Love's Reward (13 page)

“Very well.”

She took a knife and sharpened her charcoal, chopping fiercely at the innocent stick.

“I find it incredible that you let Lady Mary come to me with her request. A message would have sent me to her. She shouldn’t risk the air. She is obviously very ill. Don’t you care?”

“My sister knows that I have things I must do. She also likes to go out when she is feeling up to it. If she is dying, is that a reason to restrict what’s left of her life? Rather the opposite, I would have thought.”

Joanna dropped her charcoal. “She is
dying
?”

His tone remained level and controlled, but anguish shimmered and darted beneath the surface.

“I hope not. But the possibility brings me here to your studio. Nothing else would, I assure you. Now, for God’s sake, start working.”

Joanna stared at him blindly, as if her own shock and distress stripped what she was seeing of meaning. Then she shook herself. This was the gift Lady Mary wanted.

“I’ll start with a profile. Stay just as you are and look at the window frame.”

He remained as still as a marble god while Joanna let her charcoal sweep feverishly over the paper. The line of brow, nose, and chin burned into the white surface. In a set of quick strokes she blocked in the turn of his shoulder and his high collar and cravat, which blocked any view of his neck or throat. His hair lay like a shadow over his forehead.

She stepped back for a moment to look at what she had done. Emotion had distorted her drawing into something far too disturbing. In one violent movement, she stripped the paper from the board and crushed it in both hands.

He glanced around. “Do I contaminate your art—like the blood of Nessus—poisoning your gift into agony?”

“No, it’s not your fault,” she said blindly. “Stay like that. I shall start again.”

It would not come right. Every attempt dulled into meaninglessness.

Joanna began to hate herself, and her pain threatened to spill over into something embarrassing and public. This was her one gift. She had thrown away every privilege to which she’d been born in order to pursue it: a Season in London; evenings filled with frivolity and flirtation; the chance to meet a man she could love, to marry him and bear his children.

Now her skill seemed to have seeped away, draining from her fingertips like sand flowing from a broken hourglass, making a mockery of her sacrifice.

She tore down the sheet and crumpled it with the others.

“What is it?” Genuine concern marked his voice.

Joanna threw down her charcoal and walked away from the easel.

“Nothing, Lord Tarrant. I am out of practice. Let’s try again tomorrow.”

“For God’s sake, you’re my wife. Call me Fitzroy.”

“Very well. Fitzroy. Anyway, who was Nessus?”

He stood and flexed his shoulders. “The centaur who carried off Hercules’ wife, Deianira. When Hercules shot him down with a poisoned arrow, the dying Nessus convinced her to soak one of Hercules’ shirts in his blood, claiming it would act as a love charm. Instead, when she made Hercules a gift of the shirt, the poison caused the hero so much torment that he killed himself.”

“And Deianira hanged herself, too, didn’t she? I remember now.” Joanna paced restlessly. “What do you suppose all those old stories really mean? Centaurs and gods and warriors in bronze armor? Must heroes fight monsters to prove themselves, and must it always end in tragedy?”

“It doesn’t matter how it ends,” he replied. “It is how they conduct themselves in the meantime, and whether the monster is successfully destroyed.”

“That’s so typical of a man. Of course it matters how it ends!”

“Both Nessus and Hercules died. One for love, and one from its results. But only Hercules is remembered as a hero.”

Joanna spun back to face him. “No one asked Deianira for her opinion.”

His eyes filled with mockery. “She ran away with the wrong man, like you did.”

“In my case they were each the wrong man, weren’t they? And we are not Greek. Our stories are so much tamer.
‘I,’ said the Sparrow, ‘with my bow and arrow, I killed Cock Robin.’
England is not as well suited to high tragedy.”

“Yet Cock Robin is just as dead.”

He crossed the room to her easel. Pinning up a fresh sheet, he took up a stick of charcoal.

“‘Who’ll dig his grave?’ ‘I,’ said the Owl, ‘with my pick and shovel, I’ll dig his grave.’”
His hand moved rapidly over the paper. “What would Athene think, do you suppose, if she knew that her sacred bird has become a gravedigger in an English children’s song?”

“I don’t know.” Joanna gazed at the strong, graceful line of his arm and the strangely innocent concentration on his face. “Is it merely a children’s song? Who
was
Cock Robin?”

“I thought you would be able to tell me that,” he replied, turning his head to smile at her. “You’re the pagan, after all.”

Joanna crossed quickly to the easel. Nessus’s powerful horse’s legs straggled across the turf, his man’s torso twisted in the death agony, his hands clutching at the shaft of an arrow fired by a faraway Hercules just cresting a hill top. The creature’s head and shoulders lay in the lap of a woman.

The entire drawing was fiercely, brilliantly executed, with a stunning economy of line and a passionate depth. She could feel the centaur’s torment and his desire for revenge as his lifeblood ebbed away.

And the woman? The wife of Hercules, who unwittingly brought about the death of these two great symbols of male power—centaur and hero?

Deianira gazed away into a remote distance, as if the pain of these inferior creatures meant nothing to her. Black hair fell uncoiled around her face—the face that Joanna looked at every morning in the mirror. Her husband had used his own wife as a model for Deianira, though neither hero nor centaur yet boasted features.

Confused heat flooded her cheeks.

Someone tapped at the door.

Fitzroy tore down the sheet, as she had done, crushing it into a ball.

A footman entered with a letter on a tray, and bowed.

“For Lady Tarrant, my lord.”

“For me?” Joanna broke open the plain wax seal. A strand of bright blond hair curled inside the paper.

“What is it?” His tone was sharp.

“I don’t know.” She looked up, unable to hide her mistrust and distress. “I don’t know what it means.”

She set the paper into his outstretched hand, reading aloud the one line as she did so.

“We have Milly.”

Joanna sat on the empty chair, dropping her head forward as she stared down at the lock of blond hair.

“What can it mean?” She felt sick and faint, the blood draining away. “Who has Milly?”

Fitzroy savagely crumpled the note. “Your little sister is in no danger, Joanna. It’s all right. You must trust me in this.”

She looked up. “Trust you? Why should I trust you?”

He watched her steadily for a moment, as if regretting what he would have to say.

“I have a man watching Miss Able’s Academy. If anything had happened, he would have sent word. Milly is safe.”

Joanna clutched at his sleeve. “You have a man there? Whatever for? Is Milly in peril? For God’s sake, why?”

He threw down the crushed sheet of paper, his hand white across the knuckles.

“She’s your sister and you are my wife. So I took some simple precautions. There are people who don’t like me, that’s all.”

Joanna leaped to her feet. “And Richard, and Harry, and my sister Eleanor? Are they in danger, too? You married me, saying nothing of this, knowing that it might put my family in some kind of jeopardy? You unconscionable—”

Fitzroy caught her arms. “There’s no real risk, merely a little petty harassment, perhaps. I have made certain of that much, at least, Joanna. Only I am the target. Not you or your family.”

“How can you be sure? Oh, dear God! We must go there.
Now!
”

He studied her face, his eyes dark and soft.

“By all means,” he said quietly. “If it were my sister, nothing else would content me. But believe me, Milly is safe and we race off on a wild-goose chase. It will result in nothing more than whimsy and, very likely, a good soaking. Be of good cheer, Joanna.”

Yet he ordered his carriage. Fifteen minutes later Fitzroy handed Joanna onto the high seat of the yellow-and-black phaeton. The exactly correct amount of seriously shiny brass glimmered brightly in the light from the flambeaux.

A couple of armed menservants on horseback were waiting to accompany them.

In spite of his assurances Fitzroy obviously intended no risk on the journey, but perhaps he always traveled carefully at night.

He gathered up the reins and nodded to his tiger. His very competence and nonchalance were reassuring, somehow filling Joanna’s heart with comfort.

The tiger released the horses’ heads and swung up behind them.

Fitzroy gave her a sudden smile. “Are you prepared to rouse Miss Able out of bed?”

“For my sister’s sake, I’d rouse the Prince Regent himself.”

He laughed. “I doubt very seriously if Prinny is in bed this early.”

They drove rapidly along the turnpike toward the school that Joanna had fled less than two weeks before.

She clutched the strand of hair. Had Milly been kidnapped to be held to ransom, or hurt in some way? If only, if only she could trust that Fitzroy was right!

Yet he seemed unconcerned and lighthearted, gently teasing her about her schooldays. Joanna found her fear melting away to be replaced by an uncomfortable doubt. Perhaps she shouldn’t have demanded this?

Miss Able’s Academy lay in darkness. It had begun to drizzle, turning the sky an inky black.

As they turned in at the gates, one of the servants that Fitzroy had sent on ahead rode up to meet them. Water beaded on his hat, sparkling in the light of the carriage torches.

“I spoke with Vernon, my lord. The little girl’s not been approached and is safe in her bed, right enough.”

Fitzroy grinned at him. Taking Joanna’s hand in his own, he brought it to his lips and kissed it.

“Nevertheless, we shall rouse the academy, Simon, and create a stir of excitement for the ladies and their noble pupils, shall we?”

Simon touched one finger to the brim of his hat, causing a little cascade of water to run down over his nose. He grinned back.

“Very good, my lord.”

“You were right?”

Joanna found herself embracing his strong fingers as relief flooded through her. She closed her eyes for a moment. Nothing could come of this wild nocturnal journey now but embarrassment, surely?

“So it would seem.”

“I’m sorry. I should not have insisted. We have no need to disturb them.”

“Nonsense,” Fitzroy replied. “After coming so far and getting wet, the least we can do is have a little fun, don’t you think?”

He helped Joanna from the carriage and into the shelter of the porch, where Simon began a ponderous hammering at the door. There was no reply.

“Keep trying,” Fitzroy said.

Several more heavy blows followed.

Joanna stood in the porch, while her husband stepped back out into the rain and gazed up at the face of the building.

It began to pour in earnest. The horses shifted nervously in the hand of the tiger. Fitzroy spoke to them, soothing and quiet, water running down over his face and soaking his coat.

“Whatever is the alarm?” a shrill female voice cried suddenly. “I warn you, if you are brigands, we are armed.”

“Brigands in England, Miss Able?” Fitzroy queried, calm and polite. “Lord Tarrant, at your service, ma’am, most certainly not a brigand. You will not, I pray, fire that fearsome blunderbuss? I have come to visit my new wife’s sister, Lady Matilda Acton.”

A lamp sprang to life in an upstairs window. Yellow light washed over Fitzroy’s face, casting his features in gilt.

“At this hour! All decent God-fearing folk are in their beds, Viscount Tarrant. This is a ladies’ establishment, where decorum and propriety are our watchwords and our guides. You would not gain entrance now, were you good King George himself.”

“I trust I am more in command of my faculties than our sainted monarch, ma’am. I pray you will open this door before my servant takes it into his skull to break it down.”

Miss Able shrieked. “I’ll have the Watch on you and your men, you rogue!”

“No, no,” Fitzroy called. “Not the blunderbuss, I pray you, ma’am!”

Joanna stepped out and peered up at her erstwhile headmistress.

“I am here, too, Miss Able, and getting uncomfortably wet. Pray, let us in! Having come so far, may I not see Milly now?”

“Oh, goodness! This is beyond the bounds of anything. I am surprised you dare show your face on these premises, young lady.”

Fitzroy choked back a grin and tried to look stern.

“You are speaking, Miss Able, to my wife, Lady Tarrant, future Countess of Evenham. I’m sure she will forgive your nightcap and gown, and even your fearsome weapon, but she can hardly overlook being made to stand in the rain.”

Miss Able clutched at her nightcap, askew on the straggles of hair that snaked beneath it.

Throughout the exchange, Simon had continued to hammer lustily at the door.

One by one, other lights appeared in other windows, followed by a succession of young female faces pressed against the glass. Eventually a window at the end of the row on the second floor opened to reveal a bright blond head.

“Joanna? Oh, how splendid!”

Joanna spun about and ran along the front of the house until she was directly beneath the window.

“Milly! Are you all right?”

Lady Matilda Acton leaned further from the window. “Of course, I’m all right! Why wouldn’t I be? What on earth are you doing here?”

“Why do we not discuss that in more comfort?” Fitzroy suggested, taking off his hat and pouring water off of it. “Miss Able?”

Mistress and blunderbuss both disappeared from the window.

A few moments later the front door swung open. Fitzroy and Joanna were allowed to step into the hallowed hallway of Miss Able’s Academy for Young Ladies, while Milly was fetched from her bedroom.