She turned the idea over in her head. She still had some time before Buchanan would demand his due. Time enough to gather her courage and share her secret with Nicholas as he had shared his with her. Tell him about her engagement, tell him why she had agreed to do what she had, and why she had to follow through with the marriage if the debt wasn’t paid. If he decided not to help her, her position was no more precarious than it had been before.
It would be difficult to destroy his vision of her. He thought her proud and noble, and overall, a virtuous woman. He thought of himself as fickle and faithless. What would he think of her when he discovered she had spent the last month cheating on her fiancé? What would he think when he learned the name of her fiancé? Lexie not only knew what Nicholas thought of Buchanan, but she understood Buchanan’s nature. She could hazard a guess as to what her life would be like when she married him. She didn’t labor under the delusion her duties as his wife would be gentle, or that he had ever intended a tender introduction into the ways of love. That knowledge was part of the reason she had chosen to give her virginity to Nicholas.
Nicholas had never made a woman any promises, yet he considered himself faithless. Of the two of them, she was the faithless one. She was the one lying to him and to her fiancé. She was the one who had lied to herself if she thought she would come out of her affair with Nicholas unscathed. Nicholas thought he was selfish because he pursued what he wanted. Well, the same could be said for her. But she hadn’t hurt just herself. She had betrayed Buchanan, and all of them—Nicholas, her father, Lexie—would pay for her indiscretion.
Everyone had a price, and Buchanan had found hers. If she could gather enough courage, the hard part would be telling Nicholas exactly what her price had been.
She never got the chance to tell him.
The time was never right. Nicholas and James often worked all day, and when Nicholas would come home, late at night, she wanted to savor the sweetness of their time together and not mar it with talk to broken promises and faithlessness and debts. It was too hard to broach the subject with him and so easy to relish the warmth she found in his arms.
The day her perfect life was destroyed was hot and muggy. The romantic in her wanted to call it sultry—moist and warm, the sun shining in a sky clear and blue—but the day could only be described as muggy. Sultry suggested pleasantness.
There was nothing pleasant about this day.
She had taken the carriage and gone downtown to market. She needed to pick up some things, and Nicholas, away for the day attending to business, wasn’t expected home until evening. The heat had never bothered her before—Sacramento was far hotter than here on the coast—but today the air felt heavy and oppressive against her skin. Her stomach churned unpleasantly, probably from too much rich food the night before, and she had the beginnings of a headache.
No, not pleasant at all.
She wandered from storefront to storefront, looking in the windows at clothes, jewels, books, though nothing struck her fancy. She needed to go to the butcher, but the thought of meat made her stomach turn. As she stood outside of the butcher shop, she decided she would save this stop for last. Maybe the bakery first.
She had just made this decision when a voice said from behind her, “Having fun, little girl?”
Her heart sank at the sound of the voice she had prayed she had left behind when she left Sacramento. That he had found her here both surprised and unnerved her. Her stomach clenched painfully, and she thought she might retch.
Turning slowly, she came face to face with the owner of the voice. Buchanan.
She closed her eyes, wanting him to be a nightmare and willing him to disappear. She opened her eyes and found him glaring at her, all too real. Damn. “Mr. Buchanan. I’m surprised to meet you here.”
His mouth turned up in a small, cruel smile. “I’m sure you are, Alexandra, but a man must claim what is his.”
She closed her eyes again, and took a long breath she slowly released. “I am aware of the terms of our agreement, Mr. Buchanan. No ‘claiming’ necessary.”
Snarling, he grabbed her by the upper arms and pulled her into the nearby alley. He pushed her up against the wall and sneered, “You are mine, yet you choose to run off to San Francisco with Nicholas Wetherby? Your father, God save him, swore to me you were an honorable woman, yet I find you here with
him
? You refuse my offer to pay your debt, and then I hear you’re living him, and not as his servant, and you expect me to
not
come here to claim you? Rumor is you are his mistress.”
Cheeks flaming, Lexie cried, “That’s a vicious lie!”
He regarded her carefully, his eyes half-lidded with anger. He looked reptilian with his eyes slit in such a fashion, his mouth nothing but a cruel slash across his face. A rich, well-dressed reptile. He reached out and traced the line of her jaw with his finger. “Is it, Miss Markland? All of my sources are mistaken, I suppose, and he
hasn’t
escorted you to some of the biggest parties in San Francisco?”
Heart hammering, she let out what she hoped sounded like an exasperated sigh. “I attended as his guest, Mr. Buchanan, not his concubine.”
Buchanan nodded slowly, his face perfectly blank, and she feared this particular look far more than she had feared his earlier wrath. Anger she could fight, but she could not fight cold, cruel reason.
“Let’s hope so, for your sake, no? Oh, and for his.”
Feeling like a fish on dry land, Lexie sucked in her breath. “What do you mean?” she demanded, pleased her voice did not betray her. At least she was able to maintain the façade that she wasn’t terrified out of her wits.
He looked at her as if bored, but just below the surface, she saw barely controlled anger boiling. “You are mine. If you do not proceed with this wedding, if you try to back out or betray me, you—and your father—will be thrown in jail for larceny.”
Such threats did not surprise Lexie. She had understood his intentions ever since the letter he had sent her right after the Governor’s Ball. Lexie wished she didn’t care what Buchanan did to her father—he would never change, and he was ultimately responsible for this entire mess. He deserved jail and so much more.
But she wouldn’t abandon him this time as she had before. She’d been too disengaged to save him before. Not this time. This was her punishment and her atonement. If she did this, she owed him nothing more for the rest of her life.
She needed to tell Nicholas everything. She needed to stop worrying about what he would think of her. He had trusted her with the secret of his heart and now the time had come for her to do the same. She needed to trust him enough to show him who she really was. If he refused her, if he turned away from her, she lost nothing. Her heart might be broken, but she would be no worse off.
And if he agreed to pay her debt, if he loved her enough...
Warmed by the thought, she notched her chin and said, “I understand what you’re saying.”
Buchanan’s lip lifted into a sneer as he studied her. As if reading her mind, he snarled, “If you think to have your pretty boy pay your debts, think again, girl. First, I doubt he cares enough for you to do it, and, even if by some miracle he does, if you don’t honor your bargain, I will watch him die.”
His words took the air right out of her lungs, and for a moment, Lexie’s head spun. “You wouldn’t do that!”
“No?” Buchanan asked. “He wouldn’t be the first man I’ve killed, and you’re naïve if you think he is. I didn’t get where I am by allowing anyone to take what’s mine.” He paused for a moment, pulled her in close to him and crushed her lips against his. “He would never expect it. And I...well, who’s going to prosecute me? I’m friends with the governor, and my brother’s the sheriff. The district attorneys in four different counties were elected because of me, and I have more judges in my pocket than your pretty boy has horses. I’ll kill him with my own hands and I’ll
enjoy
it. You’re the one who would suffer. He won’t care, he’ll be dead. You, on the other hand, will wish you’d never been born. You, I would let live just so you’d have to live with the results of your handiwork for the rest of your life.”
Tears pricked her eyes, and she fought them back. She didn’t doubt he meant what he said about enjoying killing Nicholas. She’d already witnessed Buchanan’s cruel streak. She understood his connections to the rich and powerful throughout the state made him invincible against someone like her, who had so little to fight him with.
Her word would never be enough.
“You can’t do that!” she hissed.
“No? Will you sacrifice them, then? Your father, your employer? If he means nothing to you, then absolutely, go ahead and tell him. What will he do to me? Call me out? Maybe he would, but you can’t think I would lose. Do you honestly believe I would fight fair? There’s a reason why I win all the time, Miss Markland. I
cheat
. So throw them to the wolves for all I care. See your father jailed, and Mr. Wetherby six feet under. You are mine, by right. Oh, and before you claim Mr. Wetherby is nobler than I, try to remember I would make you my wife. He keeps you as his servant.”
The tears gathered and began to fall before she thought to stop them. She wiped them angrily away. Buchanan’s last comment hurt far more than she cared to admit. Nicholas hadn’t released her from her debt to him, and while she enjoyed her time with him, the fact she remained his servant remained a constant presence in the back of her mind. Though she played at being the mistress of the house, she never forgot she was only pretending. She was still, and would remain, his servant.
Her voice breaking on the words, she said, “I have not forgotten what I owe you, Mr. Buchanan.”
His grip on her arms hurt. “Good,” he replied. “I want you to remember this conversation. I want you to remember this day. Oh, and Miss Markland? Tell your little friend Wetherby about our conversation, and you may as well put the final nail in his coffin.” He pulled her close to him and laid claim to her mouth, a kiss that felt like punishment.
Lexie fought for breath against a corset suddenly far too tight, and her vision swam for a moment. Rubbing away the sting of his kiss, she said tightly, “I understand.”
He pulled her roughly up against him, before shoving her away. “Let’s hope so, Miss Markland, for your sake.”
She stared in the direction he’d gone long after he’d disappeared into the crowd.
Lexie had no idea how long she remained in the alley, fighting for breath in the shadow of the buildings. Her life crashed about her ears as she stood in the shadows of San Francisco’s majestic buildings, grief pouring over her like a tidal wave. There was no fighting her fate. She needed to leave Nicholas immediately. She couldn’t remain in his household, not as his servant and not as his mistress. She had to break from him immediately, permanently.
When she emerged from the alley, she continued with her errands woodenly. By the time she reached Nicholas’s rented house, she had gone to the butcher, the bakery, fetched the post—done all of these things and not remembered a single detail. She had no recollection of paying the baker, did not recall handing her parcels to the driver and requesting dully he take her home. No, not home, not to her, anyway. Back to Nicholas’s house.
Her limbs were stiff and sore, and her stomach churned as she sat down on the bed she shared with Nicholas and wept.
She reminded herself she had known her love affair with Nicholas would eventually come to a bitter end, but she wasn’t ready to let the happy fantasy go. And as she sat on his bed, clutching his pillow to her chest, the scent of him surrounding her, she realized she never would be.
Better now than later, she consoled herself. Every day she found another reason to love him. Better to break things off now, when it wouldn’t hurt so much.
Only she couldn’t imagine the pain being any worse. Her stomach turned, her chest was tight, her heart burning beneath her breast. She shook violently from a cold that would never abate, despite the heat, and that was nothing compared to her emotional turmoil.
She wanted to break in half. She wanted her mind to crack under the emotional strain, only it didn’t. Instead, she remained achingly, agonizingly
present
. She would not be forgetting these moments. She would find no solace in madness.
In those dreadful moments, Lexie finally came to understand loss, to understand her father in a way she never had before. If she could lose herself in drink and gambling the way he did, she might not be able to stop, either. When the one thing that means more than life itself was lost, it was hard to let go of the only things bringing any comfort, even if the vices brought destruction once the short-lived solace is over. She missed her mother, too, had loved her, too, but she never understood how her father could do what he did, and continue to do it despite her pleas for him to stop, blithely ignoring her as his life crashed down around his ears.
In that destruction, Lexie’s guilt took root. When her mother had gotten sick, Lexie had been unable to look upon her, fearing every time she saw her mother would be the last time. Lexie had fled, refusing to go up to her mother’s room, taking refuge in books and outings with her friends. Her father had shouldered all the responsibility for caring for his ailing wife. In those long months of her mother’s illness, he had been her rock, never faltering, never complaining. They had never been wealthy, but as the medical bills mounted, they descended into poverty, and between that and the financial situation in California, his business went bankrupt. He never complained. During that time, he had been strong and faithful, never wavering in his commitment to his wife.
Lexie let him. She hadn’t made any attempt to share his pain because she had been scared. At the time, he seemed so capable she thought he didn’t need to lean on anyone.
Not until after her mother’s death did she realize how dire things had gotten for her father, and by then it was too late. He sought comfort in drinking and gambling because he hadn’t been able to share his grief with the one person in the world who should have understood it. He escaped his pain for a time, and Lexie finally comprehended how much escape meant, because there would be no solace, no escape for her.