Flowers From The Storm (16 page)

Christian braced back in the seat in spite of the pain of it. He hung on to the strap and to Maddy, made a low growl in his throat. He didn’t want to get out; he didn’t want to start a fight that would end in worse humiliation for him. He looked desperately at Maddy.

She smiled at him, just that sort of reassuring smile that she’d given the laughing young madman the day before, like a patient nursemaid for her children. Christian saw abruptly what it all was: a charade, a little play in which everyone knew their part. The landlord awaiting the carriage, the quiet village, the Ape standing by—a pretense of the real outside when Christian wasn’t outside at all. He was still locked in the madhouse. They had only expanded the walls.

There was no public to humiliate him here. They already knew he was a lunatic. They expected it. He could burst into howls of insanity, and they would only smile those gentle smiles at him and wrestle him into the chains.

Maddy’s hand worked restively in his, in spite of the encouraging expression she maintained. Christian knew she was afraid of what he would do: she wasn’t overly good at hiding it. That, of anything, made him release her hand and stand up and let himself down from the carriage like a civilized man—because he didn’t want her afraid of him. He wanted her afraid of herself,
little patronizing patient thee-thouspinster
.

Outside the carriage, she smiled at him again. Christian bore it. He was the prize pupil, subdued and compliant. He was calm.

He was a very, very good boy.

Maddy slowly relaxed as the occasion seemed to be proceeding smoothly. Jervaulx’s initial tension had vanished; he looked about the village with casual interest, as if he’d never been wrought up at all, though her hand still held the after-ache from the strength of his grip in the carriage.

“Shall we take a walk?” Cousin Edward asked. “Her Grace requested that Mr. Pember have an introduction to Master Christian. The vicarage is across the common.”

As Maddy gathered her skirt and reticule in preparation to follow, she saw the moment of panic in Jervaulx’s eyes. He hesitated, with an intense, sweeping glance. Then in one of the uncanny alchemies she was coming to recognize, he controlled the confusion and held on to himself. With an ironic look toward Cousin Edward, who was already moving away, Jervaulx walked to Maddy and offered his escort.

She felt oddly bashful to have this courtesy expended on her. He took her hand on his arm as if it were utterly natural— perhaps it was, to him, but Maddy had never walked arm-in-arm alongside any man besides her father, excepting only briefly in and out of Meeting when the doctor had been courting her.

Of course, Jervaulx only did it because he was what he was, a duke and a gentleman, and intended Cousin Edward not to forget it. Maddy understood that much. When Jervaulx put his other hand over her fingers, not allowing her to slip them away, it was a demonstration for the benefit of Cousin Edward.

Still, a maiden Quaker lady could feel rather complimented, and perhaps imagine just a tiny sinful hint of what it must be like to be a duchess—even if she was one of the Peculiar People and her duke a lost and disordered spirit.

With Larkin trailing them, she walked with Jervaulx across the common. Somehow it wasn’t awkward; she didn’t have to shorten or lengthen her steps to match his, as she’d had to do in her fleeting strolls with the doctor. She didn’t have to watch her feet: the little beaten path through the grass was hers, while Jervaulx kept to the more uneven turf. How many ladies he must have escorted in this way, to be so pleasant and easy at it! When they came to the lane on the other side of the common, he paused, just as if it were a busy London street and he her dependable escort across. At the vicarage gate, he gave way for her to precede him, leaning forward to hold it open as it began to swing closed behind Cousin Edward.

She passed through. Jervaulx released the gate to the weight of the suspended ball and chain that caused it to fall rapidly shut. At the sharp bang and Larkin’s grunt behind them, Maddy glanced aside at Jervaulx. He lifted his eyebrow and looked down at her with an expression of aristocratic languor.

Mr. Pember was already in his hallway to greet them, primed for the occasion by the note Cousin Edward had dictated to Maddy in advance. He was a vicar of the sort she’d been brought up to think the very worst of his breed: obsequious and comfortable, his home full of stuffed sofas, carpets, dishes of sweetmeats and too many beeswax candles and lamps.

A few minutes’ conversation, and she decided him to be amiable, kind, and perfectly disagreeable. It was no wonder that the dowager duchess had found him worthy of an introduction to her son: he was full of just the sort of pious sentiments that the lady had discoursed upon at such length in her letters.

Mr. Pember began talking at Jervaulx about the wages of vice and moral turpitude from the moment that everyone had been introduced, speaking of a just punishment in the most genial and mild voice, looking at Jervaulx from behind square spectacles, with frequent resort to a handkerchief between pinches of snuff.

Maddy hoped that Jervaulx understood none of it; she hoped that he thought it was only country gossip, which was precisely the tone in which the vicar delivered his sanctimonious pronouncements of divine judgment.

She didn’t think Jervaulx comprehended Mr. Pember’s words. The duke merely looked at his host with an expression of polite boredom, as if he’d been through this sort of thing many times before. He accepted tea from the housekeeper, glancing over his cup and the woman’s plump shoulder as she poured for Cousin Edward, giving Maddy a secret smile, perceptive and subtle.

Sitting in the front parlor between the vicar and her cousin, Maddy felt closer to Jervaulx than she had felt alone with him in his barred room. There, she was the stranger, miles and lifetimes different from him, unable to understand or be understood. Here, communication between them seemed perfect: an instant agreement on this little society and its annoyingly pious mummery.

Jervaulx picked up his cup and saucer and stood, looking out the window into the back garden. The vicar’s sermon paused. Apparently even he was unable to go on in the face of such obvious indifference.

In the little silence, Jervaulx said, “
Cat
.”

The expression on Mr. Pember’s face was almost comical. Maddy could see him rapidly revising his estimation of Jervaulx’s intelligence downward. The vicar nodded and chuckled uneasily. “Oh, yes. A pretty kitty, isn’t she?”

Jervaulx looked at Maddy. He set his teacup on the windowsill and made a gesture with his hand for her to come.

“Oh, dear—is it quite the thing?” Mr. Pember asked, as Jervaulx walked to the door. “Does he wish to go outside?”

The duke stopped beside Maddy’s chair. He turned to Mr. Pember and in the sort of tone that could command regiments, uttered. “
Cat
.”

His hand fell on Maddy’s shoulder. He gave her a hard nudge.

“It’s all right. Go outside with him, Cousin Maddy. Let him look at the cat if he wishes. Just stay inside the garden wall.”

She rose, happy to comply. The housekeeper led them to the back door that opened into a pleasant kitchen and cutting garden. Inside a high brick wall, asparagus was going to feathery yellow and seed.

Carrots had been planted in short, even rows. It wasn’t until Maddy had stepped outside a few feet that she saw around the corner. There, against the side wall, a bushy plot of dahlias made an amazing sight: brilliant huge platters of blossoms, red and orange and pink-hued white, staked full seven feet tall and blooming at their autumn peak.

It was just the sort of garden Maddy had always wished to have herself—mostly practical, but with a corner saved for something vivid and wondrous, something not at all useful save in its own joyous fantasy.

The vicarage cat, a plain yellow tabby with a crooked tail, disappeared behind the dahlias. Maddy hadn’t thought Jervaulx really interested in the animal; she’d supposed that he’d only used it for an excuse to escape the parlor, but he walked away from her, following the cat into its shadowy alley behind the flowers.

Maddy stood waiting. His passage rustled the plants. The top-heavy blooms swayed cheerfully, moved by an invisible hand.

The cat appeared suddenly atop the wall, balancing from the leap. She hissed back at where Jervaulx was hidden, then jumped off the other side.

The garden grew quiet. Maddy tilted her head, expecting him to come out, having lost the tabby. She could hear muffled laughter from the group in the parlor and a strange, faint, squeaky noise beneath the light breeze.

She moved forward cautiously, not quite sure of Jervaulx. He wasn’t above leaping out to grab her, she was perfectly certain of that. She held her skirt up above the dirt path and leaned forward, peering around the back of the thick bush of dahlias to the space in the shadow of the wall.

He stood leaning against the bricks. In his hand, he held a spotted tortoiseshell kitten, while another three or four crawled and mewled and tumbled over his feet. He stroked the tiny creature’s head with his thumb. From the hidden corner, he looked up at Maddy with a beckoning smile.

She hesitated.

In the narrow aisle behind the dahlias, he bent down to scoop up another kitten, holding them together in the cup of one hand, a spotted puff against a black one. They hissed tiny hisses at one another, and then fumbled together, settling in his palm. Maddy moved closer, careful of the others at his feet. He held the pair as she stroked their plumy tips of fur with her forefinger. When he pressed the spotted one toward her, she took it into her own hand, feeling the tiny pinprick claws in the transfer.

The space behind the dahlias made her think of when she’d been a child and crawled beneath the baize cloth on the parlor table, surrounded by folds that hung all the way to the floor, creating a dim room of her own. Here and now, the daydream room was built of plants and brick, not cloth; the green wall rustled. No man-made scents, sweet and vain, but the smells of earth and earthy perfumes.

She lifted her face, looking from beneath her bonnet to Jervaulx. The duke stood leaning his shoulder against the brick, holding the kitten in one hand, moving his thumb rhythmically over the tiny creature’s head.

His face still held that faint, knowing hint of a smile. He lifted the black kitten toward her, held it within a breath of her cheek. His hand with its small burden drifted downward, so that the kitten’s fur caressed her skin from her temple to her lips.

She could feel the little animal shift in his palm. Its dainty nose touched her, exploring. The kitten eyes, wide and blue, stared into hers from an inch away. A paw came out, reached up, clung to the stiff brim of her bonnet, too weak to budge it but ready to play. Tiny teeth and claws opened wide and tried to sink into the rigid brim.

Jervaulx made a soft sound of amusement. He lowered his palm. With a violent soprano mew of distress, the kitten hung suspended for an instant, pulling Maddy’s bonnet forward over her eyes. The others broke into a bantam chorus of cries, but before the victim could fall, Jervaulx caught it safely back into his palm.

Maddy moved to readjust her bonnet. She pushed back the brim, settled it properly again, an awkward job as the kitten in her other hand began to try to crawl up her bodice.

Jervaulx reached out. She thought he was going to rescue her from the tortoiseshell kitten busily climbing her dress, but instead he caught her bonnet-string. He curled it in his fingers and tugged lightly. The tight constraint came free. He lifted the bonnet away and held it dangling in his hand.

Maddy pressed the spotted kitten against her dress, looking down, avoiding the sudden awareness, the disarmed sensation. She reached to take the bonnet, but he leaned his shoulders on the wall and held the prize behind him. When she met his eyes, he began to smile. He lifted his arm, teasing.

As he swept the bonnet upward, Maddy grabbed at it one-handed, unbalanced in her effort to lean forward without endangering kittens by shifting her feet. She missed. He held the bonnet high. Maddy stretched. With a flick, he tossed it over the wall. The spotted kitten gave a little cry as she almost dropped it and fell against him.

He made no move to steady her. She pushed herself awkwardly off the solid brace of his arm and side, standing straight. He grinned; an instant of devastating dark blue eyes and humor slanted at her. A moment later, like a bad schoolboy, he’d composed his features to an earnest and virtuous gravity.

“My bonnet!” Her stout censure met his mischief like a stone flung into mist: much effort and little effect.

“Thou art iniquitous!”

He flicked a glance at her. She saw the slight frown pass over his face and disappear into proud neutrality. He didn’t understand the words, but wouldn’t acknowledge it.

“Wicked,” she added, for amplification.

He looked straight ahead into the green tangle of dahlias. He tilted his head, as if considering whether he would accept that assessment.

“A scoundrel,” she stated. “A rogue.”

That pleased him, the frivolous wretch; she could tell it. He cradled the kitten in his hand, rubbing its black fur with his thumb.

Maddy bent down and deposited her kitten on the ground, pulling the others free of her skirts. As she rose and took a step backward, he caught her arm.