Savage Nights (The Savage Trilogy #2) (32 page)

“I know,” Savage said, glancing up at me again. “That was intentional. Lawton had become entirely too attached to you, and I thought it best that he be removed before he was hurt.”

“
Hurt!
” I exclaimed, feeling a bit hurt myself. “How could I hurt him? Your son is a charming boy. He and I got along wonderfully well.”

Something flickered across Savage’s eyes that I couldn’t read, or perhaps I’d just imagined it.

“That’s exactly the reason,” he said evenly. “You liked one another too well.”

“How can that possibly be?” I asked. “He is your son, and—”

“Lawton
is
my son,” he said bluntly, “and not yours. There’s no question he liked you, as any motherless boy would. But he’s too young to understand that your presence in his life will only be temporary, and I didn’t want him to feel it was his fault when you inevitably left him behind.”

I began to protest, then stopped. Of course. These last two days with Savage would have also been the last two I’d have had with his son.
His
son, not mine. There would have been no reason to see Lawton again, and Savage was right to spare the boy—a boy who was not my own, nor ever would be, as Savage had so pointedly reminded me.

I looked away, hiding the disappointment that must surely be in my eyes. Lawton might be a motherless boy, but I was also a childless woman, and perhaps I’d been equally guilty of becoming too close to him. No wonder the sting of his sudden departure seemed so sharp.

But now that I was turned away from Savage I noticed other things that I hadn’t when I’d first entered the room. Mingled in among the letters on his desk were train schedules and maps. On the floor were several leather-bound trunks, their lids open, half-packed with the kind of books gentlemen took to amuse themselves on long journeys.

I could guess what this meant, but I had to know for certain.

“You’ve sent Lawton away,” I said slowly. “Are you leaving London soon, too?”

He stood upright again to confront me, his expression enigmatic and impossible to read.

“Yes, I am,” he said with that same maddening evenness. “I have some affairs that need my attention in France. I have passage booked to Calais for tomorrow evening, and then the train to Paris. I would imagine you’ve made similar plans for yourself.”

“Oh, yes,” I lied, praying the faintness of my voice didn’t betray me. How had the time passed so fast? I’d made no plans at all for myself, and now the finality of my life without him in it seemed to yawn before me like the edge of a cliff.

We’d agreed that our version of the Game would end on this date, and I’d known that from the beginning. But what if he was leaving now for the same reason that he’d sent Lawton away? What if he feared I’d leave him—and hurt him—first?

Unaware of my thoughts, Savage had pulled his watch from his pocket, flipping the gold case open with his thumb.

“It’s nearly four,” he said. “I’m surprised Lady Tremayne is this late, considering you’ll have to wait at least two hours in line along the Mall for your turn to enter the Palace.”

“I saw the drawing you made of me last night,” I said.

He tipped his head to one side, considering me. “Did you like it?”

“I didn’t,” I said honestly. “Not at all.”

I sensed the subtle change in him, a tension in his body that hadn’t been there before. His half smile had a snarl to it, a challenge.

“Was it the pose you didn’t like?” he asked, his voice low and slightly mocking as he raised a single dark brow. “Or perhaps you didn’t care for seeing yourself blindfolded and bound to my wishes?”

“But I wasn’t,” I said. “That is, I was blindfolded and you’d tied the cords around my wrists and ankles. Yet the way you drew me wasn’t how I
was
.”

He shook his head once, decisive. “You’re mistaken, Eve.”

“I do not believe I was,” I said. This time I was determined to follow the truth, even if it countered his memory of it. There was too much at stake for it to be otherwise. “I did bow to your wishes. I obeyed you in every way, exactly as an Innocent should. But you didn’t draw that. Instead you drew not what you saw, but what you feared.”

He lowered his chin, his expression darkening. “You’re making no sense,” he said. “I’ll concede that the drawing was flawed, as my work always is, but it was as true as I could make it.”

“But it wasn’t,” I said. “Once you said that a true artist must capture the soul of his subject, and make it his own. The drawing you made last night had none of me or my soul in it, but all of your fears that I would rebel, and leave you.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” he said sharply. “Whatever has given you such ideas?”

I raised my own chin to match his, my heart racing.

“Perhaps I couldn’t see, but I heard how you fought with the chalk,” I insisted. “I heard the force of your drawing, and I heard you swear with frustration. I heard you fight with the truth of what you saw, versus the drawing you had to make. My soul was lost, but yours was laid bare in black chalk.”

“That’s all nonsense.” His handsome face was frozen, rigid with self-control and denial, yet in his eyes I saw the unmistakable flicker of despair that proved my words had struck home. “This is not the Eve I’ve known.”

“Because here, now, I am Evelyn,” I said. “Eve has her place, just as there will always be a place for you to be my Master. But we could have more, Savage, if we dare, if we—”

The servant’s knock on the door could not have come at a worse time, yet Savage seized upon the interruption, barking for the footman to enter.

“Lady Tremayne’s carriage has arrived, my lord,” the footman said. “Her Ladyship sends her compliments to Mrs. Hart.”

“Mrs. Hart will be there directly,” Savage said, then looked back to me. “Go. You can’t keep her waiting.”

I didn’t follow the footman, waving for him to go without me.

“Is that the end of it, then?” I asked Savage wistfully. “You’ve nothing more to say to me?”

He smiled, a forced, tight smile, and exhaled. “I will join you at the reception after the ceremony.”

I swallowed the lump in my throat.

“How do I know you’ll be there?” I asked, unable to keep the bitterness from my voice. “How can I be sure you won’t run away tonight instead?”

He was looking at me as if memorizing my face, as if trying to preserve this moment in his memory. That and the unmistakable desperation—or was it despair?—that he couldn’t keep from his face did little to reassure me.

“I promised you seven days, Eve, and seven nights,” he said. “I don’t say things I don’t mean.”

I wanted to remind him of all the times he’d told me I was his, that I belonged to him and no other man. I thought of how he’d let me glimpse his darkest secrets and how we’d come to share so much more than sex alone.

But I hadn’t questioned him then, and I didn’t now. I’d still had some semblance of pride left to me.

“Good-bye, Savage,” I said, the words brittle, and turned away. The only sound was the rustle of my silk train as it swept over the parquet floor.

I was nearly to the door when he called my name. I paused, hating how the sound of my name on his tongue was enough to make my heart beat faster. Against my better judgment, I couldn’t help but turn and look over my shoulder back at him.

“Don’t doubt me,” he said. “I will be there.”

But I did doubt him, doubted him very much, and I left without replying. He didn’t follow, either.

Hamlin was waiting with my cloak and plumed fan and to make the final plucks of adjustment to my dress. One of the footmen carried my train for me down the steps of the house. I bowed my head with the towering plumes to climb up into Lady Tremayne’s carriage and with a sigh settled my train across my lap as the door was latched shut.

“Good day, Mrs. Hart,” said Lady Tremayne, burrowed into the far corner of the carriage. Being an older widow, she was permitted to wear dark colors and sleeves to Court, and both made her almost disappear against the tufted maroon upholstery of the carriage’s seat. “You look as excited as I to be heading to this foolishness.”

“Good day to you, my lady,” I said hastily. “Forgive me my ill manners. I was preoccupied with the preparations for the day.”

“‘Preparations,’ my foot,” she scoffed. She could have been the younger sister of the old queen, small and stout and swathed in old lace, if the old queen had had rheumy eyes and smelled faintly of brandy with an overlay of brandy-sugar drops. “If I were a guest of the Earl of Savage, I’d have much more interesting things on my mind than dragging a Court train through the Palace.”

I flushed, grateful that the shadows in the carriage would likely hide it. “His Lordship has been most kind to me.”

“Oh, I am sure he has, a pretty American lady like you,” she said shrewdly. “If even half of what is said of that man and his attributes is true, then you have had a merry romp in his company, Mrs. Hart. A merry romp indeed.”

I raised my chin defiantly. I wasn’t ashamed of anything I’d done, and I refused to let her think I was. “There is no harm in merriment, my lady.”

“Hah,” she said, not in the least offended. “I never said there was. Still and all, I should have asked for a larger … remembrance for this day’s work had I known of your antics. If I am to present you, I must vouch for your reputation as a respectable widow, you know.”

I sighed, thinking how this day could not sink much lower. “Would another fifty pounds suffice, my lady?”

“Oh, you Americans are so vulgar about money!” the marchioness exclaimed, waving her fan grandly before her. “We needn’t haggle like fishwives, Mrs. Hart. I shall leave the exact figure of remuneration to your generous discretion.”

I said nothing more, and neither did she, though I mentally added the additional sum to the already-ridiculous cost of my presentation. It was a long time for silence. As everyone had warned me, the traffic along Pall Mall leading to the Palace was indeed staggeringly slow. I wondered if Savage’s guards were riding somewhere behind me or if I’d lost their escort along with Savage himself. The fading afternoon sun was still warm, especially dressed as I was. Making the wait even more disagreeable were the people who lined the pavement to gawk at the extravagantly dressed ladies in their carriages and who offered loud, coarse, and often cruel appraisals of the dresses and jewels as well as the ladies themselves.

Lady Tremayne coped with this unpleasantness by falling asleep, leaving me to stare resolutely ahead and try to ignore it all. This was not so very difficult. Because of Savage my head was full of far more than the hecklers on the pavement.

No matter what he’d promised, I didn’t believe he’d come to the reception after the presentation. What I did believe was that that kiss we’d shared in his library would be our last. I realized now that there had been a poignant finality to it. At the time, I’d thought he hadn’t embraced me to save my dress or for the sake of the Game, but now I sensed it was another of his ways of drawing apart from me, of saying farewell, as much a step in separation as the desk had been.

My role as Eve to his Master was done. Our game, our affair, or whatever it had been had lasted thirteen days, but one day short of what we’d promised each other. If we’d both dared and been more honest, it might have lasted far longer than that. But neither of us had been that brave, and now it was over.

The knowledge pressed like a leaden weight upon me, dull, heavy, and unforgiving. There wasn’t so much a pain as a hollow sadness that was beyond the showy emotion of tears and full of regret for what might had been. I tried not to think of his smile, his touch, the way he looked at me, and how he’d loved me. Because there
had
been love between us, too. I don’t think I’d imagined it, yet that was also done now. Already I felt the emptiness that he’d left in me, a void that I doubted I’d ever be able to fill.

I’d make only the briefest appearance at the reception, and then I intended to return alone to the Savoy. I’d leave London as soon as I could arrange it. I’d no wish to remain here in a world that was so much Savage’s, even if he, too, was leaving. Paris was of course out of the question, but Florence might be a haven, or Venice, that city of lost souls.

I felt the pressure of the rings on my nipples, his last gift to me. I considered removing them now, here in the carriage while Lady Tremayne slept unawares. If I was no longer Eve, then I’d no right to be wearing them. But my hand reached for my bodice, then stopped. Savage had put them there. If that was our last shared intimate act, his final caress, then I wanted to prolong it as long as I could.

By the time our carriage finally reached the Palace steps, I felt as distanced from myself as Savage must have. It was almost as if I were in a play and I were in the audience, not on the stage.

With Lady Tremayne at my side I joined the long line of other women waiting their turns. With my train looped over my left arm the line inched through the various antechambers and into St. James’s Gallery. The marchioness and I continued our silence, for which I was grateful in my present mood.

I was only vaguely aware of the distance the other women were keeping from me. Because of Savage I’d become that scandalous American lady, and I imagined what they would have thought if they could have seen the rings squeezing my nipples beneath my dress. Whispering, sharp-eyed mothers in line around me were pointedly shielding their virginal daughters from my taint.

At any other time, I would have laughed at their vigilance. So would Savage, and I pushed back the little rush of sadness that he wasn’t there with me. Not that he could be, of course, considering that Drawing Room presentations were for ladies only, but for the last weeks we’d been so nearly inseparable that it felt odd not to have him with me.

Finally Lady Tremayne and I reached the entrance to the Throne Room, and even I couldn’t help but feel awed by all the crimson and gold. Three pages arranged my train behind me, Lady Tremayne handed a card with my name to the Lord Chamberlain at the door, and with a deep breath I glided across the room towards the king and queen, seated on their thrones.