Beauty Tempts the Beast by Leslie Dicken Page B

movements and patterns, to decide what to do about her future.
    The clank of a tea cup told him she was up there. Just as he suspected. Habits did not change much in the old. The infirm.
    A few silent footsteps brought him up the stairs and to her side. Her eyes widened at the sight of him, then dropped with resignation. Shoulders slumped, hands knotted, mouth tensed. Whether it was guilt at what she’d done to him or fear at what he could do again to her, she always reacted to his presence in the same manner.
    “Mother.” He looked at her gnarled hand, but didn’t touch it. “It has been a year since we’ve talked.”
    “Go away. I will yell for someone.”
    Martin grinned at her hoarse threat. Without access to a bell—which he blocked from her reach—no one could hear his mother call.
    “Why don’t we take a walk?”
    Her dark eyes glared. “You’ve seen to it that I can never walk again.”
    He straightened. “I meant we can take a stroll. I’ll push you along the pond. I have something to speak with you about.”
    “Let go!” She tried to twist around from her chair, but she was too frail and weak to reach him.
    He took a hold of the handles and steered her toward the ramp. It had been built a full year after she fell down the terrace steps. Her husband had some strange belief that his wife would get up and walk again.
    But the woman had not worked hard for anything in her life. Why would she start then?
    “You want something from me. You only come when you do.”
    A wheel squeaked as he drove her down the ramp and started across the lawn.
    “Shall I visit you more often?” His pulse jumped, fire tipped his ears. “Perhaps I should come to see you as often as you came to see me twenty years ago.”
    He could see her tense. “I—I told you I tried to find you. I asked all the neighbors where you’d gone.
    No one knew.”
    Rage boiled below the surface of his skin, threatening to crumble his composure. “I waited there six months for you to return. Six months! As winter approached, I grew too cold to sleep in alleys and steal food.”
    The wheelchair bumped over dips in the grass, jostling his mother in the seat. She cried out, but then settled when they at last reached the pond’s edge.
    “You left me to fend for myself. I was still a boy. A child.” He let go of the handles and walked around to face her. She wouldn’t look at him. “I made my own way. Whatever way I could.” Martin narrowed his eyes. “And I am the one who finally found you .”
    “And then ruined my life when you did!” She gasped at her outburst. Her face paled.
    His hand shot out as reflex, but he stopped just short of making contact. “I ruined your life from the moment I was born. How often did you tell me that? How often did you kick me to make me pay for your sin? Finally, you just walked out and left me behind.” Martin crossed his arms to keep his impulses in check. “But you found a way to marry yourself into wealth and status. And now I will do the same.”
    “What…what do you want from me?”
    As a mother, he could give her nothing. He’d long lost the opportunity for kindness and comfort.
    Now, she was only worth the money and connections she could provide him.
    Voices startled him. People were gathered on the porch. He didn’t have much time.
    “I need invitations to balls, parties and the like this season.”
    “Why?”
    “Why doesn’t matter!” Martin squatted before her, not to become less intimidating, but to hide from the onlookers. “Just find a way to get my name on as many invitee lists as you can.”
    “And if I don’t?” A tremble lurked beneath the words.
    He peeked around her to see three people coming down the steps and looking this way. “Send the cards to Crawley’s Hotel.” He stood, backed away toward the trees crowding the banks. “You should know better than to cross me.”
    Martin did not wait for a reply, nor to hear what was said to his mother by the servants. He