“You cannot linger here.”
Mary leaned forward and braced her hands against the marble mantel carved with birds and berries and swirling leaves. Her fingers fit smoothly to the warmed, sleek stone. “Am I to run again?”
It was so strange, for she wasn’t asking Edward. She was asking herself. What course was she to take? Though she longed to, she could not leave this decision to anyone but herself.
A loud sigh rushed through the room. Edward’s sigh. “I see no other choice. He knows where you are. What he’s had done to Yvonne? That is merely a sample of what he must plan for you.”
It was so tempting to lift her hands to her face and scream, but she was done with screaming. She was done with madness. She had to be if she was to survive. She so longed to be worthy of Edward’s admirable strength, yet here she was, cowering again. Bitter regret crept into her plaintive demand. “And where would I
run
?”
“We,” he corrected. “Where would
we
run?”
Mary blinked, then whipped toward him, her skirts whooshing against her legs. “I don’t understand.”
He stood, strong and noble, in the center of the room surrounded by his beautiful things. Somewhere along the course of the evening, he had slipped out of his coat and freed himself of his cravat. Now his starched white linen shirt hung open at the neck, exposing a hint of bronzed skin. The sleeves were rolled up to just below his elbows, baring strong muscles and the feathering dark hairs along his forearms. “Mary, you know I cannot let you go.”
How she wanted to believe it. Wanted to believe it so bad, her heart thudded audibly. What would she give for this beautiful man to truly need her? She drank him in slowly, savoring the pure awe his simple pronouncement had lit within her breast. There was nothing but strength to him, unless she allowed herself to look past the picture he presented with such skill.
For the first time, she truly looked at this fierce man who had saved her. And she saw it, there in the slight vulnerable expression on his strained features and the way his hands were clenched in rigid fists as he waited breathlessly for her response.
She had no idea what to make of it. Her heart tightened to a terrified fist of its own, scared to open lest it be ripped to shreds. What did she mean to him? Did he desire her for herself? Or had he become as needful of whatever he felt she could give him as she had been for her laudanum? The questions wouldn’t cease but reeled again and again through her mind.
Edward stepped toward her, speaking urgently. “This is only a temporary measure, to prepare you further to destroy your father. I’ve sent a note to Powers. We’ll find a safe place.” He paused in his litany. “We will not let your father escape his deeds.”
“No,” she declared. “I will not stand by while he brutalizes so many women.”
“So we will disappear for a little while and plan.”
She broke his hypnotic gaze. Barely able to believe he was not abandoning her when faced with such danger, she studied the fireplace mantel and its intricately carved birds. She felt like those birds, locked in stone, unable to break free. “I will never be able to thank you enough.”
His footfalls behind her sent a shiver of anticipation over her skin. “You already know I don’t wish your thanks.”
She frowned into the fire. The heat shimmied through the thick folds of her frock and up her bodice to warm her sensitive flesh. “I’m still not quite certain what it is you do wish.”
“I’ve told you,” he said firmly. “For you to become well and free from your father.”
She bit her lip. His words were so simple, but she knew there was a complexity beneath them that he wouldn’t admit. At present, it was impossible to press him for the truth. She needed him. “You truly won’t abandon me?”
“Never.”
Mary lifted her head. There was no relief for her in his reply. Words meant so little. Words could be gainsaid by action. From all that she had learned, she should demand to know why he was so insistent on helping her. It was not love. No one could love a woman such as she. She would never be worthy of Edward.
She highly doubted Edward wished to expose his own weaknesses to her. And then there was her own dangerous secret, her knowledge of her mother’s end.
“When we go,” he added, “we will take Yvonne.”
Mary’s hands slid away from the mantel as he faced him. “You would do that?”
He leaned in to her, his body a towering cliff of strength and tenderness. “She can’t be left here.”
With those simple words, it was as if he’d linked a chain between them. Something stronger and more unrecognizable than usual gratitude heated her body, enveloping her in its foreign warmth.
“I was so afraid for her, Edward.” Mary buried her sudden trepidation. She was being foolish, fanciful, and if she didn’t know better she would have sworn it was the faint traces of laudanum having its way with her. But it was imperative that she show him how much his thoughtfulness meant to her.
She took a slow step toward him, an incomprehensible feeling of anticipation springing alive in her breast. She’d known so many ruthless and selfish people that she could hardly believe she had found someone like him. “I thought . . . I thought perhaps you would forget her or send her off—”
“I could never hurt you in such a way, Mary.” Edward held still, allowing her to come to him.
She stopped in her path. Her fingers itched to reach out and stroke his sleek hair back from his face. Instead, she fanned them out over her skirt, focusing on the weave of the fabric. “Hurt me?”
“I saw you,” he said gently. “I saw the guilt and pain upon your face when we found her.”
Mary sucked in a shaking breath. Her entire body seemed to rattle with that breath as if all the pain that had been stored inside her was clawing forth. “It
is
my fault.” Another gasping breath shook her chest and a ridiculously useless whimper escaped her lips. “I did that to her.”
“No,” he gritted.
Grief and anger crushed any sort of self-pity she might have felt. “I never should have gone to Yvonne for help.” She shook her head wildly. “I shouldn’t have led him to her. I knew what he was capable of. What he has done—”
“Mary.” His voice penetrated her pain like hardened steel. “If you hadn’t gone to Yvonne, what would have happened to you?”
With every fiber of her soul, she focused on his strong, avenging face. Desperately, she searched her thoughts for any reasonable answer. All she could find were memories of herself, curled up in a ditch, half dead, hugging herself for warmth and starving for lack of food.
“Where would you have gone?” he demanded again, unflinchingly.
“Somewhere.” She couldn’t think of anything but the memory of laudanum racking her bones and the icy rain trickling down her spine. “Anywhere to keep her safe. I risked her life. I risked—”
“Cease, Mary,” he commanded roughly. “Would you have yourself dead in the street, or worse?”
It was on her lips to say yes, but it wasn’t true. She still longed to live, no matter that God had forsaken her. “No.”
“Why is that?” he asked. His eyes probed hers, searching into the torturous memories that still held her prisoner.
“Because . . .” A tear slid down her cheek, unbidden and unwanted. The power of that single tear nearly undid her. Surely, now that one had slipped free she would be lost on a tide of tears. She gasped. “I don’t wish to die.”
His handsome face struggled with emotion. “Because you are worth something. You are valuable to this world. And you shouldn’t die for other people’s sins.”
Mary drew herself up, throwing her shoulders back so she wouldn’t curve in on herself like a battered child. So that she wouldn’t give in to a storm of tears. “I have so much anger, Edward.” Her voice rasped against her throat, cutting at the air like rusty razor blades.
“You have a right to be angry. The suffering you have known is greater than most know in their entire lifetime.”
She grabbed fistfuls of her gown and twisted the fabric, needing to rip and tear and destroy what was inside her. “It’s choking me. I—I can barely draw breath.”
“Then spit it out.” His large body tensed with the fullness of his own anger at her pain.
“I want to kill him so much,” she hissed. “I want to destroy him, to take from him all his self-respect and power. I want him to grovel the way he made my mother do time and again. I want to beat him with a cudgel until he cannot move. I don’t care if he ever understands what he has done—I want him to pay.”
Edward did not back away from her shocking proclamation. Instead, he vowed, “I promise, one day he will. He will pay dearly for the pain he has caused.”
“Will he?” She longed to believe justice would at long last be meted out. But everything in her past told her not to give a tendril of hope to that ridiculous dream. “Justice is not something that is consistent in this world,” she said, her voice flat. “I want to rip out whole parts of my mind so that I never have to recall what happened to me. I want to tear it from my flesh so that I never feel self-loathing or pain again. But more than anything I wish to see my father dead.”
Edward stretched out a hand to her, his face finally blanching. “Mary—”
“Do you know what it is like?” Hate laced her whole body as she gave voice to the despair that had lived in her so long. “To be taken against your will, to be used like a thing?”
Edward’s jaw clenched, but he stood silent at her onslaught.
“Do you? To be held down and fucked no matter how hard you scream? And when you’ve lost the will to protest, you simply consent because it is the easiest thing to do.” It tumbled out of her so fast, she could barely draw breath. “Can you understand that, Edward? I want that for my father. Can you give me that?”
Edward stood before her, his bleak eyes helpless at her fury. He didn’t offer false comfort. Nor did he pretend to understand. She admired him for it, for nothing he could say would appease the vengeful beast within her.
“I didn’t think so.” The fury slumped out of her and her shoulders bent. “I’m tired. I’m so tired of him. Of what he did to my mother, to me, and now to Yvonne.” A terrifying thought shot through her. “What if he does it to you?”
Edward closed the small distance between them. He slipped his arms around her, careful, gentle. “You mustn’t be afraid for me. Your father can’t touch me. Nothing can. I am here for you, no matter that I can’t understand what has happened in your past. I am here for you. Do
you
understand that?”
Mary half smiled. “I know.”
She stood in his arms, her arms at her sides, loving how reassuring his hands felt pressed against her back. “It is why you took me in, is it not?”
He gazed down at her, his shoulders curving to allow for the difference in height. “Yes, but now it is more.”
She raised her chin, tilting her head back. The frightening desire to lift her hands to his shoulders and return his embrace dawned upon her, but she held still lest she break this moment. “More?”
His brow creased as he struggled to speak. “You’ve come to mean something to me.”
“Tell me,” she murmured.
Make me believe.
Whether he was aware or not, his hands pressed ever so slightly against her corset and tucked her in just the smallest degree closer to his body. “I—I’ve made mistakes enough to ruin a host of lives, but you . . .” He rested his chin against the top of her head. “I don’t know how to say it, but . . .”
Mary allowed him to hold her so close, though a nagging argument inside continued to command her to step back. But another part of her, a stronger part, wished to remain in his arms, hearing this captivating confession of his. She allowed herself to be guided into the hollow of his body as if she was his match, his pair.
“You’ve shown me that no matter how brutalized we are, we can rise again.”
Slowly, she lifted her hands to his shoulders. Uncertainly, and without a thought for what might happen next, she rested her fingers against his crisp linen. “So not only am I Calypso, I am a phoenix?”
“You are.” His voice deepened with passionate admiration.
“No, Edward.” Her fingertips trailed up slowly to the curling hair at the nape of his neck. Oh, it was soft. Softer than she’d ever imagined it. It was intoxicating, the nearness of him. Much to her shock, she found herself pulling him, urging his face closer to hers. “I am still among the ashes. I have not yet flown.”
He lowered his head toward her in careful, slow stages. “But you will.”
The scent of leather and spice filled her senses and the sudden desire to taste his mouth and be one with this strong man burst within her.
“Yes,” she murmured before lifting herself up onto her slippered toes and giving over to her blossoming passion. “I will.”
O
ne could never fall if one felt such ecstasy. Mary slipped her hands into his hair, savoring the hot taste of his mouth and the careful touch of his lips. Was this the pleasure of freely giving oneself? With no condition or expectation?
She would never plummet to the hard earth with this feeling of wonder. She would glide free and alive in this kiss, in his glorious touch. Mary opened her mouth in a gasp of delight and immediately tasted crushed mint and the hint of red wine.
Without thinking, she pushed herself against him, as if she might climb inside his strong fortress of a body. The full bells of her skirt batted at her legs, the hoop dancing out, but she gave no notice. If anything, she longed to be divested of her garments and
feel
him.
Freedom was in his touch. The freedom of knowing that she was giving herself because she wished it, not because she had to or had anything to gain but the pleasure of the moment.
Carefully, she lowered a hand to his chest, just over his heart and its solid beat. Gently, she pushed.
He broke the kiss, his breath ragged. “Forgive me.”
Her own breath came at a rapid pace as she let her hand hover over the thin linen covering his hot skin and hard muscle. “As you are always telling me, there is nothing to forgive.”
A slight smile touched his lips and he began to step away, but she grabbed him, her fingers holding tight to his shirt. “There is something . . . I would like to do.”