“I do so swear,” she said, holding her hand high.
He smiled and shook his head before returning to whatever he was doing at his desk. It went straight to her heart, that smile. Her foolish, impossible-to-reason-with heart. What a flagellant it had turned out to be.
When the servant returned with the quicksilver a scant quarter of an hour later, she finished mixing her ingredients. Painted onto her hand and left to dry, this paste would come in very useful this evening.
That done, she reached further into the depths of her bag and produced several lengths of rope. Alex’s head was down as he concentrated on whatever he was doing, apparently oblivious to her continued presence. She longed for the same insouciance but she was always, always aware of him, so close, yet completely untouchable.
“Hold out your hands, please,” she said, crossing to his side.
He glanced up and stilled when he saw the rope. Oh, she had his full attention now all right. Dangerously so. His eyes took on a glazed expression, heavy-lidded yet somehow expectant.
Wasn’t that what she wanted deep down? For him to look at her again the way he had when he’d begged her to reconsider her decision about becoming his mistress? Through simple honest lust, she could have his fixed attention without all the feelings and tenderness, the impossible longing and insurmountable obstacles. Through his lust, unobtainable though he was, she held him.
It got to her, the way he didn’t say anything. The way he simply turned sideways in his chair and held his hands out. He trusted her in this though she’d done nothing to earn it. He would let her do anything she wanted.
“Place your hands palm down on the arms of the chair.”
And he did.
She stepped closer. Close enough to detect the faint cedar scent of his cologne. “Tonight, I will be bound and you will have to bind me, since you are the person I’m supposed to be hoodwinking.” She tried to keep her voice businesslike, looping the rope around first one wrist, then the other. “Can you get free?”
He relaxed his arms in response. That was good; she hadn’t even been conscious that he’d tensed them. With relatively little difficulty and only a brief expression of discomfort, he used the slack he’d created with that slight resistance against the rope to wriggle free. The backs of his hands were a little scraped up but it had taken him only moments to escape.
“When Captain ties someone, assuming he doesn’t wish them to escape, he pushes down to try and reduce the amount of slack. Do you think you can make it look like I’m tightly bound without actually constricting my movement too much?”
“Of course.”
“It needs to look believable.” She almost asked him to show her, but no. He might enjoy that a little too much and so might she. And then where would they be? “I’ll carry a knife in case.” She spoke with determined nonchalance, yet still his breaths were shallow, his gaze intent. A tremor went through her in response. “You mustn’t look at me that way.”
“What way?” But he knew. She could tell.
Despite herself she stepped even closer. It was like stepping into the light. “It’s only our bodies, Harcastle.” But her voice wasn’t as brusque as she’d meant it to be. “Soon I’ll be gone and you’ll move on to the next obsession. You and I, we’re from different worlds. One day, you’ll look back on this and wonder what you were thinking.”
His hand whipped out and grabbed her wrist. When he smiled, she wanted to kiss it right off his face. Instead she made herself utterly still. He must never know how he affected her.
“Yes, we’re from different worlds,” he said. “Our lives couldn’t be more different. But you and I…” He released her wrist and interlaced their fingers so they were palm to palm, holding hands like sweethearts. “You and I are the same. Devious and distrustful, we expect everyone to lie to us. Perhaps that’s why your moods, your silences, everything you say and do, make perfect sense to me. When I’m with you, only when I’m with you, I’m not Harcastle. I’m not acting a part. And I think it’s the same for you because you feel it too. That despite what’s on the surface, you and I are made of the same stuff.”
Oh, he was ruining her.
His palm rested warm against hers. As messy, sticky emotion rose within her, her heart seemed to swell until it must surely burst with the strength of her feelings. For the first time, she understood what it was to have a full heart.
“Alex,” she whispered, a reproach and a plea. She could bear this so much better if all he wanted was to bed her, if she believed that the true attachment was one-sided. Why must he speak of the bond between them? Didn’t he know that, by acknowledging it, he gave it life? “There’s no point.”
“Because you’re leaving,” he said. “Because I have all this.” He waved his hand, the gesture encompassing not only the room or even the vast, gloomy entirety of Harcastle House, but everything—title, land, duties, dependents.
She shouldn’t pity him for being bound to so much privilege, yet seeing the look on his face, she almost did.
“I have to marry an heiress.” His grip on her hand tightened almost painfully. “If I don’t, I might lose all of it, or at least so much that the title will become a joke. You see, the actual duke himself is nothing. Each one, each generation, is merely a link in the chain. None of this is truly mine. I’m its guardian, and so I must marry a suitable and suitably rich woman and make a little lord who will grow up and become another link in the chain.”
“I don’t understand.” Who was it all for if not the duke?
“I’m not surprised.” He laughed bitterly. “It may seem strange but that is how it’s always been. I cannot be the man who breaks the chain and so I am bound by it.” He eased her hand open and kissed the palm, his lips brushing her skin, barely touching. It was a curiously chivalrous gesture and one that was completely alien to her. “But you see, whatever the unspoken rules may be, I am still a man and, from the moment I first saw your face, I recognized something in you.”
He rose from his seat and released her hand. He was about to leave the room and she must allow it. If she didn’t let him go now, she would want to keep him forever. But he had more to say before he went and, whatever it turned out to be, she sensed it would devastate her.
Sure enough, he stopped before he reached the door, though he didn’t turn to face her. “So, no, I won’t forget you when you leave, I will never wonder what I was thinking, and I will always, always be sorry that we were not to be.”
It was both a declaration and a renunciation. She closed her eyes against the pain of both. When she opened them again, he was gone.
…
That night, Alex watched from across the séance room as his cousin and Nightingale made what was undoubtedly polite conversation.