Flowers From The Storm (19 page)

His tongue moved over her as if she were a ginger lozenge, to be tasted in small nibbles. He took her lower lip between his teeth, gently, teasing. A flourish of pure fleshly joy blossomed in her body.

She felt her own will leap up to meet his. Her mouth opened; he answered instantly with a deep and ardent union. His hands drew downward, closing as he leaned into her, bracing his forearms on the door.

He enveloped her. The feel of his kiss was strange and painful and electric. Her hands opened helplessly, trying to find something to touch that wasn’t him, but everything was him: all the solid reality within reach.

He opened his palms and smoothed her hair—sweetly, over and over like a parent would touch a child—at the same time that he kissed her, pressing hard against her, a forceful intercourse of their mouths and bodies.

He broke it, pulling back to look into her face. They were both breathing deeply, almost silently—as it had all been silent, in this room with her father just two yards away.

In her ears, her pulse beat frantically. She began to feel what she’d done. Her soul came back from some place it had gone, lost in self-will, sunk in vanity and carnal pleasure.

Jervaulx was watching her. Maddy stared up at him.

He
was
the Devil—smiling a little, tender, a warmth that she’d never foreseen, not in all her everyday prayers to God to keep her soul safe and in spiritual grace. Never once had she imagined that Satan would smooth her hair, would smell of heat and earth… wouldn’t speak, wouldn’t hiss evil promises in her ears. Never once had she thought he would be anything but ugly and corrupt and easy for virtuous Archimedea Timms to scorn.

He looked down at her. The warmth in his smile went to slow irony. He took a curl of her hair that had fallen free and brushed it under her chin, then pushed himself away. The floor creaked under the shift of his weight.

Her father sighed and sat back in his chair. “It’s a fearful thing, this.” Papa shook his head over the astronomical calculations. “Inconceivable. I shouldn’t have believed the results if I hadn’t done it myself.”

Jervaulx turned. He went to the table and braced his hands against the edge, bent over the computation, his head cocked to one side.

“Dost thou think it holds?” her father asked, after Jervaulx had frowned at it for a long time.

The duke looked up at Maddy. He swept his hand over the formula her father had completed, where the value for the earth’s distance from the sun was multiplied by numbers half a million times greater than itself to reach the realms of their new geometry.

“
Stars
,” he said, his face alight with passion. “In…
finity
.”

And he smiled at her as if he owned it: distance and space and stars and infinity… as if he owned her, too.

Silence, and Meeting.

The plain walls, the plain benches, simple, stark, silent, awaiting the still, small voice of God. The woman in front of Maddy, dressed in gray wool, had a cracked button at the top of her collar. When she bent her head, a single faint wisp of dark hair escaped the back of her bonnet.

It was a small Meeting, not more than twelve Friends sitting motionless in the square room. No one took the elders’ position facing the members. No one spoke. They listened, subdued self-will to the guiding spirit within.

Maddy stared at the woman’s wisp of hair. She felt something she’d never felt before in Meeting—she felt herself among strangers. Everyone here was quiet, in a state of spiritual stillness, unadorned and undefiant. As Maddy should be. As she always had been in the past. She looked at the escaped strands of hair and thought of the duke with her bonnet. She looked at the bare and sober walls and saw his smile: mocking, tender, exulting in stars and infinity.

Infinity. Even that seemed somehow immoral. How could anyone but God Himself dare to trifle with infinity? To harness it with numbers and lay it on a baize tablecloth? Perhaps that was why He had struck Jervaulx down with this affliction—for wicked hubris, for daring to turn the universe inside out and make a calculation that wouldn’t fit inside the world God had given to Man.

She felt the power of the new geometry without understanding it. She’d heard the awe in her father’s voice. Numbers, stars, parallax… infinity.

Maddy found herself on her feet. She stood helplessly. A thousand words and thoughts possessed her, none of them spiritual or even rational. Many times in her life she’d sat in silence and heard someone stand up and speak out spontaneously—never once had she done so herself. Never once had she risen from her bench before the rest did so.

But none of the words within her were God’s words. They could not be. They were all about a kiss, a man’s smile, and infinity as he leaned over her and touched his mouth to hers and she didn’t turn away.

The sound of her shoes on the floorboards filled the room. It was only five steps from the last bench to the wooden door. She pushed it open, letting light pour into the dimness, squinting at the sun. The still, waxen scent of the Meeting room vanished in cold open air, in the smell of sun-warmed, white-washed boards and woodsmoke. A single cow, black-and-tan, looked up at her with solemn, pretty eyes and went back to grazing the common.

Maddy dropped down onto the last step, holding her arms tight around herself, bending over her lap.

She hid her face beneath her bonnet brim, though there was no one outside to see her—no one who couldn’t see past a bonnet and into her heart anyway.

Christian waited for her. She didn’t come in the morning.

Only the Ape, not in a pleasant mood. He brought a Bible marked in three places. While Christian stood manacled by one hand, the keeper read verses out like toneless announcements. Christian didn’t bother to listen to it,
thud babble
, watching instead the door and out the window for Maddy.

She didn’t come all day.

Brutal humiliation, that she could avoid him and he could not seek her out, his intention to humble her turned back against himself.

Worse, he’d awoken a hunger. He’d brought it with him into this cell: an embrace, her body between his and the closed door. He’d brought something that he wanted and could not have, not at his own will.

And there was nothing else to think about, no easy distraction as he’d always had before—stupid to crave a woman he couldn’t touch… he’d always moved on to one available. But there was no obliging substitute now. There was only a new desire, sharp as the throbbing pang in his back. Only the sweet way she’d let him do it, and answered him.

He was afraid that she would not come back. He watched, chained to the bed. The Ape went away.

Darkness fell. Still he watched, and still she didn’t come.

She was so ashamed, the first time she had to go back she did not look at him even once. She went into the cell and stripped the bed and left.

That was morning. In the afternoon, the schedule said that she was to take him outside in the grounds.

She prayed that it would rain, miserly cowardice and self-will that God did not see fit to satisfy. The day was still and unseasonable, almost warm, the sky a misty blend of cloud and blue coalescing into one another without definition. She walked from the bright yellow of the dining parlor to the upstairs corridor, hesitating before she came in view of his door.

Her heart was pounding. She could still go back, the Reasoner whispered; she’d come so quietly that Jervaulx could not have heard her. She could leave him here and finish up with her secretarial duties.

All the other patients were silent—outside for air or simply mute. Moving softly, she peeked around the doorframe.

He stood at the window, looking out, one hand resting against the bar, his fingers curled lightly around it.

And suddenly she saw how contemptible it was to keep him there in the dim cell, when it was her duty to God and to Cousin Edward—to Jervaulx—to take him abroad in the sunlight.

She put her key in the lock. He turned. For an instant he looked at her, an immeasurable look—infinity between them.

Duty had no place in it. Hot blue, his eyes; sable-lashed; the line of his cheek and his mouth so severe and finely fashioned. A mystery. Infinity and falling, down and down and down, the way it was in dreams.

He broke it, drowned it in those black eyelashes and a moody glance away. When she entered the cell, he moved back from her, as if there should be some certain distance between them.

“I’ve come to take thee for a walk in the garden,” she said, with a little gesture toward the door.

A faint smile curved his lips. He said nothing.

“Walk. Garden.” She held the door open. “Wouldst thou come?”

He extended his hand in a courtly motion, as if to give way to her before him.

Christian respected her reticence, not insisting that she stay too close to him. He allowed her the lead, walking behind her on the gravel paths among the roses.

She moved restively, touching a flower, pushing back her black skirt, bending to collect fallen leaves and pull a tiny weed. The flowers were opulent, full-blown,
topple shower petals at a touch
.

He thought that she might topple that way, falling all at once into his hand, a soft drift of blossom between his fingers. The roses bowed their extravagant heads, nodding, but she was all stiff prim and black, back in her bonnet, so that he could not see her face unless she looked directly at him.

Still, she made it simple. She walked down along the path to a corner arbor, the bench beneath it dusted with withering petals from the red climber arched overhead. She didn’t sit; she inspected the flowers as if it were an important office that she needed to perform. Christian didn’t have to do anything; he merely moved into the path of escape, flanked on either side by thorns.

She turned around. He saw her realize it.

She looked scared and breathless. A scarlet petal floated downward, avoided the brim of her bonnet and caught on her shoulder.

The scrap of crimson lay there, close to the pale curve of her throat, between the stark collar and the tight upward sweep of her hair. Christian reached out and caught the petal between his fingers. She held stiff, breathing like a frightened doe. He let the moment spin out, his hand suspended near her cheek, not quite touching—not quite, not quite—a whisper away, a restraint as intimate as a kiss.

Color flooded her cheeks. Expectation. Her eyes, those eyes that turned hazel to gold under wanton lashes; her eyes held terror and wonder.

He stepped back and set her free.

With a duck of her head, hiding beneath the defense of her hat, she hurried past him. Christian turned after her, smiling to himself.

Free… at his consent. He still had that much power— that he could have kept her there and kissed her, shedding rose petals at a touch.

After that, she didn’t linger in the walled rose garden but went quickly to the gate. Christian followed, lazy hunting now, allowing a little distance to open between them. Beyond the garden door was a large courtyard dotted with lunatics and keepers. Nearest was the madman who muttered across the hall from Christian’s cell, the Ape behind with his hand on the lunatic’s taut shoulder leash.

Christian disliked the open yard instantly.
Not circus beast, animals drag round leash exercise
. He stopped inside the gate, ready to object, but Maddy was gone.

His nerve evaporated. He stood where he was, trying to find her. The Ape and his madman approached, trudging around the track. The lunatic was shaking his head, pulling at the leash, mouthing silent words. The Ape bent close to his ear and said something. The madman looked at Christian, half a foot
away, full-empty eyes, stare void, chilling
.

“Timms!” the Ape said sharply as they passed him. “Takare charge!”

Christian looked after the keeper, and for an instant he saw Maddy beyond. Then a howl—and an impact that hit him from nowhere, took him down, impaled him on pain, while hands ripped at his coat and collar, drawing the neck-cloth in a red strangle against his throat. The madman was screaming above him, mouth pulled back, pounding his fists into Christian’s head and face.

Christian fought, his hand on the maniac’s jaw, fingers forcing it up, rolling off his back with a shove that speared agony through him. He struck, a hard blow to the madman’s face that didn’t check him. The clutching hands tore at Christian’s throat, scrabbling for purchase. The man shrieked, his fingers closing on Christian’s neck, pulling him down, trying to sink his teeth into anything in reach. Christian hauled back on his knees and locked his fists, swinging at the lunatic’s jaw.

The impact slammed through his arms, made an instant’s weakening in the grip on his throat. Christian swung again. The blow knocked the madman insensible. Christian stayed on his knees; he went on hitting, his side an agony, breathing hard and pounding at the still figure beneath him. He hated the lunatic, loathed him, wanted out of this nightmare if it took beating the man to bloody pulp.

But the Ape came—a surprise, a grip from nowhere— hard hands pulling Christian to his feet, people running toward them. He’d completely lost Maddy. His body was aflame, hurting. He tasted blood.
Leftme
! He had four keepers dragging him back from the lunatic.
Maddy
! When she finally appeared it was another shock—she wasn’t there, and then she was, and he could only stare at her in accusation
leavevanish desert me Maddy! Leave me this, leave animal defend animals fight teeth fist barbarian!