The Suffragette Scandal (Brothers Sinister #4)(38)

But he wasn’t a sweet nothing sort of man. She dragged her hand over her face and sighed.

“I’m sorry,” she told him. “I shouldn’t have snapped at you. It’s just that I know I shouldn’t have nightmares. It’s ridiculous.”

“Shouldn’t you?” he asked gravely.

“It feels foolish to admit it. Like I’m admitting to fear.”

He cast another glance at her. “And you’re not afraid?”

She didn’t answer.

“Of course you’re afraid, Miss Marshall. Fear is only foolish when it’s irrational. You have men painting threats on your door, burning your house down. If they’re writing you letters suggesting that you need a child in your belly, I doubt they’re offering to put it there only if you’re willing.”

She let out a shaky breath. “I still have nightmares about being in the lock hospital.” She took hold of a curl of her hair, wrapping it around her finger. “And that makes no sense. I was there only for a few weeks, and there’s no danger of my being sent back.”

He fell to silence.

“I knew my brother would get me out. And still I remember the baths—ice water in winter. Brown ice water. They didn’t change it between women.”

He shuddered.

“And the medical exams. It wasn’t like having a doctor listen to your pulse. They had to examine you visually.” She let out another breath. “Everywhere. I tell myself I’m strong and brave, but I had been going to spend two months there. I broke after two exams.”

He took her hand in his. He was still wearing his gloves—he’d been feeling too self-conscious to take them off. He didn’t say anything. He wasn’t sure if he was holding her hand to give her strength, or to drive away his own plague of memories.

She sighed. “But then, what would you know of it? You’re not afraid of anything.”

He ought to have laughed. He should have told her that fear was for other men, because he was the thing that they feared.

Tonight, he couldn’t make himself tell her that lie. Instead, Edward let out a long breath. “Percussion fuses are the very devil.”

She didn’t say anything, and for a long while, he didn’t either. Their hands tangled, warmth meeting warmth.

“I was in Strasbourg,” he finally said. “Seven years ago, during the siege. I was on the fire brigade. The Prussians had these rifle-bored cannons that could shoot shells an impossible distance—right into the center of the city itself. All those shells had percussion fuses so they exploded on impact. There was no place safe. Cellars, if you lined them with bags of sand—but then the danger was that the house would collapse on top of you. Later, I heard that in the first days of the siege, the Prussians had sent through a shell every twenty seconds. You can’t imagine it, Miss Marshall. Everything burned, and what didn’t burn, splintered. Have you ever seen plaster dust ignite in the air? I have. And we’ve not begun to talk about the machine guns—capable of sending out bullets at the speed of a hand-crank.”

She turned her head to look at him. Her fingers played in his.

“The worst were the shells that didn’t explode on impact. They could go at any time. I saw a man ripped to shreds by one in front of my eyes.”

For a long moment, he didn’t say anything. He couldn’t.

“I don’t believe in lying to myself,” he said. “I’m afraid. To this day, I can’t hear a loud noise without jumping. And I never do like sleeping in small spaces. I’m always afraid the walls will come down on me. Fear is a natural response.”

Somehow, his arm came around her.

“It’s what you do with your fear that matters. And that’s what I can’t make out about you.”

She turned to look in his eyes.

“Lightning always strikes the highest tree on the plain,” he told her.

Her eyes were wide, glinting in the dim moonlight.

“Most people who are struck by lightning learn to keep their heads down. It’s only people like you who grit your teeth and then come out again, refusing to cower. That’s what I can’t understand about you. You’ve been struck by lightning, again and again, and still you stand up. I don’t see how you are possible.”

God, it was so easy to hold her. To pull her closer to him, to feel her body against his. The curve of her breast pressed against him, the line of her leg.

She didn’t answer. Instead, she tilted her head up to him. His arm came around her; his lips came down on hers, and the rest of the world—the dark room surrounding them, the uncomfortable feel of hard boards beneath too-thin blankets—seemed to slip away. There was nothing but her shoulder under his hand, her lips soft under his.

Kisses were dangerous things, when a man wanted a woman.

They made him want to toss his heart in her lap. They weren’t just an exchange of pleasantries; they offered a glimpse into the future. A kiss hinted at the pleasure that might come from a night in bed, at the deliciousness that a heady, week-long affair might bring.

But when Edward kissed Frederica Marshall, something terrible happened—something that had never happened in a lifetime of kisses.

He didn’t see an end.

He wasn’t going to want a sweet farewell in a few weeks’ time. He wouldn’t walk away with a light heart. He was going to want more and more—more kisses, more of her, again and again.