Flowers From The Storm (48 page)

He rolled away from her and sighed, locking his hands behind his head. Then he glanced toward her sideways. “Regret?”

The one word held defiance. She looked in her heart for regret. For anger, or repentance. None of that was there. Only dismay, that she had given in to such weakness. Only a growing sense of the enormity of what she’d done.

“I broke,” he said. “I… agreement.”

“I did not ask thee to stop.” It was the truth.

He turned on his side. His blue eyes watched hers.

“
Wife
,” he said.

Such an emphatic presence, even to the impression of his body in the bed, that weighted it down and drew her toward him. His knee touched her calf, high up, where no one ever touched her but herself.

“Yes,” she said, a bare whisper. “I am thy wife in truth.”

He sat up, flinging back the bedclothes, expelling the dogs from their places. Maddy watched him stalk across the rich room, as graceful and barbaric as the tapestries and paintings. Her own blood marked his skin. The drapes rattled as he pulled them wide. Intense sunlight flooded in, outlining him with the glare.

Elevated as the room was, all she saw beyond him through the glass was light and sky.

He leaned one arm on the casement. Then he looked back at her, and grinned.

“My wife,” he said. “
Good
.”

He stood there, relaxed, a half-shadowed silhouette against the streamers of radiance.

His wife.

She blinked and glanced away, because it hurt her eyes to look at him.

Alone with him, uncommitted, she had not made any approaches to the staff; she had lived in his home like a guest, but neither Lady de Marly nor Jervaulx would allow such a dereliction of duty any longer.

“He is the duke; you are his duchess—begin as you mean to go on,” his aunt declared.

At her direction, Maddy had sent a request for the quarterly accounts, and sat down with Rhodes and Calvin Elder to review them. A full half-year of pages were laid before her—and Maddy learned for the first time that while the duke’s absence had been presented to the staff only as a lengthy illness, Rhodes and Calvin Elder were well aware of the nature of it. Although the word “asylum” was never breathed, she suspected that they had been quite uneasy about their future and who would control it. They were stiff with Maddy, but not uncooperative—and before they departed, Rhodes asked a guarded question about whether there was any idea of closing up the castle at all.

“I don’t know,” Maddy said honestly. “I’ll ask the duke. But he seems very much at home here.”

“Pray don’t ask, Your Grace! Don’t indeed. ”Twas a foolish question.“ Calvin Elder gave Rhodes a severe glance. ”Your talk will run on to absurdities, Mrs. Rhodes. Why should His Grace close the castle?“

Rhodes accepted this rebuke in astringent silence.

Maddy thought it best to meet the matter head on. “Ye have heard, perhaps, that the duke’s competence to conduct his business is in question?”

“We haven’t heard anything, Your Grace, but that His Grace was ill,” Calvin Elder said—a patent falsehood.

“It’s true he has been ill. It’s true that there is to be a hearing for his competency in several months.”

They both looked at her stoically.

“Dost thou believe him to seem incompetent?” she asked the steward.

“Certainly not, Your Grace.”

“He cannot speak well,” she replied.

“Very true; I’ve remarked that. But he does not seem anything but able to me.”

Maddy thought this was something of a statement of policy rather than of sincerity, but it showed at least where the steward’s loyalty lay. “Yes,” she said. “If ye will be patient, and give him time, and listen well, then ye will find that he’s quite able.”

“Very well, Your Grace.”

“I’ll keep these to overlook.” She drew the books to her. “And I ask each of thee to inform all of the servants beneath ye that I am not to be addressed as Your Grace, but simply as your mistress. I am—I was raised in the principles of the Society of Friends, and I cannot be easy with the other.”

“ ”Mistress,“ Your Grace?”

“Mistress,” she said firmly. “Simply that.”

“May I request the favor of using the address of ”Madam‘?“ Calvin Elder asked. ”As more in keeping with the honor of the house?“

Maddy looked directly at him. “I think the honor of the house will be better upheld by the conduct of those within it than by how I am addressed.” She instantly heard how self-righteous she must sound, and bit her lip. She added, “I don’t pretend that I know anything of a household such as this; I’ll need your help and guidance. But—I will not be false with ye; I expect that ye will not be false with me. The duke is in real danger of being judged unfit. If that happens, I cannot vouch for what will come after. So perhaps no one will blame ye if ye choose not to obey me now. But as I… I am his wife, I must do what falls to me in that regard at present, and in the manner that seems best to me.”

“Yes, Mistress,” Rhodes said. “There’s been things said— we’ve heard this and that and the other about His Grace, and it’s unsettling. I for one thank you for your frankness. ”Tis better to know the worst than to be kept in the dark and wonder.“

“Indeed. Thank you… Mistress.” Calvin Elder gave the lesser address as if it were a strange foreign word, but he gave it.

Maddy had conducted the session with the staff alone, in the duchess’ boudoir, but afterward Lady de Marly sat with her in the drawing room to judge the accuracy and necessity of the expenditures. The last quarter to have undergone query had the duke’s scrawled notations tipped in, mostly instructions to Calvin Elder about plumbing repairs. The entire expense of the place was staggering. There was a woodman, and five gamekeepers; watermen, lamp-and-candle men, sixteen chambermaids, three carpenters, an upholsterer and someone called a “gong-man.” The costs of candles alone left Maddy light-headed: she felt guilty that Jervaulx had lit so many to chase away ghosts in the hall.

She and Lady de Marly were in ready agreement that the amount of ale consumed belowstairs had been overmuch for a household with no visiting entourage—Maddy painstakingly reckoning up the daily demand against the vast number of staff—but when she objected to thirteen pounds for hair powder for the footmen and grooms of the chambers, she found herself immediately at odds with all moral rectitude and virtue.

“The honor of the house,” Lady de Marly stated, as if that settled the matter.

“Still,” Maddy said, “I think that the custom may be discontinued except on special occasions, and when no guests are present.”

“You know nothing of such things, ignorant girl. They would look ramshackle without powder.”

“I shall note that hair is to be kept short and neat at all times.” Maddy made a memorandum, the way the duke had done, and placed it in the book.

“Humbug! They must be powdered!”

“On special occasions, and when guests are present,” Maddy said, adding it to her memo.

“Oh, you are one of those, are you?”

Maddy looked up at Lady de Marly in question.

“One of those soft-voiced, serene girls that just go on chewing their cud and walking straight ahead, say what you may to them.”

She smiled a little. “No. I think by nature I’m shrewish and managing, as thou art. But I discovered from my father that a quiet obstinacy is the perfect counter to it.”

“Shrewish! Do you dare! Of all the impertinent—”

“You… pride in it,” Jervaulx said, walking in from his bedchamber. “Aunt.”

“Tell this silly chit that the men must be powdered!”

He paused. “Men must… what?”

“The menservants,” Maddy said. “Hair powder. Thou hast spent thirteen pounds upon it last quarter.”

“A pittance,” his aunt exclaimed. “They must be powdered. Your consequence, Jervaulx!”

“They might wear powder on special occasions,” Maddy said, “and with guests.”

“Guests can arrive at any time. Visitors come to tour without notice. You don’t understand an establishment of this stature. Jervaulx—I suggest you set your wife in order straightaway.”

He looked between the two of them, sober, as if it were a profound controversy. “Solomon.” He brought down his hand in a vertical cut. “Half powder… half not.”

Maddy made a count. “There are seven of them. They can’t be divided evenly.”

Her husband did not blink. “Powder half their heads.”

She hesitated, and then broke into a peal of laughter. Christian watched her with pleasure. She always laughed as if she hadn’t ever had the enjoyment before, as if the very act surprised her.

He would have her painted. Lawrence, he thought, regretting Rembrandt with an inner smile. She wasn’t beautiful; she was like the small painting—a moment, a fleeting shade of expression—he would have liked to have it caught, that instant when he coaxed her, when those sultry lashes lifted and the straight-laced propriety changed to something else, when the promise gave way to reality.

He’d learned that a matter-of-fact bearing relaxed her, and from there a gentle tease was most effective: a silly joke more likely to disarm her than gallantry or urgent wooing. Her sense of humor was unsophisticated. The more patently ludicrous a jest, the more likely she was to understand. He wondered if her Quakers ever laughed at all.

He had another item to please her. He held out a note scribbled in Durham’s hand. “Father is… now coming. Today perhaps.”

Joy blossomed in her face, and instant trepidation. She took the paper from him, read it quickly, and pressed her lips together. “Oh,” she said helplessly, “what must he think?”

“He ought to think you’ve done prodigious well for yourself,” Aunt Vesta said, ill-tempered.

“I should not have married without his permission. I should not have taken it into my own hands.” A little tinge of panic crept into her voice.

Christian watched the play of emotion in her face. “He will… is… angry?”

“Oh, no. He would never be angry. He will only be—he will be so quiet! He will make me cry, because I ought to have been better!”

“Better?” Lady de Marly demanded. “You’ve made the best match in the country, my girl! I’ll tell him so, if he don’t know it for himself.”

Maddy only clenched her hands around the note. Christian walked back into his chamber, then stopped and turned at the door. “Maddygirl,” he said. “I thee wed. Don’t… forget.”

He met her eyes. He wasn’t going to beg for her allegiance. He’d made her his own, by law and by physical possession. She was his.

He only hoped to God that Durham had done some bloody persuasive talking to Timms.

Maddy had wished for her father so violently before, and almost as violently wished now that she could have more time before she saw him. She should have written to him, made some manner of explanation.

She dreaded his coming.

And yet, when Calvin Elder brought the news that a chaise approached the castle, she rushed down to the gatehouse and was there to see the conveyance roll into the first court.

“Papa!” She was at the window before the postilion had brought the team to a halt. “Oh, Papa.”

Durham had come with him; the younger man rose and gave her father his support. Papa negotiated the steps and stood before her, all bundled in a furred greatcoat that diminished him to birdlike delicacy.

“Maddy girl,” he said warmly—and she knew he was glad to be with her, at least.

She went into his arms, hugging him close. “Oh, I have missed thee. I have missed thee.”

He kissed her cheek, holding onto her hands. “Maddy girl,” he repeated, as if it were all that he could say. He stood back from her and reached up to touch her face, smiling a little. “What hast thou done?”

She shook her head. “Papa, I—” She lost her voice. She squeezed his hands very hard. “Nothing will change!” she exclaimed. “Thou art to live here with us, did Durham tell thee? It is—oh, Papa, if thou couldst see it! It’s a castle, with great towers and a hall as big as a steeplehouse. I don’t—I don’t know what I’ve done! I only knew—thou commanded me to stay with him, and I did, and this has come of it.”

He patted her. “Verily, Maddy—I did not command thee. I wouldst not. I asked thee at Chalfont Giles, was it so difficult to stay—and thou answered me that thou couldst not desert him.”

“Yes, but thy message—”

“No need to dally,” Durham said. “It’s bitter cold out here, don’t you think, Duchess? Let us—ah!

Here’s Shev.” Jervaulx came across the graveled court. Durham grasped his arm at the elbow, held it for a moment’s grip between the two of them. “How do, my man? An old married fellow, by God.”

Jervaulx took her father’s hand, enveloping it in both of his. “Timms. Welcome. Come in… the cold.”

Maddy found herself trailing behind as they guided him off between them. She hurried forward. “There are stairs, Papa. Two long flights. Here—now they begin.” Amid an echo of footsteps on stone, Jervaulx and Durham escorted her father up. “It’s very formidable to see,” Maddy said to him from alongside.