"I meant how did you learn to play the piano?" Lottie gestured toward the keys, shock robbing her of all eloquence. "Like that?"
"Mama was teaching me when she died." The girl shrugged her slender shoulders. "It was never hard for me the way it is for some people."
Lottie shook her head. The child was a prodigy and she didn't even realize it. "I thought you didn't remember your mother."
"Oh, I remember her!" Allegra's gaze grew fierce again. "He doesn't want me to, but I do. She was kind and funny, always laughing and singing. She would spend hours just sitting on the floor with me, drawing pictures or teaching me a new song. She would let me wear all of her hats and we would serve tea to my dolls together."
Lottie smiled wistfully, wishing she had such memories of her own mother. "You must miss her very much."
Allegra rose from the piano bench. She paced back and forth across the parquet floor, bunching up handfuls of the fine linen to keep from tripping over the hem of the oversized nightdress. "I never meant to become a ghost, you know. Whenever Father would go away, I would sneak in here and play the piano. I didn't even realize the servants could hear me until one morning when I overheard Meggie and Martha whispering about the manor being haunted."
"But you didn't stop."
"No," Allegra admitted, her gaze openly defiant."I didn't. After a while, I even started playing when Father was home. He was in Yorkshire on business when I first found the trunk in the attic where he kept Mama's things locked away. I put on her nightdress because it smelled like her."
Lottie nodded. That must explain the jasmine, although oddly enough, the fragrance seemed much weaker than it had only a few minutes ago.
Allegra turned pleading eyes to Lottie. "I didn't have anything of hers, you see. He'd hidden it all away. And he refused to speak of her at all. It was as if she had never existed, and I couldn't bear it!" The girl's voice broke as fresh tears spilled down her cheeks. "Oh, I hate him! I hate him with all my heart!"
Lottie didn't even realize she'd opened her arms until Allegra ran into them. The girl flung her arms around Lottie's waist, sobbing as if her heart was breaking anew. As she stroked Allegra's soft, thick hair, Lottie lifted her head to find Hayden standing in the doorway of the music room, his face ashen in the moonlight. Before she could reach out a hand to him, he had vanished back into the shadows.
* * *
Lottie drew a blanket over the sleeping child. Although Allegra's face was still stained with tears, she slept with the open-mouthed abandon of the very young. She probably wouldn't awaken until morning. Even so, Lottie was reluctant to leave her all alone. She glanced around the child's bedchamber until she spotted her old doll perched on the windowsill, smirking affably at them both. Lottie gently tucked the doll in the crook of Allegra's arm, then drew the bedchamber door shut behind her, leaving the lamp burning.
She found Hayden exactly where she thought she would — standing in the middle of the music room, gazing up at Justine's portrait. The moon had shifted in the sky, bathing the portrait in a luminous glow.
"Why shouldn't my daughter hate me?" he asked bitterly as he heard Lottie's hesitant footfall behind him. "After all, I took her mother away from her."
For just an instant, Lottie would have sworn her heart stopped.
"Look around this house," he continued. "Outside of this room, there are no portraits of her, no samplers she stitched, no watercolors she painted — not even the smallest remembrance that she ever walked these corridors. Allegra was so young when her mother died. I suppose I thought it would be better if she could just… forget."
Lottie's heart started beating again, if unevenly. She sank down on the edge of the divan, her knees betraying her. "How could you expect Allegra to forget? You obviously haven't."
Turning away from the portrait, Hayden moved to the piano. Using only one finger, he picked out the first few notes of the second movement of Beethoven's "Pathetique." "I even denied her the piano after her mother died. I suppose I always believed that somehow the music and the madness went hand in hand, that she couldn't have one without the other. Justine was brilliant. Had she been a man, she would have been invited to play for the king. She adored music."
"And you adored her." Lottie refused to insult either of them by pretending it was a question.
Hayden's finger hit the wrong note. He withdrew his hand from the keys. "We were very young when we wed. I wasn't yet twenty-one and she was seventeen. At first I thought her mercurial moods were just part of her charm. She was French, after all, and much less reserved than the women I was accustomed to. One minute she'd be laughing, the next sulking over some imagined slight, the next goading you into a shouting match. But then she'd cry and beg you to forgive her so prettily." He shook his head wryly. "It was impossible to stay angry at her for more than a few minutes."
Lottie stole another look at the portrait, then almost wished she hadn't.
Hayden straddled the piano bench, facing her. "It wasn't until after Allegra was born that Justine's moods took a darker turn. She would go for days without sleeping, then take to her bed for weeks at a time."
"It must have been very difficult for you."
He shook his head, refusing her pity. "There were dark days, but there were good days, too. When Justine was well, we were all happy. She adored Allegra. Being a mother gave her so much joy. Although she would sometimes turn her wrath against me, I never once saw her lift a hand to our baby." His face darkened so dramatically that Lottie glanced at the skylight to see if a cloud had passed over the moon. "When Allegra was six, Justine lapsed back into one of her black moods. I thought perhaps a Season in London would lift her spirits. We married so young that I'd always felt a little guilty for depriving her of the social whirl she loved." Abitter smile twisted his lips. "My dear friends Ned and Phillipe had both courted her before we married. At our wedding, they laughed and swore they'd never forgive me for stealing away their treasure."
A tarnished treasure indeed, Lottie thought, but she managed to hold her tongue.
Hayden rose from the bench and began to pace the floor much as his daughter had done earlier. "At first London seemed to be the answer to all of my prayers. For over a fortnight, Justine was the toast of the town, the belle of every ball. Then things started to go wrong. I knew the signs only too well. She stopped sleeping. Her eyes grew too bright, her laugh too shrill. She would pick quarrels with me over anything — or nothing at all. We started having terrible rows. We both said things that were… unforgivable. She began staying out until the wee hours of morning, wearing too much powder and rouge, flirting shamelessly with other men in my presence."
"What did you do?" Lottie asked, fighting the urge to reach out and grab his hand as he passed.
"What could I do?" He spun around to face her. "When one of my sympathetic friends sent over his private physician — a most reputable fellow who had treated our former king during some of his darkest days — the man simply shook his head and suggested I send her to Bedlam. Bedlam!" Hayden dropped to one knee, closing his hands over Lottie's shoulders. His eyes searched her face, their dark-fringed depths fierce with anguish. "Do you know what they do to the inmates at Bethlem Hospital, Lottie? They chain them to the walls in tiny cells. The attendants charge the public a fee to come and gawk at them. Why, Justine wouldn't have survived the night!"
Now Lottie couldn't bear to look at him or the portrait. Couldn't bear to imagine that vibrant young creature chained to a wall like a feral animal while spectators paraded past, laughing and pointing. She didn't realize she was crying until Hayden gently brushed a tear from her cheek with the pad of his thumb.
"After the physician left, I informed Justine that we'd be returning to Cornwall in the morning." He fingered the scar beneath his left ear, managing a rueful smile. "She did not take the news well. I was afraid she might do some mischief to herself so I gave her a generous dose of laudanum. Her physician from home had sent a bottle with me, just as a precaution
. Before long she was sleeping like a babe.
"There were arrangements to make. Friends to bid farewell to. So I left her there in the care of a servant."
Hayden rose to his feet. Once Lottie might have begged to hear the end of such a story. But suddenly she wanted to press her fingertips to his lips, wanted to implore him not to utter another word about that night.
When he spoke again, all the passion had drained from his voice, leaving it as remote as the moon. "When I returned, I found her with Phillipe." His uncompromising gaze pinned Lottie to the divan. "Do you want to know what the worst of it was?"
"No," she whispered. But it was too late. They both knew it.
"He let her believe it was me. She was sick and drugged and confused and she thought I'd returned so we could make up our quarrel. If she hadn't been watching, half out of her mind, when I dragged him off of her, I wouldn't have waited for the duel. I would have killed him with my bare hands." He flexed those hands now, reminding Lottie of their power.
"If you had, you'd be rotting away in Newgate right now and Allegra would be without a father." But would she still be without a mother? It was the one question Lottie couldn't bring herself to ask.
Hayden raked a hand through his hair, shaking his head. "After Phillipe fled, everything was a blur. I was half crazed myself. I remember sweeping Justine up in my arms and carrying her through the town house. All I could think about was getting her out of that bed where she had… where they had…" His hands clenched into fists. "She still didn't realize what had happened. I remember the feel of her cuddled against my chest, the way her arms curled so trustingly around my neck just as they had a hundred times before. She gazed up into my eyes and told me how sorry she was for the cruel things she'd said, the hurtful things she'd done. She told me how much she loved me, how grateful she was to me for giving her the chance to prove that love."
He unclenched his hands, studying them as if they belonged to a stranger. "For one fleeting instant, as I gazed down into those beautiful eyes of hers, I wanted to strangle the life from her, if only to spare her the knowledge of what she had done — what she'd done to us."
"But you didn't," Lottie said fiercely, rising from the divan.
He watched her approach, his eyes wary. "I have no need of your pity, my lady, and I certainly don't deserve your absolution."
"I don't pity you," she said calmly. "I envy you."
"Envy?" He snorted in disbelief. "Are you mad as well?"
She shook her head. "Most people go through their entire lives and never know a love like the one you and Justine shared."
Hayden rolled his eyes toward the skylight. "Dear Lord in heaven, deliver me from the romantic notions of schoolgirls. If that was love," he all but spat, "then I want no part of it ever again. It does nothing but destroy everything in its path."
"It hasn't destroyed you or your daughter. Yet."
"Are you so sure of that? You heard Allegra tonight. She despises me."
Lottie rested her hands on her hips. "Oh, really? Is that why she goes into hysterics at the mere mention of being sent away from you? Is that why she snuck into this room and masqueraded as a ghost in the desperate hope that you would be the one to walk through those doors, not me? Why, the only way she knew how to get your attention was by dressing up as her dead mother!"
For a long moment, Hayden could only blink at her in disbelief. "That's ridiculous! Whenever I try to give her my attention, she flings it back in my face, just as she did the doll I had made for her."
"That's because she doesn't want dolls or expensive toys from you. She wants you to look at her! She wants you to really look at her, just once, without seeing Justine!"
Lottie couldn't have said when her voice rose to a shout. She just knew that somehow they'd ended up standing toe-to-toe, so close she could feel the heat roiling off of his body and smell the crisp, rich scent of his bayberry soap.
Hayden reached down and twined one of her long, golden curls around his fingertip, his voice growing dangerously soft. "What about you, Carlotta? What do you want?"
Lottie wanted him to look at her, just once, without seeing Justine.
She wanted him to assure her that she wasn't falling in love with a murderer.
But most of all, she wanted to kiss him. She wanted to stand on tiptoe and claim that wary mouth of his for her very own. She wanted to kiss him until all the ghosts — both Justine and that phantom of his younger self — had been banished from the room. She wanted to twine her arms around his neck, press herself against him, and remind him just how warm and giving living flesh could be.
So she did.
Chapter 15
How could my treacherous flesh crave the touch of a murderer?
HAYDEN STIFFENED IN SHOCK AS LOTTIE'S lips brushed his jaw, scattering soft kisses all along its rigid curve. He closed his eyes, a muscle working in his throat, as her lips sought the corner of his mouth. But it was the bold flick of her tongue against that vulnerable spot that made him groan, coaxed his mouth into melting against hers, no longer able to resist the carnal innocence of such a kiss.
Wrapping his arms around Lottie, Hayden slanted his mouth over hers, thrusting his tongue deep into the silky heat of her mouth. Her tongue curled around his, maddening him with its wordless promise of pleasure. Pleasure he had denied himself for far too long. Somewhere in his mind, love and loss had become inextricably intertwined. But Lottie was seeking to give, not take, and he was powerless to resist such a generous offer.
Until he glanced up to find Justine laughing down at him, mocking him for succumbing to the very temptation that had once proved his ruin.
Hayden thrust himself away from Lottie, struggling to catch his breath. If he dared to look at her in the moonlight with the spun gold of her hair tumbling down her back, her lush lips moist and swollen from his kisses, her misty blue eyes imploring, he knew they'd both be lost. He'd have her beneath him on the divan, her nightdress rucked up around her waist, before she could draw another breath.
"I already told you once," he said, his voice so harsh he barely recognized it himself, "I neither want nor deserve your pity."
"Is that all you think I have to offer you — pity?"
Hayden closed his eyes, steeling himself against the husky catch in her voice. "I'm sure you have much to offer, my lady. But I have nothing to give you in return."
"Because you gave it all to her."
Even as his silence condemned him in her eyes, Hayden could not resist stealing one last look at Lottie.
Although her eyes glistened with unshed tears, that stubborn little chin of hers had lost none of its determination. "Then I hope the two of you will be very happy together. I'm beginning to believe you deserve each other."
With those words, his wife turned and walked stiffly from the room, much as his daughter had done earlier in that cursed day.
Biting off an oath, Hayden swept one of the porcelain shepherdesses off the mantel and hurled it at Justine's portrait with all of his might. The figurine shattered against the canvas without leaving a single mark on her angelic face.
* * *
The next morning Lottie sat on a rock near the edge of the cliff, the hem of her skirts whipping in the wind. She wanted to cry, but she knew the wind would only snatch the tears from her face before they could fall. So she simply gazed out to sea, her heart aching and her eyes burning with unshed tears. She wondered if Justine had ever sat in this very spot, gazing down upon the jagged rocks that would end her life.
Lottie was beginning to realize just what a colossal fool she had been since coming to Oakwylde. She had thought to banish all the ghosts from the manor, never taking into consideration that it wasn't Hayden's house that was haunted, but his heart. Despite all of her bravado, she did not know how to fight an enemy she could not see.
Watching the breakers swirl around the rocks, she wondered how it must feel to be loved with that kind of all-consuming passion. How could a man destroy somethi
ng he loved so much? But passion and jealous rage often went hand in hand, she reminded herself. The hunger to possess was all too often coupled with the drive to destroy what refused to be possessed.
"Justine," she whispered bitterly, searching the cloudswept sky. "Why did you have to take all of his secrets to your grave?"
She closed her eyes, wondering if she was imagining the faint hint of jasmine that perfumed the wind.
When she opened them, Allegra was standing there, clutching Lottie's doll in her arms. As usual, she didn't bother with pleasantries, but simply blurted out, "Father says I'm to be allowed into the music room to practice the piano whenever I like."
Although her expression was no less dour than it normally was, the girl somehow managed to look as happy as Lottie had ever seen her. Perversely enough, it was Hayden's kindness, not his rebuff that finally prompted the tears in Lottie's eyes to well over.
"That's marvelous," she said, dashing away a tear before Allegra could see it. "I'm so happy for you."
"Then why are you crying?" the child asked, creeping nearer.
"I'm not crying," Lottie insisted. "The wind just blew a speck of dirt in my eye." But to her dismay, the tears began to spill down her cheeks faster than she could dash them away.
"No, it didn't," Allegra said accusingly. "You're crying."
No longer able to dispute the obvious, Lottie buried her face in her hands to muffle her sobs.
She was startled to feel the weight of a small hand on her shoulder. "Why are you crying?" Allegra asked, sounding genuinely curious. "Was someone mean to you? Someone besides me?"
That earned her a strangled hiccup of laughter. Lottie lifted her head, smiling at the child through watery eyes. "No one was mean to me. I'm just feeling a little sad today."
"Here." Allegra shoved the doll at Lottie. "When I'm sad, sometimes I squeeze her very tightly and it makes me feel better."
Caught off guard by the child's unexpected generosity, Lottie took her old doll and gave it a wary squeeze. Surprisingly enough, she did feel a little better. But not nearly as good as she felt when Allegra slipped one small hand into hers.