Captured. Emilie had always assumed that he had received his wounds in some sort of fighting: a shell perhaps, a rifle shot, an explosion that had somehow both ruined his face and taken his hand.
"Your captors injured you?" she asked.
"Yes. They wanted information, and I would not give it to them. Here, you must have cake. You're quite pale."
"No, I'm not hungry. I . . ."
"And you, Emilie? What brings you here to me, of all the places in the world? What injury has been done to you?" There was more rattling of porcelain; evidently he was not taking her at her word about the cake.
"Why do you think I have been injured?"
"For what other reason would a beautiful woman, a lady, possessing such obvious dignity and virtue, be reduced to meeting one such as I in a remote hotel in darkest Yorkshire?" His tone was light. He pressed a plate into her hands. "Your cake."
"Thank you." There was no fork. She broke off an end with her fingers and put it in her mouth. "Oh, it's lovely. Orange?"
"Yes. The house specialty."
She took another bite and cleared her mouth before speaking. "To answer your question, I am here because I have been separated from my family, due to a . . . a misfortune. My father was killed, and my sisters and I"-she was revealing too much, she knew, but she had to say something, had to reveal some little true corner of herself to him-"my sisters and I were sent to live with friends of the family."
"I am very sorry. Under reduced circumstances, I take it?"
"Yes." Emilie thought of her room, on the third floor of Ashland Abbey. "Quite reduced."
"But you were educated as a gentlewoman."
"Yes. I was fortunate to receive an excellent education. I had plans . . ." She stopped herself.
"Plans? What sort of plans?"
"Surely that's of little interest to you."
"On the contrary. I find myself passionately interested. I suspect your plans weren't the ordinary sort, for a well-bred young lady."
"No. I . . ." She stopped again. "You'll laugh."
"I won't, on my honor. Tell me."
She shouldn't speak. And yet the temptation was irresistible: Ashland standing nearby, unseen and immense, with his coaxing and sympathetic voice. She wanted to confess everything. She wanted to open every recess of her soul to him. She heard herself say, in a rush, "You must understand, I was raised in a strict environment. I was expected . . . That is, my life was quite regimented. My future was already determined for me, my person simply an object, to be given away at will. And I hated it. On the outside, I behaved myself perfectly, and on the inside I raged. I had . . . I had brains and talent, and I wanted-I needed-to use them."
"Yes," he said. "Yes."
Her heart swelled at that single soft word. She leaned forward and went on. "When I was younger, I wanted to disguise myself as a boy and go to university. That was impossible, of course. Then I wanted to be like my governess-an extraordinary woman, my governess; I admired her with all my heart. I wanted to be like her, to run away to seek employment as a governess under an assumed name. I could study all I liked and be independent. I could make my own decisions. I could be free. I could be myself." Her voice fell away, heavy with longing.
"And what happened?"
"I told my governess. She laughed and told me to think twice about that."
Ashland didn't laugh, didn't ridicule her. "It's a difficult life, I'm told. And you'd have been at the mercy of your employers."
"Yes, I realize that now." She fingered the delicate edge of her plate.
"What then? Surely you didn't give up."
"I thought . . . well, I thought I'd do something even braver. I'd keep my name. I'd simply pack my trunk and move to the city and live as an independent woman, studying what I liked and seeing whom I wished. I'm quite beyond the first blush of youth, after all."
"Not so far past." His voice was very low.
"I thought I'd perhaps sponsor a salon on Wednesday evenings, or start a literary journal. If polite society shunned me, I'd simply carry on with impolite society."
"Which, after all, is decidedly more interesting," said the Duke of Ashland.
"So I saved my allowance, sold a few baubles, wrote a few discreet letters. I told my governess and no one else."
"And then?"
She stared into the blackness, the depthless space beyond her eyes. "And my father died."
"I'm very sorry."
"And now I have my freedom, at least a little of it, and I find I . . . I have no one to talk to, really, and . . . in fact, it was rather an accident, coming here last week . . ."
"For which I am grateful."
"Are you?" She looked up in the direction of his voice. He had resumed his seat, it seemed.
"I have thought of little else this past week."
Emilie gripped the edges of her plate. "Come now. After so short a meeting? So . . . so unnatural the circumstances?"
"Emilie . . ." He checked himself. She heard him shifting in his chair, rising again, his restlessness seething through the blackness around her. He spoke in a voice so low, it was almost a growl. "Emilie, you must know how different you are. How utterly and instantly different from any other woman."
Yes, she thought bitterly. I have known it all my life.
"Of course I'm different," she said. "What other lady would undress herself for a stranger, without hesitation, for mere money? Would sit here and let him stare at her unclothed body, in exchange for fifty pounds in crisp and unassailable Bank of England notes?"
The coals sizzled and popped into the silence. Ashland stood somewhere to her left, not moving, not making a single sound. Not even breathing, that she could hear. Emilie placed her plate on the table, cake still half eaten.
"Well, then. The hour grows late. I suppose we should get to it."
* * *
He had chosen Pamela, out of some perverse desire for self-torture, or perhaps out of irony: Who knew?
To her credit, she hadn't blinked when she lifted the blindfold and saw the book waiting for her on the table. "Shall I start from the beginning?"
"Certainly."
She read beautifully, as she had done last week. She had an expressive voice, and she read every line of dialogue in character, with animation, almost as if she were enjoying herself: "Is it not strange, that love borders so much upon hate? But this wicked love is not like the true virtuous love, to be sure: that and hatred must be as far off, as light and darkness. And how must this hate have been increased, if he had met with such a base compliance, after his wicked will had been gratified."
A blush was creeping along her face, on the side of her cheek that was visible to him. He imagined himself rising from his armchair and bending over to kiss that blushing cheek. In his mind, his lips were exploring that pinkness, that rush of blood beneath her skin. How warm it was, how soft. Her throat, her shoulder, her bosom half hidden by the volume before her: He was kissing every inch of her now, taking his time, tasting the tender creaminess that glowed under the lamp. He was drawing the pins from her hair and letting it tumble, heavy and shining, into his hand. He was taking the book from her fingers and pulling the lace-edged neck of her chemise slowly downward, until a single pink nipple popped free, and he ran his tongue over the delicate tip.
Emily's voice rose and fell in his ears. "You shall not hurt this innocent, said she: for I will lose my life in her defence. Are there not, said she, enough wicked ones in the world, for your base purpose, but you must attempt such a lamb as this?"
"Stop," he said.
She looked up, startled. "Sir?"
"Pull down your blindfold, please." His voice rang out brusquely.
She sat with her fingers poised on the page, looking carefully away. "Have I displeased you?"
"Your blindfold, madam."
Emily sighed quietly and set the book on the table. Her long fingers went to the blindfold and adjusted it downward to cover her eyes.
Ashland let out a long breath and rose from his chair. "You will miss your train, if you don't leave now."
"Is it that late?"
"Yes." He walked to the sofa and found her stays. She was still sitting in the chair, her unsmiling face turned toward him. The opaque blackness of the blindfold made her hair seem like spun gold. Each detail of her body beneath her chemise was made perfectly visible by the direct light of the lamp.