A Lady Undone by Máire Claremont Page B

Eclipse in March 2014

 
    London
    1866
    Lord James Stanhope, Viscount Powers, was going to kill the ridiculous Irishwoman standing before him. In slow degrees. He was going to kill her for daring to mention his wife. For daring to even whisper his daughter’s name. He was going to rip her to bloody pieces for insinuating that he, the son of the Earl of Carlyle, was insane.
    “My lord?” she asked, her voice rising above the howling, barking voices scattered through the warrenlike rooms of the asylum.
    James blinked. The shadows of the cell’s single gas lamp danced over her. His mind abruptly skittered. Skittered to the swish and sway of her pressed grey skirts. The way they molded over her hips and the tiny form of her corseted waist. Astonishing. She was such a tiny thing. Barely coming up to his shoulder. Perhaps she stood as tall as his sternum. Perhaps.
    Yes. One of the fairy folk.
    He shook his head, but the motion felt as defined as movement through muddied water. What had he been thinking? Oh, yes. He’d been angry with the petite creature. Furious. But now? He swallowed, and the room swung on its axis and his body whooshed through the air . . . and yet he didn’t fall. He stayed upright on his boots, planted, despite the treacherous feeling of being adrift. He opened his eyes as wide as they would go and grunted against the unpleasant, rolling sensation. “What did you say?”
    She stepped forward, her soft, crimson hair glinting in the half-light. “I’m askin’ only that you allow me to call you by your given name, my lord, not for the personal history of your opium exploits.”
    Christ . . . the way her mouth worked as she spoke . . . Her rich, lilting voice sounded as if she were fucking every single word . . . Even her pink lips were lush. Soul-seducing erotic art. Gorgeous. Slightly pursed. Not for a kiss but in disapproval. He arched a single brow, determined to put her in her place. A damned difficult thing, considering he was the ward and she the interrogator. And the fact that his brain seemed entirely at its own command with very little rhyme or reason to his thoughts didn’t aid him.
    He hadn’t taken any opium in days, but he still felt in the throes of it. It was most distressing. “Powers,” he said tightly.
    She sniffed. That pert little nose, free of a redhead’s cursed freckles, tightened with her irritation. “That is your title. I ask again that you permit me the use of your name.”
    In the shadowy light, her skin appeared translucent. He wondered if he reached out and put his hand on her, would it rest on mortal flesh? Or would it slide through her, ghostly female that she appeared to be? “My name was for one woman.” Why was it so hard to speak? He swallowed and slowly articulated, “And you are not she.”
    She cocked her head to the side. Her curls, which had been smoothed back into a tight coif, slipped free at her temple, dusting her high cheekbones. “And you shan’t make me an exception?” She smiled. A pixie’s winning, devilish smile. “Lovely lass that I am?”
    He smiled back. “I’d sooner rip your arms off.”
    Her cinnamon brows lifted, a stunning imitation of his own disdainful gesture. “Indeed? And wouldn’t that be a great shame, fond as I am of my arms?” She licked her lips. Not a seductive gesture by any means, for there was nothing suggestive in her controlled demeanor, which exuded propriety from the tips of her booted ankles, up her charcoal frock, to the starched white collar ramming her neck straight. “Don’t you see? I wish us to be on equal footing. And if you are unwilling to be a gentleman, I shall have to be unwilling to be a lady.”
    An image of her white body sprawled out naked on the stone floor flashed before him, her pristine grey skirts thrust up about her waist, white legs parted, stockings embracing her thighs. He was going to worship her. Bury his face into her sweet, hot folds. The desire that shot through him