Flowers From The Storm (41 page)

“Right,” Durham said promptly. “Ready Philistines up-on, eh?”

Upon him, indeed. His whole family, beginning with the she-dragon, as soon as they had the word.

God’s blood—his mother and sisters—they’d be in a frenzy. His jaw hardened into a sardonic smile.

A silence fell. Maddy was oblivious, at work on her letter. Fane fondled Devil’s ears assiduously, pushing the dog off his knees at every third stroke. Durham rocked gently before the fire.

“Play me billiards, Colonel?” Durham asked suddenly.

“Aye!” Fane looked cheerful at the notion. “Guinea game?”

“What, think me a nabob?” Durham was already at the door, his port in one hand, the handle in the other. He gave Maddy a little bow. “Will excuse us, Your Grace?”

She looked up at him. “Thou must not call your grace.”

“Duchess,” he said placatingly. “Duchess, mean.”

“Archimedea,” she said stubbornly.

“Maddygirl,” Christian suggested, with a slight smile.

“Good night,” Durham said. “Before dig this hole deeper. Wish you joy, Duchess-Archimedea-Maddygirl. You, Shev.”

Fane echoed his sentiment, settling for “ma’am” with reference to Maddy.

“Dogs,” Christian said. “Out.”

Fane whistled, the Pied Piper of the canine world, and the dogs hopped up and slipped through the open door with him.

“Durham.” Christian spoke as it was closing behind them. “Thank…” He wanted to say more, but the words would not come.

In the shadow of the door, Durham turned his thumb up and grinned. The handle clicked shut.

Christian poured himself a glass of port and sat down. He closed his eyes.

A relief, to be alone. In his own place. He allowed himself to drift. His right hand tingled, the levy of exhaustion. He listened to the intermittent scratch of Maddy’s pen, noting distantly that she didn’t seem to be having an easy time with her letter.

The familiarity of everything was bizarre: the way the place functioned even as he mangled and fumbled his orders. He felt at home, and yet an imposter—as if it were the not-real man who lived here, and the real one, himself, the muddled scared wounded one, belonged back in the bare room and the lunatic house with the other broken beasts. And yet the mad place itself had already receded to a bad dream—he
was
himself, normal; it was just that a part of his head was off in some obscure and misty cloudland, beyond reach.

It was coming back. He had got here to Jervaulx, so it must be coming back. He could remember himself worse than he was now, but the now was so maddening, and the future…

He had not until this moment even thought of a future beyond reaching home and safety, each moment unraveling before him, flashing past like a steeplechase, like riding hell-for-leather point to point, over strange country with the light failing and nothing to do but give her her head and pray—he smiled at himself with his eyes closed—but it had seemed that way, all a rush, obstacles and decisions and words that leaped up at him and then were gone, and he was over them and down on the other side.

Over and down. Married.

God.

So far, it was all right. Everything was the way he’d envisioned it: home, safe, quiet. Loyal Maddygirl, hen-scratching at the writing table.

He opened his eyes and looked at her. She had stopped her pen and held it poised, caressing her lips with the feather tip as she considered. She seemed very careful; from where he was he could see that she had not crossed out anything on her page, though there was plenty of paper for her to have composed all the drafts she liked. Christian always used reams of paper to get his thoughts down before he settled on a final version.

He set his glass on the table beside him and watched her cautious authorship. He supposed that it was her Quaker upbringing, not to be extravagant. Or perhaps it was because she had learned economy in difficult circumstances. Or perhaps it was just Maddy, herself, and she was a natural pinchpenny.

It came as a revelation to him that he didn’t know, that he had married this young woman, neat and simple and plain except for her hair and her hedonistic eyelashes, and he knew almost nothing of her at all.

Prim and decent, chaste, careful, loyal, moderately brave in some things, a lion in a few, and when he touched her, she fluttered—nice feminine flutter, modesty and passion. As he watched her, she put her tongue to the tip of the feather and stroked it thoughtfully, unselfconscious, all unknowing— and heat began a slow liquid dissolve in his loins.

It could not quite banish the leaden weariness that held him down, but he took pleasure in imagination.

He had time. She was his wife. Anytime, any place that he wanted. Here, if he liked.

He smiled. He lay in the chair and pictured himself rising and going to her, talking down that amazing hair and letting it fall in a cascade to the floor—discarding the white spinster collar that hid her throat, pulling fastenings free; her stark dress in a confusion at her waist, her belly and breasts and shoulders all white and soft—and that hair…

He drew a breath deep inside himself and let it go, almost but not quite a sound in his chest.

He would take her here, he thought, right here in the drawing room, his duchess. He would push her skirts to her waist and touch her, kiss her; and she would flutter like a soft bird, flutter and sigh and stretch out her legs and lie back in her chair at the writing desk, that hair a sheen of firelight and honeyed ale from the arch of her throat to the Axminster carpet—bare feet and toes that would flex and dig into the silk as he tasted her—so sweet—warm secret curls, bright and saucy.

And inside her, God, inside her… he imagined it… spreading for him, opening like a flower; in his mind the dress had disappeared and she was perfectly, gloriously naked, slim pretty nymph in the drawing room, eager, arching back in the chair and pulling him into her, her lips parted… wanting closer, wanting deeper and deeper and harder…

The duke made a faint sound. Maddy finally put down her pen, defeated. She could not explain to Papa, not in any words that she would want Durham to read aloud. When she looked over at Jervaulx, he was sleeping, his head turned a little toward her, his face relaxed, as if he had pleasing dreams.

Maddy could not help herself: he made her smile.

His hands rested on the carved arms of his chair. On her own hand she felt his heavy signet, suspended inside her finger, too large—but not too large for him. His fingers were strong and sound; they made a slight twitch as he slept, a thing insignificant and private, an intimacy. He breathed deeply, quietly, not precisely even, still on the edge of full sleep—but as she watched, the rhythm eased into the cadence of profound slumber. His head declined a trifle lower to the side.

She felt a rush of confusion and tenderness. It could not be true; it simply could not be. She was not his wife—the absurdity of the idea, the magnificence of this place, the food, the servants, the uncountable candles and paintings and crystal bowls of fruit and flowers, the great harp standing in a corner of the room, the endless corridors—there was even a water closet all richly tricked out in marble, and seventeen more elsewhere in the castle, all of the modern patent variety, as she had been informed matter-of-factly by the housekeeper.

She could not be the mistress of this place. Something would happen that would prove it all to have been mistaken. The wedding, so hasty and preposterous—that would not be legal, even if Durham insisted that the special license he’d caused Colonel Fane to procure in anticipation of pursuit was in order. And even if it were, Friends would not accept it. When they found out, she would be disowned: married by a priest, in a church, without her father’s permission—worst of all—married to a man of the world.

Yet in his sleep, he did not look so diabolic. Earthly, yes: the sensual line of his mouth, the straight strong nose, the elegant jaw, his hair falling over his forehead—and those dark lashes, as long as a child’s, but with a child’s innocence made reckless in a man grown.

Her words in the church had come from Quaker weddings she had attended—whether they were her own words or God’s words in her, how was she to know? She could reason both ways: as she had reasoned this morning, that to refuse him was to condemn him to Blythedale Hall, or as seemed so apparent now—that there was no possibility she had any power to protect him, or any grounds to belong to this place.

She had never been so unclear before, caught between what Friends would say and what seemed to hold her heart. For a long time, she watched him sleep.

If it weren’t for this place. If he were just an ordinary man.

Just an ordinary man, for ordinary Archimedea Timms. A man the Meeting would approve, a practical garden and a bell-pull that worked. The Duke of Jervaulx in Plain Dress. Whenever pigs might learn to fly.

Standing up softly, she pulled the bell-rope that adorned the duke’s drawing room, a thick black cord of silk, braided and tasseled in gold. It worked. In a very few moments, the steward appeared, the door opening on oiled hinges. Dressed in long-skirted white satin livery, with his hawk nose and long chin, his stockings as white as his wig and coat, he bore a strong resemblance to the duke’s butler in town—Maddy supposed the likeness of Calvin Elder to London Calvin was not coincidence. She gave him a small, embarrassed smile.

“Your Grace wishes to retire?” he asked in a low voice.

So late, in such a circumstance, it did not seem worthwhile to argue the title. She glanced uncertainly at Jervaulx, and then nodded.

Calvin Elder turned, holding the door open for her. Maddy followed him, led from the rich warmth of the tapestried and firelit room into a frigid corridor illuminated by torches, the smoky light shining down upon polished suits of armor that lined the walls like a mute army. At the end, a broad stone staircase curved downward into blackness. Calvin Elder stopped at a small table, lit a candle that had been provided ready there, and started down.

The candle’s bobbing rays illuminated the arched vault overhead as they descended. At the foot of the stair, the ceiling abruptly gave way to a huge darkness: a hall, cold and resonating, in the dim candlelight bigger than the biggest meetinghouse she had ever been inside, bigger than a church, its vast space rising into unseen realms above where the peaks of soaring lancet windows were lost in gloom.

Calvin Elder walked across it on soft slippers, but Maddy’s sturdy shoes made crude clapping sounds that she could not seem to silence. The noise echoed: It almost seemed as if someone were following them as they crossed the vast floor— a thought that raised prickles on the back of her neck.

At the other end, he led her two floors up a tight winding staircase, the uneven stone steps worn away in the middle by countless feet. Before she had caught her breath from that ascent, they went through a door into another blackness. The floor creaked beneath the carpet, and Maddy startled at the sudden looming up of a white face and staring eyes. Elder Calvin simply walked on, and his candle illuminated a bright haughty figure, a portrait of a man in studded armor and robes. Another rose up beyond it, a rich stilted profusion of jeweled cloth and pearl headdress, with a woman’s pale and expressionless face beneath it. Maddy realized she was in a long gallery, icy, lined the whole length by these staring portraits.

Their eyes followed her, appearing out of the shadow, lit for a moment by the passing candle, and fading into ghostly silence.

The hairs on her scalp rose. She felt their antagonism like a living presence.

Finally, through a door, another corridor, and Calvin Elder opened a room. He gave her a grave look.

“The duchess’ boudoir.”

Maddy did not think Calvin Elder approved of her much, either. They hid it well, he and the housekeeper Ellen Rhodes, but the staff must be in something of an uproar— perhaps even uncertain of the duke’s sanity. Maddy thought she would have questioned it herself under the circumstances.

She stepped meekly through. The room ought not to have shocked her after all the rest of the feudal splendor, but it did. The light from the single candle darted among huge shadows, glowing momentarily on walls hung in rose damask, plaster and gilt at the ceiling, abundant with chairs and plush settees. A fire smoked in the open hearth, helpless to warm the big room much better than the gallery and halls. Calvin Elder walked through and opened another door. “The bedchamber, Your Grace.”

Maddy followed him. Another outburst of luxury, this time in a bed with cloth-of-gold hangings lined in pale pink, the walls adorned by tapestries and silver sconces. She was becoming unnerved by it.

Over the upholstered bench at the foot of the bed, her nightgown lay spread neatly, a plain white contrast to everything else in the room.

“The bell-rope is here, Your Grace.” He walked across, reaching to pull it. “A woman will come up to serve you.”

“Oh no. I need no one. I can… serve myself.”

He bowed.

“The duke…” Maddy made a vague gesture, not sure which direction was the right one after all the halls and turns and staircases. “Is there someone to help him?”

“When he doesn’t bring his own man, His Grace has commonly preferred to valet himself on those occasions that he retires late. The staff is not to disturb him. His room has been made ready in the manner that he usually desires it.”