Beyond the Sunrise (3 page)

He liked to believe that it was his presence out there that had drawn her. She had called him tall. She had not commented on his thinness, only on his height. And she had called the blondness of his hair lovely and had approved of the fact that he liked to wear it overlong. She had called him handsome—
very
handsome. And she had asked him to kiss her. She had asked him to take her to the ruins the next day. She had said that at last there would be a day to look forward to.

He was no longer merely attracted to her slim dark beauty, he realized, the sounds of music and gaiety from the drawing room forgotten. He was deeply, irrevocably in love with Jeanne Morisette.

*   *   *

She
had caught sight of him several times since her arrival at Haddington Hall, though she had not been formally introduced to him, of course. Her father had explained to her that he was the bastard son of the marquess and that really it was not at all respectable for him to be living at the house. It must be very distressing for the marchioness, her papa had said, especially since the poor woman was apparently barren and had been unable to present the marquess with any legitimate heirs or even any daughters.

Jeanne did not care about the fact that he should not be there at the house. She was glad that he was, and only sorry that it was not possible to be openly friendly with him. She had not met many boys or young men during her life, having had a sheltered upbringing with her father and having been sent to a school where she and her fellow pupils were kept strictly from the wicked male world beyond their walls.

In her boredom and loneliness at Haddington Hall, she had watched him covertly whenever she had had a chance, most notably
from the window of her bedchamber. And she had quite fallen in love with his lean and boyish figure and his longish blond hair.

On the night of the ball—though both her father and the marchioness had tried to console her by assuring her that it was not really a ball—she had stood moodily at the window of her room and seen him, at first on the terrace and then disappearing to the far side of the fountain and not reappearing. He must be sitting on the seat there. She had already dismissed her maid for the night. Her breath had come fast and excitement had bubbled in her as she felt the temptation to slip downstairs and outdoors unseen to talk with him.

She had given in to temptation.

She had been dazzled. She had not realized quite how tall he was or how handsome his face with its aquiline nose and firm jaw and very direct eyes. He was seventeen years old, a young man, not the boy she had at first taken him for.

He was the first man she had danced with apart from her dancing master at school, and he was the first man to kiss her, not just that first time in the way her father might have kissed her, but the second time, when his lips had lingered on hers and she had felt delightfully wicked right down to her toes.

She was in love with him before she had finished running lightly upstairs to her room and before she had closed her door behind her and leaned back against it, her eyes closed, and tried to remember just exactly how his mouth had felt. And then she opened her eyes and raced to the window and drew back again half behind the heavy velvet curtains so that she could watch him wander up and down the terrace without herself being seen. But she need not have worried—he did not look up.

She was in love with him—with a tall and slender blond god who was all of seventeen years old. And who had the added attraction of being forbidden fruit.

They had four days together—four afternoons when she was dutifully resting in her room as far as her father and the marquess and marchioness knew. They went to the ruined castle on the first
day and he climbed the winding stone stairs of the tower ahead of her, turning frequently to point out to her a chipped or crumbled stair where she would have to set her feet carefully. She was more frightened than she would admit and almost squealed with terror when they came out into daylight at the top and she discovered that the parapet had quite fallen away so that there was nothing to protect them from the seemingly endless drop to the grass and ruins below. But she merely shook out her hair—she had disdained to wear a bonnet—and looked boldly about her.

“It is magnificent,” she said, stretching out her arms to the sides. “How wonderful it must have been, Robert, to be the lady of such a castle and to have watched from the battlements for her knight to come riding home.”

“After an absence of seven years or more, doubtless,” he said.

She laughed. “What an unromantic thing to say,” she said. “Anyway, I would not have let him go alone. I would have ridden with him and shared all the discomforts and dangers of the military life with him.”

“You would not have been able to do it,” he said. “You are a woman.”

“Because it would not have been allowed?” she said. “Or because I would not be able to stand the hardships? I would too. I would not care about having to sleep on the hard ground and all that. And as to not being allowed, I should cut off my hair and ride out as my knight's squire. No one would even know that I was a woman. I would not complain, you see.”

He laughed and she discovered that white teeth and merry blue eyes made him even more handsome in the daylight than he had been in the moonlight the evening before.

She invited him to kiss her again when they reached the bottom. Indeed, she had found coming down to be a far greater ordeal than going up had been. She was glad of an excuse to lean back against a solid wall and to rest her arms along his reassuringly sturdy shoulders. He felt strong despite his leanness.

His arms slid about her waist as his lips rested against hers and her arms wrapped themselves about his neck. She tried pouting her lips against his and felt their pressure increase. She was being kissed by a man, she told herself, by a tall and handsome young man. And she was in love with him. It felt wonderful to be in love.

“I will have to go back,” she said, “or they will be sending up to my room to see why I am sleeping so long.”

“Yes,” he said making no attempt to delay her. “I will take you back as far as the stables.”

For the three afternoons following, they walked—across fields, among the woods, beside the lake a mile distant from the house in the opposite direction from the old castle. The weather was their friend. The sun shone each day from a blue sky, and if there were any clouds, they were small and white and fluffy and merely brought brief moments of welcome shade. They walked with fingers entwined and they talked to each other, sharing thoughts and dreams they had confided to no one before.

His father wanted to buy him a commission in the army when he was eighteen, he told her. But it was not a life he looked forward to. For as long as he had lived with his mother he had assumed that he would always live quietly in the country. It was the kind of life he loved. But he must do something. He realized that. He could not continue to live at Haddington Hall indefinitely, and he was not, of course, his father's heir.

“But I have no wish to be an officer,” he told her. “I don't think I could stomach killing anyone.”

She told him that her mother had been English, that her grandparents, the Viscount and Viscountess Kingsley, still lived in Yorkshire. But her papa had allowed her to visit them only twice in all the years they had been in England. Her father wanted her to be French and to live in France. But she wanted to be English and to live in England, she told Robert with a sigh. She wished she did not belong to two countries. It made life complicated.

She told him again of her dream of being old enough to attend
balls and theater parties, of meeting and mingling with other young people. Except that the dream did not seem quite so important during those days. She was living a dream more wonderful than any she had ever imagined.

They lay side by side on a shaded bank of the lake during the fourth afternoon, their arms about each other, kissing, smiling at each other, gazing into each other's eyes. He touched her small breasts lightly and she felt her cheeks flaming, though she did not withdraw her eyes from his or make any protest. His hand felt good there, and right. And then he rested his hand against her waist. It felt warm through the cotton of her chess.

“Robert,” she said, “I love you.”

And she loved the way he had of smiling with his eyes before the smile touched his lips.

“Do you love me?” she asked him. “Tell me that you do.”

“I love you,” he said.

“I am going to marry you,” she said. “Papa will not like it, I know, but if he will not give his consent, I will elope with you.”

He smiled slowly again. “It can never be, Jeanne. You know that,” he said gently. “Let's not spoil these few days by dreaming of the impossible. Let's enjoy them.”

“It can be,” she said, wrapping her arm about his lean waist and moving closer against him. “Oh, not yet, of course. I am too young. But when I am seventeen or eighteen and have not changed my mind, Papa will see that I can be happy with no one but you and he will give his consent. And if he does not, then I shall follow the drum with you. I shall ride to war with my knight.”

“Jeanne,” he said, kissing her mouth and her eyes one by one. “Jeanne.”

“Say you will marry me,” she said. “Say you want to. You do want to marry me, Robert?”

“I will love you all my life and even beyond that,” he said. “You will always be my only love.”

“But that is not what I asked you,” she said.

“Sh.” He kissed her again. “We must go back home. We have been away longer than usual. I don't want you to be missed.”

“Tomorrow,” she said, smiling at him as he got to his feet and reached down a hand to help her up. “Tomorrow I shall get you to admit it, Robert. I always get what I want, you know.”

“Always?” he said.

“Always.” She brushed the grass from her dress and peeped up at him from beneath her eyelashes. He looked adorably handsome with his hair disheveled from the ground.

“I shall come for you on a white charger on your eighteenth birthday, then,” he said, “and we will ride off into the sunset—no, the sunrise; the sunrise would be better—and marry and have a dozen children and live happily ever after. Are you satisfied now?”

She stood on tiptoe, kissed his cheek, and smiled dazzlingly at him. “Utterly,” she said. “I have heard what I want to hear. I told you that I always get what I want, you see.” She laughed merrily. She thought that she had never been so happy in her life, though she knew it was a happiness for the present only. She knew as well as he that they would never marry, that after that particular week was past they would probably never meet again.

But she would always love him, she believed with all the passion of her fifteen years. He was her first love and he would be her last. She would never love another man as she loved Robert.

J
EANNE
'
S
happiness lasted for an even shorter time than she had expected. She had hoped for three more days. Three more brief days out of eternity. But she was granted only half an hour longer. Her father was waiting for her in her bedchamber when she returned.

“Jeanne? Where have you been?” he asked her in the French he always spoke when they were alone.

She switched to his language. “Out walking,” she said, smiling at him. “It is such a beautiful afternoon.”

“Alone?” he asked.

Her smile broadened. “Madge does not like walking,” she said. “I did not insist that she accompany me.”

“Three would have been a crowd,” he said, not returning her smile.

She looked at him warily.

“He is a bastard, Jeanne,” her father said sternly. “He should not even be housed beneath the same roof as decent people. I would have thought twice about accepting the marquess's invitation here had I known that you would be subjected to such an indignity. I believe he keeps the boy here only to taunt his wife with her barrenness. You have been meeting him every afternoon while you have been ‘resting'?”

“Yes,” she admitted defiantly. “He is fun to be with, Papa, and
there are no other young people here for me. You would not allow me to attend the assembly although I am fifteen years old.”

“Has he touched you?” the count asked, his voice cold and tight.

Jeanne could feel the color drain from her cheeks as she remembered the kisses she had shared with Robert on several occasions and his touching her breasts that afternoon.

“Has he touched you?” her father repeated harshly.

“He has kissed me,” she admitted.

“Kissed you? Is that all? Tell me!” The count took her none too gently by one arm.

“Yes,” she said, feeling guilty about the lie. “That is all.” How could she tell her father that Robert had touched her where no one had touched her since she had begun to blossom into a woman?

He shook her roughly by the one arm. “Fool!” he said. “Madge must go, I see. I must find someone else to look to your virtue, since you cannot seem to look to it yourself. Do you not realize how he must be gloating, girl? Do you not realize how he must be laughing with the servants at his conquest of you?”

She shook her head. “No, Papa,” she said. “He loves me. He is not like that.”

“And I suppose you love him too and have told him so,” he said.

“Yes.” Her chin rose stubbornly. “And I have told him that I will marry him when I am eighteen.”

Her father laughed harshly. “Then I will have to be in my grave first,” he said. “You will not be marrying anyone's bastard, Jeanne. Or anyone English if I can help it. And if you must know the truth, then I will tell you that I learned of your movements for the past afternoons from a stablehand to whom the bastard has been boasting of his conquests and of his plans to completely ruin you before you leave here.”

“No,” she said. “You are making that up, Papa. That is not true. Robert would not do that.”

“You call me a liar, then?” he said coldly. “He would take your honor and then laugh in the face of the French bitch who thought
herself so much better than he—his very words, Jeanne, spoken to the stablehand and doubtless to all the other servants too. His very words—the French bitch.”

“No.” She shook her head.

“Who first mentioned marriage?” he asked. “Which one of you?”

“I did,” she said. “I wanted him to know that I was willing to marry him no matter what.”

“And he agreed?” her father asked.

“Yes,” she said. “Eventually.”

“Ah,” he said. “Eventually. And did he tell you he loved you before you told him?”

“No,” she said, “but he said it immediately after me.”

“Jeanne,” he said harshly, “you are a green girl. Love and marriage have no part in the plans of such a man. Only revenge on those more respectable than he. You are ‘the French bitch' to him. Do you think I will ever forget or forgive those words? I would thrash him within an inch of his life if I were not a guest in his father's house. As it is, I will have a word with the marquess. Respectable people are not safe around such a boy.”

“No,” she said. “Please, Papa, say nothing. I would not wish to get him into trouble.”

“You will stay in this room,” he said. “I shall say you are indisposed. You are not to leave under any circumstances without my permission. Do you understand me?”

“Yes, Papa,” she said.

But she would not believe any of those things he had said, she thought after he had left. He had said them to turn her against Robert, whom he would of course consider ineligible. She would believe none of it. Robert loved her. Robert wished to marry her even if he had realized all along, as she had, that they would never be able to marry. She would not believe her father.

But in the silence of her room during the ensuing hours she could not help remembering that he had not said that he loved her
until she had said the words first and begged him to say them too, and that he had avoided several times telling her that he wished to marry her. She remembered the fact that his kisses had become more prolonged and more ardent each day and that he had touched her breasts that afternoon.

How much further had he planned to go in the three remaining days before she and her father were to leave Haddington Hall? If he
had
planned ahead, of course. Or had all his words and actions been spontaneous, as she had believed all along? But she recalled his saying that they should not think of impossibilities but enjoy the days that remained to them. Enjoy? How?

And those words stuck in her mind, the words by which he had reputedly described her to a stablehand.
The French bitch.
Was it possible? But would Papa have made up such words? Or would the stablehand have made them up and repeated them to her father if they were not true?

Doubt and anguish and youth gnawed at her through the endless remainder of the day and the sleepless night that followed. Mostly it was youth. She was fifteen years old, she reminded herself. She knew nothing about men, except for the fact that the teachers at her school had always emphasized their wickedness and their eagerness to prey upon a young lady's innocence. Papa, on the other hand, had lived in several different countries and had been a diplomat for years before fleeing to England during the Terror. Papa knew far more about life than she. And he loved her. He had always told her that, and she had no reason to doubt him.

She had been made a fool of—because she was fifteen and eager to be a woman and to be loved and appreciated.

Robert was seventeen, a man already. How he must have been laughing at her. How he must have been enjoying the free favors she had been handing him. How he must have been looking forward to the remaining three days, when distress over their impending
parting would have made her a great deal freer with her favors. Oh, yes, he would have enjoyed those days.

And how she hated him!

Perhaps she
was
only fifteen, she thought finally. But she had done a deal of growing up within a few hours. She would never fall in love again. She would never allow any man to have any power whatsoever over her again. She would learn how to have that power herself, and how to wield it too. If there were any more fools to be made, it would be the men in her life who would be at the receiving end.

*   *   *

Robert
loved the early morning. Most days, unless it was raining too hard, he rode for miles, enjoying the sense of freedom and solitude. He did not like being at the house, where there was always the chance that he would come face-to-face with his father's wife. Even his father's company made him uncomfortable now that they no longer met in the familiar surroundings of his mother's cottage just beyond the boundaries of Haddington. His father no longer seemed like the same cheerful and indulgent papa who had used to bring him presents and play with him and sit sometimes talking with him while Mama sat on his lap.

Robert was returning from his morning ride the day after he had kissed Jeanne at the lake and promised to ride off with her on a white charger on her eighteenth birthday. He smiled at the memory, though the smile was somewhat rueful. There were only three afternoons left and then he would see her no more. He would love her all his life, but he would never see her again once she left Haddington. Her father was talking about returning to France when they could, she had said. And even if that were not so, there was no possibility of a future for them. None whatsoever.

Once again the reality of his situation as an illegitimate son
stabbed home. And yet he was growing to manhood. Reality had to be faced and accepted. There was no point in raging against it.

There was a carriage drawn up on the terrace before the house, he saw as he neared the stables. The Comte de Levisse's carriage. He frowned as he swung down from the saddle and hailed a passing groom.

“The count is going somewhere?” he asked.

“Leaving,” the groom said. “Grumbling, his coachman was about it, Master Robert. Likes the tavern at the village here, he does. But the orders were given last night.”

Leaving! The bottom felt rather as if it had fallen out of Robert's stomach as he handed the reins of his horse absently to the groom—he usually looked after his own mount—and strode in the direction of the terrace.

But he halted at the corner of the house. Both his father and the marchioness were outside bidding farewell to the count and Jeanne. The latter was dressed in a dark green traveling dress and bonnet and looked slender and very young in company with the three adults. And very beautiful. He knew now that her dark hair was more brown than black, that her dark eyes were gray, not brown. He knew a great deal more about her than he had known the night of the ball.

Jeanne!

But though he stood quite still and was some distance away, she saw him as she turned toward the open door of the carriage. She hesitated for a moment and then hurried toward him. Her father stretched out a hand toward her but then dropped it to his side and watched.

Robert said nothing. Why ask her if she was leaving? Obviously she was leaving. He looked at her in anguish. Even a private good-bye was to be denied them.

“Robert.” She smiled brightly. “How glad I am that I have seen you before I leave. I wish to say good-bye.”

He swallowed. Unlike her, he did not have his back to the three
watching adults and the servants. He felt very exposed to public view.

“I want to thank you for four lovely afternoons and for the dance on the terrace,” she said, her voice light and teasing. She was looking up at him from beneath her lashes.

“I need no thanks,” he said. He found it difficult to get the words beyond his teeth. “Jeanne.” He whispered her name.

“Oh, but you do.” She smiled dazzlingly. “The days would have been so very dull if I could not have amused myself with you.”

She was out of earshot of the people on the terrace and she had her back to them. She did not need to act a part.

“Jeanne,” he said again.

“Why are you looking so sad?” she asked. “We are leaving early, is that it? But I asked Papa to take me back to London because life is so dull here. Oh, Robert, you are not feeling sad, are you? You did not take those kisses seriously, and all that foolish talk about love and marriage?”

He looked at her and swallowed again.

“Oh, poor Robert.” Her eyes fell to his Adam's apple, and he felt overtall and gangly again. She laughed merrily. “You did, did you not? How foolish and rustic of you. You did not think I would seriously fall in love and consider marriage with a bastard, did you?
Did
you, Robert?”

He merely looked at her as her eyes swept up to meet his again.

“Oh, poor Robert,” she said again, and her laugh tinkled about him like broken glass. “How droll. The bastard and the daughter of a French count. It would make a wonderful farce, don't you think? Papa is waiting. Good-bye.” She held out a gloved hand to him.

He ignored it. He did not even see it. He did not see her even though he looked directly into her eyes. He felt only the blinding hurt of a reality that he had thought he was growing accustomed to.

She shrugged and turned from him. And two minutes later her father's carriage was bearing her away from Haddington Hall.
Robert had not moved. He had not noticed the approach of one of his father's servants.

“His lordship would have you wait upon him in the library immediately, Master Robert,” the servant said.

Robert looked at the man and made no reply. But he began to move along the now-deserted terrace.

*   *   *

“
And
so you see why they decided to cut their visit short by three days,” the marquess was saying to his son. He was reclining in a deep leather chair behind the oak desk in the library, his elbows on the arms, his fingers steepled beneath his chin. His son was standing before the desk. “It is an embarrassment to me and a disappointment to her ladyship.”