Undoing of a Lady. Nicola Cornick

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СКАЧАТЬ but the most perfect sense of rightness. It felt heavenly. Her body felt ripe and sated and her mind felt a deep content, as though at last she had come home and was at peace. For Nat had spoken the truth when he had said that she loved him—she could see that with utter clarity now, all pretence and pride torn away in the honesty of their lovemaking. Nat was hers and he always had been, and now she was truly his.

       And surely Nat must love her, too, because that was the way it was meant to be.

      Lizzie opened her eyes and blinked a little. The candlelight seemed too harsh and bright, stinging her eyes. Nat had withdrawn from her. He had turned away, fumbling with his clothes. His face was in shadow. Lizzie waited for him to speak, to tell her he loved her. And then suddenly he turned to look at her fully and her heart leaped in anticipation of the words she would surely hear and the love she would surely see in his eyes. The moment spun out and she searched his face, and saw bewilderment and disbelief and a dawning horror there.

      “Lizzie…” He said. His voice shook. The horror in his expression was raw and painful.

      Lizzie felt cold. Something inside her seemed to shrivel and die, shredding like petals falling from a blown flower.

       Nat did not love her. He had never loved her.

      She could see it in the appalled dismay in his eyes.

      She pushed down her skirts, dragged the fragments of her bodice together and tried to stand. Her legs were shaking and she stumbled and almost fell. Her weakness horrified her. Nat was coming toward her now and she felt panic clogging her throat. She could not talk to him now. She could not even look at him. She felt too shamed as though every last defense had been stripped away leaving her emotions as exposed and naked before him as her body had been. She had to get out. She had to get away from him before he guessed the truth of her feelings, before he put it into words and made her humiliation intolerable.

      She overturned the table, blocking his path and sending the candle flying, and then she was running down the stone spiral stair, reeling off the wall as she almost fell in the darkness. She heard Nat swear and saw a flare of flame behind her as the wall hangings caught fire from the candle, and then she was in the guardroom, groping for the key on its ledge, and for a split second she could not find it and the panic clawed at her chest. She heard Nat beating the flames out and hoped it would hold him for a precious few seconds. The door…It seemed to take forever for her to open it, whilst her cold and shaking fingers slipped on the key, and then she was out in the night and she could hear Nat’s steps on the stair behind her and smell smoke on the air.

       Where to run? Where to hide…

      The wood closed about her. It was dark, deep and anonymous. That comforted her. She could hear Nat calling her name and there was an edge of fear to his voice as well as anger, but the sound was fading as he moved away from her. The relief washed through her. He would not find her now; would not find her again until she was ready to be found. She did not need anyone to help her. She could put herself back together, good as new. She could pretend that this had never happened.

       Nat did not love her. He had never loved her. She had made a terrible, terrible mistake.

      The thoughts jostled through Lizzie’s head, dark and menacing like monsters in a nightmare. She pushed them away. She had to forget what had happened. And now that Nat was at liberty to attend his wedding, he, too, could join in the pretense. He could marry Flora, just as he had intended, he could gain the fortune he needed, and neither of them would say a word about this night ever again.

      Except that Nat had never been very good at pretending. Lizzie had always said it was because he had no imagination, but Nat had always had a nasty habit of facing his demons and of making her face hers as well.

       Not this time…

      “Nothing happened,” Lizzie said aloud. She smoothed the torn remnants of her bodice and wondered why her fingers were still shaking. “Nothing happened at all.”

      Chapter Two

      NAT WATERHOUSE STOOD in front of Fortune Hall, stared up at the darkened window of Lizzie’s bedroom and tried to think. What would Lizzie do now? Would she run? Would she hide? Where would she go? He should know the answer to these questions. He had known Lady Elizabeth Scarlet for ten years, since she was eleven years old, and he a youth of eighteen. He had seen her grow from a child into a woman. He had thought he knew everything there was to know about her. How wrong he had been.

       Where was she?

      His mind did not seem to be functioning as clearly as usual. He could not seem to focus on the practicalities of his situation, what to do, how to put matters right. All he seemed capable of thinking about was Lizzie.

       What the hell had he done?

      Pointless question. He knew precisely what he had done. He had seduced a woman who was not his fiancée on the night before his wedding.

      He had ended over a year’s celibacy by making love to the one woman he should never, ever have touched.

      He had ravished a virgin.

      He had been too weak and too lacking in self-control to resist.

      None of the above actually did justice to the heinousness of the situation, though. He faced it squarely.

      Lizzie. Hell. He did not love her. He had not even liked her very much for the past few months. Once upon a time they had been friends but she had been getting under his skin recently, trying to persuade him not to marry Flora, provoking him, using him, taking him for granted. He had already been aggravated almost past bearing when he had received her note that night. He had almost ignored the summons and only habit and that damned sense of responsibility he had always felt for her had prompted him to go to meet her. He wished he had not.

      Regret speared him, painfully sharp. That was pointless, too. It was done. Lizzie had goaded him, pushed him beyond bearing but he was not going to blame her. The truth was that she could not have provoked him into doing anything unless he wanted it, and he had wanted to make love to her. He had been desperate to make love to her. He still was. It shocked him that he could be in such a godforsaken mess and all he could think about was Lizzie’s beautiful silken white skin beneath his hands and her body, unbearably hot and tight about him, and the dazzling, blinding pleasure of taking her. He was no saint when it came to women, but nor was he a rake. And Lizzie was the last woman whom he would ever have imagined wanting. How could he when he had always seen her as in need of protection? From the moment he had first known her he had sought to make up for the fact that the two men who should care for her—her half brothers Montague and Tom Fortune—were a feckless idiot and a dangerous wastrel respectively.

      He was worse than both of them.

       Damn it all to hell and back.

      The chimes of the church clock wafted over the fields from Fortune’s Folly village. One o’clock. Less than an hour for his whole life to change…

       Where was she? He had to know she was all right.

      Anxiety ran through his blood. Of course she was not all right. How could she be? He had ravished her, ruthlessly seduced her. He had known that she must be a virgin, still innocent despite her wild, wayward behavior. What gently bred debutante of nearly one and twenty was not? And she had shown her СКАЧАТЬ