The Nude (full-length historical romance) (46 page)

Charlie yelped when Sir Donald kicked him in his side.

“Tie the women up,” Sir Donald said to his henchmen. “We will dispatch them last.”

Elsbeth backed away before a rope could be lopped over her wrists. She couldn’t let herself be bound. Not with so many lives at stake.

“You think you’re so clever, don’t you Sir Donald?” she said as she closed the distance between her and Sir Donald.

“Yes. I rather do.”

Lauretta cried out as the scarred man dragged her to her feet.

“Unhand her,” Elsbeth ordered. She whipped the pistol out from her cloak and pressed it against Sir Donald’s chest. “Tell him to let my cousins go. Now, or I shall shoot you.”

“Put that toy away,” Sir Donald said.

Elsbeth cocked the pistol. “I don’t believe I will miss. Not standing this close to you. What do you think?”

“Elsbeth, no,” Nigel cried out weakly just as Sir Donald tried to snatch her gun away.

“You are naught but a woman. That’s what I think,” Sir Donald said with a laugh. He grabbed the pistol’s metal shaft.

She pulled the trigger and fired. His eyes grew wide with disbelief as blood bloomed on his arm.

“You bloody whore! I should have killed you myself instead of letting that oaf Guthrie dump you out into the storm.”

He lunged then, his icy fingers curling around her neck, squeezing the life from her. She struggled, ripping at his wrists as the dimly lit warehouse grew even dimmer.

“No!” she heard Nigel shout. A sickly pop followed. Sir Donald’s tight grip around her throat almost immediately loosened.

Sucking in air, she watched Sir Donald crumple to the ground at her feet. Nigel was standing on the crate. Mr. Waver was next to him. The pistol in Nigel’s hand still smoked.

Sir Donald was dead.

Elsbeth’s heartbeat thundered in her chest. She barely noticed the two burly villains trying to escape into the night.

“Elsbeth?” She didn’t know how he’d gotten there, but Nigel was suddenly standing directly in front of her. He had a tight hold on her shoulders. “Elsbeth?” he said again and gave her a gentle shake. “Elsbeth, dove, speak to me.”

She blinked heavily.

“She’s in shock,” someone said.

Slowly, ever so slowly, the world all around her returned. “You’re Dionysus,” she muttered.

Nigel’s gaze darkened. “Yes, I am.”

Still too numb to react properly, she merely shook her head. Lauretta was screaming somewhere behind her. Her poor innocent cousins, they should have never witnessed such a wretched scene. Why had they been allowed to come along?

She fought free of Nigel’s grasp and half-walked half-stumbled to where Lord Ames hugged Lauretta to his chest. Her cousin’s screams had thankfully softened to soft whimpers.

It appeared that everyone in the dark warehouse was just standing around not doing much of anything. Which seemed odd. And Nigel, dear living, breathing Nigel, looked frozen in place.

Olivia touched her hand to Elsbeth’s cheek. “How are you?” she whispered.

“I am quite fine, thank you,” Elsbeth said tartly, and fainted dead away.

The candle sputtered and started to dim. If there had been windows in his dank cellar, Dionysus would have seen that morning was breaking, that the dense fog was dissipating.

He hadn’t slept. There was no possible way he could have slept, not after the way Elsbeth had looked at him, not after seeing the confusion and hurt bubbling in her sapphire gaze. How could he seek out his bed, knowing that she wouldn’t be in it? He’d lost her.

It was time to do the honorable thing.

It was time to let her go.

Sir Donald was dead, and there was no longer a threat.

He ground fresh vermilion and worked the dust into a paste, taking his time to get the consistency just right. He dipped the soft bristles of his brush into the scarlet paste. And then paused to study the unfinished painting. His brush poised, he prepared his heart to finish the task he had started.

* * * * *

Gainsford entered the breakfast parlor and cleared his throat. “My lady?”

Elsbeth put down her fork—she’d only been pushing the food around her plate anyhow. She gave a shallow nod. Nigel’s butler looked grim, even grimmer than the night before when Nigel’s life had been in peril.

“His lordship requests your presence in the study, my lady,” he said.

She’d not seen Nigel since the warehouse. Lord Purbeck and Aunt Violet had arrived in Lord Purbeck’s carriage shortly after the excitement had ended. Nigel had spoken quietly with his uncle before sending Elsbeth, her cousins, and Aunt Violet away with Lord Ames.

All night she’d waited for his return. The first rays of morning were breaking through the heavy clouds when she finally drifted off to sleep. If he had returned to the house, he never found his way to his bed. For that was where she had spent the night, in his bed.

Gainsford cleared his throat again. “I am sorry about what happened last evening.”

“At least it is over now.” She stood gingerly. The rough activities the night before had tugged at the stitches in her side. This morning she was stiff and uncomfortable.

And incredibly sad. Why hadn’t Nigel come to her? She’d lingered in their suite of rooms, waiting until nearly morning’s end. Still, he’d not come.

She went to the study and found Nigel sitting at his large oak desk. His cravat hung loose around his neck. A dark bloodstain stood out on the starched white material. He wasn’t wearing a coat or waistcoat. His sleeves were rolled to his elbows, his shirt and hands flecked with paint.

He didn’t look up when she entered the room but continued to study a document sitting on the desk. He looked rumpled and tired and harassed and wonderfully, wonderfully alive.

Her heart flipped in her chest.

With a wave of his hand he dismissed his man-of-affairs who, without meeting Elsbeth’s gaze, scurried from the room.

Once they were alone, Nigel raised his head and sighed. Those dark eyes of his no longer looked as if they reflected the depths of hell. They shined with something deeper, darker. He gathered up the papers before him and circled around the desk to stand in front of her.

“I trust you’re well this morning,” he said.

“Yes. And yourself?”

“Never better.” A lie. His tortured eyes spoke the truth for him.

He held out the sheave of papers. “This is a deed for one of my smaller estates. I put the property in your name. The land will provide you with a comfortable income. In addition, I will send you a quarterly allowance. It is all spelled out in the second document.”

“All . . . spelled . . . out . . . ?” Her heart sank to her toes.

“My life is no longer in danger. I thank you for staying by my side, for saving my life.” He stepped back, putting a distance between them that she feared she would never be able to breach. “I have seen Charlie shipped off to an estate my uncle owns in the Caribbean where he will work off the debts he has collected. I will make sure he will never bother you again.”

“Thank you,” she said. The world felt as if it was tipping on its end. She grabbed the edge of the desk to steady herself. Something must have happened after she’d left him last night. But what? He’d promised he loved her. But if that was true, why was he pushing her away?

“You stayed with me. Without you, none of this would have been sorted out.” He took another step away from her. “I would have been killed last night if not for your quick thinking. For that, I’ll be forever in your debt. However, as much as you may wish it, we cannot annul the marriage. You must understand that. In society’s eyes we are already joined. In truth, we are joined, you and I. I will do everything in my power to make certain the bishop recognizes the union. You need not worry about your reputation.”

“I don’t understand.” She crumpled the documents she was holding.

“It’s simply, really. I’m releasing you from any obligations you might believe you have toward me. We will remain husband and wife in name only. I am giving you the freedom you crave. The freedom you deserve.”

He turned away from her to stare into the fireplace. “Please. Go.”

But she couldn’t. She stood there, her gaze fixed on his broad shoulders, stunned. The documents slipped from her fingers and scattered on the ornate rug. She would be free, forever free. That had been what she’d wanted. So, why did she feel as if he’d just run a knife through her heart?

She stepped toward him.

The muscles in his neck stiffened. “Go.” His voice was sharp, angry. “Go. Now.”

But she couldn’t leave. Not like this. Her gaze strayed to Dionysus’s small, violent painting above the mantle. The colors were dark, yet there was a fragment of a rainbow—a sliver of light—struggling in the midst of a terrible storm that was whipping the sea into a brutal rage.

The painting troubled her.

And suddenly she knew why.

“Before I leave,” she said, “answer me one question. Why did you create Dionysus? Why did you feel the need?”

After a long, tense silence, she gave up and moved toward the door.

“I couldn’t,” he said, just as her hand touched the knob. His face was still toward the fire. “You see it. Don’t deny it. I’ve seen you shiver whenever you look at my work. You recognize it. I couldn’t risk letting people know.”

“What did you think you needed to hide?” she asked gently.

“The emptiness.” He raised a fisted hand to his chest. “I’m flawed, unworthy of my lands, my fortune, my title. My paintings are as flighty and empty as the painter who created them. How could I risk letting my colleagues or my family discover such a defect?”

Her gaze again strayed to the violent storm in the painting. She recognized pain, anger, frustration in the brush strokes, but not emptiness.

And the rainbow.

She’d been wrong about it. How could she have loved Nigel and still have mistaken the painting’s meaning? The storm wasn’t destroying the rainbow. No, without the furious spiraling maelstrom, there could be no beauty. The storm raging within Nigel had created the delicate miracle.

Beneath the pain, beneath the self-loathing his uncle had forced upon him, there was hope. She prayed she could reach it. Oh, how desperately she needed to reach it.

She returned to his side and carefully placed her hand on his shoulder. “How can you believe yourself empty when your love has filled me so completely?”

He jerked away from her, moving so close to the fire that he appeared to be in danger of being consumed by the licking flames. “No, I have done nothing.”

“
Nothing?
You have reminded me how to love. Even when I fought you, spurned you, you didn’t turn your back on me. You stood your ground and waited for me to come to you.” She drew a deep breath, fighting back the tears that were threatening. “Your love has freed me from the hell I’d been cast into.”

The fire crackled as the coals shifted behind the grate.

“I created that hell,” he said.

“No.” She realized that their relationship was in her hands. If she wanted it to continue, she was going to have to speak the words she’d once thought she’d never speak again. Her lips trembled. “You freed me, Nigel. Your coming into my life has made me whole.” She drew a deep breath and trusted him with her heart. “I love you.”

A tense silence weighed down the air in the room.

“What did you say?” he said at long last. He turned toward her.

She grabbed his hands. “I said that I love you, Nigel.” The words came much easier now. “I love you. And there is nothing you can do to get rid of me. I can be quite stubborn, I’ll have you know. Once my mind is set there really is very little that can be done to change it.” She smiled despite her tear-dampened cheeks. “You, my dear husband, are good and stuck with me.”

He wrapped his arms around her and held her tightly against his chest as he crowned her head with a halo of gentle kisses.

“Thank you,” he whispered.