he pulled her atop him and covered them up with the blanket.

“You belong to me, Anais,” he murmured. “And you’re not leaving my bed tonight, or any other night for that matter.”

18

Anais awoke early and brushed the sleep from her eyes. Turning her head on the pillow, her gaze slipped to the person beside her. Ann was sleeping like a baby.

She should return to her room before the servants arose to start their daily duties. Would Lindsay be gone? she wondered, remembering how she had left him in bed, sleeping heavily. She hoped so. She also hoped that Louisa had not already arrived in her room to wake her.

The pounding of hooves above the dim chatter of birds made Anais jump out of bed. Anais ran to the window in time to see Lindsay galloping down the lane atop Sultan. The view of him melting into the gray-blue light of the dawning morn made her heart ache. Gone was the night of loving and open emotions. With the dawn came the return of her secrets and the full realization that she was treading dangerous waters.

Tying the sash of her wrapper tight around her middle, Anais tossed her hair over her shoulder and looked back at her sister, who was still asleep. Tiptoeing back to her chamber, Anais let
herself inside and breathed a huge sigh of relief. Neither Louisa nor the chambermaid had been in yet, and she saw that Lindsay had haphazardly made the bed, covering any evidence of their lovemaking. The pillow was still indented from his head, and Anais found herself brushing her fingers along the spot, feeling the warmth that still lingered on the crisp linen.

Slipping back the covers, she discovered a folded piece of vellum tucked beneath her pillow. Opening it, she saw Lindsay’s bold handwriting scrawled across the letter.

No more secrets. I spoke of mine last night. It is time for you to speak of yours.

The note fluttered from her fingers, landing atop the wrinkled bedsheet. Did he know? No, she was being nonsensical. How could he possibly know? It was impossible that he had uncovered her secret. Perhaps he just assumed that she was keeping something from him.

Good God, she thought in panic, what if he did find out? What was she to do then? She didn’t want to hurt him, especially after last night. He would be destroyed if he discovered how she and Garrett had betrayed him.

Jumping up from bed, she hurriedly penned a letter to Garrett. She had to see him. She needed Garrett’s steady nerves. Together they could come up with a plan to keep Lindsay from learning their dark secret.

A fat log cracked in the hearth as Lindsay took a chair close to the fire, settling his chilled body into the warm leather. It was
bloody cold and the wind was up, sending drafts through every room in the house.

He’d ridden long and hard, breaking a sweat in an attempt to outrun his thoughts, but they had chased him through the forest and down the paths that led to Bewdley. He was cold and tired from his ride, but the fatigue did not stamp out what he really felt—unease. The disturbing sensation had been gripping him since awakening all alone in Anais’s bed that morning. Instead of relenting as it should after his ride, the sensation only curled tighter.

Was Anais’s eagerness for his bed nothing more than the hunger for sex? Did what they find together mean nothing more to her than carnal pleasures? He feared the answer, knowing it was not difficult to confuse lust with love. In his case, he knew where his heart lay; he loved Anais. To him they had made love. But what did it mean to her?

She had left him sometime during the night, and awakening alone in the bed was one of the most gut-wrenching kicks in the stomach he had ever felt.

“Your tea, my lord,” the parlor maid murmured as she set the silver tea tray on the desk and poured him a steaming cup.

“Thank you.” He took the cup from her thin fingers and sipped it carefully. “Where is everyone? The house is rather quiet.”

“Lady Weatherby and Lady Darnby have returned to the modiste to outfit Lady Ann with another dress.”

He wanted to ask where Anais was, but he refrained and instead asked after Lord Darnby’s health.

“He is better, I think, my lord,” she said as she passed him a silver plate loaded with fruitcake and biscuits. “He sat for a few
minutes this morning in this very room. His color was high and he seemed in good spirits.”

Nodding, he bit into a piece of cake covered in marzipan. “And what of Lady Anais?” he finally asked.

“I have not seen her today. Shall I make inquiries with her maid?”

“No. That will not be necessary. I was only making conversation.”

“I see, my lord,” Mary said politely, despite the quizzical expression on her face. “Shall you be attending the Duke of Torrington’s New Year’s Eve ball tonight, my lord? I believe Lord and Lady Weatherby have accepted the invitation.”

“Oh, I’m sure,” he drawled. “My father is never one to look down his nose at an invitation. And New Year’s Eve is akin to my father what a feast day is to a patron saint.”

The maid flushed and lowered her head, although he saw a hint of a smile before she hid it from him. “Well, then, my lord, if that is all, I shall return to the kitchen to help Cook with supper.”

“Good day,” he said with a nod, watching as she curtsied and inclined her head, which was covered in a white lace mop cap.

The door closed behind the maid and he let his head rest back against the leather. Was Anais upstairs avoiding him? Had she any idea what thoughts were running rampant through his mind—
what utterly terrifying thoughts?

No, she could have no idea. He scarcely believed them himself. Yet he could not bring himself to discount the niggling feeling in his gut. And that had been the reason he had stopped by William Crosby’s bookshop and purchased a medical manual.

He peered down at the black-and-gilt cover.
A Dissertation on the Human Anatomy; Its Parts and Functions, Failings and Maladies, by Dr. Samuel Stuart.

He barely knew where to start. How would he begin researching the myriad of afflictions the human soul could succumb to? How would he know if his research was leading him down the right path, and furthermore, did he really want to know what it was she was keeping from him?

“Bloody damn cold, wouldn’t you say?”

Lindsay looked up from a diagram of a cross section of the female body, only to see his father slide into the chair opposite him. “Makes my bones ache, this weather,” his father grumbled as he reached for the wool plaid that was draped over the back of the chair.

“It is indeed rather chilly,” he replied, watching his father arrange the blanket over his legs and wondering when it was the Marquis of Weatherby had turned into an old man.

“What is it?” his father grunted as he poured himself a cup of tea. “Why do you look at me like that?”

“Like what?”

“Like a doddering old fool,” his father thundered in a throaty snarl.

Returning his gaze back to the diagram, Lindsay mumbled, “Forgive me. I did not mean to make you feel as though you were an invalid.”

“Hmph. The only invalid in this house is that pain in the arse lounging about upstairs. It’s high time he started getting on the mend. I’m bloody sick and tired of having so many people around all the time. It interferes with a man’s routine.”

Despite his own foul mood, Lindsay found himself grinning. Just last night his father had proclaimed to everyone who would listen in the assembly rooms that he had never had more enjoyment than the past sennight when his home was overflowing with guests and evening entertainments. But then, he’d been three sheets to the wind when he had said it.

“What do you have there?” his father asked. “Not some drivel written by Scott or Keats, I hope. You should be brushing up on your equine knowledge if you’ve a mind to breed that beauty you brought back with you from Turkey.”

Lindsay had all but forgotten the fact he had returned home with the intention of starting an Arabian breeding program at Eden Park. Returning home to find Anais was going to be his houseguest for an extended period of time had done little to motivate him to begin. Hell, he’d been far too occupied with making plans to get Anais back, that he hadn’t given a fleeting thought for his breeding program. Hell, it had hardly even registered in his brain it was the Christmas season.

“Well, what is it?” his father grumbled. “A tome on breeding practices?”

“Actually, it is a medical text.”

His father’s eyelids narrowed and something flickered across his yellowed orbs before he looked away and peered into the flames. His father remained quiet—almost pensive as he watched the flames flicker in the hearth. Lindsay was about to excuse himself, when his father’s eyes swung to his. “Always liked the fire a good log produces over coal. Used to sit here for hours during the night watching the flames.”

“And what did you see in them?”

“Ghosts. Many of them.”

Lindsay swallowed hard, wanting to break the intimacy of their locked gazes, but he could not. He had never seen his father in such a state. He had been a young boy the last time he witnessed his father this sober and somber.

“You’re on a dangerous path, boy. I know. I’ve traveled it before.” Lindsay looked away and pretended interest in his teacup, but his father kept talking. “You’re gaunt. You’ve circles under your eyes like you haven’t slept in weeks.”

“It’s nothing—”

“Don’t lie to me,” his father spat. “You’ve never had the kindness of heart to lie to me before, so don’t start now. You’ve never spared my feelings and I shall return the favor in kind. You’re killing yourself over this girl and it pains me to see it. I know that you’ve been deadening yer pain with opium.”

Lindsay looked at his father in horror. “Just what the devil do you think, that I’ve gotten myself into a…a
dependency?
I have dabbled in opium, nothing more. I don’t
need
to have it.”

“That’s what I told myself, too, in the beginning. And it was true, I didn’t have to have it, but before I knew it, I’d given my body up to the alcohol. I thought I didn’t need it, but my body disagreed with my mind.”

“I am not dependent upon it. I am not
you!
”

“It was your greatest wish in life, wasn’t it, to not become like me. I knew it all along—all those years you were a small boy, I felt it—your disgust, your disapproval—
your fear.
”

I don’t want to be like him, Anais. I don’t want to hurt everyone I love and not care about anything but my own needs.
He was sixteen when he had blurted that out. And she had reached for his hand
and clasped it tightly in hers.
You won’t Lindsay. You’re nothing like him. You’ll never be like him.

“I know I was never the father to you that Broughton’s father was to him, or even the sort Darnby is to his chits. I know I wasn’t what your sensitive nature needed in a sire, but I swear to you, I never wanted this for you. I never wanted you to walk in my shoes. I may not have grown to love your mother, but I always loved you.”

Never had his father admitted any affection for him. Lindsay found himself speechless, staring at the man he barely knew.

“I was once like you, boy. I, too, loved and lost. I, too, have been consumed by demons. I turned to drink when the woman I loved betrayed me. It was the only thing that deadened the pain. It was the only thing that could stop me from thinking about her day and night, and week after week. You have discovered the same cure.”

“That’s not why—”

“Then why have you taken it up? Why can’t you put it down?”

Lindsay looked away, ashamed of what he wanted to say, but knowing that there was no other truth. “Because all my life I’ve been weak. I feared your fate would befall me because I always felt the niggling of temptation nipping at my heels and I fought so hard to ignore it, and there were some days I thought I wouldn’t be successful because it was so damn hard to resist. I never wanted to be you, falling down drunk and groping women. I didn’t want to hear my wife crying in the middle of the night because she had caught me in bed with one of the maids or dallying with her friend.”

Lindsay squeezed his eyes shut and pressed his fingers farther
into his palm, attempting to control the sudden rage and emotion that threatened to spill from the pit of his gut. “I couldn’t bear the thought of Anais looking at me like she looked at you when you were stumbling drunk. I never wanted to see disgust in her eyes. I never,
never,
” he roared, pounding his fist on the arm of his chair, “wanted to turn her away from me the way you turned Mother from you.”

His eyes flew open and he met his father’s hard stare. “So, I discovered the opium and I thought that if I wasn’t drinking like you, and I wasn’t chasing anything in a skirt like you, that I would be safe from my fate of becoming you. I truly believed that one day I would be worthy of her and I would outrun the craving for temptation. I thought of opium as a lark, something we all partook in to have some laughs and relaxation. I didn’t realize till too late that I used it to control what I really am—your son.”

His father blinked once, then again, slowly, as if he was trying to stem the moisture Lindsay suddenly saw spring into his father’s eyes before looking away and back to the fire. “It will no doubt come as a shock to you, but I despise what you’ve had to see. I hate that the model for a gentleman you had in your life was me. But I can’t change any of that, can I?” he muttered as he lifted his teacup to his lips. “I can’t change my path in life. But I sure as hell can set you on the right way.” His father set his cup down on its saucer with a clang. “Let me tell you something about women like Anais. Women like her are a man’s dream. I know I’ve professed she’s a nothing little baggage, but the truth is, if I were your age and I had someone hanging on my every word and looking at me with those big, blue eyes as though I
were a god, I’d be as smitten as you are. What man doesn’t want the demure little paragon that pants hot for us? What man doesn’t want the lady by day and the temptress by night? I’m no different. I fell in love with a woman like Anais. I wanted her. I loved her and she told me she wanted me, too. She gave me everything, then she told her papa that I had forced her. She lied and she devastated me in the process when she turned something I had never experienced before, into something ugly and hateful. And she made her circumstances in life better when she married a duke and forgot all about me. But I didn’t forget her—I couldn’t. Every time I closed my eyes I saw her. I felt her touch, and damn me it was more than I could bear.” His father was breathing heavy and his big hand was fisted tight in his lap. “Your Anais is just like her, boy. She’ll tell you ‘no we shouldn’t’ even as she’s raising her skirt for you. And after the deed is done and the passion subsides and she’s left with the memories, she’ll cast you aside because you can’t be what she wants. You can’t be the man she has created in her mind. And she’ll torture you with the memories. I know your torture,” he grunted as he shook a finger at him. “She is making your life a living hell. Forget her!” he roared, smacking the arm of the chair. “Forget that night in the stables because it is obvious she has. You may have lost your heart to her that night, but she didn’t lose hers to you. I’ll tell you, life with that one will only make your days hell.”