Laura Kinsale (33 page)

Her heart lifted. He meant for her to stay.

“Would you like to do it?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said, taking refuge in an intense study of her fruit fork. “Yes, I’m sure that I should like that.”

After dinner, his father stood before the fire with a small glass of one of the revolting-looking cordials that he always drank. He had already tried the “Member of Parliament” overture, in which Arden was to be tempted into standing for some convenient borough by the dropping of appetizing political tidbits at dinner. There was a “Justice of the Peace” script which would follow shortly, probably before the arrival of tea, and then finally they would arrive at the one Arden intended to accept this time, much to his father’s shock, he was sure: “Respected Landlord.”

He was determined to find some use for himself at Swanmere. He had said he would try.

But the walls seemed very close as he stood with his parents and his not-quite-wife in the small drawing room, which was larger than the entirety of the apartments that he had used to keep in London. He had come to the fire, but it was too hot, so he drifted about the room, listening to the conversation between his parents only sufficiently to put in brief nods and “yes, sirs,” at the appropriate pauses.

The dinner. The dismissed second-floor housemaid. The necessity of looking thoroughly into the characters of servants. The sad loss Mr. Forbis would be to the county; he had been an excellent magistrate. No, Arden did not suppose that he would care to consider the position himself.

He stood with his back to a window as the tea arrived.

“Will you pour, Lady Winter?” his mother asked.

He watched Zenia as she did it. She was a little awkward, carrying a cup to his mother. His father declined, only accepting a plate of biscuits.

She looked up at Arden. “Will you take tea?”

The irony of it seemed too keen. She brought the teacup and placed it silently in his hand. He thanked her—in Arabic. Though she ignored his words, she flushed bright pink.

“Pray tell us what he said, Lady Winter,” his mother said. “I do think it is so uncivil for someone to speak a foreign language.”

“He only thanked me, ma’am, for the tea.”

“What a mouthful, merely to say thank you,” his father said. “What are the words?”

His question met a long silence. She seemed rooted in place, blushing.

“It’s hardly that risque,” Arden said. “You can tell them.”

“ ‘May Allah reward thee, O my hostess,’“ she murmured quickly, turning a deeper red, “ ‘and multiply your children.’ “ She bit her lip. “It is a common blessing among the Mohammedans.”

“A pleasant sentiment,” his father said heartily.

His mother sipped her tea. “The heathens always seem inclined to multiply.”

Standing beside Zenia, Arden saw her flush turn to white. She took it as a comment on herself—which it might well have been, knowing Lady Belmaine’s stiletto methods. “I promised you would have tea with my mother,” he said in Arabic. “Pleasant, is it not?”

She cast him a look, an unhappy appeal.

“It is quite rude, Arden, to speak in a foreign language,” his mother said.

“I was merely complimenting Lady Winter on how becoming she appears in shoes,” he said. “She was barefoot when we met.”

Zenia’s lips parted. She looked as if she would like to dash his tea in his face.

He didn’t know why he said it. He had meant to be cordial. He could not afford to enrage her—his father had informed him that she was withholding her consent to their marriage—and yet he could not help himself. It was the only point of reference he could find with her, a shared language and memory. If they could speak of it, if he could tell her what he remembered and what had happened to him after she was gone, if they could talk of the red sands and the strange mountains of Jabal Shammar and the walls of Hayil; if he could discover his brave and graceful wolf cub in her...

He could love her. He would. He already did, but he couldn’t find her.

He wanted her; her body inflamed him, even here in the somber dress and cap. But it was strange to him, formed differently, moving differently: he needed to find her inside this new shape.

“That is hardly a time Lady Winter can wish to be reminded of,” his mother said. “You are shockingly impudent tonight, Arden.”

Which of course he was. “I think I liked her better then,” he said, recklessly digging his own grave deeper. “I liked her barefoot.”

“What an ungracious thing to say.” Lady Belmaine set down her cup.

“Does she always wear shoes?” he asked. “The way Beth always stays in heated rooms?”

“Of course Lady Winter wears shoes. Whatever has got into you, Arden?” His father was scowling at him in a familiar way. He took a long sip of cordial and set the glass down hard on the mantelpiece. “Or need I suppose it is anything more than perversity?”

“Is it perversity, Zenia?” Arden asked, looking at her lowered profile. “Am I to forget everything I knew of you, all the best things, so that you can be an English lady?”

She stood there staring down at her clasped hands. The small bunch of black silk flowers pinned at her throat rose and fell, the only motion about her.

“Tea and seedcakes!” He gave a short laugh, turning away to the window. “Such a very proper lady. You came to the right place for that. My mother is the highest authority in the matter.”

“I really must see to Elizabeth,” Zenia said—slipping away, escaping him once again. He heard her footsteps hurry across the carpet, and the solid sound of the closing door.

Elizabeth was fussy and petulant. Zenia tried to calm her by nursing, but she found to her great distress that her milk was finally and completely gone. Elizabeth sat in her lap and cried. Zenia wanted desperately to weep too—it seemed such a cruel moment to lose the one thing she alone could share with her daughter.

But Elizabeth did not seem to want to share anything with her now. She refused to stay in Zenia’s lap, she refused to be rocked or listen to lullabies, and she would not settle into bed, but kept sliding down and reaching to try to open the door to her playroom. If Zenia would not open it, she would begin to wail. So it was standing open when he came.

“It is only until she goes to sleep,” Zenia said—but of course the moment that Elizabeth saw him, nothing would do but that she must be picked up and carried on his shoulders. He stripped to his shirtsleeves and hefted her up with a grimace and walked back and forth between the rooms, with Elizabeth cooing happily whenever he ducked under the doorframe.

There was a dangerous moment when she pointed at the outer door and began to whimper, but Lord Winter turned her over in a tumble onto the bed, and she was still tired enough that she lay laughing up at him, tousled and breathless and drowsy-eyed. To Zenia’s dismay, he sat down beside her on the bed, then rested on his elbow amid the pillows while Elizabeth clutched his open shirt collar.

She fell asleep with it in her fist. He and Zenia had not once looked at one another.

There was a light knock on the bedroom door—Zenia’s nightly tray. The maid came in and put it down and curtsied on her way out. Lord Winter stayed where he was on the bed, and Elizabeth barely fluttered her lashes before she was asleep again.

They must look a real family, Zenia thought. A father and mother and child.

“Eat,” he said quietly. “I don’t mind.”

Her throat felt so tight that she did not think she could force herself to swallow. “I don’t care for anything now.”

He still had not looked at her. “I understand that you are not yet certain... whether you wish to be Lady Winter in fact.”

“We will wake her, talking,” Zenia said, keeping her voice low. “I think it would be best if you asked your father to arrange for another room for you.”

He looked up at her then, a flash of blue. “No,” he said.

“Your presence upsets her. I could not get her to bed with the door closed.”

“Then leave it open.”

“I cannot—” She stood, turning away so that she did not have to look at him.

“Do you think I’m going to ravish you, Lady Winter? Bring in a trundle for the nurse, if you feel the need of more chaperonage.”

She heard the bed move, and looked to see him disengaging Elizabeth’s fingers. As he rose, Elizabeth rolled over into the warmed depression where his body had been and sighed, relaxing.

Zenia was angry with him. Elizabeth had never let anyone but Zenia lie down with her. Never.

He lifted the silver cover from one of the dishes and ate a thick slice of cheese. And then she was angry with him because he so easily made himself at home in her room.

“I wish you would leave,” she said tightly. “A gentleman would leave, and arrange to sleep elsewhere.”

“Oh, a gentleman.” He glanced sideways at her. “I’m sure you know all about that.”

“Please,” she said.

“Beth likes me here.”

“She only cares for you because you allow her to do what she should not.”

He gave her a long look. “If you insist on keeping her imprisoned, you know, you may find that she doesn’t care for you at all.”

“I do not keep her
imprisoned.”
Zenia expelled a sharp breath. “She goes out whenever the weather is fair. You know nothing of it.”

“Zenia—” He moved to the shuttered window, his back to her. His voice was unexpectedly intense. “I know something of it.”

“What can you know? You only saw her yesterday for the first time in her life. What do you know of how I’ve tried to keep her safe? What do you know of what it was like, after—”

He looked back at her. She turned her face away.

“They said the Saudis took you. There was blood on the saddle.” Her voice began to shake. “You were dead. And I’m not going to let Elizabeth die! You aren’t afraid of anything, you have no sense, you don’t care if you kill yourself, and I’m not going to let—”

There was a whimper from the bed as Elizabeth lifted her head. Zenia realized how her voice had risen.

“Please go!” she whispered, sitting down at the desk and staring at the silver dishes. “Just go.”

“Zenia—”

“Go. You’ll wake her—and I can’t bear it if she cries.” He walked past her to the other room. As the door began to close, Elizabeth pushed up on her arms and started to wail.

“Leave it open,” Zenia hissed.

It stayed open. The light from the candle on the other side was suddenly snuffed, leaving the doorway dark. Elizabeth peered at it for a long moment, and then laid her small head down again with a satisfied sigh.