Chapter 17
Damien looked at himself in the mirror above the fireplace in his private sitting room. With linen, he finished drying himself, casually tossing the damp fabric aside.
He had walked back from the bathhouse and through the house naked, confident in his standing rule that no servant be abroad after a certain time of night.
He glared at himself, hating the reflection with its mask over face, shoulder and upper arm.
With sudden anger, he tore the mask from his face, throwing it across the room.
What now stared back at him looked no better.
My curse. My stain.
He found himself regretting the slamming down of his portcullis in the bathhouse, shutting Maria out of the parts of his life he had not yet given her admittance to.
He wanted to be pleasuring her again. In that moment, he had almost been able to forget his disfigurement, had almost been able to pretend he was a normal man. Almost.
“You are not, and it does not serve you to forget it,” he told the man in the mirror.
“But you want to be, don’t you?” the man replied with a mocking smile.
“I want nothing but what I have. Except to be left alone. To be free of the prying ghouls. To be forgotten.”
“To be left alone with the woman who has already penetrated deeper into your mind than any other. You cannot deny it. Even now, you want to go to her again.”
Damien turned away from the mirror and strode across the room, into his bedchamber. He covered his nakedness with a robe and went to the window.
There was no bar of golden light flowing from Maria’s window. No tantalizing silhouette. Either she embraced darkness, or she was still in the bathhouse. Either possibility put hooks into Damien’s mind.
The thought of her body, slick and pliant, open to his instruction, was maddening. Whether she sported herself in the warm water of the bathhouse or lay on her bed, perhaps allowing her skin to cool and dry in the night air from her open window.
Damien’s mouth was dry, and his pulse raced. His body responded to his fevered thoughts, and he was glad to have sworn off drink years ago. At that moment, the courage of brandy would have run through his inhibitions with swift rapier strokes, and Damien would have been at Maria’s door.
To render myself helpless before her. I will not be helpless. I will not be vulnerable. That is a weakness.
He went to the bureau in a corner of the room, opened it and swiftly went through the letters stacked there. Acceptance from the board of directors of the Willow Street Orphanage.
That part of his plan was achieved. The dratted orphanage was safe. One of Maria’s requirements for their marriage was now neatly set aside. She did not need to remain at Winterleigh out of concern for the orphanage’s fate. He tossed the letter into the fire.
I do not want to be reminded of them. It is nothing to me.
Through the open door of his bedroom, he saw the mirror over the fireplace. Caught a glimpse of himself.
“But you do, don’t you?” the reflection mocked. “It has given you a warmth deep inside at the thought of defending the defenseless. Like you said to the boy.”
Damien growled and strode to the door, slamming it shut with one powerful sweep of his arm. The crash echoed from the walls. He stood before it, breathing deeply, teeth bared.
But the Phantom of Winterleigh remained… inside his mind.
“I am no chivalrous knight,” he whispered. “No matter the nonsense I told that sniveling child. I am no hero.”
He turned back to the bureau, picking up the next letter. It was from Simon, and it concerned the rumors of his brother. The contents troubled Damien. He had expected a flat denial of the rumors, a confirmation that he was alone in the world, the last of his line. But Simon had not said that.
“Damien?”
His head snapped up at the sound of Maria’s voice.
It came from the window. He went to it, looking out at the oak.
It was dark, its outline only visible where it crested the roofline of Winterleigh and stood out against the starlit backdrop of the sky.
No flood of warmth from Maria’s window. No golden light.
“What?” he snapped to the night.
“I heard a crash.”
“You heard a door being closed.”
“Violently.”
“That is how I do everything.”
“Not everything.”
His mind returned to the steam of the bathhouse, to the warm water and the even warmer body he had pleasured. He thought of her writhing, moaning, sighing form. Of her vulnerability before his experience and expertise.
Did she think of what that signified? Was she jealous? Did she regret that she had married him? Worse, a small traitorous voice in Damien’s mind wondered if she wanted him.
“Everything,” Damien said, preparing to turn from the window.
He could have closed his window and ended the conversation. He did not. He could not, and that made him angry.
I will not be weak!
“But you are!” Mocked a voice at the back of his mind.
“I can attest to that not being the case. I wanted to… I wanted to say…” Her words trailed off, stuttered and died like an ember cast from a fire.
“What?” Damien asked, voice softening as he moved back to the window.
“You were gentle with Gilbert,” Maria said quietly. “You seemed to care about him, that he was happy, and you had only met him.”
“It was nothing altruistic,” Damien said. “I was kind to him for your sake.”
“Because you care about me,” she said. “In your own strange way.”
“I may have spoken in haste when I said that… the boy could not come here,” Damien said after a moment’s silence.
“Yes?” Maria said, hope lifting her voice.
“Perhaps, in a few months. When you are comfortable with the house and my rules. When the grounds have been made safer. Perhaps.”
“I should be grateful. Most grateful.”
She managed to put a promise in those apparently innocent words. It was the kind of promise that made Damien want to vault the windowsill and climb down to her window.
“You should take care of how you speak. Your words have meaning I do not think you appreciate.”
“Do I not?” Maria replied.
Damien stood, and for one giddy moment, he was determined to go to her, whether by window or door. He tore open the door of his bedroom and saw himself in the mirror. That man mocked him with his stained face. With his cursed disfigurement. Damien stopped.
“I still wish I could see you,” Maria said into the silence.
“No.”
Damien closed the window, locked it and hurled the key into the fire.
Another breakfast alone. Maria stared at the empty seat opposite her.
She had been so certain that she had broken through Damien’s reserve, touched the man behind the impenetrable wall, the man behind the mask.
It was not just the intimacy they had shared in the bathhouse but what was, to Maria, a far greater intimacy, the sharing of information concerning his childhood.
I have seen his mother, and he clearly reveres her. I have seen a side to him that no one knows exists. Perhaps not even the servants, if they are prohibited from that wing of the house as well.
But here she was. Alone. In a house that was still full of locked doors. Locked doors uttering strange sounds. She shuddered, remembering her roaming of the house the night before.
When she had heard the sound of Damien’s window closing and knew that she had been shut out, she had not been able to sleep or quell her spinning mind. So, she walked. Trying doors that led to rooms in which dust and darkness were the only occupants.
And doors that were locked. One of which had spoken to her.
“Maria, good morning. I trust you dined well,” Damien entered the room.
Maria jumped, so lost in thought about the previous night that she was taken by surprise.
“I am sorry, I did not mean to startle you.”
“Then you should have announced your presence,” Maria said, a hand to her chest.
“In my own house? Presumptuous,” Damien said.
He went to the window and drew the curtains, turning his head away from the bright light of day as he did.
“I did not dine well, in answer to your question. I had thought we would dine together.”
“What made you think that?” Damien asked.
“Our sharing last night,” Maria replied.
“Intimacy between a husband and wife does not necessarily denote friendship. Or closeness.”
Would one call that intimacy? Maria valiantly resisted the impulse to squeeze her thighs together and calm the sharp ache that threatened to from between her legs.
“I was referring to my finding you in your private gallery of your mother’s artwork.
” Maria said, feeling a hint of victory at Damien’s assumption.
He is a man after all. Thinking with his loins.
Admittedly, she was not better, but—
Well, that was irrelevant. Even if she was thinking a little with her loins, she did also have an ulterior motive.
“I could not sleep last night,” Maria said, taking a sip of tea and trying to appear nonchalant.
Damien watched her silently.
“I decided to go for a walk about the house. I often do it when I cannot settle myself to sleep.”
She was watching Damien closely and saw the sudden tension in his posture. He turned away, walking to the window, as though unconcerned.
“There are many locked doors in this house,” Maria added. “It is most unusual.”
“Is it? That should not come as a surprise to you,” Damien said.
“It does not. You did tell me so. What do they conceal?” Maria asked.
“Nothing that concerns you.”
“When I hear voices behind certain doors, it concerns me greatly.”
“You heard servants,” Damien said dismissively.
“Servants are not allowed to be about at that hour. I know your standing orders, you see?” Maria countered, lowering her cup. “Am I to understand the house is haunted? Or do your servants delight in disobeying you?”
“Do not be ridiculous,” Damien replied. “It was probably a voice from the servant’s quarters carried through some quirk of the architecture. This is an old house, and it has many idiosyncrasies.”
Maria looked at him, wondering how far she dared push him.
Will he decide he has had enough, even now, when I felt I was getting through to him? Do I want to stay or have Gilbert live in a house with so many secrets?
“Or perhaps you simply dreamed it. The mind plays tricks at that time of night, particularly in a strange house,” Damien said.
“It is strange but not that strange,” Maria replied. “Perhaps I should ask Doctor Hale. He seems to be your only friend.”
Damien rounded on her angrily, his face thunderous.
“I would thank you to stop your attempts to pry. Content yourself that you are here, and your orphan child will have a grand house in which to live. Is that not enough?”
Maria felt she had scored a point and immediately felt sad at the adversarial tone of the conversation.
But then I do not wish to be adversarial at all. He takes offense where none is intended and keeps secrets that I am sure must be unnecessary.
Maria tipped her chin up and gathered her courage. “I must be assured that he will be safe here.”
“He will be.”
“Not in the woods or anywhere beyond the lawn,” Damien said. “You know how dangerous it is. I will not have you risking a child just to defy me.”
“Do you think I would do that, out of spite?” Maria rose, angry herself now.
For a moment, it was as though the air crackled between them.
Maria gazed into his eyes and hoped that her own were as alive with fire as his.
She could melt into that gaze. There was such depth.
She wanted to reach out and tear the mask away, wanted to run her hand down his cheek, show him that no harm would come to her for simply looking upon him, unmasked. Damien looked away.
“I do not want to argue with you in every conversation,” he said heatedly.
“Nor I.”
“I will have Langford make the woods safe,” Damien said.
“Thank you,” Maria smiled, “and thank you for your kindness towards the orphanage. It was very generous.”
Damien turned away as though afraid to maintain eye contact for too long.
Are you afraid of what you will concede if you continue to look into my eyes?
While he was looking away, Maria rose and went to the window, intending to open the curtains once more.
“Don’t!” Damien barked, “I dislike the brightness of day. It is irritating.”
He grabbed for the curtain to hold it in place, and his hand touched hers. Warmth jolted through her hand and all the way up her arm. Maria’s breath caught as he looked down at her from inches away. The curtains had been pulled open enough to admit a narrow spear of sunlight behind Damien.
“You came looking for me while the sun was in the sky,” she said softly. “It did not harm you.”
She pulled the gap wider, felt Damien’s hand tighten upon hers, pulling it back.
Then his fingers moved down the back of her hand to her wrist. She bit her lip, wanting to close her eyes and savor the feeling of that tender touch.
Could she persuade him to do more than that?
What would she need to do in order to persuade Damien to finish what had begun between them in the water?
“It will not harm me,” he said. “It is irritating.”
“I imagine it is when you avoid it so assiduously. Is it not a case of becoming used to something new? Like me.”
“I have not become used to you. I will never be used to you.”
Maria found herself smiling. “I do not know if that is something I long for or not. They say familiarity breeds contempt.”
“While novelty is excitement,” Damien sighed, letting his fingers trail down Maria’s arm to rest against her neck.
She was struck by the gentleness of his touch compared to the power his body held. It was strength kept under tight control. She reached up to place her hand over his, pressing his fingertips to her lips.
There was nothing now to stop her opening the curtains all the way. He gazed down at her as the beam of sunlight slowly widened, flowing over the back of his head and his shoulders, illuminating the lower half of his face but not yet touching his eyes.
Maria stopped, drinking in the sight of him for just a moment. “It does, such excitement as I have never experienced. I will not push too hard. I do not want to make you uncomfortable,” she said, letting the curtain go.
It fell back, the sunlight retreating.
“I will go and visit with my friends today, I think. Perhaps we will take advantage of the bright weather for a picnic in Hyde Park or a visit to Vauxhall Gardens.”
“Do so,” Damien said.
The contact was broken. He walked to the door, letting the shadows envelope him.
“Will I see you for dinner?” Maria asked, hopefully.
Damien stopped at the door.
“Perhaps.”