Julia London 4 Book Bundle (35 page)

“Max, however, thought that quite an extravagance. He insisted the bucket was quite serviceable, and that Polly was making much too much of it.”

Adrian barely heard her. He could not tear his eyes away from the hazy image of a candelabrum. Dear God, could it be possible? He could see nothing else, just the three points of light and the glint of the silver candelabrum. The smell of duck soup drifted by his nose; a footman placed a bowl in front of him.

“I finished your portrait,” Lilliana continued. Adrian nodded, groping for a spoon, his eyes fixated on the wavering object in front of him. “I had Bertram hang it on the ground floor of the west wing with all the family portraits. He commented that it was the exact likeness of you.”

“You are very talented,” he muttered.

“Don’t you adore duck soup?” she asked. He had the sensation of everyone pausing, looking at him. His gaze, faint as it was, dropped to where the soup should have been.

He could see nothing.

With his hand, he found the bowl, and very gingerly slipped the spoon into the liquid, straining to see something,
anything.
The clink of Lilliana’s spoon on her bowl sounded as loud as a church bell, and a bit of perspiration dripped down his side.

“—Bertram thought so too.”
What was she saying?
He forced himself to lift the spoon and take a mouthful of soup. “In fact, he pointed it out to me.”

“I beg your pardon?” he muttered, trying desperately to keep his voice even as he lifted his gaze to the pinpoints of light again.

“The portrait of the two girls. One of them bears a strong resemblance to you. And then I remembered what has been bothering me. That painting reminded me of a portrait at Kealing Park. I used to study the portraits in the gallery for hours, it seems, when I was a child. Do
you recall the portrait of a man with his leg propped on a chair and the riding crop across his thigh? You bear a strong resemblance to him, too.” She paused, sipping very daintily. Adrian placed the spoon on the table and shifted his eyes to the left.

The blood drained from his face.

Dear God, this was impossible, bloody well
impossible!
He could see the dark, fuzzy shadow of a human! Anxiously he rubbed sweaty palms on his thighs, afraid to look to his right, to Lilliana.
Was
it possible? Would God grant him such an enormous reprieve? An irrational and strong fear swept through him at the prospect, and he realized he was perspiring terribly. What lunacy! If he were to regain his sight, he would fall to his knees in thanks!

“—And of course, she did.”

Adrian jerked toward her voice and thought he might faint for the first time in his life. He could see her! Not really
see
her, but the vague shape of her head. “She?” he echoed hoarsely.

“Polly. Of course, she knows
everyone
who has ever carried the name of Albright, but what with her ankle so swollen, she really couldn’t come to the west wing with me. Nonetheless, she was quite adamant that it was your mother.”

Adrian stared in her direction, straining to see more than the strange shape of what he was fairly certain was her head. What would she say if she knew he could almost see her? They had been so happy, so terribly happy … was he addled? What sort of idiot would be reluctant to gain his sight? No, no, of course he wanted his sight back! But he couldn’t say anything, not yet, not until he had time to think it through. Not until he was
sure.

“Why are you looking at me so strangely? Oh! Polly’s ankle!” Lilliana sighed with exasperation. “Well, she
did
surprise us all, and had I known she was going to barge in like that, I would have moved the ottoman.
Honestly, Adrian, why are you looking at me so strangely?”

“I am not looking at you, Lilliana. I cannot see you,” he said bluntly.

A moment of silence passed. “Of course not,” she murmured.

Of course not
, he thought numbly, and groped for his spoon again. He spent the remainder of the meal trying to converse with his wife while staring at what he thought was a candelabrum, or trying to catch a glimpse of the footman’s form, or the shadow of Lilliana’s head. It was preposterous that he should be so rattled. If he weren’t completely mad, he’d be leaping from his chair to rejoice in his blessing. Yes, well, he wasn’t
certain
of it. At the moment there was nothing but varying shades of darkness, undefined shapes, and the barest hint of light. He could hardly suggest he was regaining his sight!

Then how would he possibly know that she stole his pudding?

He smelled it—he
knew
it had been placed at his side. He had thought the footman had stopped serving him pudding long ago, but he saw it, just as plainly as he saw the shadow reaching for it. Stunned, he swallowed a gasp of surprise. He could not
possibly
have seen … first of all, Lilliana would not
steal
his pudding. Secondly, he could not see something as defined as an arm. The madness was mocking him! Oh, he was losing his mind, all right … or was he?

He swallowed. “Enjoy your pudding?” he asked casually, desperate to know if he was right.

Lilliana did not answer right away, and once again he had the eerie feeling that the whole room had paused to look at him. “I’m sorry,” she murmured. “But you
never
eat it.” Adrian’s heart seized at her admission. He
had
seen it! “It’s … it’s bread pudding. I adore bread pudding,” she muttered, clearly embarrassed.

Stunned, Adrian shook his head, “You may have the pudding, Princess,” he absently assured her. They finished their meal in silence; Lilliana too appalled at
having been caught, and Adrian, too confused by what was happening to him.

And when they retired, he grew more confused than ever. Once they left the dining room, he was unable to make out any other shape. Nothing—just blackness. He made love to Lilliana with deliberation, burying his face in the skin of her belly and her thighs. He entered her slowly, holding them both back from a climax, lingering in the place he had found such solace in the last two months. It was
here
that he had found his mercy and his peace. And dammit, he was fearful of losing that in the naked light of day.

Sight began to come back to him in bits and pieces. Nothing really consistent or constant, but vague shapes and strange shadows that drove him to distraction while giving him a surreal sense of what was happening around him. Still, he refused to believe it until the shapes began to take a sharper form and the weak light began to sting his eyes so deeply that he could no longer deny it.

Lilliana, in particular, was beginning to take shape for him, and he was almost sick with dread. He had discovered in his blindness that there was so much more to her than he had ever realized, but now he feared—perhaps irrationally—that he had just convinced himself of that. Was it possible that he had been so terrified of the darkness that he had imagined the happiness he had found with her, clinging to her in desperation? What would he think when he actually saw her again? What would
she
think? Had she stayed with him because she truly loved him, or had she confused pity with love? Had it all been a false sense of peace?

He was duly astounded when he began to see the watery image of her face. Not that he could actually
see
it, but in certain conditions, such as the noonday sun, he had a sense of a beauty there, one that was natural and honest, born of a vibrant spirit more than cosmetics. It
astounded him that he had ever thought her plain. Lilliana was … 
brilliant.
He believed he could see the sparkle in the dark circles that were her eyes when she laughed, the gleam of her gorgeous smile, and the long, shapely shadow that was her figure. As he began to see her more clearly, he understood quite plainly what a consummate fool he had been. She was lovely, but he had been too engrossed in his own troubles to notice.

Oddly enough, the more he could make out her face, the more afraid he became of telling her about his sight. At first he was afraid that his feelings would somehow change when he saw her. God knew that they did—impossible though it seemed, he cared for her more. No, he
loved
her, he finally realized, but cringed with alarm at the very idea. Years of conditioning, years of experience, told him that to love her was to lose her. He felt trapped, stuck between a world of darkness that had been his peace, and the world of shimmering light in which Lilliana lived, freely and joyously. And the feelings that invaded him were foreign and certainly damning.

As Lilliana’s shape began to gradually develop edges, Adrian discovered just
how
freely his wife lived. In the orangery, for example, she made little pirouettes that seemed to come from somewhere inside her; careless little pirouettes that made him smile. She chased her pups on the bowling lawn.
Pups
, she called them, but Hugo and Maude were now the size of small cattle. At night, in the gold salon, she would read to him, and he discovered that she had little patience for his indifference to popular literature, something he would never have known without seeing her shadowy image. “That novel is positively asinine,” he remarked about a Jane Austen tome one night, to which Lilliana wordlessly shook her head—the light of her curls distinguishable from the darkness around her. She continued reading, and in the middle of the next chapter, he exclaimed, “What absurdity! She writes like a child!” That prompted her to toss her head back against the settee and roll it from side to side in a
show of great frustration before answering sweetly, “It is not meant to be a treatise, my lord. It is meant to entertain.” He had refrained from making any more comments after that, fearful that he would burst into laughter.

The worst was when he had come to her rooms and had been shown to her bath. Sitting in that tub with soapy water sloshing carelessly over the sides, he could make out her succulent breasts riding the water like two porpoises, disappearing beneath the suds only to emerge again in a triumphant arc. It had taken a great deal of will to pretend to listen to the latest spat between Max and Polly. As she related the controversy having something to do with drapery, he was certain he saw her swirl the water around her breasts, running her hands over them and fingering her nipples. It was terribly erotic, and it had taken every ounce of his self-control not to fling himself into the bathwater with her. But his sight was still blurred, and he could not help wondering if he saw what perhaps he
wanted
to see.

And then there was the small matter of having fallen in love with her. Of course, he could not actually say something like that, because he could not be entirely certain he had not put the word
love
to a deep sense of gratitude. And even if he did convince himself it was love—there were times he was quite certain he loved her—it did not erase a lifetime of losing those he cared about. He could not risk that. Not yet. Not like this.

So he plodded along each day, realizing that as his sight steadily improved, withholding the truth from his wife grew more monstrous. But then Benedict returned to Longbridge, and something happened to convince Adrian his sight had indeed been restored.

Over tea with his wife and brother, Adrian was quite certain he saw their hazy forms come closely together, followed by muffled laughter that Lilliana claimed was for her dogs. A seed of suspicion took root, and as the day wore on he gained himself a terrible headache as he
strained to see them, convinced they often moved as one, and castigating himself for even thinking such a thing.

He understood, of course, that he was spying, watery images or no.

He also understood that now he was convinced he could see, he must tell her. And he had every intention of doing just that, the moment his sight was pure.

But not a moment before—because he had to know the truth about them first.

     
T
HERE WAS NO
denying it. A week after Benedict’s last visit, Adrian could no longer deny that his sight was fully restored. If he had any doubt, he needed only to look at the glorious color of her hair.

He had to tell her. But uncertain about what was going on between his wife and his brother, and uncertain how to explain a week of sight, he waited for the right moment. In the meantime, Lilliana had coaxed him into picnicking at the lake with a large basket of food and wine. From his perch atop a flat rock, Adrian watched her beneath heavy lids as she tossed the stick into the water for the dogs, her laugher sounding like chimes. It was a miracle that he noticed the snake at all, its silvery head just barely visible above the grass and poised to strike at her ankles.

Adrian reacted without thinking. “
Lilliana!
Don’t move!” he barked, and came swiftly to his feet. She turned; surprise and confusion scudded across her face as he began walking toward her, his eyes fixed on the snake. He caught the almost indiscernible movement of the reptile and suddenly lunged for her, jerking her off her feet and around.

The snake struck air, then fell to the ground. The dogs began barking wildly and chased after the snake as it slithered quickly through the grass and into the water, their tails high and erect as they trotted back and forth along the water’s edge in case the snake thought to return.

And then Adrian remembered. Cautiously, he turned his head. She was peering up at him, her bright eyes awash in confusion. So much for his plans to tell her at the right moment, he thought uneasily, and smiled sheepishly, like a child who had been caught pilfering sweets.

Lilliana sluggishly pushed his arms from her and stepped back as the look of confusion turned to utter disbelief. “You can
see!
”

“Yes,” he said simply.

Without warning, she suddenly flung herself into his arms, knocking him off balance as she hugged him tightly to her. “Oh Lord, I am so grateful!” she cried. “Thank God! It’s a miracle, isn’t it? I have been so afraid to hope.… Oh Adrian, this is
wonderful!
”