“Fashion can go to hell. Forcing the human body to conform to an unnatural shape is foolish and dangerous, particularly in the name of fashion. And any man who’d choose to see his woman resemble a pouter pigeon ought to be forced to spend a few hours in one of those bloody contraptions.”
She couldn’t think of anything to say to that, and glanced up at him in faint surprise. It was unnerving to discover that the top of her head barely reached his shoulder, and even more unnerving to believe that his indelicate talk of corsets had been prompted by concern. He was a strange man; his black velvet voice made her feel things she didn’t understand, his bluntness disturbed her and left her without the protection of conventional propriety, and though he’d been very calm and matter-of-fact about it, his determination to have her seemed unswerving.
Then he continued speaking in the same calm but forceful voice, and she wondered a bit numbly if there was anything, anything at all, that he considered improper to discuss with a woman. Somehow, she didn’t think so.
“Besides that, you don’t need any kind of artificial help to have a magnificent body. God gave you one. Seeing you naked has become my life’s ambition.”
Julia wanted to gasp or laugh hysterically, but her stays were too tight to allow her to do either without fainting at his feet. She almost told him so, certain he’d appreciate the remark. Instead, staring straight ahead and determined to keep her calm no matter what he said, she said coldly, “I’m terribly sorry to frustrate your ambition, but I must.”
“Why?”
“I told you. I don’t want an affair.”
“I’ll change your mind.” He looked down at her as they walked along the winding path, wondering absently how long her hair was. It was difficult to judge, since the fiery mass was arranged in a pompadour. The hand he held firmly in the crook of his arm was very small and slender. Her left hand, he realized; neat gloves hid her wedding ring, but he knew it was there.
Too tight. The thought sprang into his mind, and he didn’t know if it was literal or symbolic, if her ring fit too tightly, or her marriage vows did.
“I don’t want my mind changed,” she snapped. “I have no desire to be flung out in the streets and branded an adulteress.”
“Drummond wouldn’t do that even if he found out,” Cyrus said coolly. “He’s a politician. Infidelity means nothing compared to the damage a divorce would cause his career.”
Until that moment Julia had believed she’d experienced all the pain a man could inflict on a woman, but this was a new hurt, an unexpectedly raw hurt. Another man, she thought bitterly, who discounted private torment as long as the world saw only a mask of contentment. Another man who would stop at nothing to satisfy his own needs. She wondered suddenly if even the scars of her private hell would evoke a shred of compunction in what passed for Cyrus Fortune’s heart.
The concern she had thought she’d heard in his voice only moments before had obviously been no more than her imagination. Or perhaps his condemnation of corsets came purely from a man’s desire to have the body he wanted undamaged by silly fashions.
“No,” she said quietly, feeling empty.
“You don’t love him, Julia.”
Genuinely surprised, she looked up at him. “What does that matter?”
He stopped walking and half turned toward her, still holding her left hand against his arm. The path they stood upon was shady and reasonably cool, with a few midsummer flowers perfuming the still air with sweetness. Now, in the middle of the day, only the young people and the two of them were in the park—and the others were so distant even their laughing voices couldn’t be heard.
Cyrus looked down at her upturned face, and wondered why he’d even said what he had. She didn’t love her husband, but, as she’d said, what did that matter? She wasn’t refusing him because she loved another man, but because she was a married woman who wouldn’t break her vows.
“I won’t give up,” he said.
Her green eyes were clouded with puzzlement and something else, something he couldn’t read. “Why does it have to be me?” she asked.
“Because I want you.”
She shook her head a little, her delicate features briefly holding a kind of bitter anguish. “Is what you want so much more important than what I want? Does it always have to be that way?”
For just an instant an unaccustomed hesitation took hold of Cyrus. This wasn’t what he’d expected; she was different from the others. She was in pain, this was hurting her. He didn’t want to hurt her, and honestly believed he wouldn’t. All his instincts told him she needed him like the others had.
They had needed different things from him, those other women. Though no one who wasn’t immediately concerned would have believed it, few of them had ended up in his bed. Some had needed a sympathetic ear or shoulder, some discreet help with problems they didn’t dare take to their husbands, some a more nebulous assistance or comfort. Since he didn’t particularly care about his reputation and since none of the ladies involved were harmed by their rumored affairs, he allowed people to think what they liked.
But with Julia…He acknowledged silently to himself that with her the instinct to help had tangled instantly and fiercely with a desire so powerful, his own needs had been more important to him.
Now her upturned face was filled with mute emotions that hurt him and made her even more beautiful to him in a strange, primitive way, and the intense desire for her swept over him like a tide. She needed him, he knew it. He knew it.
Julia was caught off guard by what she saw in his burning black eyes. She shouldn’t have been, perhaps, because he’d certainly made both his desire and his intentions plain enough. But despite everything he had said, she really hadn’t expected him to attempt a blatant physical seduction—and certainly not in broad daylight in a public park.
When his hands rose to her shoulders and his dark head bent toward her, she opened her mouth to utter some wild, wordless protest that never found a voice. His strong face blurred and she closed her eyes helplessly to try to shut out what had already gotten too close. His lips were hard, curiously hot, the demand in them so insistent she was aware of every suddenly throbbing nerve in her body. It was a shock greater than any he’d yet caused, stealing what little breath her stays allowed her and filling her mind with dizziness.
She was dimly aware of his long fingers tightening on her shoulders, of the whisper of pain as tender flesh protested even that slight pressure, but it didn’t matter. He was drawing her down into some dark place that was velvet and fire, and she was lost there.
He muttered something against her mouth and then his slanted, deepening the kiss even more with stark possession. His tongue was sinuous as it stroked hers in a touch so intimate it sent a shudder of feverish pleasure rippling through her. Her body swayed toward his, and she felt the hardness of his chest press against her breasts.
Then his hands slid down her back to her waist, trailing new heat and the echoes of old pain, and the reminder was just enough to bring a chill of sanity to her mind and a moan of protest to her throat.
Whether or not he heard, Cyrus raised his head, staring down at her dazed face with eyes so fierce she almost flinched away from them. “You want the same thing I want, Julia,” he said thickly. “That’s what matters. It’s all that matters.”
She backed away from him slowly, and he let her go. She had a fatalistic certainty that next time he wouldn’t…because next time she wouldn’t be able to protest. It took more willpower than she thought she had to turn and walk away, but she did it. Her heart was pounding and she couldn’t breathe except in shallow little gulps, but she walked with her head up and she didn’t look back at him.
—
Some minutes later, as Cyrus continued on his way, frowning in thought, a man stepped onto the path behind him and stood gazing after him. He was a tall man, well dressed and obviously prosperous. His lean face was without expression, but a shaft of sunlight fell across the powerful hands t
hat clenched into fists by his sides repeatedly in a measured rhythm.
He turned his head and glanced back the way Julia had gone, then looked after Cyrus again. His hands continued to flex and clench steadily. A faint breeze stirred the trees, and a pattern of dappling sunlight shifted briefly over his face. His eyes reflected nothing in the light, like the windows of an empty house.
—
It was late that night when Cyrus returned home from the poker game at Noel Stanton’s house, and he wasn’t in the best of moods. He’d been on edge since Julia had left him in the park, and his luck with cards had been so abnormally bad that Noel had chided him on his lack of concentration—cheerfully, since he’d been winning every cent Cyrus lost.
Cyrus didn’t care, except that it might have been another sign of his changing luck in other ways and it made him uneasy.
He let himself into the house and locked the door behind him, frowning when a soberly dressed man came silently into the hall. “I’ve told you not to wait up for me,” Cyrus said.
“Yes, sir.” The butler’s face was impassive as usual. “A package came for you tonight, sir. On your desk.”
“A package? From whom?”
“I couldn’t say, sir. Someone rang the bell and left the box on the doorstep. Your name was written on the box, but nothing else.”
Cyrus nodded. “All right. Go to bed, Stork.”
“Yes, sir.”
Cyrus crossed the hall to his study and went in. A lamp had been left burning for him, and in the light of it the wooden box on his desk gleamed darkly. He frowned as he stared down at it, surprised to see his name hadn’t just been written on the box, it had been burned carefully into the wood.
There was no latch on the box; the well-fitted lid simply lifted off. Cyrus set it aside, surprised again to find a gold-handled cane inside. Real gold, he realized as he held it in his hands. This was old, he could feel it. The handle was ornate, but the design was subtle and exquisitely made, and the cane itself was heavy.
He saw the slip of paper a moment later, and laid the cane on his desk with unconscious care before reaching into the box for what he hoped would be a note explaining the curious gift. It wasn’t exactly a note, however, merely a single sentence written in the same fine hand that had burned his name into the box.
Your father wanted you to have this.
Cyrus’s first thought was that this had to be somebody’s idea of a joke, because Tate Fortune had never used a cane in his life, even in his last years when age had taken its toll….
His father?
Very slowly, Cyrus sat down in the chair behind the desk and stared at the slip of paper. Then he looked at the cane, and he was conscious of nothing except shock.
His real father?
Chapter 3
Julia managed to remain very close to home during the next few days, even though she risked Adrian’s suspicion by doing so. Despite his own busy schedule, he always seemed to know if she’d gone out and often where she had been. Any variation from her usual routine was a virtual guarantee he would spark an explosion of questions, accusations, and cruelty. Ironically, he was most suspicious when she didn’t go out, apparently believing she was more likely to betray him in his own house.
Normally, she spent no more time in the house than necessary unless it was literally too painful to get dressed, keeping herself as busy as possible so she wouldn’t have time to think, to dread. She tried to make certain she was either very much in the public eye or else indisputably in the company of other women, so Adrian had no grounds for suspicion.
The tactics made her feel the constant tug of an invisible leash, and they weren’t always successful since he was sometimes completely irrational, but it was the best way she’d found to cope with an impossible situation.
After what had happened in the park, however, she didn’t dare go out. She knew that hiding in the house was only a temporary postponement, but she needed the time to try to shore up her splintering emotional barriers. Luckily, Adrian had decided they would give a party—a large party—the following weekend, so Julia was able to claim preparation for it as an excuse to remain at the house.
In truth, there was a great deal for her to do, and since the visible evidence of her work greeted Adrian when he came home late each afternoon, he could hardly deny she’d been taking care of all the arrangements involved in hosting a large social event—especially since she made it a point to greet him with numerous questions regarding his preferences. It was another tactic she’d found to be generally effective; by focusing his attention on mundane details that he had absolutely no interest in, she could induce him at times to release the pressure inside him in small spurts of temper rather than devastating explosions.
“For God’s sake, Julia, I don’t care what you serve!”
She kept her voice brisk. “If you mean to discuss politics either during or after dinner, Adrian, then what we serve for the meal is quite important.”
They were standing in the foyer, alone after a maid had bustled by with her arms full of linen, and Adrian glared down at Julia. His hat had been tossed aside the moment he came into the house; his blond hair was plastered to his scalp with perspiration, and a nerve beside his hard mouth pulsed visibly. He looked hot and frustrated; his duties as mayor were more difficult than he’d expected. The strains of office coupled with the intolerable heat wave gripping Richmond made his temper more ragged than Julia ever had seen it. At least for the moment it was just annoyance, not irrational rage.
“Why’s it important?” he snapped, loosening his tie with a jerky movement.
“In this heat, serving something too rich will just put them to sleep or make them hideously uncomfortable. No one will feel like talking, especially about politics.”
“Then serve something mild and chilled—use your head, Julia.” He shrugged out of his coat, scowling. “Is my bath ready?”
“Yes.”
She remained where she was, watching him ascend the stairs until he was out of sight. Only then did she swallow hard and slump a little as some of the tension left her. Perhaps this would be a good night. She wasn’t sure yet, and wouldn’t feel completely safe until he was asleep. He could still shout for her and demand she help him bathe, she knew. It was one of the little humiliations he enjoyed inflicting, forcing her to handle his naked body in the most intimate manner possible. The first time he’d made her touch him, she had been unable to hide her loathing and distaste, and she still carried the scars of his resulting fury. Since then she had learned to do as he wished without revealing any of her emotions, to detach the part of herself that felt ill and shamed and degraded.
Sometimes she wondered why she didn’t go mad. Sometimes she thought it had already happened.
In the first weeks of their marriage, when Adrian’s propensity toward violence had become all too dreadfully obvious, she’d been unable to hide her shock and fear. Cowering in pain and terror from his blows, flinching from what he said to her and what he demanded of her, she had begged him to stop hurting her. It made her nauseated now to remember, but she had. If anything, her pleading had only made him more violent.
When she had tried to fight his anger with her own and at least to make an attempt to defend herself, he’d nearly killed her, and when she had withdrawn into a frozen silence, it had been even worse. Gradually, locked into a ghastly cycle of abuse with no escape, she’d learned how to survive it. She had mastered all the little tactics designed to keep him calm, had sacrificed her independence, her pride, and her self-respect. She had learned that when there was no stopping him, the only thing to do was endure. The rest of the time she simply behaved as though nothing out of the ordinary had ever happened between them, as if their marriage was a normal one.
God help all women, she thought, if hers was a normal marriage.
He had only once struck her face, knocking her to the floor, and the resulting swollen bruise had made it impossible for her to be seen for nearly two we
eks. After that he was more careful, even in his rages. Careful enough to mark her where only he would see. Whether he feared public censure or simply valued his favored position in the society in which they lived, she could not guess, but it was clear he intended to keep his bedroom brutality secret.
“Julia?”
She looked around with a start, then smiled when she saw her sister. “How was the picnic?”
“Hot,” Lissa said, stripping off her gloves as she crossed the foyer. “Whatever possessed Mark to think today would be a good day to sit out in the sweltering heat, I’ll never know. He and the other men could at least take off their coats and roll up their sleeves, but Susie, Helen, Monica, and I nearly smothered.”
Julia frowned as she studied her sister’s flushed face. “You should go up and get out of your stays, then take a nice, cool bath.”
“That’s what I intend to do. Is Adrian home?”
“Yes, he’s bathing. We’ll have something light and simple for supper and a quiet evening.”
“I imagine Adrian will work in his study?” Lissa asked, starting up the stairs.
“He didn’t say.”
“In that case, I’ll ask him at supper to give me another chess lesson tonight.”
Julia kept her smile in place until Lissa was out of sight, then turned slowly and went toward the hallway that would take her to the kitchen. Lissa knew only one side of Adrian, had seen only the charming face he wore publicly. From the very first he had deliberately set out to make her adore him—and he’d succeeded.
She had gone away to school immediately after the wedding, and Adrian had been very careful to do nothing to upset Lissa’s favorable image of him when she came home to visit for holidays and the summer break. When she was staying with them he was on his best, most charming behavior and, at least until this visit, had controlled himself and hadn’t hurt Julia badly enough to force her to keep to her bed. Julia still didn’t know what had set him off the night of the dance, and she hadn’t dared ask. He certainly hadn’t volunteered the information, and he’d long passed the point of apologizing for what he’d done to her, but it had been Adrian who had ordered her the next morning to remain in bed.