Flowers From The Storm (57 page)

“I know,” Maddy said quietly. She looked at Eydie’s bright yellow curls dangling down and remembered the lock in the watch-case by Jervaulx’s bed. “I’m sure it should have been thee.”

“What?” Eydie’s body convulsed with a scornful sob. “Don’t you want him… now that you… now that you—” She moaned again, pulling away and hunching over her lap, holding her arms tight around herself.

“Don’t you—want him now?” she said between tears and a bitter laugh.

“I meant—that we are not much like,” Maddy said.

“Like!” The lady’s shoulders shook. She put her face down in her lap and cried.

Maddy stroked her shoulder, feeling the deep huffing sobs under the exquisite satin.

Eydie dug in her reticule for a handkerchief and held it to her mouth. “You’re one of those Quaker people,” she said through the linen.

“Yes, I was brought up a Friend.”

She rocked herself. “I don’t believe it. I don’t believe it. I hate you, Christian.” She raised her voice to a scream. “I
hate
you, do you hear me?”

No answer came. Maddy didn’t look to see if he was still there. Eydie began to weep again, more quietly now, her handkerchief pressed to her face. She shrugged Maddy’s hand off her shoulders.

“How did you manage it?” she asked suddenly.

Maddy sat on the stair, gripping her fingers together around her knees. “Manage?”

“How did you trap him into it? And don’t tell me silly lies,” Eydie cried. “His sister is my friend. She will tell me everything true.” She suddenly gathered up her skirt and started down the stairs, as if that thought had impelled her from grief into action. At the foot, she stopped, then cast a quick glance backward, above Maddy. An instant later she had pulled her veil over her face and vanished into the vestibule. The front door slammed, echoing around the hall.

Maddy sat on the steps. She had to think of each breath, holding back the shudder that started in her stomach and tried to work its way outward to all her limbs. When she thought she had it under control, she rose. She turned, but she already knew that he was not there: she had seen it in Eydie’s face.

Calvin came quietly into the hall from the back stairs. “It’s my blame, Mistress,” he said. “I ought not to have let her in the door.”

“Calvin,” she said in a treble voice that almost went out of her command. “I need to have my cloak.”

“Mistress—”

“I must go outside. I have to go outside.”

“The garden is—”

“No.” She started for the front door. “Away from here.”

“A moment, Mistress. His Grace will wish to know.”

She opened the door. Cold damp air poured in—it felt good on her hot cheeks. She did not wait for Calvin or her cloak, but quietly closed the door, went down the pristine white steps and began to walk toward home.

Christian heard the front door slam beneath his dressing room. He didn’t move, nor look down on the street to see Eydie leave. He stood alone in the center of the room, the sound of her shrieking voice still in his ears.

He stood there for a long time.

The bizarre unreality of it, to stand watching while his wife went to comfort his weeping mistress. And vile piece of work that he was, he’d thought:
she doesn’t realize
.

If she did or if she didn’t, her simple compassion cut him open—exposed him to himself for what he was: he’d been furious at Eydie’s brass in coming here, enraged into frozen passion at the scene she made, ready to throw her into the street—and Maddy, oh, Maddy, she made him feel it, how he’d wounded.

I didn’t mean it to come to this: nauseating whine of every thoughtless devil after the fact. I didn’t mean it; I wouldn’t have done it if I’d known, if I could have foreseen, if I’d just considered, if, if, if…

Calvin’s light scratch at the door made him turn. He flung it open.

The butler looked like a man facing execution. “Your Grace—” he began.

Christian cut off the groveling before it could start. Too disgusting, to rake down a servant for what was at heart nothing but the devil’s luck and the devil’s own folly that had induced it. “Where?” he demanded.

“Mrs. Sutherland?” the butler asked.

“Hang Sutherland! Duchess is… where?”

“Your Grace—she has gone out. A few minutes ago.” As Christian made an exclamation and headed through the door, he added quickly, “Your Grace—I thought it best—she seemed determined to proceed. I sent a man after her with a cloak, and orders to attend her at a distance and send word if she doesn’t return directly.”

Christian halted. “Yes. All right.” Let her calm herself. Give her time. Give her time and room. “Yes.

You did… well.”

The butler cleared his throat and said reluctantly, “Mr. Hoare has arrived to see you, Your Grace. I have put him in the library.”

Damn—so soon! Christian wasn’t prepared—he’d intended to have Maddy with him, primed to help him if he needed it. Hoare was the lynchpin; if Christian failed here, he was dead.

He pushed a breath through his teeth and picked up his coat. He had no choice. The wheel was turning.

He’d set it to rolling and had to ride it now.

Christian entered the double-storied library from its book gallery, where he could overlook the room below. Pausing amid the familiar smell of leather bindings, he swore silently as he looked down upon the men sitting like a pair of misplaced undertakers on a couch still slipcovered in red summer stripes. His summons had been answered by the one partner Christian had the least desire to deal with. Of these two promising scions of the Hoare family, the elder was agreeable enough, but his younger cousin was Religious— not a trait which recommended him to Christian, nor the other way round.

Hoare’s had been bankers to the Dukes of Jervaulx for a century. Christian hadn’t changed that, though he’d often thought of it when the partners had tilted at him with polite vigor over his schemes—reckless or visionary, depending on whose side held the floor. But Hoare’s had stood with the family through his father’s decades of real debt, so Christian had kept on with them, impatient though they made him. He wished now that he’d been a little less loyal.

He thought of the letter they’d written in reply to his last draft. Pray for his health, would they?

Self-righteous bastards. He’d give them something to pray about.

With a loud, rude step, he went down the stairs and swung to face them from the foot. “Gentlemen,” he said, without greeting. “Explain.”

They both rose, with murmured good mornings. The religious Mr. Hoare walked forward as if to shake hands.

Christian didn’t move. The man stopped, losing momentum before he got three feet.

“I…
wait
,” Christian said. “Explain.”

“If you refer to the delay in—”

“
Delay
!” Christian cut into the banker’s dignified words. He did not dare allow a rational dialogue to develop. “I am… my feelings… so violent—” He flung himself away from the staircase. “Can hardly…

speak, sir!”

He didn’t want to play up inarticulate fury too far or he would encourage doubts about his sanity. So he stopped at his desk and sat down. This, at least, he’d had time to prepare— another draft already written out and placed beneath a blank sheet, the whole concealed from their view by a convenient stack of books. He picked up a pen and wrote across the blank sheet—God knew how it turned out, but he didn’t stop to check—and slipped the one Maddy had examined for errors from beneath.

He stood up and held it out. “Try again.”

The bankers had looked uncomfortable from the start. The elder of the Hoares stepped forward to accept the draft, but his partner said, “I’m afraid there may still be a delay.”

“Why?”

“We have instituted certain new regulations.”

Christian leaned on his desk. “My money…” he said menacingly. “You have… lost it?”

“Certainly not!” The elder spoke up.

“To be perfectly candid, Your Grace,” the younger Mr. Hoare said stiffly, “your family has given us grounds for concern as to…” He found himself swimming in deep water and spread his legs, taking a firmer stance. “As to the propriety of allowing funds to be removed from your account at present.”

“Ah.” Christian smiled. “No regulation.” His lip curled. “Just plain… thief.”

“Now see here! We are merely exercising due care, as anyone of sense would expect us to do in this uncertain situation.”

Christian sat back in his chair, picking up a copy of
The Times
. He held it up in one hand and looked at it consideringly. “ ”Bank robbery. Hoare’s steal…
deposit
.“” He tilted his head in approval. “Clever headline.”

They stood like men facing an armed highwayman themselves. Christian lowered the paper and smiled apologetically.

The elder Mr. Hoare folded the draft and put it into his pocket. “Of course that won’t be necessary,” he said, in a quieter tone than his cousin had yet used. “We had understood that Your Grace was not well, and that communication alleged to be from yourself might not be perfectly legitimate. We wished to exercise due prudence. For myself, I hope it hasn’t caused Your Grace offense. If so, we must apologize profoundly—must we not, Cousin Hoare?”

His younger relation begrudged it. His tone still held a grain of defiance. “Of course, we’ll be keeping strict account, should there be any inquiry from the Lord Chancellor’s office.”

“By all means,” Christian said. “The money… when?”

“I’ll have a courier here before noon,” the elder said.

Christian pulled the bell for Calvin. He let them stand there until the butler came, stewing in his unforgiving silence. They went out with stiff wishes for his continued health that he answered with no more than a curt nod.

When they were gone, Christian collapsed heavily into his chair. His hands were not quite steady.

Victory.

All on his own, victory.

He wanted to grin and weep at once. He wanted to share it, this charge of elation. He wanted Maddy beside him.

The watermen’s calls were all that was tangible about the river—the calls, and the slow current at the bank that fanned the water weeds, a silver surface that vanished into mist a few yards out. The fog had clung to Chelsea all day, swallowing the row of houses behind her and muffling the sound of traffic.

Maddy leaned on a rail by the river, huddled in her cloak. The footman from Belgrave Square was still with her, a patient silhouette standing under an awning across the street, just at the edge of the mist.

The light had begun to fail. She knew she would have to do something soon. She could not stay here forever.

A waterman ran his punt up onto the bank, secured it, and dragged out a basket. She watched him hike his pants and make a nimble leap to a set of wooden steps. He climbed up. “Live eels, ma’am?” he asked cheerfully.

Maddy shook her head.

He walked past, holding his burden up for the view of a carriage that Maddy heard coming along the street behind her. “Live eels, then!” he called. “Live-o!”

The steady beat of the horses’ hooves advanced slowly. Maddy turned to look as the coachman curbed his team in a jingle of harness. The waterman raised his eels hopefully toward the shining black chariot.

It had a bright, familiar crest on the door. She saw her shadowy footman come forward to it from the mist.

The door opened. Jervaulx stepped down, his cape spreading to show a flash of scarlet. He stood looking toward Maddy.

“Five and a half, Your Lordship,” the waterman said, asking an outrageous price. “Alive-o. Look here.”

He started to open his basket.

Jervaulx glanced at him, then toward the footman with brief nod. The servant forestalled the ecstatic waterman from displaying his wares to the duke, drawing the eel catcher away toward the rear of the carriage. Jervaulx walked toward Maddy.

He stood in front of her.

“Enough,” he said quietly. “Come… home.”

Home, she thought. But this was home, this village and river, these trees, these boats; she knew them all, could have found them in the mist, with her eyes closed. She had lived here all her life.

He looked away from her, toward the river. Then he made a sweep of his hand, dismissing the carriage.

“Walk?” He offered her his arm.

In silence, she turned, resting her fingers lightly on his sleeve. He was warm beneath her cold hands. He put his glove over her fingers, covering them against the misty air.

He always made so it easy to walk with him. Without awkwardness, with a feeling of fitting naturally to her step. They walked until Maddy could no longer hear the soft snorts and intermittent hoof thumps of the waiting horses.

“Wast thou engaged to marry her?” she asked.

The muscle in his arm tightened a little beneath her hands, the only sign of change in him. “No.”

“”She said—that it ought to have been her.“