In which our heroine, Elise Fountain, gets her first look at Lord
Lavay...
The loquacious Mrs. Winthrop went curiously silent as she led
Elise through a labyrinth of Alder House's too-dark hallways.
The candles hadn't been trimmed; a few were fitfully, smokily,
burning in their sconces. Elise frowned. The house was handsome
enough, but itn the rooms they swiftly passed, the fires burned
low or not at all. She surreptitiously dragged a fingertip along
the top of the wainscoting; she could feel dust cake it.
She saw no evidence of the rumored household staff.
They scaled a flight of marble stairs with a smooth, modest banister,
and Mrs. Winthrop finally halted on the threshold of what appeared
to be a study.
It was as dark and soft as a cave, but a huge leaping fire picked
out glints from around the room, and Elise's eyes tracked them
reflexively: the polished legs on a plumply upholstered settee
and a pair of gorgeous chairs, the inlay on a small round table,
the gilt on a framed map and the stand of a handsome globe, an
empty crystal decanter, a tiny bottle of Sydenham's Laudanum on
a sideboard, only half full.
She stopped when she reached the mirror-like toes of a pair of
Hessians by the hearth.
And followed them all the way up.
Inside them stood a man.
A very tall man.
He in fact all but loomed; the firelight threw his shadow nearly
to where she stood at the door.
Elise took an unconscious step back from it, as though it were
a spill of lava.
His face was aimed rather pointedly at the window, as if he was
expecting someone.
She followed his gaze curiously.
She just saw the same ceaseless slanting rain, like bars on a
cell.
A spray of sparkling shards surrounded his feet. The remains
of a vase, from the looks of things.
"Lord Lavay..."
Elise shot Mrs. Winthrop a worried look. The seemingly indefatigable
Mrs. Winthrop's voice had gone faint. As if she suddenly didn't
have enough air to form words.
The man turned. Slowly, as if he was the earth itself on its
axis. Or as if an invisible sculptor was rotating him to present
a finished work.
Voilà! Elise thought to herself. An attempt at bravado.
It was too late. She'd already sucked in her breath and tightened
all of her muscles, like a creature who had stumbled across a
predator in a clearing and wished to make herself unnoticeable.
He was so clearly of that singular species, The Aristocracy,
that she might as well have bought a ticket to see him, the way
she had once when her father had brought her, as a little girl,
to see the Royal Menagerie in London.
He wasn't young. There was no softness to his face-not in the
set of his mouth, or the burn of his gaze, or the severe right
angles of his jaw. His beauty was austere and inarguable, and
there was a palpable force to him, as if he had sprung from the
earth due to violent underground activity, a bit like a mountain
range. She thought about the things she'd been told about him.
Privateer. Soldier. Prince.
Power, violence, privilege.
He looked like all of the things he was purported to be.
Do we carry around our pasts so visibly? She wondered. Because
if she so, she was certainly in trouble.
There was no denying that he frightened her.
And after a moment, this made her angry. She'd been so certain
she was impossible to frighten after the events of the last five
years. She could not afford to be frightened. She thought she
deserved never to be frightened again.
She squared her shoulders.
Life is full of tests, children, she'd once primly told her students.
That was before she'd been tested.
{end of excerpt!}
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