Teresa Medeiros (14 page)

“Mr. Claremont?”

It was the tentative note in her voice that stopped Gerard. He bit back an oath. Was this infernal child-woman destined to thwart his every objective? He could still feel the shock of her cool, silky fingers closing over his. When he’d dragged her into the moonlight to find her wrapped in that delicious concoction of lace and silk, he’d felt the blood drain from his roaring head and rush to other, even less rational, areas. Gerard reminded himself savagely that he’d been so long without a woman, he’d probably be equally affected by the sight of Smythe in a dress.

He swung around, his muscles coiled with tension, fully expecting her to tilt her chin in that imperious manner of hers and command him to fetch her slippers in his teeth or empty her chamber pot.

Her chin was set at a regal angle, but he would have almost sworn it quivered just a bit as she opened the library door and beckoned him inside. “I came to fetch my easel. Would you please carry it upstairs for me?” Her smile lacked its usual brittle confidence. “You always seem to be around when I need you.”

Gerard steeled himself against a dangerous surge of empathy. “That
is
what your father hired me for.”

Lucy was not spared his implication: no man would tolerate her company without being paid for it.

Her most recent artistic effort sat in a bright puddle of moonlight beneath the window. As she packed up her scattered watercolors, Gerard dared do no more than cast the secretary towering over her father’s desk a hungry glance.

Lucy was gathering her brushes when Mr. Claremont came to stand behind her, too close as always.
His physical presence was like an invading touch. It made her skin tingle.

Trying to divert herself from the disturbing spice of his bayberry shaving soap, she plunged a stiff paintbrush into a water pot. “Don’t be shy, Mr. Claremont. What do you think of my latest effort? Many of my father’s associates have told me that I might have enjoyed a career in the arts had I not been born a mere woman.” She wiped the paintbrush on a rag, modestly awaiting his praise.

Claremont rocked back on his heels and squinted at the watercolor. “It makes me wonder if you’ve ever seen the sea.”

Lucy pinned him with a disbelieving gaze. There was no trace of teasing or mockery in his face. For once, he looked utterly serious. Lucy didn’t want to admit that his opinion mattered one whit to her, but she couldn’t quite hide her mild hurt.

She tilted her head, examining the watercolor from all angles. “You don’t care for it?”

He shook his head and she knew a brief moment of relief as she waited for him to soothe her wounded ego.

“I loathe it.” His opinion was offered with such blunt candor that Lucy found it almost impossible to take offense. He leaned over her shoulder, pointing as he spoke. “Oh, it’s technically proficient. You’ve got the light right and most of the colors.” His voice deepened and softened, so close to her ear that his warm breath stirred the tiny hairs at her temple. “But there’s not a shred of life in it. Not an ounce of passion.”

Unable to resist the seductive timbre of his voice, Lucy’s gaze was drawn from the painting to his profile. The moonlight silvered its rugged planes. His eyes shifted from amber to jade in the capricious light. If
Lucy could have sketched him in that moment, he would have never dared to call her passionless.

His hand arched in the air, painting her a vision more vivid than any rendered from paint and water. “The sea at dawn is a cathedral, Lucy.”

Her breath caught at the unexpected music of her name on his lips.

“It’s where darkness is conquered by light in a battle that’s been waging for all eternity. To watch the sun weave that first gleaming thread on the horizon is an invitation to worship, a call to fall on your knees, renounce your cynicism, and embrace the belief that a world as corrupt as ours can be washed clean with nothing more than the spill of the waves against the sand.”

Lucy couldn’t breathe. She’d long ago resigned herself to being unworthy of love, but the aching knot had moved to her throat—a knot of yearning tainted by agonizing jealousy of something a man could adore so much. She had hoped Claremont’s company might ease her loneliness, but instead he had sharpened it, made its edges more jagged.

The lamps of the Admiral’s carriage appeared through the bay window, winking in and out among the trees as the vehicle negotiated the curving drive. Panicked more by the foreign emotion than her father’s approach, Lucy tore herself free from Claremont’s spell and snatched up her paints and brushes.

She tore the offending watercolor from the easel and tucked it under her arm, beyond caring that she was crumpling it. “For a man who’s made physically ill by the very suggestion of the sea, Mr. Claremont, you seem to have developed a certain poetic affinity for it.”

He folded his arms over his chest. “A common phenomenon, Miss Snow. Don’t we all secretly find irresistible that which is most dangerous to us?”

His lips tilted with the mockery she’d come to expect from him, but it was the somber challenge in his eyes that sent her fleeing from the library, easel forgotten, to the tranquil haven of her bedroom.

The following evening Gerard learned to his immense frustration that he was to accompany Miss Snow to a Lady Cavendish’s supper party. He awaited her in the entrance hall, watching the rain dance down the beveled panes of the bay window. Its plaintive melody made him crave a smoke. The footmen had lit fires in the drawing room and library to burn off the damp, but the entrance hall was already touched by the chill of approaching winter.

Gerard could feel it coming in his bones. Days too short. Nights too long. The inescapable darkness. He wanted to be far from England when it arrived, safe in a place where it was always warm and the misty rain nourished the trees instead of stripping them bare with remorseless fingers.

A light footstep drew him back to chill reality. He turned to discover Lucy descending the stairs. If not for her wretched interference, he thought, he might be on his way to that place even now. Yet a treacherous warmth surged through him at the sight of her.

Her customary white muslin had been replaced by cream silk so sheer he could see the blush of her pink stockings through the graceful folds of her skirt. A wide belt woven from gold filigree girded her waist just below her breasts, accentuating their gentle curves. Her hair had been caught in a loose Greek chignon, artfully arranged to appear disheveled by a lover’s hand. Gerard cursed himself to realize just how badly he wished it had been his.

The classical fashions suited her slim form. She glided down the stairs, Persephone freed from the Underworld,
bearing the seeds of spring in her lace-gloved fingers.

Gerard couldn’t resist the familiar impulse. As she stepped off the last stair, he brought her hand to his lips and pressed a gentleman’s kiss to her palm, his lips lingering against the perfumed mesh of lace and skin.

Their eyes met over her upturned hand—hers wide with surprise, his narrowed in challenge. If this were another place, another time, Gerard thought. If he were another man …

Realizing how ludicrous they must look, she in her finery and pearls, he in his crudely tailored tailcoat and a hat that had been unfashionable two seasons ago, he dropped her hand.

Smythe emerged from nowhere to drape a cashmere shawl around her shoulders. Gerard scowled, thinking the garment too fragile to protect her from the cold rain.

“My father?” she queried.

“I’m afraid the weather has aggravated his wound, Miss Lucy,” Smythe explained. “He won’t be attending. He asks that you deliver his regrets to Lady Cavendish.”

Gerard hastened Lucy into the waiting carriage. He suspected her father’s indisposition had more to do with the fresh exploits of Captain Doom off the coast of the Admiral’s own beloved Cornwall. They had been splashed across the front pages of both the
Times
and the
Observer
that morning.

Rain pattered on the carriage roof as Fenster deftly maneuvered them into the congested traffic of the Strand. Its cozy rhythm only served to underscore their awkward silence. Both Lucy’s tyranny and the fleeting camaraderie they’d enjoyed in the library seemed to have dissipated in the chill. She gazed out the rain-beaded
window, her profile pensive in the hazy glow of the carriage lamp.

Probably fretting over her precious father’s conveniently fickle health, Gerard thought unkindly. Or mooning over Captain Doom, nursing her childish infatuation with a phantom.

His irritation increased with every revolution of the carriage’s wheels. If the Admiral had wanted a man to squire his spoiled daughter all over town, why hadn’t he just hired her a bloody beau? Or a husband? Ionia’s library stood unguarded, yet Gerard was to spend the evening banished to some servants’ hall, relegated to pressing his nose against an invisible window, separated from everything he’d ever wanted by a mocking twist of fate.

The carriage lurched to a halt. A footman wrapped in an oilcloth cloak appeared at the door. “There’s been an accident. Hackney coach overturned in the road.”

Gerard opened his mouth to snap a command, but Lucy’s cultured tones thwarted him. “Tell Fenster to turn around and take whatever route the other carriages seem to be taking.”

Gerard settled back in his seat. He’d do well to remember his place. After all, he was only a servant.

It took the elderly coachman several minutes to untangle them from the snarl of vehicles, but they were soon rumbling after a carriage with an elaborate coat of arms consisting of an eagle with outspread wings emblazoned on its door.

Leaving behind the broad paved lanes haloed by rows of street lamps, the carriages wended their way down an unfamiliar street. Unfamiliar to Lucy, but not to Gerard. He knew every cracked cobblestone, every ramshackle hovel, every smudgepot of an alley. The tainted smell of the river flooded his mind with childhood
memories, more bitter than sweet. There was nothing left of the boy who’d been born and raised there. Not even his name.

Some nobleman with a perverse sense of humor had christened the teeming wharf district the Garden. His aristocratic nostrils had obviously never inhaled its hellish stench of rotting fish, stale gin, and overflowing sewage, all layered by centuries of poverty. The river was the pulsing vein of its existence, yet there was never enough water to wash with, never enough water to drink. Was it any wonder Gerard found the lemon- and soap-scented purity of Lucy’s skin so unbearably erotic?

Crowds thronged the narrow street, blithely ignoring the rain for most had nowhere to go to escape it. Beggars, whores, and street vendors rushed toward the shiny carriages, hoping their dismal luck was about to change. The clamor of their voices pierced the thin glass of the carriage windows, their cries as timeless as their emaciated faces.

“Spare a farthin’ fer a cripple, mate?”

“Come ’ave a glass with me, guv’nor. Ye’ll not regret it. Me name’s Angel and I can take ye straight to ’eaven!”

“Cat meat! Get yer fresh cat meat!”

Gerard searched Lucy’s face for a sign of disdain, not understanding himself why her reaction to this place was so vitally important to him. She was staring straight ahead, her delicately chiseled features as cold and impassive as the Greek statuary she resembled, as cold as the lump of marble she dared to call a heart. Savage disappointment wrenched his gut. He turned his face to the window, knowing he should be relieved that he could no longer bear to look at her.

The ducal carriage had drawn far ahead of them, its occupants eager to escape the seething mass of poverty.
The massive vehicle raced toward the deserted corner, its rate of speed increasing as its driver lashed the handsome grays into a dangerous gallop.

Gerard saw Lucy’s head jerk toward the window, heard her horrified gasp an instant before he saw the ragged child step into the road, arms outstretched as if to steal just a touch of the splendor thundering past. Then the child was lying crumpled in the road and the carriage was gone, rocking wildly as it disappeared over the horizon.

Gerard bellowed for Fenster to stop, but before their own carriage could lurch to a halt, Lucy had thrown open the door and spilled into the pouring rain.