Lord Lightning (22 page)

She would need it.

When she went downstairs an hour later, she discovered that Edward had already left and was not expected back until evening. His man offered her the full purse his master had directed him to give her and offered to attend her to the public coach that departed in an hour for London.

She refused the purse, waved off his offer of assistance, and left him to watch, openmouthed, as she strode out of the house. She was afraid to stay a moment longer and risk hearing any words his master might have commanded him to speak, words that might shake her from her determination to remain. She passed the day walking on the shingle alone, her thoughts in turmoil.

When she returned, near suppertime, she found a gentleman dressed in clerical garb waiting in the vestibule, seated on a side chair. His foot tapped uneasily on the flowered carpet. When he saw her enter, he began to rise and bow
politely toward her, but as she came closer, his eyes narrowed as they took in her clinging gown with its low cut front and he sank back onto the bench with a small shudder, as if horrified by how close he had come to treating her with politeness. She hurried past him, too perturbed already to wish to dwell on what he must think of her, but he called out, “Stay, woman. I must have a word with you,” and reached out one hand to arrest her further progress. When she stopped, he cleared his throat, blinked his eyes twice and kept them shut for a moment as if he was searching inside their lids for the text of the sermon he was about to preach. Then he addressed her.

“Young woman, do not meddle in the affairs of your betters! You have presumed on Lady Hartwood’s goodness. You have gone too far. Yet even now, so great is her Christian charity that she has found it in her heart to give you one last chance. She has asked me to find a place for you, a retreat where in a humble manner appropriate to your station, you might repent of your sins and toil for God’s forgiveness. Her kindness to you is inestimable, but her patience is limited. If you would escape the punishment you so richly deserve, I urge you take up her offer, now.”

“I have no desire to change my situation.”

“Your reply is just as I told her it would be,” he said with complacency. “I will no longer lower myself by having further commerce with you. You are a shameless hussy and she will be well rid of you.”

Just then Eliza heard footsteps coming toward them down the hallway. The clergyman stood up just as a servant appeared at the doorway and beckoned him into the parlor where Lady Hartwood awaited him. Eliza withdrew into the library, her mood even more somber than when she had arisen. She reminded herself that Edward had promised that no harm could come to her, but the resentful tone of the clergyman’s admonition had chilled her. For the first time in a very long time, she found herself wishing she were back in Aunt Celestina’s parlor.

She retreated to her own small room in the attic, alone with her uneasy thoughts, until necessity forced her to venture out. She made her way downstairs, where she almost stumbled into Lady Hartwood who was making her way through the foyer, her interview with the clergyman over. Catching sight of Eliza, she smiled a smile that had no good humor in it. Eliza thought of making a dash for the doorway, but it was too late. There was no way to avoid her.

“I see that my son has begun to tire of you already,” Lady Hartwood observed with obvious relish. “It is all around the household that he left you here alone last night and made his way to a gambling club that is famed for its accommodating women.”

Eliza’s face must have shown some of the distress that Lady Hartwood’s revelation caused her.

“You have served your purpose,” Lady Hart
wood continued inexorably. “He has used you to infuriate me and now he will cast you aside. You were a fool to have fallen in love with his handsome face despite my warning. Though it doesn’t surprise me. They say there are women who write love letters to the prisoners awaiting execution at Newgate.”

Her tormentor’s argument, sounding so much like the voice of her own fears, brought out the fight in her. “If your son really was a murderer, would he not be awaiting execution at Newgate, too? Even a nobleman cannot kill and walk free. I cannot believe that your son truly killed anyone, though you seem dearly to wish to believe that he did.”

“You
are
in love with him,” Lady Hartwood said with satisfaction. “Most foolish of you.”

“I cannot believe him guilty of what you accuse him of.”

“But he is guilty.”

“There must be some explanation. Did the woman you refer to die in childbed?” If he, like his brother, had impregnated some woman only to have her die in childbed, it would be dreadful, but it was not the same as murder.

“You’d like that to be the explanation wouldn’t you?” Lady Hartwood snarled. “But it will not serve. I owe you no explanation. You are an unrepentant harlot and deserve the fate that awaits you.”

“But I must know what it is that makes you hate
your son so much,” Eliza cried out in frustration. “What has he done to put him beyond all hope of forgiveness?”

“Why should you care? You’d be as much in love with him whatever his crimes might be.”

“I am
not
in love with him. But I must know what kind of man he is, for my own peace of mind.”

“You’ll find out soon enough,” Lady Hartwood said grimly. “Why not ask him how he enjoyed his visit last night to the brothel.”

Eliza looked up and saw a familiar burst of pale golden hair at the doorway, as Edward strode angrily into the foyer. His icy gaze swept from one woman to the other.

“My visit to the brothel was quite pleasant, Mother, thank you. Have you any other questions you would address to me?”

“None! None at all,” his mother snapped. Then she slowly turned and made her way out of the foyer, leaning on her ebony cane. As her halting steps vanished down the hallway, Eliza found herself alone with Edward.

He stood by the newel post at the foot of the stairs, observing her with the distant, ironic look she had learned was his defense against showing pain. “Why are you still here?” he demanded. “I left more than enough money for you with my man.”

“I told you I wouldn’t leave until you tell me the truth about the crime you accuse yourself of.”

“Why should it matter? Why isn’t it enough that you know I’m guilty of such a crime?”

“Because I must understand you. I cannot
leave with so much unanswered. I may have been wrong about what I saw in your horoscope. I’m willing to accept that. But I must know where I erred, so I may learn from my mistake and not make another like it again.”

“So you would force me to divulge my secrets so you might become a wiser astrologer?”

“So that I might become a wiser woman,” she replied softly. “If you are truly what you say you are, and if I have made myself blind to it, I
am
in danger, even as your mother claims. I must learn to see the truth, no matter how ugly.”

He hunched his broad shoulders as if her words had struck him. “Even now you are the earnest philosopher. Any other woman would be drenching me with tears.”

“Why should I shed tears?”

“Why indeed.” His voice was controlled, ironic. “You assured my mother that you do not love me, and I know you abhor dishonesty—at least in me. So it must be true. But I told my mother the truth, you know. I
did
visit a brothel last night after I left you.”

“What affair of mine is it if you did?”

“Does it not make you jealous?” A look hard to interpret played across his features.

Eliza bit her lip, unwilling to let him know how closely his barb had hit home. She twisted her left hand in the fabric of her skirt, waiting for the pang his words had caused her to die down. “I have no claim upon your fidelity,” she said at length. “You are Lord Lightning, famed for your inconstancy.
It is only to be expected that you would tire of a pretend mistress and seek out a real one instead.”

Edward reached out and took her hand in his, stroking her fingers softly. “Ah, but you forget, Lord Lightning never does the expected. So your assumption was wrong.” He dropped her hand. “Though I did indeed go to the brothel, it was not to ease myself on some poor wretch, but to finish my conversation with Tamworth. It was the one place I could be sure of encountering him.” He drew forth his jeweled snuffbox and made a show of busying himself with a pinch of snuff while observing her reaction from the corner of his eye.

Eliza hoped her relief was invisible. “Why did you seek out Tamworth?”

“I wished him to know that though I had spared his miserable life, my patience would be exhausted were he ever to forget himself and speak of you again in such an insulting way.”

“And you did that, even though you believed I would be gone this morning?”

“That made it all the more important. Now that you have the reputation of having been my plaything, you would be in the greatest of danger should it become known you were now on your own.” He brought his fingers up to his face as if to inhale the snuff and then stopped. “But you have
not
left me,” he observed, with a strange look.

“No. I told you I would not leave until I heard the whole of your story.”

He blew the snuff from his hand and then slowly put away the glittering snuffbox. “I cannot
buy you off,” he said in a wondering tone. “I cannot frighten you. I cannot even make you jealous. I suspect you would just stand there and put up with
any
enormity I might serve you with, and just keep staring at me like a Sphinx until you got what you wanted from me.”

She nodded, unable to speak.

He sighed. “I have not the energy, then, to outlast you. I suppose I must give you what you want, else you will bribe my mother or interrogate the servants until you find out what you are determined to learn.”

She would have called the look on his face amusement, except that the roughness in his voice suggested that he was barely suppressing a much stronger emotion.

He held out his hand to her. “Come,” he said. “If you insist on knowing the worst about me, we will walk out along the shore where we can talk in peace, and I will tell you all.” He drew in a long breath. “Perhaps then you will leave me alone and I can go back to being the man I used to be.”

“If that is truly what you wish, Your Lordship.”

He did not correct her use of the distancing honorific, though she had seen him wince when she used it. For a moment their eyes locked, and again she saw the pain that lay hidden under the cool ironic façade.

“I no longer know what I wish,” Edward said. “You may take credit for making that much of a change in me.”

***

They drove in his carriage down the cliff road to the place he had shown her the day before. He gave orders for the coachman to wait for them there. Then he led her down the steep path to the beach.

They walked along the hard-packed shingle in silence. Again the wind was blowing fitfully. His pace was brisk, almost as if he were trying to outpace a pursuer, and Eliza could barely keep up with him. At last, when they had neared the headland, he stopped.

He stared out at the waves for a moment, marshaling his thoughts, then in a calm, measured tone he began to speak.

“I was seventeen when my mother forced me to take the blame for the ruin of the girl who died while attempting to bear James’s bastard child,” he began. “I told you that. What I didn’t tell you was that shortly before that event, I had contracted an informal engagement with the daughter of a neighbor, Estella Hartington.

“Estella was my age and we had grown up together. She was very beautiful and I fancied myself in love with her. Her family was not wealthy and they were not enthusiastic about her attachment to me, as I was only a younger son. But I promised her I would earn enough on my own to make our marriage possible. I even gave her a ring as token of my commitment. We planned to marry when I had attained my majority.

“But when the word of my shame got out, Estella ended our engagement by post, sending me back
my ring and refusing to communicate any further with me. I attempted to see her again, to explain the true situation to her. But my efforts were futile. Though she had claimed to love me enough to be my bride, her feelings for me could not withstand the gossip that surrounded the death of James’s victim. A few weeks later, I learned she had engaged herself to marry a wealthy viscount—a man far older than herself.

“I was a young man then, and my heart was still tender. I won’t bore you with a description of my feelings when Estella cast me off. Suffice it to say that it isn’t only women who feel pain at a rejection.” He dug into the hard pebbly sand with one booted toe and then kicked the ground savagely.

“I didn’t suffer long. I threw myself into the pleasures of the world, as you well know, and then, to get away from my family, I bought a pair of colors and went off with my regiment to fight the French.

“I did not see Estella again until I returned on leave to London some years later. By then some well-chosen investments had made me a wealthy man. As could have been predicted, Estella’s marriage had not been a happy one. Her husband had lost interest in her after their first few months together. They had little in common, and she had the further misfortune of discovering she couldn’t bear him an heir.

“When she saw me again, after all those years, she professed to have realized the mistake she
had made in casting me off and she offered herself to me as a mistress.”

Edward stopped. He took a few deep breaths, as if steeling himself to continue. Only then did he resume his story.

“I took her up on her offer. You will not, I pray, make any sentimental excuse for my behavior. I made her my mistress not because I still cherished some fondness for her, for I did not. Far from it. I did so only because for years I had lived with one hope—that someday I could cause Estella as much pain as she had caused me when she had cast me off without giving me the chance to defend myself.”

He paused. Eliza could feel him watching to see how she responded to his confession. She schooled her features to betray nothing, afraid that if he saw any reaction there, he would explode into anger, or, worse, laugh that ironic laugh of his and walk away.