Chapter Four

"Why do you have whiskey so readily to hand?" she wondered, almost conversationally, into the elongating silence. "In case

you need to subdue hysterical women? Or is it for fortifying yourself against hysterical women?"

"For pain," he said shortly. Absently. His expression was thoughtful. But he wasn't blinking.

She leveled a searching gaze at him. Damn it all. Despite everything, she didn't like the notion of him being in pain.

"So in other words, yes to both," he added, a second later. With a flickering ghost of a smile.

She eyed him cautiously. Though she did indeed find this rather blackly funny, she was disinclined to reward him with anything

like a laugh. It seemed inadvisable to betray any sort of weakness to this man. To relent in any way. Though she wasn't precisely

entitled to it, she had her pride, too.

"Alexandra..." He paused, seeming to consider what he was about to ask. This hesitance struck her as unusual; she'd known

him as a man who bluntly came out with things. "Are you afraid of me?"

She went still. The question surprised her.

She regarded him warily.

How to answer?

Five hours after they had spoken their marriage vows, two hours after she had broken those vows in a way she had neither planned

nor anticipated, he had demonstrated to her why his enemies found him terrifying. He'd done it without raising his voice.

Before that time, he had never been anything other than solicitous and gentle with her.

The clearheaded, ruthless, cold efficiency with which he had outlined the nonnegotiable terms of her fate—and therefore, his

fate—as a consequence of her actions had shocked her, then numbed her, then settled on her soul like a killing frost. Until

her heart felt like a rattling black husk in her chest.

It was how it had felt ever since.

That was, until today. Her heart had gone through a lot of things today.

She had trembled throughout that whole horrible conversation that night. But she hadn't groveled or lied or sobbed or hidden

her face.

She had never planned to wrong him.

But she uncontrovertibly had.

Her own stubborn, inconvenient integrity refused to allow her to do anything like dodge away from the truth, or attempt to

rationalize the choice she'd made. As far as he was concerned, she'd sealed her own fate that night.

"Why do you ask?" she finally asked.

She saw his features darken and tighten as if her words had entered him like a dart.

It was a long moment before he spoke.

"I would never harm you." He sounded tired. He landed tautly on "never."

She merely nodded, humoring him. Men said a lot of things they didn't mean.

His eyebrows dove. "Has any other man ever harmed you?"

She stared at him, stunned. Her cheeks went warm.

Any other man. She was unprepared for the almost dispassionate acknowledgment that in the five years they'd lived apart she might have taken

a lover or two, any one of whom might have knocked her around a bit. For his apparently cold acceptance of their very unorthodox,

yet not uncommon among the aristocracy for all of that, arrangement.

Doubtless he'd had lovers in the interim. He was a man.

She felt this possibility now like a weight on her chest.

It had been so easy not to think about it when she was occupied. Which is why she'd made certain she was always occupied.

Which was part of how she'd ended up in a Newgate cell. Trying so very hard to remain occupied.

"No," she answered quietly. "No other men have harmed me." She wasn't going to expound. It was true. She paused. "What would you do if they had?" She made the question sound casual. It emerged slightly defiant.

She found she was genuinely curious.

He studied her. But the faint smile lifting the corners of his mouth did not light his eyes, and it made the little hairs

prickle at the back of her neck.

"Make them rue the day they were born," he explained with great patience.

Long before she'd ever met him, her father had told her an anecdote about Colonel Brightwall: the mail coach upon which he'd

been traveling one night had been waylaid by a pair of highwaymen, who had forced the passengers to disembark at musket point.

Brightwall had at once put himself between the other gentlemen and the two lady passengers. Quick as a snake he'd lashed out

and snatched the musket from the grasp of the nearest robber and swung it like a cricket bat at the man's skull. The man had

gone down like a ninepin. Then Brightwall had pivoted and rammed the musket stock into the other robber's chest, sending the

man's shot—aimed right at Brightwall—well wide of the mark. That rogue had crumpled, too. Over in seconds, the whole thing.

As efficient as if he'd practiced doing all of that at Manton's.

"Why waste good gunpowder?" he'd allegedly remarked absently as he worked with the other gentleman passengers to tie them

up. He hadn't even reached for his pistol.

They'd left the robbers bound hand and foot on the side of the road and carried on their journey within minutes. Brightwall had taken the robbers' weapons. He still owned them.

It was what he was built for: inspiring rue in anyone who dared cross him.

"So it's just the general... fact of me." He swept a hand vaguely about his vast person. "That made you flinch away, as

one might from any alarming thing. A dragon, for instance."

She'd always known him to be economical with words. But she recalled how now and again out came something so intriguingly,

delightfully vivid it had made her restless to know the other thoughts that milled about in his mind, unspoken.

"The sudden appearance of a dragon would be alarming," she agreed politely.

And for a breathtaking, vanishing instant, shared amusement arced between them.

They had liked each other, once. Though they'd known each other for so short a time before they wed.

Of course, it had become all too clear they hadn't truly known each other at all.

Even now she could probably charm him.

To what end? He would soon resent her for it. For it would remind him of what a fool he'd been to be charmed once before,

and this had led to what he surely now considered the one great folly of his brilliant, storied life: marrying her.

Well. He had bought her.

Or her father had sold her.

However one preferred to look at it.

Caveat emptor , Colonel Brightwall.

Did he think the notion she might genuinely fear him outlandish? Had he never stood in front of a mirror?

And then she had it: likely it was simply a matter of honor for him. For if she'd been a man, he might have killed her with

pistols at dawn or some such for what she'd done five years ago. The rules were different for women.

And what did a military man understand better than rules?

Her father, Lord Bellamy, was a widower who loved to entertain, and when he held house parties, it was Alexandra's habit to

circulate through the gathered guests like a breeze, making certain everyone felt comfortable and welcome and seen. The night

of the reception in honor of Colonel Brightwall, sweet, shy Mary Hotchkiss had been sitting alone near the hearth, pushing

her sliding-down spectacles back up her nose at intervals and trying to disappear into the wallpaper, valiantly pretending

she was not suffering. Alexandra had gone to sit with her. Soon she had Mary laughing, and one by one guests were drawn to

their effervescence, until they were the center of a small, merry crowd.

Whereupon Alexandra melted away to the arched window that looked out over the back garden of the house they might soon lose forever thanks to her father's bad luck with investments, and admired Mary's face shining amidst her new friends. Her own world was rife with concerns. She knew life to be both beautiful and pocked with injustices and hurts. But there was such relief to be had in making it all just a bit easier for someone else, if only for a moment or two.

"You're a kind person, Miss Bellamy."

With a start she turned to discover Colonel Brightwall leaning against the wall near her.

She studied him. Hanging in the British Museum was a painting of Brightwall atop a rearing, wild-eyed horse, his leonine head

wreathed in the smoke of battle. Defeated enemies were heaped all around like cordwood. She'd thought it an exaggeration bordering

on parody. She was not so sure now.

He looked exactly like the sort of man who would swing a musket at the skull of a highwayman.

His entrance into the party tonight had precipitated a hush. Jaded adults with glittering pedigrees craned their heads, staring

mutely up at him like bashful children. The air was practically misted with awe.

Brightwall was clearly accustomed to this. Her proud father had led him about the gathering. The colonel apportioned to each

introduced guest a few gruffly gracious words and brisk nods of thanks for what were clearly compliments. He clasped both

hands behind him when he listened. His bearing recalled the mast of a ship. He left in his wake eased postures and glowing

faces, as though he'd bestowed benedictions.

He moved, and occupied space, with utter self-possession. There wasn't a single tentative thing about him. Alexandra found him thoroughly intimidating.

Another person might have said "you are kind" as a matter of rote, as one might say "please" or "thank you." But he'd said

this almost gravely. As though he was imparting something significant he felt she should know.

She soon learned that almost nothing he said sounded casual.

She was not a shy person. But what she saw in his eyes then made her cheeks warm. She found she could think of nothing to

say, which was a rare occurrence, indeed.

"Thank you, sir," she said politely, finally. "I do hope you are enjoying your evening."

Worrisomely, he seemed to actually be contemplating whether he was.

"Mr. Perriman went on at great length to me about pigeons and I fear I may have merely stared at him with my brows drawn together."

He paused, pensively. "I couldn't think of a single thing to say. I seem to be struggling a bit to regain a knack for light

conversation."

She was amused speechless at the thought of him glowering while Mr. Perriman nattered on about pigeons.

He turned to her, his eyes creased with rueful amusement.

All at once she felt peculiarly light, as if she'd stumbled across something unexpectedly magical. A gemstone embedded in

a rock.

"If it helps at all, Colonel, Mr. Perriman never seems to require a response. Just an audience. I've found that nodding along and interjecting an occasional ‘ah' or ‘you don't say' usually suffices. And then a polite excuse to retreat when the opportunity arises. If it happens again, touch your ear and I'll rescue you."

Eyes glinting, he nodded as somberly as if she were Aristotle imparting wisdom.

He appeared to be looking for someone as he watched the milling gathering.

And then her father saw him, and Brightwall straightened alertly.

"When I was stationed in Spain, a huge striped cat by the name of Oliver lived in our camp," he said suddenly.

"A cat?" She was startled and enchanted by this non sequitur.

He nodded. "During a lull in action, my subaltern took a notion to sew a wee uniform coat for him and stuff him into it. You've

never seen a more confused, resigned expression on an animal. We all had a laugh at the poor beast. And that"—he turned to

her with a roguish, conspiratorial smile that transformed his face so utterly it made her breath hitch—"is a bit how I feel

walking about in civilian clothes at a house party instead of on a battlefield in my uniform."

And off he'd gone with her father.

But she remembered this conversation now because Magnus was the first person to ever outright tell her she was kind, as though

he saw this as a precious and rare quality.

She could not recall the last time she'd extended any charity to herself, or thought of herself as possessing a redeeming virtue. The last five years her life had been strung together by sleep and diversions designed to keep her from dwelling on a thing she had done which could not be undone.

And even though her pride warred with her instinct to soothe him, this was simply how she was made: she could not seem to

help caring.

Gently, she said, "If I flinched, Magnus, it was less to do with you than with how... everything during my visit to..."

She closed her eyes. Visit? It wasn't as though she'd left an engraved calling card there. She cleared her throat. "Everything at Newgate made me flinch

and I suppose I've acquired a sort of flinching reflex. I'm certain it will pass."

She met his eyes bravely. It was an appalling thing to admit to her war hero husband. But now it, too, was part of her personal

history. Which had been spotless for most of her life and then had taken an abrupt turn into the catastrophic, where it seemed

to have settled in comfortably.

Would a day come when she could blithely say at a dinner party, "This blancmange is such a nice change from prison food!"

and everyone would laugh and laugh over the lark of it all?

Perhaps it would even be the sort of thing considered spirited discourse in the sitting room here at The Grand Palace on the

Thames.

Magnus took this in, and his fingers twitched reflexively on the arms of the chair, as if he was flinching away from all those things, too. Or itched to combat them.

He deliberately flattened his hand and patted it once, thoughtfully, on the arm of the chair.

Finally he rose, somewhat stiffly, and surprised her by pacing slowly to the crumpled dress on the floor and lifting it gently.

It looked like so much bright scraps in his big hands. He gazed down at it, his expression bemused and almost weary in a way

that sliced right through her.

She wondered if he was thinking: In another life, in other circumstances, I might know this dress, and all my wife's clothes.

Her throat suddenly felt thick.

"Please do not let it trouble you any further," she urged softly.

He met her eyes again and held them. His did not precisely soften, but with a short nod he indicated he was apparently satisfied

that she was telling the truth.

"I expect you're exhausted." His voice was gruff. "And hungry."

The moment he said it she fully realized she was almost too weary to even agree. As if she could melt into the settee, become

one with it, vanish from existence.

The bliss of that notion this moment.

"And perhaps you'd like a bath, as well," he added.

Her face must have registered surprise, even wariness, because a screen of cynicism moved across his eyes.

"To be clear: you are safe with me, Alexandra. And from me."

In other words: not even the prospect of her nude in a bath would tempt him to touch her.

Fair enough.

"Yes," she said quietly. "I should like to sleep. And eat. And I would like a bath."

Baths were not included with room and board at The Grand Palace on the Thames, their charming and genteel proprietresses had

delicately informed them. There would be an additional cost.

And so of course, that meant the bath was his, too. She was wildly, wildly tempted to say it. Why not continue to court catastrophe?

What did she have to lose? Perhaps with enough practice she could field catastrophe with the panache of Brightwall swinging

a musket at a highwayman.

He draped her dress on the back of the settee as gently as if it was a living thing. "I'll speak to the proprietresses about

preparing one for you. And a meal."

He turned toward the door, then paused with his hand on the knob, and turned back to her. "We'll talk when you've rested."

It sounded like a warning.