Page 6 of Reflections of Silence

The coachman caught me as I toppled from the step to what appeared to be several paces to the ground. Large, calloused hands gripped my body until I seemed impossibly fragile before his bulk. I gasped as his thick arm wound around my waist, tugging me back against his body.

His frame was hard, like granite. Leaning back into him was nothing like innocent forays with the youths of my limited debut; this man was colder than a gravestone, contained within the same stillness. I spun around, but his gloved hands cinched my waist, offering no release.

A jolt passed through my body, my core clenched as he leaned into me, his cool breath wreaking havoc on my senses. That same sense of nothingness despite the evidence my body offered niggled at me.

But the man’s presence…God above. Had he given me an order, I would have followed it without question. Authority exuded from him, and my body reacted to his silent demand, softening in his grasp.

“I am not, I mustn’t—” I couldn’t force the right words past my lips beneath his midnight gaze. His eyes were fathomless in the depths of the night. As the false dawn approached, he squeezed my waist as though testing my mettle. Sensation zinged through me at the contact, while my mind screamed at me tomove. But I didn’t want to move. I whimpered and attempted to cover the moment of weakness with an unladylike cough. “Let me down,” I hissed. My breath puffed between the bared flesh of his neck and my cheek. “Thiscannot happen.”

I made it a statement; nosiras the English had their habit. Every word pushed against some insatiable desire to give into this man. But we were no longer in England, or France, or Europe.

Instead, I had been dunked into this edge of primordial sludge and told to make a life of it.

Lost in my reflections, I realized the coachman still had a hold of me as I reached back to collect my box. I froze, repressing the urge to squeal—for what an ignominious noise that would be—and waited for him to remove his hands, as requested.

As I demanded.

Donning defiance as my shield, I tilted my head back and stared haughtily down my nose; a habit picked up from a previous abbey and a past life I shucked in return for humid air and biting insects.

“Only if you do not wish it.” His reply to my demand brushed over the nape of my neck in a brief caress.

I shivered. His counteroffer had a finality to it as he swept inside, his thick cloak swirling around his shoulders.

Then the contact was gone, and a whisper of cold air remained in the wake of his touch.

Another footman rushed forward to attend me. I stood inert, wondering what just happened, mulling over his words.

Only if you do not wish it.

CHAPTER THREE

SEBASTIAN

My new wife shied away from me like a skittish mare, but the defiance in her eyes defined her. Drew me to her, until I came within an inch of throwing off my cloak and unmasking myself before her. Claim her there on the drive, be damned what any of my staff thought, or expected. This woman wasmine.

In every way.

Not that she would forgive me for such an act, an intrusion without her permission, no matter how much I craved her the moment my dead skin touched hers. Fragile she might appear and feel beneath my hands, but her eyes flashed with a fierce independence far more attractive than any other quality she might possess.

The taste of her lingered in the night air, a flavor of innocence tainted already with the evils of this place.

Of myself, and the evils I carried with me across oceans, over unnatural lifetimes.

Cursing myself as a fantastical fool, I tossed the reins to the stableboy waiting in the shadows. My eyes weren’t the only onesthat had followed my wife’s flight. I clipped the boy gently across the back of the head, a not-so-subtle reminder of his place, and mine.

The house’s silhouette lengthened with the night as I paced through the lower halls, ignoring the new presence above me while Charleton escorted her to her rooms. I couldn’t shake the feel of her where she clung to my tarnished soul, aching to rip him away from her and terrorize her in the bedroom set aside for her use. It wasn’t likely that we would spend that many hours together, considering my nocturnal custom, unless she was prepared to flip not only her French lower nobility life for me, but her sleeping habits too. I probed her mind gently, the faint scent of night jasmine and naivety lingering though we were a floor apart.

The corner of my lip curled. A virgin, as promised. How…sweet. I could have taken one of the courtesans offered, their souls already shredded, but some part of me wanted to have a slice of purity in this life, if only for a short period. My conversation with my local stone mason echoed through my mind.

“You’ll outlive her by an eon. Ten, a hundred. Will your immortal soul deal with her death after a lifetime of regrets?” His knowing eyes settled on mine, the sort of broken soul he spoke of reflected intimately there.

At the time it was all too easy to laugh off his romanticized notion. Now, I wondered there wasn’t more truth in his wisdom.

Gisella’s sharp opinions echoed inside my mind for a brief moment as she berated the valet silently before they flittered away, and I lost the connection. I smiled despite the pain clenching my chest, wishing it was air I breathed, and not her life I craved.

Desperation clawed at me to reclaim her, but now wasn’t the time to intrude further than I already had on her singular nightof peace before she was thrown headfirst into my world. There would be time. An eternity of nothingness in which to discover her.

A dry laugh, less a polite sound than something from the bowels of hell itself, ripped from my throat. But even my solitary hours weren’t to be my own.

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