Dark Season (21 page)

Earlier in the evening, he’d told himself he needed to look at her, because he was assessing her, coolly evaluating her every gesture, squaring his impressions with Lizzie’s revelation.

His impressions did
not
square with the revelation. This irritated him immensely, his inability to see her as the larcenous,
nasty
baggage Lizzie had described. Maybe that was why he’d needed to keep staring. He wanted to see it, the mercenary strumpet. The filcher who would violate any trust. The woman who spoke of the world’s need for kindness then took advantage of kindness when she found it.

Without that hideous bonnet, she looked even more unearthly. Her head capped with that shining, silvery blond hair, upswept to reveal the delicate curve of her neck as she stared into the candle flames. He knew how those tresses felt, slippery and soft.

She didn’t speak at dinner. Made no attempt to dazzle the company or ingratiate herself. She was the
opposite
of crafty baggage. She was utterly withdrawn. Even absent. She had looked at him once, and smiled. That smile transformed her features, illuminated her pale face, kindled something darkling bright in those enormous black eyes.

He’d had no choice but to devote his attention then to the tedious Penny Tenby, who was bland as a dinner bun, and whose agenda was almost pitifully clear. She wanted to make a brilliant match. With him, if she could. If not, with someone else. Flattering, to be sure. He couldn’t feel too badly about disappointing her.

He hadn’t looked in Miss Reed’s direction again until he’d let the table’s reaction to Penn gall him into idiot speeches. She was nodding as though in perfect agreement. He could tell she was in sympathy with Mr. Penn and had little patience with Berners, Tenby, and the rest. That irritated him too. Everything he liked about her chafed. Desiring her was bad enough.
Liking
her … It was out of the question.

After dinner, in Tenby’s parlor, he very nearly failed to do it. He’d stalled, reconsidered, and recommitted himself. Daphne and Miss Reed standing close together across the room presented a startling contrast. Daphne, with her auburn hair and red silk gown, was so richly colored, small, rounded, and supple. Miss Reed, in black, so slender and straight, was pale as a moonbeam piercing a dark cloud. Day and night. He preferred Miss Reed’s eerie beauty, which seemed to go through phases like the moon. Sometimes she dimmed, vanished into herself. Sometimes she was wan, glancing. Sometimes she turned to him, full-faced and radiant. He felt that he could watch her forever. That it would be a rare delight to come to understand her cycles, what made her show her face, what made her slip away.

But he couldn’t just watch. He’d had to steel himself and approach her.

Afterwards, he expected to feel some release, but he felt worse. He’d joined the circle by the piano and waited there until she and Mrs. Trombly departed.

The expression in her eyes had nearly unmanned him. Like a wounded deer awaiting the
coup de grace
. He wished she had tried to defend herself. If she had lied to him, pleaded with him, displayed any kind of cunning … he could hold her in contempt. But she had only looked at him, unwavering, until
he
felt like the criminal. There had been no hint of accusation in her face. That too would have made it easier. He could have felt the comfort of righteous indignation.

She was possessed of innate nobility. This charlatan housebreaker.

He could see the river now. Black and high. Barges moving slowly out on the little waves. The red lights of coal fires winked as they bobbed up and down. Smaller boats were drifting beneath the arches of the Waterloo bridge.

And he could see a figure walking along the embankment. Not a typical waterside character. A cloaked woman, straight and slender, with a peculiar gait, as though she walked with stiffened limbs, as though she were powered by a mechanism tightly wound. A clockwork walk.

He had to stop in his tracks. Blink. Convince himself she wasn’t a figment. A conjuration of his inflamed brain. How could it be? But it was. Miss Reed, walking in the dead of night alongside the dreary river. She had stepped out of his very thoughts. He was too stunned by her appearance, at this hour, in this chill and desolate place, to call out. What was she doing, walking so close to the shelving-wall, the river at flood tide, moored boats floating? She risked assault. Robbery. Rape. Murder. His muscles tensed.

She stopped and faced the water, and the wind blew her cloak around her.

He remembered the bleakness in her gaze.
You won’t see me again.

A dog barked nearby. She didn’t turn. She stepped up on the wall.

Christ almighty
. She was so small and the river vast and foul, tons and tons of black water surging with the blind power of annihilation. It had swallowed who knew how many miserable souls.

No
, he thought.
No
. And some more obscure voice from deeper inside him cried out too. Cried,
Not again.

He ran. He threw himself across the uneven ground, threw himself into the teeth of the wind. He splashed through puddles, vaulted rotten wood, reached her in moments. He launched himself onto the wall behind her, barely checking his momentum as he hugged her against his body, grabbed her shoulders, the two of them carried forward even as he jerked them back. They balanced on the river’s edge. Her body went rigid with shock. Then she thrashed her head, threw her elbow into his side, and kicked and screamed, fighting him like a wild thing. He tried to still her, whirl her around so she could see him, know him, the whole time saying her name, but she was beyond hearing. Her feet slipped out from under her on the dank stone, slick with deposits, and she was suddenly clinging to him, pulling him forward.

“Don’t fight me,” he grunted. “Little fool, don’t fight.” But she twisted again in his arms, crazed, off-balance, pitching her weight, and then they were both of them over the edge, falling down into the black water that closed—frigid, filthy, final—above them.

Cold. She had never been so cold. She tried to struggle, but fabric wrapped her arms, her legs. She was paralyzed in the freezing, breathless dark. No air in her lungs. She didn’t know if her eyes were open or shut. No way of determining up or down. She opened her mouth to scream, to breathe, both impossible, and the water rushed in, choking, thick, and now her chest burned, burned like fire, even as she sank like a stone in the icy fathoms. Was that the sound of her blood, that rushing in her ears? She had to get out, to claw her way out, out of the clothing that was weighing her down, out of her
body
, it was too clumsy, too heavy, if she could only wiggle free and rise, but she was trapped in wet wool and silk, in cold, cold flesh. She was squeezed from all sides. She could feel
her heart beating, beating, beating, but the water, which had no rhythm, was beginning to cancel everything out. The terrifying darkness—silent, featureless—filled her. Still. Blank.

She could see a light, far off. The moon floating on top of the river. All the talk of heaven and hell … empty bluster. It was just the moon in the end. Papa was waiting on the moon. He beckoned, or it was the light waving, waving through the water as it found her. Cold, and a little frightening, the light waved. How strange that it could find her, even here.

Something was pulling her. Pulling her away from the light. She wanted to move her limbs, fight against whatever it was, but their weight was the weight of the river itself. She was being sucked down, down, and the light was receding.

Let me go
. She tried one last time to reach for the light.
Papa. Papa.
Then there was only black. She screamed and heard a gurgle, oily water and bile pouring from her throat, and air rushed in. Air that felt like claws, scraping all the way down into her stomach. More water, hard, hurting, moved up through her body to pour from her mouth. She was wracked, shaking. Through the pain in her ears, she heard a voice. Deep. Harsh.

“Breathe. Breathe, damn it. Breathe, my angel. Breathe, darling, breathe.”

It hurt to breathe. But the air came rasping in, and this time it went again, without water. She felt something hard digging into her back, became aware of her soaking dress plastered to her skin. She couldn’t stop shaking. She opened her eyes and saw only blackness.
No.
She shut them again in terror.

“Open your eyes.” She recognized that voice. That command. She felt the scratch of callused fingers moving on her face, the pressure of warm hands. “Look at me.”

This time she could see. A dim figure bending over her, dripping onto her. From the shadows of the face as it drew nearer: a glimmer of blue. Blue eyes. The color of midnight—that absolute black that signaled the day would come. Bright. Shattering the dark. Blue beneath black. Blue eyes bringing her back into her body. She tried to sit up, and strong arms wrapped around her.

“Don’t fight me. Can you stand?”

She could. Shakily, his arm around her waist.

“Come,” he said. He led her, half crawling, half climbing over slippery stones. She stumbled, sinking in sludge and scum.
God, that stink.

“This way. We can’t get up the wall there.”

The bell of a church clock tolled in the distance. Once. She could hear the creaking of iron chains and men’s voices, indistinct, coming in and out across the water. An enormous ship was passing slowly, close by, on the river. No one from the deck would notice the two figures, wet, shivering, struggling on the shore. And that other sound—chugging, nauseous—that was the paddles of a steam ship churning.

“Wait, wait.” She pulled against his arm, and he held her while she vomited, doubled over, more filthy water. It gushed even from her nostrils. Stinging. She heaved again. Nothing. His hand was smoothing back her hair, kneading her back. His voice was murmuring near her ear. “Easy, love. Easy. Let it out. Breathe. Ready?”

He was gentle but firm. Already urging her on. She wanted to collapse, but she forced her legs to move. Suddenly they were out of the lee of the pier, and the cold wind slapped against them. She gasped, and the wind snatched her breath away.

“Stay still,” he commanded and ripped off her sodden cloak, dropping it in the mud. He caught her beneath the knees and armpits, carrying her the last few yards up to the riverside streets. She heard his breath sawing as he went on his knees to lower her to the cobbles. She drew in her legs, clutching herself, and rocked. He crouched beside her. He withdrew a knife from his boot and pulled her arm across his thighs. He worked the blade between her wet, shrunken glove and the skin of her inner arm. He slit the fabric to her wrist and spread it apart. She gasped as the cold moved up her arm, air brushing across the exposed skin. He pulled the ruined glove from her hand. He did the same with her other arm. Then he rubbed at the clammy flesh, caught her numb fingers between his hands, and chafed at them. God, they hurt too. Everything hurt.

His teeth were chattering. Blades of hair plastered his cheeks. He put his lips against her forehead, the hot breath providing a temporary focal point—one thing in this world of pain that felt good.

“We need to get to my coach.” She felt his lips move. “We’re going to stand at the count of three.” She couldn’t bear to imagine him standing, removing his body. The wind would blow through her. She clutched at his shirtfront.

“Stay,” she whispered. This feeling—it was almost like the convulsions. Her body was frozen in a slow-motion spasm. Clenched. “Stay here.”

“We’ll be warm soon,” he said. “I promise. Now we’re going to stand. One. Two.”

At “three” they rose. She made it to the alley before she wavered, too dizzy to take another step. He lifted her up into his arms. She pressed her face into the wet cloth of his shirt. His heart beat steadily, but so slowly. She must have lost consciousness. The next thing she knew, she was being wrapped in a greatcoat that smelled of camphor and horses and settled on the padded bench of the coach. The movement of the coach jolted her. She huddled back into the greatcoat. The light from the coachman’s lamp gleamed through the window, playing upon the face of the man beside her.

He had saved her life. He had also nearly killed her.

Now that her senses were returning, questions followed.

“What … ” she began and coughed. Her throat felt raw.

“You swallowed a great deal of water.” He slid across the seat until he was pressed against her side. “Don’t overtax yourself.” For the first time, his presence failed to make her skin tingle. Her skin was like rubber.

“I can’t feel my feet,” she said. She couldn’t tell if her lips moved when she spoke. Her face had stiffened, become a mask.

He got his arm under her knees and lifted her legs, pulling them across his lap. His fingers, so beautifully formed, so clever, moved clumsily as he tried to untie the laces of her boots. His hands were trembling. He lifted them before his face, opened and closed them, shook them viciously from the wrist, then spread the fingers wide. Still, they trembled. He swore and reached for his knife. Then he cut through her bootlaces with two crude motions, tugged off her boots, and tossed them to the coach floor. She felt the tip of the blade as he slit her stockings and pushed them up her calves. She wiggled then, resisting, back pressed to the side panels of the coach. Her legs, from bare calves to heels, rested on his damp trousers. His palms slid across the tops of her feet. His thumbs pressed deep into the arches. He bent her feet up, then down, sliding his thumbs in little circles.

“Can you feel this?” he asked, pressing harder with his thumbs.

She felt it. She had never felt anything like it. She swallowed, wincing at the ache in her throat. He lifted her feet, leaned over, and … breathed against her toes.

She jerked involuntarily. If his grip were any looser, she’d have kicked him in the face.

“Lord Blackwood,” she whispered unsteadily.

“Isidore,” he said wryly. “I am, after all, blowing on your toes.” And again that warm, tickling breath seeped across her skin.