Flowers From The Storm (46 page)

It instantly felt so wonderful and rejuvenating that her protest died on her lips. She tried to remain sitting straight, but the combination of his delightful kneading of tired muscles and the angle of her position would not allow it. “Oh. That is… very easing.”

He made no answer, looking down at her feet as he rubbed them. Her skirt fell in a sapphire sheen to the floor, rumpling a little as he compressed her heels and then slid his hands up to the back of her ankles.

“Oh,” Maddy murmured, with another sigh. She closed her eyes. He kneaded her calves, and then slipped one hand back to her toes, wriggling them apart one by one in a maneuver that was as delicious as it was singular. She gave a breathless small laugh, her eyes still closed. “I didn’t know such a thing—felt so agreeable.”

“Mmmm.” He shifted. Maddy opened her eyes. He was repositioning himself, stretching his legs out on the chaise again. She started to withdraw her feet, but he held them, settling back. He closed his eyes and went on with his smooth massage.

“Wouldst thou prefer that I rub thy feet instead?” she offered.

“No.”

Looking at him, she might have thought he was asleep, except that he continued the strong, steady circles with his thumbs against the soles of her feet, then up the sides, and all around her heels. Then her toes again, one by one, until her feet began to tingle with pleasure.

She closed her own eyes again and sat still, allowing herself to be immersed in the sensation. The hearth in his room was of the modern sort, a raised grate that sent warmth to the comers. She let the silk shawl she’d worn all day slip down off her shoulders.

“Could only Rembrandt… paint you,” the duke said.

She found him watching her. He ran his palm along the length of her leg, a light stroke, from her ankle to her knee.

“This way… paint… so I can remember.”

His hands ceased their motion. The room was silent, except for the slow faint hiss of steam from the coals. In the light of the oil lamp, curves of indigo and cobalt draped down her skirt, rich color against the stark white of her stockings. His hand lay across her exposed leg, motionless.

He was watching it, his face dark and harsh in the lamplight. He looked up sideways at her. “Friend?”

She made no answer, too full of feeling to put words to it.

“Friend you, Maddy… always. Don’t… forget.”

“No,” she whispered. “I will not forget thee.”

He moved abruptly, setting her feet away. She drew them underneath her as he rose. “Sleep here,” he said. “I… bedding closet.”

There was a sleeping cot in the dressing room; Maddy had seen it when she took his clothes. “Oh, no.

That would not be fair. I will go when thy aunt is retired.”

“Go? Long way, Maddygirl. Dark. Not-alive. Ghost. Stay here.”

“Ghost?” Maddy said.

“Bad…
ghost
.” He looked at her, all pirate innocence. “Didn’t tell?”

“There is no ghost.”

He made a sound in his throat, the most blood-curdling low moan. Devil lifted his head, looking up alertly from a comfortable curl on the bed.

“There is no ghost!”

“One step… one step…” Jervaulx stood in half-light, his eyes glittering. “Hall… walk… slow… up the stairs.”

She took a deep breath, found her shoes, and stuck her feet into them. She marched to the door. “I shall go back with Lady de Marly.”

“She won’t like. Want you here. Sleep.” He grinned. “Choice. Dragon… ghost… me.”

“There—is—no—ghost!”

He did not say there was, and he did not say there wasn’t. Maddy peeked out into the drawing room and found that Lady de Marly had already gone. The chamber was dark, growing cool, with only the last orange winking eyes of the coals casting a dim light over the carpet. She thought of ringing for Calvin Elder and realized how late it had become. Besides, it was ridiculous and unchristian to fear ghosts. Devil hopped down from the bed and came to her. “Wilt thou attend me?” she asked the dog. Devil wagged his tail. He jumped up and put his paws on her skirt.

She looked up at Jervaulx archly. “We’ll take a candle.” He bowed and opened his hand. “Fare…

well.” “Come,” she said to the dog, who trotted obediently ahead of her out the door.

Frigid air washed in the drawing room door as she opened it into the corridor. Devil slipped out and disappeared instantly beyond the wavering globe of candlelight.

“Come back!” she demanded in a hiss. Her words echoed, returning as sinister whispers.

The dog, its nails clicking on stone, came back and jumped up on her. She petted it and started ahead.

Devil fell away, trotting on again, vanishing. She quickened her steps, squinting into the quivering shadows cast by the candle.

Her shoes, unbuckled, made scuffling clunks against the floor. She stopped once. The corridor was full of reverberations that died away, leaving cold silence. If there were another person in the entire mammoth pile of stone besides herself, there was no sign of it now. Her breath frosted. She turned behind her.

A man was standing there.

She gave a gasp, jumping back, realizing even as she did that it was one of the suits of armor at motionless attention, the flux of her candle giving it the illusion of strange life.

“Devil!” she called softly, urgently, forcing herself to turn her back on the figure.

In a moment, she heard the reassuring click of dog paws, and Devil’s familiar white-speckled shape appeared out of the gloom. This time, she bent a little and grasped the animal’s ruff, forcing it to stay with her.

They went forward together to the top of the stair. Maddy stopped there. She heard nothing but Devil’s tongue as he took advantage of the moment to lie down and lick at one of his paws.

The stairs swept downward in a broad curve, an invitation into blackness. The memory of the duke’s chilling moan came to her, so vivid that she whirled around again to see if he had followed her to tease her with it.

The wide corridor stood empty. As Maddy turned to the stair, Devil’s ears lifted.

He stood up, staring down into the dark ahead.

Maddy felt a terrible prickle come over her. Her eyes began to water.

The dog leaned over the stair. He bristled. A low, menacing growl rose in his throat. Maddy’s breath seemed to leave her all at once.

He leaped forward with a snarling bark.

Maddy broke and ran.

She had her skirts in one hand, the candle in the other. Her shoes slapped, awkward, echoing as if there were something treading sharply after her. Devil came beside her and ran ahead into the dark. She rushed faster, making little whimpers in her throat, feeling the footsteps behind catching up; when she saw the dog scrabbling at a door, she shoved it open, threw the candle onto the stone floor behind her and slammed the barrier shut. She found herself in the duke’s chamber. He was turning around, his shirt in one hand. Maddy hurled herself against his bare chest, whirling so that he was between her and the door.

“There’s something
there
!” she cried. “The dog—the Devil—there’s something in the hall!”

“Maddygirl. Maddygirl.” He held her hard, rocking her, chuckling quietly. “It’s all right. There’s nothing.

Nothing there.”

In his arms, the convulsive shivers were subsiding. She felt silly even as she clung to him. There was nothing there. Of course there was nothing. “The dog growled,” she lamented, her voice still holding a high-pitched break. “He was looking down the
stairs
.”

Another shiver took her. She drew in a deep breath, trying to gather her wits. Devil had jumped on the bed and sat looking at her, absurdly unconcerned.

The watering of her eyes had wetted her cheeks. He touched a tear with his forefinger.

“I’m sorry!” she said. “I know there’s—nothing there! I’m so—stupid! At night—in my room—I hear footsteps!”

He folded her closer into his shoulder. “Maddygirl. I’m sorry. It’s my fault.” He hugged her. “Come.

Let’s go see what it was.”

“Oh, no. I’d rather not!”

But with his arm around her shoulder, he took her to the door. Just outside, the candle she’d thrown down lay in the stone corridor, still burning. He picked it up, not letting go of her. The light flared as he held it up high and fed one of the oiled flambeaux to life. He kept her against him, striding across to the next torch and lighting it, illuminating the corridor as they progressed. The dogs ranged ahead and back.

At the top of the stairs, he snuffed the candle against the wall and pulled the last torch from its bracket.

With Maddy beneath his arm, the whole staircase lit by the intense flame, they went down.

As bright as it was, the darkness in the hall ate up the light of the single torch. Jervaulx let go of her at the foot of the steps, handed her the flambeau, and went to a huge crank on the wall. He pulled the brake free, and with a clanking of gears, a rope began to pay out from the wheel.

The torch caught the shadow of a mass descending, illuminated the two immense iron chandeliers declining ponderously from above. When they were within reach, he set the brake again and took the torch, walking from candle to candle, lighting the whole range of both pendants. Slowly the great room began to brighten, lighting him as well, the golden blaze on his bare skin, his hair as dark as the deepest corners of shadow.

Finally he stood back, holding up the torch, a pagan god in the barren hall.

“Better?” he asked.

Maddy had long before begun to feel very, very foolish. “Oh, yes,” she said in a tiny voice. “Thank thee.”

Devil suddenly let out a bark and scrambled after a shadow that thumped down from the minstrels’

gallery onto a table below. The two raced across the floor, the tabbycat making a tremendous leap and disappearing into a niche inside the fireplace just an inch ahead of Devil’s nose.

“The ghost,” Jervaulx said.

A bewildered young footman in his shirtsleeves appeared in one of the arched doorways beneath the gallery. The duke looked toward him.

“We dispatch… specters,” he said. When the servant came into the hall, he held out the torch. “Snuff them. The candles… up… the morning.”

The footman took the light and bowed. Jervaulx came to her.

“Thank thee. I was silly. Perhaps—I should go to my room now,” she said.

He took her around the shoulders and started for the stairs that led to his own. The dogs came, running ahead. Maddy thought of the dark gallery and the halls and stairs between her and the dowager duchess’

apartment. She thought of the footsteps. She didn’t believe in ghosts, but in a place like this, it was a fine thing to have two dogs and a large, vigorous and very substantial male striding along the reverberating passages beside her.

Ghosts. Christian rested his arms behind his head, grinning up into the darkness of the dressing room.

Maddygirl—his prim, righteous, practical Maddygirl—was afraid of ghosts. Jervaulx Castle had them, of course. Any number. He’d had to lie extravagantly in reassuring her. His favorite was the staghound that slept before the tremendous hearth in the hall on Christmas Eve. He’d seen it himself, when James was still alive, one cold night after Mass. They’d thought it was a stray got in past the gatehouse, but when they’d called out to it, it had risen, and stretched, and loped away to vanish right through the carved wood of the screens passage. The story—that the dog’s place of honor by the fire had been earned saving the lord’s child from drowning and that the ghost appeared as guardian, a signal that the lady of the castle was soon to produce and safely raise another offspring— he thought the tale overly maudlin for any self-respecting apparition. But it was true that his youngest sibling Katherine had been born that next year, and was still alive and in perfect health at twenty-five—unlike three of his brothers and two sisters not so fortunate. He sighed, thinking of James. And Clair, and Anne, and sweet William Francis. His mother had her reasons for curdling into a religious zealot. Perhaps they should have left a leg of mutton out to entice the ghostly hound to come more often.

He hadn’t told Maddy about the staghound. On his own account, he’d let only one small truth slip—that above the duchess’ bedchamber was the Black Guard’s Walk. He didn’t even have to tell her the story that went with it; he could see that the mere name was enough.

He smiled. She would stay with him from now on.

Maddy snuggled down in the duke’s bed. She was in her chemise, having no gown with her, but still warm and secure. Devil and Cass lay at the foot of the bed, breathing soft occasional sighs.

She did not instantly go to sleep, as comfortable as she was. There were several pillows; she’d shifted around among them until she’d found the one she was certain was Jervaulx’s. She lay on it, breathing in the scent of him.

Somewhere between upright Archimedea Timms and total wanton surrender to fleshly temptation was someone new to her: a person who liked pretty colored dresses, and having her feet rubbed, and kisses.