Love on a Midsummer Night (Shakespeare in Love #2) (6 page)

Pembroke kissed Titania back as if Arabella were not there, his mouth opening over hers. She surprised herself by not feeling repulsed by the open sensuality of the moment. All she felt was pain, sharp and clear, a pain she had earned. She had given him up, and now every woman in the world had more right to him than she did.

Without another word, the actress turned to leave. Codington closed the door behind Titania with an emphatic click. Pembroke sighed, and Arabella sat down once more to finish her brioche.

“Colorful company you keep,” she said. She swallowed her pain and jealousy but found that they would not dissipate. The soft bread was like sawdust in her mouth, but she forced herself to finish it. She needed to be on the road soon, and it would be hours before she stopped to eat again.

A scratching at the door broke through her pain, and Codington entered the room without being called. He brought a letter on a silver tray, not to Pembroke but to her. She broke the seal that bore Angelique’s crest, a phoenix rising from the ashes.

“Hawthorne has left my husband’s house. He’s searching the city for me.”

Arabella’s hands shook as she stood and cast the heavy paper into the fire.

“I must go.”

Pembroke stood as she did. “You aren’t going anywhere without me.”

“You have enough to amuse yourself in town. I will go, and you will stay, and all will be as it should.”

He did not argue but silenced her by placing one great finger over her lips. The warmth of his touch made her tongue seize. Pembroke smelled of cloves and cinnamon, as if he had been baking. She could not catch even a hint of brandy on his breath from the night before, only dark coffee with cream.

“We will go to Derbyshire, to my father’s house,” he said. “I will not leave you to Hawthorne’s tender mercies. Nor will I let you gallivant across the countryside alone. You came to me for help, and now you have it, madame, whether you want it or not.”

Arabella could not catch her breath. She simply stared into the blue of Raymond Olivier’s eyes. In spite of all that had happened between them, she remembered one simple truth. Every promise Pembroke had ever made to her, he kept.

“Thy lips, those kissing cherries, tempting grow…”

A
Midsummer
Night’s Dream

Act 3, Scene 2

Oxford, May 1818

The day Arabella fled from London was the longest of her life. Even the day her husband died, with its crush of physicians and vultures come to pick the bones clean, could not compare.

On the journey out of town, Arabella sat in the traveling chaise with the crest of the Earl of Pembroke emblazoned on its side. She kept the hood of Titania’s cloak up, hiding her face whenever they stopped to water the horses. They took their luncheon in a private room in an inn along the North Road, and she wore the dark green cape even then, drawing all eyes. If Hawthorne chanced to look for her here, he would hear only of Pembroke and his doxy, nothing of the Duchess of Hawthorne.

Angelique had left for her estate in Shropshire, traveling with a maid dressed in a fine black gown. She had sent word to her acquaintances in the city that she had retired to the country for some much-needed rest. Arabella hoped that the simple duplicity would be enough, that Hawthorne would head toward Shropshire first.

Arabella knew that she would not be able to hide for long. Hawthorne was a man of keen intelligence. She could only hope that his search for her would take him to her mother’s family in Devon after his aborted attempt to find her in Shropshire. No one had ever acknowledged her father’s birthplace. The duke would have to dig hard to find it. She was betting her life on it.

She had only a week or two at most to find the money she looked for, the money that would help her escape the rule of men for the rest of her life. Then she would have to disappear in earnest.

She tried not to think of Hawthorne and his gray eyes, the glint of the knife in his hand. She tried not to think of Pembroke, though he sat across from her in the carriage, swilling brandy from a flask.

Instead, she cast her mind not on what her life was but what it might become. When she thought of the future, it was of a year hence, when she might be tucked away by her own fire, making lace for a new dress, a kettle on the hob and roses beginning to bloom in the garden. The sight of this mythical cottage was the only ease she could find as she fled north under Pembroke’s protection.

Even now, as darkness began to rise from the land around them, Pembroke looked slightly dangerous, his blue eyes hooded, his blond hair falling across his forehead to further obscure her view of him. He wore all black, save for his silver embroidered waistcoat. He did not look at her but kept his eyes firmly on the countryside beyond the window, his silver flask in his hand.

His servants in town had thought nothing of loading an unknown woman into his carriage and spiriting her off to the country for a tryst. No doubt he did such things all the time. No doubt he often did much worse.

The setting sun cast its fading light over the deep green country, throwing the interior of the already darkened traveling chaise deeper into shadow. Arabella shrugged the hated green cloak from her shoulders to reveal a dark blue pelisse and matching bonnet. The dark blue of her clothes, while not strictly appropriate for a widow in the first month of mourning, was certainly more appropriate than a harlot’s satin. Not that anything was appropriate under the circumstances. Arabella had never been schooled in the proper etiquette of running for her life.

Titania had been kind to shield her, another woman in her lover’s keeping. Arabella felt a surge of jealousy at the thought of the beautiful actress, Pembroke’s mistress. She wondered, had their positions been reversed, if she would have been as generous.

No doubt the ruse of Titania’s cloak had bought Arabella more time out from under Hawthorne’s boot, but the actress’s choice of perfume left a great deal to be desired. The sickening sweetness of heavy lilac had surrounded Arabella all day, choking the air in the carriage. When the traveling chaise finally came to a stop at the Unicorn Inn outside of Oxford, Arabella did not wait for Pembroke to hand her down but leaped out of the carriage on her own, taking deep breaths of fresh evening air, leaving her borrowed cloak behind.

Pembroke raised a sardonic eyebrow as he pocketed his flask. He offered his arm and steered her into the inn, which was clean and well lit. The tavern keeper greeted them with a bow, asking no questions and giving her no sideways glances. The staff soon had them settled in a private parlor with a fire lit and cider on the hob.

Arabella drank her cider gratefully, the pewter mug warm in her hands, savoring the tart taste mixed with sweetness. She wondered if the innkeeper’s wife might part with her recipe. She opened her mouth to ask, but the staff withdrew as soon as Pembroke had dismissed them, handing coin all around. She assumed it was to keep their silence.

Alone once more, she and Pembroke simply stared at each other, the only sound in the room the quiet crackling of the fire in the hearth.

“I’ve taken one room,” Pembroke said at last. “I stay here a great deal, and it would look odd for me to take a separate room for…”

“Your mistress,” Arabella said.

“For the lady in my company,” Pembroke answered.

She nodded but did not speak again. She looked past his shoulder to the bedroom beyond, where the coverlet had already been turned down.

“I will sleep in the parlor on this settle,” Pembroke said. “It will place me between you and the door.”

She could feel his gaze heavy on her, and Arabella found that she could not look away. She searched his eyes for the boy she had known but could not find him. There was only the man he had become, his dark blond hair falling over his forehead, his deep blue eyes staring into hers, taking her breath.

Pembroke did not smile or speak, did not soften the moment with some flip remark. Instead, his gaze drifted down, as Hawthorne’s had the day before, to take in the small, soft curves of her breasts, the line of her throat. He looked hungry, his eyes hot, as if she were a package of sweetmeats, a gift left on his doorstep.

Her skin flushed as heat rose within her. She felt suddenly as if she stood too close to the fire. She took a step back and drew out her handkerchief to blot her temple, but the smell of lavender did little to soothe her. He did not turn away.

She moved suddenly to the window set above the courtyard. Even with her back to him, she could feel the weight of his gaze. The heat on her skin did not dissipate. She struggled with the latch, which would not budge. She settled for pressing her palm to the glass in the hope of cooling herself, but it had been a warm day, and she could feel the heat of the sun still caught in the pane.

Pembroke was beside her then, his hand over hers. His palm pressed hers down, trapping her fingers against the glass. He held her prisoner there, his breath on her hair, the scent of cinnamon surrounding her. For one mindless moment, she wanted to lean back and feel the strength of his body against hers.

It was madness, and she knew it. Nothing good could come of it. But she wanted it. She wanted him.

Pembroke reached past her with his other hand. The casement swung open for him easily.

Arabella knew that she should move away, but he stood between her and the rest of the room, shutting out the world. She tried to talk of something, anything: Derbyshire, the state of the roads, her gratitude for his kindness. But she could not find the words. She simply stood like a rabbit caught in a snare, trapped by the heat of his hand on hers.

It was Pembroke who broke the spell. He cleared his throat and took his hand away. She turned to watch as he moved away from her, as if the touch of her skin was a pot that had scalded him. He pushed his great paw through his unruly hair, and the golden heft of it fell back against his forehead again and into his eyes. He searched the pocket of his coat and took out his flask, but he found no solace there. It must have been empty, for he tucked it away again, his eyes never leaving her face.

“I will see about dinner,” he said before he fled, closing the door of the parlor behind him.

Arabella sat down on the hard wooden settle, the thin cushions doing nothing to soften the oak. There was a little breeze from the window now, but her skin was still flushed. She thought to move the fire screen to block the blaze, but she did nothing. She only stared into the flames, her fingertips touching her lips.

Had she ever felt such overwhelming desire? It had been many years since she and Pembroke had loved one another, since they had stood together by the river in their Forest of Arden, but she did not think she had ever felt such overwhelming lust when she was a girl.

She would have remembered.

Arabella could not become a slave of the past or to her own fancy. She could not moon after Pembroke as a grown woman. Once she reached Derbyshire, they would part—he to return to town and his mistress and his drink, she to start a life of her own. He already had a life of his own, and he was living it. He had not wasted his youth, locked away as she had been. He had gone abroad and fought wars on the Continent. No doubt Pembroke had long ago forgotten all that had once passed between them.

Of course, that did not mean that he would be averse to making her his mistress now.

She could not let him touch her again. She could never become his mistress, no matter how much heat rose in her at the touch of his hand.

Arabella knew enough of marital relations to be certain that she wanted no part of it, now or ever. She had survived the first year of her marriage. She had lain in bed, night after night, waiting for Gerald to come to her, thanking God when he did not. The humiliation, the physical pain of those couplings was still with her. She needed no such pain in her life again. She was free, and she meant to stay that way.

***

All Pembroke knew was that he had to get out of the room. He slammed the door behind him as if sealing in the hounds of hell. He stood in the corridor outside, the sounds and smells of the taproom below rising up the narrow staircase. He stood with his back pressed against the wall, breathing heavily as if he had run a fast mile. He forced himself to regain control, reaching for his lost courage. He could not seem to find it.

He had been confined all day in a closed carriage with the woman he still wanted more than any other. The acrid, too-sweet scent of Titania’s perfume had soon worn away, and all he could take in was the soft hint of cornflowers and cream on Arabella’s skin, the scent warmed by the confines of the carriage they sat in.

There was something about Arabella, just as there had been all those years ago. Her soft vulnerability called to his better instincts and made him swear once again to protect her, to shield her from the world. He could barely remember the boy who had first made that promise, but somehow, seeing her again, Pembroke began to be curious about that boy. Why had he loved her? Why had he been so moved by a slip of a girl? How could he still be so filled with lust at the sight of such a delicate, ladylike creature when all the women of the world were at his fingertips, waiting for him only to beckon to them?

He would take Arabella to Derbyshire, as he had promised. And then he would let her go.

Pembroke stood in the hallway outside the sitting room, a sharp pain lodged in his lungs just above his heart. He should hate her. Pembroke told himself this, but his lust went nowhere. He would not touch her again, no matter how much he wanted to.

His man, Reynolds, stepped forward out of the shadows. “My lord, are you quite well? Is there anything I might fetch you?”

Pembroke forced his pain down and drew out the smile he always wore unless he sat alone or with his friend Anthony. “No, Reynolds, though I thank you. An elixir to help me forget the past if you have one about your person.”

Reynolds had served him as valet for the last two years, since Pembroke had come home from the war. He must have been used to his lord’s strange turns of phrase for he did not even pause in his answer. “No, my lord, I fear not.”

Pembroke laughed, clapping his man on the shoulder. Reynolds winced at the impact of the friendly blow, and Pembroke laughed harder. “Just dinner, and then you may see to your own comfort.”

“You will be staying the night in these rooms, my lord?”

Reynolds never judged Pembroke for any of the women with whom he kept company, nor his gambling, nor his drinking. He turned a blind eye to all of Pembroke’s vices. But clearly something about Arabella had caught his valet’s eye, making even his man feel a certain protectiveness toward her.

“Indeed I will, Reynolds. But I’ll be sleeping on the settle.”

Reynolds bowed. “Excellent, my lord. I will have more pillows sent up.”

“No need. I don’t want the rest of the inn to know that I sleep on hard wood instead of the decent feather bed I’m paying for.”

A ghost of a smile flitted across Reynolds’s face, but it was gone before Pembroke could fully take it in. “Indeed, my lord, as you wish. Dinner will be served in twenty minutes.”

“Thank you, Reynolds.”

Pembroke was glad for once to keep country hours. The sooner he and Arabella ate, the sooner she would disappear behind her bedroom door. He would have a few hours’ reprieve while she wrapped herself in the coverlet of the warm feather bed.

Before going back into their rooms, Pembroke went downstairs and washed his face and hands in cold water in the inn yard, making his linen damp. Reynolds would be annoyed when he saw the evidence of Pembroke’s carelessness, but no matter. Cold water was called for, so cold water was what he doused himself in. It would be a long night.