Wicked Nights With a Lover
Page 29

Ash dragged a hand through his hair, pulling at the long ends. “If I’m inclined to believe some fortune-teller—”
“I didn’t believe her at first either, but everything she says always comes to pass.”
“So,” he said slowly, air exhaling from his nose as though he was grappling for control. “You think this woman can truly see into the future? That she foresaw what happened just now—” he cut himself off, his beautifully carved lips twisting.
“You have to admit it’s more than coincidence. How else could she relate so many details?” She nodded, then stopped, hissing at the fresh pain it produced in her head. She pressed a trembling hand there, fingering the goose egg.
He scooted closer, removing her hand and gently testing the knot with his warm fingers, his voice distracted as he muttered, “I only care that you no longer believe you are going to die.”
Disappointment surged through her. “You think I’m mad then. That I can’t be right about this?”
“Sweetheart, I’ll believe anything you want right now.”
“I am not a little girl with fanciful notions that must be indulged.” Bristling, she glared up at him through her lashes. “I’m not daft, Ash. I’m quite serious—”
“I know you are,” he snapped, “as much as I’d like to pretend otherwise. I can’t fathom why you’ve let some charlatan’s tales guide you in your dealings with me, Marguerite. I credited you with far more sense.”
She sucked in a breath, glaring at him, unaccountably hurt. “I’m not foolish,” she whispered, her voice low and wounded. “And you needn’t scold me like a child. I’m full-grown.”
He rubbed a hand over his forehead, looking suddenly weary, but still angry. She marked that at once in the flexing of his jaw. As though he ground his teeth together to cling to his composure.
“I don’t want to argue with you. I’m still trying to rid my head of the image of you falling beneath those horses …” His voice faded and he sighed deeply, raggedly, pausing as if words were elusive, beyond him.
Her chest felt tight and prickly, watching him.
She’d never seen him so … affected. He swallowed, his throat working. “When I thought I lost you … I don’t want to ever feel that way again,” he said thickly.
Is that what worried him? She reached for his cheek, hoping to reassure him. He turned his face away and her fingers only grazed his jaw. “You won’t. I promise.”
He busied himself removing his greatcoat and draping it over her shivering form, and in that moment, in that carriage with him, it didn’t matter that he was unable to look her in the eyes, that his face looked carved from granite, that a foreboding quiet hung about him. She told herself it was just because he cared about her. Perhaps he even loved her.
He just didn’t know it. Yet.
Chapter 23
He was a bloody fool.
All this time he’d thought his parents’ marriage would be the worst fate imaginable. The type of marriage where love soured and turned twisted, descending into a state of constant hostility. The kind of poisonous union that had killed his sister and left him scavenging the streets of St. Giles at an early age.
But even worse than that fate, there loomed another.
Loving and then losing someone to death … well, that was a pain he wouldn’t face. Not if he could help it.
And he could.
Evidently, falling in love was not something one chose, but embracing that love was. As the choice
was his, he chose not to embrace what he felt for Marguerite. He knew it would hurt to let her go. Just the thought made his throat squeeze. Yet nothing could hurt him as much as those moments when he watched Marguerite fall beneath slashing hooves.
He’d miss her, long for the yielding heat of her in his bed, the way her eyes softened when she looked at him, but the ache would ebb. Eventually, he’d grow numb. Perhaps even forget her. His chest clenched suddenly at that thought.
Marguerite slept, snoring lightly beside him. She’d scarcely moved since nodding off after the physician Ash had called for examined her and treated her with a small dose of laudanum.
Lying beside her on the bed, he trailed his hand through the cascade of her ink-black hair. Rubbing the tendrils between his fingers, he watched her, memorized every delicate line of her heart-shaped face until a faint blue-gray of dawn tinged the air, seeping into the room beneath the damask drapes.
He knew she believed the risk to herself over, but he didn’t believe in fortune-tellers. He didn’t believe that one’s fate was decided in the dregs left in a teacup. One’s fate could not be foreseen. He brushed an ebony strand off her forehead, wincing at the sight of the nasty scrape edging her hairline, so stark against her fair skin. Life was dangerous, full of loss and pain. A diviner didn’t need to tell him that.
He’d died inside when those horses reared over Marguerite. The sound of her cries ripped through him, playing through his head still. He doubted he could ever close his eyes and not hear her screams … not live in a state of constant unease that he would one day suffer that again. Only worse because the next time she might not survive.
He took her hand and raised it to his lips, marveling at how entangled he’d become with her in so short a time. The slow clatter of carriage wheels sounded below.
Lowering her hand back to the bed, he rose and moved toward the window. He recognized Jack’s carriage. A groom helped two women. He recognized Grier at the lead. The other one—smaller and younger—was vaguely familiar from the night he’d stormed Jack’s house looking for Marguerite. He slipped quietly from the room, sparing one last glance at Marguerite, still sleeping soundly.
He met the women as they entered the foyer.
Grier fixed her steel-eyed gaze on him. “We came as soon as we heard.”
Ash snorted. “Indeed. Ash Courtland rescuing a woman from beneath a carriage. I’m certain it was all over St. Giles.”
“Jack wouldn’t permit us to call on you last night,” Grier complained. “He made plans for us to attend the opera with the Duke of Colbourne. Bloody ass,” she muttered.
Ash wasn’t certain she referred to her father or the duke, but he didn’t inquire. “Marguerite is resting,” he informed them. “The doctor assured me she’ll be fine.”
“Madame Foster was right then,” Grier said.
He angled his head dangerously at Grier. “Not you, too,” he warned.
“Come now. Don’t you find it a coincidence—”
“Yes,” he snapped, cutting her off. She sounded too much like Marguerite. “A coincidence. Nothing more.”
“Cheerful fellow, aren’t you?” Grier asked with a wry twist of her lips.
He swept his gaze over the pair of them. “You’re welcome to wait in the drawing room, but it could be a while.”
“We would not wish to overwhelm Marguerite the moment she wakes,” the sister who had yet to speak murmured. “We’ll call again when she’s better. Please let her know we were here.”
“You may not find her here,” he announced.
Grier blinked. “You’ve just arrived in Town and you’re departing again?”
“I’ve an estate outside Town that I’ve paid little mind over the years. The place needs a proper mistress to care for it—”
“You’re moving then—”
“No. I’m staying. I still have the gaming hells to oversee here. God knows your father won’t see to their operation.”
“But you’re dumping her in the country?” The younger sister crossed her arms over her chest, dragging them back to the subject of Marguerite. The very subject he wished to avoid.
He stared at the two females. They’d only just met Marguerite, but they behaved like the fiercest of protectors. “It would seem the safest place for her. She’ll enjoy it there, away from the dreary City.”
“What nonsense is this?” Grier held up a hand in supplication. “You said you love her.”
“That bears no significance,” he snapped, his face heating with the reminder of his confession. “This is the best thing for Marguerite.”
Grier shook her head. “Marguerite is asleep. I wager she has no notion you’ve made this decision for her. Why don’t you ask her when she wakes if she wants to be discarded—”
“Because I know what she wants!” he shouted, tossing his arms wide. “And I can’t give her that. I won’t go through yesterday all over again. I can’t.”
The sisters looked alike in that moment. With brown eyes similar to Jack’s, they gawked at him in wide-eyed wonder.
Grier looked him up and down with ill-concealed disgust and sneered, “Coward.”
“You know nothing of me,” he spat. “Or Marguerite for that matter. Sharing blood doesn’t make you an instant family, it doesn’t make love just magically emerge.” He swept his hand toward them in an angry wave.
The young one spoke quietly. “You’re absolutely right.” She stepped forward, undaunted by his glare or that he towered over her. “Love is something that doesn’t happen instantly or easily. But for whatever reason it’s happened between you and Marguerite. And you’re a fool to throw it away.” With a slow exhale, she swept Grier a glance. “I’ll wait in the carriage.”
Feeling as though she’d taken her reticule and beaten him about the head with it, Ash watched the female he had dismissed as unassuming take her leave. With a weak smile that looked damnably close to pity, Grier followed her.
Ash stared at the door for some moments with a scowl on his face before marching away to his study to write a missive for his housekeeper in the country, informing her of his wife’s impending arrival.
“What do you mean I’m going to spend some time in the country? By myself?” Marguerite lowered her fork to her plate, the breakfast she had thus far consumed suddenly rebelling in her stomach. The rasher of bacon that she had so looked forward to sinking her teeth into no longer looked appetizing.
“It’s a lovely estate,” was Ash’s only reply.
He stared at her, so cold-faced and distant where he stood at the window. She could scarcely stomach to look at him from where she sat propped against pillows, a bed tray over her lap. The damask drapes had been pulled back. He turned away and looked down at the street, his hands clasped behind his back, as if something was occurring below of vast interest.
He looked stark, officious. Every inch the gentleman. Nothing like the scoundrel she’d met on the streets of St. Giles. Nothing like the man who had swept her up into his arms yesterday and looked down at her with such longing and anguish. As though her pain were his own.
Where had that man gone? The man whose face had been the first sight she sought when she woke this morning?
“Where are you going to be while I’m buried in the country?” she asked, unable to mask the quaver in her voice.
He finally looked at her. “I’ve business to attend here.” He must have read something in her face, for he added, “I shall visit, of course.”
Was that the way it was to be then? She had escaped death, emerging ready to seize her life with him only to find he had no wish for her presence.
“The house is magnificent, the grounds vast, but it needs a woman’s touch. I’ve neglected it appallingly ever since I won it off some baron two years ago.”
She shook her head, bewildered. “Did I do something … are you still angry that I visited with Madame Foster—”
“It is not that, Marguerite. I’m not angry with you.” He gazed at her with dull eyes. “This is simply the way it has to be.”
They way it has to be. He, here, and she in the country.