Nicola Cornick - The Undoing Of A Lady

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.

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.”

“You are a spoilsport.” She pouted. So she was sweet drunk not angry drunk. It did not appease him. Fear for her mingled with his exasperation. It was as though she lived on a high wire. He did not understand what it would take to bring her safely back to earth.

“There wasn’t any left in the flask anyway,” she said. She turned and walked away from him, into the moonlight. It sculpted her face in silver making her look pale and fey, a fairy from another world. Nat looked at her with her bodice slipping and her shawl sliding off her shoulders. She had pulled the neckline of her gown down too far earlier and the curve of one small breast showed now. He wanted to trace the line of it with his finger. He wanted that quite badly. Lizzie did not have Priscilla’s opulent curves. He had noticed them since Priscilla had been thrusting her breasts in his face all night. It had not attracted him. He had wanted Lizzie’s delicacy instead. He wanted her so much that he ached.

“John Jerrold wouldn’t have thrown the flask away.” She was taunting him now. “He would have fetched me more brandy.”

“Jerrold is a bad influence on you,” Nat said. She was surrounded by bad influences, her dead parents, her drunkard elder brother, her profligate younger one, now John Jerrold. He had wanted to hit Jerrold and it was not solely for his lack of judgment in encouraging Lizzie’s drinking. If she had gone outside with Jerrold would he have found them with Jerrold’s hand down her bodice or up her skirt?

“I was only flirting with him,” Lizzie said. Her smile was sweet, her eyes wide and bright.

“You were playing reckless games.” Nat sighed heavily. She looked so young in the moonlight with her gown falling off her like a child let loose in the dressing up box. “You don’t know how dangerous it is,” he said coldly. “Jerrold wanted to kiss you-”

“I’ve kissed other people before.” Lizzie sounded cross, defiant. “It is not just you, Nat. I know how to go about it.”

Dear God, he didn’t want to think about it. Other men kissing Lizzie, plundering that soft, sweet mouth of hers as he had done…And tonight she had been flirting as though her life depended upon it, tempting them with other liberties far beyond mere kissing. There was knowledge in her eyes and the promise of temptation. How far would she go? As far as she had gone with him? He would kill any man who took her up on that offer because it was his fault that she had the experience to follow through.

“You must marry me,” he said, following that train of thought. “It is the only way to put matters right.”

“No.” She swung away from him. “What you mean is that it is the only way to make you feel better.”

Devil take it, he thought, she was right. He felt all manner of emotions, of which guilt was only a small part. Self-loathing, disgust at his lack of control, regret at the way in which he had obliged Flora to free him and now an equal regret that he and Lizzie were trapped by their situation…And then there was the almost paralyzing fear over the need to gain a fortune and quickly, for his sister’s sake if nothing else, to end the blackmail…

But there was also that deep and undeniable sensual attraction to Lizzie, too, which seemed undiminished by the guilt and reproach, a wicked, dangerous desire that tempted him to take her again because he wanted her. He wanted her with a hunger so sharp and so deep that it made his breath catch. Lizzie had made love in the same way that she did everything else in life-with hunger, with recklessness, with an appetite that left no space for caution or care.

“Lizzie,” he said, “what if you have a child?”

Her face seemed carved from stone in the moonlight. “I won’t.”

“Do you know that or are you just being wilfully stubborn?”

She made no reply and suddenly he realized with a pang of the heart that the blank look on her face was not obstinacy but fear, that her persistent refusal to face the truth sprang from terror. Lady Elizabeth Scarlet might be twenty years old yet she was still little more than a child herself in temperament. It was one of the reasons why he had always taken care of her, because she had seemed so dangerously careless of herself.

“I won’t,” she said again. “There will be no child.”

“Do you know that for sure?” Nat pressed, wondering as he did so why he was asking. It made no difference to him or to what he had done. Even if there were to be no obvious consequence of their mad, mindless passion, it had still happened and he still had to put it right.

“I don’t feel any different,” Lizzie said. She sounded very young. “I am sure that if I were pregnant I would be able to tell.”

Nat almost laughed but he had heard the edge of fear in her voice again, the note that betrayed her.

“I do not believe one can always tell at first,” he said carefully.

She shot him a look that was full of defiance. “How would you know? You are a man.”

She had a point, Nat thought. But even so…

“How long is it until you expect your courses?” he said, very careful again. He saw her blush pink even under the pale gilding of the moonlight. She might be wild but she was not so immodest as to be familiar discussing intimacies with a man.

“I…in about five days time, I think. Perhaps a little less…I never pay much attention to them.” She raised her chin. “I think it stupid to let such matters govern one’s behavior.”

Well, quite. He could imagine that Lizzie would not let such a trifling matter interfere with her riding or her other activities as many women did. Nevertheless it would have been useful if she had paid more attention to them because by his calculations that put their night of mad passion in exactly the most dangerous time of the month.

“Then I think it essential we wed by special licence as soon as possible,” he said.

“And I think it better that we do not wed at all,” Lizzie said.

Nat looked at her, wondering if she was trying to deny both what had happened and what the consequences might be. He wondered if she wanted children. They had never talked about it. He had thought that they were friends and yet there were so many things that they had never discussed. He wanted children-with the right mother. He had always imagined that he would marry someone like Flora, or Priscilla Willoughby, who were dutiful and well-bred and would surely give birth to dutiful and well bred offspring. Was it wrong to think that Lizzie could not be a good mother, twenty years old and yet still behaving like a child herself? The only real example of motherhood she had had was the Countess of Scarlet, who had been selfish and neglectful.

Lizzie had walked away from him again, graceful as she dipped in and out of the shadows. The leaves rustled in the night breeze and it spun tendrils of her hair.