To Have and to Hold (12 page)

"Very well," he said solemnly, "I will grant you your wish—a little more time. But don't make the mistake of growing complacent," he cautioned in a lower voice, leaning toward her. "I'm not a hermit, and Lynton Hall is not a religious retreat. Sooner or later, you'll have to help me entertain my friends. Furthermore, when I engaged you, I had more duties in mind than merely seeing to it that my house is clean." He left it at that, not putting into words the other "duties" for which they both knew he'd engaged her. What was the need?

"Thank you, my lord," she said stiffly.

He made her a slight bow. They understood each other.

The clock in the tower of All Saints Church began to strike the noon hour. Time for his meeting with the mayor. But Rachel's bowed head distracted him, her face invisible beneath the unattractive bonnet. He had an idea.

"Come with me," he said abruptly, sliding his hand into the crook of her elbow to get her moving. Startled, she let him lead her along past the village inn, the alehouse, Swan's blacksmith shop. When he stopped and opened the door for her at Miss Carter's Frocks and Ready to Wear, she balked for a second, looking astonished and then bemused, and finally preceded him into the shop.

Sebastian had made Miss Carter's acquaintance over a month ago in the company of Lili, when his erstwhile mistress had insisted on going into the village for the express purpose of laughing, not very discreetly, at what passed for fashion in the local shops. Her performance hadn't endeared her—or him, by extension—to Miss Carter, a small, blond-haired woman whose welcoming smile didn't reach her eyes when she heard the bell and came out of a back room to greet her customers. And when she saw that the woman accompanying him this time was the notorious Rachel Wade, even the insincere smile waned, and he suspected that all that kept her from incivility was his title.

"Are you in mourning for anyone, Mrs. Wade?" he asked, lounging against the counter along the shop's rear wall.

"I beg your pardon?"

"Anybody die on you lately for whom you feel the need to wear black?''

"I—no, my lord."

"Or brown?"

"No, my lord."

"Splendid." With a flourish, he untied the ribbon bow at her throat and whipped the offending bonnet off her head. He couldn't have said which lady was more flabbergasted, the housekeeper or the shopkeeper. "You sell hats, don't you, Miss Carter?" he inquired of the latter. She nodded mutely. "I hope you have others besides that." He pointed to the one displayed on the counter, an extravagant leghorn affair suitable for the May Day procession and nothing else.

"Why, yes, my lord, I—that is, I have forms, you know, and—quite a large selection of trims to go with them, ribbons and such. Would you care to see them?"

"Very much."

"I'll only be a minute," she promised, and disappeared into the back of the shop.

"The poke bonnet had its heyday around 1842," he told Rachel while he waited, fingering a cheap pair of kid gloves on the counter. "Nowadays a lady of fashion wears a very small bonnet far back on the head, or, if she's quite dashing, a hat. With luck, that's what we're going to get you today, Mrs. Wade."

She had her head bowed, hands demurely folded; he couldn't tell what was going through her mind. Perhaps she was wondering about the propriety of receiving a personal gift from him, especially in a place as public as Miss Carter's. Well, she had better make peace with her scruples, because once she was his mistress—assuming she pleased him—he meant to buy her a dozen hats, and gowns to go with all of them.

Miss Carter returned with her "forms," which showed more promise than he'd dared to hope. "Do you fancy any of these?" he mused. "Try this one." He started to put it on for her, but she took it from him and settled it on her head herself. Miss Carter held the glass. After a few seconds, Sebastian and the shopkeeper said, "No," in unison, and the hat was rejected. Two others were tried and cast off just as quickly.

The fourth was of wine-colored plush, medium size, with a brim that curved rather rakishly on the side. It was pretty and it suited her, even flattered her, but Sebastian's attention wasn't on the hat anymore. It was on Rachel's face. A little while ago he'd wondered what other surprises she had in store for him, and it seemed he hadn't had to wait long for the next one. She was staring at her reflection as if she were looking at a complete stranger. An unexpectedly attractive one, if he was interpreting her look of fascination correctly. "Do you like it?" he asked softly, unnecessarily.

She gave a small nod, keeping her eyes on the glass.

"It's most becoming," Miss Carter piped up, "one of my very best, and only eighteen and six, which leaves plenty for . . ." She halted, coloring, realizing that economy probably wasn't high on Viscount D'Aubrey's list of criteria for hat-buying.

"Plenty for decorating," he finished for her kindly. "Show us your flowers, feathers, and furbelows, Miss Carter; we're squirming with impatience."

She went away again, returning in a moment with two boxes of hat-trimming possibilities. There were no ostrich feathers—too dear for the ladies of Wyckerley, apparently—and the other feathers, except for the gaudy peacocks, were dull or cheap-looking. They settled the matter of the ribbon expeditiously and unanimously—black velvet, the inch-and-a-half width. Veils and netting were rejected as too prissy for such a sleek, stylish hat, and that left only flowers. He was reaching for a handful of cloth violets when Rachel, who had been comparatively passive up to now, made a low sound of demurral and chose a bouqueted cluster of peonies.

"Ooh, that's cunning," Miss Carter said approvingly, holding the glass again. Her earlier reserve was wearing off as she got more into the millinery spirit. "I'd never've thought that pink would go, but it does, it most certainly does. Very fetching, madam, and it shows off your color very nicely."

An understatement, thought Sebastian. The peonies were large—too large, he had judged, but. he'd been wrong—and their coral-pink shade matched exactly the pretty color blooming in his housekeeper's cheeks as she stared, entranced, at her own image. Again, it wasn't the hat that arrested him, or even how pretty she looked in it, but rather the subtle metamorphosis from age to youth, from caution to near-confidence in her expressive features. She couldn't take her eyes off herself, and neither could he.

He broke the spell when he touched her cheek, to smooth back a lock of her dark, silver-streaked hair. Self-consciousness replaced the fledgling approval in her eyes; she stepped away, out of his reach.

Just then the bell over the shop door tinkled and a woman came through. Tall, dark, expensively dressed, she looked vaguely familiar until she smirked at him in pleased surprise, and he remembered who she was: Honoria Vanstone, the mayor's tiresome spinster daughter.

"Lord D'Aubrey, what a fortuitous meeting," she exclaimed in an affected falsetto. "How do you do? I was telling my father only yesterday that it's been too long since we've seen you." She saw Mrs. Wade for the first time, looked between them, realized they were together, and said, "Oh," in a long, rising-and-falling intonation of delicate horror. It might have been amusing if it hadn't ruined the mood of tentative gaiety that, against all odds, had prevailed in the shop before her arrival.

Immediately Mrs. Wade's face and figure took on the familiar hooded, haunted look. If she'd been on her own, he was sure she'd have bolted. Had she encountered the Vanstone woman before in some unpleasant social connection? It would explain her abrupt regression to the downcast Rachel of old.

Impulsively he reached for her hand and drew her closer. The burgundy hat no longer suited her; the pink peonies looked garish next to her pallid complexion, and the jaunty, carefree style seemed to mock her. He felt her humiliation, and he was moved to help her.

What was it, then, that made him take the hat from her head slowly, almost caressingly—as if they were alone and he were undressing her? Her dark hair had grown enough by now to curl below the collar of her dress. He slid his fingers into it, ruffling it a little where the hat had flattened it. The attentive silence egged him on; now he felt as if he were on a stage, with one other player and a rapt audience of two. He brought his palms to the sides of Rachel's face, brushing her mouth with his thumbs. Behind him, Honoria Vanstone gasped.

"When can you have the hat ready?" he murmured. Miss Carter made some answer, but he didn't catch it. Rachel was holding perfectly still, eyes lowered, staring off somewhere to the side. He felt her breath flutter on his fingers, the helpless trembling of her lips. He could lean down and kiss her now if he wanted to. He could do anything. The tiny golden hairs on her cheeks beguiled him; he smoothed his fingers over them lightly, frowning at her. He wanted her to look at him, but she would not. At last he took his hands away and stepped back.

"I didn't hear you," he said, not taking his eyes from Rachel's face. "When did you say the hat would beready?"

Miss Carter had to clear her throat. "By tomorrow, my lord, I expect. I should think. That is, unless—"

"Send it to the Hall with your bill, please. A pleasure, Miss Vanstone, as always," he murmured to the mayor's daughter, whose face had turned an unattractive shade of mauve. "Mrs. Wade?" Rachel still wouldn't look at him, but she had no choice but to take his arm when he offered it. Behind them, the affronted muttering started before they were even through the door.

Out on the cobbled street, he watched her jerk the ribbons of the old black bonnet under her chin in a turbulent, untidy bow. She was furious with him, but she would never say it. "You'll find your way home alone all right, will you?" he inquired facetiously.

Her eyes shot fire, but her mumbled, "Yes, my lord," was perfectly respectful. In her black dress, she looked alarmingly slight and somber against a riot of purple foxgloves blooming along the riverbank. He imagined her walking home through the village by herself, enduring the stares of the curious and the hostile; for all he knew, people even said things to her—insulted her. He wavered for a moment, actually considering going back with her, putting off his meeting with Vanstone on copper mine investments to another time.

Nonsense; he wasn't her guardian. And what a foolish precedent he would set by such an attention.
Begin as you mean to go on
was sound advice; he meant to go on using Mrs. Wade for his convenience, not the other way around. If her pariah status had increased today, it was by his own doing, and it was a little too late for guilt or second thoughts.

"Good day to you, then." He touched his hat and walked off toward the mayor's house, leaving her alone in the street.

Rachel watched him stride away, swinging his walking stick in the loose, arrogant way that seemed natural to him, not affected. He must be feeling quite satisfied with his morning's work: he had not only shocked two of Wyckerley's most respectable ladies, he'd also shamed her in front of them for his personal amusement. What she didn't understand was why. What perverse pleasure did he take in tormenting her? It wasn't anything as simple as cruelty, she was sure of that, because his mind was too subtle, his depravities too complex. Whatever his motive, she told herself it didn't matter, that the joke was on him because she had no pride or public honor left to humiliate. But even as she thought it, she could feel the icy stares of Miss Vanstone and Miss Carter, like a cold breeze on the back of her neck. When she turned around, she saw them in the window, eyes narrowed, mouths moving, contempt and dislike distorting their faces. Now they had two things to hate her for: she was a murderess, and she was Lord D'Aubrey's whore.

She started up the street, moving blindly in the opposite direction from the route he had taken. The sun was high, the air mild and gentle, but the pleasure she'd taken in the day only an hour ago was gone. The street made a sharp turn at the top of the square, adjacent to the vicarage and the blocky Norman edifice that was All Saints Church. She didn't know if it was fatigue or a reluctance to brave the gauntlet of staring townsfolk again so soon—or something else entirely—but instead of turning around and starting for Lynton Hall, she walked through the arch of two enormous sycamore trees and passed into the shadowy churchyard.

As soon as the rusty lych-gate clicked shut behind her, she knew why she'd come here. She had almost come last Sunday, after the church service, but too many people had been milling about and she hadn't wanted anyone to see her. Now she was alone, and she could accomplish her mission without witnesses.

They'd arrested her early on the morning after Randolph's murder, and later she hadn't been allowed out of gaol to attend his funeral. As a consequence, she'd never seen his grave. But she found it easily enough today, because his stone was taller than anyone else's, and grander, and an enormous wreath of fresh flowers lay at its base. She read his name,
Randolph Charles Wade,
and the dates of his birth and death, but when she started to go closer to read the smaller, ornately lettered inscription, she found she couldn't move. She stood twelve feet away, her back pressed against the rough granite of a neighboring monument, rooted to the spot and unable to go a step closer.

What was this fear, and why would it come over her now? Randolph was dead, he couldn't hurt her again. But even his marker upset her, the stony straightness of it, the cold, phallic implacability. All at once, memories she thought she'd buried years ago burst in violent pictures before her tightly closed eyes. She had to turn away and drop her face in her hands. But it wouldn't stop, and she could still see herself as if from a distance—exactly as she had seen herself when it was happening to her—and suddenly she was his victim again. She knew the same bewilderment, and then the same enveloping horror. The precise design of the floral carpet in his bedchamber filled her mind's eye, giant cabbage roses on a sky-blue background. She saw herself kneeling on it, in front of the low, broad, obscene ottoman, her hands behind her back. Waiting. She heard his quiet voice, always patient, always merciless, instructing and explaining, never angry, not even when he hurt her, not even when—