The Indian Maiden (23 page)

THIRTEEN

She looked very
well there, he thought, though he couldn’t utter the compliment aloud. It was an entirely inconsequential thought, anyway. But now, as she rested and sighed with relief as though she’d put down a heavy weight, the first thought that sprang to his mind was how very well she looked tucked up into his favorite chair, with a lap rug he’d ferreted out of the closet covering her. She looked like a sweetly sleepy child peeking out of her coverlets, no never a child, he corrected himself, for if she really put him in mind of one, he’d have no difficulty speaking to her now as she awaited his reply.

Her color had returned after she’d done weeping in his arms and he’d administered another cordial and wrapped her into the rug, and then sat quietly and heard out the whole of the story. Now she was pink-cheeked and shining
-
eyed. Her long lustrous hair spilled around her. In the dim light, the manner in which she lay back and cuddled comfortably into the rug, the disarray of her clothes and hair, all made her a delicious vision that conjured up disorderly thoughts of tumbled bedclothes, coverlets, and pillows for him, as well as a great many other untidy delights that he had to forget entirely before he spoke one more word to her.

There were yet other things that came to his mind that he would have to strictly set aside before he could speak. What Methley had done, her bedeviled listener had thought all the while that she related the abortive “adventure” she’d endured, was far worse than villainous, it was stupid. There were gentlemen who subscribed to the belief that cold women could be warmed by heated stories and pictures. That made no more sense, Barnabas thought, than believing someone terrified of dogs would become a
fancier of the breed if locked in a kennel with a pack of them overnight. But he couldn’t tell her this either, not yet.

Because there was one grain of pure reason that had shone through all of Methley’s clouded thinking, which doubtless had spurred on the madness. She did fear men, there was no doubt she did, if he had not heard it from her lips, he had nonetheless tasted it there, it had shaped her life, it had touched his, and it would be difficult, if not impossible, for any man to win her as things were. Shyness in a well-bred young female was understandable; reluctance, or a good imitation of it, to engage in lovemaking was often encouraged, but Faith’s reaction to an embrace transcended this. Her immediate response was very close to sheer terror.

That very point had been troubling him for the past days easily as much as it had evidently preyed on the earl’s mind tonight. But bringing her to a bordello so that she might see the act and so put aside her fears of it? Methley might have done more damage this night, Lord Deal sighed, than even he had originally intended. Likely the earl had planned ruination for her, if only of her reputation, so that she’d have to accept his suit, and hadn’t thought of any damage done to her mind or soul. Or did he even care, Barnabas thought savagely, so long as her fortune remained intact?

It was the devil of a coil, he realized, running his hand through his thick, shaggy hair for want of something more constructive to do. Here he sat with a delectable creature he liked very well, alone and at an hour past midnight, and he couldn’t even tell her how lovely she looked to him. Nor did he dare touch her, certainly not after what she’d seen tonight. Nor could he admit that he understood why her abductor had treated her to the sights he had. All he could do was to be her friend, a better friend than he’d ever been to any man or maid, for whatever else transpired, he was determined that he not let her down as he’d failed Nettie all those years ago.

But even if he succeeded in that, he couldn’t win. For as he was coming to see too clearly with each passing hour, what he wanted was to be far more than that to her. His instant, deep, and horrified reaction when he’d thought the worst had finally brought it home forceably to him. When he’d thought her violated, it was as though he himself had been. It was no longer any use denying it to himself, she’d crept, all unnoticed, which was perhaps the only way any female could have gotten past his guard, too deeply into his heart for him to ever pluck her out again.

He ought not to be surprised, he thought. She, after all, exemplified all that he had admired in the New World, and all that he valued in the old. She had morals (albeit it was possible she couldn’t help that), manners, wit, and beauty, as well as a warm heart and high good humor. She could be a man’s friend and partner, as so many of her countrywomen in the new wilderness had to be, since being decorative alone was never enough for a man there. Yet she could remain unquestionably a tempting female, as so many in his old world required a female to be. The problem was, he sighed again, it well might be that she could never be more than tempting, and would eternally appear to offer all that she could never give. And unfortunately for himself, he could never take that which was not given.

But now, it was he who must give something, and if that were only to be comfort, why then, he thought, he would try to give that in abundance. That commodity, he’d often found, came best if packaged in laughter, for the healing touch was often the lightest one.

“Would you like another cordial?” he asked pleasantly, watching the level of liquid in her glass shrink. “That way, we can float you home when the time comes, and won’t have to bother to call a carriage at all.”

“Oh dear,” she said with a guilty start, for since she’d arrived she’d been taken up with so many things she’d never given a thought to her eventual return to her noble host and hostess’s house. She’d been so glad to get here, away from the nightmarish streets she’d somehow managed to traverse, shrinking into the shadows at every coach that rattled by, running the faster for every man who’d looked to her or called to her or come near to her. Barnabas said it was a miracle she’d gotten to him safely, and so it was, and if it was, it wasn’t the only thing to be grateful for. Barnabas himself had been rather a miracle too.

The moment she’d been able to wrench away from the earl and sprint down the deserted street, she’d known she couldn’t go back to Lady Mary to see her guilt or return to the duchess to read the spite and deceit plain in her face. She’d thought of Will, and remembered he’d been lodging with Lord Deal. Or, she wondered only now as she sat safe and comforted, had she thought of Lord Deal, and then remembered Will might be with him? No matter, it might have been a miracle that she’d found a homeward
-
bound lamplighter who’d known the street and hadn’t thought to taunt or terrorize an unescorted female. But the true miraculous revelation had come the moment she’d seen Barnabas open his door. Then she’d known she was saved from the night and safer than she’d ever been. Somehow she trusted him implicitly to protect her from any threat, even from herself.

But it had been odd when she’d found herself within his house, in his very chair, to see the athletic gentleman she’d always thought so vigorous and hardy turn pale with shock at her distress. She’d only managed to speak at last so that she could spare him further discomfort. His hazel eyes had been bleak with despair, his strong, long hands had shaken as he’d handed her a goblet of liquor to down. She’d never known she could affect someone so strongly, it amazed her still. Yet in a small, secret, dreadfully perverse part of her mind that she examined briefly now and then quickly hid again, she had never felt so powerful before either.

Then, of course, when he’d realized she was unhurt, she’d feared he might correct that circumstance in his rage at her. In all, she’d been through so much emotion, both hers and his, in the last hours, that she felt curiously numbed to all sensation, just as her hand felt sometimes when she’d leaned on it for too long.

Now she was safe, and it was very good to sit and talk with him in the dim quiet of the late night. It was singular for a well-bred young woman to visit a gentleman in the dead of the night and sit alone in his home, sipping strong spirits and laughing with him. It wasn’t done in any country she knew of, it was shameless behavior, but it was very good, and she no longer cared a fig about all the rest. Too much had happened, there simply wasn’t any emotion as strong as shame left to her. So when he mentioned her ultimate, proper destination, instead of being horrified at being reminded of her odd behavior, she pulled a face that made him laugh.

“I don’t want to leave,” she said childishly, snuggling down into the chair with a rebellious pout, since tonight, it seemed she could say anything to him.

“And I don’t want you to either, but you shall.” He smiled. “But not just yet,” he added, and she sank back again with a relieved grin. “We’ll think up a suitable revenge before you go,” he said lazily as he seated himself on a hassock he dragged up close to her chair, and arranged his robe decorously around his legs. “Yes, absolutely, and we’ll wake Will, too, to get his opinion. But in time,” he reassured her and himself, “all in due time. Let’s let them all stew a while longer, the duchess and Lady Mary, and Methley, too.”

When her grin faded at the mention of the earl’s name, he decided to pull those fangs first. And the best defense against dread, he decided, was disrespect.

“Methely,” he said, “is a corkbrain. I suspect it’s possible he thought you might find the view he’d exposed you to either inspiring or incriminating enough to move you to immediate wedlock. It was fortunate then, that as it happened, even less was seen of you than you saw of the activities there. Ah, yes, our illustrious longlegs is much more of a misguided clunch than a villain. Unless, of course, he was just a blameless patriotic sort of fellow who felt that Mother Carey’s establishment was a must-see on any American tourist’s itinerary, second only to the Tower in historic value. It might have been that he took you there to impress you with Britain’s supremacy in vice as well as virtue.”

“But we have such at home too, you know,” she murmured over a suppressed giggle.

“Oh, really?” he replied, noting that her color had returned in force, and beginning to wonder if there wasn’t a deal more in Methley’s method than he’d previously supposed, since she now was recovering very nicely indeed. But then he understood that the combination of her relief, the cordials, the warmth, and the absurd hour of the night was making her giddy, and was very glad of it. So he refused to make Methley’s mistake and stifled an impulse to tell her he knew the places she spoke about only too well, and said negligently instead, “But I doubt you’d take tourists there, would you?”

“Oh, no,
I
wouldn’t have to,” she said airily. “We’re much more
modern
. We run regular tours of such places on Saturdays and holidays at home.”

He rocked back in soft laughter and then smiled his approval at her. Though they sat close, the room was so still they unwittingly spoke in ever diminishing, subdued voices, and when, now and again, one of them laughed, even that sound was automatically muted in respect for their privacy and the dreaming night surrounding them. What had begun in fear was growing into a shared mood of increasingly high spirits. It wasn’t long before they reached a point of night and mood where silly things seemed exquisitely clever, and the merest jest attained heights of hilarity the sober day could never equal.

He congratulated her on her homeland’s superior wisdom, and began to complain at how it was just his luck that he’d missed the tour when he’d been there, and although his conversation remained within the limits of delicacy, of course, his topic could not. She suffered an onslaught of muffled giggles when he agreed that it was a splendid idea and asked her if she’d have been more comfortable this evening if Methley had gone about the thing the open, frank new American way and appointed the duchess as her guide.

“Methley said,” she finally said thoughtfully, gazing down fixedly at her lap, ignoring his question as she rightly should, “that if I looked close, I might even discover you there—at Mother Carey’s tonight, I mean.”

“Oh,” Lord Deal said, and wondered if his own color was rising, for absurdly, he felt as discomfitted as a schoolboy. So he gave her truth for truth. “Perhaps if you’d looked several years ago, you might have. But even then you’d have had to go to the upper regions of the house and throw open a door in order to do so, I’m afraid. I’ve never thought lovemaking was an art for public exhibition. I believe an audience of one is sufficient for any man,” he said primly, while privately he was scarcely attending to his own words, as he was rapidly realizing this was becoming the most unorthodox conversation he’d ever had with any female, lady or not.

It was decidedly titillating, while it was not intended to be, since knowing he couldn’t touch her he didn’t speak with the purpose of arousing her, although it was definitely having the opposite effect upon himself. He was, he discovered, enjoying the experience enormously. It was novel and liberating, as well as exciting to speak with a woman as though she were a man and yet all the while remain acutely and delightfully aware that it was a warm and beautiful female he addressed and not a male friend.

But then she brought him down to earth.

“It certainly isn’t for public display,” she agreed vehemently, remembering the scene and pleased to see that a man agreed with her, most especially this man whom she wished very much to explain herself to. She went on rapidly, forgetting all her humor in her anxiety to make it clear, “It’s frightening to see such violence of emotions, such lack of control in ordinarily proper people, such wild abandon. And that’s only what there is to see,” she laughed nervously. “The noises, the racket they make, they could wake the dead. Such ugly noises, and the protests, the promises, the florid, half-finished threats, I find that perhaps as terrible as
...
” Her voice trailed off as she heard what she’d been saying, and saw, even in the dim light, that he was no longer smiling. He sat before her, very still, his clear, knowing eyes suddenly studying her keenly. Yet when he spoke he seemed as troubled as he’d been when he’d first tended to her.

“Faith,” he said softly, looking at her so steadily she could not drop her own gaze through the force of his, “Mother Carey’s is always crowded. Mother Carey’s is so noisy, there’s such a constant party in progress, that I doubt you heard very much from the unlovely couple, even if they were coupling in such an abandoned fashion
—
which I very much doubt, since you said you only saw them for a moment before you turned away. Faith,” he said seriously, “will you tell me about it? If it was not seen on the mythical tour we jested at, it was something similar, and very real to you. Don’t retreat from me. It’s late and dark and there’s only the two of us here. What does it matter, after all? Just speak it as you recall it. What was it you were telling me about just now?”

It was indeed late, and dark, and she’d had a great many things happen to her in a very short space of time. And something this night had disturbed something in her memory. Something had been rudely jogged loose and would not fit back into place again, and that was an excellent excuse to deafen herself to all the warning voices and at last this late night let the dark thing out into its own element for him, as he’d asked.

“Well,” she said in an attempt to be flippant, but very quickly so that she’d have the thing out and said before there was any help for it, “I was young, you see, and visiting with my mama at my father’s home in Virginia. They’d gotten together for my birthday. I was ten, and that was the last time they tried a reconciliation at his house, so I remember it well. There was a thunderstorm that woke me in the night, and I went wandering the halls, because I never sleep well in strange surroundings, and the slave that was supposed to watch over me was dead asleep, poor girl.

“I found them in the salon,” she said on a brittle, artificial laugh, “though they never saw me, of course. And then I ran back to bed, that was all there was to it, it was never so much actually, but still you see, I suppose that’s why it’s true I’ve always disliked the thought of that sort of behavior. It’s an unlovely thing to witness. At Mother Carey’s, or anywhere else.”

She lowered her head and gave her empty glass sudden acute scrutiny, unable to speak another word lest her heart leap from her mouth, as she was amazed to discover it beating so rapidly she thought it must burst its bounds.

All the while, he attempted to think very fast. He’d asked for the moon and gotten it, and now wondered at whether he could bear up under its weight. For if he knew anything, it was that whatever he said next would be of prime importance to them both.

“Not quite like Mother Carey’s,” he commented with forced casualness. “It’s not as though you went looking for the experience.”