How many would see him like this in the future?
Oh, but now, at this moment, only she did. She was the one who commanded him. She was the one whose hair he tangled his fingers in.
She was the one who licked and licked and licked his cock until he moaned in lost abandon.
Until he broke.
He sat up and, in a tangle of purple silk, grasped her and pulled her into his lap, her thighs wrapping around his back. Still sitting, facing her, he thrust into her, rocking hard, his azure eyes gleaming in triumph and lust.
She wound her arms about his neck and rocked with him, watching him, trying to clutch, to hold this moment: the smells, the sounds, the sight of him gazing up at her.
He leaned over and picked up his half-full wineglass and splashed the cold liquid on her breasts.
She let her head roll on her shoulders, gasping as he licked the red wine from her nipples and thrust his cock into her.
He took one nipple into his mouth and suckled and she caught her breath, falling, despairing, the tears suddenly washing over her eyes.
“Valentine. Valentine. Valentine,” she whispered as the shocks quaked through her. “I love you.”
And he shouted his own release.
DAWN WAS A very good time to hold a duel, in Val’s opinion. First, one was wide awake, having never gone to sleep the night before. Second, everyone else was sleepy, having awoken at an unaccustomed hour. Third, most people were actually asleep at dawn—well, most people of any consequence—which made for less of a chance of witnesses. And fourth, dawn was generally a very pretty time of day—mists, the rose-tinted light just peeking o’er yon horizon, et cetera, et cetera.
Fourth, he found, did not actually pertain to dawn in late October.
Val shivered on his black mare as he made his way through the park. The dawn was looking more gray than rose-tinted and there was the definite threat of rain in the air. He very much hoped that he might quickly stab Caire in the arm—or another appropriately painful, but not actually fatal spot—and then hurry home to a hot pot of tea.
Up ahead, through the gloomy mists, a few individuals were standing about. Either he’d found his dueling partners or he’d happened upon someone else’s duel. If so he’d offer to trade just so he could get the thing over with before it rained. Séraphine had been warm and, now that he thought about it, rose-tinted, when he’d left her curled in his bed.
If he was lucky she’d still be there when he returned.
“Montgomery,” Caire called as he neared. “Where is your second?”
“Don’t have one,” Val said as he swung his leg over the mare’s neck and dropped to the ground. “If you kill me, your second will just have to be satisfied with kicking my body.”
That surprised a laugh from one of the other two men, a bespectacled gentleman wearing a gray wig.
Caire grunted. “Well, I brought one. Godric St. John, this is Valentine Napier, the Duke of Montgomery.”
St. John seemed to suppress a sigh as he made a bow, his gray eyes grave.
Val made his usual elegant sweep as he was introduced to the third man, the doctor.
“May I examine the blades?” St. John asked.
“If you must,” Val said, unsheathing his and holding it out over his forearm, hilt first. He met Caire’s eyes. “I hope we can finish this soon. I left your sister in my bed.”
St. John swore under his breath and stepped between them, facing Val. “Are you insane?”
“Many think so.” Val was watching Caire, his lips twitching.
Caire hadn’t moved. Only his eyes, hard and staring and trained upon Val, showed that he’d heard Val’s words. Those eyes burned a bit like Séraphine’s, Val mused, and he wondered if the other man truly meant to kill him this morning.
Well, he could certainly try.
He grinned. “Shall we begin?”
St. John handed them back their swords.
In the distance galloping hoofbeats could be heard, drawing closer.
Val assumed his fencer’s stance, muscles readied, arms gracefully extended, death at the point of his sword.
He smiled into Caire’s eyes.
The other man had a longer reach.
But Val would lay money he was the quicker of the two.
And he was the younger by at least eight years, maybe more.
He shifted his weight to his back leg, ready, waiting…
“En garde!”
Caire sprang, ferocious and fast, and Val laughed out loud as he parried, retreating, looking for the opening…
“Stop! Stop at once!”
The roar came from the mounted man, on a horse so huge it looked like something used to pull a brewer’s cart. The horse half reared, protesting the abrupt halt, and Val came within inches of having his brains dashed out by an enormous hoof.
Both duelists backed quickly away, their swords lowering.
“What’s the meaning of this?” Caire demanded.
While his second asked more calmly, “Who are you, sir?”
“I’m Hugh Fitzroy, the Duke of Kyle,” said the rider, who certainly was. He looked at Val. “And I need to speak to you.”
Val waved his sword. “Busy.”
“Now.”
Val arched an eyebrow, but walked over, out of curiosity if nothing else. He’d had no idea Kyle had such a flair for the dramatic.
Kyle took something from his cloak and it was a moment before Val recognized it.
Perhaps a killing blow was always a surprise.
“You know what this is,” Kyle said.
“I do,” Val said, tasting blood in his mouth, though that might’ve been his imagination. “The question is, do you?”
Kyle glanced at the casket in his hands. “I know that whatever is in this box is enough for you to forfeit this duel.” He looked up. “And that I can trade it for the prince’s letters. All of the letters.”
“Ah,” said Val, drawing back his head. “No, you don’t know what is in the box, then. If you did, you’d use it for far more than paltry letters.”
He turned and looked at Caire, unsmiling. “I forfeit the duel. I do apologize most abjectly. I am a cad, a bounder, a rogue, a liar, a thief, a blackmailer, a murderer, and, yes, the seducer of your sister. I regret causing offense to your house and to your honor.”
Caire looked at him and nodded curtly.
Val bowed and turned to Kyle.
The duke was watching him speculatively. “What’s in the box?”
“Oh,” Val said as he mounted the black mare. “That. It’s my heart—or what’s left of it. She gave you my heart.”
Chapter Eighteen
That night King Heartless and Prue trudged wearily to the garden. “I think your father plays me for a fool,” the king growled. “If he does I shall cut off his head.”
Prue threw down the needle she was trying to thread. “This is why people say you’re heartless.”
“I am heartless,” said King Heartless. “What more should you expect?”…
—From King Heartless
She didn’t know what to do next.
Funny. Bridget had spent most of her life placing one foot in front of the other, one task after another, going from one situation to the next, methodical, precise. Her day was ordered from when she rose to when she blew out her candle, a series of chores and lists and arranged events.
And now?
Now she was walking down a London street, very early in the morning, a soft bag with all her worldly possessions held in one hand, and Pip trotting on her other side.
She didn’t even know where to go.
Around her London was waking, maids coming out to sweep the front steps, delivery carts rolling by, and she… she didn’t know what to do.
She’d received the note from the Duke of Kyle with its curt message: “Done. All safe.” And then she’d fled. She’d not even had the courage to wait for Val to return. To bear his recriminations and anger for betraying him.
>
What a coward she was.
A carriage pulled up beside her.
Bridget halted and for a moment her heart squeezed so tight she thought it might stop altogether.
But then the door opened and Lady Caire peered out.
Bridget blinked.
A footman got down from the back and set the step.
“Well, get in, dear,” said Lady Caire, and Bridget did.
Pip hopped in as well, the door shut, and the carriage started forward.
“I didn’t know you had a dog,” Lady Caire said, staring at Pip.
Bridget looked at him.
Unfortunately he was trying to bite his hind leg.
She glanced up again. “I do.”
“I see,” said Lady Caire.
Pip jumped on the seat beside Bridget and the carriage rumbled on for a bit.
Lady Caire cleared her throat. “Montgomery forfeited the duel.”
Bridget nodded.
“I understand,” Lady Caire said, “that we have you to thank for that, Bridget.”
Bridget looked at her. “Did you name me?”
Lady Caire looked startled. “I’m sorry?”
“Did you name me or did you just drop me with Mam and my foster father and leave them to pick a name? Did you know them at all?” Bridget’s hands were twisting in her lap and she half laughed as she remembered Val’s words. “Or perhaps you put me in a basket like a kitten and sent me off with a servant to find someone to raise me. Did you even care if they were good or bad people?”
Lady Caire’s face had gone white. “I stayed with a girlhood friend up there. She knew your… Mam and foster father. I went to interview them in their cottage when… when I was close. Your Mam was there when I had you. She was the second to hold you. After me. I held you first. I cradled you in my arms and saw that you had black hair—my family’s black hair—and a red scrunched face. You were very quiet. My son screamed at birth but you just lay and looked around with wide eyes. We swaddled you. And then I gave you to your Mam.” Lady Caire looked down at her hands. “I named you Bridget because… because I knew that I couldn’t give you one of my family’s names. Bridget was my old nanny’s name. She was from Ireland and I loved her dearly.”
She looked up and tears were silently streaming down her proud aristocratic cheeks.
“There are many, many things that I regret doing in my life, but nothing that I regret more than what I did to you, Bridget.”
At that Bridget burst into tears.
SHE WAS GONE.
Gone.
Gone.
Gone.
His housekeeper, his archangel, his inquisitor, his Bridget.
His Séraphine.
Burning light. Warmth in the darkness. Stealer of both heart and soul.
Though he had that back. He’d bartered it for a handful of royal letters.
Val stared at the ivory box as he drank from the bottle of wine. Straight from the bottle of wine, for he seemed to have misplaced his wineglass and none of the servants would come near him no matter how loudly he bellowed.
Such were the things that happened when one’s housekeeper left.
She’d said she loved him. Loved him. What a strange and wondrous thing. And how it hurt, this love! What pain it caused, like tiny knives in the veins. He didn’t think he liked it much, but he’d endure it, yes he would, if only she’d return and stab him again.
He held out his arms and looked at the ceiling of his library, his grand library, his very favorite room in his magnificent house, the house he’d had built to his very, very specific plans. The ceiling was painted and gilded and grand, very grand.
And cold.
Everything was cold.
The fire wasn’t hot enough, that was the problem. So he took some of his books—his beautiful, beautiful books—and burned them, gilt edges curling, illuminated pages turning brown, fine leather smoking and stinking, and thought that must be a shame. Séraphine would scold him were she here. She would snatch them from the fire and never burn her plump fingers for she was a creature of fire herself, burning, burning.
But she wasn’t here.
Gone.
Gone.
Gone.
And when he looked up from the embers of his precious books, he saw that he’d somehow smashed the bottle of wine. He’d trod on the glass in his bare feet and his blood had mingled with the wine on the floor.
Or perhaps it was the opposite. Perhaps the wine had mingled with the blood in his veins and now he was part grape.
Fair Séraphine had tried to explain to him the difference, right from wrong. It made sense to her because she burned and was an angel. But to him, a creature of hollow ice and pain, it was sound and confusion without her to filter it for him.
And she wasn’t here to care anyway, either for him or for his victims.
So he wrote to Dyemore.
“I’M SO GLAD you agreed to stay with us,” Temperance Huntington, Lady Caire said the next morning at the breakfast table to Bridget.
Bridget bit her lip, looking up from the eggs she hadn’t touched. Yesterday, after an incredibly awkward carriage ride, the elder Lady Caire had deposited Bridget at her son’s town house and then almost immediately left. Bridget had been a very poor guest so far, having spent the previous day mostly in her room, exhausted and sleeping, too depressed to venture forth and confront strangers who must think the very worst of her.
This morning, though, she’d determined not to be such a coward. “Thank you for letting me stay, my lady. I do appreciate it very much and I promise it won’t be for long. Just until I can find a new position and—”
“Oh.” The lady’s brows knit over her gold-brown eyes. “First of all, you’re more than welcome to stay as long as you wish—indefinitely, really. You’re Lazarus’s sister. And please. Call me Temperance.” She smiled, her entire face lighting. “We’re sisters, after all, aren’t we?”
“I…” Bridget had to look away from the kind face. The tears threatened again, damn it. She’d never been one for weeping and now she was a veritable watering pot. She inhaled shakily. “You’re very kind.”
The sudden scrape of a chair made her look up.
Temperance was standing. She held out her hand. “Will you come with me? I want to show you something.”
The elder woman led Bridget up a staircase, splendid but not as flamboyant as dear Val’s—push that thought aside. Down a passage that obviously held the private apartments of the family, and to a set of large double doors. She opened them and Bridget blinked.
This was the master bedroom, and most obviously used by both the lord and the lady of the house.
Bridget looked at Temperance, but the other lady was calmly walking to a tall chest of drawers. On top were arranged a few items and she picked up one and turned, holding it out.
“This is Annalise,” Temperance said. “The first Annalise. Lazarus’s younger sister—and your elder, I suppose.”
Bridget took the miniature—for that was what it was—and looked. A small girl peered up at her, dark-haired, brown-eyed, wearing a severe, square-necked bodice and a ribbon around her throat.
She looked all of four.
Bridget glanced up and met Temperance’s sad golden eyes.
“Their father was… well, as far as I can gather he was quite awful,” Temperance said matter-of-factly. “Very strict. Possibly mad. And he ruled the household with an iron fist. When Annalise was five she caught some sort of fever. He refused to call a doctor. Amelia, Lady Caire, pleaded with him, but he…” Temperance shook her head, pressing her lips together. “Annalise died. Lazarus was ten years old.”
Bridget swallowed and looked Temperance in her golden eyes. “I’m not Annalise.”
“No,” Temperance said at once. “Oh, no. I didn’t mean that. You can’t replace her, of course. It’s just…” She sighed. “He never had anyone else, you see. He rather blamed Lady Caire for Annalise’s death, even though… well. Child
ren can be so stubborn in their prejudices, can’t they?” she said somewhat obscurely. “Anyway, it’s only been recently that they’ve been able to talk at all. For years he was so alone. So lonely. I know he can seem quite intimidating, so sharp and, well, looming.” She rolled her eyes. “And he didn’t exactly make a very good first impression, calling out your… well… the Duke of Montgomery, which,” she muttered under her breath, “really is a bit hypocritical, considering how he courted me, but I hope you’ll give him a chance. You’re actually rather a miracle, you see.”
Bridget looked down at the miniature of a long-dead half sister and wondered if she’d found her family at last.
Chapter Nineteen
Prue had rather come to like the king in the last two nights, despite his foul temper, so she said, “I expect wisdom, fairness, and kindness from a king. Just because you haven’t a heart in your chest doesn’t mean you can’t act as if you had one.”
The king scowled quite ferociously, but Prue tilted her chin and stood her ground. “Fine!” he finally shouted.
They set to work and little more was said that night, but the king looked thoughtful as he labored.…
—From King Heartless
Everything was so gray without Val, Bridget thought morosely a few days later. She’d decided to take a short walk with Pip, who was trotting along jauntily beside her. Apparently now that she was the sister of a baron, she merited a footman to follow her. Something that she might find amusing were it not for the fact that everything was so gray, despite the fact that the sun was shining.
If only…
If only she could have one more chance to talk to him, to try to explain while he painted swirls of colors with words, to kiss him tenderly while he told her she burned.
To tell him again and again that she loved him even if he couldn’t quite return the words yet, his head cocked, his azure eyes glittering and alive.
But she’d betrayed him, given his worst secret, his most terrible vulnerability, to one of his enemies, and even with all his wonderful, beautiful, mercurial madness, Valentine would never be able to forgive that.