Heartless (16 page)

“Ah,” Luke said, his eyes still on Daniel Frawley, “that detail had escaped my memory.”

Anna, listening to the pleasantness of his voice, shivered once more.

But suddenly the other man dragged a sword free of its scabbard at his side and pointed it directly at Luke. Anna felt her knees turn to jelly.

“You will not stop us,” he said. “Stay just where you are, Harndon, if you do not wish to take harm. Doris and I are leaving.”

Luke neither moved nor changed his tone of voice. “Extremely unwise, my dear,” he said to Daniel Frawley. “Put it up while you have the chance.”

Daniel made the mistake of sneering. It seemed to Anna that she saw the sword in her husband's hand before she heard the scraping sound of its being drawn from its scabbard. And then somehow—her eye was not fast enough to follow the exact sequence of events—Daniel Frawley's sword was flying in an arc through the air and clattering down onto the path a dozen feet away and the point of Luke's sword was at his throat. Anna, too horrified to move, watched in fascination as a dark bubble beaded there and began to flow in a thin trickle down his neck.

“What you will do,” Luke said, his tone still unchanged, “is leave alone, Frawley. With your life and most of your blood if you are a good boy. I shall relieve you of a little more of the latter if you ever come within hailing distance of Lady Doris Kendrick again. I might have allowed you to meet her occasionally under strictest chaperonage had you not shown yourself quite as prepared to take my money as to marry my sister. I might have allowed it in the hope that she would come to realize that such a change in her style of life would not bring her the happiness she expected. But now you will communicate with her on peril of your life. You may retrieve your sword before leaving.” He lowered his sword unhurriedly and replaced it in its scabbard.

Daniel Frawley did as he was told.

Doris, who had stood frozen, both hands over her mouth, lowered them finally as her lover disappeared from sight. “I hate you,” she said dispassionately to Luke. “And I will do all I can to defy you. I will elope with him at the earliest opportunity.”

“Anna.” Luke kept his eyes on his sister. “Will you be so good as to hurry back to the rotunda and ask my mother if she will come here? Explain that she will be taking Doris home, if you please. Stay there with Lady Sterne until I come to you.”

Anna hurried away. She knew for once in her life what Judas Iscariot must have felt like when he left the Garden of Gethsemane. The betrayer. Except that Doris had been saved from a disastrous future, especially if what Luke had said about the money was true.

Somehow she was more inclined to believe Luke's version than Doris's, which had come from Daniel Frawley. Perhaps because she wanted to believe Luke's.

Five minutes later the Dowager Duchess of Harndon was on her way to the gates, having heard enough from Anna's brief explanation to understand exactly what had happened.

Anna, watching her leave, stood for a few moments outside the rotunda, welcoming the darkness and coolness and relative privacy, calming herself before following her husband's instructions and joining her godmother inside.

But before she could do so, a tall black shadow stepped between her and the nearest light. “Ah, alone at last,” a horrifyingly familiar voice said. “Well met, my Anna.”

I
T
seemed that all lights had gone out and all air had been sucked away. Panic—sheer raw panic—froze her to the spot on which she stood.

“Your husband is otherwise engaged for the present,” he said. “'Twill be my pleasure to give you my company, Anna. I will walk with you beside the canal.” He extended an arm for hers and in doing so stepped slightly to one side so that the light of a single lamp streamed over his shoulder.

“What do you want?” Her lips were stiff and unwilling to move.

“I want to walk alone with my Anna for a few quiet minutes,” he said. “Take my arm.”

The thought of touching him was deeply nauseating. “Please.” She could hear the abject, pleading note in her voice and could seem to do nothing about it. “Please leave me alone. Please. I am married now. All that is in the past.” Pointless words and untrue. Nothing was in the past.

“Take my arm, Anna.”

She took it and squeezed her eyes tightly shut. She knew suddenly why she liked Luke's height. This man was tall; her head reached barely to his chin. She felt overpowered by him, enveloped in him, robbed of personal identity by him.

He strolled with her in the direction of the canal and the tree-lined path on the far side of it. Other masked revelers moved to either side of them, chattering and laughing. One or two of them greeted Anna. She walked past them in the darkness, in the shadow of the tall, black-cloaked, black-masked man at her side. It was impossible to believe that this was the same enchanted path she had taken with Luke earlier.

“What do you want?” she asked again.

“Just this, my Anna,” he said, indicating the pleasure gardens about them and touching her hand. She dared not snatch it away. “I longed to be back home with you. It was a severe disappointment when I finally returned and found you gone and knew that there would be the delay of coming to London to claim you. And yet when I came here, I found a further complication. Well, I chose to allow you to continue with your very naughty plans to marry. I chose to stand back and allow you a little time with your duke. 'Tis not easy. These few moments will soothe the emptiness.”

“What are you going to tell him?” she asked.

“Nothing at all,” he said, looking down at her with eyes that glittered through his mask. “'Twill be unnecessary. You will come to me when the time is right, my Anna, and he will need to know nothing but the fact that you have tired of him. He will not need to know that you are a cheat and a thief and a murderer—and a whore—unless you prove difficult.”

“I intend to repay every one of my father's debts,” she said. “Then you will have no more reason to terrorize me.”

“Terrorize?” he said. “Do you still not believe that I love you, Anna? That when the time comes I will take you away and make you happier than you ever dreamed of being? And do you not know that the debts mean nothing to me? That I assumed them only to lift an intolerable burden from the shoulders of my beloved Anna?”

“I will pay them all,” she said. “In money. I will no longer accept even the smallest of them as gifts for favors rendered. In time I will pay them all.”

He patted her hand. “Let us not talk of such things,” he said. “Let us enjoy a quiet stroll. Ah, the wonder of seeing and feeling you beside me again.”

She could remember the deep gratitude she had felt toward him when he had first come to live in the neighborhood very soon after her mother's death. He had seemed solidly calm and kindly and reassuring in contrast with her father, who had lost himself in drink and self-pity for years and then had collapsed almost completely when Mama died. Sir Lovatt Blaydon had visited often and, without ever seeming to insinuate himself into her confidence, had won her trust. She could remember strolling with him one afternoon in the garden, her arm through his as it was now, comforted by his tall solidity and his sympathy, telling him about her father's debts, about their closeness to total ruin. She had not known what would happen to the children—even Victor had still seemed a child though he was nineteen at the time. And Emily was a deaf-mute.

Even unburdening her anxieties to someone else had been an enormous relief. She had not asked herself why she would do so to a stranger. He had not seemed to be a stranger. He had seemed more of a father figure—a dependable father figure.

He had bought all her father's debts. She could remember his telling her, also in the garden. And she could remember being speechless with gratitude and relief. She could remember stretching out her hands to him and squeezing his very tightly and lifting them to her cheeks. She could remember biting her upper lip to stop the tears from flowing and then laughing because they had spilled over anyway and because she had been quite unable to speak even the words “thank you.”

She had thought he had done it because he loved her. She had expected him to return the next day to offer her marriage. She had pictured his making her a wedding present of those debts—a most precious gift. She had liked him so well that it had felt almost like love. It had not seemed to her that she would be sacrificing herself by marrying him. She had wanted to marry him. She had wanted to spend the rest of her life showing her gratitude.

But he had not wanted marriage. Only power over her. Though he had begun to call her “my Anna.” And he had begun to talk about the future life they would live together. He had begun to claim to love her. The further he drew her into his net, the stronger had grown his claim to love her.

Sometimes she wondered why he had chosen her as his victim. Simply because she had been there? Because making her a victim had been almost laughably easy? Probably she would never know.

“Ah,” he said now as they strolled back along the shabby path, “the husband awaits.”

Luke, she saw, was standing still below the rotunda, watching them. She wondered if the two men would meet. She wondered what would happen. Panic had long ago disappeared to leave in its place a dull sense of fatality. It was out of her hands.

But Sir Lovatt Blaydon stopped when they were a little distance away from Luke, took her hands in his, and bowed over them. Anna closed her eyes, but he did not kiss them.

“You may enjoy him a while yet, my Anna,” he said. “I will communicate with you from time to time to make sure you keep in mind that you are merely on loan to him at my pleasure. But you need have no fears for your reputation. I love you more than anyone else possibly could.”

She drew her hands from his, breathed air slowly into her lungs, and turned from him. She moved toward Luke, who was still standing where he had been before. She tried not to hurry, though she felt suddenly that devils' claws were about to tear at her back. She smiled and let her eyes sparkle above the veil until she remembered that for more than one reason the smile was inappropriate. She let it die.

•   •   •

Luke
watched her come. He had felt a rather foolish and uncharacteristic alarm when he had returned to the rotunda to find that she was not there, either with Lady Sterne or with anyone else. For one moment he had imagined that she too had flown. But of course she was outside strolling, as were more than half the other revelers at Ranelagh.

He did not recognize the man who accompanied her, though he might have been an acquaintance. His black cloak and mask and the fact that his hood was up made identification difficult.

It was perfectly acceptable for his wife to be walking with another man. He should return to the rotunda, Luke thought, lest both she and others think that he spied on her. He spent enough time watching her in ballrooms and drawing rooms, and he had no doubt other people had noticed. He had no wish to be known as a man besotted with his own wife.

However, he stayed where he was, watching them, having the inexplicable feeling that he might be needed. But they had seen him and the man was taking his leave of her, bowing over her hands. For a fleeting moment Luke felt that he must know the man, but full recognition eluded him.

Her eyes smiled at him as she approached and then turned serious again.

“Anyone I know?” he asked.

“Oh.” She laughed. “No. Just a rather distant neighbor from home. I used to know his daughter quite well. I am amazed he recognized me. I did not know him until he identified himself. Did you send Doris home?”

“Yes,” he said. “I saw them on their way. I regret that you were a witness to violence, Anna.”

“'Twas not your fault.” She looked closely at him. “Where did you learn such skilled swordplay?”

“In Paris,” he said, “among other things.”

She shivered suddenly and sagged toward him in such a way that he had to reach out a hand to steady her.

“I want to leave,” she said. “Please, Luke?”

“I came to suggest it,” he said. “'Tis not easy to rejoin the revels after one's sister has just narrowly escaped ruining her life when she is too young to know what she does.”

They took their leave of Lady Sterne and Anna's sister and Theo and were in the carriage on their way home five minutes later. Luke set his head back and closed his eyes, glad that his wife seemed indisposed to talk. Ruin would be so much more disastrous for a woman than for a man. He had been only a year older than Doris was now when his own life fell to ruins about his ears. Because he was a man, he had been able to make a new life for himself. It would have been far more difficult for Doris to do likewise.

His cold anger had receded though he was not sorry for the decision he had made while he had waited with Doris for their mother to come to take her home. Tomorrow she would be sent all the way home—to Bowden Abbey, where she could be watched more closely. His mother would go with her. He had told them of his plan and had told them too that he would call on them in the morning to see them on their way.

“And to beat me before I leave?” Doris had asked defiantly and bitterly. “You are not going to let me escape without a beating, are you, Luke?”

“Be quiet, girl,” their mother had said coldly. “I would stand by without a word of protest if Lucas should have the good sense to discipline you in such a way, even if he were to use a whip. It is something that should have happened to you long ago.”

Luke had made no comment. He had been too angry. But remembering his mother's words now, he found himself wondering if it was whippings that Doris had lacked through her childhood and girlhood—or if it was love. Perhaps if his mother had hugged her a few times . . .

But he did not believe in love. Love would have destroyed Doris just as surely as its absence seemed to be doing. Not that he could accuse his mother of a total absence of love, he supposed. It was just that she had always put duty and propriety first, as if a display of love were a foolish weakness. And yet Doris perhaps needed more open love than she could get from her mother—or from him. He could remember what an affectionate child she had been.

Luke swallowed. And he realized suddenly that he was holding his wife's hand rather tightly on the seat between them. It was not something he was in the habit of doing. It was almost as if he had reached for her, needing her. He did not need her or anyone else. He had learned to be strictly self-sufficient. He must never allow himself to need Anna in any other way than the sexual. He slid his hand from hers.

She sat quietly beside him for a few moments, and then she swayed toward him so that her arm was against his and she rubbed her cheek hard against his shoulder. Startled, he opened his arms to steady her as she got awkwardly to her feet and moved across him to sit on his lap. She yanked her veil beneath her chin, wrapped her arms about his neck, rubbed her breasts suggestively against him, and found his mouth with her own in the darkness.

Good Lord! His arms closed about her, his mouth opened appreciatively, and he thrust his tongue into the warmth of her mouth. She moaned and he felt the stirrings of arousal in himself.

“After all”—she drew back her head and laughed—“why waste a perfectly decent carriage ride?”

Anna as innocent flirt he was familiar with. Anna as seductress was a new pleasure to him. She feathered kisses over his face. “I want you,” she whispered between each one. “I want you.”

He could feel the warmth and shape of her legs through the flimsy drawers. Her breasts were pushed high by her stays, an armor that kept the rest of her body from his seeking hands, and yet somehow an excitement in itself.

“Here in the carriage?” he said. “I am very ready to oblige you, madam, if you can stand the relative discomfort.”

“Here and now.” Her voice was low and throaty. “Not a moment later. Give it to me now.”

He would have made the peeling away of her drawers an erotic part of their foreplay. But her hands joined his to tear impatiently at them and toss them to the floor. He undid his own buttons and brought her astride him on the seat. She was on fire, almost frantic with desire. She had fired him too. He was glad she wanted it now. He did not believe he could wait until they reached home.