Undoing of a Lady

“Lizzie,” he said, “you little hellcat.”

He turned and crashed angrily down the spiral stair, taking the candle, leaving her in darkness but for the faint moonlight that slid through the arrow slits in the wall. Lizzie let her breath out in a long, shaky sigh. She had only a moment to compose herself, for once he realized that there really was no escape he would be back. And this time he would be beyond mere fury.

She heard him try the thick oak door—and swear when it would not even give an inch. She saw the candle flame dance across the walls as he checked the guardroom and the passageway for potential exits. The swearing became more colorful as he acknowledged what she already knew—there was no way out. The tiny water closet opened onto the equally miniature moat and was far too small for a six foot man to squeeze through. The room in which she stood had a trapdoor that led up to the pretend battlements but she had locked it earlier and hidden the key in a hollow tree outside. She had wanted to make no mistakes.

He was back and she had been correct—he looked enraged. A muscle pulsed in his lean cheek. Every line of his body was rigid with fury.

When he spoke, however, his voice was deceptively gentle. Lizzie found it more disconcerting than if he had shouted at her.

“Why are you doing this, Lizzie?” he said.

Lizzie wiped the palms of her hands surreptitiously down the side of her gown. She wished she could stop shaking. She knew she was doing the right thing. She simply had not anticipated that it would be quite so frightening.

“I told you,” she said, tilting her chin up defiantly. “I’m saving you from yourself.”

Nat gave a harsh laugh. “No. You are denying me the chance to gain the fifty thousand pounds I so desperately need. You know how important this is to me, Lizzie.”

“It isn’t worth it for a lifetime of boredom.”

“That is my choice.”

“You’ve made the wrong choice. I’m here to save you from it.” Lizzie kept her voice absolutely level despite the pounding of her blood. “You have always cared for me and tried to protect me. Now it is my turn. I’m doing this because you are my friend and I care for you.”

She saw the contemptuous flicker in his eyes that said he did not believe her. Lizzie’s temper smoldered. She had always been hot-blooded, or perhaps just plain belligerent depending upon whose opinion one sought. It seemed damnably unfair of Nat to judge her when she had his best interests at heart. He should be thanking her for saving him from this ghastly match.

Nat put the candle down on the little wooden table beside the door and took a very deliberate step toward her. He was tall—over six-foot—broad and muscular. Lizzie tried not to feel intimidated and failed.

“Give me the key, Lizzie,” he said gently.

“No.” Lizzie swallowed hard. He was very close now, his physical presence powerful, threatening, in direct contradiction to the softness of his tone. But she was not afraid of Nat. In the nine years of their acquaintance he had never given her any reason to fear him.

“Where is it?”

“Hidden somewhere you won’t find it.”

Nat gave an exasperated sigh. He flung out an arm. “This isn’t a game, Lizzie,” he said. She could tell he was trying to suppress his anger, trying to be reasonable. Nat Waterhouse was, above all, a reasonable man, a rational man, and a responsible man. And she supposed it was unreasonable of her to expect him to see the situation from her point of view. She was in the right, of course. She knew that. And in time she was sure he would acknowledge it, too. But at the moment he was annoyed. Disappointed. Yes, of course. He would be angry and frustrated to lose Flora’s fortune. He had cultivated the heiress, courted her and flirted with her, which must have been a dreadfully tedious business. He had invested time and effort in landing his prize. And now she was queering his pitch. So yes, she could see that he would be cross with her.

“What you are doing is dangerous,” Nat said. He still sounded in control. “You have locked yourself in with me. Is this some ridiculous attempt to compromise me so that I am obliged to marry you instead of Flora?”

Lizzie’s temper tightened another notch. She was starting to feel genuinely angry now in addition to feeling afraid. She was infuriated by his presumption in thinking she wanted him for herself. “Of course not,” she said. “How conceited you are! I don’t want to wed you! I’d rather pull my own ears off!”

Nat’s smile was not pleasant. “I don’t believe you. You have deliberately compromised yourself by locking us in together.”

“Rubbish!” Lizzie said. “I don’t intend to tell anyone. I only want to keep you here until it’s too late for the marriage to take place, and then I will let you go.”

“Handsome of you,” Nat said. “You wreck my future and then you let me go to face the ruins.”

“Oh, do not be so melodramatic!” Lizzie snapped. “You should not have become a fortune hunter in the first place. It does not become you!”

“There speaks a woman with fifty thousand pounds and a judgmental attitude,” Nat said. “You know nothing.”

“I know everything about you!” Lizzie flashed. “I have known you for over nine years and I care about you—”

“You aren’t doing this out of disinterested friendship, Lizzie,” Nat interrupted her scathingly. “You are doing this because you are selfish and spoiled and immature, and you do not wish another woman to have a greater claim on me. You want to keep me for yourself.”

Lizzie gaped. “You are an arrogant pig!”

“And you are a pampered brat. You need to grow up. I have thought so for a long time.”

They stood glaring at one another whilst the tension in the room simmered and the candle flame flickered as though responding to something dangerous in the air.

Somewhere inside, Lizzie was hurting, but she cut the pain off, cauterized it with the heat of her anger.

“When have I been spoiled and immature?” she demanded. She had not wanted to ask, to twist the knife in her own wounds, but she found she was unable to keep the words inside.

Nat laughed, a harsh sound that ripped at her soul. “Where shall I start? You have no interest in anyone or anything beyond your own concerns and opinions. You flaunted yourself brazenly at the assembly on the very day that my engagement to Flora was announced, and that could only have been to take attention away from her. You flirt with anything in trousers. You have kept both Lowell Lister and John Jerrold dancing on a string for months when you have no interest in them other than in the way they feed your vanity. And if we are talking about serious lack of consideration for others, you bought some of Miles Vickery’s most valued possessions at the sale of Drum Castle and never had the generosity to give them back to him—”

Lizzie covered her ears. Nat caught her wrists and dragged her hands away.

“You wanted to know,” he said. His voice was hard. “I knew you would not be able to take the truth.”

He dropped her wrist as though he could not bear to touch her, and they fell apart. Both of them were panting. Lizzie felt as though her skin had been flayed bare by his words. Her eyes prickled with hot tears. She forced them back.

After a moment Nat raked his hand through his hair again and made a visible attempt to keep calm.

“Give me the key and we’ll forget this ever happened,” he said.

It was too late for that and they both knew it.

“No,” Lizzie said. She crossed her arms. “I don’t have it.”

“You are a pampered brat. You need to grow up. You are spoiled and selfish…”

She told herself that she did not care what he thought. She knew she was lying. It hurt horribly. Something precious, something she had cherished, had been broken beyond saving. Nat’s opinion had always mattered to her. She had respected him. Now she felt as though she hated him.

Nat’s gaze stripped her, suddenly shockingly insolent. “I suppose you have hidden it about your person.”

“No, I have not!” Lizzie was taken aback both by his tone and the look in his eyes. He had never looked at her like that before, as though she was some Covent Garden whore displaying her wares for the purchase. She felt humiliated; she told herself she was livid. Yet something in her, something shocking and primitive, liked it well enough. The blood warmed beneath her skin, the heat rolling through her body from her cheeks down to her toes and back up again, setting her afire.

Nat grabbed her so quickly she did not even see him move. His hands passed over her body; intimate, knowing hands, seeking and searching. The goose bumps rose all over her skin, following the path of his touch. The heat intensified inside her, burning hotter than a furnace. She squirmed within his grip, protesting against the humiliation of his restraint and her body’s response to it.

“Let me go! I don’t have it, I tell you!” There was more pleading than she liked in her tone.

“But you know where it is.” He let her go, breathing hard. There was some expression in his eyes, something feral, something different. It made her tremble. She remembered for the first time that he was a man who habitually, ruthlessly and coldly hunted down criminals in the course of his duty. She did not think about that often for that was the side of Nat’s life that she seldom saw, but she thought about it now because she could sense the rage in him and the desperation. She remembered that he had said he needed Flora Minchin’s fifty thousand pounds very badly indeed. She knew that he had wanted to restore Water House and provide for his family—his parents were old and his sister Celeste an invalid—but recently it had seemed there was an added urgency to his actions as though something else had happened to make his pursuit of the money even more pressing. She did not know what it was. She had never asked. Perhaps Nat was right that she was always wrapped up in her own concerns. The thought disturbed her.

She searched his face for the Nat Waterhouse she recognized and saw a stranger.

It chilled her so much that she teetered on the brink of capitulation and Nat saw her hesitate on the very edge of defeat—and he laughed.