Blood Marriage (4 page)

"You are very gracious, your lordship." Their hostess, Mrs. Huntington, had finally managed to make her way through the crowd. She signaled the musicians who began to play once more and the crowd dispersed. "Ladies, if you will follow me, I have a room where you can be private and recover from this, um, experience." 

His hostess’s tight smile was not lost on Nicholas. He'd known Mrs. Huntington since he was in short pants. More would take place in that room than recovering. Countess Glenbury's daughter was about to get an earful. Would the girl have the good sense to stay quiet and let Mrs. Huntington have her say? For the moment she seemed completely cowed by her mother's presence and allowed herself to be led away by the two older women. Elizabeth moved to follow, but Nicholas couldn't allow her escape so easily.

"Countess Glenbury?" he said.

The ladies stopped and looked back at him. 

"I confess I'm curious about the type of spider I may have been exposed to." Nicholas closed the distance between himself and the women in two strides. He was making a complete cake of himself in front of Mrs. Huntington and anyone else within earshot, but the countess owed him and he was determined this night would not be a complete loss. "I realize Lady Harriet is overwrought and needs your attention, but perhaps you could spare Miss Smith. After all, she did see the spider." 

The countess's face puckered, lemon-sour. 

"Perhaps," he broadened his smile, but kept his eyes flint hard, "she would be kind enough to spare me a few minutes. A dance?"

Harriet's face flamed and her chest puffed out. "How dare...ouch! Mama!" 

The countess had directed a discreet, but forceful elbow to Harriet's ribs.

Elizabeth cocked her head to one side, pointedly examining Nicholas's cheek. "I believe you escaped unscathed, your lordship. There is no bite."

"The bite of some creatures isn't apparent at first. Sometimes it's well-hidden." He felt like laughing when that expressive eyebrow rose at him once again. "I had, it seems, been wearing the spider for some minutes before Lady Harriet came so bravely to my rescue. Set my mind at ease, Miss Smith. Stay and enlighten me while we dance."

"It seems a reasonable request," Mrs. Huntington said. 

"Well, yes then, of course. Dance with the man, Elizabeth," the countess commanded. She turned and tugged a furious Harriet from the ballroom. 

Mrs. Huntington's eyes swept over Elizabeth, then she shook her head and clucked her tongue at Nicholas. "The
pink
roses are especially beautiful this year," she murmured before following in the countess's wake.

Behind them a quadrille was coming to an end. Nicholas held out his hand to Elizabeth. She shook her head.

"I cannot dance," she said.

"Then we will not dance." He smiled. "The pink roses are especially beautiful this year." 

Indecision flickered in her violet eyes. He offered her his arm, willing her to lay her white-gloved hand on his sleeve. Across the room a pair of identically lovely middle-aged ladies strolled into the ballroom. His father would not be far behind. 

"Very well. For a moment only." Elizabeth placed her hand lightly on his arm. 

He matched his pace to her slower one and led her out the French doors. A final glance over his shoulder told him his father had still not appeared behind the twins. The duke would not see his son taking the wrong girl out into the night.

Mrs. Huntington's servants had set a punch table at one end of the stone terrace, well away from the doors and close to the wide steps that led down into the garden. A place for couples to pause and wait to see if watchful parents or jealous spouses had pursued them before hastening down one of the multitude of quiet paths that wound through the rose gardens. 

At risk of destroying their reputations and inviting scandal, unmarried ladies did not dare go further than the short stretch of lawn at the end of the terrace. Though even there Mrs. Huntington's staff had placed the garden lanterns in such a way as to allow semi-private patches of shadow where a bold maiden might allow her hand to be held or a serious suitor to kiss her cheek. Pink roses encircled this area of lawn and, as Mrs. Huntington had promised, they were in rampant bloom, their gentle fragrance scenting the night.

Nicholas handed Elizabeth a cup of punch. After the sounds and smells of the ballroom, the night air was a balm to his senses. He watched Elizabeth sip her punch, amused by the way she looked everywhere but at him. 

He'd expected a shy lady's companion, one whose head might be easily turned by a little flattery and the unexpected attentions of a wealthy peer. Nicholas was not a vain man, but neither was he blind. It was obvious by the way the ladies' eyes followed him when he entered a room, and by the invitations the bolder ones made him, that he was not without appeal. Tonight he'd come prepared to use whatever enticements he possessed to lure this woman into Mrs. Huntington's rose garden. 

And not the pink one. 

But having watched Miss Elizabeth Smith thwart McClintock's advances and save Harriet's reputation within the last half hour, he'd begun to suspect leading her down a garden path would not be simple. She wasn't the type to let a man she'd just met lure her easily into the darkness. 

Another of his sort would simply have gazed deeply into her eyes and taken her where he pleased. Unfortunately that trick was beyond him, one of the things left undone by the one who'd made him. Though Nicholas disliked doing so, his time was running short -- the countess would eventually notice the girl was gone -- so he'd been forced to resort to spiking the beauty's drink with a drop of carefully measured drug. Enough to make her vulnerable for a short time; yet not enough to drug himself when he took her. He watched her sip her punch and felt the blood-lust rising. It wouldn't be long now.

Chapter Six

"You unnerve me when you stare at me in that way." Elizabeth downed the remaining punch in a less than lady-like fashion and set the cup on a nearby railing. Unlike the beverages Mrs. Huntington was serving in the refreshment room, the punch out on the terrace had been laced with spirits of some sort. The taste was unfamiliar, but she could feel the effects already. The pain in her knees and elbows lessened. She should ask Mrs. Huntington what the brew was. Perhaps it could give ease to her mother as well.

"How would you prefer I stare at you?" Lord Devlin asked.

"I would prefer you not stare at me at all."

He laughed, the sound low and pleasing, but oddly distant. She moved away from him, back toward the French doors and the noise of the ballroom. Then stopped. Inside, the dancers spun and whirled in the most dizzying fashion. A steadying hand under her elbow and the bewildering blur of dancers was replaced by a more serene view of pink. 

"Then let us both stare at the gardens a while," he said. 

Elizabeth listened as he described the Huntington gardens. Fascinated by the smooth timbre of his voice, she floated along on the sound of it, her feet barely brushing the ground. 

"There are five gardens, each devoted to a different shade of roses," he said. "The pink garden surrounds the terrace where we enjoyed our punch. From the pink garden four wide hedge-lined paths lead out onto the grounds. They wind and intersect in places, but finally each ends in a circular garden. The path we are on now leads to the white garden. Do you like white roses, Miss Smith?" 

She should answer, but it seemed too great an effort. Instead she allowed herself to continue to drift along on the soothing sound of his voice.

"They are beautiful in the moonlight, don't you agree?" he asked softly.

They'd stopped. Elizabeth sucked in a breath. All around her bushes heavy with white roses glowed in the moonlight. 

"Ghost roses," she whispered. 

A feminine giggle sounded from a nearby arbor. A masculine chuckle followed. Elizabeth turned toward the sound, then tried to stand on her toes to whisper in her companion's ear, but couldn't keep her balance. Strong hands encircled her waist.

"Someone is being kissed," she said. 

"Would you like to be kissed, Elizabeth?" His voice rumbled intimately out of the darkness. 

This time, with the strong hands supporting her, she did manage to stay on her toes long enough to put her lips to his ear. "Yes." She dropped back on her heels and frowned up at him. "But I never will be."

"Won't you?"

"No." She turned in his hands and leaned back against his chest. "I would lose my position. Then my mother would have no place to die, and no one to care for her while she does."

The bun at the nape of her neck released. Hair spilled down her back and curtained over her shoulders. That wasn't right. She should protest. But the pain was gone and her mind felt light and free for the first time in years.

The couple in the arbor was laughing again. The white roses growing up the sides of the structure shook gently. Lord Devlin's fingers tickled her neck as he brushed her hair to one side. 

"And what will you do when your mother is gone, Elizabeth? Will you continue as a companion? You are a beautiful woman. It isn't your only option." His breath warmed her ear; delicious tingles spread over her skin. 

The roses on the arbor shook violently now, as if they danced some frantic ghostly dance. The feeling of lightness, that pleasant sensation of floating was slipping away. Elizabeth closed her eyes, trying to pull it back, to allow it to ease the pain in her joints and in her heart.

"When she is gone it will make no difference." The important thing was to hang on to her own life until she'd seen her mother safely through the end of hers. 

The woman in the arbor was speaking now in tones so breathy Elizabeth could catch only a few words:
shouldn't... must get back...of course I do, but...
The woman cried out. A man growled low, but whether it was the man in the arbor or the one standing behind her, Elizabeth wasn't sure.

A cracking sound, lightning sharp, cut across the darkness. The frantically bobbing roses collapsed. A tangle of white lace, blond hair, black satin breeches, and a yellow waistcoat tumbled out onto the garden path, crushing the flowers. The man landed on top of the woman and Elizabeth heard the whoosh of her breath, followed by "Thorns!"

Devlin's lips brushed Elizabeth's throat and his breath hissed against her neck, but she was already moving toward the couple. By the time she reached them, the gentleman had managed to roll off his companion and was kneeling on the ground beside her, attempting to release her hair and dress from where the vines and trellis snagged and held her. 

"Oh, it hurts! Hurry!" The blonde woman pawed at the ground as if searching for something, found it, and put on a pair of round spectacles. They sat crooked on her small nose. "Oh!" Shock registered on her face. The man on his knees looked up. His hands froze.

Elizabeth followed their gaze past her own shoulder. Devlin stood there, an odd expression on his face. 

"Miss Smith," he said, "allow me to introduce you to my close friend Mr. Leo Fosse. And to Miss Amanda Blakely, my fiancée."

Chapter Seven

Her head was clear, but the pain was back. Each step was an effort. Elizabeth concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other and praying that when they reached the house, her absence would have gone unnoticed. Though, knowing the countess as she did, she held little hope. How long had they been gone? More to the point, how had she allowed herself to be led into the gardens by Lord Devlin? 

Beside her, Miss Blakely matched her steps to Elizabeth's slow pace, seeming in no hurry to get back. She'd been crying into Mr. Fosse's handkerchief most of the way. The two men followed, wordless, behind them. The lilting music of a waltz being played in the ballroom grew louder, signaling they were close to the house. Elizabeth smoothed her hair with a trembling hand. 

Lord Devlin had done his best to restore her bun. He'd worked in silence, his hands efficient and impersonal. He had not tried to assist Mr. Fosse in releasing Miss Blakely from the rose trellis, but Elizabeth knew he'd watched, knew he must have seen, as she had, the tenderness with which his friend helped the lady to her feet and assisted her in brushing the worst of the debris from her dress.

Both Mr. Fosse and Miss Blakely had attempted to explain. They'd been strolling in the pink garden, discussing their deeply shared interest in insects of all types, when Mr. Fosse spotted a Yellow Horned Moth. Chasing it lead them into the gardens, where they'd lost track of the creature. After that, well, things had gotten out of hand.

"You would be within your rights to call me out," Mr. Fosse had finally said.

"Why should you have both the pleasure of my fiancé and of putting a bullet in me, Leo? Seems unfair." Lord Devlin's words had been light, but there had been no amusement in his voice. "But never fear,
my friend
, I have something already in mind."

At that moment Elizabeth had felt invisible. Neither Miss Blakely nor the men seemed to notice that Lord Devlin had also been in the garden with a woman. She didn't count. Was it because she was a paid companion and therefore insignificant? Or was it simply that gentlemen, engaged or otherwise, were not held to the same standard?

The wide path made a sharp turn and a few yards later they stepped out onto the lawn of the pink rose garden. Four women stood on the terrace staring down at them. The look on the countess's face made Elizabeth's stomach do a sick churn.

"Amanda!" A plump blonde woman bustled down the stairs and out onto the lawn. The countess, Harriet, and Mrs. Huntington followed at a more dignified pace. Amanda's mother wrapped her daughter in her arms and the girl's tears gave way to full-blown sobs. 

Mrs. Huntington shot Devlin an angry look. "Turn around and march right back into the garden. All of you. Quickly!"

In obedient silence the gentlemen turned on their heels and, with the group, followed their hostess through a series of winding garden paths. Mrs. Huntington set a brisk pace that left no time to speak. Elizabeth struggled to keep up, her knees burning with the effort. Yet she fell farther and farther behind. Eventually, she lost sight of the party and, when she came to an intersection in the pathways, would not have known which way to go, except that Lord Devlin was waiting. He offered her his arm and she took it, grateful to lean on him and ease the pain a bit.