As soon as he shut the door to his bedchamber, he crowded her against it, planting his hand on one side of her head, the bottle on the other. She tried to turn her face from him, and as she shifted, her cheek came into contact with the glass. Her lips curled.
Ludicrous, his need for her affirmation.
“I’m a good man,” he said. Laughed at himself as he said it. “Dammit, I’m not who you think I am, who my father, or Yardley, or . . .”
She cut him off.
“Who are you, then?” Tension vibrated through her limbs. The same tension had vibrated through him, for weeks now. Now he almost shook with the force of his longing, with the effort it took to restrain himself from biting her plumped lower lip. A provocation. Her lips, her body, her being. All of her provoked him.
You’re a duke, she’d said in the glasshouse. Well, here he stood, the fully empowered Duke of Weston. An accident of birth. Not even. The result, rather, of George’s accidental death. Who was he, really? Once upon a time, he’d wanted nothing more than a soldier’s kit, felt most alive on a fast horse opening into a gallop under a midnight sky. And now? What did he want?
He let his hand fall to her shoulder, taking up a lock of hair, winding it around his fingers before releasing it. She caught her breath. Then she reached up, curled her arm around his. He let her force his arm down, work the bottle out of his hand. She looked at it, studied it, brow furrowed, as though she could break it down into constituent parts. Glass, liquor. Sand, barley.
“I’m not drunk,” he said, detecting petulance in his tone, hating it. Legally no longer a child. Why did he sound like a sulky boy? “I haven’t had a sip.”
“I’ve heard that before,” she said flatly. And she had, of course. She’d heard it from him. Heard it from her father. Heard it, no doubt, her whole life.
He’d always hated being hectored, judged, patronized. Strange—with her, he wanted to explain, to prove himself. To be better.
She didn’t look at him. She kept staring at the bottle. Perhaps she could see her face reflected there darkly.
“This is what I’d use to peer into your soul.” Now she did look up. Her eyes glittered terribly. “A bottle of whiskey, not a crystal ball. But I’m not a fortune-teller. You want to find out who you are? Here. Best of luck to you.”
She thrust the bottle back at him, hard, a blow to the diaphragm that knocked loose his breath.
“Lucy,” he began, fingers wrapping the neck of the bottle. He lifted it, but he could see only the finger-smeared surface of the glass. When he lowered it, he met those glittering, baleful, beautiful eyes. He wanted to see his soul there, trapped in their amber.
“I saw you in the garden,” she said, and laughed. The laughter hit a false note. He realized she was trembling. She had watched him coming down the path from the back garden flanked by courtesans.
“If you must have a . . . a . . . Feast of Venus in the glasshouse, move my easel out of the way and mind the brushes. That is my only request, and it’s only a request. You have every right, of course, to do what you want with whom you want and to drink yourself into an early grave. Your Grace.”
She turned, pulling the doorknob. He pushed the door closed with the palm of his hand. The look she slanted up at him made every muscle in his body clench.
“Oh,” she said. “And happy birthday.”
“Dammit.” He growled, bending toward her, elbows pressed to his sides to keep himself from gathering her into his arms.
“Lucy, I wasn’t with them, those women. I wasn’t drinking. I was . . .”
What? He didn’t want to say it.
“I was waiting.” He spoke the words unwillingly. “I was waiting until the clock struck. To drink. To get drunk. To drown out . . . everything.”
She was staring at him, lips parting. Her expression gave him courage. It seemed . . . open. She would listen.
“I don’t know why.” He shook his head, rueful. “Perhaps because I can. It’s funny: it used to be because I couldn’t. And it’s all because of him.”
He meant his father. He meant George.
“That’s what I tell myself. Told myself.”
She’d been standing rigid, back against the door. He could see her posture loosening.
“I want things to be different, not because of the will. Not because I’m obeying or disobeying my father. I want . . .”
The distance between them had closed. He moved aside locks of hair, stroking down to the gauzy edge of her robe.
“I want to find the self I’m proud to be,” he said hoarsely. “It’s not in this bottle.” He dropped it, a dull thud.
He wanted a different intoxication, less lonely. One that would please them both.
The door was thick, the walls paneled. The sounds of the party had faded, but they both heard a crash, a shout, then shrieks of laughter.
“It’s late,” she said. “I should go.” She didn’t reach again for the doorknob. His fingers ran lightly down her sleeve, closing on her wrist. The bones were so delicate. And yet her wrists were strong, her hands capable. More than capable. Gifted.
“Should?” he said. There was no more should. Not tonight.
“What do you want?” He breathed the question.
Her eyes betrayed her. They slanted down to his lips. He pulled her into his body and kissed her.
Their teeth grated together as her arms twined around his neck. Sensation sliced through him. He was already in ribbons, flayed by desire. She had done this to him, exposed him, forced him to bear witness to his own body, his own soul. He dipped down to kiss the hollow at the base of her throat, bending her backward, arm tightened around her waist. With one arm, he lifted her, hip nudging between her thighs. She straddled him, gauze bunching, air hissing out of her. One step, two steps, three. He tossed her onto the bed, stood over her, staring.
She lay on her back, wild-eyed, hair straggling down from her bun in Medusa locks, silver gown hitched up around her bare calves, sweetly rounded. Her breasts, divided by the pale blue yoke of the robe’s bodice, rose and fell with her rapid breaths, full, the peaked nipples visible through the thin layers of fabric. She lifted herself onto her elbow as he turned down the gaslight.
“Don’t turn off the lights,” she said with urgency.
His mouth crooked. She was mad to fear that he’d proceed in darkness. He’d dreamed of the blush that stained her breasts with seashell pink, dreamed of the freckles on her inner thighs. Fire was his accomplice.
He was already lighting candles. His hands were steady, movements precise. If he were drunk, he’d sacrifice this delicacy, which served for much more than striking matches. He held a candle aloft, studying the play of light and shadow across her face, wide across the freckled cheekbones. Her eyes shone. Their color was alchemical gold, mysterious, unstable. Shadows pooled at the corners of her mouth, beneath the plush of her bottom lip. Her beauty was a bewitchment. He set the candle back on the table, put a knee on the bed, and kissed her again, pushing the robe down from both shoulders, kissing the upper slopes of her breasts. He slid his hand into her chemise and forced her left breast up roughly, catching the nipple between his teeth. He sucked and she moaned, her hands pressing the back of his skull. Her nails dug into his scalp, tiny crescents of pain.
He lifted his head, rolling her nipple between his thumb and first finger.
“What do you want?” he asked with new purpose, meeting her eyes. They were wide-open. She wanted to see, yes, and she would see, but sight was no disembodied gift. Eyes were flesh. Matter. He planned to make her very eyes swell with desire. A blur over everything.
But not yet.
She pushed his chest hard and he stood back as she sat up. He couldn’t help but stare at the breast that thrust above the crumpled chemise, the rosy nipple taunting him. So impudent. He would teach that nipple a lesson. He would torment that nipple.
“Strip,” she said huskily. “I want to see . . . you.”
He gaped at her, surprised at his own surprise. Then he grinned, shrugging out of his jacket, unbuttoning his shirt. As he dropped his shirt onto the floor, he felt an unexpected shyness. He’d never stripped in this way, on command, a woman sitting straight-backed before him, eyes hooded. He hesitated, hands on his trouser buttons.
“Go on,” she ordered. It was little more than a croak.
When he peeled off his flannels, he heard her gasp. He kicked them away, glancing at her. She’d caught her lip between her teeth.
He was so hard it hurt.
She dropped her legs over the side of the bed and stood, laying her fingertips on his chest. Her face was bright with triumph.
“Turn,” she said.
“You like giving orders,” he observed. It felt unspeakably erotic, letting her have this power over him, watching her glory in it. He turned slowly, and her fingers trailed over him, sliding around his abdomen and across the small of his back and his hip, wandering down to trace the curve of his buttocks.
If he were drunk, he’d be inside her by now, plunged to the hilt, her knees by her ears. Crass and hot and fast. His smile faded as her hand closed around his cock.
He couldn’t stifle a groan. Now her look of exultation was tinged with wonder.
He would teach her what she had to exult in.
“My turn,” he said. He backed her up until she fell against the bed, then settled beside her. This was no narrow cot, this enormous bed with its heavy, tethered curtains, its cool, fresh linens. He had room to maneuver. He rolled her over, pulled her up so she was on her hands and knees. He unlaced the back of the robe, lifted one arm out, then the other, slid the fabric over the swell of her hips, the fullness of her buttocks. It made a frothy pile at her knees. He palmed her buttocks, curved his body over her, reached to tease her breasts as she rocked, rubbing into him. He gritted his teeth, heaving her up, forcing her head to the side so he could lean over her shoulder and plunder her lips. His hand closed on her breast, flicking the nipple, the heel of his palm grinding the flesh in a slow circle. Unconsciously, she mimicked the motion with her buttocks, grinding against him.
He could spill his seed now. He lifted her away and she made a guttural sound of protest, turning to face him. Now he could see her, the straight line of her shoulders, the upward tilt of her breasts, the slope of her waist, the curve of her belly, the tuft of hair on her mound, glinting with red in the candlelight.
Nothing blind about this experience, this feeling. He savored his awareness.
“You’ve bewitched me,” he told her, and she made a faint sound of negation that whooshed into a sigh as he lifted her breast, licking the crease beneath. She had faint freckles even there, in that delicate, secret place. He licked up the slope, tasting the salt of her skin. With his other hand, he gripped her hip, then pressed her quim, hard.
“You said you want to see. Is that all you want?” He stroked with his thumb, parting her. Her breathing rasped. He lifted his hand to her chin, tilted up her face, looked into her eyes, hazed with longing, her longing, his longing. He could no longer tell.
“If that’s all . . . I’ll stop now.”
Could he? He stilled his hand, withdrew it, sitting back on his heels.
“You don’t have to go further.”
She shivered. Cool air had rushed between their feverish bodies. Her breathing still rasped. She lunged forward and kissed him with bruising force, lips, teeth, tongue. A fierce joy rose in him, but he broke their kiss, gripped her face in his hands, held it an inch away.
“Say it,” he said. “Tell me.” He kissed her throat, her cheeks, her eyelids.
“I want you, Anthony,” he prodded. She made a sound deep in her throat, but her voice seemed to have caught there. The look she gave him was mutinous. She liked to boss but she didn’t like to be bossed. He couldn’t suppress his smile.
“You have to say it,” he said. “To get . . . this.” He dampened his thumb with his lips while she stared, face tense, brows drawn together. He pressed the wet pad to the small knot between her thighs, the center of her pleasure, and her jaw slackened, lips parting.
“Shall I make you beg me, then?” he asked, moving his thumb. She gasped, shuddering. She tried to speak.
“You can nod,” he said. And she nodded, head falling against his shoulder.
Pleasure was pulsing through her, robbing her of language, of all abstraction. But she’d never had the words to describe his beauty. Instead she’d used her hands, to paint it, and she used her hands now. She touched a vein that snaked around his forearm, followed it, felt the hard points of his elbows, stroked up the bunched muscles in his arms. She found that by scratching her fingernails across his nipples she could make him gasp, make the muscles in his stomach ripple. But then she moved her hand lower, to where the ridged abdomen flattened below his navel, and down . . .
Suddenly she was on her back, sinking into the mattress. He’d launched himself at her, covered her with his body. She wiggled, deliciously pinned. He kissed down her arms, kissed her palms; then he was kissing the instep of her foot, kissing up her legs.
No wonder the gods were always turning into beasts. The myths relied on symbols to express the most primitive fears and desires.
She felt as though feathers were about to push out through her skin. They must. She couldn’t endure this feeling much longer and remain unchanged. Her need was feathered, clawed, fanged.
“Please,” she moaned, and he laughed, low and sultry.
“Red,” he whispered, his mouth opening against her thigh. Then he lifted her so she slid down and felt his lips, his teeth, ah, against her, right between her thighs, that delicious juncture that she hadn’t known could swell and beat and produce such miraculous sensation, until he’d shown her. The moisture was gathering, heat coursing through her, as his tongue delivered a slow, long lick. She twisted and moaned. His hands gripped her hips, steadying her.
She gasped, undulating against his mouth.
“Please,” she said again, breathless. Begging.
“Please what?” he said. He rose onto his elbows, mouth glistening, jaw clenched. His green eyes burned. He bent his head and licked again so she bucked, shuddering.
“Is this what you want? My mouth?”
“Y-y-yes,” she stuttered. “Yes.” But she wanted more. She wanted to metamorphose into something wild, a fantastical creature composed of both of their bodies, writhing as one.
Her mind felt cored like an apple. There was a hollow where the words used to be. How to say it? She tugged under his arm, bade him position himself higher up her body. She reached between his legs and gripped him, the skin sliding smooth over the hardness.
The phallus. In painting, it was so often hidden by drapes, or the angle of the thigh, the sweet curve of a single leaf. This was no phallus. The heated length of muscle extended toward her, thick, proud. Impossibly hard. Huge. It was a cock. His cock. The word thrilled her. It didn’t belong to academic discourse on art. It belonged to them.
“I want your cock,” she said, appalled, delighted by her daring, and then she could say no more. He stuffed his tongue into her mouth, his lips hot and briny. He shifted over her, pelvis rubbing between her thighs, his cock sliding over the swollen flesh.
“I want . . .” she moaned, and that was all, that was everything. She wanted. Her legs fell open wider, and then she felt seared as he slid inside her, stretching her, filling her, driving deeper. She clawed his buttocks, the burning transforming from pain into radiance, the air bursting from her lungs. He fisted his hand in her hair, pulling her head back.
“You wanted to see.” He grated the words. “Look. Look at me.”
She hadn’t realized her eyes had closed. She forced her lids up and looked into his face, his expression hard and concentrated. His gaze locked on hers as he flexed and thrust deeper still. He clasped her hand, fingers spreading hers as they twined. Even that sensation, her fingers stretching around his, mirrored this delicious stretching inside her. She gasped, gasped again. He was galloping her now, and she was surging to meet him. There was nowhere to go but out of her body, bursting the skin. There was no line, no form, just smears of color, of feeling. Black, green, ochre, red.
“Lucy,” he growled. His lips twisted. His strokes slowed but the angle changed, and she couldn’t speak, could only moan, holding his back, cupping the tense curve of his flexing buttocks. His eyes filled her vision, needful. Green dominated. The world was green, a green plundered from dragons’ scales. He riveted her. He filled every bit of her, until she overflowed herself. He cried out, jerking his hips, and her cries mingled with his.
“Oh, oh.” She broke, seizing against him as he thrust again, again, his tongue deep in her mouth so the words he groaned were also deep inside her, felt rather than heard.
I love you.
He rolled off her, spilling his seed onto the sheets with a harsh moan. Her body still quaked with aftershocks of pleasure, warm, tingling. He pulled her against his chest. Had he said it? The vibration was fading.
I love you.
Safe and sated in his arms, she was drifting into sleep, the darkness itself velvety and carnal, a soft burgundy blooming behind her closing lids.
His head wasn’t pounding when he woke up. His eyelids didn’t cut like glass when he blinked at the bed’s canopy. A sweet, warm weight pressed his shoulder, his thigh.
She lay on her side, one leg thrown across him, breath easing through her parted lips, curls spread across the pillow. He removed his arm gently, sliding it free, untangling a lock of hair that wrapped him like a vine.
Sleeping Beauty and the briar wall in one.
He dressed quietly, hurriedly, in the clothing he’d discarded the night before. No sign that Humphreys had appeared. Passed out, no doubt, under a rosebush. Just as well.
He stood at the side of the bed for a moment, looking down at her, wonder loosening his muscles, expanding his chest. She had felt like magic beneath him. The first choice he’d made on this, the day of his birth, was the right choice. Certainty glowed within like a pearl.
He would carry that glow to the solicitors’ office.
As he descended the staircase, he noticed a silver trumpet standing on a step, abandoned by a pretty musician. He swept it up. He wanted to announce the day, to signal his happiness to the quiet house. He blew the first note of reveille. Ridiculous impulse. Laughing at himself, he hooked the trumpet on the finial on the newel-post at the base of the stairs and passed from the house.
He was whistling as the clerk led him through the lobby of the firm of Hamilton, Johnstone, and Giles. Fifteen minutes later, the song had died in his throat. He was sitting in a wingback chair, staring at Yardley and at Hamilton and Johnstone. The solicitors were exchanging looks of their own. Hamilton was a thin, bald, wrinkled man in spectacles. Johnstone was rounder, with copious hair slicked back, but he, too, was advanced in years. They’d both represented Anthony’s father for decades.
“I don’t understand,” Anthony said at last. He crossed his legs, trying to contain his anger.
The ignoramus, blinking up at the learned, long-suffering men given charge of him. God, he wearied of the role.
He continued carefully. “You agree I have satisfied my father’s conditions. I see no reason I shouldn’t assume full control of my affairs this very day.”
A champagne bottle popped. Yardley filled a flute and handed it to him. He took it numbly.
“It’s a special day,” said Yardley, passing champagne to the solicitors. He was dressed in an exquisite gray suit elegantly offset by the rich leather of his chair. He smiled.
“Your father would have been proud,” he said.
“Spare me.” Anthony took a swallow of champagne, to rinse the bitterness from his mouth, and set the glass aside.
Hamilton shuffled papers, produced one, and handed it to him in silence. The print swam before Anthony’s eyes. His rage knew no bounds.
“What’s the meaning of this?”
The solicitors hesitated until Yardley spoke into the silence.
“Your father wanted to exert a positive influence on your life, not merely impose prohibitions. A respectable home life will provide you with the strong and stable foundation you need to continue to make responsible decisions. None of us knew he’d written a second codicil to that effect until last week. I was organizing his financial papers, to help with the transition, and I discovered it. Of course, I brought it here straightaway, so Mr. Hamilton and Mr. Johnstone could ascertain if it was operative. Which—I defer to you, gentlemen”—he tipped his head toward the solicitors—“it does seem to be. Dated, signed, witnessed.”
Anthony couldn’t look at him. He leapt to his feet, addressing himself to Hamilton.
“This paper,” he said, shaking it so hard the edge tore, “continues the trusteeship of Mr. Yardley.”
“Until you marry, yes,” said Hamilton, sighing. “Do sit down, Your Grace.”
Anthony stabbed at the paper with his finger. “Not just marry. Marry a woman of unimpeachable moral character and good breeding.”
Johnstone smiled patiently. “Marriage is sacred, of course, and limitations placed on the right to marry aren’t always enforceable. But the court does uphold provisions that facilitate a prosperous and sober union, particularly if the delimited category of potential spouses contains a reasonable number of options. That’s the case here. No one would argue there aren’t many fine women of unimpeachable moral character and good breeding for you to choose among.”
Anthony’s laughter sounded unraveled, even to his own ears. “Do I decide if the woman fits the criteria?”
“No.” Hamilton cut his eyes at Yardley. “The consent of a neutral designee of excellent reputation is required. If you finish reading, you’ll see that your father specified Lord Southgate.”
“Neutral.” Anthony shook his head. “Southgate was my father’s crony and is now his crony.” He turned to Yardley and his voice rose. “How many votes have you wrangled for Southgate? What favors does he owe you?”
Yardley looked blandly at the solicitors.
“You see how he needs a tempering influence,” he murmured.
“I’m sorry this comes as such an unpleasant surprise.” Johnstone leaned over his desk. “Perhaps you’ll come to see it differently, as an opportunity to build the best possible future, starting now, on your birthday.”
Not a bit of it. Slowly, Anthony ripped the document into pieces, letting them shower onto the carpet. Consummate professionals, neither solicitor raised an eyebrow.
“A copy, of course.” Hamilton sighed again. “Smythson will have to draw up another.”
“I’ll contest this.” Anthony swallowed bile. “Perhaps the condition itself is legal, but that codicil is dated only days before my father died. Apoplexy had ravaged his mind.”
Johnstone lit his pipe. “You would need to produce evidence that the testator, your father, was not in possession of testamentary capacity.”
“A preponderance of evidence,” added Hamilton. “Given that the codicil is rational, of regular form and judicious disposition, without any suspicious marks or alterations. The burden of proof rests with the contestant.”
More bile rose into Anthony’s throat. His father hadn’t seemed altogether sane at the end; all the old grievances intensified, wracking him. But what proof could he produce?
He dropped back into his chair so he could look Yardley straight in the eyes.
“You knew about this second codicil all along,” he said quietly. “You knew, and you waited. Did you come up with it together? Who wanted it more? Him? Or you?”
“I’ll find Smythson now,” said Hamilton, rising. “Unless Your Grace has further questions.”
“We’ll give you a moment.” Johnstone followed Hamilton to the door. Pipe smoke lingered in the room. The air was still. Such a tasteful, well-appointed office. Anthony’s heart was beating as though enemy cannons were trained upon him.
“Let me guess.” He leaned forward. “To build the best possible future, Southgate shall determine that I should marry Lavinia.”
Yardley didn’t have the decency to look chagrined. Instead, he smiled.
“The two of you are well suited,” he said, nodding. Anthony smiled back. Then he turned and punched the back of his chair. This explosion of violence relieved nothing.
His chest heaved. Over the past months, he’d become increasingly disillusioned, but he realized his trust in Yardley hadn’t died, not completely. He realized because it was dying now, and he was inflicted with the death throes.
Once upon a time, this man’s good opinion had meant the world to him. It was the spar to which he’d clung as a boy in hostile seas.
The spar had snapped.
“I will never marry Lavinia,” he said. For the first time, Yardley’s mild expression hardened.
“Stop yourself before you say something about my daughter she doesn’t deserve. You’re angry at me. Don’t take it out on her. She adores you.”
“I take nothing out on her.” Anthony drilled a knuckle into his temple. Christ, the waves of rage beating against the inside of his skull were going to crack it open. “It’s none of our fault, who we’re born to.”
Once upon a time, he’d wished he was born to Robert Yardley.
“You will marry Lavinia,” said Yardley softly. “Your brother threw away his life. Your sister threw away her life. Your father and I have constructed a life for you and bound you to it. As lives go, it’s a good one. You should be grateful.”
He felt no gratitude. He stood, put his hands in his pockets.
“I will not marry Lavinia,” he said. “I will marry Lucy Coover.”
“You’re baiting me. Don’t,” Yardley warned. “Let’s start well today. Miss Coover is a laughable match. I can tell you now that Southgate will agree. George had several passing infatuations with women of her ilk, all of them angling for annuities. Miss Coover has proven herself a practical, rather self-interested young woman. As soon as she sees the benefit, she agrees to the terms. Remember the Albion. You don’t marry a Miss Coover, Anthony. The answer is absolutely no, and someday you will understand, and thank me.”
The disingenuousness of it took his breath away. Yardley accused Lucy for falling prey to his own persuasion, based on lies and appealing to her deepest fears. But—he hated himself for it—an ugly ripple passed over him, sullying the wonderment he’d felt upon awaking. This was the real world, and there wasn’t a place for them, for him and Lucy, to be together without reality flooding in.
Anthony couldn’t bear to look at Yardley a moment longer. He looked out the window at the tree-lined street. He’d been schooled, many times, in defeat. Was learning to excel at it.
He cleared his throat. “The committee investigating the Charlotte Road properties.” A squirrel was dancing from branch to branch, fearless. “Have they returned with any findings?”
He heard Yardley shift in his chair. After a pause, he responded.
“In fact, the committee met the other night. The evictions will proceed.”
“Also for the best, I’m sure,” said Anthony. His chest was tight, muscles like springs in his arms and legs.
“As a matter of fact . . .” began Yardley, but the tempest in Anthony’s skull lashed, drowning out his words. He was exiting the lobby before he heard the clerk calling his name. More business needed attending to. Anthony scarcely slowed.
“Talk to Mr. Yardley,” he said. “He handles my affairs.”
His feet propelled him through the mews and into the back garden, down the camellia walk to the glasshouse. Habit, habit could be relied on. Lucy would have left his room by now, gone to the Royal Academy, where her own habits positioned her behind her easel.
They were led in different directions, to different ends.
He beelined for the tank, dug deep inside, searching for a full bottle. His fingers brushed a smaller, more flexible cylinder, wrapped in linen. He blew air through his nose. Lucy’s painting. Not what he needed. His fingers closed around a bottle, heavy with dark rum. Good.
He was done with everyone and everything. He took a hard swallow and then another.
She hulloed softly on the threshold.
“I thought I might find you here,” she said. She could see him sitting on the sill, feet propped on the tank, head tilted back against the glass.
“I can hear Mr. Barrett buzzing.” She came slowly into the glasshouse. Inexcusable, really, to skive off her lessons. She didn’t care.
“I wanted to see you, to say happy birthday, properly.”
Aside from the low buzzing—a fly bumping high in the glass dome, not Mr. Barrett—her footsteps made the only sounds. The light fell thickly, warm and muffling. A strange timidity made her tiptoe.
“Anthony?”
At last, he rolled his head on his neck and looked at her. A smear of blood tracked across his forehead.
“What . . .” She ran to him, but he held up his hand, stopped her.
“It’s nothing. I hit my head on that bloody bracket.”
She slowed, took in the bottle balanced on his knee. He slugged from it, then placed it behind him on the sill, out of her sightline. A strange mix of boldness and slyness. He didn’t seem himself, or rather, he seemed the self she knew least.
A bleakness started to unroll within her, a long, blank scroll.
Swiftly, she walked to the marble bench, picked up the newspaper-wrapped package tied with green ribbon.
“For you,” she said. “Happy birthday.”
His face changed. It wasn’t anticipation. It was closer to dread. She pushed the present into his hands. He tore the newspaper clumsily, and her stomach sank. He looked at the miniature; then his gaze shifted to her. His eyes looked empty.
“I know you might not want a portrait of yourself,” she said hastily. “It’s for you to give to Effie, when you find her.”
She’d felt foolish, working on it during their week of silence, but she’d persisted. She’d thought, at certain moments, that the miniature might function as an exorcism, ridding her of her obsession. In the end, she’d seen it as something else entirely, something she had to give him no matter what.
A talisman for his sister’s return.
He stared at the portrait, at his own painted eyes. Then he propped it on the sill by the bottle and looked away.
After the storm of tenderness she’d experienced the night before, it was odd to feel suddenly so flattened. She’d imagined that on this day, of all days, he’d grin, caper, dance, do a bloody headstand.
He must have met first thing with his solicitors. The visit hadn’t gone well. She opened her mouth to ask, but he spoke first.
“Let’s run away.” His voice was so low she doubted the words.
“Run away?” she said. “Are you mad?”
“Mad,” he said, and suddenly his voice was wild, and he stood, enfolding her in a brutal embrace. He was damp with sweat, radiating heat. She could smell the alcohol. Instinctively, she stepped back, and he let his arms drop.
“Let’s get married madly in Scotland,” he said. “Let’s live in a cottage, or something even more picturesque, a gorse mill, and eat bannocks of oats. I’ll break horses and you’ll paint lairds in their drafty castles.”
She blinked. The dimples didn’t flutter in his cheeks. His face was stark.
“What are you saying?” Her eyes found the bottle on the sill, measured the level of the dark, sun-struck liquid. How much had it contained when he’d started?
He swiped at the blood on his forehead. He looked pale.
“I gained nothing. No, it’s worse. I lost everything.”
“You did not inherit?” Now she understood his wildness. But not yet how it came to be. She glanced at the floor, at the ripped newspaper, a penny rag that spilled ink on all the day’s scandals, large and small, real and invented.
“Was it . . .” She hesitated. “The drinking?”
He laughed, a chilling laugh. It froze her blood to hear him so mirthless. He spun around, swept up the bottle, and slugged from it again, like a parched man might slug from a canteen of water.
“No.” He shook his head. “It turns out there’s another proviso.” He returned the bottle to the sill, perhaps to avoid her eyes.
“I have to marry,” he said. Now he scratched at his forehead, and the blood freshened, began to slide toward his brow.
“I have to marry a well-bred, unimpeachable woman approved by my father’s friends.” He took a quick breath. “They’ve gone ahead and selected one. I have to marry Lavinia.”
She could not look at him, so she looked at the miniature. She wasn’t Augustus Burgess, but she understood Anthony’s face, the planes, the colors. The portrait was compelling, lively, unsmiling but full of humor. Only she could see the dimple waiting to flex in his cheek, because she was the one who darkened the color ever so slightly, hinting at a quirk in the muscle.
“But that’s not so bad, is it?” she heard herself say. “She’s lovely. Who else were you going to marry? Properly, not madly.”
She risked a look at him. A mistake. Color was leaching from his face, the smear of blood, by contrast, taking on a freakish brightness.
Walk away. Walk out into the garden. You’re late for class. This is not your life.
Was it her mother’s voice she heard?
This man had the power to hurt her beyond her wildest imaginings. Waking up in his bed, padding around his room, she’d allowed herself to imagine a proper togetherness. One that meant they didn’t hide from the world, or from each other. She’d allowed herself to luxuriate, believing him, believing in him. She’d thought, last night, when he’d dropped the bottle, that he was inviting her to see through a different glass, to see a different future.
She could not move. Her heart had stopped.
“No one,” he said. “I’m not meant for proper marriage. Let’s go. Now.”
“To Scotland?” Her laughter was shrill. Did he even hear himself, hear how little he offered her? “I don’t know that I’d want even a reformed rake.” She spit it out. “Let alone one who won’t so much as pretend to offer constancy.”
“Constancy?” His teeth flashed. “You mean my money? I’d be giving it up, all of it, for you. But perhaps it’s my money that attracts you.”
Bastard. She almost choked on her rage.
“Don’t deceive yourself. You don’t give up anything for me. You want to hide in Scotland with a bottle. Sit pitying yourself in some hovel. Spoiled drunkard.”
She whirled but he caught her wrist. She tugged, head lowered stubbornly.
“You could stay here,” she said to his shining boots. Expensive. Kept in high polish by someone else’s labor. “You don’t need to run away from London to give it all up. You could work as a horse trainer and rent a cabbage-smelling flat and live a bloody decent life.”
He made a noise in his throat, something like a laugh, that only incensed her further.
“Scotland sounds more exciting, more romantic, because it’s a fantasy,” she said. “Hand in hand, tramping through the heather. Moonlight. Sea mist. It’s a silly, selfish dream.”
She’d be throwing away years of artistic training, all her ambition. And he’d be abandoning his sister, his responsibilities, every last shred of self-respect.
“Marry Lavinia,” she bid his boots. “Do the thing properly.”
He dropped her wrist. At last, she looked up at him, unprepared for the intensity of his gaze.
“Last night,” she said, and his eyes burned hotter. “Last night, I talked with Augustus Burgess. He knew of a theater where your sister might . . .”
The light in his eyes extinguished. He slumped, jaw oddly slack.
“Another theater,” he said, with only a hint of mockery. His voice sounded . . . exhausted. “If I marry Lavinia, I won’t have to skulk around theaters. I will control my fortune. I’ll pay Scotland Yard to turn over every paving stone.” He straightened, demeanor shifting slightly, a subtle physical response to the power at his fingertips.
“Effie will be found.” He folded his arms, looked down his nose at her. “Without your help, such as it is.”
Her mouth was dry. He wanted to make her pay, now, for her deception at the Albion. Alcohol brought out his edges, made him more willing to cut.
“If you marry Lavinia . . .” She stiffened her back. Clearly, there wasn’t an if. “Well. It’s what you have to do, isn’t it? Settled. Simple even.”
Nausea swept over her. She felt dizzied. Counted the steps to the door in her head, wondered if she could cover the distance.
Walk away. Walk away.
“I won’t hold you to all your promises.” She tried to smile. “You don’t have to invite me to dinner.”
He flinched. His green gaze skewered her.
“But . . .” she continued, a trifle unsteadily. She couldn’t leave before she assured herself he would keep the promise that mattered most. “You must have talked to Mr. Yardley when you saw the lawyers. Did you ask him about the investigation? Into the evictions?”
His eyes didn’t leave hers.
“The investigation has concluded,” he said, with a slight shake of his head that told her everything.
The dizziness transformed into trembling.
“You will proceed,” she said. “Independently, with Mabeldon.”
Her knees shook. She wanted to cry, but not here, not while he looked at her, with bright, drunk eyes, hollowed cheeks. Beautiful. Absolutely undependable.
“Lucy,” he said, “if I marry Lavinia . . .”
That if again.
He took her hand, thumb pressing her wrist.
“I can buy the leases. I can buy the whole bloody street.”
Denial sprang to the tip of her tongue. I don’t need your help. She wanted to say it to him. But it wasn’t true. She needed his help desperately. Or . . . not his help precisely. Not Anthony’s.
“My thanks to the Duke of Weston,” she said. “Your money, at least, is worth something.”
His face crumpled, then smoothed so quickly she doubted her perception. He reached behind him. She didn’t want to watch him lift the bottle again. She turned, gathering up her brushes, the scattered sketches. She began to walk to the door, the scent of budding lilac from the garden and sweet hay from the mews drifting toward her. She heard the voice again.
That’s my brave, good girl.
It would be the last time, light spilling down on the two of them in this crystal hideaway. She spoke over her shoulder.
“You’ll send the canvas to Charlotte Road?”
He jogged around her, blocked the way, a frantic gleam in his eye.
“Of course,” he said. “But this space is . . .”
She shook her head. Better to make a clean break. He opened his mouth, shut it, leaned closer.
“If there wasn’t a will,” he said urgently, a throb in his voice. “If there weren’t these rules . . .”
She knew what he was asking. The lump in her throat kept her from speaking.
“You and I,” he said. “We’d . . .”
“No.” The answer emerged, surprisingly mellow. No snap to it. There wasn’t a we. She would not hold her heart hostage for something that might never arrive.
Good girl, brave girl. Walk away now. Go on.
Her mother’s voice, goading her. And so she walked around him, out into the garden, and away.