Wicked Intentions (Maiden Lane #1)(50)
Author: Elizabeth Hoyt

Then she said softly, “So you have and I thank you.”

He glanced swiftly sideways at her. Her cheeks were pink, but the color was not from any rouge pot. “You have no need to thank me. I’m merely fulfilling the bargain we made.”

She looked at him, her gilded eyes mysterious and far too wise. “You’ve done more than that for me. You’ve given me this beautiful gown, the hairpins, slippers, and stays. Why shouldn’t I thank you for all that?”

“Because I’ve brought you into this den of wolves.”

He felt more than saw her startled glance. “You make a ball sound overly dangerous, even for one as inexperienced as I.”

He snorted. “In many ways, this company is as dangerous as the people we’ve met on the streets of St. Giles.”

She looked at him skeptically.

“Over there”—he tilted his chin discreetly—“is a gentleman—I use the word in only its social sense—who has killed two men in duels in the last year. Beside him is a decorated general. He lost most of his men in a vain and stupid charge. It’s rumored that our hostess once beat a maid so badly she had to pay the woman over a thousand pounds to hush up the matter.”

He glanced down at Mrs. Dews, expecting shock, but she stared back, her expression open and frank and a little sad. “You’re merely proving that money and privilege do not go hand in hand with good sense or virtue. That, I think, I already knew.”

He bowed, feeling heat stealing up his cheeks. “Forgive me for boring you.”

“You never bore me as well you know, my lord,” she replied. “I only wish to point out that while money can’t buy those things, it can buy food for the stomach and clothes for the body.”

“So you think the people here are happier than those in St. Giles?”

“They should be.” She shrugged. “Being hungry or cold does terrible things for the temperament.”

“And yet,” he mused, “are the wealthy here any happier than a poor beggar on the street?”

She looked at him with disbelief.

He smiled down at her. “Truly. I think a man may find happiness—or discontent—no matter if he has a full belly or not.”

“If that is true, it is very sad,” she said. “They should be happier with all their needs fulfilled.”

He shook his head. “Man is a fickle, ungrateful creature, I fear.”

She smiled at that—finally! “I don’t think I can understand the people from your class.”

“Best not to,” he said lightly.

“You, for instance,” she murmured. “I’m not sure you have any more need of me in St. Giles, but you take me with you still. Why?”

He looked ahead of them, examining the crowd, watching the other men watching her. “Why do you think?”

“I don’t know.”

“Don’t you?”

She hesitated, and though he didn’t look at her, he was aware of her every movement. Of her restless fingers tracing the neckline of her bodice, of her pulse fluttering at her throat, of the moment she parted her lips again.

He leaned closer to her and repeated low, “Don’t you?”

She inhaled. “At Mrs. Whiteside’s house, you made me watch…”

“Yes?” They were in a damnably crowded room, the press of bodies almost suffocating. Yet at the same time he felt as if they existed in a closed glass sphere of their own.

“Why?” she asked urgently. “Why did you make me watch? Why me?”

“Because,” he murmured, “you draw me. Because you are kind but not soft. Because when you touch me, the pain is bittersweet. Because you cradle a desperate secret to your bosom, like a viper in your arms, and don’t let go of it even as it gnaws upon your very flesh. I want to pry that viper from your arms. To suckle upon your torn and bloody flesh. To take your pain within myself and make it mine.”

She trembled beside him; he could feel the quivers through the arm she kept on him. “I have no secret.”

He bent and whispered against her hair, “Sweet, darling liar.”

“I don’t—”

“Hush now.” A shiver ran up his spine, and he knew without even turning that his mother was approaching. They’d neared Sir Henry, who stood with two other gentlemen. Deftly he inserted Temperance into the circle, made a slight excuse, and turned just as Lady Caire tapped him rather hard on the arm.

“Lazarus.”

“Madam.” He inclined his head.

“I see you’re still escorting that woman.”

“I’m so glad your memory is intact,” Lazarus said smoothly. “So many begin to lose recollection as they age.”

There was a short, frigid silence, and for a moment he was sure he’d said enough to drive her away. He watched as Temperance leaned toward Sir Henry, and the man’s eyes dropped to her bosom.

Then Lady Caire drew a trembling breath. “What did I ever do to you to deserve this terrible sentiment you show toward me?”

He looked back at her, blinking in honest astonishment. “Why, nothing.”

She sighed. “Then why this constant hostility? Why this—”

Something snapped in him. He took a step toward her, using his height to tower over her smaller frame. “Don’t ask questions when you don’t truly want to know the answers, madam.”

Her blue eyes, identical to his own, widened. “Lazarus.”

“You did nothing,” he said quietly and hard. “When Father abandoned me at the wet nurse, you did nothing. When he returned five years later and tore me screaming from her arms, you did nothing. When he whipped me for crying for the only mother I knew, you did nothing. And when Annelise lay dying of a childish fever—”

He cut himself off, staring blindly toward Temperance. Sir Henry had his hand upon her arm, and there was a slight frown between her brows.

His mother laid her hand on his arm. “Don’t you think I mourn Annelise’s death as well?”

He turned back to her, swallowing, his mouth twisted in a sneer. “When Annelise lay dying, desperately ill from fever, and my goddamned father refused to send for a physician because a five-year-old girl should learn strength, what did you do?”

She merely stared at him, and he noticed for the first time the fine lines that radiated from her blue eyes.

“I’ll tell you what you did. Nothing.” Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Sir Henry draw Temperance away from the other gentlemen. Toward the back of the ballroom. “Nothing is what you always do, madam. Don’t be surprised when I, in return, feel nothing for you.”