Judith Ivory (9 page)

With that ominous ending, the Old Man motioned for Gregory to close the door. It slammed, then the carriage wheezed down the drive. It disappeared into a low fog that was rolling in with the dawn.

By the time he stomped up his own front steps, Adrien was tired and irritable. He was greeted at the front door by Dobbs, Chapman, and a kitchen girl.

Dobbs began immediately, reading from a list. “Lady Meldown wants a reply for a party on the nineteenth. We have heard from the Scottish estate; the agent says the tapestries are bid currently at 95 pounds each. Then, Captain and Mrs. Hall have returned from India; they’re hoping you will come by and give your opinion on a piece—”

“That’s enough. We will have to deal with all that this afternoon.”

“But, Your Lordship, there are two other bidders on the tapestries. And Captain Hall—”

“I said that was enough, Dobbs.”

The man closed his book, a slow gesture full of grave reluctance. “As you say, sir.”

“Will you be wanting breakfast now, my lord?” the girl asked.

“I’ll be down for dinner.”

“Sir—” began Chapman.

“I have no need of you now. I’m going straight to bed. I’ll ring for you when I wake up. What is this?”

There, by the door, were two small trunks. He recognized them before the answer came.

“Mrs. Pinn, sir. She has sent for a carriage. She is packed for London—”

Adrien had already picked up the larger of the trunks and started up the stairs.

Christina barely heard the knock. “Yes, yes, in a minute,” she called. She was preoccupied with a letter she was writing.

She blotted it and began to fold it. Then, on a whim, she unfolded the correspondence. She dipped the pen into the ink again. A postscript had occurred to her, which she added to a letter otherwise written with careful forethought.

Five days ago, she had at last heard from her father. His letter had been brief, succinct. She was to come home at once—had she lost her mind? He had hired the best firm of solicitors in London for cases such as hers. If that scoundrel, Pinn, wanted to take it that far, by God, Winchell Bower himself would handle the matter in court. Also, there were some doctors he thought she should see. He had spoken to several, and such things were never so cut and dried. He had several other ideas….

Christina had not liked the commanding tone of her father’s letter. She did not like the idea of more doctors. She was not even sure she liked the idea of more lawyers. She only wanted what was hers and the peace to adjust and try to understand what had happened to the happy life she had planned for herself. And, to this end, she had an idea of her own. Unhappily, she didn’t know how to implement it without retreating to her father’s household—he would never deal with her from here;
that much was clear. And this, she judged, was perhaps for the best anyway. The greenhouse incident had frightened her. For a number of reasons, she was going home.

Yet the present letter she wrote was not to her father.

She was beginning to suspect Richard of being more venal than she had realized. She had heard from his lawyers again. There was mention of a “sum.” They continued to assert that Richard did not wish to make a “thing” of this, that everyone involved must think of the future. But this was beginning to sound more like a threat than a desire for peace. Everyone knew her father—Richard’s lawyers included. Winchell Bower was already mounting for battle, preparing for war. He would not have his daughter found insufficient in any way. At least not on paper, in black and white. The counselor set great store by such things.

Indeed, the problem did not seem to be getting her father’s “help,” but rather keeping him from giving it.

Her father meant well, Christina knew. He truly did care about the “principles involved.” She just didn’t want to become the focal point, caught in the midst of one of her father’s battles for principle. The one obvious way to stop this would be to get—to pay—Richard to admit some trumped-up culpability, pay to have the divorce decree read the way her father thought it should. Oddly enough, Richard seemed amenable to such a possibility. She wasn’t certain why, but Richard seemed suddenly less interested in “coming off in a bad light” and more interested in money—provided it should fall to him in sizable quantity. And what Christina was interested in, at this point, was more information.

Hence the letter. It was to a firm her father had used on several occasions. For a price, they would “gather evidence.”

The knocking came again, almost a pounding. “I’m coming,” Christina called.

She opened the door to her sitting room, thinking it was the man come for her last bag.

“May I come in?”

“No.” She was stunned. And flustered.

She couldn’t believe the look of him. Adrien Hunt was disheveled. His cravat was undone, his coat and vest unbuttoned. He had a dark growth of beard. He looked frayed, raw at the edges. And rather touchingly all the more human for the state he was in. Accessible. Even perhaps a little vulnerable.

Yet his eyes, the piercing blue, didn’t yield to this. They pinned her. “Where do you think you are going?” he asked.

“Home. To my father.”

“Like a frightened child?”

She looked away. This offended. For this was precisely her fear. That all her resolve might just be an excuse. That she, in fact, was just a child, unable to cope and running to Papa. “I’m sorry,” she murmured. “I must go. The carriage will be waiting.” She tried to close the door.

His hand slammed into it. He braced the opening a foot wider. “Why?”

“You know why.”

“Remind me.”

She looked down. Her free hand had begun to play with the buttons at the neck of her dress. “You know why,” she repeated.

He let the trunk go. It made a dull echo, thump-and-clatter. “Must I really speak to you out here in the hall?” He put pressure on the door.

She leveled a censuring look at his hand, then his face. This stopped him.

He heaved a huge sigh and ran his hand back through his hair. “Why are you being so difficult?”

“My leaving will simplify things.” She wanted des
perately to put distance between them. “Your Lordship,” she added.

He made an insulted snort. “Adrien.”

She shook her head,
no.

“Christina.” His voice sounded soft, conspiratorial there in the hallway. “I’ve kissed you. I’ve done a lot more than kiss you. You can use my first name.”

Again, she resorted to head-shaking. She couldn’t speak. She couldn’t look him in the face.

“What then?” he asked. “There was no intercourse, so your virtue is intact.”

What sort of conversation was this? Her face glowed from the frankness he insisted on. She could barely breathe. “More or less,” she murmured. She struggled for a coherent answer. “I don’t know.”

His hand touched hers. He stilled the fingers that played with the buttons of her dress. “Then let’s eliminate the ambiguity.”

“No—”

Again, he dropped his hand. As if he would wait for a better solution. Then he changed his mind. He touched her face. Her eyes went up to him. Dangerous. He leaned and kissed her. His hand went down her side, around her waist. He brought her to him. Then, he covered her other hand with his, lifted it from the knob and pushed on the door. He stepped through.

“Don’t.”

She shoved at him, a little angry, a little overwhelmed. Not twenty-four hours from the greenhouse, and he was backing her into the same position. He turned her around, a slow spin. And suddenly she found herself pressed against the other side, the inside, of the door.

She heard the key turn in the lock.

She tried to push him back. “Don’t. I’m serious.”

He took her face in his hands. His thumbs stroked her cheeks. Tender. All she could see were the blue
eyes in the vaguely unkempt dark complexion. They traveled her face.

“So help me,” she promised, “I’ll scream.”

She reached up and took his fingers from her face—trying to render them harmless. Yet he didn’t move away. She lowered her eyes.

His cravat hung loose. The first few buttons of his shirt, she noticed, were undone. The shirt was open: She had had sudden knowledge of him she didn’t want. The hair of his chest would be dense, black. It showed at the edge of his opened collar. She could smell the warmth of him…. Mingled with another, heavier scent she couldn’t quite put her finger to…. Then she realized her mouth, her chin were resting on his knuckles. She was still holding his hands.

She turned loose, pushed away. He stepped back, at arm’s length.

She leaned her head against the door while he studied her.

“Would you really?” he asked.

“What?”

“Scream.”

She nodded, very soberly. Yes.

He thought about this. Then he let go.

He turned and took in his surroundings. He didn’t seem to know the room. Or he knew it only in an abstract sense: a room like a dozen others he had walked through. He glanced at her last trunk, standing upended in the middle of the room.

“So you were going to sneak off, without saying a word?”

Suddenly, it did seem awful. “I was going to leave you a note,” Christina lied.

“Oh, fine, a note.” He threw her a sarcastic look, tapped his fingers once on the trunk.

She didn’t know how he was doing it, but he was making her feel guilty. As if
she
were somehow the cad.

“You should go.” She moved toward him, trying to physically start him toward the door. “My carriage will be here—”

He raised his arm indignantly as she tried to take it. He slipped by her in precisely the opposite direction she was trying to get him to go. “Is this my note?” he asked.

Christina was left standing, bewildered, in the middle of the room. Then bewilderment took on a little anger, a little panic. He had picked up her letter.

“No, it’s not your note! That’s mine!” She crossed the room.

She reached. He sidestepped. There was a little scuffle. The writing table chair grated, went over backward. The desk slid as she came up against it. Then against him. She leaned, reached, all but leaped up the length of his body, trying to get at the letter. But all she got for her trouble was a lordly glance—which quickly turned into the sort of sharp, speculative interest she wished he would keep to himself.

She backed off, raising her hands from his chest cautiously, as if they had touched something prickly: This time she knew the scent. He was saturated with the strong, musky odor of a woman’s heavy perfume. Her hands hovered in spite of this, still aware of him. She was stymied for a few seconds by an atmosphere, a warmth, the nearness of his naked chest through the open placket.

Christina drew a deep breath and rested back on her heels. Her fists clenched of their own accord. Blood seemed to rush from her face to her palms. She was so annoyed. By him, by his actions, her own reactions; and by the damned reek of him. He stood there, a virtual hallmark of carnal knowledge.

“Give me my letter,” she said. “That is my private correspondence.”

But he turned, lifted his long arm—he held the letter easily out of her reach. He began to read.

At first, it was pure perverseness; a nasty aristocrat in him not about to be told what to do. Then his eyes jumped down the page and back up. He took it in.

“Oh dear.” He laughed. “Poor Mr. Pinn. But you will need money for this.” He looked at her over the edge of the paper. “Do you need a loan?” Then a look of distaste crossed his face. “What’s this? Here, at the end?”

“The main body of the letter is an investigation I want done of Richard.”

“And the postscript?”

“You can read it for yourself.”

He looked a little alarmed. “And will these people”—he glanced back at the letter—“this Mycen and Weller, do this for you?”

“Without a doubt.”

“Do you do this often, to have it outlined so thoroughly?” She had shocked him. His voice was edged with concern. Good, she thought. He had certainly shocked and upset her enough.

“No,” she answered. “But my father was very particular where he invested his assets. He rejected three suitors before he settled on Richard. And by the time I married him, my father knew the date of origination of Richard’s father’s title and every shilling and square foot of property Richard would one day possess. He knew the condition of the property, the succession of title, the line of inheritance to the property and money—and he knew that no one could stand between Richard and all of it, except the baronet himself.

“I married Richard because I was rather taken with him. But my father allowed it because his grandchildren were to be titled, moneyed people. From his viewpoint, I was married off on the best of evidence, tied up neatly with a silk ribbon, just like a brief—” She drew a breath, as if to continue in the vein of this speech. Then she abandoned the stance with a huge sigh. She had heard the belligerence rising in her own voice. This
damned man, this earl, made her too defensive. Too middle-class. “It’s all a little crass, isn’t it? Still,” she spoke directly, “I intend to stoop to it again, to find out why the little ribbon seems to be unraveling now on Richard’s end. ‘Know thy enemy’?” she offered. “Or at least where one’s best interests lie.”

“And myself. Am I being scrutinized as an enemy or a potential husband in the postscript?”

“Neither. You’re just a matter of curiosity.” But she had him; she could see it in his face. She had asked them to make inquiries about him, and he had something to hide. “Little meetings in the woods?” she suggested. “Conducted mostly in French? Over my prostrate body, I might add. I think I have a right to know….” She looked down. Where she got the nerve, she would never know; she added, “But if you were serious about the loan, to tell you the truth, I could certainly use it—”

“Not with that last sentence. Get a pen. Delete the last line.”

She was stalled for a moment, not certain she had heard right. Did he really intend to lend her money? And did a few questions asked about him around London really matter so awfully much? What exactly was it, she wondered, that he was hiding? She fetched the quill and scratched through the postscript. “Now. Why did that upset you so badly?”

“It would upset anyone. It’s damn well going to give Richard a seizure.”

“You know Richard?”