Chapter 29 #2
She let him lead her upstairs and into a room, a grand bedroom where he lit two branches of candles.
Thick carpet and rich rose-pink hangings.
He moved away, and to her shame, she clung.
It could cause scandal and make matters cruelly worse, but suddenly she couldn’t bear the thought of being alone.
“It’s all right,” he said, gently untangling her fingers from his shirt, and sitting her on the big bed. “Wait there. I’ll be back in a moment.”
She began to shake. Fighting a weakness and dependence she despised she shed his coat, but a prick startled her. It was his pin, still holding together the cut edges of her bodice.
Abruptly, she hurried to the washstand, pulling out the pin.
Water in the jug.
Lukewarm, but that didn’t matter.
She splashed it into the bowl, lathered the cloth, and washed her breasts. Washed them over and over, trying to scrub away even the memory of Lord Randolph’s hands there. His eyes on her—
Suddenly aware, she turned, clutching her bodice back together, and found Bey watching her.
He came over, a white garment in his hand. He worked it over her head so it covered her, arms and all, with soft cotton fresh with the scent of washing and blowing in the wind.
She relaxed her grip on the bodice. “I’m sorry. I don’t know why—”
“Hush.” He turned her, and beneath the cloth, undid the fastenings down the back of her gown. He stepped away then, and she stripped it off herself. Did he think she didn’t want him to touch her?
With an inward shudder, she realized that in a way, he was right. Her skin felt all awry, and she didn’t know what she wanted.
“Do you want a bath?” he said.
In a way she did, but she didn’t want servants. She didn’t want to be looked at yet.
“No.” She untied her petticoat and let it fall. Then she shed the last soiled and ruined layer, the shift, and put her hands into the sleeves rolling up the cuffs.
Only then did she turn to him.
“Better?” he asked, standing a surely precisely judged distance from her.
It was one of his shirts, and it hung to her knees protectively. “I’m being silly, I know—”
“No. Except in saying that. Allow yourself to be weak, Diana.”
I wish you would.
Aloud, she said, “I can’t. I mustn’t be weak.
That gives him a victory of sorts. That washing was a victory for him.
A bath would be a victory for him. If I act like that, I’m admitting he dirtied me.
That he changed me in ways that will linger.
” She raised her chin. “I’m braver and stronger than that. ”
“Ironhand. But you leave me adrift. What can I do for you?”
“Bey, don’t! Don’t ask me to be weak for you.”
He closed his eyes for a moment. “Do I need people to be weak?” he asked, as if truly adrift. “I didn’t think so.”
His distress burned away hers. He was deeply shaken, far more deeply than she’d guessed. He needed to care for her as much as he’d needed to kill Somerton, but it was something else he would sacrifice for her if she needed it.
Oh God, she felt as if she held crystal in her hands, impossibly thin and fragile crystal that could be shattered by the slightest thing.
Wise or not, she stepped forward and took his hands. “Take me to bed, Bey. I need you to hold me.”
After a moment, he swept her into his arms and carried her to the bed.
He couldn’t know, even he could not know, that Lord Randolph had carried her to that awful bed, but it was like the beginning of a perfect realignment. “I do need this,” she whispered.
“You shall have everything you need,” he promised. “And no more.”
At the bed he paused, holding her to him for a heart-stopping moment, then he laid her down carefully as if she were the fragile crystal, and filled to the brim with water.
“What do you need now?” he asked.
And she suddenly knew, though she wasn’t sure she should ask. “I want you to tie me to the bed.”
“What?”
His shocked pallor made her say, “No. That’s silly. I don’t need—”
“You want to reenact it? Why?”
All she could give was honesty. “The worst thing was being helpless. Completely helpless. I’d rather have been fighting even if he hurt me, even if he hurt me badly. I want to relive that fear and conquer it. But I see it’s too much. I shouldn’t have asked.”
He sat on the bed and looked at her. “You’ll be the death of me,” he said, but a hint of humor, a touch of color, told her that perhaps this was all right. She’d given him something to do, something difficult, and that was what he needed.
“You’re sure?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Don’t run away,” he said dryly, and went into the next room.
She heard tearing sounds, and he returned with four strips of embroidered black velvet.
“What are they from?” she asked, wide-eyed, but she thought she recognized the exquisite black velvet coat he’d worn to the Queen’s House two nights before. Which he’d worn to the ball in Arradale an eon ago.
“If we are to do this,” he said, “let us do it with a degree of elegance.” As he tied one strip loosely around her right ankle, he said, “Will it spoil the experiment if I promise to stop whenever you ask me to?”
Diana had to think about that. “Yes, I think it would. It wouldn’t be at all frightening then.”
He tied the other end of the cloth to a bedpost. “I don’t want this to be frightening.”
“Nor do I, but it has to be.” With one leg tethered, her nerves flinched as if they held a memory of earlier terrors.
He tied the other ankle, face set and cool.
“I don’t want to hurt you, Bey,” she said helplessly. “You asked what you could do.”
“I think I had in mind a foot massage.” But a little lightness stirred as he looked at her. “It’s all right. I’m just nervous about what you might want me to do once you’re fixed in place.” He looked at the bed head. “I’ll have to tie your hands to the corner posts. There’s nowhere in the middle.”
She stretched her arms out. “I’m supposed to feel like the victim, not you.” But then she twisted to look up to where he was tying her right hand. “I’m forcing you, aren’t I? Isn’t that a bit like rape?”
“Don’t overdramatize this. However, I am not making love to you like this. That would be rape, and of me, not you.”
She followed him with her eyes and he walked around to tie her other hand. “I won’t. I wouldn’t. I just need to feel this, and deal with it.”
He tied the last knot and sat on the bed again. “What are you feeling?”
“Panic,” she said, looking up at the satin canopy, where before there’d been cobwebby beams. “It’s silly because I know you won’t hurt me, but it’s beating there like a drum.” She turned her eyes to him. “I’m even afraid that you’ll go away and leave me like this.”
“Diana, this is pointless. You aren’t fighting an unreasonable fear. You are helpless. If I was a villain, you’d be right to be afraid.”
“But not to show it. Would you show fear in this situation?”
“No,” he said and placed a hand on her abdomen.
She jerked, instinctively trying to reach down to control his hand. “Don’t.”
“I believe you set the rules,” he said, circling his hand there over the soft, fine cotton.
She wanted to cry stop. She knew that if she really demanded it, he would, but she worked instead at controlling panic, and at not showing fear.
He slid his hand up, between her breasts, to rest at the side of her throat. “Your pulse still races.”
“No one can control their pulse.”
“It is possible, but very hard. Control your breathing instead. That, anyone can do.”
He put his hand back on her abdomen. “Push my hand up and down with your breaths.”
She focused on that, and slowly the panic eased.
Her whole body relaxed into his hand, comfortingly warm and strong against her.
“I’m rather comfortable now,” she murmured, and still breathing against his hand she let her eyes drift shut so she could sink into a peaceful warmth that was completely new to her.
Then his hand left her. She opened heavy eyes to see him cutting her velvet tethers. As she brought her arms down to her side, she explored a sense of wholeness and completion that was inextricably connected to him, to her feelings for him, and his for her.
It was if they created something between them which was impossible apart. If she’d fought before, it had been with half her heart. Now she felt invincible.
She had to be.
“That foot massage?” she murmured.
His eyes met hers, smiling slightly. “We are in harmony at last.”
He left, but returned with a small vial, and sat on the bed by her feet. He poured oil onto his hands, and the rich scent of sandalwood crept over her. She was floating even before he took one of her feet and began the magic.
No stockings this time, just his strong, skilled hands on her.
“It’s wonderful. It seems to relax my whole body.”
He smiled slightly, but didn’t speak.
“I want to be able to do this for you. Is it possible?” she asked, deliberately asking about more than the moment.
“My will is shattered,” he said, beginning on the other foot with a touch that told her that she could ask anything of him now and he was powerless to refuse.
It wasn’t right though. It was because of what had happened tonight. Because of her danger, and his failure to protect. Perhaps it was also because he had sacrificed the healing power of bloodshed.
For her.
She couldn’t accept an offering of guilt.
“That isn’t good enough,” she said.
“I know.”
She lay silent as he worked magic on her feet, wondering where they went from here. His lids guarded his eyes but she knew he was, as he had said, shattered. She could do anything with him now, demand anything.
The last thing he needed, however, was more guilt.
What she wanted was his acceptance of his right to love.
“It is possible,” she said, but she knew words weren’t enough, not for him. He was a man who had to be engaged mind, body, emotions, and soul. And the mind—the brilliant analytical mind—still held firm.
He made no response, just put more oil on his hands, and continued to manipulate her feet.