Lady of the Butterflies (45 page)

“I am trying very hard to be dignified, even though my teeth are chattering.”

“You look as lovely as a mermaid.”

“I shall swim like a mermaid, too, before this day is done. Let’s try again.”

“You are a determined little doxy, aren’t you?”

I smiled, took his hand and pressed it palm-flat against my stomach. “This time, please keep it there until I say otherwise.”

He bobbed his head, his eyes glittering. “I am at your service, my lady. Now. Spread your legs.”

I giggled. “For you, sir, anytime.” I sank down into the water, to assume a swimming posture again.

“And this time, for pity’s sake, if you are about to go under, hold your breath,” he instructed.

I took my time and cleared my head before I lifted my feet off the seabed again and kicked out, once, twice. This time he let go of me one finger at a time. When I felt his hand fall away completely I took a gulp of air just before I sank. There was a rushing in my ears, then an eerie silence. I did not panic but kept on scrabbling at the water. One stroke, two. I was floating just beneath the surface, freed from the pull of the earth. I opened my eyes onto a murky blue world.

My lungs were bursting and as I tried to push up my feet went down. I broke through a wave and was back in the world again. I turned round elatedly to find Richard. “I did it!”

“You did.”

“I can swim!”

“Almost.”

“I did not sink!”

“You did not. The sea has declared you a little witch, for sure.”

I frowned to see how close he was. “I thought I had gone further though.”

“I came after you,” he said. “In case you needed me to fish you out.”

He pushed through the water and stood in front of me, gently wiped the wet hair off my face and coiled a dripping strand of it around his hand. “You shouldn’t stay in too long or the cold will make your muscles stiffen and I’ll have to carry you out.”

My legs felt perfectly supple. “I think they’re stiff already.”

He did not pick me up.

“Last night, would you have bedded that knave to save your house from burning?”

“No!” Then: “What a time to ask.”

“It would not have been a loathsome sacrifice? He is desirable to you?”

“He most certainly is not!”

“You have known him a long time.”

“Yes, but in any case, I do not think he had any wish to bed me.”

“That I do not believe,” he said softly. “There is not a man on this earth who would not wish it.”

“You are not exactly impartial.”

“No. I am not.” Then after a moment he said seriously, “You need to beware of Thomas Knight, Nell. The man’s trouble, a firebrand.”

“I know. I just wish I knew why. Please can we go now? I’m frozen.”

He scooped me into his arms as he had last night, my long, wet hair trailing like gold seaweed. “Swimming is not so good as skating?” he asked.

“Actually, this particular part is far better.” I rested my head against his shoulder, twined my arms up around his neck, and felt myself complete again.

When we reached the shore he retrieved his cloak from behind a rock, flung it round his shoulders, opened it like great black bat wings and enfolded me in it. It smelled faintly of horses and male sweat, of smoke and cologne, of him. I tucked my fingers into his armpits to warm them and gazed into his lovely eyes.

“You are very brave,” he said.

“You make me feel brave,” I told him softly. “And terrified, all at the same time. You make me feel strong, stronger than I have ever felt before, and yet never have I felt weaker. When I am with you I want to laugh and to weep, all at the same time.”

He was smiling at me in recognition, as if at a sudden revelation that made him very happy. “So you do love me, then?”

“Yes,” I said. “I love you.”

I WAS SITTING by the fire, drying my hair and warming my bare toes. Richard sat in the chair at the other side of the hearth, his long legs stretched out in front of him, tall shiny boots up on the fender. There was no sound but the crackle and hiss of the apple-scented logs.

My eyes were drawn to his mouth, the slightly open pout of his kissable lips. I wanted to rise from my chair and go to him, sit at his feet and put my head in his lap, or for him to come to me so that I could stroke the black curls off his brow and bury my face in them. But I spied Forest peering round the door, seemingly almost as fascinated by this man and as desperate to be with him as I was. I sent Forest off to ask Bess to warm some wine for us. I felt very selfish, wanted Richard all to myself, even if all he was going to do was sit there, withdrawn, and stare morosely into the fire, in a way that kept me firmly in my chair and him in his.

“What’s the matter?” I asked him.

He looked up from the flames, the light of them still reflected in his eyes, but said nothing.

“What is it?” I repeated, unnerved. “What’s wrong?”

His right arm was resting on his thigh and I saw him flex his fingers, clench them. “Five years,” he said ominously. “You have tortured me for five years. You say you love me, and yet you let me be miserable for five whole years.”

I felt a terrible pang of remorse and I did not know what to reply. I had not expected such recrimination and yet I saw that it was inevitable, that it was a conversation we had to have at some time. “I have been miserable too,” I told him.

“Then it was all of your own making. You have none to blame but yourself.”

“I did not think I deserved to be happy.”

His eyes flared, blazed darkly, and it was no longer the firelight that made them do so. “Nor I?”

I gave a small shake of my head.

He turned away from me, so that I could not see his face.

“We did a bad thing, Richard. We deceived Edmund. We betrayed his trust. He did not deserve that.”

He was on his feet and in two strides he was standing before me. “You think I don’t know that? Of course he didn’t deserve it. He did not deserve to die either. But all I did was to love you . . . more than I have ever loved anyone else. It was utterly beyond my control. Did that warrant your unkindness to me? The cruel treatment you have shown me? You were cruel, Nell, make no mistake. Did you want me to suffer to make yourself feel better? Is that it? Every time you sent me away, every time you spurned me and humiliated me, did it make you feel that little bit more righteous? Damn it! Who are you to set yourself above God, to mete out penalties and punishment?”

I stood, squaring myself up to him as best I could. “I was punishing myself.”

“Oh, aye. You Puritans are all for that, aren’t you? Make life a bloody misery so your rewards in Heaven will be all the greater.” He ran his fingers through his black curls. “So, you have decided that our penance is done now, have you, Eleanor? That I am to be your hair shirt no longer? You’ve decided, after all, not to wait for Heaven to claim your reward?”

I let my breath steady. “I am Eleanor to you again, am I?” I said quietly. “Not Nell anymore?”

That seemed to penetrate his anger, dispel it. He lowered his eyes, bent his head. After a moment he let me take hold of his hand. I brought it to my lips, held it there to kiss his fingers.

“I am so sorry,” I said.

He turned his face up to mine. “All the letters I sent to you. What did you do with them?”

“I . . . I burned them.”

He made to take his hand away but I held on to it.

“Before you read them? Or afterward?” he asked.

“Before,” I admitted, ashamedly. “All but one,” I added quickly. “One of them I opened. And read, and once I had done, then I had to keep it. I have slept with it under my pillow ever since. Every single night.”

He gave me a little smile. “Have you?”

I stroked his face. “Please, don’t let us argue anymore. What’s done is done. We have both suffered enough.”

He gave me an odd look. “Tell me this. Have you ever thought it would have been more just if I had died instead of Edmund?”

“You can’t ask me . . .”

“Because I have thought it. Time and again I have thought it.”

“Stop it.”

“Edmund should be here now, instead of me. He should be here with you and his children, shouldn’t he? Would you rather that? Would you rather . . .”

“No!” Then more quietly: “No.”

He calmed a little, as if my words vindicated him somehow. “Shall I tell you why I did not abandon my pursuit of you years ago, the first time you refused to see me?”

“Tell me.”

“Edmund said to me once that he could see why you loved butterflies so much. Because they are proof that there is real beauty in this world. Well, you are my butterfly, Nell. Despite everything, you are the best and most beautiful thing that has ever happened to me.”

I kissed him, very gently, on his lips, then I led him back to his chair and I sat on the floor at his feet, offered him my hand to hold again. For a long while we were silent, but it was a companionable silence this time rather than a tense one.

I caught Forest peeping round the door once more, though he scurried away when he knew himself discovered. “You seem to have won a devoted admirer in my son.” I smiled at Richard. “As it should be. You are his sponsor, after all.”

“It’s not a child’s admiration I seek, Nell.”

“You won mine before I even met you,” I confessed. “When I first heard you could swim. How did you learn? Who taught you?” Despite all that he had already shared with me, I realized that there was still much I did not know about him and I wanted to know it all, everything, all at once. I wanted to know every tiny detail of his life, what were his hopes, his opinions, his fears. I hardly knew where to begin. “Where did you learn to quote poetry? And where did you learn to handle a sword so expertly? Were you ever in the militia?”

He smiled his lovely smile and I was so glad to see it again. It was like sunshine after rain. “So many questions. Which shall I answer first? I was educated at St. John’s College, Cambridge, where I developed a love of music and literature, but regrettably left without gaining a degree. No, I am no militiaman. I fear I am far too undisciplined ever to be a very good soldier or scholar. But amongst those in exile were fine horsemen and swordsmen, with time on their hands, who were willing to act as riding and fencing masters to me. I was put into the saddle before I was two, was handed a sword and pistol almost before I had learned the words to ask for them. When the King lost his head and my father lost everything he had, except for me, he determined that I would never lose anything ever again, that I should learn to ride and hunt and shoot and swim too, so that when I grew to be a man I would be the best at everything, have the best of everything.”

“That sounds exhausting.” I thought how it was also a route to disillusionment and disappointment.

“It was certainly no boon to be thrown into a lake,” he said. “Told to swim or drown. My first lesson in life.”

I sensed from the tone in his voice and the look in his eyes that he’d been a boy who had had no particular stomach for daredevilry, who had developed a taste for it but at some personal cost, learning through those hard years of exile to constantly hold his fears in check.

“That is a cruel lesson,” I said, “one no little boy should have to learn.”

“Aren’t all lessons that children have to learn rather cruel?”

“They do not have to be.”

“What d’you teach your son?”

Bess came in then with two conical glasses and the earthenware decanter of wine. She barely faltered when she saw whom the extra glass was for, but by her reaction it was clear she knew him to be the same man who had unleashed his sword on the rabble last night. I found that I could not bear for her to think unkindly of Richard. It was alarming how one person could have come to mean so much to me, how my own happiness and peace of mind were so entirely bound to his, and I knew that there was nothing I would not do for him, nothing I would not do to make him happy.

“My son knows I would do anything to keep him safe,” I said, for Bess’s benefit.

I don’t think Richard even heard me. “How is the man who was injured?” he asked Bess directly.

She nearly spilled the wine all over him. “I believe he is recovering, sir.”

“Was he badly hurt?”

She flicked a suspicious glance at him, but read his concern as entirely genuine and softened. “It is just a surface wound. It will mend.”

“I am glad. Who is he? What is his name?”

“John Hort.

“And what does he do for a living?”

Bess was as surprised as was I at this depth of interest. “He’s an eeler, sir.”

Richard put his hand in the pocket of his breeches. “Here.” He held out a little pile of gold coins. “Take this to him, with my good wishes. There’s enough to see he gets proper treatment and to compensate him for loss of earnings until he is fit again. Take a sovereign yourself for your trouble.”

Bess took the money willingly, as if she could not believe her good fortune. “Thank you, sir.” She bobbed the prettiest little curtsy. “That’s very kind of you, sir.”

“That was very charitable,” I said when she’d gone. “I’ve never heard Bess call anyone ‘sir’ so many times in such a short conversation. You’ve certainly won her over and no doubt will win over the entire Hort clan. Maybe even the whole village.”