A Study In Seduction

chapter Four




After ordering tea, Alexander watched as Lydia sank onto the sofa in the drawing room. Her hands trembled as she lifted them to smooth back her disheveled hair, confined only by a ribbon at the back of her neck. Red blotches marred her smooth skin, and puffy circles ringed her eyes. She stared at the floor, her chest hitching with every breath.

A surge of something fierce and protective rose in Alexander. He stood behind a chair, his grip tight on the polished wood.

He wanted to pull Lydia hard into his arms, to feel her slacken against him, to fix whatever it was that caused her such distress. The realization, the intensity of the feeling, startled him. He dragged a hand over his hair, unable to stop looking at her.

“Miss Kellaway.” He forced his voice to remain steady, not wanting to frighten her away with the urgency of his need to know. “Has someone harmed you?”

She laughed, a bleak, harsh sound. “Not in the way you think.”

“You can tell me the truth.”

“That is the truth.”

“You’re certain.”

“Yes.” She nodded, her fingers twisting and untwisting the folds of her skirt. “I’m not… It’s not what you imagine.”

“Then what is it?”

“A personal issue, a… It doesn’t matter.”

“It does to me.”

“Does it?” She lifted her head, her blue eyes dark with anger and frustration. “Don’t you merely want the payment of my debt? That’s why I’m here. Take it. Kiss me.”

Alexander shook his head. “Not like this.”

“There was no condition attached to your request.”

“There is now.”

A knock at the door preceded the footman’s entry with a tea tray. Alexander nodded his thanks as Giles turned to leave. He waited until the door had closed before reaching to pour the tea, adding sugar to one cup before pressing it into Lydia’s hands.

“What condition?” she asked.

“I will not kiss you when you are in evident distress. Aside from the fact that such an act would be misguided, if kissing me were to intensify your misery… well, I don’t believe my pride could withstand such a blow.”

The shadow of a smile curved her lips. “Your pride appears quite capable of withstanding much worse, my lord.”

“Perhaps. Though I’ve no intention of finding that out.” His eyebrows drew together as he watched her take a sip of tea. Her lips closed around the thin edge of the cup, her throat rippling.

Alexander waited an interminable few minutes for her to further compose herself. Then he asked again, “What happened?”

Her eyes darkened to the color of lapis lazuli. She shook her head, tendrils of thick hair moving against her neck. When she spoke, sorrow weighted her voice.

“I sometimes feel… very powerless.”

Alexander had no idea how to respond to that simple statement. On the one hand, it made no sense coming from a woman with as brilliant, as perceptive, a mind as hers. On the other hand, she spent her time devising equations about love, a task Alexander knew would lead nowhere.

Silence stretched, flexed between them like a living entity.

He cleared his throat, wishing for a fleeting instant that Sebastian were here. Sebastian would know what to say. His brother possessed a natural ability to make women feel safe, protected. They confided in him, trusted him. Not like Alexander, whose reputation for remoteness had some basis in fact, especially after the catastrophe of his failed engagement.

Lydia’s mouth twisted as she set her cup on the tray. “But that’s neither here nor there, is it?”

“What sort of power do you seek?”

“None that I might obtain, so why bother naming it?”

He studied her, the bend of her neck, the way her eyelashes made shadows on her cheekbones. “I know you possess a fine, sharp mind. That your aptitude for numbers has earned you respect among the highest academic echelons.”

“How did you come by such knowledge?”

“I asked about you. Your name carries respect, Miss Kellaway.”

“My name carries curiosity, my lord. Like that of a South American tapir or a circus performer.”

He shook his head. “You’re wrong.”

“Am I?” She lifted a hand to smooth her hair away from her forehead. “I don’t mean to sound as if I pity myself. Or as if I don’t value my own mind. I merely ask that you don’t attempt to convince me that my abilities endow me with authority over anything except equations. They don’t. I learned that long ago.”

“Yet mathematicians and university professors consult you about their work.”

“Yes. Exactly that. The work. Our discourse is purely academic.” Something appeared to harden within her as she met his gaze again. “My point, Lord Northwood, is that my mathematical skill is quite a distinct entity from the rest of my existence. Command over one area of life does not translate to another.”

“It can.”

“Not in my case. I feel a great sense of power in solving equations, in proving theorems. But it ends within the restricted world of mathematics.”

Alexander let out a breath. “I can’t admit to being the most productive student. However, even I know that mathematics is hardly a restricted world. In school I learned about the mathematical formulas applied to Renaissance art. There are connections between music and mathematics I couldn’t begin to understand. Managing an estate the size of my father’s requires a constant balancing of income versus expenditure, of figuring rent and—”

Lydia held up a hand. “That’s very well and good, my lord, but please understand that my experience bears out quite differently. In my world, mathematics is indeed restricted.”

Like you.

The two words punched through his head. He stood, restless anger stirring in his gut, and began pacing.

“What do you want, Miss Kellaway?”

“I don’t… I didn’t have anywhere else to go. I thought of—”

“No.” The word came out hard, abrupt. He spun to look at her, his hands clenching at his sides. “What do you want?”

“From you?”

“For you.”

“I don’t understand.”

“What do you want? What would help you obtain this elusive sense of power?”

She blinked. Her expression seemed to close off, as if she sought to suppress a myriad of surfacing thoughts. “I don’t know.”

“You do know. What is it?”

“Sir, I am not a fool. I know my place, my position. Dreaming of what can never be is illogical and senseless.”

“What makes you think it can never be?”

Amusement shone in her eyes, faint and yet sparkling with the promise of brilliance. If Lydia Kellaway ever allowed herself to experience full, unrestrained laughter, it would be a thing of beauty.

“You’re a romantic, are you, Lord Northwood?” she asked. “Believing things might happen merely because we wish them so.”

“Or because we make them happen.”

“Easy enough for you to say.”

“What does that mean?”

“Even before we… before I made your acquaintance, I’d heard about you. Though I meant it when I said I dislike gossip, I can still determine some elements of truth.”

“And what is the truth about me, Miss Kellaway?”

“That you’ve sought for two years to restore your family’s reputation in a very public and unapologetic manner.” She glanced down at her cup and quietly added, “Unlike your father. Your work with the Society of Arts, trade regulations, numerous charities, lectures, clubs, and now an international exhibition… it all speaks to your philosophy of generating change.”

She looked resigned, as if the condensed report of his efforts had somehow dispirited her. As if she spoke of something she wanted and yet would never possess. Alexander began to pace again, aware of a nagging discomfort.

“That is all true enough,” he finally allowed. “Though I’ve had little choice in the matter. If I didn’t do something, no one would.”

“Oh, you had a choice, Lord Northwood. We always have a choice.”

“No. Given the current difficulties with Russia, my family’s ties to the country are increasingly maligned. What choice do I have in that?”

“You’ve a choice in how you respond to such intolerance.”

Alexander turned his head to look at her, struck again by the sense that Lydia Kellaway’s composure was something both durable and imperfect, like a solid Greek amphora marked with cracks and flaws.

“What was your choice?” he asked.

For an instant, she didn’t speak, though some fleeting, raw emotion passed across her features.

“Not one I care to elucidate.” She took another sip of tea and stood, smoothing the wrinkles from her skirt. “I do apologize for intruding upon you yet again. It was reckless and very imprudent.”

“I think you ought to be reckless and imprudent more often, Miss Kellaway.”

“Then your thoughts are extremely mistaken.”

“Are they?”

“Yes.” Her jaw tightened with irritation, her chin lifting. “I’m no longer a young woman, my lord. My days of recklessness are long past.”

“In all honesty, I find it difficult to imagine you ever had days of recklessness.”

“Good.” She started toward the door.

“Tell me what you want, Miss Kellaway.”

She stopped. Her back stiffened, her shoulders drawing back. “I will not have this discussion.”

“Tell me what you want and you can have the locket back.”

She spun around, her skin reddening with anger. “How dare you manipulate me!”

“It’s a fair trade.”

“It is not. No trade is fair when the winner also loses.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means you haven’t a care for either of the things being exchanged,” Lydia said. “The locket means nothing to you and everything to me. My wishes mean nothing to you and everything to me. So I tell you what you want to hear and win the locket back, but I’ve still lost, haven’t I? You’ve still gotten what you want.”

“Forget the locket, then. Just tell me.”

“Why do you want to know?”

“Because I refuse to believe the answer is nothing.”

“You want to know what I want? What I can never have?” She stalked toward him, her body rigid. “Fine. I’ll tell you what I want. Then you’ll realize what an unproductive act of futility it is for a woman like me to want anything beyond what she has.”

Alexander didn’t move. “Tell me.”

Her eyes flashed. “I want my mother’s locket back. I want my mother back. I want her to be whole and well and never to have suffered the horrors of her own mind. I want my father to have had the career he deserved. I want my sister to live the ordinary, happy life I never did. Is that enough? No? There’s more. I want my grandmother to stop trying to set Jane’s future. I want to prove Legendre’s prime number theorem. I want to do something. I—”

Alexander stepped forward and captured her face in his hands. He stared at her—the fire of pain and anger blazing in her eyes, the flush of her skin. An ache of want speared through him again, powerful enough to break his own vow. Before she could draw another breath, he lowered his head and kissed her.

She trembled beneath his hands, a hard, edgy tremble of anger. But she did not pull away. Alexander pressed harder, heat spreading through his chest as he sought to invade her mouth. Soft, soft, soft. Her mouth was so full, so pliable, such a contrast to the rigidity of her body. He flicked his tongue out to lick the corner of her mouth. She shuddered in response, and though her shoulders remained stiff, her lips began to slacken, to open.

The taste of tea and sugar, of Lydia, swept through Alexander’s blood. His hands tightened on her shoulders, pulling her closer so the curves of her breasts brushed against his chest. She gasped, a choked, throaty sound that made him ache to know what kind of noises she’d make if she were splayed naked and willing beneath him.

The image burned in his brain. He pressed himself against her. He lowered his hands to her tight waist, his fingers digging into an impossibly stiff corset. He wanted to strip it from her body, to feel her bare skin against his, to cup her breasts in his hands and hear her moan with pleasure.

Hot. Christ, she was hot. He could almost feel her skin burning through the material of her gown. She kissed him back, her delicious tongue sliding across his teeth, her hands fisting in the front of his shirt. It was neither a gentle kiss nor one of seduction. Her kiss was angry, frustrated, her lips fierce against his.

She pushed herself closer to him, one hand unclenching from his shirtfront to splay over his abdomen. Her palm slid over him in a heated and urgent caress, her fingernails scraping against his chest. She pulled his lower lip between her teeth. A mild twinge of pain went through him, only heightening his arousal.

Yet even as his body began to ache for her, a sense of unease began to dilute Alexander’s uncoiling lust. His brain fogged too thick for comprehension, but he knew instinctively that something was wrong.

With supreme effort, he lifted his head, his fingers digging into Lydia’s shoulders as he set her away from him. Her eyes blazed indigo blue into his, her reddened lips parted as she drew in a sharp breath.

“Not reckless enough for you?” she asked, her voice as tight as spindle-pulled yarn.

“Miss—”

“You think I’m a spinster, don’t you?” she snapped. “Dried up like a piece of leather. Unused, lonely. You think—”

“Do not tell me what I think.” The words came out harsh and frustrated. His hands clenched as he stared into her eyes. He couldn’t shake the unease, the odd apprehension. The sense that he was falling into something far more complex than he had ever anticipated.

“You believe I’m destined for a life of solitude,” Lydia continued. “My only companions textbooks and equations and formulas. A cold, intellectual life of the mind.”

“I don’t—”

Lydia stepped closer, a visible shudder racking her slender body. “My lord, it would be for the best if you simply continued to believe that.”

“Why?” he demanded.

“Because it is far too dangerous for either of us to believe otherwise.”

Before he could move, before he could speak, she was gone, the door shutting with a hard click behind her.