Passion

PASSION

Gayle Eden

Copyright 2011© 2013 Gayle Eden

All rights reserved. No part of this
publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or
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consent of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form
of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and
without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent
purchaser.

The right of Gayle Eden to be identified as
the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with
the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

First Ebook Publication 2011

First Edition

All characters in this publication are purely
fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is
purely coincidental.

Published at Smashwords.

Smashwords Edition

Introductions…

When I was a child, my mother sewed brightly
colored skirts and shawls, between her shows at the theater. She
told me, whilst weaving gold and silver thread in and out, that my
future was as the blend of yellows, crimsons, sapphires, black, and
rich purple—that no matter how dark it seemed, I was to remember
that the gold and silver held everything together. A pure heart
shed many tears, she said, but good fortune had no value if one did
not experience the struggles.

I would cling to that wisdom, for five long
years after she died, in the squalor of a back alley, her sadistic
patron having isolated her from friends, forbade her to work, and
over time, robbed her of jewels and riches—of esteem and
security—then put her to service his cronies for a roof over our
heads.

When she discovered he had plans and arranged
the down payment to set me up for an acquaintance— we fled with
only the clothing on our backs. She fared worse on the streets, far
worse. We had to constantly hide from men he sent out to find us.
Abuse did not begin to describe the depravity of those who used
her—and, those who resented our encroachment into their
territory.

It was a living nightmare. What horrors did
not happen in the rank alleyways, were done in tunnels and chambers
below the city streets. He drove us to the depths of hell, and she
protected my life with her own, gave up any semblance of dignity or
fear of danger, on the promise from me that I would leave, go to my
father, and plead for his help.

I clung to her story, to all the wisdoms she
would mutter even with feverish lips—when fate held me in the grip
of darkness. Yet, when she died, I put her on a cart with paupers,
and as it went away, I hugged my ragged coat to my too thin body
and felt a rift in my soul. Her voice would not come to me again
for many years.

I slept, that night, not in the stews, but
further up-town, just across from a familiar mansion. I clutched
not my mother’s fevered hand, but a dagger she had stolen and given
me to wear, which was like a hand to me—so oft had I held it—and
used it. I hummed not the songs she taught me, but chanted a much
sweeter refrain— Revenge, revenge, revenge.

Aptly appropriate to the world I was familiar
with, it was no angel who gave me the means to gain it, but a dark
wraith I recognized—a figure that had haunted the dank and reeking
passages, rasping a name, calling for her, had anyone seen her,
stopping at every huddled figure, every grunting, writhing
creature, searching seeking, and asking.

I remembered the sight of that long, dark
coat, fanning out like wings, and the sound of his boot heels as he
strode through refuse and puddles, times in chilly rain, when he
stood under the scant shelter across from where I had huddled—the
fog drifting thick. Yet his dark eyes under the brim of a hat
piercing through both. I remembered—when a woman was found dead,
washed ashore the Thames. Oh, the crude and cruel jests amid
chatter on the streets to cover the terror too, that a killer was
loose.

Suzette, that was the name he called, the
name, sometime later in the papers. However, when he should have
stopped, he still came, though rasping her name no more, He was
still restless, driven, and perhaps haunted. He walked in the
darkness, and moved amid the shadows. The thieves, whores, and
street urchins began to whisper that he had killed the woman
himself and was demented by it.

I never believed that. I suspected who had
done it because of a small mention in the papers of something the
woman wore—a ring—belonging to my mother.

The night I saw the man seemed fated. He
paused just under a lantern to light a cheroot. The mist of a fresh
rain dotted his pitch hat and longish hair. Shadow and light struck
on a fierce and hard visage, a mark I was familiar with, for I bore
it on the inside of my own, if not outward.

I knew how to make myself invisible. Yet, he
blew out the flame and spoke, offering condolences for my mother.
The knife was visible in my hand, as I stood, my back against the
brick still in the alley entrance asking how he knew these things.
He answered not as I expected, by way of the streets on his
haunts—or of a whore’s death in the papers, but by revealing that
she had asked a favor of him and told him much of our past. I was
not trusting. Yet he called me Tara. My mother’s pet name for me,
and he knew who my father was. I informed him I wanted nothing from
the Duke. To which he replied, he knew exactly what I sought, for
we wanted the same things—revenge. Stunned, confused for a spell, I
considered fleeing.

As if reading my mind again, he laid out his
plan to me. I listened with some awe and not a little fear, for it
required I go with him that night and trust him, not only with my
life, my goal, but give him years in which to train and tutor me,
to build upon a fantasy sure to lure the monster with envy, lust,
and greed. It required that I put my trust, my life, my passion for
justice, in his hands.

I did.

I was sixteen years of age.

Many years after I entered that old stone
mansion, too dark, too empty, too cold, to be called a home, I was
so occupied with his stringent instructions and following his
commands, learning from books, papers, rags, and his constant
drilling into my head—that I forgot my mother’s words about balance
and hope.

My body fleshed out, matured, and grew
healthy again. My world was split between dark and light, with
glimpses of myself, shadows of my mother in my black hair with its
burgundy lights, and the fullness of my curves. Though my eyes were
brandy instead of her own deep brown, I had gypsy skin and
naturally red lips, a perfectly straight nose.

For the plan, I enhanced the exotic whilst
polishing the aristocratic blood in me. I was partly what I was
born to be, and part (his) creation. I became the lush and rich
jewel, the sultry and exotic flavor, and scent, in a house of
shadows. Like its master, it remained distant, aloof, intensely
dark, save for the spaces I inhabited, the textures, hues, sounds
that I was to absorb.

I felt more than was told, when the time was
ripe to move. I was aware that the enemy was ensconced in his
mansion, and I knew he had begun following him at night to mark his
routines and patterns. By the end of the week, we had attended a
race, a play, and been seen in public together.

I was twenty years old the day we stopped
rehearsing and stepped out to begin our performance. By nightfall
the first day, whispers began about the dark male and his exotic
mistress.

In contrast to his severe black, I wore a
peacock blue silk gown with a bodice low enough to display my
generous breasts, and snug enough before fanning out at the knees,
to mark every line of my waist, hips, and my backside. My hair was
up with just a jeweled comb in the center twist, one blue and
silver feather behind it, to contrast with the sheen. My pumps were
velvet with silk bows, and had tiny diamond heels. My gloves were
silver satin. My aim was to inspire envy, to turn heads, to draw
attention, interest, curiosity, and make men want me, make them
talk of me in their clubs, gambling halls, card rooms, or out
sporting.

I received no praise though I knew I had
exceeded my own expectations. I expected none from my tutor. He had
shown me only two sides of himself—the man who kept his word—and
the ruthless taskmaster. The rest he closed off as much as he
closed himself in his chambers for hours on end.

The hour was coming when our prey would take
the bait, and be lured into our trap.

Revenge had nurtured me, driven me, sustained
me, and created the woman I now was. As it put the glitter in my
sultry eyes, guided the sensual movements of my stride, and bade me
lift my head, smile mysteriously—it had honed the darkness in my
counterpart—given him an enigmatic and dangerous air, and made his
tall, broad-shouldered, lean gracefulness, seem a kind of
intensity, fitting his fierce black eyes and over long raven mane.
His mouth hinted at sensuality and cruelness, his flaring nostrils
at raw sexuality, and dark distain, and rasping voice, at bedroom
whispers and explicit dominance.

Thus, as the night arrived when I at last saw
the author of my nightmares, the demon of my hell, looking at me
across the floor at a posh and popular gaming hell, I felt a surge
of victory inside of me, unlike anything I had felt before, a kind
of mouthwatering anxiousness to sink my nails into his flesh and
make him bleed. I also felt the energy wafting from the man beside
me—the knife’s blade of cold and lethal steel that I understood
about him now—having found the papers report of his wife’s
butchered body….

I turned to him, playing my part as mistress.
I teasingly slow, ran my folded fan up the arm of his jacket,
leaning in to whisper, so that the bodice of my crimson and black
gown was strained and offering, to ask if he felt as excited as I,
at the attention we were getting?

He leaned to me, lips grazing my cheek, my
ear, and rasping, yes, he could almost taste the victory…

We looked at each other as we had made a
habit in public to do, building that fantasy of helpless smoldering
attraction, sexuality, and intimacy…something dangerously wicked
and explicit.

I heard my mother’s voice after so many
years.

It shook me to the core.

I was so close to avenging her, so close to
extracting payment for those hellish years that I had watched my
mother degraded and dying—years—I fought to survive on the
streets.

However, something else quickly rose too—a
realization, that I was also losing my heart to a man enshrined in
torment, my partner in revenge. Even knowing, If not for that bond,
that dark breath that sustained us, I did not expect, either of us
would survive this deadly game.

Gabriella Druitt, daughter of “The
Gypsy”-Natasha Druitt, bastard of His Grace, David Bordwyc Duke of
Coulborne.

* * * *

I had shaped a house of desolation behind a
façade of my aristocratic family. I made a bargain with my wife,
the late Duchess of Eastland, whom I wed, as most do, in an
arranged union when I was but twenty-two, and she twenty and
eight.

Impeccable breeding on Matilda’s side, lofty,
haughty, distant, and hypocritically judgmental, (I say this
because Matilda’s own mother was known to have kept a lover most of
her life. Not that I blamed her, the whole of that family were
stern and harsh. I found Matilda’s abhorrence of anything
resembling affection, sinful). However, they were lofty to the
point that most feared the Lombardi’s. To the very end, Matilda
ruled supreme in society, if not through commendable
characteristics, through her sheer power and influence.

But, the agreement, ah yes, that selling of
our soul…

I fathered a child by my lover, a son, who
was born after my first-born and heir, Jules. A year after my
second son, Blaise.

His mother named him Raith.

Because Raith’s mother was a highborn woman,
I begged Matilda to go away with us and return, claiming the child
as her own, to let him be raised in our household. Matilda’s first
response was—better to drown the mutt than have to feed it, to
provide for it. However, I begged—on my knees—a sight she relished,
I am sure. She acquiesced. It was not, I told myself, as if Matilda
reared our children herself, her social life was too full for that.
We had nursemaids, tutors, later there would be school.

Nevertheless, for my weakness and love of the
child and his mother, she made me pay a price. For his presence, we
all felt the coldness. Though his mother returned to her father in
Spain, having been visiting with a diplomat brother I was well
acquainted with, Matilda still made her name a curse in private—and
made her brother’s wife so loathed in society, she managed to
destroy the entire family with little more than a whisper.