Chapter Twenty-Five
Stoker leaned against the corridor wall and stared down at Bridget. The dog ignored him; her unerring focus was on the closed laboratory door behind which Sabine stood. After the struggle they’d had, he did not blame the dog for wanting to be close.
Stoker had suggested that the detective might take her mural more seriously if she explained without the growling presence of a suspicious dog.
“It won’t be long now,” he told the dog, hoping this was true. A second and third detective had arrived shortly after the police cleared the scene. They introduced themselves as an explosives regulator and a detective who specialized in smuggling and joined the interrogation of Sabine. She now captivated a growing circle of men gathered around her mural. They were well into their second hour of questions and studying her evidence. The men had been shocked when Stoker declined to remain in the room for the discussion—in truth, they were shocked that he did not conduct the discussion—but this was her investigation.
Now he and the dog would wait. He wondered how Sir Dryden fared in his Whitehall holding cell. In the confusion of a dog barking, a bleeding woman, and a frantic professor who began a guilty recitation of ridiculous excuses, there had been ten stray minutes when Dryden had been left alone under very distracted guard. Stoker had used the time to slip into the destroyed office and have a few words with the sadistic git. A handy pen had somehow escaped the melee on the desktop. Stoker had snatched it up and dug it, nib first, into the shallow wound Sabine had inflicted on this thigh. While the older man tremored and begged for mercy, Stoker told him in no uncertain terms what would happen to him if ever he approached Sabine again. He assured him that the police would prevent him from ever residing at Park Lodge and the older man dared not contradict him.
Later, when the last detective had gone, Sabine asked Stoker if they might walk for a while before they made their way home. He wanted to ask her again to seek out a doctor, but she’d cleaned up her nose and swept up her hair, insisting that she was otherwise unharmed. He would not cluck over her, she didn’t like it, and he was trying very hard to do what she liked.
A memory from the morning flashed in his mind.
“Remember this morning,” he ventured, “when you referred to me asunsatisfyingandboring?”
Sabine chuckled. “Of course this is how you would remember it. I did not assign these words to you, as a man. I was describing certain... er, interludes. Not all, just some.”
“Forgive me if I saw only the forest of your message and not the trees.”
“Actually, I was paying you a compliment.”
“Oh yes, how complimentary to hear that I bore you and fail to satisfy.”
“If you are waiting for me to say that I regret the conversation, I do not and I will not.”
“Sabine Stoker,” he sighed, “woman of no regrets.”
She laughed. “I wouldn’t say that. But I am decisive and I aim to be sensible, to consider cause and effect. I am not cavalier when I make decisions. What are you getting at?”
He stopped walking and turned to her. “At the risk of rehashing the topic of Sir Dryden, I merely want to point out that, if I bore you, I am endeavoring to be the opposite of your uncle. I endeavor to be the opposite of every terrible man I have seen bullying a girl—”
She tried to cut in, but he rushed to finish. “Certainly, I am big and strong and aggressive, and my desire for you is so great, it takes my breath away. But possessing these attributes does not mean it is safe or reasonable for me to inflict them on you.”
Sabine nodded and looked away. Bridget paused on the sidewalk to drink from a puddle. A day of storms had washed Regent Street in cold rain. They stared down at the dog.
“Your caution is a gift. Truly it is,” Sabine said. “Forgive me if I have not shown gratefulness in addition to my, er, demandingness. But what I endured under Sir Dryden has no bearing on what we enjoy when we are intimate. Sir Dryden’s violence was about power. When you are passionate, your, ah, fervor does not come from a place of power, but of—well, I assume it is enthusiasm? Attraction? Passion for passion’s sake?”
It’s love,he thought, but he said, “Yes, it is all of those things.”
“Power does not enter into our intimacy—not in my view. Well, perhaps that is not entirely true. If I’m being honest,Ifeel a small amount of power overyou. That is, when you are doing it right—”
“Oh yes, on those rare occasions...”
She laughed and started walking again. “When we are both caught up in the moment, I feel as if I am irresistible to you. It is a powerful feeling, and an intoxicating one. I quite like being irresistible to you.”
I have never known anyone or anything more impossible to resist,he thought. He said, “I’m sorry to raise the topic after the day you’ve had. But I felt compelled to mention it. In my defense.”
Sabine paused and looked up at him. “I never meant for you to defend yourself, Jon. I only wanted you to love me the way you did the very first time. When we were hiding in that bedroom at the Courtlands’, you touched me as if I was something that felt very... precious and almost fleeting. It was as if you wanted to swallow me whole, lest I slip way. And I had never felt more revered. Or looked after.” She flashed an expression that said,Don’tyou see?
They stared for a moment and Sabine shrugged. She continued down the sidewalk and Stoker watched her progress. “Noted,” he finally said.
“But you raise an interesting point about power,” she said when he caught up. “I’ve come to believe that how a man wields his power is a real measure of his character,” she said. “Sir Dryden had a small amount of power over me, and he used it to terrorize and control. But look at someone like the Duke of Wrest. At one time he had considerable power and he chose to do practically nothing but serve his own folly. In the scheme of things, the amount of power a person has matters less than how he or she applies it.” She shrugged. “But it’s all relative, isn’t it? A woman has very little power at all, not beyond her children or her staff. Women in particular are keenly aware of men who take advantage.”
She looked up. “You never take advantage, Jon. Never. You have respected my interests and my intelligence. You have quarreled with me as if I am an equal.”
“Only you would appreciate the manner in which I quarrel,” he said.
“The way we quarrel,” she listed, “the way we make love, the way you convalesce. Good lord, I am demanding.”
