A Certain Latitude (15 page)

She hadn’t skated in years, but she remembered that effortless freedom. The power of gliding over ice, the wind in her hair.

“I don’ believe it,” Celia muttered.

“It’s true, my dear,” March said. “But don’t worry. When you go to England, you’ll be warm and snug. I can’t have my little hothouse flower shivering in the cold.”

“I don’ wanna go,” Celia said.

“Nonsense,” March replied briskly. “A husband will keep you warm enough.”

Celia made a face.

After dinner they returned to the drawing room where Clarissa played the pianoforte, her fingers stumbling on the notes. Her clumsiness was from more than lack of practice; she was intensely aware of March’s presence, agitated by her attraction to him.

She had to be careful, very careful.

She finished the piece and took the music from the stand.

“Will I play like dat?” Celia, eyes dark with longing, gazed at her.

“Better, I hope. But I believe it is your bedtime now.”

“Yes, Miss Onslowe.” Celia dropped a curtsey to her and kissed her father.

“You instill great obedience in my unruly child,” March said after his daughter had left the room. “I usually like to take a turn in the garden with a cheroot after dinner. The smoke keeps away the insects. Would you care to accompany me, Miss Onslowe?”

“Certainly.” She rose and placed her fingertips on his forearm.

She remembered overheard fragments of conversation, things she, as an unmarried woman, a spinster past her prime, wasn’t meant to hear.
Keep him guessing…let him think he is the one who pursues…behave as if you are displeased with him or indifferent…

Not that any of that had entered her mind when she had fallen in love and brazenly offered an unworthy man her heart and body. Matrimony had not been on her mind, and certainly not on his. And as for Allen Pendale… Well, it was probably not best to think of him at this moment.

Now she gave March a cool smile and unfurled her fan. If he thought he was about to tumble her between his neat flowerbeds, he was in for a rude shock.

March bent to light his cheroot at a candle and a footman padded ahead on quiet, bare feet to open the door into the garden.

Outside the air was warm and fragrant, the stars blazing huge in a sky of dark blue velvet. She gave a gasp of pleasure and tightened her grasp on his forearm.

“I wish I could claim credit for the moon and stars, Miss Onslowe, to see that look directed at me.”

“Isn’t that rather blasphemous, Mr. Lemarchand?”

“Call me March.” There was a touch of impatience in his voice.

“I think not. It implies a certain level of intimacy that would not be proper.”

He laughed. “I suspect you care little for propriety, Miss Onslowe.”

She fanned herself with slow, luxurious sweeps. “Indeed.”

“I believe a sensualist lurks beneath the proper demeanor you work so hard to maintain.”

“What a fanciful imagination you have, sir.”

“Not so much an issue of my imagination, Miss Onslowe, as my powers of observation.”

She smiled, while wondering how on earth she had given herself away.

“The way you move,” he said, as though reading her mind. “Your enjoyment of such simple things as food and wine, or the night sky. Your voice. You are more than a governess, Miss Onslowe, although I think you may do very well there. So what would you expect from a man who wishes to be your lover, Miss Onslowe? What is your price?”

“My price?” She looked over his shoulder at the deep indigo of the sky and the blaze of stars. “Oh, I expect very little, sir. The moon and stars in the sky—that is all.”

When Allen left March’s house in outrage, he borrowed a horse for the journey, with one of the house slaves to walk ahead and show him the way to his father’s house. Still smarting from Clarissa’s high moral tone—she was right, of course, not that he’d ever admit it, and certainly not to her face—he had deliberately not bidden March farewell, or thanked him for his hospitality.

Hospitality March had abused, in his opinion.

Fortunately, under the circumstances, and once the family news was shared, it was very unlikely he need see March or Clarissa again. He kicked the horse forward, appalled at the bad state of the road—the path, rather, heavily rutted and dusty—and ducked to avoid a creeper-covered branch overhead. Above the sky faded to rose and lavender, the shadows lengthening, the greenery on either side of the path becoming dark and mysterious.

The boy flitted ahead of him, turning occasionally to give him a wide grin. “Nearly dere, sah. Nearly dere.”

And then the path opened up to a wide vista of carefully maintained grass, and a modest stone house—a house not much bigger than his farmhouse in Somerset, but flanked by wooden porticos, and with a covered wooden walkway that he knew, from his stay at March’s house, led to the kitchen. Gravel crunched underfoot as he turned the horse onto the driveway and pulled it to a halt at the front door of the house.

He kicked his feet free of the stirrups and dismounted, wondering why no slaves rushed out to greet him. He removed the straw hat March had lent him and tossed the reins to the boy.

“You, mon! Take dat horse round de back!” The voice issued from the shadows of the portico, stern and male, accompanied by the scuffle of bare feet on wooden planks.

Not a well-ordered household. He raised his voice. “Tell Lord Frensham Mr. Allen Pendale is here.”

The scuffling ceased.

Lemarchand’s boy, meanwhile, scrambled astride the horse. “I must go, sah. Dere be ghosts in de night.”

“She’ll look after you.” Allen slapped the rump of the horse.

“Sah?” An elderly man, clad in the Frensham livery, approached. His voice was no longer sharp, but frightened. Was he too afraid of ghosts in the dusk? “I—I beg your pardon, sah. I t’ought … I …”

“What the devil is going on?” The front door opened, revealing Allen’s father. He frowned at Allen as though he did not recognize him—or looked through him.

“Milord …” the slave quavered.

Allen couldn’t understand why the man was so mortally afraid of him—he refused to think it was because slaves were notoriously superstitious—and stepped forward, addressing his father. “Sir, I’m—”

“Allen!”

His father descended the steps in a rush to Allen’s surprise—the Earl had never been particularly demonstrative—and gripped his son’s arm. “For God’s sake, wear a hat. Always. Look how dark you are,” he muttered. “Well, come on, then. Never mind Reuben—my majordomo—he’s a little cautious of strangers. Come into the house. I wish I’d known you were to visit.”

Bewildered, Allen let his father push him inside the house. Had the Earl really not recognized him? It had been a good two years since they’d met last and his father was not expecting his youngest son was to arrive. He should have sent word from March’s house; it would have been less of a shock.

“You’re looking well, sir,” Allen said.

His father seemed very little changed, still with that arrogant tilt to his head and his mane of silver hair as thick as ever. For a man near seventy, he was in exceptional, vigorous health, despite complaints in his infrequent letters that the climate of the island sapped his strength.

The Earl led him into a book-lined study and gestured to a chair. “You’ll take some wine? Tell me how the family does.”

Allen accepted a glass of wine and waited until his father sat, before breaking the news.

“My sister was brought to bed of a daughter the day I left England.” He handed the creased and stained letter that had somehow survived the voyage to his father.

“A girl? A pity. What else?”

“Sir, I regret I must tell you there is bad news also. Lady Frensham is dead.”

He didn’t know how else to say it. There was no easy way to announce such news, even though his mother and father had lived apart, the Earl on this island and his mother in the family’s country seat, for at least a decade.

“When?” His father asked.

“Three days before Christmas Day.”

The Earl nodded. A tear gleamed on his cheek. “Poor woman.”

“We—my brothers and sisters and I—were there. She told us she was at peace and that we should not grieve.” At his mother’s deathbed he had not been able to ask the question that had brought him to the island. Seeing his father’s shocked face, he could not ask him now.

Who is my true father?

Instead he reached into his pocket. “We had this made for you, sir.”

The Earl opened the small, velvet-lined case and turned the mourning ring over in his hand, before slipping it onto his finger. “I knew she was not well, but she wrote to me that I should not come back to England, some six months ago. I did not realize how ill she was.”

“None of us did, sir. She kept the truth from us. I have letters from my brothers for you. And this one from my sister to me, announcing the birth of her child.” He handed over the bundle of letters.

The Earl gazed at the ring on his finger. “Poor Kitty.”

As at March’s house, there were liveried slaves everywhere, offering to help him dress or undress, to bring him breakfast or coffee or tea or wine; always underfoot, never meeting his eye, and who could blame them. Now and again, he’d catch a glimpse of dark-skinned women slaves slipping quietly through the house. Occasionally his father hinted that women could be made available, if Allen wished. He did not. Not after Clarissa’s tirade. Not after Clarissa.

He tried not to think about her in the next few days and nights.

One morning a visitor arrived early, while Allen shaved. He had heard the crunch of a horse’s hooves on the gravel, and the jangle of the front door bell. Probably someone on estate business to call so early.

He wandered downstairs, stood on the portico enjoying the fresh, cool air, and continued down onto the flagstones that formed a patio. He removed his coat and waistcoat to begin his usual early morning routine, fencing with an invisible partner. A couple of small black boys lurked behind a pillar on the portico, giggling.

“Would you care for a bout, Pendale?”

At the sound of March’s voice, Allen almost lost his footing. He turned to see March, followed by Reuben, standing on the portico.

“I didn’t mean to startle you,” March said. “I have offered my condolences to Frensham. We’re old enough friends that I could come before the business of the day started.” He stripped off his coat and handed it to Reuben. “What do you say?”

Allen could hardly refuse. “It would be my pleasure, sir.”

“Reuben, your master has foils, I believe? Excellent. Fetch them, then.” He unbuttoned his waistcoat, rested one hand against a pillar and stretched out his calf muscles.

More slaves appeared to watch the show, brooms or garden rakes dragging behind them, making no attempt to hide their interest.

March had a better reach than Allen and he was surprisingly fast on his feet, for a man some twenty years his senior.  He was a good opponent, a strategist, and Allen realized fairly early on that March aimed to tire him, playing him as though he were a horse on a lunging rein. Allen refused to circle him, backing away instead, and saw March grin in appreciation. Having a balanced opponent was like participating in a dance, or a courtship—each gesture and stroke rich with meaning and intent.

At one point they locked foils, meeting face to face, forearm to forearm, close enough for Allen to scent the other man’s sweat, for the warmth of their bodies to mingle.

“Had enough, Pendale?”

“I think not.” He restrained himself from kicking his opponent’s ankle as he would in a real fight—this was his former host and his father’s friend, after all—and tried shifting his weight to rock him off-balance.

March smiled, looking straight into Allen’s eyes, and something—Allen wasn’t sure what—disconcerted him, sending him off-balance and crashing over into a roll. There was a gust of laughter and squeals from the onlookers who scattered out of the way, while March stepped back with the utmost courtesy to allow his opponent to rise.

Now Allen was really off his stroke, uncoordinated and fumbling like a beginner, sweat running into his eyes—a good thing indeed he was not fighting for his life. March toyed with him now, teasing like a deadly coquette, and Allen was grateful the foil had a button as it flickered dangerously in the vicinity of his chest and belly.

All too soon he stood panting, March’s foil planted squarely on his heaving chest, to the applause of the onlookers.

“Touché,” March murmured.

“Indeed, sir. You have me at a disadvantage. I fought exceedingly ill.”

Lemarchand removed his mask. “Not that badly, Pendale. You kept me busy enough.”

“It’s kind of you to say so.”

“Well fought, sirs!” Allen’s father, wearing a banyan, stepped forward to clap March on the shoulder. “You’re sure you won’t stay for breakfast, March? No? Allen, I’ll see you in the morning room shortly, then.” He shook March’s hand and returned to the house.

Reuben helped March on with his coat and waistcoat and sent the slaves back to work, muttering of laziness.

“Will you walk with me to the stables?” March asked.

Again, Allen, in a position where he could not refuse—as seemed to be the case around March—agreed.

“I fear we parted on less than friendly terms.” March’s voice was low, his attention apparently on the pair of leather gloves he held.

“No matter,” Allen said, his suspicions raised by March’s apparent humility. They turned into the stable yard, where a boy brushed one of the Earl’s horses, tethered to a ring on the wall.

March paused at the doorway of the stables, working his fingers into one glove, his whip tucked beneath one arm. “I should not like there to be impediments between my family and yours, even for so short a time as you are to visit.”

“So short a time?” Allen echoed. He and his father had not discussed the duration of his stay.

“I understood from Frensham that you will return to England when his next ship is loaded—a matter of a few weeks.”

Trying to collect his thoughts, Allen headed for the stall where March’s mare nibbled on a net of hay and swung the saddle down from its perch on the wall divider. His father, for all his affection and pleasure at seeing Allen, intended to send his son away as soon as possible. He lifted the saddle onto the mare’s withers and slid it back into position.