Mad for Love: Even Gods Fall in Love, Book 2 (20 page)

But her mother had not, to her mind, showed her anything but kindness. That was until she learned the true intent of the green liquid she’d drunk obediently every morning before she’d quit her mother’s house. She still wanted corroboration for that piece of mischief, preferably from her mother herself, but with the current state of affairs, she doubted that would happen.

All too soon they arrived in London. When Blaize laughingly suggested that they should lease the yacht for an extended trip somewhere, she was more than tempted, but she resisted. They had to confront her mother, and the sooner the better. And she wanted to know if d’Argento had located her brother, whose fate had lurked at the back of her mind for some time now.

Although she heard regularly from him, funny notes from the French court that could only have come from him, now she knew exactly what her mother was doing, she feared for him. Blaize suspected he was an immortal. More than suspected, as he explained to her.

“Your father was involved in the explosion thirty years ago. Your mother gave birth at the right time afterward, within nine months of the event. That makes it highly likely that Kentmere is an immortal, but if he is, he’s an Olympian. Let us discover if d’Argento has been successful.”

It took her a few minutes to find her feet once they landed, but when Blaize offered to carry her to the carriage that awaited them, she found she could manage very well, with the support of his arm. After a few rapid words with Marcus, Blaize led her to their vehicle, but she paused.

In the full sight of any docker who cared to watch them, she flung her arms around Marcus and kissed his cheek. “Thank you!” she said, with heartfelt sincerity. “You brought him back to me.”

Red-faced, Marcus glanced around at the spectators who’d paused to watch. “You’ll have us talked about.”

“Not with Blaize looking on,” she pointed out. Blaize’s grin was as broad as the ones on the faces of some of the dockers.

“I did it because we need him. Few of the ancient immortals exist, and we have to save all we can.”

She hugged him once more, then released him. Marcus straightened his neckcloth, but she loved the way his face had flushed. He couldn’t hide that. “That’s not why you saved him and you know it. Who would you spar with, if he was gone?”

“I could find someone,” he said gruffly. “I daresay there are many who would pick a fight with me.”

Blaize touched her arm and she turned to him. “I needed to thank him. He took very good care of me. He’d have married me if we didn’t find you.”

“I’d have knocked his teeth down his throat if he had,” offered Blaize. He lifted her hand and firmly placed it on his sleeve. Then he nodded to Marcus. “Nevertheless, I’m indebted to you for your help. Without it, the dowager could have kept me prisoner for years.”

“We need your help,” Marcus said. “I will call on you tomorrow. Today I’ll discover what I can.”

Blaize nodded once more, this time in agreement with Marcus. “Thank you. I need to make my house safe for my bride.”

Aurelia’s eyes widened at that, but she didn’t ask anything until they were in the carriage and jolting along the streets of the East End of London on their way to the other side of town and her new home. “Make it safe?”

“Place safeguards around it. I’ve already made it safe for me and any immortal, or as safe as I can.” He squeezed her hand warmly. “You also need to have your things packed and brought around. I’ll send to the dowager. No doubt she’ll bring them herself, so we have to prepare for her wrath. But there’s nothing she can do, my love. You’re mine now, and I intend to keep you as safe as I can manage.”

“You’ll risk facing her before you—convert me?”

He nodded. “In my house, yes. But the conversion—should you mind if it takes place soon? It will render you physically weak for a day or two. People would put it down to other causes.”

“What?” Her mouth dropped open when she realized what he meant. “But I feel wonderful. It’s as if I’ve become the person I should be, when I’m with you.”

His smile turned intimate. “Thank you.” He raised her hand to his lips and touched them to the back of it. Even that small demonstration of his love thrilled her.

She asked a question that had nagged at her, even through her happiness of the past two days. “What do you plan to do to my mother?”

“Are you sure you want to know?”

“I need to.”

“Drive her mad,” he said shortly, watching her carefully for her response. “But she’ll have safeguards wound around her, especially if she knows an enchantress to do it for her. It won’t be easy, especially since she knows who I am. Her counteractions will be clever and dangerous, I don’t doubt. I want to wait until d’Argento returns for a full confrontation. But if she comes to our house, then I will meet her at any level she chooses. If she decides to pretend ignorance of immortals and suchlike, then I’ll do the same. If she wants to meet me in full knowledge, then I will do that.”

His mouth straightened in determination, but his eyes revealed regret. “I’m sorry I have to do it, but it’s necessary. She won’t give up, and she won’t be persuaded. We still live in hope that some Titans will give up their quest for power, but it’s not looking likely.”

“You won’t kill her?” Aurelia said. To have her husband responsible for her mother’s death felt unbearable to her.

“Not unless I can’t do anything else. If she tries to kill me or you, then it might force my hand.”

“Would going mad send the Titan out of her?” Perhaps that could be a way to drive the evil out. The dowager wasn’t wholly evil—Aurelia firmly believed that nobody was—and perhaps the woman under the ambitious immortal could yet be saved.

“It’s never happened yet, to my knowledge.”

But he didn’t say no. She clung to that thought as the carriage bowled up the Strand and around the top of Piccadilly toward Blaize’s house—their house.

She knew where Blaize lived, but of course she’d never been inside before. He had one of the recently built houses in Hanover Square, and as the carriage drew up outside, the shiny, black-painted door opened to reveal a neat interior. Larger than the house her mother had hired, but not by much, it was five stories high, counting the servants’ area at the top, and the door was approached by a double-pilastered portico.

He handed her down and they went up the shallow steps together. She entered the house first and unashamedly stared around her. The stairs ran up one side of the square hall, and then edged the upper stories on all four sides. The skylight, far above, cast sunbeams onto them. The floor was tiled in black-and-white chequered marble, and the marble stairs had an elaborate balustrade. The effect was light and airy. Aurelia, already predisposed to love Blaize’s home simply because he was in it, loved it more, for its own sake.

A throat clearing brought her back to the floor she stood on. Confronting her was a man who might well be the tallest and thinnest she had ever seen in her life. Blaize wasn’t a short man, far from it, but even he had to look up to this person, if only by a few inches. She gazed at the man in awe as he bowed to her, the movement stately.

“Aurelia, my love, this is my valet, Gates. And this,” he added, turning to another man about a foot shorter than Gates, “is the butler, Ranier. Ranier, her ladyship wishes for a new maid.”

“I will see to the matter immediately, my lord. Would tomorrow suit for the interviews, my lady?”

“Indeed.” They hadn’t asked who she was or what she was doing here. “I expect I’d like to see the housekeeper too.”

Blaize groaned. “The full panoply of domestic bliss. Should you wish to interview the cook? I beg of you, sweetheart, not to question him too closely. Yes, I have a male cook, from France. He’s the best in London, I believe, and many attempt to bribe him. I live in terror that one day someone will do just that.”

She smiled at his drollery. Surely nobody was that good. But she’d never eaten at Blaize’s house. He had no woman living with him who would act as his hostess, so even setting foot over the threshold was impossible until now. But why did he have a superb cook?

“Because I love good food,” he murmured, as if she’d asked. She’d meant to question him about that habit, to discover if what Marcus had said was true, but so much had happened she hadn’t done so yet.

“We must trust he is capable of handling a larger meal.”

“He will relish the challenge. In fact, that prospect will probably keep him in our service. He has been chafing at the bit to produce a formal dinner.” Taking her hand, he turned to the butler with a smile. “Her ladyship was previously Lady Aurelia Welles. We married in Scotland a few days ago.”

The butler brightened, his pleasant face taking on a smile that suited his features. On the other hand, she couldn’t imagine Gates smiling, but he surprised her when she turned and discovered the lugubrious features cracked with a smile as broad as the moon.

“I would appreciate your sending around to the Duchess of Kentmere’s house for her ladyship’s possessions,” he said. “Emphasise the urgency, would you? And if you could have tea served in the drawing room in twenty minutes, with a few refreshments, that would suit us very well.”

“Yes, sir.”

He drew her toward a room at the side of the hall. “Time for you to see your new domain, my dear.”

Since she had no clothes other than the ones she stood in, she couldn’t do much other than stay indoors. The gown she wore might be suitable for travelling, but not for town. It was too plain, unembellished and unadorned.

When she said as much to Blaize, he gave her the intimate smile she was coming to know meant he was thinking of matters other than her lack of ornamentation. “It makes it so much easier to remove. Don’t get rid of it, will you, sweetheart? I have special memories of this gown.”

Although she’d have given in there and then, he insisted on taking her around the house. She caught her breath at the room she was to call her own. Not because it was elegantly appointed, which it was, but because it was perfectly suited to her taste. It was a frivolous design, with a Chinese print of birds darting in and out of trees at the windows and hanging from the canopied bed, comfortable and almost dauntingly new.

“I knew you were coming,” he said by way of explanation.

“This wasn’t done in a few days.”

“Neither was my intention to have you for my own.” Since they were alone, he drew her closer for a kiss. “I will show you the room we will share later. I’m afraid if I show it to you now, I won’t want to let you leave, and you must have your tea.”

A wave of emotion almost swamped Aurelia. She dropped her chin, resting her forehead against his chest and felt his hand come around her to rest on her hair in a protective gesture. “So much has happened. I’m not sure of anything anymore.”

“Except that I love you.”

“Except that. And I love you. But the rest…” She moved closer, and he slid one arm around her to cradle her close. “What you and Marcus told me, and my mother…I know it’s true, know it in my heart, but Blaize, it’s hard to take in all at once.”

“I know. Sometimes events crowd in on each other.”

He said no more, but they stood together in the peace of that bedroom, the quiet only broken by the sound of their breathing and the distant traffic from outside. The music of London, street traders, carriages, the sound of a dog barking, wove around them and finally the turmoil in Aurelia’s mind began to settle.

She was married to the one man she would have chosen above all others. Her husband was an Olympian god and her mother was a Titan. Or was that Titaness? She should really have paid more attention to the classics.

She’d studied alongside her brother, her mother being of the opinion that a tutor should earn his extravagant salary and teach both children. Besides, Edmund was always lazy at his studies and the prospect of his younger sister doing better than him spurred him to use his brain. Although Edmund was probably a god too. The boy who’d pulled her hair, chased her around the grounds of the castle and slowed down so she could catch him when it was her turn to chase him—he was a god? She had yet to convince herself that was true.

Gently, Blaize put her aside and crossed the room to stand before the window. A sunny day was slowly giving way to a mellow, gentle evening. This house looked out over the garden at the centre of the square, but a chill crept over Amelia, and she folded her arms over her chest.

Tension entered the air. “I need to tell you something,” he said. “I always promised myself I’d tell my wife the whole truth, but that was in the expectation that I’d have no wife. Not again.”

Amelia wished she’d found a shawl. Strange, since the room was cold. “You didn’t tell me you had a wife before.”

“Two. I was in love with them both.” He turned to face her. His features were as bleak as she’d ever seen them. She could hardly breathe.

“And now you love me.”

He said he had. She clung to that, as she was clinging to her arms as her world crumbled around her. He was a god, he could drive people mad, he lived longer, although how long she didn’t know. All that she’d accepted, but this—for some reason this was breaking her.

“Yes, I do. So much it hurts. Especially when I have to tell you this. Will you listen?”

She nodded.

“The first was a shy girl, sweet and pretty. I loved her for her gentleness, but—” He bit his lip. “Our love didn’t last very long. But I did love her and I did marry her.”

“What went wrong?” She needed to know. Would their love last such a little time? Not on her side. She’d love him for the rest of her life.

“I told her what I was. Who I was, but only after we married. She didn’t believe me at first. When she did, she wouldn’t let me near her. We lived the rest of our lives apart. I moved on before she died. Falsified my own death and went abroad. I lived in France for a time. Then came back and inherited the Stretton title. That was when I met my second wife. My first had remarried and died long before, so by anyone’s standards it was allowable.”

He spoke as if this had happened to anyone else, but his chest heaved with suppressed emotion, and the bleakness in his eyes permeated every part of him.