The Dark Lady (17 page)

How had he descended into such depths of cruelty?

Worse, he’d been so tempted. So dangerously tempted to let her do as she had wished. Would he have given her the laudanum just for his own goddamn growing need to feel her? To meet with her on some plain that was far afield from that of friendship?

He would never shake this new self-revulsion. He’d been far too close to lacing his hand into her hair and guiding her mouth not to his cock but to his own lips, and then he would have made slow, careful love to her.

Far too close.

So he would have to be as cruel to himself as he was to her.

Crueler.

He strode up to the inn. Perhaps he should have sent Digby to collect their necessaries, but he longed for the normalcy he’d once known. The simple instruction of
men, of organizing, something that had come naturally to him in India. But this wasn’t India. He doubted whether anything could ever be normal again.

The Tudor structure sat like a tired old woman, half slouched into the earth and snow.

The sign of the Rose & Thistle swung drunkenly above the scratched wood door, its rust-hewn hinges creaking in the wind.

Wordlessly, he walked into the premises. The narrow hall was dim in the morning light, the whitewashed walls unwelcoming. Immediately the scents of dark ale and cooking meat mingled with rosemary assaulted him. God, what wouldn’t he give to stride up behind the bar—wherever that was—grab a bottle of whiskey, and pour the peaty liquid down his throat. He’d be done with it all for at least a day. But drunken oblivion was not in his near future.

Hell was on his horizon and one didn’t face hell three sheets to the wind. Not if one wished to defeat it rather than join it.

Eva would hate him more and more and he would see more and more of the dark side of her heart that had taken hold in these ravaging years. Striding deeper down the hall, he swung his gaze to a doorway, praying the keep was awake.

A pathetic fire burned in the hearth of the sparsely furnished sitting room. Empty of life, ratty brocade chairs were interspaced over the cracked wood floor. It was barely later than dawn and no one was in sight. A black pot hissed and sputtered over the poorly banked fire and Ian drew in the smells of thick porridge.

His stomach growled, and he forced himself not to go over and eat straight from the spoon still in the pot. It was almost a certainty that Eva was not hungry. Years of laudanum use was a particularly good means of suppressing
the appetite. He, on the other hand, might eat an entire boar if it were placed before him.

“Keep!” he barked, not giving a pox-ridden damn if he woke the entire establishment. Ian headed into the frigid room. If he concentrated, he could just barely feel tendrils of heat slipping through the cold air.

“Keep!” he shouted again, his voice echoing off the white-plastered walls.

Footsteps scurried above his head, shaking dust from the low wood-beam ceiling, then scuffled down the stairs at the back. “Sir,” an alarmed voice called just loud enough that he might hear. “Sir, please. I’ve guests. They’re sleeping and I can’t—”

The short little man of about fifty nearly tripped on his long, flour-covered apron as he hurried forward. His mouth froze as he took Ian in. Bushy white whiskers framed the keep’s face, and he squinted up at Ian through myopic blue eyes. For several moments, those fat lips worked and his Adam’s apple bobbed as he contemplated him in exaggerated shock.

Apparently, gentlemen didn’t make a habit of stopping at the Rose & Thistle.

“Do you require a room?” he finally managed.

Ian shook his head, already desirous of departing. In fact, the fast-brewing impatience in him would not dim until he was safe in his castle on the clean and untouched sea. “Fresh horses. This is a coaching inn?”

The man bobbed his hanging chin up and down. “Indeed. Indeed. I shall fetch my man.”

Ian turned toward the window, squinting at the sun’s first real rays gleaming through the dirt-smudged panes. “And while you’re at it, I’m going to need several other items for quick transport.”

“Certainly. In a few hours—”

“Now,” Ian barked, his gloved hands fisting as he
snapped his gaze back to the short little man. A man who no doubt had never known a life-threatening day in his existence. “I will give you five guineas if you can make all that I wish happen within the hour.”

The innkeeper wrung his calloused hands. “F-five?”

“Five,” Ian said firmly. “I need horses. Coal for a burner. Blankets. Water, food. And anything that might relieve—” Ian hesitated. How was he to say it? “Shivering.”

“Shi—” The man nodded as he stopped himself. “Of course. Of course.”

Ian didn’t smile or nod; he was beyond such reassuring measures now. He’d wasted those on Mrs. Marlock. In turn, Mr. Marlock had taken his coin and sent Mrs. Palmer’s dogs on Eva. “Good. I shall return within the half hour. I expect all to be done.” With that, he charged back out into the cold.

As he came outside the old inn, he slowed his step, eyeing his solitary coach standing in the quiet yard. Something wasn’t right.

The door stood ajar.

Eva.

Unruly fear grabbed his guts. His eyes darted to the coaching box. The coachman was gone. Ian ran across the snow, his feet slipping in the icy slush. Windmilling his arms, he just barely kept from sliding headlong into the earth. He stopped at the vehicle and ripped the door open.

The velvet seats stared back at him. Empty.

Bloody hell.

Ian reeled around, his breath coming in strangled intakes. His vision intensified until his pupils burned. Again. He’d made a mistake again. A horrendous mistake. Since Hamilton had shot that horse, his life had been nothing but one mistake after the other. “Eva!” he shouted.

His desperate eyes searched the horizon, then swung back to the inn. “Eva!” he shouted again.

“Yes?” she called sweetly.

He stopped and whipped around at her disembodied speech.

Snow crunched on the other side of the coach. Then Eva emerged from behind the vehicle, straightening her skirts. Dark smudges blossomed under her eyes, but there was a definite relief to her face. Her tension seemed to have dissipated as if she’d been holding her muscles taut these last hours.

For a brief moment, he was certain she’d somehow gotten her hands on laudanum, but there was hardly an apothecary here on the open land.

“Where the hell did you go?” he demanded. Terror still ricocheted through his limbs and stole his reason. He crossed to her in two short strides and grabbed her upper arms, feeling the ridiculous need to have her body under his touch. To know she hadn’t been taken. “I told you to stay in the coach.”

She narrowed her cobalt eyes, then jerked back from his grasp. “You don’t need to handle me.”

Her warmth vanished from his now empty hands. Anger and fear rumbled inside him. “Eva, I cannot allow—”

“Oh, yes,” she mocked, her hands shaking slightly. “I forgot. My safety is your primary concern.”

“Exactly,” he said softly, wishing he hadn’t reacted with such impulse. “I’m sorry you dislike my behavior, but you are behaving rashly. You charge off without thought—”

“I had to relieve myself,” she mumbled quickly, her eyes leaving his. “I believe your servants needed to do the same.”

Ian gaped at her, his intense, fury-tinged worry
fading at her practical and yet frustrating words. “You could have waited.”

She turned her face back up to his, her bold chin thrusting at him. “No, I couldn’t. And you gave me no indication as to how long you might be gone.”

“There are men looking for you, Eva.” He closed his eyes for a moment, attempting to collect his mixed thoughts. He couldn’t decide whether he should shake her for taking such a chance or drive his own head into a nearby stone wall. “Do you understand what will happen? If they find you?”

Instead of the immediate contrition that he had expected, she snorted. Tendrils of short hair bounced against her face as she propped slender hands upon her equally slender waist. “Oh, Ian.” The admonition came out as a rich, frightening laugh. “I understand better than you possibly ever could. I lived in that madhouse. Not you. I know what Mrs. Palmer and her men are capable of.”

“Then why—?”

“Because you wouldn’t stop the coach when you would have been but a step away from me. I have been in severe discomfort for over an hour.” Those indigo eyes glinted under the morning sun, cold, empty, furious. “I don’t know about you, but I had no desire to ride all the way to Devonshire with the scent of—”

“Yes, thank you,” he growled. He had never traveled with a woman and certainly not at breakneck speed. In the military, men had picked up and run without hesitation. With her, there was a host of troubles. Aside from her addiction, there were common necessities that would simply slow them down.

Perhaps he could permit her a few moments’ rest inside the inn. As he opened his mouth, the rumble of another coach approaching filled his ears. The brief
temptation to let her go into the inn with him vanished. Foolishness could not mislead his heart. Nor pity. Not when so much was at stake.

At any moment, that woman’s men could come racing down the road. He might not be able to fight them off, for all his fine experience in killing. “Get in.”

She blanched at his harshness, her cheeks even paler than usual. Her skin glistened with the fine touch of perspiration despite the chill in the air. “Ian, I merely wish to walk. My legs—”

“You can walk to Land’s End and back when we reach my estate.” The last thing they needed was someone to see her. She stood out like a lily among slug-eaten petunias. If Palmer’s men came asking questions, he wanted as little information left in their wake as possible. He took a step forward, towering over her. “Are you waiting for something in particular? Another invitation, perhaps?”

She drew in a slow breath, her breasts pressing against the thin gown. “Ian, you cannot mean to—”

Without a word, he picked her up, ignoring her tense muscles. There was no time for words, for explanations or assurances. Her light form barely weighed his arms down as he readied to shove her back inside. It seemed to be a ritual in the making, his depositing her without due manners into his coach.

Still, needs must.

A feral growl came from her throat and her body turned into the harsh angles of an angry cat. “Put me down,” she snapped. “You cannot treat me thus.”

He said absolutely nothing as he thrust her into the vehicle, bum first. “Digby,” he shouted.

His man ran from the back of the inn, his hands at his breeches, buttoning them swiftly.

“My lord?”

“We’re leaving. Now,” Ian ordered.

“Yes, my lord.” Digby turned about and called over his shoulder, “I’ll fetch the others.”

Ian gave a sharp nod, adjusting his hold on Eva.

She dug her nails deep into his shoulders, but he ignored the sharp pain as he eased her back onto the cushioned seat. Despite being so thin, she struggled and twisted against him with a force worthy of the fiercest grenadier. With each thrust and twist of her, her bottom curved into his hips.

Ian swallowed, grabbing her hands and wrapping his arms across her chest. A double embrace. An embrace one made after making love. Not for subduing women on the brink of madness.

At last, he could take it no more. “Stop fighting, woman.”

She glanced back at him, her teeth bared. “I’ll stop fighting if you stop being an ass.”

His arms tightened about her as he yanked her tighter against him, her back to his front, her breasts soft yet firm under him, and the thin curve of her hip pressed against his. “Don’t be mad, you little fool,” he gritted against her ear.

Instantly, she stilled. Her eyes lifted to his and his heart slammed against his ribs. Those cool blue depths stared up at him as if he were an enemy. “I am not mad. Nor am I a fool,” she said, her voice so low it rang through the small space like a tragic bell.

Suddenly, he felt stricken, as if somehow she had delivered a mortal blow to his heart. But it was he who had delivered the blow. A verbal one. “I—”

She turned her face from him, her entire body held rigid against him as if such a pose were the only thing keeping her inside her skin.

“Eva?” he coaxed, suddenly wishing she still thrashed
against him. Anything but this. “I—I didn’t mean it. You must know that?”

As horse hooves, harnesses, and the soft talk of servants loading supplies onto the coach echoed through the yard, she didn’t relax against his chest or yield to his words.

The animation of her spirit slipped away from him, even though he held her in his arms. With each painful moment that slipped past, he knew whatever trust she might have had in him was gone. Shattered as easily as spun glass. With careless words.

M
ad.
It had pained her more than any beating to hear the word slip past Ian’s lips. Worse even than
whore.

Slowly, Eva inhaled and the tangy salt air stole into her lungs.

Soon they would arrive at his castle. Moments, really. After all, Ian had claimed they’d rolled through the gatehouse leading to his estate. Though she had said nothing, a part of her rejoiced. They would reach their destination and she would finally be free of this horrid box racing across England.

He’d been tense since the inn, as if he were as wary of returning to his life as she. Would he find it easy to be the lord of the manor? Would he delight in the return to his castle?

As if in answer to her thoughts, the coach rattled over gravel and came to a halt.

“We’re here,” Ian said, his voice wary. He lingered, staring out the window, his hand on the door handle. A brief look flashed over his face. A look that brought to mind the sweet boy who had come to Carridan Hall afraid and alone.

She resisted the urge to comfort him. He was a man who would not likely accept such a thing now.

Eva didn’t move. For all that she longed to leave the coach, she was unsure what awaited her outside it.

The door sprang open and Ian vaulted down into the damp gray light of lowering evening. His hand reached back into the coach. Expectant. “Come, Eva. It’s time.”