Read Online Lady in Red by Máire Claremont - Free Book Online Page A

quietly.
    Mary took in her body, small and draped in a coverlet. Her bare shoulders peeked from the linen, nearly exposing a small breast. Where was her gown?
    She looked to the floor. The purple fabric lay drunkenly amid a cracked hoop skirt and a twisted corset. Of course. He’d had to remove them.
    Slowly, it came back to her. She stared at the shimmering fabric and tortured undergarments. She’d almost died. The power of it was worse than the humiliation she had been feeling. Her near death hadn’t been at the hands of the madhouse keepers, or the frigid cold of the black, icy nights of York. It had been here, in a duke’s home, safe, warm, and beautifully clothed. It was her own hand that had nearly driven her from the world that she so longed to take her place in. She forced her eyes up to his face. “You . . . saved me.”
    His dark eyes widened, startled. “I . . .”
    It was fascinating, the struggle working across his strong face. His brows drew together and he pressed his lips into a knife blade of a line. Vulnerability hovered in his eyes. The vulnerability of a little boy who knew the world was not the fairy tale he’d been told by his nanny, but rather an ugly, unkind place bent on crushing those who could not stand on their own.
    She contemplated comforting him with her hand, a foreign, shocking desire. She allowed herself a moment to fortify herself before she reached out and, for the first time she could recall in years, willingly took a man’s hand in hers. His hand. “Thank you.”
    He looked to her pale fingers entwined with his stronger ones. “Get well and that will be all the gratitude I ever require.”
    The world slowed as his words came down upon her. Was he indeed so foolish? Under that harsh exterior lay the heart of a true idealist? While it was beautiful and unbearable to behold, she found herself struggling to give his sentiment credence. “Edward. Sad though it may be, I don’t know if I shall ever be entirely well. Not after—”
    His face tensed and those onyx eyes sparked with anger. “You shall. You must . I will restore you.”
    The sudden passion on his austere features gave her pause. “Why?”
    A muscle flexed in his cheek before he said darkly, “Because I wish it.”
    Suddenly, her heart ached for this good man who wished for something that would most likely never occur. “And your wishes are always realized?”
    “ Always .” He declared it with ease but there was something . . . unknowable in his eyes that revealed that his true wishes, the wishes of his soul, were all dead.
    She slipped her fingers from his surprisingly callused hand. A brew of ill portent and anticipation spun her insides. “I know men like you.”
    “Men like me?” he echoed, staring at her hand now a safe distance from his own, which rested lightly on her abdomen.
    “You’re a good man, Edward, but all the same you must have what you want when you want it, and if you don’t get it . . .” Mary inwardly shuddered, the rage in her father’s eyes coming to her mind. He had always been so kind, so generous, until one denied him. Then his generosity froze into a glacial cruelty that didn’t stop at unkind words. She hadn’t realized that when she was small. Not when she was his little pearl. The diamond and the pearl. That’s what he had called her mother and herself. Two jewels to be kept and owned and, when rebellious, beaten into submission. Made to fit their settings as her father determined.
    “I’ve known men like that, too, Calypso, and I am not one of them.”
    It would be the height of foolishness to believe in him and allow herself the naïveté she’d once basked in. “You’re not ruthless, then?”
    “I can be,” he admitted without shame. “A man of my standing must be.”
    She let out a long sigh. This conversation alone made her a fool. She should keep her mouth firmly shut and simply allow him to do and think whatever he wished. What did it matter as long as she