Page 56 of A Courtesan Countess Worth the Scandal
He remembered hearing the pounding of her footsteps along the corridor behind him, as she had given chase. Entirely naked, and seemingly shameless in her nudity, she had lunged for him when he had reached the top of the stairs. Her face had twisted up in a mask of hatred as she had pushed him with the full force of her strength, fully intending to see him tumble to his demise.
“I will see you dead first!” she had shrieked like a banshee.
Had it not been for his quick reactions, he knew that fall might have been the end of him. But his hand had shot out, just in time to catch hold of one of the balustrade posts. His spine had bounced along a few of the stairs, indenting bruises into his back that still ached in the colder months, but his grip on that post had prevented him from falling any further.
“How dare you judge me!” Élodie had screamed, bringing the rest of the sheepish staff out of the woodwork. “You leave me alone and expect me to wait? I am no prisoner. I belong to no man! I willneverbelong to one man!”
Unleashing an ungodly howl that would forever send a chill up his spine, with every remembrance, she had raced down the stairs toward him. There, she had scratched and clawed at his hand like a wild animal, while driving her heel into his side again and again, kicking him so hard she had managed to break a rib.
“You disgust me! You are the same as every other man! You want to possess me, not love me!” she had growled, in a voice so low and guttural that it had not seemed like it belonged to her. “I choose. I say who gets to devour my flesh. You want to put me on a shelf like a porcelain doll—pristine and perfect. But I have fangs, mon amour, and I will show them to you!”
Making good on her threat, she had crouched over him and bitten him hard on the arm, drawing blood. He recalled unleashing a howl of his own as his eyes had met with her wild, inhuman stare. The woman he had adored, the woman he had married, the woman he had tried so hard to save, was no longer within her at that moment. Indeed, seeing her like that, it had made him wonder if she was ever the woman he had thought her to be.
“You no longer have any say in anything,” he had managed to hiss back. “Ididlove you, with my whole heart, but no more. You have played me for a fool, and I will not be ridiculed by you. I gave you everything, and would have continued to do so, if you had not betrayed me like this.Youdisgust me!”
Visibly incensed by his attempt to fight back, Élodie had let go of the last of her inhibitions and given into the primordial force that had been unfurling inside her. Flinging herself upon him, she had pummeled him with her fists, savaged him with her teeth, and cut his flesh to ribbons with her sharpened nails.
“You do not get to leave me!” she had shrieked. “I do as I please. I am Lady Keswick. I will not go back to the farmlands. I will not be a prisoner anywhere. I will do what I want, and you cannot stop me!”
Somehow, he had succeeded in wriggling free of her violent fury and skirted around behind her. Lightning fast, before she could resume her barrage of fists and teeth, he had wrapped his arms around her as tight as possible, constricting her so she could not attack. But the bestial power that had possessed her was far stronger than he had ever imagined, and the blood she had spilled—his blood—had made his grip slippery.
“You will not parade me in front of your high-society idiots!” Her elbows had jammed into his sides, her legs kicking furiously to break loose. “You will not use me to warn other young ladies. We will never bow to the likes of you, the cowards, the dolts, the easily manipulated! You do not deserve us! You are lucky to be allowed to touch us!”
All of a sudden, she had lurched forward with such immense power that he had been forced to let go of her. If he had not, they would both have fallen down the steep staircase to the hard, parquet floor below. Instead, there had been nothing he could do but watch as she had lost her balance upon the blood-slicked steps.
“No!” she had cried, as her eyes had widened in horror.
For a fleeting moment, he remembered that everything had seemed to slow as she had tilted backward. Perhaps, he had tried to reach out to grab her… perhaps he had not. He could not quite recall those details. All he knew was that she had continued to fall backward, her arms flailing frantically, until she had made her final descent to the lower floor.
There, she had lain still, a scarlet pool forming beneath her head, while her eyes had stared up at him, both filled with such venom and accusation that he would never be able to forget them.
“Liam?” Nora’s voice pulled him out of his grisly remembrance so abruptly that he physically jolted.
He shook his head, as though that would rid him of the nightmare. “My apologies. I did not mean to… daydream like that.” He shuddered, feeling cold despite the warmth of the carriage’s interior. “I always find myself feeling peculiar when I am nearing home. You should ignore me at such times, for I always manage to drag myself out of it.”
Her fingertips curled around his hand and squeezed gently. “Did something happen to you there? I know you said your Aunt was not fond of you. Did she do something to hurt you?” Her eyes shone with deep, genuine concern that made his heart beat faster. “If she needs a stern talking to, you must let me know. As your “wife,” it’s my duty to scold those who would cause you distress, and I don’t mind picking out a switch for a timely lashing on the arse if that’s what she needs.”
Liam laughed, despite himself. “We have a strained relationship, but we are civil. When I was younger, she was outwardly hateful, but now she chooses indifference.” He paused, realizing his hands were shaking. “But that is not why I am fearful of my own home. You see, I—”
In that moment, he wanted to tell Nora the entire truth of his past. However, before he could utter the sentence he so desperately wished to say—“Nora, I have been married before. It is a tale I hate to tell, for it almost destroyed me, and I hope that you might understand why I did not say so before, once I have regaled you with the full story”—Lily awoke with a loud yawn, silencing the words on his tongue.
“Are we almost there?” the young girl asked, her milky eyes seeking out Liam and Nora on the opposite squabs.
With an apologetic smile, Nora gave his hand another squeeze, as if to say,“Don’t forget what you were about to say. Tell it to me later. I’m not going anywhere.”In truth, it might have been the most touching gesture he had ever received, though he feared that, if such a time did come to pass again, he would not have the courage to tell her his story.
“We are, Miss Lily,” Liam replied to the girl. “And I hope you find it to your liking.”
His eyes turned back to Nora, and he hoped she could read the same sentiment there,“I hope you like it, too.”For, somehow, the more they tried to distance themselves from one another, the more they found themselves leaning upon one another. And the more he told himself that he was only doing this to repay a debt, the more he found himself liking the way it felt to have her at his side.
Against all the odds, even the gentle caress of her thumb circling the top of his hand was enough to send away some of the ghosts that crept into his mind. If he could just concentrate on her, if he could just continue to gaze into her eyes and feel her smooth skin against his, perhaps there was a way that he would be able to forget his past all together.
Chapter Twenty-Six
As the carriage proceeded up the winding driveway, toward a hulking monolith in the near distance, rainclouds bloomed across the sky, turning the world a muted shade of gray. Nora did not know if that was some sort of portent, but her excitement quickly got the better of her. Still holding onto Liam’s hand, at least until her mother awoke, she poked her head out of the window.
“What does it look like?” Lily asked eagerly.
Nora squinted as the first raindrops flecked her face like tiny shards of ice. “It’s tall and… rectangular, I’d say. I can see three floors, and the cross-hatched windows are glinting in the daylight. There’s a colonnade across the front, with Ionic pillars, and I can see sculpted vases along the top edge of a flat roof.” She wished Lily could see it with her own eyes, for her descriptions were sincerely lacking.
