Page 72 of The Phantom Duke
“I would consider this new information for a time. Would you excuse me?” Damien said, softening his tone and knowing that Simon would read it as gratitude.
Simon smiled. “Of course, it’s a lot to take in. I am on my way to Willow Street anyway, I promised Drayford to help check on the progress of the little ones with the fever they were afflicted with. Send for me if you need me.”
Damien nodded. As the door closed behind Simon, Damien looked back at the window. The women were still there, but Maria was gone. He opened the curtain wider to expand his field of view. There was no sign of her.
She has probably gone to refresh herself. No need to assign significance to something that is insignificant.
But he felt regret that she was no longer within his sight. A sense of loss. Angrily, he turned away, determined to return to his work and forget the nonsense that was nothing morethan weakness. It was only when he stood before the desk, the papers now bright in the sunlight, that he realized how wide the curtains were. He looked over his shoulder, narrowing his eyes instinctively, expecting pain or at least discomfort.
When it didn’t come, he angrily drew the curtains fully closed.
Such conditions as mine do not disappear in a moment. To believe otherwise is false hope.
Damien stood over his desk, surveying the ledgers and accounts. He could not bring himself to sit and immerse himself once more in their dry pages. His mind roamed beyond the curtains into the sunlight, where Maria had been moments ago, a creature of the light while he was of the dark.
With a sudden flare of anger, he swept the papers and books to the floor, then stormed out of the room, slamming the door closed. He went upstairs to the gallery of his mother’s paintings. But when he arrived, the curtains that kept daylight from the room had been flung wide.
Sunlight bathed every wall, bringing all the stunning paintings to life. For a moment, he marveled at colors he had forgotten existed in those landscapes—aspects he had ceased to see because he always viewed them in the subdued light of candle, lamp or fire. Maria stood in the middle of the room, watching him.
“I saw you watching me,” she said.
“I was wondering at the source of the noise that was distracting me from my work,” Damien said.
“That is not true.”
“Do you call me a liar?”
“No. But I think you deceive yourself at times.”
Damien stalked closer to her. She lifted her chin as he approached, never taking her eyes from him. Her gaze was unafraid, even challenging.
“Pray, how am I deceiving myself?” he asked quietly.
“By hiding your thoughts. Your hopes for us.”
She spoke boldly, putting forth her opinions as though daring him to gainsay her. There was something immensely attractive in that boldness. She was a lioness.
“I have never denied my attraction to you. You are extraordinarily beautiful, beyond any woman I have ever known,” he said dismissively. “My hopes for us from the beginning were to cease to be a public curiosity, to effectively kill the Phantom.”
“No,” Maria shook her head, “that is what you tell yourself. It is what I told myself. But I do not think it true, any more than your affliction which renders you vulnerable to daylight.”
“I have had that affliction since…”
“You stood in full sunlight watching me. You stand in full sunlight now. I believe the sight of your mother’s paintings, revealed so brilliantly in the sun, took your mind off it. I flatter myself that watching me distracted you earlier.”
Damien refused to let his emotions show on his face, even though what she had said resonated within him.
I was distracted by the sight of her. Or rather by her sudden absence. I did not notice how wide I had opened the curtains just to try and catch sight of her.
“I was distracted, but not by these pictures. I know them all so well. The distraction was always you.”
He looked around the room, feeling uncomfortable at the brightness of the light and the nakedness he felt at his admission. But the pain in his eyes was far from what he had felt in the past.
“I am merely trying to break down the wall you insist on building between us!” Maria cried, sudden passion breaking through her own self-control.
Damien’s attention had been drawn back to the paintings, his eye caught by a seascape suddenly revealed to be a patchwork of blues and greens in subtle shadings that he had never been able to appreciate before. Except…
“I remember that one. I remember…”
