Midsummer Moon (5 page)

Her mind felt like jelly. She could only nod again, not even understanding the question.

He caught her hand and carried it to the joining of his legs. “You pleased me,” he said. His voice was strange and thick. “Lord, that's the understatement of the century. Do you feel that? For God's sake, I already want you again. Merlin, sweet Merlin—I want you. All of you. I want you to think of me and nothing else."

"But my wing design,” she protested. Her voice sounded weak and breathless as he shifted his weight across her. “I have to think of that."

"The devil take your wing design. Must you be so bloody literal?” Stiff cotton rustled as he pulled her blouse halfway down her shoulder. He kissed the soft skin of her underarm. “Sweet Jesus, you are lovely. I can't bear it. I have to love you again."

"Shouldn't you take off your boots?” Merlin asked timidly. “Thaddeus will be furious if you get mud on the counterpane."

He looked up, offense and laughter chasing one another across his handsome features. “I didn't change for dinner, by God. Why should I change for dessert?” He leaned over her. “Besides, His Grace of Damerell never has mud on his boots."

"Oh.” The syllable came out a gasp as Merlin felt the hard length of him penetrate her again in one smooth thrust. His hands slid beneath her buttocks, lifting her into him.

Merlin's body answered with a surge of excitement. She knew what to expect now, knew where the deepening rhythm led. It was as wondrous as any discovery she had ever made. In her intensity she abandoned shyness, the wing design forgotten along with the rest of the world. When he kissed her, she kissed him back. His tongue swept into her mouth, and his arms tightened around her, drawing her with him as he rolled onto his back.

He took longer this time. Much longer. He pulled the blouse and camisole off her and caressed her shoulders and neck and breasts. Over and over, Merlin trembled on the verge of that lightning explosion. She worked clumsily at his shirt buttons and tugged at his cravat, baring the smooth, hard muscle of his chest and throat. A faint sheen of perspiration turned his skin to shadowed marble in the deep twilight.

He pulled her down until she could taste the salt of excitement on him. “Merlin.” His voice was breathless at the base of her throat, his hands sending sparks from her breasts to her belly. Suddenly he clasped her to him hard and rolled atop her again. She heard her name in broken, whispered repetition, and then it was lost in a low moan, in his fingers gripping her arms and his face buried in her hair.

She thought for a wild moment that they might die of this, that the breath would never return to her lungs and the exquisite agony would burn her to ashes. But she lived through the climax, through the burst of lightning and the long fall, and a moment later felt his thrust, prolonged and shuddering, and a sound from deep in his throat that had no meaning beyond ecstasy.

The daylight faded, and with the last of it, Ransom's illusions. He lay with his arms around her, staring at the deep shadow of her hair against the pillow. He felt, for a few moments, suspended: hung between the brittle heights of elation and the strangling, sickening swamp of horror.

It was a peculiar experience, as if he saw himself—a man, with a woman, lying sated on a bed in the gathering dark. He knew himself content. He knew happiness; that much was left of the wild tide of emotion that had swept him to this moment. He knew that the quiet rise and fall of her breasts beneath his hand gave him pleasure. Simple pleasure, heart-deep. A satisfaction he had never in his life felt so completely.

But that was the man on the bed. The man who had taken a woman as if he owned her, when he did not. Who had just violated every sense of decency and honor Ransom had upheld for a lifetime. The man lay there, in possession of an innocence still lovely in destruction—able to feel the smooth curve of her arm, to smell the warm scent of dust and love on her skin.

Ransom hated that man. Betrayal burned through his veins, turned to raw anguish as the last moment of unreality passed and he
became
that man.

"No,” he groaned in helpless fury. The crime was committed; he had done it.
He
had—the man who should have protected her. His duty, his morality, his honor as a gentleman...

She turned toward him, and in the deep dusk he could see just enough to know that she smiled. Remorse gutted him. He wanted to howl with it. He laid his head back and covered his face, pressing his fingers into his skull until he ached with the strain of holding back his cry of rage.

"Mr. Duke,” she whispered, and touched his arm.

He grunted, unable to command his tongue.

"Mr. Duke,” she said, a little louder. “I know I don't get out much, but really...” There was a tone of wonder in her voice. “I don't believe I've ever met anyone quite like you."

Ransom began to laugh. He laughed until the bed shook with it, until she sat up and began to make ineffectual attempts to relieve him—little fluttering pats on his back and singsong “There nows,” as if he were weeping instead.

And he wanted to weep. He could not believe it. Never in his lifetime, not raging or drunk or sober, had he discarded all control and let his passions have free rein. To act without thought was the greatest sin he could imagine. Ransom had been trained to discipline from his first rational moment, had been drilled in the consequences of power, in his duty to wield it with precision and care.

He was human; he had his desires and his weaknesses, but to act on them to the ruination of someone else, to the injury of an innocent girl who had every right to expect all the strength of his protection...

"Oh, God,” he said, his voice a rasp of stupefied rage. He turned his face downward into the pillow. “Oh, God,” he moaned, and curled his hands over his face. “Oh, God...” he hissed into his palms. “
There was something in the salt.
"

"Never thought to see the day,” Thaddeus grumbled, thumping a plate of burned bacon and tomato down in front of Ransom. “Never thought to see a bastard eatin’ at me own table."

Ransom swallowed the urge to take out a few more of Thaddeus's already scarce teeth. “Mind your own affairs,” he said stiffly. “I'll make it right."

"'Tis me affair, ye bleedin’ sod.” A cup of cloudy, lukewarm tea hit the table with a clatter. “I took care of her, I did; it's what me an’ Theo's done for years, all right and tight, and then you come along in your gentleman clothes and smooth talk and what's she know about it? Ain't never seen a blighter the likes o’ you, she ain't. Don't know a randy sonofabitch from a mare's hind end—"

"
Enough.
” Ransom's command would have frozen King George in his royal tracks. “I said I'd take care of it."

Cold toast rattled ominously in its rack as Thaddeus dropped it in the general vicinity of Ransom's plate. “Spilt milk,” the old man said darkly. “I'd like to know how you'll be cleaning it up."

"I'll marry her."

Thaddeus stopped on his way to the pantry door. “Will ye now?"

Ransom made no answer. He bit into his charred breakfast and glared.

"When?” Thaddeus persisted.

"When I obtain a license."

"Bishop Ragley's to home, over at Barnstaple. Half an hour an’ ye can be there."

To his utter disgust, Ransom felt himself flushing. Ragley, for God's sake. One of his grandfather's oldest cronies. Ransom could imagine it, confessing the sordid story to the stiff-necked cleric, asking—begging—for a special license. His gorge rose just contemplating the humiliation.

"I'll ride into London and bring the license back,” he said, and then felt double disgust at the notion of explaining his intentions to a meddling servant.

Thaddeus turned and shuffled back. “That won't do, sir. Won't do at all."

"Get on with you,” Ransom snapped. “Cursed impudence."

"Cursed blackguard,” Thaddeus muttered.

Ransom thrust his chair back and roared, “I'll marry her, damn your eyes! What more do you want?"

"Today."

Ransom stared at the old man, his jaw quivering with suppressed rage. Thaddeus stood his ground, holding out a jam-pot as if it were a knight's shining sword. In a concerted effort to gain control of his temper, Ransom narrowed his eyes and looked down. He selected the least-crumbled piece of toast and put it on his plate. After a moment Thaddeus moved forward and spooned a blob of marmalade onto the bread.

"She's sleepin’ like a lamb up there,” the old man said. “Like an innocent babe."

"I'll speak to her when she wakes."

Thaddeus plopped another spoonful of jam onto the toast. “Never knowed a mother, not as she could remember. Ain't had no proper life at all."

"I can see that,” Ransom said sourly.

"Sure ye can.” A third scoop of marmalade hit the mound with a liquid plunk. “Fine gentleman like yourself, knows just how to take advantage of a trustin’ lady."

Ransom clamped down on a retort. Another spoonful of preserves quivered where Thaddeus dropped it and then slithered over onto the blackened bacon.

"Her poor mother, that fine, gentle lady, she must be turnin’ over in her grave,” Thaddeus went on, spooning a further heap of marmalade onto the growing mound on Ransom's plate. “And we promised her—lying there on her deathbed, she was—me and Theo promised her we'd take care of that little girl. And we done fine, too, until here comes Mr. Fancy Dancy"—preserves splattered across the bacon and dripped from the wrinkled tomato—"without a by-your-leave, all set to turn our Lady Claresta's little girl into a wh—"

"
Don't you say it.
” Ransom came to his feet, shoving his chair aside. In the sudden silence his words filled the air with soft menace. “If you value what's left of your life, old man, you won't finish that sentence."

Thaddeus drew himself up, his bald head coming no higher than two inches below Ransom's shoulder. The manservant glared at Ransom for a long moment and then began vigorously scraping the last of the marmalade out of the pot and spooning it all over Ransom's food. “Bullyin’ meself for your own sins,” he muttered. “Hit me, hit me, see if it makes ye feel a right one. Go on, now, while I ain't lookin'. While me back's turned, that's the way. Me old neck'll snap like a twig, I warrant. I won't feel a thing. Won't have to worry for me poor mistress no more, won't have to work on me hands and knees in the garden, won't have to—"

"Oh, for the love of God.” Ransom flung his tattered napkin down onto the table. “Go saddle up my horse.” He kicked the chair out of his way. “On second thought, don't touch my horse. If your cooking skills are any example, the beast would be lame before it reached the front gate."

"Where're ye goin'?” Thaddeus asked, hope and belligerence mingled in his querulous old man's voice.

"I'm going to Barnstaple. I'll be back with the bishop this afternoon."

From the window of her laboratory, Merlin watched him ride out of the dooryard.

So.

He was gone.

It left a funny feeling inside her, that departure. Funny and quivery and sad, a lot like the way she had felt when Uncle Dorian had died, but worse, for this time she felt it was somehow a failure of her own, that this man who had arrived in her life like a burst of electricity had wanted to befriend her but had found her lacking. Last night he had held her in his arms, after his strange, angry laughter faded, and then when she'd awakened, he'd been gone.

She'd bathed in cold water as usual, except this time it wasn't usual, for she'd washed away all the traces of the astonishing experience of the evening before. She'd tiptoed to the door and heard him, downstairs with Thaddeus. An odd panic drove her away when what she'd really wanted was to see him again—to touch him, to hear the laughter in his voice.

Merlin, Merlin, I love you. Do you believe me?

She looked down at the leather-bound stack of papers she'd assembled. Twelve dozen, she'd counted out, and then in a burst of hope added a few extra, just in case he had more scientific friends than he had first imagined.

But he was gone now. Merlin bit her lip and rubbed at the binding with her fingertip.

Well,
she thought.
Perhaps I'll donate them to the universities myself
.

The bell on the speaking box shrilled. Merlin swallowed the stupid lump in her throat. He hadn't even taken the speaking box, in the end—the invention he had come for.

The bell rang again. Thaddeus, Merlin knew. There was no one else to call her. She sat waiting, knowing that he would give up soon. He always did. And the stairs to the solar were too much for his ancient legs.

She was safe here. She was alone with her work, as she'd always been. After the bell went silent, she slid off her stool and began to dig amidst the confusion on the table, looking for the last equations that she'd balanced before Mr. Ransom Duke had exploded into her quiet life and then faded out again.

Her dogged concentration faltered at noon, when she saw Thaddeus carry a tray for his brother across the yard to the cottage. Certain that he would be occupied for an hour with Theo, she slipped downstairs for a solitary lunch. Somehow she didn't want to talk to Thaddeus. Not today. Not when he would ask questions. Questions like who her visitor was and why they had left the table in the middle of dinner and why the bed in Uncle Dorian's room was mussed and why her own was not.

She frowned at the marmalade-covered breakfast plate that lay abandoned on the dining room table. There was a trail of jam across the wood that ended at a tented napkin. The napkin emitted a faint crunching sound. Merlin lifted the material. Beneath it, the hedgehog rolled up, clutching the last of a jam-covered slice of bacon.

"I'm not going to take it,” she assured the little animal softly. “You can open your eyes, silly."

The hedgehog ignored her. She replaced the napkin. After a moment the modest crunching resumed.

Merlin sliced herself bread and cheese and sat down. All morning she'd been occupied, lost in struts and stabilizers. It had come as a profound relief to put her mind to familiar puzzles, to slide easily into the elegant world of numbers, of theories, where questions had answers, if one only thought hard enough.

Now, emerging from that comforting trance, she was aware of the silence of the empty house. Her own breathing was the loudest sound she heard. It seemed to Merlin to ache, that silence. It made her throat fill up with pointless tears.

She stared blindly at the jumble of discarded junk that filled the corners of the dining room. Leaning against the wall beneath the window was a kite she had begun months ago. The framework was there, the short tail and the smooth, silken body, carefully modeled after a hawk's wings curved in the downbeat of flight. She knew the kite would fly. Beautifully. What she didn't know was why.

Her gaze drifted lazily past the kite to the half-finished anemometer she'd copied from a diagram by Sir Francis Beaufort. The little twirling cups would measure wind speed. There were a pair of them—why she'd made two, she couldn't remember, but a thought hung like a tickle at the back of her mind.

She rose. For a few minutes she stood frowning down at the kite and the anemometers. Then abruptly she grabbed them up and spread the kite across the table. After a frenzied search for tools, she bent over the kite and began to work, her mind empty of everything but her sudden purpose.

A half hour later, she was ready. The kite's pure curve sprouted new decoration: the two anemometers, one each mounted above and below the wings, and a tall pole, salvaged from the great-hall and attached at the apex. A string was centered lower, near where a bird's legs would have been. Half an hour of concentration had produced a pulley that would control the angle of the kite relative to the pole to Merlin's satisfaction.

She maneuvered the unwieldy apparatus out the door and down the passage, stopping only to stuff a notebook and pencil into her apron pocket. As she stepped into the yard, a stray breeze caught the kite. The anemometers spun.

Merlin watched them, one above the other, and gave a little squeal of excitement. The wind in the dooryard gusted and died, but she knew where it would be blowing more steadily. She tucked the kite under her arm and trotted out the garden gate, headed for higher, open ground.

It was almost dark when she found her way home, dragging the pole and the kite behind her. She was utterly happy and exhausted. Her notebook was filled with observations, with every variation of wing and wind speed. She'd scribbled down equations, crossed them out and scratched in more. She'd watched the birds and with her new knowledge seen things she'd never really seen before—the arc of a soaring wing and the changing angle of a feathered curve as a buzzard came to rest in a tree. The exhilaration of discovery carried her into the dooryard and past the carriage before she even noticed it was there.

It was Ransom's voice that broke through her reverie. She looked up and saw him striding toward her. The delight of the afternoon welled up into a cry of pure joy.

"Mr. Duke,” she called. “Oh, Mr. Duke, I've
done
it! You won't believe how simple it is! It's the curve of the wing, you see. I have it all down. I measured everything. The wind speed varies with the curve, and the angle against the—"

"
Merlin!
” His furious shout cut her off, far louder than necessary from a yard away. He grabbed the kite and tore it out of her hands. Silk ripped under his fingers as he tossed the delicate framework aside. It landed and snapped, settling in a shapeless mass.

His hands closed tight on Merlin's arms, but she was looking beyond him. “You broke it,” she said.

"Are you all right?” he demanded. “Are you hurt?"

Merlin dragged her eyes away from the heap of silk and stared up at him. “You broke it."

"Where have you been?” he cried. “Not flying some damned kite? I've been out of my wits, curse you.” He began to pull her toward the house. “I come back and find your chaos of a laboratory in shambles—if the mind can conceive of such a thing—your precious Thaddeus knocked over the head, and no sign of you. I've got my agents out searching over half the shire.” He shook her as he walked. “You might have had your throat slit. Or worse, by God. Far worse."

Merlin stumbled along beside him, unable to focus on anything but her broken kite and his last words. “I don't see what could be worse than that."

His grip tightened. “Don't you? Well, let me tell you, my innocent babe, being raped—” He broke off suddenly, and even in the twilight she could see the dark rise of blood in his face. He looked sideways at her, his mouth set in a terrifying curve. “Never mind that. The bishop's here."

"The bishop,” Merlin repeated in a small voice. “What bishop?"

"What difference does it make? Ragley."

"But—is he here for dinner? I don't think there's mutton enough for..."

"Lord, we won't have him sit down to one of your elegant dinners,” the duke snapped. “He can do his business and be gone."

She pursed her lips in desperate confusion. “What business?” Then she sucked in her breath and lunged against his hand, trying to break into a run. “Not Theo! Oh, no—you can't mean you've sent for a clergyman for Theo!"