Stuart thought of the boys in the photograph, their hands held tight. Seven years later they would despise each other. For the next twenty years they would communicate only through intermediaries, sustaining the hostilities as if the bonds of brotherhood had never meant a thing.
And now Bertie was dead. Too late for weddings, births of children, or sheer old age to bring them together, the overheated spite of yesteryear forgotten in the bright joy of the occasion, or simply because too many years had passed and they could no longer remember their trespasses against each other.
He wanted to tell someone about them, about the boys in a garden that no longer existed, the brothers who had discussed death and life on an old stone bridge, the sibling who was going to name a rose after him—and he could only think of one person who might understand the intensity and ambivalence of his sentiments.
He’d wondered why she’d wept at Bertie’s funeral. Bertie had made no provisions for her in his will. He hadn’t even ever set her up properly as a mistress—she’d worked for him all throughout their affair. Perhaps they too had ended their association on a bitter note. And only now could she recall him without lingering resentment distorting her memories.
He needed that, needed the past she and Bertie had shared, their long, complicated history an echo of his own twisted chronicle with Bertie.
But he’d just walked away from her, the soles of his feet tingling as if he’d stepped back from the edge of a precipice.
He left his seat and went to the window that overlooked the gravel drive leading away from the house. It came down to a question of potency. What did he want more, to put Bertie’s ghost to rest or to avoid Madame Durant?
It seemed almost a rhetorical question. Of course Bertie was more important. Yet he hesitated for another full minute. He would need to conduct himself with excruciating care. And watch every thought and impulse. And not let his guard down.
And never trust himself.
Verity watched the carriages depart, the brougham carrying the master of the house, his guests, and his secretary, the wagonette with the one maid and two valets that had accompanied them on their visit. Her gaze followed the brougham until it was entirely obscured by the trees that grew most thoughtlessly along the drive.
And they did not live happily ever after.
The end.
It was all expected, all run-to-course, all predetermined even. And yet it was a furious pain unfurling, its dark tentacles strangling her heart.
The end.
She closed her eyes.
The knocks on her door she ignored. The kitchen could do without her for a few minutes. She didn’t know how much time passed before she turned around and saw the note that had been slipped under her door.
Dear Madame,
I require your presence in London.
Your servant,
Stuart Somerset
She read the brief message three times before she understood it. Then the words burned.
Why did he want her in London? To gratify those curtailed desires that had been writ plain on his face? To have her someplace private so that he wouldn’t be deterred by the fear of exposure should he want to explore his improper curiosity again?
It went against everything she knew of him. But what other reason could there be for the summons to come so abruptly, almost immediately after their near-encounter in the greenhouse, when it had been decided well in advance that no servant from Fairleigh Park was to follow him to London until after the New Year?
Well, she wouldn’t go. She was a servant, not a slave. She was free to leave his employ at any time.
She sat down at her desk and began her resignation letter.
Chapter Nine
July 1882
Stuart could not believe what he was doing, nor the vehemence with which he did it. He all but ravaged her mouth, unable to stop himself for fear that she would stop him first. Her lips were the opulence of Arabian Nights. She tasted of cake and whiskey—sweetness and fire, like the first sunrise after the Deluge. His fingers dug into the thin calico of her blouse, hungry for her skin, her everything.
Let me. Only let me. Please.
Then she did—she kissed him back. The floor tilted, stars fell, and he was entirely vanquished. He was a stranger to her. And yet in her kiss there was an enormous trust. He was humbled; he was grateful beyond words. He couldn’t remember the last time he felt such affinity for another person, such willingness to yield everything of himself.
He pulled back. He was no longer accustomed to emotions of such intensity. His heart couldn’t seem to handle it. He didn’t know whether to rejoice or be frightened witless.
She looked at him, her eyes full of dismay. Because he’d kissed her? Or because he’d stopped?
He wanted her too much. And he knew, better than anyone else, what happened when he wanted anything too much. There was a price to be paid. There was always a price.
“You can still send me away,” he said.
But even as the rational coward in him looked for a way out, the rest of him would have none of it. Whatever the price this time, he would pay it, for the sanctuary he would find with her—for the sanctuary he had already found with her.