Flowers From The Storm (29 page)

The duke simply took her arm on his, appropriating the decision. With an autocratic determination, he drew her with him, walking out of the alley and into the street.

Lacking her bonnet, Maddy pulled her hood up over her bare head and still felt baldly conspicuous with Jervaulx on the open curb. She didn’t recognize the street, never having ventured into Mayfair. The buildings stretched both ways into the fog, not as elegant as Jervaulx House or the new homes in Belgrave Square but still far above anything Maddy had ever been accustomed to. The scent of roasting apples drifted on the mist, their vendor only a disembodied voice, a woman’s musical cry. Her call was lost in the echo of horses’ hooves as two carriages came down the street with liveried servants on the box and up behind.

The coaches passed on. Another vehicle came out of the fog, the single lame cab horse clopping forlornly toward them along the cobbles. Shouts began to resonate from the unseen corner in the direction of the church. Jervaulx turned his head, his fingers going tight on her arm.

He stepped into the street in the path of the hackney. The horse threw up its head. “Ho there!” the driver cried, jerking the reins as if the poor animal had not already halted of its own accord. “Mind your lady, fine sir!” The man looked over his shoulder at the commotion in the fog behind and then back at Maddy and Jervaulx. “Can I carry m’lord and m’lady?” he inquired, without much expectation. “Fast as lightning, comfortable too.”

He looked rather startled when Jervaulx reached for the door, but clambered down from the perch in an instant, helping in the duke after Maddy, showering them with compliments as the yelling and the sound of running feet grew louder in the misty street.

The cabman glanced in that direction, and then back at Jervaulx. “Where to, m’lord?”

The duke squeezed Maddy’s hand so hard that she gasped. She caught her breath, and said, “Chelsea.

No!!” Not there, people knew her there. A voice shouted up the street; she had no time to think.

“Oh—hurry!” She seized on the first faraway locale that came into her head. “Ludgate Hill!”

“John Spring’ll have you there in a blink, and so you’ll see!” He slammed the door, and in a moment she heard him snap his whip at the mournful horse. They rattled at a great pace away from the pursuit, the sound of it lost instantly in the creak and grind of the shabby coach.

Maddy dropped her head back against the squabs. “We should not. We should not!” She put her hand to her mouth.

“Oh—hast thou any money?”

Jervaulx didn’t respond, only gripped the strap with a frown, a look of strained bewilderment in his eyes as if he didn’t comprehend her, as if his own actions had gone beyond his mastery.

“Money!” she exclaimed, hardly able to contain her distress.

He glanced at her with a hot uncertainty.

Maddy gave a little moan. “I don’t even have a shilling in my shoe!”

“
Shoe
,” he said, one of his reflexive repetitions. He made an aggravated sound, turned from her with a scowl. The hackney took a corner, jostling them together in a bump and rattle of wheels. He propped his foot on the opposite seat and braced her with his shoulder.

Abruptly, he laughed. “Maddygirl.” He leaned over and tore the buckle from his formal slipper. “
Money

.”

In Ludgate Hill, outside the mercers’ and drapers’ shops, amid the screeching roar of iron-wheeled traffic, Maddy had to explain to the cabman as he leaned in the door. “We must sell this,” she said, handing it across Jervaulx, “and then we can pay thy fare. I’m so sorry to make thee tarry.”

The driver held the sparkling buckle, turning it over in his fingerless gloves. A flock of pigeons took wing from the sidewalk at the sudden peal of the bells of St. Paul’s, clapping upward into the sooty fog.

“You’re running away, ain’t you, ladyship?”

Maddy moistened her lips, aghast at his intuition. “I’m not a ladyship! Thou must not call me so.”

“I heard ”em after ye, back there west. You talk peculiar. You one o‘ them sort—how do they say it?“

“Friends,” Maddy said faintly. “A Quaker.”

He looked up at Jervaulx. “You going to marry her for real, then, m’lord? John Spring don’t hold with no carrying off.”

The duke said nothing. His confusion had vanished; he only seemed haughty, sullen in his silence. He fixed the cab driver with a look of disinterested scorn.

“Thou art mistaken,” Maddy said. “We aren’t to marry.”

“Ought to,” the driver grumbled. “Ought to make ”im do right by you, m’lady.“

“It isn’t—” She broke off. There was no use trying to explain. “Dost thou know a shop where I may sell it?”

“Those three balls hung over the door yonder, that’s a pawnbroker’s sign. You stay here, m’lady, if you please, so I know m’lord ”ll be back with me fare.“

“No. I must go. The—” She almost called Jervaulx by his title, then thought better of it. “He will wait.”

She gathered her skirt in preparation to get down.

Jervaulx plucked the buckle from the cabman’s hand. Before Maddy could prevent him, he climbed down from the coach. She scrambled after, but the driver caught her arm as she reached the pavement.

“One of you stays right here, m’lady,” he said.

“No! He shouldn’t go alone. He can’t—”

The duke was already amid the crowd, ignoring both the driver and Maddy’s protest, avoiding a donkey that trundled past with two rush baskets of coals hung across its back. He turned in the direction opposite from the pawnshop, up the hill toward the cathedral.

“Thou must let me go!” Maddy stood on tiptoe, dreading to lose sight of him. “I have to go with him!”

Though he stood out, tall even bareheaded, his black hair and the blue sash across his coat easy to descry amid the everyday pedestrians, at any moment he must vanish from sight in the swarm.

“Nay—do you think he’ll abandon you so easy, m’lady?” As she craned anxiously, the driver pointed after Jervaulx. “Look there. Right into Number 32, me fine lordship,” said John Spring in satisfaction.

“Rundell and Bridge it is.”

Christian stopped just inside the jewelers’ door. The assistant who had ushered him across the threshold seemed to recognize him, bowing from the waist with a stream of soft greeting. It was all familiar; Christian came here with some frequency—he remembered an emerald bracelet, a set of earrings to match; who had that been for?

A partner came instantly from the inner precincts. Christian acknowledged the man, unable to recall his name, not needing it. Words were unnecessary. Normally he would have been escorted to a private room to view velvet trays and rainbow fire at his leisure, something he liked, but had no time for now. He could not afford to linger here where he was known.

He laid his buckles on the counter. There was a little pause. The assistant faded backward into obscurity. The partner, well fed and courteous, his cheeks completely hidden behind tall collar-points, gave no indication of surprise. He went around the counter, felt in his pocket, and pulled out a tiny magnifier. Christian watched the evaluation of the brilliants, which was short and professional. The jeweler laid down the buckle.

“Hd three hunded cepul’t”grace?“

Three hundred was an outrageous overpayment, the pair couldn’t have been worth more than half that together. Christian frowned, afraid he had not understood it right. He fought down alarm, choked it in ice.

“Three twent five,” the man said. He smiled. “Yugrace been good tus. Ledus taportunty showsteem return.”

The assistant came round the corner of the counter, returning a tray of rings to their drawer. Golden curves, set neat row after neat row. The brief display caught Christian’s eye, distracted him.

The partner made a questioning murmur. Christian realized that he’d drifted. He covered it with a quick autocratic nod, agreeing to the price.

The rings disappeared into their slotted drawer. Wedding rings. The assistant lifted the key on a string round his neck and unlocked another tray.

The partner leaned a little across toward Christian. “Cred grace,” he asked in a very soft voice,

“caspaint?”

The low tone, the question—Christian didn’t understand. He felt befuddled, facing the man’s expectant confidentiality. In an appallingly long pause, he clung to his ice remoteness, refused to lean close or acknowledge the question, tried to think it through. The merchandise examined, the bargain struck, then… what?

They would pay him.

Credit or cash payment. Yes.

His heart accelerated. He could think of no way to respond. He gripped the edge of the counter—then put his white-gloved hand on top. He opened it, palm up.

“Ver’good.” The partner nodded. “Moment.” He took up the buckles and went briskly toward the back rooms.

Christian watched the assistant at his work. The new tray went down the counter to a man and a young woman in a plain gray dress. And as Christian was standing there with his jaw clamped, his heart pounding, spying on some country couple who murmured solemnly over their meager purchase, it came to him. A revelation, an answer that had been making its way through his numb and wayward brain for longer than he’d even known himself.

Maddy. It was Maddygirl he should marry.

The clarity of it, the beauty, burst on him in perfect glory. Maddygirl would never let them send him back, Maddygirl could understand him; she didn’t humiliate him; her father was a talented geometer, she was devoted and loyal—look at the way she’d come with him, even if it had been under a certain amount of force, a very little. She’d come almost of her own accord—ye Gods, he’d even seen her stand up, and damned well, to the she-dragon. And she had said she loved him. He thought she’d said that. He was almost certain.

Maddygirl deserved to be a duchess. It had been a great mistake of nature to make her a thee-thou sugar scoop bonnet.

The partner returned with a slim leather book. He laid it on the counter, circumspect, no sign of banknotes, but Christian knew what it was. He felt urgent, anxious to escape— with an effort he governed his impulse to snatch it up and flee. Instead he went to the ring tray, made a slight bow of apology to the young lady, pulled a ring from its velvet rest, and brought it back to the jeweler.

The partner smiled his affluent smile. He started to take back the money book. Christian clapped his hand over it.

“Billen, course.” The jeweler never blinked. “Led jurgrace box.” He took up the ring, leaving the book untouched.

Christian slipped the leather wallet into his pocket. He hated the taste of this—a thief with his own money. He felt his control breaking. A skulking, escaped animal, Chancery lunatic, with no right to sell his shoe buckles, to purchase a ring for his future wife.

The partner returned with the box. Christian accepted it. They ushered him out as if he were real, still the Duke of Jervaulx. Still a man and not a beast.

When he returned to the street, he felt dazed, sluggish; his whole body felt like terror trapped inside lethargy. He walked a little way along the pavement, then stopped and leaned on the wall. The crowds flowed past, confusing and loud—alien gibber, horrible mindless sound that should have been sense.

The ice calm of the episode deserted him; late reaction sent his heart thudding with dread—he might not have done it right, he might have forgotten something, he didn’t know; it was all forbidding and strange; what might have happened, how he might have given himself away, made himself ridiculous, put himself in their power to seize and restrain.

He heard Maddy call him. He heard his name through the disorder—
Jervaulx
—solid dear plain no manners Maddy-girl, her hands on his arms, her eyes—sherry eyes, decadent gold—looking up into his, full of fear and question.

He drew in a hard breath, mastering panic. He manufactured a grin. Without looking down, he fumbled the book of banknotes from his pocket and pushed them into her hands.

Maddy had not ever had so much money at once in her possession. She held the wallet in both hands as they walked, afraid to tuck it into her dress. The hundreds of pounds made this preposterous flight seem all too credible— an immediate return became choice, not necessity.

After she’d paid the driver, Jervaulx had looked at her as if she knew what they ought to do. He kept his hand gripped firmly on her elbow, a strange mixture of dependence and protection. With the duke beside her, none of the barrow boys shouted at her that she stopped the way, no quarrelsome pedestrian pushed her into the muddy street rather than give up an inch of space to pass. He was broadshouldered and imperial, and his eyes were the blue spirit of bewilderment—a disquietude like looking into the sky at the last of twilight, straight overhead to a single star, when comfortable illusion vanished and the solid roof of the sky dissolved to betray its real and dizzy distance.

She felt as if her whole solid world had evaporated in that way; it was hard to conceive that Archimedea Timms was standing in the teeming footway on Ludgate Hill trying to decide what was to be done with the Duke of Jervaulx, since he did not appear to have any notion what to do with himself.