The Dark Lady by Máire Claremont Page A

the curves of her waist, her bottom, the shadows that hinted at her most intimate places. A good man would not have noticed such a thing.
    Nor would he have noticed how the rough fabric of the shift hung on her shoulders, skimming her body, leaving that fragile, unearthly silhouette for him to study. Hisfingers curled into fists, as if he had to deny his need to cross the room and touch her. To rend the formless fabric that caressed her legs, so that she was never touched by such rotten stuff again. God, even in such a hideous dress, even having undergone such foul treatment, she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. And when he had his way, she would be dressed in silk, a fabric that would kiss her skin with its softness, not punish it with its every thread.
    It took all the self-will he had cultivated in the last five years to stop himself from reaching out to her, from claiming that beauty, so that he might fan it to a life bursting with power. But he couldn’t, and the pain of it crushed him.
    In careful steps, she walked to the window and braced her hands against the panes. The heat of her breath blossomed against the cold glass. For a moment he wondered whether she had entirely forgotten him, she was so absorbed.
    “Ian?” Her voice hummed through the space.
    “Yes?”
    “I don’t know myself anymore.” Her slender fingers curled as she lingered, looking out to the street below. “How do I find myself again?”
    Ian rooted his boots in the floor, still resisting the desire to go to her. To try once again to wrap her in his arms and soothe all her fears away. He would have to be far more clever to accomplish such a thing. “Eva, you are who you always were.”
    She laughed. The brittle noise bounced lifelessly off the plaster walls. “Oh, Ian. Don’t lie, even if you do it with such conviction.”
    “It’s not a lie,” he ground out, another lie thick between them. “Underneath it all, you are still the same. The woman your husband loved.” It didn’t matter that,in the end, Hamilton had proved himself unworthy of her. So he continued. “You are the girl who raced horses with me with more confidence than any man I’ve met. Nothing can take that away.”
    “Horses.” She sighed.
    He flinched. How thoughtless could he be to bring them up? A horse had changed their lives forever. He had never told her about Hamilton and the horse, having harbored a secret hope that his childhood companion had not already been ruined in that moment. He’d lied to himself about the truth of his friend’s heart and, as a result, he’d lied to Eva. To protect her. He wondered now who he’d truly been protecting. “Eva, please—”
    A shallow laughed echoed from her. “Please? Please, what? Pretend it never happened? Pretend you kept it from me?”
    “Yes,” he whispered. Neither of them could face the choices he had made.
    “Then you are in good luck. Pretending is what I do best these days.”
    “I am sorry. But I had thought . . . I had thought he still was good at heart, that I could change him.”
    She sighed. “I suppose we both did. We paid a heavy price trying to save him.”
    The pain in her words lacerated him, and if he could have undone all that had transpired, he would have, but that power was not within his grasp. “Eva, you will be yourself again. I promise.”
    “I don’t think so, Ian.” She glanced back over her shoulder. Her fingers slid off the glass, leaving long trails in the soft clouds, marring the panes. “That woman you speak of is gone. She died.”
    “What?”
    “On a muddy road.” Eva gave him her back, perhaps unable to look at him. Her stance was severe, unforgiving.She lowered her head and rested her forehead against the window before she breathed. “In the rain. With her son.”
    Ian’s chest constricted. There was nothing he could say that would give her comfort. Adam was dead. And perhaps Eva had indeed lost herself that day among the wreckage of a twisted