Flowers From The Storm (49 page)

“They’re—oh, they must be three yards wide, and go up beneath arches, with columns at the landing.

There is a huge ancient door at the top and a footman to hold it open for us.”

“In…
powder
,” Jervaulx added firmly.

“So far no trouble with Timms,” Durham said after dinner, as he and Christian lingered alone in the Great Chamber with their port. “Told him it was a surprise love match. Swept away, and so forth. Do you think she’ll say anything to contradict it?” Christian considered. He thought of Maddy in his bed, of ghosts and a shy sudden laugh. He rested his fist on the table and turned his thumb up.

“Ah. Going well, is it?” Durham asked. “Well, I was vague about the details, but I doubt he’ll go comparing notes. All he cared for was that she was safe.”

“Not… angry… wed?”

Durham popped a slice of cheese into his mouth and wriggled his fingers. “Bit puzzled by it all, I think.

Doesn’t say much, or ask many questions. He’s a fine old chap. No fool, either, under that hat brim. Just demanded to know whether you meant honorable by his girl. Don’t think he gives a candle for the rest.

Didn’t ask a thing about money nor endowments. Likes you, that’s the sum of it. Thinks you’re a bloody genius.”

Christian made an ironical grunt. “Bloody… imbecile.”

“Plain as a pikestaff that you’re better than when I saw you last. Nearly good as new.” Durham lifted his port. “This will pass. Got to. I only hope you won’t look back and wish you’d done differently when the time comes.”

“
Good
new… do you think?”

“Well, listen to you. You’ll be putting ”em to sleep in the Lords in a trifle.“

Christian tried to imagine speaking again in the House. His pulse rose. “The Lord… the… can’t…” It all locked, the very thought of a public address driving him to halting inarticulation. “
Damn
!” He flung himself away from the windows. At the bookcase wall he stopped. He took hold of a pair of pilasters, gazing at the leather and gilt and Latin titles lined between them. Then he dropped his forehead against the shelf edge, the ancient musty smell of books in his nostrils, the wood hard against his head. “
Can’t
!”

Durham was silent. Christian stood with his back to the room. He took a deep breath and pushed himself away, turning.

“Afraid.” He shook his head and sank into a chair. “Afraid… never… Durham.”

“I don’t believe it. Damn it, Shev, I won’t believe it! You’ve come this far!”

“Far.” Christian’s lip curled in mockery. “Listen… me.”

“You’ve got to keep trying. Perhaps if you had a—a tutor of some sort.”

“My head. Gone! Try… try…
no
! Try is… make worse. Understand?”

“What, then? You go to ground in this place for the rest of your days? It won’t do, Shev. They’ll hark in, force you to break cover. There’s too much at stake. Manning’s been with your mother every day, did you know it?”

Christian’s hands tightened on the chair arms. Manning— his sister Charlotte’s husband, who’d stood with barristers and bagwigs in that room. Watching. Waiting to see him stripped and chained.

A violent surge of anger spiked through him, shame and dread mingling, holding him mute. He worked his hand on the arm, pressing his fingers into the wood until they hurt. “New…
hearing
,” he managed at last, as calm as he could make it.

“It’s their chance. I called on him myself, just to get a notion how things stood, and I’ll tell you, Shev, it chilled my blood. The man’s got himself all talked into it, how you’ve always been erratic and promiscuous; that if you’re left free to act, you’ll ran the estate into rain, and there’s the future of your nephews at stake. The worst of it is, he’s made himself believe it. They’re not going to give it up. And I’ve got to warn you—when they heard of this marriage, it was the devil to pay. It plays right into their hands. Don’t think because you haven’t had word from ”em yet that you won’t.“

Christian closed his eyes. He could not have spoken if he’d wanted to.

“For Maddy to get a penny—it’ll be like stripping the hide from ”em alive,“ Durham said. ”They’ll do anything they can to stop it.“

Christian nodded.

“So don’t say ”never.“ You’ve got responsibilities. To your wife, if nothing else.”

He thought of that—beyond himself, to what would become of Maddy if he were to be declared incompetent. If they took him back. They’d set aside the marriage, certainly. His family would never tolerate it.

Yesterday it would not have been such a disaster for her. But today…

To lie in the cell, to lie imprisoned there not knowing where she was, what they’d done to her; not even knowing if she was alive. He imagined it, and the nightmare of that place descended to a depth he had not known it could fathom.

Maddy had seen her father settled in and retired directly after dinner. She spent a good deal of time making certain that his chamber was not smoky and that the bed was warmed.

“Thou must not linger overlong with me, Maddy,” he chided her softly. “Thy husband will expect thee.”

“Oh, no—I’m sure the duke won’t mind.” She found herself covered in self-conscious blushes. “Lady de Marly and Durham are there.”

“Still—perhaps it is thee that he would rather see. Thou hast only been married a week.”

“But I thought we might talk—”

“Go away now, Maddy girl.” He smiled. “I’m tired and need to sleep.”

“Papa,” she protested faintly.

He pulled the bedclothes up and closed his eyes. Maddy sat still. After a moment, he rustled the sheets and turned over away from her.

By the time she rang for a footman to take her back through the dark passages and hall to the drawing room, Durham and the duke had come in after their port. Durham didn’t linger. When Lady de Marly announced that she would go, he politely rose and offered to escort her.

Maddy was left alone with Jervaulx. Instantly, a desperate modesty overcame her, an exquisite awareness of him—and herself. She watched him snuff the candles, leaving only the sharp odor of extinguished wicks and the orange light from the hearth.

He went into his bedchamber. The door was open, the room beyond well lit with oil, but Maddy felt bound to her chair. Papa had steadfastly refused to give any opinion on her marriage. She didn’t think he condemned it entirely—at least he did not seem disappointed or cross with her—but he was troubled, that she knew.

She sat in the chair, her legs pressed together, her hands holding the silken ends of her shawl clasped in her lap.

Jervaulx came back to the door in his shirtsleeves, a silhouette against the light from his bedchamber.

The coals gave just enough illumination to pick out the shape of his face and the pale fall of the lace on his shirt front. He leaned against the doorframe.

Maddy ducked her head and clasped her hands more tightly on the shawl. She heard nothing; only his shadow falling across the light on the carpet told her that he came into the room.

He walked behind her. He began to take down her hair, searching out the pins and letting them fall silently on the floor. Her plaits came free. She kept her head lowered as they tumbled across her shoulders.

As she sat there still, he began to unbraid them. He spread the ends between his fingers, fanning them open, holding them up to her cheeks to stroke her, feathery, tickling, down the line of her jaw, behind her ears. He traced her throat, pushing away the shawl that she held to her.

It slipped from her fingers. Softly the fans of hair caressed her bared shoulders, in circles and arcs, to the nape of her neck.

She felt his fingers work at her buttons—perfectly capable of it, but slow, one by one downward, unhooking her stays, too. Maddy bent her head as her clothing loosened. She breathed deeply.

He moved in front of her, offering his hand. Maddy stood, expecting him to lead her to the bedchamber, but instead he slid his fingers through her braids, releasing the woven strands, spreading them, combing through them.

There was an intensity about him, a strange severity. He never looked into her face. Fireglow traced his cheekbones and his jaw and glinted on his lashes. He worked her hair, worked it all free, fanned it open, a cloak around her.

He put his hands on her shoulders and pushed her dress and underclothes down her arms. Maddy made a faint sound of protest. Not here, in the open room.

Christian heard her, but he did not pause. He couldn’t remember when he had first begun to imagine this: her hair around her in fragrant waves, her pale skin a glimpse beneath. It had been somewhere in the nightmare, and while he had her now, had freedom and sense and beauty before him—while he could touch her he would do it in the light, to make it real.

While she stood immobile, he drew her hair forward in a curtain over her breasts. He allowed her that defense, covered her in a sheen of dark gold, while beneath it he took down all her clothes to her waist, sliding the dress and the white plain shift past her elbows and her wrists.

She made another small sound, as if she wished to remonstrate. But her hands were unresisting as he brought them free of the dress. “This is not—” She caught her breath as he rested his palms on her bare torso. “Jervaulx.”

“Christian.” He put his forehead down to her shoulder, breathing the liberated scent of her. “With other… Jervaulx. With… alone—Christian.” He was exploring beneath the rippled shower of her hair.

His hand touched one straining hook. He released it between his thumb and forefinger. The clothes dropped in a bank of silk and linen at her feet.

“Oh,” she said, a whimper of excited misery.

Below the dramatic length of her hair, her stockings showed white down to the tops of her incongruous stout shoes. Christian smiled. Sturdy Maddy. Luscious Maddy. Layers and layers, prim-provocative-puritanical Maddygirl.

He knelt before her and unfastened the shoes, powerfully aware of the whisper of her hair at his temple.

Turning his head, he kissed her calf and the side of her knee through the thick cascade. He cupped both his palms around her leg, sliding them up and down the knitted wool, exerting pressure inside her knee to invite her to come to him.

She caught his shoulders, unbalanced. Christian clasped her stockinged foot, delicate and arched as she lifted it free of the rigid shoe. She drew quickly from his hold, setting her foot down amid the puffs and folds of silk, taking her hands from him.

He coaxed the other leg, but this time she lifted free of her own accord—a moment, the white tip of her toe in his view—and then she stepped back swiftly, her hair moving in a wave around her.

He sat back on the carpet in front of the fire, gazing up at her. The temple of her hair made her virginal—her shoulders glowed ivory where the shiny tumble parted over them— nun-like and seductive at once, a living image of bronze and gold.

“Don’t look at me!” she said in a strained, small voice.

“Why?” He didn’t take his eyes away.

“It is—creaturely.”

Christian leaned back, propping his elbows on his aunt’s cushioned footstool. “You’re… beautiful creature.”

“No,” she whispered.

“Yes.”

“Thou art so wicked!”

“To say… beautiful? Not to say… is lying. Can’t lie, Maddygirl. You taught… no lies.”

She held her arms crossed over her breasts. Her eyes were shadowed in soft radiance.

And then, unexpectedly, she dropped to her knees at his feet. She shook her hair back, half-revealing herself. The rise and fall of her breathing brought a glimpse of the tips of her breasts.

Sharp desire rose in him. The virginal image fell away like a mask: she was a nymph of fire and shade, offering herself.

“No,” she said. “I ought not to pretend.” She lifted one hand a little toward him, and let it fall helplessly.

“But I don’t—I don’t know what to do.”

He could have taken her down and had her, without ceremony, without regard for anything but the lust that coursed through him. He could have held her beneath him, pinned down on those waves of hair, thrust hard into her with the force of his own desire.

But all the experience was his. She would not admire him for how he’d obtained it, but it was not lack of hunger that held him still: it was the strength of an exhaustive education in the finer points of love.

“Do… what you like,” he said.

She hesitated. He held quiescent, relaxed, watching her.

She bent her head a little, her hair falling forward around her cheeks. She touched his boot. Christian smiled, observing her: suddenly the sensual nymph vanished and she became plain practical Maddy again—she slipped the trouser strap off his heel, took hold of his foot with both hands and jerked the halfboot loose with a deft motion, out and up, then slid it free, as efficient as any seasoned valet.

He wriggled his toes at her. Primly, she set the boot aside. In a moment, she had dispatched the second and positioned it neatly next to its mate. She scooted forward a few inches, arranged her hair modestly, sank back onto her heels, and drew his feet into her lap.