Wicked Becomes You (27 page)

When the door closed behind their hostess, Gwen sank onto the bed. “Do you think we’re safe now?”

Alex slid the bolt home, locking them inside, then leaned back against the door and fixed her with a cold, steady regard. “For the time being,” he said.

She blinked. Far from the reassuring tone she’d expected, he spoke very sharply. And he was looking at her as though he were sizing her up for execution—his eyes narrowed and blazing, his jaw so rigid that it made an almost perfect square. “Are you . . . angry?” she asked in bewilderment.

“Am I angry,” he repeated softly. The corner of his mouth tipped. It was a smile she never wished to see again. “What do you think, Gwen?”

“I can’t think of a single reason—”

“A
single
reason?” He paused for an audible breath. “Setting aside your stupid heroics on the lawn—you went into that room with him. With Barrington.” Each word was distinct, a chip of ice. “You walked off, alone, with a man whom you knew I did not trust.”

Astonishment briefly paralyzed her. And then she shot up on a laugh of disbelief. “You think this was all
my
fault?” Of
all
the things they had to talk about—“I thought to have information from him. To ask a few questions—”

“To have
information
?” He pushed himself straight, and if anything, he looked angrier. “I told you that
I
would do the goddamned investigating!”

“Only—only to see his private rooms,” she said quickly. “To map out the house. And had
you
not been skulking about, I would have been safely in bed right now, having told you where to find his study! You see?”

He stared at her.

And in fact, she wasn’t quite right. Barrington had clearly known of Alex’s identity. “Well, he knew who you were,” she said weakly. “We didn’t realize that. So something was bound to happen. But, still—it wasn’t
my
fault.”

“Bound to happen. Yes. Bound to happen to
me.
” He took a hard breath. “And tell me, what do you think would have happened to
you
? Had I not so fortuitously been ‘skulking about,’ do you think he would have let you leave?”

“Yes! He’s a—” All right, clearly he wasn’t a gentleman. “He didn’t know that I was part of the deception,” she said.

He didn’t seem to have heard her. “But perhaps I have it wrong,” he said. He spoke now with terrible pleasantness. “Was it a seduction you planned? Having given up on me, you turned your sights on him—”

“Don’t be an idiot,” she said sharply. “I will tell you what would have happened. I would never have kissed him had I not seen you hiding there. And if he had kissed me, I would have refused him!”

He laughed. It was not a pleasant sound. It raised the hairs on her nape. “Refused him.”

“Yes!”

“Simply walked away.”

“Yes, that’s what I mean!”

“Could you, then?” He took her hand and pulled her up to him. “Demonstrate for me,” he hissed in her ear. He snapped her around so expertly that despite her unpreparedness, or perhaps because of it, the result was like a move in a dance: she pivoted fluidly and gracefully, her back coming up against the full length of his body.

He had positioned them before the small mirror over the washstand. In the reflection, he looked—different, somehow. And so did she, her cheeks flushed and her chest rising so rapidly. Like photographs of themselves, clichéd types: the rogue with the black reputation; the heiress ripe for plunder.

She straightened her spine; she did not require his support. He pulled her right back against his chest.

“Walk away, then.” His voice was low and rough. “Go ahead, Gwen. Try to break free.”

She shoved at his arm. It was immovable. “I would have kicked him,” she said.

“So try it.”

“I have no desire to kick you!”

“Do you imagine that you could?” Abruptly his regard in the mirror seemed neutral and detached—studying her with the idle curiosity of a stranger. “Have you never heard of my little hobby? I was sure my sisters would have mentioned that I go about kicking men for fun. Smash their jaws, on occasion. Men much larger and stronger than you have learned it firsthand.” His face darkened. His words took on a smooth, venomous lilt. “It’s a very economical way to fight. Barrington would have learned so tonight had you not felt the need to
interfere.
”

She swallowed. Alex had dispatched Barrington with the speed and ease of a lion taking down some aged, limping gazelle. She might have been terrified by it had anyone else performed that cool dispatch. But Alex had done it. And she knew him.

He was wrong, though, if he thought he could have taken Barrington without her help. A smashed jaw was one thing, but a gun could kill. This anger was unfair—and out of character, besides. Alex could be cruel, but he was never unfairly so.

“He had a gun,” she said.

His indrawn breath audibly shook. “Yes,” he said.

She looked into his face in the mirror, met his eyes, and something in her—her stomach, her heart, God knew what—something turned over.

He’d been frightened for her.

God above. Alex had been frightened.

She’d been clutching his forearm, braced against it. Her grip softened now. She tentatively stroked her hand down to his wrist, then back again. “It’s all right,” she whispered. “Alex, I’m fine.”

His arm dropped. He stepped away from her. “I am amazed you have lived this long,” he said in a dead voice. “You have no value for yourself, do you? No value apart from the number assigned to you by your parents’ wealth.” He made a scornful noise. “Miss Three Million Pounds, to be squandered on whichever man deigns to give her attention this month.”

A breath escaped her. He knew so well exactly how to wound her. “I should slap you for that,” she said faintly.

“But you won’t, of course.” He shrugged out of his jacket and tossed it onto the floor. For a moment he looked at it, then he turned back to her, leaning against the wall, tall and elegant in his shirtsleeves. “You won’t because you recognize that it’s true. Poor Gwen. Life would be so much easier for you if all that ailed you was common stupidity.”

“Stop it,” she said. “This is unfair of you, Alex. I was only trying to help—”

“Oh, that’s smashing,” he said. He slid his hands into his pockets, looking down his nose at her, his smile taunting. “Trying to
help
—out of the goodness of your heart, I suppose? Yes, that must be it; what other reason could there be to risk yourself so carelessly?
I thought to have information from him.
” It was an unkind imitation of her voice; he made her sound like a whining child. “And what cause for your great bravery, Gwen? Love of the Ramsey lands? But what care have you for some no-name estate? Not even entailed, you noted. Was it a concern for Lord Weston’s name, then? A chemist’s daughter would appreciate the importance, no doubt.”

The boor. “I have told you my opinion of sarcasm,” she said hoarsely.

“No matter,” he said. “It’s a trick question, anyway. I’ve already told you the answer: you have no notion of your own worth. And so you trade on other people’s idea of what matters.”

She stepped back from him. “You are a boor!”

He laughed. “Your curses are pathetic. Call me a bastard. That would serve.”

“Very well, you
bastard
, if we’re talking of worth, what about your own opinion of yourself? Why are
you
here? A man pulled a gun on you, very well might have
killed
you, and for what? For your
brother’s
sake?” Her own laughter scraped her throat. “Lord Weston does nothing but complain and disown you. If he sold the lands, let
him
deal with your sisters. Or let
them
buy back the land, if they love it so! Why must
you
solve the problem for them?”

His face went blank. An indecipherable emotion passed over his face. Slowly he sat onto the bed.

“Oh, Alex.” All the fight went out of her. Everything—fear and adrenaline and anger—seemed to coalesce and transform into a great rush of agonized tenderness that made her knees fold, leaving her sitting, trembling, on the bed beside him. Wanting to touch him. Not daring. “I do not mean it, of course. You help Gerry and the twins because you love them. Exactly as you should.”

The moment the words were out, she felt a curious chill—as though some strand of ice in her gut had been delicately plucked, sounding a premonitory note whose vibrations spread through her whole flesh.

She could not
love
Alex. She had known him too long. She knew all his faults. She even knew what he would say next—some dismissive, cynical remark that would shame her for introducing the idea that love might provide any motivation for him whatsoever.

Instead, he stared fixedly at the blank white wall and said, “I never wanted any
of this.”

She hesitated. “Yes, I know.”

“I should have turned back for Lima at Gibraltar.”

“Probably.”

“England has never given me any reason to stay.”

At that, she snorted. “You love your family. You
do
. Just because your brother
may
have made a mistake . . .”

He fixed her with a long, strange look, during which time his chest rose and fell on a deep breath—once, twice, like a man gearing himself up for a long, breathless dive.

“Let me explain something to you,” he said.

Slowly she nodded.

He angled his body toward hers slightly, as though preparing to tell her a secret. Instead, in a calm voice, he said, “You speak of love, Gwen, as if it’s something that should hold a person down.”

Her lips parted on an unvoiced syllable.
Yes
, she wanted to say.
Love should hold you. It should bind you.

But she did not speak, because with a sinking feeling, she suddenly divined the direction of his thoughts.

And, indeed: “I suppose that’s what love properly is,” he continued with a rueful half smile. “But you must understand—sometimes it feels indistinguishable from cowardice.”

Here he lost her. “It takes bravery to love,” she said. “I see no cowardice in being beholden to a person.”

“Yes, well, perhaps you wouldn’t,” he said softly. “Here’s a tale. Part of it you know. I had terrible asthma as a boy.”

“Yes,” she said slowly. She knew it through Richard, and of course his sisters, who forever feared that the childhood ailment had wrought some lasting weakness in him. Gwen had never understood such worries: Alex was the most vigorous man she knew.

“Terrible fucking disease,” he said bluntly. “I would wish it on no one. What can you count on, if not your own breath? And there were no identifiable causes for it. I never knew when it would strike—one moment I would be well, the next, flat on my back on the floor. Then there was only one question: where was the medicine? Sometimes it was in my pocket, and sometimes, it even did the trick. But sometimes it was fifty yards away—or, worse yet, only a few inches past my reach—the nitre paper and matches on the table above me, and me staring up, unable to do so much as lift my hand or call out, my only hope that someone . . . a maid . . .
someone
would come by.”

He took a deep breath. “I remember—” He exhaled, and she did, too, through a throat that felt tight. “I remember those waits,” he said quietly. “Every one of them. Suffocating, helpless as an infant. I was not calm, Gwen. I never mastered that art. I was terrified. I always knew that this would be the time when no one came.”

She blinked, and flinched as she felt a tear fall free. She reached up to shove her hair out of her face, but really to wipe the tear. If he saw it, he would not appreciate it.

“I had no choice but to depend on others,” he said.

“I know.” Her voice betrayed her. It sounded full of gravel.

He glanced at her, light blue eyes penetrating. “The memories do not upset me. Perhaps I should have said that beforehand. I am sharing them by way of explaining something to you. After a few frightening episodes, my parents set someone to follow me about. Room to room, house to lawn, lawn to house. A bloody ear pressing to the door of the water closet. No woods for me; the pollen was suspect. No dogs, no horses; dander might trigger an episode. Other boys of my age played rough; I was kept to the company of my sisters, and of Gerard, when his self-respect could permit him to play with a cripple.”

“Alex,” she breathed.

“That is only the word he used,” he said evenly. “I did not agree with it, of course. But all this care did not prevent the attacks. And so the doctors began to speculate that the asthma was a product of nerves. Off I was sent to Heverley End. Nobody else around. My parents hoped that solitude and a strict schedule would heal me. I was taken for daily walks. Fed and lectured and taught. Cleaned and put to bed. I was ten, eleven, during that time. Like a beast tethered at the end of a chain. But at least I felt safe. There was no chance that an episode would find me alone on the floor, inches from the medicine. All that ailed me was my own loathing. I was
glad
, for a time,
to be a tame little pet.

“That didn’t last long, of course. I was growing. My lungs began to catch up to my limbs. I grew bolder and decided I wanted to go to school. I begged and argued and pleaded and demanded to go. They refused. Out of love, no doubt. I threw fits. I ran away. They caught me and locked me inside my rooms to keep me safe. Out of love, you understand. They fitted up Heverley End like a prison, with locks that kept one inside. And even then—even
then—
I knew that their decisions, and the restrictions they placed upon me, seemed necessary to them. Because they loved me. They were keeping me alive, they thought. And I have never resented them or wished them ill for it. But it took some very spectacular threats to finally win the right to go to Eton. And I still find it very difficult—so difficult, Gwen—to think of love and concern without thinking, first, of how very many ways one might suffocate.”