Twice Tempted (38 page)

It was incomprehensible. Fiona had been created for the skies, for the bright light of the sun, for rapier-sharp debate and sly humor. It was the way he’d always seen her in his mind, as a primal force.

But Fiona was not only that bright spirit waving from the carriage, or the tight, controlled lady who had survived her grandfather. She was the muck of the gutters. The thin, honed steel of survival. She was so much more than he had fallen in love with, and he didn’t know how to absorb it all.

For the moment, he didn’t have to. He only had to make sure she lived so they could solve the conundrum together.

“I assume the other man you killed was with a knife?” he asked gently.

“I got there just in time.” Her voice was flat, thin. “Poor Mae.”

“What happened?” he asked, thinking this might be the only time she would tell him. Thinking she needed to. Her eyes were so bleak, haunted with ghosts he would never see.

She shrugged. “It was the vaults. He surprised us.…I hoped nobody noticed.”

He had thought once before she would trust him enough to share completely with him. He’d thought he could at least let her weep, hoping she could purge some of the poison from her past. He’d hoped for it. When he saw tears well in her eyes now and begin to track down her cheeks, he was no longer so sure. These tears were different; darker, more bitter. Real poison welling from an ancient wound.

She seemed to be crumbling right before him, the change quick, as if a dam had let go with her admission and she was being consumed. Overrun. She looked frantic, suddenly, frightened. Her breath seemed caught in her chest, causing it to spasm without effect. Her mouth opened, but there was no sound except wheezing, and her hands kept clenching. As if it would keep him from seeing her, she closed her eyes.

Alex knew then that he’d been wrong. He didn’t want to see this. No human should ever see this.

No human should ever have to suffer it.

And then he heard it and the hair went up on the back of his neck. It was worse, far worse than with Mae. Mae had keened with distress, with shock and trauma. Fiona keened with despair.

Alex didn’t even think about it. He climbed up on the mattress and pulled her into his arms, even though she was stiff and unyielding and frightened him to death. “Hush, sweetheart,” he murmured into her ear. “You’ll alert Mae if you don’t.”

The noise stopped. Fee looked worse, her eyes glittering. Slowly, she turned to look up at him. “How
do
I atone?”

He thought his heart would simply shatter into dust. “You foolish girl,” he grated, his throat too tight. “Don’t you understand yet? You spent your life atoning. You saved Mae countless times. You saved your brother by letting him focus on his job.” He dropped a slow, sweet kiss on her rather salty mouth. “And what would have happened to me without you? There would have been no Fee to save me. No Fee to remind me what was important and true.”

“Is it enough?” Her voice was so small, so fragile.

“Well,” he said with a smile, “if not, you could always marry me. That should even the score quite nicely.”

She blinked at him, but it was as if she hadn’t understood. Alex wasn’t surprised. He hadn’t realized until he’d said it that he meant it. Suddenly, though, he knew that it was the only future he wanted. She was the woman he saw working beside him. The spirit that would help guide his feet.

But she didn’t answer.

He couldn’t bear the distress that thrummed through her body, the decade of struggle and loss and betrayal that was reflected in the depths of her gaze.

“Sweetheart,” he murmured, cupping her chin and gently easing her gaze back to his. “You have more than earned a bloody great cry. Why don’t you let me watch out for the world a while?”

It was as if she had been waiting for those words. Tears welled, hot and thick, and spilled over. She sobbed, and then sobbed again, her chest heaving. Her body began to shake as if she had the ague, and, rising from deep inside her, from places too old and torn to protect, the keening rose again, unstoppable, unbearable.

Alex held on as tightly as he could, his own throat on fire, his hands shaking as he stroked her hair and uselessly wiped at tears, as he wrapped around her in a futile attempt to protect her from her own memories. It was then, finally, that he learned what Fiona Ferguson had been holding to herself all these years. It erupted from her like infected blood, drawn from the deepest core of her, where the worst memories crouched, the worst fears, the most dreaded truths, and it spilled down her face, down his chest, down onto the comforter and bedsheets as he rocked her. It scoured her lungs and drew her body tight into a ball, as if she could protect herself from the kind of grief that can only be purged with deep, wracking sobs, the pain that had been carried too long in marrow and tendon and bone.

And finally, finally after both Wilkins and Chuffy had popped concerned faces in the door and been silently admonished to leave, after Alex’s waistcoat suffered irrevocable damage and his own heart lay wasted and sere in his own chest, Alex felt her sobs begin to ease. He held her all the tighter, murmuring, murmuring, his forehead against the top of her head, her hand in his, his body once again instinctively shielding hers.

Very gently, he bent to set his lips against the damp tendrils at her temple. “Better?”

She didn’t smile. Alex understood. He didn’t ask if all the poison had been drained. He asked if it was bearable again. “Yes,” she said, sounding surprised as she laid her hand against his chest. “I believe it is.”

He dropped another kiss on the tip of her freckled nose. “Then why don’t I check your dressing one more time, and then you and I will curl up and finally get a bit of rest until O’Roarke shows up?”

She nodded, gently rubbing her hand against his shirt, as if settling. “Alex.”

He looked down to see that she lay with her eyes closed, as if she, too, were walking the edge of dreams. “Yes, sweetheart?”

“Ian doesn’t know. Please. It would do no good to tell him. He was doing his best for us. I don’t want him to bear this burden, too.”

She kept taking his breath. He stroked her hair, not even minding anymore that it was short and uneven. It was her hair, and every part of her was precious. “Only if you’ll marry me.”

She didn’t tense up. She didn’t relax, either. Not for a long while.

When she finally relaxed into sleep, her breathing deep and even, her head tucked safely into the crook of his shoulder, Alex felt as if he had attained the kind of victory that stayed embedded in a man’s soul. It filled him like light, softening the raw wounds that had been laid bare tonight. It would have been perfect if he didn’t remember that Fiona had never answered his proposal.

Chapter 22

F
iona woke to sunlight and silence. She wasn’t certain how she felt about either. She was alone in the sparely elegant room into which Alex had carried her the night before, the fire trimming the edge from the chill and the sun pouring in through the high window.

It must almost be midday, she thought, gingerly sitting up and swinging her legs over the side of the bed. Her head hurt. She felt as if she had stuffed it with grimy cotton from the crying and a surfeit of brandy. She should have felt more sore. After all, she was stitched up like a Christmas goose. But really, only her bum ached from when she’d landed on it out in front of Hawes House. All in all, she had gotten off lightly, and she knew it.

Alex had long since gone. Even the dent from his head had erased itself from the pillow next to her, although she could still smell him, vetiver, and horse. She pulled his pillow to her and inhaled, just as if it had been her mother’s, as if she could resurrect him from no more than the memory of his touch and a faint, lingering scent.

She wouldn’t have slept without him. Just as she’d known they would, the tears had released memories. Jerky, stuttering images of darkness and grime and tallow-tainted candlelight flickering off weeping brick walls. Snow-dusted cobbles on the steep streets. Leering eyes and groping hands. She could still feel the bite of cold against her toes and fingers, the fretful grip of an empty belly. She could smell offal and old drink and cabbage.

Fear. She could smell fear and remembered it on herself. Worse, because she hadn’t been able to prevent it, she remembered it on Mae. Nothing would absolve her for that because Mae had never understood. Not really. She had just looked to Fiona for answers. And Fee had only had reasons.

And yet, this morning as the chilly sun splashed across her covers, the guilt felt blunted. Diluted by the tears that had drenched her. That had drenched Alex. She felt quieter than she could remember in her life.

He had been right. It had been time. It had been well past time. She had spent years holding it off, and Alex had finally forbidden it any longer, forcing the wound open with gentle eyes and the sanctuary of his arms. And no matter what happened from here on out, she would love him for the courage it took for him to face it with her.

He had been so gentle. So kind. So understanding as she had washed him in contrition. She had heard his offhand proposal. Proposals. Both of them. And yet, how could he possibly mean them after what he’d said in the carriage? How he had reacted to her admission? She had seen the look of loathing. She swore she could still feel its impact, a punch to the chest. A strangulation of strangely resilient dreams.

And yet, when he had bent to lay gentle lips against her forehead, she had dreamed again.

Foolish girl indeed. There was nothing more pitiful than a girl who insisted on a depth of feeling that simply didn’t exist. He felt sorry for her. But he couldn’t respect her. Not a woman who had admitted what she had. How could he and respect himself?

Enough
, she thought, setting the pillow aside. She would know soon enough. She would know everything about her future. Gingerly sliding off the bed onto wobbly legs, she settled cook’s night rail about her and looked around. The room was so sleek, a symphony of blues and greens with slim Chippendale furniture and watercolor landscapes. Another place that reflected its owner, she suspected.

And yet there was nothing that might help her. No dress, no shoes, no hint of what she should do next. What she needed to do, besides find Alex. She simply didn’t know, and it left her standing by the bed staring at the door like a witless fool.

Every other day of her life, she had jumped from bed with some purpose, be it tedious, exciting, or determined. She could think of a thousand different things she would have been doing even a week before. Even a day before.

Before Mae had turned to Chuffy Wilde and relieved Fiona of the weight she had carried with her for her entire life. Before Fiona realized that even though Mae would always love her, she would no longer need to rely on her. Before Alex had offered his devil’s bargain, to take care of her, whether he loved her or not.

Fiona was a bit surprised by how afraid she felt. After all, hadn’t she dreamed of this day her whole life, no matter how she loved her sister? Hadn’t she wanted to be able to ask more than
What does Mae need?
to start her day?

But what did she ask now?

As if she had been called by Fiona’s distress, Mae was suddenly standing in the doorway, her head tilted to one side, as tidy and pretty as if Fiona had helped her with hair and dress as usual, clad in a salmon-colored morning dress, her hair classically arranged around a lovely topknot.

“There you are,” Fee greeted her, struck by a new calm in her sister’s great blue eyes. An ease that had never sat well on Mae. Fiona thought of the reason and felt another surge of ambivalence. Everything was changing, had changed. She just didn’t know her own place in the future anymore.

Mae strode in, scowling. “I want you to sit down, Fee.” She dragged forth an overstuffed chair. “Here. Did Dr. O’Roarke fix you?”

Easing onto the chair, Fiona looked sharply up. “What do you mean?”

Mae shook her head, her eyes suddenly old and wise as she perched on the bed. “Fee. You have never fooled me once. If Chuffy had not promised that I would have upset you far more by breaking in, I would have been in here. I assumed your injury wasn’t life-threatening, since people simply walked fast, not ran.”

Fiona couldn’t help but smile at Mae’s logic. “I wondered if you knew. Well, I am fine. A few stitches only. Do you know where my attire is?”

Mae giggled. “In the trash bin, I assume. There was quite a lot of outrage about you playing a breeches part.”

Fiona scowled, even as her heart sped at the memory of that flight. “It is impossible to run across rooftops in a dress.”

“Or fight assailants, I assume.” Looking down for a minute, Mae fingered the pretty cream ribbon that fell from beneath her breasts. “I didn’t like you being alone last night, Fee. Not when you…when you…” Her head came up, betraying real anguish. “I have never heard you sound like that. But Chuffy said…”

Her heart melting, Fiona reached out to her sister, to find herself engulfed in a careful hug. “Chuffy was right. You would have been submerged in salt water. Alex was quite brave to face it.”

Mae hugged Fiona one more time and let her go, her obvious distress easing. “He’ll make a good husband, won’t he?”

“Chuffy?”

“Don’t be silly. Alex.”

Fiona’s breath caught. “Who?”

Mae huffed in indignation. “He asked you, didn’t he? He told Chuffy he would.”

Unable to bear the hope in Mae’s eyes, Fiona turned toward the window and the cold sunlight. “I’m not certain, actually. But if he did, I fear it may be from misplaced altruism.”

“You are nothing like his last wife,” Mae protested. “Chuffy told me that, too.”

“I am also in need of saving,” Fiona said. “At least in Alex’s mind. What about you, Mae Mae? Is Chuffy going to make an honest woman of you?”

And for the first time in Fiona’s life, she saw a look of pure joy in Mairead’s eyes as she considered something other than the heavens.
Breathtakingly incandescent
, Fiona thought distractedly, her own heart contracting painfully at this fresh evidence that she no longer needed to base her life on her sister’s.