Undoing of a Lady

“Do you mind?” Lizzie snapped as Nat’s hand closed about her wrist and he drew her inexorably to the side of the room. “I was enjoying myself—”

“That is all too evident,” Nat said grimly.

“It is Monty’s job to take care of me, not yours,” Lizzie said, nodding toward where her elder brother was dozing before the fire, face flushed, the inevitable glass of wine in his hand. He might not have inherited their mother’s fabled looks and charm, she thought, but he had certainly inherited her taste for drink. The misery twisted in her again.

“Not that I need anyone to protect me,” she finished, and hated the forlorn tone that had somehow crept into her voice.

“Can we talk about that?” Nat asked. His gloved hand still rested gently on her wrist and Lizzie looked from it up into his face and found that she could not seem to look away. Had she ever looked at Nat properly before, she wondered. She knew what he looked like, of course. She had seen him so many times during her childhood and youth that she could describe him with her eyes closed. But had she ever stopped to think about the way in which his features had changed as he, too, had grown older, developing from the youth she had known into the man he was now; how the curves and planes of his face had grown leaner and hardened with experience, how the lines had deepened about his eyes and his hair had darkened to the ebony it was now in the firelight?

Had she noticed when first the stubble had started to shadow his cheeks and chin and when the expression in his eyes had changed from the bright eagerness of youth to this watchful calculation? She did not think that she had detected the precise moment. She did not remember why Nat had changed nor how. He was just Nat and he had been there for her from the moment she had arrived at Fortune Hall, a lonely child who had lost both her parents and had been forced to start a new life in a new place with people she did not know.

But now Nat was no longer simply a youth she had once known or a man who had become her friend. She felt a pang of loss although she was not exactly sure what it was she had misplaced. Perhaps she mourned losing the easy friendship they had once had, for despite the disparity in their ages they had been close and their friendship had been warm and valuable and precious to her. Or perhaps what she regretted was that she had not seen until it was too late that her respect for Nat, her need to hold his good opinion, had been so important to her. She wished she had realized sooner how deeply she had fallen in love with him. Instead she had been blinded by her pride; she had been in denial about her feelings, pretending that her jealousy was disinterested friendship and that she was acting from the purest of motives when really she wanted Nat for herself with the fierceness of a tigress.

“Lizzie?” Nat’s voice had softened now. Perhaps he had seen the bewilderment in her eyes and heard that unhappy tone in her voice. He wanted to protect her. She knew it. Damn it, protecting her was what he had always done. But now it was only a part of what she wanted from him. If she did not have his love then to offer her his protection out of a sense of duty, was simply not enough. She wanted his passion and his wildness and his primitive anger and possession and all the things she had seen in him that night in the folly. But she wanted his tenderness and his love as well, to meet and match with hers, and that was not what he was offering.

“No,” she said, meeting his eyes, “there is nothing to talk about.”

She freed herself from his touch and walked quickly toward the door. She was tired now and the reckless edge the wine had given her was ebbing from her blood. She wanted to go home. She would send the carriage back for Tom and Monty, send, too, a gracious note of thanks to Lady Wheeler in the morning to prove that she was not entirely bereft of good manners.

Nat was still standing where she had left him. Even as she thought that he would not make a scene in a public place by demanding to accompany her or to speak further with her she realized that she had made a serious mistake. There was a single-minded resolve in Nat now that would not baulk at causing a scene. She saw him start to move toward her with absolute determination—and then Priscilla Willoughby drifted across to him and claimed his attention with a hand on his arm, and Lizzie whipped though the door as quickly as a cat and slipped away, her heart beating fast.

It was warm in the carriage and she was alone and she felt unhappy so she reached for the hip flask that she knew Monty kept concealed there. Actually it was not very well concealed, merely shoved under a cushion. She took it out and drank from it and the brandy was villainously strong and almost made her choke, but she could feel her body relaxing, too, and her mind turning numb again. It made her happier. For a little while.

Chapter Six

HE WAS SO ANGRY he thought that he would explode. He was angry with a special sort of fury that only Lizzie could arouse in him, a mixture of protectiveness and complete exasperation.

Nat had made his excuses to Lady Wheeler, and given his apologies to Priscilla Willoughby, whom he had shed with a ruthlessness she deserved. When had Priscilla become so shockingly persistent? He did not remember her being so pushy as a debutante, but then he had been fathoms deep in love with her in his salad days and so had probably not minded her draping herself all over him and claiming his attention at every possible opportunity. Now her clinging only served to irritate him when all he wanted was to talk to Lizzie. He had to confront her. The need to do his duty, to offer Lizzie the protection of his name, drove him. So did the need to have her in his bed.

He had followed Lizzie back to Fortune Hall and seen her tumble out of the carriage. He had been prepared to accost her on the doorstep, but then she had bidden the coachman and groom good-night and had started to walk away from the house and toward the woods instead. Nat did not approve of her strolling around in the dark on her own, of course, but it did at least give him the opportunity to speak with her alone and he had been waiting for that for over a week. He had called; he had looked everywhere for her. The servants had told him that she was sick, she was out, no one knew where she was. Nat had not believed a word of it and if he had not been called back so abruptly to visit his family he would have forced Lizzie to see him before now.

“Lizzie!” He caught up with her on the edge of the wood and as soon as she turned toward him he could smell the brandy on her and see the flask dangling from between her fingers, gleaming silver in the moonlight. His heart sank. He knew that Monty Fortune had a problem with alcohol; he knew, too, that Lizzie’s mother had died abroad, an old soak, people said, disgraced and abandoned. He could not bear to think of the same thing happening to Lizzie herself if she turned to drink in her unhappiness.

“Nat.” He had expected her to run away from him as she had done before, or at least to tell him to leave her alone, but she did neither. She stood blinking at him whilst the light and the shadows played around her and turned the rich auburn of her hair to dark.

“You’re drunk,” Nat said taking, the flask from her and throwing it into the bushes. “You took too much wine tonight and now you’re on the brandy.”