Flowers From The Storm (23 page)

“Perhaps that would be best. The windows…” She let the thought trail off. “Well, you will ring if you have trouble. I’ll have a footman in the hall all night. But he seems… so much better. I don’t imagine…

you don’t think he might try the windows?”

Maddy looked at Jervaulx. Even having seen him chained at Blythedale Hall, she could not envision what he must have been like to have inspired this alarm in his own family.

“The windows, Jervaulx?” she asked slowly. “Thou wouldst not break them?”

He shook his head. She wasn’t certain he understood her, for he didn’t hesitate or attend to the words, but seemed merely to assent to the tone of her voice.

“I’ll leave you, then,” the duchess said. “Cook is to send up a tea tray.” She gave her son a long look.

“Good night, Christian. Good night.”

He gave a slight bow, an acerbic smile. The maid passed Maddy and went into the dressing room.

“I shall pray,” the dowager announced, and pulled the hall door closed behind her. The key turned in the lock.

Christian sat on the bed. He leaned his head back, clasping his hands behind his neck, and let himself fall backwards into the soft down. He sighed in satisfaction.

Home.

No Ape, no chains, no nightmare. He didn’t mind a dressing down from the she-dragon; he was accustomed to it— Hell’s bells, he almost enjoyed it. And Maddygirl was here, the only thing he would have taken with him from that place if he’d had his own choosing.

Amazing upside down world, in which his family locked him in with a young and pretty female.
Nurse
, Aunt Vesta had said, and Christian grinned at the blue arch of fabric above him.

He drew up his leg and rested his heel on the edge of the bed, indulging in an enjoyable contemplation of the wilder sort of possibilities to which such a convenient designation of one’s mistress might lend themselves. He sighed. While it made a pleasant fantasy, things were different now. The reputation of a thee-thou girl might not have occurred to his family—they wouldn’t care about it if it had—but while she was entirely within his dominion she was also his responsibility. Seduction was no longer the neat lesson that he’d anticipated. From this perspective, it looked too much like the sort of offensive attentions a man might force on his housemaid.

It was hard to recall, really, why he’d even got the notion in his head to punish her in that way.

He was frowning, contemplating that, when she said his name. He turned his head and lifted his eyebrows.

“Weema stalk,” she said.

He made a questioning sound.

“Talk,” she said.

Christian sat up. He pushed himself up on the bed, lounging on pillows, and swept a space on the bedclothes to invite her. “Talk.” He was pleased with how easily the word came.

Instead of the bed, she chose a straight-backed chair facing him. “Thou unstan hap tomorrow?”

“To… morrow?”

“Hear,” she said.

“I…
hear”
he said, annoyed that she would question it.

“Hearing,” she repeated. “Lord Chansore.”

He didn’t remember a Lord Chansore. Christian knew there was much he didn’t remember, but to think of it made him uneasy.

“Chan…
dos
?” he demanded. She couldn’t mean Buckingham’s son. The Marquess of Chandos hadn’t any trouble with his hearing that Christian knew, and he knew Chandos well; they’d gambled and raked together from London to Paris and back. Trouble with his ruinous extravagance, oh yes, but not his ears.

Not since Christian could remember.

“Hear,” she insisted. “Hearing.”

He had to work for another word. “
Young
,” he said. Chandos couldn’t be deaf; he and Christian were of an age.

She shook her head and clasped her hands with a sigh. He knew that he was failing what she wanted.

He had an urge to pound something, to smash his fists into stone. With an angry mutter he rolled off the bed away from her.

At a scratch and the sound of the doorlock, she rose. A footman entered, pushing the tea cart. He gave Christian a wary glance, then wordlessly began to remove the covers and pour.

The mince tarts and thin-sliced bread and butter appeared civilized fare. Christian walked toward the tray. The cups rattled as the footman dropped one back into its saucer and turned to face him.

Christian stopped. Never in his life had a servant looked at him with such a suspicious vigilance, as if he were some footpad shadowing the fellow in a back street.

He felt as if he’d been slapped across the face. He just stood there, accused and condemned in silence and a look.

“Shube tie up, miss?” the man said to Maddy.

Christian felt hot amazement rise in his face. Who was this impudent rogue? He looked toward Maddygirl in powerless shock. He didn’t even have a recourse, couldn’t order the fellow out of the room and out of his employment.

“No,” she answered—at least that. Christian thought she should have cast him out on his ear.

“Not fraydim?” the footman asked her.

Afraid
of him? Maddy shook her head, and Christian felt a wave of passionate appreciation for her.

The servant picked up the teapot once again, still glancing at Christian. “Broke arm, did.”

Christian couldn’t prevent it: at this monstrous assertion, a twisted utterance of protest escaped him. “

Out
!” He took a step forward. “Son of a bitch buggering whoreson bastard—
out
!”

He realized at the same moment as the footman what he’d said, and just how well and loudly. The two of them looked at one another; they both looked at Maddy.

She sat in her scoop-sugar bonnet, her fingers locked, her brows drawn together dubiously. She didn’t have the vaguest notion of the full insult to her feminine sensibility, that was obvious, but he gave her a short nod of apology anyway, and then glared at the footman, unable to express anything but obscenities.

“Haps bes go,” Maddy said, standing up.

The footman replaced the teapot, made a stiff bow, and obeyed her.

She came to the cart and finished pouring tea. With quiet and methodical moves, she prepared a plate and then set it out on the bedside table.

“Not…
arm
,” Christian said, determined to correct the record. “Not… see… never.”

“Thowst eat,” she said.

Christian scowled. He crossed his arms and leaned on the wall. “Believe!”

“Eat.”

He shoved away. “Believe! Maddygirl!”

A little Puritan pinch appeared around her lips. “Thou dustint member.”

She didn’t believe him. She believed that puling peasant over him. Christian hit his fist against the wall.

The pinch of her lips tightened. “Thou… wast… ill,” she said, very slowly and clearly. “Thou… dost…

not… remember.”

He swung away from her, pacing the width of the room. “No.
No, no, no
!”

“Jervaulx!”

She said his name so sharply, with such decisive emphasis, that he stopped and stared at her.

“Morrow. Lord Chansor hear. Thamus show cam sense. Reasonable.”

“
Who
?” he shouted. “Not…
deaf
!”

“Nor I,” she said, lifting her chin.

He exhaled, stiff-jawed, nodding once to acknowledge that. “Who… lord?” he asked, in a quieter tone.

“Chansore. Lord Chansore. Comesee hearing.”

He felt the importance of it in the intense way she looked at him. He needed to understand; she wanted him to. “Come… see…
hear
?” he asked helplessly.

“Hearing.”

He shook his head, gave it up. He was to go and see some deaf old lord trying to hear, and it was important.

She must have slept, because she had the sensation of coming awake; she felt a long and dreadful moment of fright at the monstrous design of bright eyes that seemed to hover too close before she remembered, and recognized the gilt pattern on the ceiling above. She sat up quickly in bed.

“Jervaulx?”

She saw a movement in the dark corner. A black silhouette detached itself from the mass of the door.

Real terror rose up to envelop her in the sound of her own heart pounding.

“Maddy,” he said, in the silence and the inner thunder of her heart—but in such an uncertain tone that she let go of a breath, relief following on dread, leaving her muscles weak.

“What is it?” she asked, her voice unsteady.

He was barely illuminated by the shielded lamp she’d left lit. “Hearing.” He had the emerald green dressing gown around him, loose and open, with nothing on beneath it but his trousers. “Maddygirl.

Tell…
hearing
. Lord Chance. Lu…
legal. Legal
?”

She bit her lip. “Yes. A legal hearing. Competency hearing.”

In the faint light, his eyes were black, his aspect satanic— and yet dazed. “Comp… me?”

“Yes,” she said.

He looked down at her, and then at the lamp and the dusky gleam of polished wood that was the dressing table. He shook his head a little. She drew her knees up under her skirt and held them to her breast, watching him.

He focused a look on her suddenly, a demon-look in that strange light. The cot creaked as he grabbed her arm, sat by her, fixing her with a vehement gaze. “
Back
?” he demanded. “Send—
back
?”

His grip hurt. She endured it, giving him that, for she had no other comfort. “I don’t know.”

He closed his eyes. “Not… back… mad place.” He opened them, glared at her. “No.”

She wanted to lie, to say that what was true was false. The best that she could offer him was saying that she didn’t know, and even that was half a lie, told outside the light of Truth, against everything she’d been taught all her life.

“Thou must show sense tomorrow,” she said. “Speak calmly, and show sense.”

He held her arm, sending pain to the bone.

“Thou canst do it.”

He looked toward the hallway door. Maddy saw his thought instantly. For an arrested moment they were both still, caught on the edge of his intention.

“Lock?” His fingers grew tighter yet.

She would not lie. Instead, she gave no answer at all.

He let go of her, walked to the door. The knob turned easily under his hand; the hinges moved half an inch without sound.

He held it there and looked back at her. “
Go
,” he said, between his teeth.

She sat helpless, waiting for him to do it.

He stood with the handle beneath his hand. “Two… go.” With a motion of his head, he beckoned.

“Both.”

“No,” she whispered. “I can’t. Thou must not.”

He frowned at her, as if she’d put an obstacle in his way. With a careful motion, he cracked the door wider, leaned against the frame and looked through. A ray of light from the hall fell on his face, crossing it in a slice of diabolic contours.

His mouth curved upward in a contemptuous smile. The crack closed silently. “Bone break,” he said in the darkness. “Arm.”

Her eyes readjusted to the gloom. He’d turned his back to the door and stood looking at her.

“Maddygirl,” he said. “Back—” He broke off, and then from deep in his throat said: “Die.”

She had no answer.

He came to her, sat again beside her on the bed, grasped her by both arms. “Not… back. No!”

“It is not my decision. It is not mine to say.”

“
Go
!” There was pleading in his voice. “Now.”

She pushed at him, not knowing what to do. “Go, then! I will not stop thee.”

He held onto her, shook her. “Two. Two go.”

“No,” she said miserably. “That’s impossible.”

Christian bent his head, made a sound of agony. “Not… one go. Maddy!” His fingers drove into her shoulders. “Can’t.” He pulled her toward him, leaned his face into the curve of her neck. “Maddy.

Maddygirl. Not one. Can’t,” He pressed his forehead hard against her, his jaw taut with silent entreaty.

He was disintegrating. It came to this, after the locks and the keepers and the chains. If she had handed him a key, he could not have walked out free.

He didn’t have the courage. Not himself, one, without two.

But to go back that place… the cell, the Ape.

He held to her, his body paralyzed, frozen, shattering in panic.

“Jervaulx.” She touched his hair, her voice anguished. “Morrow, thamus calm. Sense. Showst sense, ashowstme.”

“Maddy,” he said, muffled into her skin, all he could say. He shook his head, all he could do. He had no sense or sanity. He had to go, to escape, but he was frozen. He was shaking all over.