Elisabeth Fairchild (2 page)

The lad pointed.

The chateau, once exquisite, was shrouded in neglect, the garden unruly, the doorway laced with cobwebs. The rooms inside were threadbare. Dusty.

To a seven year old, all seemed magical--beautiful. The walls and windows, even the furniture wore fading flowers. Elegant faces peered wisely from gold-rimmed picture frames. A strange humming music emerged from a room full of mirrors, floor to ceiling reflections of reflections.

She was captivated. Sunlight dazzled. Dancing dust motes transformed by twilight, became gold. A pretty young woman turned a rod, on it a row of glittering wet glass, wine flutes in different sizes. Rubbing her fingertips along the rims, she made strange music, the song magical--eerie. A shepherd boy, arm in a sling, eyed Dulcie from beneath his cap brim. A cook with flour dusted apron, clutched at her bandaged hand, moaning along with the music, eyes closed.

Mr. Selwyn spoke to a gentleman in an embroidered waistcoat who turned to observe Dulcie, head tilted. He had silver hair tied back with velvet ribbon. Light hung about him like a candle’s glow.

“You are liking Mozart’s glass armonica?” Quiet. Dulcie did not hear him cross the room on thick rugs woven with falling leaves, golden and brown. “As a boy he used to play for Monsieur Mesmer long ago in Landstrasse Street.”

“A ghost harp,” she said.

They listened in silence before he knelt and looked into her eyes in the searching way all physicians did. “Your father tells me, Dulcie, you see strange things?”

Her papa nodded reassuringly.

Unconvinced, she backed away despite sympathetic eyes. “Do you mean to cup me?”

“No. No,
mon petite
. Not at all. Tell me, please, what do you see?”

She shook her head, could not tell, too dangerous to tell. She did not want to witness alarm in his regard. Disbelief. Rejection.

“My friend, Dr. Mesmer believes we are surrounded by clouds,” he murmured. One brow arched above twinkling silvered eyes.

Dulcie could not believe her ears.

“Of liquid,” he said. “Gas?

She shook her head no. He leaned close to hear her whisper.

“Light.”

Chapter Two

Eight years later

June 26, 1811

Carlton House, London

Sunlight. Blinding. Dulcie closed her eyes against the glare, the heat. Dizzy, swayed by the crowd’s impatience, at fifteen invincible and curious, she had talked her governess into the crowd’s press, to buy a ticket, to see the Prince’s table.

The gates opened. Not to let the crowd in. To allow a carriage exit.

The crowd cheered, surged forward. The ripple of movement coursed all the way to the top of St. James’s. Tall, black beaver hats and pale parasols jockeyed for position. Feathers danced along the crests of black bicornes. Sunlight glanced off gold trimmings on the blue and scarlet uniformed Horse Guard, mounts restless amid the press. Thousands gathered to see the Prince’s London residence, recently refurbished, thrown open for a viewing. The spoils of the grand fete that elevated the son of a mad king to Regent still sat upon the table all wanted to see.

Dulcie stood tiptoe to stare, with the feeling that she must.

A young man sat ensconced in the carriage, a contrary sort of gentleman to want out of the very place to which so many longed to gain access. For an instant, she and the ethereal stared at one another, two passive creatures in the midst of movement’s growing whirl. He had about him the look of a fallen angel. Flame red hair shimmered beneath a feathered hat. A quizzing glass winked. Like a match head caught in a draft, he leaned in her direction as the carriage inched upstream, against the flow, luminescent and vibrant.

Horses snorted, ears swiveling, heads flung high. Within Dulcie surged a matching wide-eyed restlessness. A woman brushed past, swaying her. The crowd’s mood pushed through the gates. She staggered, gaze alone unshaken. Unladylike to stare, but even when the sea of people bodily forced her into motion like flotsam on a rushing tide, tearing her dress, pulling her under a wave of impatient humanity, she kept her eyes locked on Roger Ramsay.

A gloved hand rose, as if to reach out, as if with the gesture the young man could stop the unstoppable.

“Damn!” The crowd swept up the young woman--big eyed beneath the pale overhang of a white chip bonnet. She stared, this odd moonling, eyes brimming with indefinable emotion. Unflinching, her regard, direct and knowing. It seemed, in an instant, she recognized in Roger everything he held private. As she was pushed toward the gates, the pale oval of her face swiveled, that she might continue to stare.

His business was urgent. The youngest of the king’s agents provocateur, he had to get under way, to prepare for his journey. He ought to urge the coachman onward, even at a crawl, but he could not at the expense of a winsome minx who found reason to stare at him as if she knew everything.

Impatiently, he pounded on the trap above his head, resigned to the inevitable.

“Sir?” Quinn peered down, the noise of the crowd rushing in.

“Damsel in distress. Hold the horses.”

A scream underscored his point.

Quinn grunted. The trap snapped shut. Roger threw his weight into the door. Begrudgingly, the crowd gave way. Calm in the midst of the furor, Roger poked his silver-headed walking stick at anyone who threatened his exit. Quizzing glass raised, Roger searched the crowd from the carriage step, for a white chip bonnet and a cloud of dark hair.

She swam in a fetid blood red broth of fear, anger and impatience, determined not to fall. Color storms and visions always weakened her knees, left her faint, dizzy and overwhelmed--by emotion, by unwanted images, by the accountability that came with them. She must not fall--would not fall.

The crowd thrust rudely against her shoulders and backside--insulted her, assaulted her, left her breathless and burning. No fighting the directionless currents.

Screams of panic and pain tore through thickened air as if through brittle tissue. The Horse Guards, supposed to control the mob, became part of the problem, mounts walleyed and unmanageable, nostrils flaring, tails lashing. The air smelled dankly of sweat, lathered horseflesh and fear.

Dizzy and disoriented, Dulcie stumbled, at times both feet lifted from the pavement. So close pressed the crowd, the hem of her gown became a boot wipe. Yanked from hemline to bodice, delicate Swiss muslin strained, stitching gave way, seams popping. Air kissed flesh.

A hem strayed, carried away by the progress of the crowd. With a frightful ripping sound, like a bobbin unwinding, she whirled, the dress the least of her worries. Direst peril lay in the mob, a frenzied wall of blind purpose. She willed herself to stay erect, to stand against all odds. But despite desperate effort the crowd yanked her off her feet. Thrown into an overripe darkness of pushing, trampling, bruising legs, she scrabbled for purchase, fingers catching at a man’s thighs, a fleeting coat tail. A woman’s knees slipped through her fingers.

“God, help me!” she whispered.

Roger launched himself from the carriage step. The crowd gave way to the relentless prod of his cane. He came upon her, struggling to rise, an Amazon, one breast exposed. It had taken very little to tear from her all vestiges of the proper young lady.

The white chip bonnet had vanished. The dark cloud of hair, half unpinned, fell in tragic wisps against pale, bared shoulders. Her eyes flashed when he planted his boots firmly on either side of torn, mud splattered stockings.

“Quick! Take my hand.”

Without hesitation she grabbed hold, gathering dignity and shreds of bodice like a tattered shawl about her shoulders. Dark lashes starred in surprise as an unexpected shove from behind threw her roughly into his chest. She fell heavily against him, one hand clutching torn fabric, the other grasping his lapel. Her hair brushed his cheek, not straw but silk. It smelled of cloves, her breath of peaches and fear.

Roger steadied her, irrationally thought of kissing lips tender as dewed fruit, ripe for the tasting. “Are you injured?” he asked.

She shook her head, more sooted silk tumbling free, an unkempt frame for the soft oval of her face. “I knew you would come.”

He found her trust naively touching, her wide-eyed regard oddly childlike despite the enticement of exposed expanses of bared skin, covered by little more than her crossed arms and a scrap of torn fabric. Around her waist sagged a dirtied petticoat, and remnants of what had been a dress. He forced his gaze to rake the crowd rather than her nakedness as his walking stick cut a pathway out of the heart of trouble and through the gates to Carlton House.

Sliding his fitted gray coat from his shoulders, he flung it around her.

Blushing, she covered herself. Haste made her awkward. The flapping bodice exposed faint, silver cupping scars puckering the flat of her back. She looked vulnerable, and embarrassed, a cygnet not yet fully feathered. Touched by her ungainly progress, he held the coat, his body a screen. One could breathe inside the gates. They had only to avoid the scurry of fresh guards mounting wild-eyed horses.

Decently covered, fastening buttons, she looked up when a well-dressed gentleman pushed past, his attendants shouting, “Make way, make way!”

“The Duke!” Roger murmured, surprised.

A trio of guards assisted the Duke of Clarence’s climb to the top of the wall.

His moonling had eyes only for her rescuer. She reached up, as if to stroke his hair.

Roger shied like a startled horse, the move unexpected, and yet her eyes focused not on his lips, nor did her fingers come into contact with a single lock of hair.

The Duke of Clarence teetered bravely on the wall, doffed his hat to wave at the crowd.

As he did, she touched the air above Roger’s shoulder, above his head, making no physical contact at all and yet the gesture shook him. The noise in the square diminished. Roger paid none of it mind, too startled by her odd ways.

The Duke shouted in a voice that carried, “It is the desire of the Prince Regent, to afford the public a view of Carlton House.”

The crowd cheered. Roger heard the slight hissing intake of her breath. Vacant-eyed, she examined the space around him, fingers delving nothingness as though it were palpable. The hair at the base of his neck stood on end.

Behind her the Duke waved his hat. “However, the pressure of people has become too great. And in proportion--the danger.”

Tension hummed between them, more powerful than that which elevated the crowds to boos and hisses. Roger felt only a captivated confusion. The girl continued to stroke air.

The Duke bellowed, “No more persons will--on any account--be admitted.”

“Like a matchhead,” she murmured, her hand hovering within an inch of his face. “Blue. Yellow.”

He frowned. Had he heard her aright? Was his moonling stark, raving mad!

Chapter Three

Carlton House, London

He cupped her jawbone between his hands, this keen-eyed goldfish of a man--not fish at all, but fox, clever, watchful, hands warm, solid and comforting. She saw herself happy in those hands. He ran his fingers through her hair, searching the surface of her scalp. Her knees went weak as visions surfaced, swept over her, disappeared like sparks from a fire into darkness, unexpected, unbidden, uncontrollable.

“No bumps. No blood.” He sounded relieved.

Her skin blazed beneath his fingers. Her hair crackled. His eyes were beautiful, pale hued in the center, ringed with a darker line of blue. They were, in this instant, worried.
She had seen the look before--when she went too far, said too much. He thought her delirious. Perhaps it was best.

“I do feel dizzy.”

His hand rose to her temple, met hers, fingers bumping. Concern there, nothing but concern for her, the need to protect her--and pity. Pity? Their contact generated the same tingling jolt she had experienced as a child in Dr. Puysegur’s magnetic experiments.

He gazed at her, pupils so dark and wide she could see herself reflected there. His hands spoke to her flesh, drawing her away from the gate, away from the uneasy press of horses and uniforms, across the inner courtyard toward the newly refurbished Carlton House. The crowd preceded them, trampling grass and shrubbery--rude, thoughtless and insistent.

He looked over his shoulder, one brow raised, lips tight. Concern could be seen in the tilt of those lips, in his intense gaze. It wrapped her, as warm as the coat about her shoulders.

Women outside the doorway to the Prince’s dwelling, wailed breathlessly, crushed by those behind. Swiftly his fox-like focus shifted--vigilant. The cloak of his concern slipped her shoulders. The sudden chill made her shiver.

As if the edifice took sympathy, windows opened. The red-faced and faint, dresses bunched, ankles in plain view, were hoisted across the sills. Those left behind jostled for fresh position, determined they, too, should be received, no matter how indecorously.

“This way.” Supporting her elbow, he drew her against the support of his chest, bracing her waist with the flat of his palm. His touch unbalanced her. His wool coat rubbed scratchy against sensitized skin.

“All right?”

She nodded, the inclination of her head a lie. She was not all right. Not when his voice, his touch, rang the length of her spine like a tuning fork. Not when the blue of him engulfed her with a hair raising, crackling tension. She felt as if she fell into him, linked by way of his hand against the small of her back, an energy of untapped potential coursing between them.

She pushed herself away from sandalwood and French pomade, from the silky lure of his shirt, from the heady heat of his breath in her hair. Her head cleared. The tension between them eased. Fingering the silver buttons that ran the front of her borrowed raiment, she wondered if he could hear the agitated beat of her heart. Her nipples, raised and hard as pearl buttons, beneath the cat’s tongue rasp of his wool coat.