Flowers From The Storm (21 page)

Maddy didn’t feel silent. Inside her a clamor of vanity and delight and joy and vexation tumbled; she felt wicked and weak, a foreigner to herself. She felt afraid.

“I don’t… know what to do,” she said painfully. “I don’t know!”

Her father lifted his head. After a long moment, he said slowly, “Is it so difficult, Maddy girl?”

She couldn’t tell him. She could not.

“It seems to be,” she said, looking down at his hand on her arm.

“Thou wouldst rather go home, then?”

She thought of doing that. Returning to Cheyne Row and the safe and quiet life there, where the only temptations were small ones: a disposition to scold the maid and a frivolous envy of girls who owned pretty clothes. Going home— leaving him to Larkin and Cousin Edward and Master William, to silence and chains and a prison cell.

“I’m sure that I would rather go,” she said. “But I—” She made a sound of despair. “I could not.”

He patted her hand. “Thou art a good girl, Maddy.”

“Oh, Papa,” she cried. “I’m not.”

He only smiled, as if she were still an impulsive child. But Maddy knew. She wasn’t good. She was tied to the earth and the Devil and a man, and she was not good at all.

They arrived in London at dusk, the city smells and population a jar to Maddy after only a month in the country. The chaise never slowed, but rolled past Hyde Park into Oxford Street, where bright gay lights already gleamed on the row of lacquered carriages standing in wait down the middle while ladies and gentlemen passed in and out of the shops. A silversmith, a spirit booth, jewelers and linen stores and confectioners: a mile of goods and spectacles, everything lit and polished for display.

The duke watched it pass, glancing keenly sometimes at Maddy, suspiciously, as if she had somehow conjured the illusion of it all. She’d tried to explain, to prepare him for the hearing, but she knew he had no notion of what she meant. She could tell by the suppressed elation in him—he thought he was coming home to stay.

When the coach turned out of Oxford Street and began to wind its way through stylish side streets, he held out his bound arms toward her.

“
Off
,” he said.

The carriage came into an aristocratic square. She could hear the calls of footmen and the bustle to clear pedestrians from the passage.

“
Please
.” The word came harshly, the sharp explosion of it in stark contrast to the appeal.

Outside, liveried servants milled about as the vehicles creaked to a halt before the house at the head of the square. The freestanding building dominated its neighbors, white and symmetrical, pristine in its Corinthian pilasters and balanced windows, not so different from the duke’s home in Belgrave Square but larger and colder in its isolated perfection, with a small and unwelcoming door just one step up from the street.

That door stood open, showing lights inside. Maddy saw Calvin the butler come down the single step and stand aside. Then came the dowager duchess in a black dress. She took Calvin’s help to the sidewalk and hurried toward Cousin Edward’s carriage.

Maddy leaned over, pulling Jervaulx’s hands into her lap. In the dimness, she struggled with the leather laces and just managed to pull them free as her cousin and the duchess came to the carriage door.

The gauntlets fell into obscurity on the floor. Maddy kicked them back into a corner. Jervaulx made a sound of gratitude, not quite accomplishing a real word. Lantern light poured into the interior as the door opened and the duchess’ voice rose above the others.

“Christian!” She paused, as if she didn’t know how to go on, staring up at him from the curb. She took a step backward, her black skirts shifting around her. A footman moved close to her side as she closed her eyes and put her hand to her throat. “No—go away. I shan’t let myself be overcome.” She opened her eyes. “Go away, all of you! People will stare at this bustle; someone might recognize him.” She turned to Cousin Edward and gestured toward an alley beside the house. “Drive around to the rear. We shall take him inside there.”

“No,” the duke said.

His mother looked back, as startled as if one of the horses had spoken. She and Jervaulx were hardly alike at all, different in everything: the dowager’s hair graying from blonde instead of black, her skin fair to paleness, her figure slender and far more delicate, in her eyes but a hint of the midnight blue of her son’s. But when her face lit with hope, Maddy saw the same intensity that kindled the duke in his mathematical passions, a stubborn, focused ardor as the duchess swept forward and caught the edge of the carriage door. “Christian? Are you—”

She stopped herself again and glanced at Cousin Edward.

“He’s made some progress lately,” the doctor said. “I think Your Grace will be pleased.”

Jervaulx picked up his hat where Maddy had laid it on the seat, and beckoned her and her father to get down. She obeyed, helping Papa to come behind her, while the dowager duchess watched them speechlessly.

“This is Miss Archimedea Timms—and her father Mr. John Timms, Your Grace. Miss Timms in particular has been of assistance-with the duke. We’ve instituted a novel treatment in his case; I shall apprise you of the details at the first opportunity, but as you see, our success speaks for itself.”

The dowager was paying no attention to Maddy or her father; instead she was watching her son descend from the carriage. Jervaulx gave his mother a dry smile and a bow.

He said nothing, only stood by the coach as if he were courteously waiting for someone to suggest a direction. The duchess kept staring at him. Her whole body seemed to shudder. Suddenly a sob burst from her and she walked into his arms, pulling herself close to him.

For an instant, he was very still. Above his mother’s trembling embrace, Maddy could see the near-explosion, the way his expression went to emotional tempest, all the words that battled for freedom.

His left hand closed into a hard fist.

His eyes met Maddy’s. Fury came so close to detonation; she could not imagine that his mother didn’t recognize it. He had no way to speak, only violence—and violence hovered, vibrating in the genteel square.

Maddy stood in terror, pleading with him silently.

He closed his eyes. With a long, indrawn breath, he lifted his right hand and laid it, tentative, against the dowager’s head. She began to weep in earnest, pressing closer.

The moment of hazard seemed to pass. He stood, awkwardly touching his mother’s coiffured hair, like a man put upon by an overeager child and uncertain how to deal with it. But his left hand never relaxed the fist, still locked in mute hostility.

The duchess pushed back a little, turning her face up, smoothing his collar with restless fingers.

“Christian.” She caught his hand as it fell away and held it against her breast. “Praise God. I’ve prayed for this. It is a miracle.”

“Progress, Your Grace,” Cousin Edward said. “Progress based on scientific treatment. We are not wholly recovered yet.”

“It’s a miracle. We should go down on our knees and lift our thanks to Heaven.” She gripped her son’s hand hard. “You most of all, Christian—in consequence of your sins. Give thanks for forgiveness and for your deliverance.” She bowed her head. “Almighty God, who dost bequeath us life and taketh it away, on whose sufferance we—”

Jervaulx freed himself. He turned and walked away from her, as Calvin sprang forward to hold open the door.

His mother finished her prayer quickly, moving her lips in silence, and went after him. She disappeared into the lighted hall with Cousin Edward on her heels. Calvin held the door open and looked back. “Miss Timms? Mr. Timms?”

There was a moment, when he came into the hall, that he found himself alone. He turned at the sound of footsteps, expecting Maddygirl, but it was his mother behind him with her pious gibberish. He’d forgot it, half-forgot her, until she’d wept on his chest in the street, and he’d realized that she must be the one who had abandoned him to the cell and the Ape.

In the hall, he disengaged himself from her again, working for command of himself, waiting for Maddygirl, feeling the world go out of balance until her gray thee-thou figure appeared in the doorway.

Once he knew she was there, he could go on: he mounted the mahogany staircase, his hand on the curved banister.

He owned this house. It seemed strange and disturbing and right. How long it had been since he’d walked this stair, this hall, he had no idea, but he owned it. Everyone here would do his bidding; even his mother lived in it at his pleasure.

It occurred to him that he himself didn’t live here. Not now. What he remembered best were times far in the past, seasons in the City, balls for his sisters, going home to Jervaulx—that was where he lived—and he felt a surge of sharp longing for its dark medieval silhouette, its convoluted towers and chimneys and endless rooms.

That was where he would go, now that he was free. Home to Jervaulx Castle.

Two of his sisters waited in the drawing room. He stood at the door, watching them before they knew he was there. They talked to one another in low tones, and looked nervous. At the sound of other footsteps on the stair behind him, they turned. They looked at him as if he were not alive. Transparent.

Walking dead. In the shock on their faces, another revelation came to him.

He knew what they’d expected. A madman, carried upstairs to be exhibited in chains. No wonder they were nervous.

His mother passed him, taking him by the arm with her into the drawing room. She talked, kept talking so quickly that he felt overwhelmed.

Clementia. He caught the name and remembered
Clem
. With that came Charlotte’s. Both of them reached out and kissed his cheek in turn, puffed sleeves and lace, plump hands that caught at his and brushed gently before they were gone. He felt bewildered, uncertain of them and their sudden smiles.

Their dresses seemed too bright and elaborate, their hair too much of rolls and ringlets.

He looked back again for Maddy, found only the blood-doctor, and strode to the head of the staircase.

She was standing in the hall below with her father, still in her bonnet and cloak.

He went halfway down the stairs and stopped. When she looked up, he made a sound. He watched her face change, felt a vast and forceful relief when she put her hand to the tie on her cloak, murmuring to Calvin as he took it from her. She guided her father to the foot of the stairs. Christian stood waiting for their slow progress until they reached him.

He would not attempt to speak in front of his family and servants who knew him. He walked silently around the edges of the white and gold drawing room while the others talked.

The house pleased him. Everything familiar and in its proper place, the marble tables with their gilded legs, the matching chairs, rich green fabric, all older than he was, standing in the places they had stood for his whole life.

He had to turn sometimes to be certain Maddy was there, because the others didn’t talk to her or even offer her or her father a seat. That provoked him. He fixed a look on Charlotte, willing her to show a little courtesy, but she only glanced at him and grew pale and discomfited.

“Shud—shudbe lowed loose?” she asked the Woodman anxiously.

Loose
! As if he were some zoo animal, to be locked up.
My house! Own it, own you… dress, lace,fancy, trust, all of it
.

He knew these two. They were the ones who needed Christian’s write-name pen to get into their equity, who most liked a generous supplement to their husbands’ means—a thing which galled those gentlemen to the edge of civility. Christian noticed that
they
didn’t seem inclined to make an appearance on his first night home.

He suspected Clem and Charlotte were here for precisely that—allowance—and he didn’t know what he would do when they finally asked. Everything before the cell and the Ape was hazy; he couldn’t recall what quarter it was or if he’d made arrangements.

He turned away from them, facing the mantel, where a good fire burned in the well-swept grate. He would ask Maddygirl to help him, after they were gone.

“Archu angry thus?” Clementia spoke into a small silence. “Chris?”

He realized that she was talking to him. He locked his hands behind his back and slanted a look toward her.

“Chu angry?” she repeated.

He looked at Maddygirl, still standing a little distance from the others. He walked to the edge of the room, retrieved two chairs, and placed them for the Timmses. He set the gilt pair with thuds that could hardly be misinterpreted, then guided Mr. Timms to one himself. When Maddy hesitated, he took up a position behind the empty chair and bumped it, frowning at her.

She cast down her eyes and sat. His family looked at him as if he were an astonishing puzzle.

Clem started to speak, then closed her mouth abruptly, distracted by the familiar snap and thump of a walking stick. That sound Christian knew to the bottom of his brain—since before the day he’d even learned to talk—the adamant herald of his Aunt Vesta.

With a sardonic smile, he placed a chair for her, too: her favorite, the heavy French-small-birds-flowers with massive gold arms and dragon-claw feet, fit throne for a she-dragon. He looked up from setting it close to the fire, sketched a bow as she stood in the doorway, imposing pale against sable black, in the mourning for father, husband, brother—perhaps even for Christian, who could tell?—that she had never put off. It was a battle of jet and ebony in this house, between his mother and his aunt. He remembered why he didn’t live here.