The Dark Lady (9 page)

She laughed softly. Then slowly her hand came up to touch her chopped hair. “I do look bizarre.”

“Eva, you will always be beautiful.” Gently, he placed the wool scarf over her head. His fingers caressed her cheeks, marveling at the reality of her cool skin against his rough fingers.

“Do you need help?” she whispered, her own hands lifting. Touching his.

Swallowing, he pulled his hands back and lied. “I can’t tie a knot or bow to save my soul.”

“Luckily, I can.” Her fingers shook and it took her several seconds to work one end of the scarf around the
other. But she did it. Then she took the greatcoat and slipped it over her own shoulders. “Ready now.”

“Good.” Ian stood, hunched, and swung down out of the coach. His boots squelched into the icy mud. Mud. His gaze turned to her slippered feet. The rattiest bits of leather covered them. “Come, I’ll carry you just a little.”

She nodded from the shadowy interior, then inched forward. Her face came out into the morning light and she blinked repeatedly. Who knew how long it had been since she’d stood in sunlight, despite Mrs. Palmer’s claims of “exercise.”

Quickly, he lifted her and carried her to the cobbles. From there it was but a few steps into the inn. The building was quiet as they walked in through the door and into the wide, sparsely decorated common room.

A stout man of about fifty, his gray hair wild and curly, stood by the fire. His white apron was pressed and folded to perfection over a light brown waistcoat. “Good morrow,” he said brightly.

Ian held Eva’s hand reassuringly in his. “I require a room for myself and my wife.”

The man’s eyes swung to Eva and his brows twitched for a moment at her odd attire. Confusion shaped his face into a surface of fatty creases until he smiled knowingly. “Certainly.”

“Of the best you have,” Ian clarified. It was strange to be at home, among the English, who while respectful had not been coerced into subservience. “I want a good, clean room,” he emphasized.

Eva had slept in enough vermin-infested beds for a lifetime.

“Of course, sir,” the man said genially.

“And I’d like a bath,” Eva added.

“Whatever you require, ma’am.”

“And food. A great deal of it, I should think.” Ian eyed Eva’s frail frame. She needed to eat. In fact, if she ate for two days straight it would only be a beginning to setting a healthy amount of flesh to her body.

“Me wife will send up a breakfast. Now just follow along.” He hefted his bulk out into the hall and up a set of narrow, creaking old oak stairs.

Ian followed, keeping Eva close behind. She was quiet as they meandered down a whitewashed passageway. At the end of the hall, the man opened a black Tudor-style door. “Our best room for you.”

Ian guided Eva inside. Well, it wasn’t Carridan Hall or even his own estate, Blythely Castle, which he hadn’t seen since just before he’d left for India. Even so, it was quaint and thoroughly English. Muslin curtains lined the one window and the walls had been painted a cheerful buttercream. A four-poster stood at one end, the empty fireplace exactly to the opposite. A round table for two had been placed in the center. “It will do.”

The man backed out and shut the door.

The latch thunked shut, leaving them in solitude.

Eva slipped the deep ruby scarf from her head. In the faint light, the wild blue of her eyes glowed and she lifted a single black brow. “Your wife?”

Ian approached her slowly, still unsure how she would react to his presence after her fear in the carriage. Lifting a hand, he watched her face for any sign of distress, then slipped the scarf from her hand. He looked down at her, a good foot difference in their heights. “Would you have preferred I called you my prisoner?” he teased.

A small smile curved her colorless lips. “That does sound overly dramatic.”

He tossed the scarf in a flutter of wool to the bed. “I’m sure Mrs. Radcliffe has written something to this effect.”

The smile dimmed from Eva’s face. “I haven’t read a novel in . . .”

He placed a finger to her lips. “There are many things you haven’t done. There are many things I haven’t done since I took my commission.” To his astonishment, he could feel nothing but the softness of her mouth beneath his touch and a vibration of heat slid along his skin. Her eyes, dark and lonely, called to him for assurance. “We shall learn to do them together.”

Frozen, she parted her lips ever so slightly beneath his finger, forming a tentative O of astonishment.

Before he could think, he lowered his mouth to her forehead in the chastest of kisses, as he had once done when she’d fallen, bruising her knees or cutting her palms. It was the barest touch and the most innocent, but he no longer felt innocent.

As if she needed to feel something, anything, her arms flung up and two fists hit his shoulders; then her palms flattened and she grabbed on to his coat. She didn’t shake or cry but merely held on, drawing strength from his gentle gesture. In turn, he wrapped his arms about her back. He lifted his face and took in her shocked features.

This was what he had wanted for years. To kiss her. Even if it was but on the forehead for now. In all that time they had spent together as children and then as adolescents, he had never understood the intensity of his affections for this woman. He had convinced himself long before, when he’d left for India, that theirs was a bond that would never be broken, a bond of friendship. Why in God’s name had he not claimed her? Why had he not taken her lips in a fiery kiss, ensuring that she would never be anyone’s but his? Duty and honor be damned.

The breath-stealing revelation was the most painful
and beautiful feeling he had ever known, because he had not claimed her. Their youthful selves were gone, incapable of being recaptured.

She still held on to him. But not out of pleasure. Her face was a mask of paralyzed fear. “Please let me go,” she murmured.

Ian’s soul cracked. The woman before him was a woman that couldn’t be touched. Not with the way she had been brutalized. He couldn’t—but, oh, how he wished to make her feel cared for.

Unable to stop himself, Ian stroked a hand up to her short hair, the tendrils soft and blunted against his fingers.

At the caress, her face twisted into an unwelcoming mask and she jerked her head away.

Horrified by his own audacity and thoughtlessness, he released her so fast she stumbled.

“My God,” she rasped. Her pale hands flew up and pressed against her cheeks.

“Eva—” His body shook, furious that he had so terrified her.

“No.” She licked her lips and lifted a shaking hand to her forehead. “But I—I don’t like to be touched.”

“I should apologize,” he said, his voice rough with a sudden need to be consumed in the fire that tortured her. To seize her from it or be consumed with her in it. “I didn’t mean to scare you. I should have known better.”

The room seemed to expand at her silent perusal of him. Wariness darkened her eyes, deepening the shadows just above her cheekbones. “But you’re not going to?”

He drove his hand through his hair. “No. It was done of care. I felt compelled to kiss you, as I did when we were children.”

“Children?” She cocked her head to the side, a lock of black hair caressing her cheek as she contemplated him.
She let out a slow sigh then. “I know, Ian. It is just . . .” Her throat worked for a moment before she breathed. “I can’t explain.”

“You don’t have to. I promise that I will take care of you . . . and I won’t touch you again.” He wouldn’t. Even if it killed him, he wouldn’t . . . until she asked. But would she ever ask?

The sort of friendship they had had so long ago was over. There would be no dancing, or hugs that threatened to crush one’s ribs, or hands entwined on long walks. Those days were done and could never be reclaimed.

They were strangers.

They had been since the day they had both made promises to Lord Carin, choosing his wishes over their own.

Slowly, she turned from him and faced the window. The light of it silhouetted his big coat dwarfing her small frame. After a moment, she lifted her hands to the lapels and eased the heavy fabric from her shoulders. As it whooshed to the floor, her ribs expanded in a deep breath, as if the coat had been far too heavy for her.

Ian suppressed a gasp at the surprisingly erotic movement. There should have been nothing to tempt him about this moment. But the sight of her vulnerable, baring herself to him? It stole his breath away, stirring instincts within that had no right to exist.

He wished he could ignore the light peering through the window, emphasizing the transparency of her frayed shift, giving light to the curves of her waist, her bottom, the shadows that hinted at her most intimate places. A good man would not have noticed such a thing.

Nor would he have noticed how the rough fabric of the shift hung on her shoulders, skimming her body, leaving that fragile, unearthly silhouette for him to study. His
fingers curled into fists, as if he had to deny his need to cross the room and touch her. To rend the formless fabric that caressed her legs, so that she was never touched by such rotten stuff again. God, even in such a hideous dress, even having undergone such foul treatment, she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. And when he had his way, she would be dressed in silk, a fabric that would kiss her skin with its softness, not punish it with its every thread.

It took all the self-will he had cultivated in the last five years to stop himself from reaching out to her, from claiming that beauty, so that he might fan it to a life bursting with power. But he couldn’t, and the pain of it crushed him.

In careful steps, she walked to the window and braced her hands against the panes. The heat of her breath blossomed against the cold glass. For a moment he wondered whether she had entirely forgotten him, she was so absorbed.

“Ian?” Her voice hummed through the space.

“Yes?”

“I don’t know myself anymore.” Her slender fingers curled as she lingered, looking out to the street below. “How do I find myself again?”

Ian rooted his boots in the floor, still resisting the desire to go to her. To try once again to wrap her in his arms and soothe all her fears away. He would have to be far more clever to accomplish such a thing. “Eva, you are who you always were.”

She laughed. The brittle noise bounced lifelessly off the plaster walls. “Oh, Ian. Don’t lie, even if you do it with such conviction.”

“It’s not a lie,” he ground out, another lie thick between them. “Underneath it all, you are still the same. The woman your husband loved.” It didn’t matter that,
in the end, Hamilton had proved himself unworthy of her. So he continued. “You are the girl who raced horses with me with more confidence than any man I’ve met. Nothing can take that away.”

“Horses.” She sighed.

He flinched. How thoughtless could he be to bring them up? A horse had changed their lives forever. He had never told her about Hamilton and the horse, having harbored a secret hope that his childhood companion had not already been ruined in that moment. He’d lied to himself about the truth of his friend’s heart and, as a result, he’d lied to Eva. To protect her. He wondered now who he’d truly been protecting. “Eva, please—”

A shallow laughed echoed from her. “Please? Please, what? Pretend it never happened? Pretend you kept it from me?”

“Yes,” he whispered. Neither of them could face the choices he had made.

“Then you are in good luck. Pretending is what I do best these days.”

“I am sorry. But I had thought . . . I had thought he still was good at heart, that I could change him.”

She sighed. “I suppose we both did. We paid a heavy price trying to save him.”

The pain in her words lacerated him, and if he could have undone all that had transpired, he would have, but that power was not within his grasp. “Eva, you will be yourself again. I promise.”

“I don’t think so, Ian.” She glanced back over her shoulder. Her fingers slid off the glass, leaving long trails in the soft clouds, marring the panes. “That woman you speak of is gone. She died.”

“What?”

“On a muddy road.” Eva gave him her back, perhaps unable to look at him. Her stance was severe, unforgiving.
She lowered her head and rested her forehead against the window before she breathed. “In the rain. With her son.”

Ian’s chest constricted. There was nothing he could say that would give her comfort. Adam was dead. And perhaps Eva had indeed lost herself that day among the wreckage of a twisted curricle in the rain and the mud.

T
he world made no sense. Just hours ago, she’d been locked away in a dark cell and now here she was in this room of winter light and sprightly furnishings.

She forced herself not to think, because if she did, she would think of him and then the pain would eat her up. And she would not be able to push away thoughts of her other man. The little one.

Her boy. Her Adam. How she had killed him with one mad decision to race off into the storm. She paused. How she wished she could recall why it had been so imperative to dash out into the rain and race to the village. But such memories had dimmed to soft gray edges that could no longer be made out.

Ian stood not ten feet away from her. She sensed his eyes burning into her back. It was the most she had felt since Thomas’s doctors had given her the first doses of laudanum hours after Adam’s death. She hated it. “Ian? I am so confused—”

“I know.” His voice was strong and deep, hypnotic even. “But I will see you right.”

Eva was sure that if she closed her eyes, she could fall into his voice and be safe forever. If she let herself believe . . . But she would never be right again.

His steps echoed on the wood floor, a clear sign he meant to close the gap between them. She had no idea
whether she should run or simply meet him. Perhaps she should let herself be consumed by his strength.

A knock shook the door and the latch clicked. “Breakfast, dears!”

The door popped open and Eva swallowed back the fear and anticipation beating through her veins. Even though she was sweating slightly now, confused at her sudden escape from the asylum, she forced herself to at least physically acknowledge the bouncing voice of the woman with a small nod.