Relieved smiles traveled the group.
Never had she imagined a day might come when she would feel complimented by the approval of convicts.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
By the calendar, he’d only lost four days. But the bright midday light showed differently. It lit Liam’s face in the mirror and offered a glimpse of his elderly future: hollow cheeks. Ashen bruises beneath his eyes. A marionette’s mouth, bracketed by deep lines.
He gazed on himself steadily as he knotted his cravat. The old man in the mirror looked put out. His jaw flexed and hardened, a weakling’s sulk, frustration with a cravat that would not cooperate. His hands were trembling too violently to manipulate it.
Liam made a fist, squeezing hard, harder, hard enough to snap his own tendons, to break his own bones.
There. The trembling stopped.
He knotted the cravat tightly. Choke on it, he thought.
“Where are you going?”
His wife’s startled query came from the doorway. She had forgotten how to knock. She assumed it was her right now to come and go as she pleased. Brazen, entitled, smug little fool. “Out.”
“Out, where? You should be in bed. You’re—”
He pivoted toward her. His expression caused her to take a startled step backward.
“I have an appointment,” he said.
He had tossed her out on waking, four hours ago. She had been sleeping next to him at the time. And beforehand? Watching him, listening to him, undressing him, bathing him, eavesdropping on his dreams, feeding him medicine to keep him weak and careless and exposed. His valet had described these deeds to him in admiring tones, as though they were proof of what a faithful and wondrous boon she was, this wife of his. As though any of it had been her right.
“You nearly just died,” she said sharply. She had used these four hours to bathe and refresh herself. Her sacque dress, a russet silk edged in gold lace, had been chosen by somebody—perhaps her, perhaps a cunning dressmaker—to complement the green of her eyes, and to force the viewer’s awareness, through the clash of russet and red, to the flaming brilliance of her hair. She looked every inch a countess, fashionable and civilized and impossibly, provocatively beautiful.
He wanted to rip that gown. Rub dirt on her face. Knock the pins out of her complex coiffure. Perfection had no place near him. Her voice droned on, fattened by the authority she mistakenly thought she possessed.
“—no ordinary fever! Dr. Smith thinks someone poisoned you, do you know that? What on earth could be so important that you—”
Words like flies flapping about him. He pushed by them and by her, too, into the sitting room, before her hand caught his elbow.
He turned immediately. “Let go,” he said softly.
Her hand detached itself. He took a long breath.
“Very well,” she said. “I’m coming with you.”
“No, you are not.”
“Yes.” She moved past him, putting herself in the doorway, barring his way by clutching the doorframe. “You are not going out alone. You have no idea how ill you were!”
He stared at her for a moment. What an absurdity. She knew he could remove her, lift her bodily away, with the barest effort. She did not know how little he trusted himself to touch her at present. If she were a man, he already would have struck her.
The thought felt strange and sickening. He had never understood or appreciated violence before being forced to practice it. He had mastered it through practice. Now the skill had become a part of him, an instinct: destroy.
“Get out of the way,” he said very quietly.
She tightened her grip on the doorframe. “I’ve spent four days nursing you back to health, and I won’t—”
“You overstepped.” Words could unleash violence, too. They felt like daggers in his mouth, sharp and murderous to speak. “It was not your place to ‘nurse’ me. It was not your place even to feel concern.”
“How can you say that? I’m your—”
“My wife. My contract wife, whose duties begin and end with the money she provides.”
She met his eyes with what she probably told herself was bravery. The noble, stainless heroine, confronting the monster she had married. “You know it was always more than that.”
A dull roar rushed into his ears. “I beg your pardon?”
“We loved each other. And had I known then what I know now—”
Pity. She felt pity for him now. He had no interest in what her pity had wrought. “Step aside.”
“You’re still feverish,” she said urgently. “You—”
He grabbed her hand and forced it to his brow.
“I am cold as a stone,” he said as he dropped her hand. “And I am sick of you, Anna. Sick of your demands, sick of your good intentions, sick most of all of your prurient little interest in my past. I am leaving—”
“Prurient! Liam, I am telling you I loved you. And I . . .” She licked her lips. “And I lost my faith in it only because I thought you had abandoned me. Do you hear me? That love never died. But I thought you had left me. Now that I know the truth—”
The truth? She knew only the barest outlines. Would a black-and-white sketch show her the truth of a three-dimensional world? But she thought she understood. She thought her pity, her Florence Nightingale ministrations, should mean something. He should feel grateful, no doubt, to find her willing to look upon him without repulsion—to remember, even, how she had once felt for the boy he’d been.
“I am leaving,” he said flatly. “When I come back, you will not be here. Or, if you are, then I will find some other place to lodge. Is that clear?”
She looked astonished. “No, I—are you angry with me? Upset that I saw you, is that it? That I know everything now—”
His laughter sliced through her words. “Everything? You know everything, do you? And now you love me again. Yes, of course, knowing everything has won me your heart. You know, for instance, that I was tied down while some bastard burned my initials into me—because if I wanted to be called that name so badly, I could wear it on my skin. You knew that? And it moved you.”
Her lips fumbled around some syllable. Of course she had no reply for him. Unspeakable things had no reply.
But he had survived them. So he could speak them.
“You knew I was whipped bloody,” he said, “and salt spread in my wounds. You know I was starved, and felt grateful when Henneage vomited, for the bread came up as soon as it went down.”
Her mouth fell open.
“Baby bird,” he said. She looked like a baby bird, gaping for a mother’s feeding. “Yes, precisely like that.”
“God above,” she whispered. “I—” She swallowed. “I want to know these things, Liam. However horrible, I want to know—”
“How courageous. You’ll find the strength to listen. Very brave, Anna.”
She stared at him, her eyes huge and fearful. An infant, at last beholding light.
But he had more marvels to share. “You’ll want to know how I wept like a child as they buried me alive.”
No reply for that?
“Two days, I spent buried in the hole. And survived! What a miracle; let us thank God for the miracle. Or do you still want more details? Do you want to know precisely how it feels to have soil clog your throat, to turn to mud when mixed with your snot? That will inflame your fantasies, won’t it? That will increase your reborn love. Your husband weeping in terror—you can think of that while you touch yourself.”
She recoiled from the doorway. How could she not? She was almost, almost, seeing him clearly now.
“Liam.” Her voice sounded broken. “I—I don’t—”
“Oh, but that’s not all.” He heard his own voice, light and casual. He saw her flinch from it. She had no practice at violence. “Later, I begged. I licked a monster’s boots. I sucked the dirt off his heels. And I tell myself it was not unforgivable—I tell myself there is no shame; it was for Wilkins’s life that I did it. I saved his t
hroat from the noose, so the shame, no, it shouldn’t crush me. But here’s the truth, Anna: it was not hard by then to bend my knees. I groveled without much effort at all, if truth be told. Go ahead, picture it—hold it in your mind: on my hands and knees, bleeding, licking a man’s boots like a dog.” He paused, staring at her. His smile made her go paler, it seemed.
“Precisely,” he continued. “Now, perhaps you can offer to bathe my brow and tell me again that you love me. That will make it all better. Remind me that your heart was broken when I disappeared—what a great tragedy, Shakespearean really! And even now, it makes you weep.” For tears were streaming down her face. “Are those tears for you, or for me?”
“For you,” she said brokenly.
“Then spare me the fucking sight of them. I cried my fill in the hole. I am done with these goddamned scenes.”
He pushed past her.
For once, she had the sense not to pursue.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Four years earlier
The ambulatory was made of gray stone, medieval pillars thicker than a man’s trunk, supporting archways that opened onto a small walled courtyard. Liam stepped through one of these archways, half expecting to find his path barred by some kilted ghost bearing uplifted claymore, demanding to know his business here.
Marriage, he would say. I have come here to be married.
But the courtyard was empty. A damp breeze stirred the branches of the weedy tree growing at the center. Liam took a seat on the single bench and studied his companion. An orange tree, he thought—no wonder it looked shrunken and wistful. It had been bred for kinder climates than this one.
From the other side of the wall came a sudden shout of laughter. Gravel crunched, conversation swelled and dimmed. Guests were arriving, greeting old friends as they processed inside. They would not guess that the groom sat ten yards away, alone, without family to accompany him, or friends to give encouragement in this last hour of his bachelorhood.
Melodrama. He’d left behind several friends in the hot, crowded rectory. Drinking friends, sporting friends, chums from his days at Trinity. In their company, this last hour, he had felt increasingly alone. He needed a moment to remember the people who should have been here in their place.
His father: he could have used his father’s advice. His father had known how to keep a complicated woman happy, how to manage the sharp edges of her temper when the world condescended to her, how to keep her laughing, how to provoke and lure her when her quick, changeable interests turned in new directions.
His mother: sharp-witted, strong-willed, restless in her curiosity. Those qualities had proved poorly fitted to what the world wanted of her, but Liam’s father had become her refuge, her inspiration, her joy. Liam knew what she would advise him: Consider your wife your greatest and rarest treasure. Guard her. Protect her. Above all, respect her. For it is a rare treasure that cannot be captured, only coaxed to stay.
His parents had prepared him well, for all that they had left too soon. Their memories would guide him. He knew they would have approved, and not only because this marriage, his bride’s wealth, would save his patrimony. They would have approved of her—Anna—his soon-to-be-wife.
He took a deep breath. The salted air tasted like the sea. He had once dreamed only of travel, of adventure. He had not realized that another person could be one’s adventure.
He wished Julian were here. Jules would listen to these thoughts calmly, without surprise, but with a dash of wry amusement that would help these feelings seem lighter, easier to bear.
Instead, Julian was in India. Liam had expected a cable from him, good wishes. But none had come.
Some noise startled him. He rose, and caught sight of a furtive movement—a glimpse of ivory lace, retreating behind a pillar.
A disbelieving smile lightened his mood. “Come out,” he said.
And his soon-to-be-bride replied, laughing: “It’s bad luck. I didn’t know you were out here!”
She had plastered herself to the far side of the pillar, but her belling skirts spilled into view on either side—tiers of stiffened satin, gleaming like moonlight, embroidered with seed pearls and fringed in thick lace. “You’re superstitious? I wouldn’t have—”
“In this, I am! Don’t come into view.”
“I won’t. It’s your face I mustn’t see—is that right?”
A pause. “I don’t think the superstition is specific on that question.”
She still sounded amused. “Then stay where you are,” he murmured, and reached around the pillar, groping blindly until her hands found his own. Her fingers were warm, soft. As her grip tightened, he felt some last, buried anxiety dissipate. A great peace filled him.
And a jumping, fluttering excitement.
They would be married.
As though she heard his thoughts, she whispered, “Tonight, we’ll be husband and wife.”
“Yes.”
They stood for a long moment, the pillar between them, and he listened to the sounds of her: her soft rapid breath, the faint rustle of shifting satin, the scuff of her slippers across stone.
“I have never felt faint before,” she said. “But I am dizzy with it. This time tomorrow, we will be en route to Paris, and married. Together, with nobody to keep us apart.”
His thoughts had not gone that far. With his hands pressed to hers, his brain had darted squarely toward tonight, and the challenge this dress would pose. “How many buttons?” he asked.
It took her only a moment to follow his meaning, and she giggled. “Hundreds.”
“God save me.”
“Your first test!”
They laughed together, and he set his forehead against the pillar, greatly needing the cool reproach of the stone to distract his body. It would not do to go down the aisle in this state.
“Everyone is inside now,” she murmured. “I peeked out a minute ago.”
“All your aunties?”
“Yes, and sixty or seventy cousins. Are you certain you’re all right, Liam? I came out here because this gown weighs three stone, and I needed a fresh breeze. But . . .”
Why are you out here? was her unfinished question.
“I was thinking of my parents,” he said quietly.
“Oh.”
“This is the happiest day of my life. I only wish my family were here.”
She squeezed his hands. “But it is. I am here. I’m your family now.”
The breath went from him. It took a moment to find his voice again; the words came out hushed, like a prayer. “How fortunate I am.”
After a moment, she said, “And your cousin is inside as well. He came alone, I think.”
“Yes, his wife took ill, I’m afraid.” So Stephen had told him, when they had run into each other on King Street three hours ago.
What a place for a meeting! For half a second, Liam had wondered if Stephen was following him. As young children, they had been close, but once at school, when the difference in their future stations had become apparent, Stephen had grown resentful. Their relationship had come to feel like a competition—one in which Liam’s reluctance to compete had only made his cousin angrier. Stephen won handily: he was the superior scholar, the better scripturalist, one of the finest debaters that Eton and Oxford had ever seen.
Regardless, he would never become the earl. And now, in one moment, Liam would also become the wealthier of them—destroying Stephen’s only remaining advantage.
There had been an ugly smirk on Stephen’s face in King Street as he’d registered the satchel Liam carried and the bank he’d just left. “Counting your chickens?” he’d asked. “I can’t blame you.”
The letter of credit had suddenly felt heavy and somehow damning.
Liam did not like to imagine that others among the guests might also be smirking, imagining that they perfectly understood the reasons behind this hasty marriage. It was not only about money. Of late, it had nothing to do with money at all. But society would imagine otherwise. br />
So, perhaps, would she.
“Anna . . .” Adjusting his grip around her hands, stroking her knuckles softly, he wrestled with whether to speak of it. The unusual contract, its peculiar terms, had been agreed on by both of them. But those terms need not dictate their marriage.
“What?” she whispered.
He wished he could see her face. He did not believe he was alone in these feelings.
But what if he was wrong? What if the confession alarmed her? She might fear that he meant to renege on the terms of their contract, and to keep her from her island, her freedoms, which she had declared from the start were all she wanted of a marriage.
Love was the secret around which he danced now as they kissed, flirted, laughed together. Love had not been her aim. But he had fallen in love—and he hoped, prayed, that she had done so as well.
Still, he could not tell her now, when her face was hidden. He would tell her tonight. Or, no—not when hundreds of buttons awaited him. He would tell her in Paris.
From the distance came the swell of the organ. Anna started in his grip. “Goodness! They are starting! And we, out here—”
“Run along,” he said, laughing as he released her.
“Don’t look at me! Promise you won’t! Close your eyes!”
“They’re closed,” he lied, and watched as she broke away from the pillar, lifting the shimmering layers of her skirts so she might run. The clouds, being wise, suddenly parted: sunlight washed over her figure, calling out glimmers from the seed pearls, the silver embroidery and lace, and drawing fire in the ornate braids of her hair.
Just before she disappeared into the church, she glanced back, and her green eyes widened dramatically as they locked with his.
“Liar!” she called, but she was smiling. She was impossibly beautiful. She was the only sight worth seeing.
“I would be a fool to look away from you,” he said. “Even for a moment.”
• • •
The cabin was palatial: four rooms of velvet and silk, tasseled and carpeted in shades of azure and gold. It would be a very comfortable way to sail to Folkestone, where they would transfer to a steamer bound for Boulogne, and thence to the railway to Paris. Liam opened the door to the balcony, closing his eyes to the cool breeze spilling off the water, carried all the way from the North Sea.