Tallie's Knight (23 page)

Her nails were chewed
to the quick. Magnus felt as if someone had reached into his chest and squeezed
his heart until it hurt.

“Please, my lor —Magnus,
let us try again. I promise I will behave better this time. I have found that
saying my multiplication tables can be helpful…”

Magnus could not
believe his ears.

“Saying what is
helpful?”

She hung her head
lower. Tawny locks tumbled around her face, hiding it from him and exposing her
delicate, creamy nape. He longed to plant a kiss on it, but was too distracted
by her incredible words.

“You have been saying
your multiplication tables while I make love to you?”

“Yes,” she whispered.

“So that you will not
be distracted by my lovemaking?”

A tiny sob came from
beneath the mop of hair as she nodded.

“And you think that
this will please me?”

She nodded again.

“Because my cousin
told you I would have no respect for you if you responded? And that you would
shame your family and mine if you did anything other than lie as still as a
corpse?”

“Yes,” she snuffled.

Magnus did not know
whether to laugh or explode with rage. Rage won.

“Bitch!” he swore
violently.

Tallie flinched.
Magnus saw it and swore again.

“I didn’t mean you,
my dear.” He reached out and laid his hand on her shoulder. He felt her tense,
and his heart clenched in his chest again. So small and naive and vulnerable. And
his —all his— despite his bitch of a cousin and her malicious attempt to ruin
his marriage.

“Come here,
sweetheart,” he murmured. “I’m not angry. Not with you. Come, there is no need
to be upset anymore.” Gently he slid an arm around her resisting body and
pulled her against his side. She still wouldn’t look at him. He could feel
repressed sobs convulsing through her.

“My cousin is a
spiteful, malicious bitch,” he said softly, “and the advice she gave you was
completely and utterly wrong.”

The sobs suddenly
stopped on a long, shuddering gasp.

Magnus continued,
stroking her soft, smooth skin as he spoke.

“She did it to cause
trouble between us.” He paused, and tightened his arm around her. “But she hasn’t
succeeded, has she? Because I’m not angry with you; I’m angry with her.”

Tallie let out a
long, quavery sigh and at last he felt her relax against him. Something unwound
inside Magnus.

“Come, Tallie, look
at me,” he murmured, putting a gentle finger under her chin. Slowly she looked
up at him, her woebegone, tear-drowned face pale, her up tilted nose damp and
rosy.

“You’re not angry
with me?” she whispered.

He shook his head. “No.
Are you angry with me?”

She stared at him,
surprised, and suddenly tears began to well up in her eyes again.

“No, of course not,”
she muttered, and with a tiny choke of relief fell into his arms.

“I love you, Magnus,”
she wailed, and, completely overwrought, she burst into tears against his bare
chest. Magnus gathered her close and held her tight, feeling as if the very
foundations of his life had just been shattered.

I love you, Magnus.

Her head was tucked into
the curve between his shoulder and his throat and he could feel the warmth and
dampness of her tears as she sobbed, clutching him as if she’d never let him
go. His cheek rested against her hair and he closed his eyes and held her and
wondered what had become of him. Never in his life had he felt like this —so
attached, so linked, so committed to another soul— and with absolutely no idea
of what to do about it.

He was all at sea in
a storm, with no anchor and no rudder and no one and nothing to guide him…
except his heart… a heart which, in all his twenty-nine years, had neither
given nor received love. I love you, Magnus.

Oh, God. He groaned
in despair and tightened his hold on her.

He did not know how
much time passed, but eventually she left his arms and went behind the screen
to wash her face. He lay on the bed, listening to the sounds of splashing
water, imagining her movements.

He felt exhausted,
and for one cowardly moment thought of sneaking off to his own chamber before
she returned. That way he could take the night to decide how best to deal with
the situation. He had just eased himself upright and was preparing to slip off
the bed when she returned, clad in a fresh nightgown. The look of soft
expectancy in her eyes sent his spirits plummeting. She climbed onto the high
bed and settled herself beside him.

“So…” She blushed
rosily, unable to meet his eyes. “If Laetitia was wrong…” She ran her finger
back and forth along the hem of the sheet. “How…? I mean, what should I…? How
do you wish me to behave when we… you know?”

Magnus felt his
throat tighten. He felt trapped, panic-stricken. What the devil should he say?
Visions of the various women he had known flitted through his mind. Courtesans,
sophisticated married women, widows —with painted faces, vulgar minds and
quick, clever fingers. World-weary women, skilled in pleasing a man, who could
calculate a man’s needs and desires as quickly and efficiently as they
calculated his income.

He did not want to
teach his wife the tricks of their trade. He could not bear to imagine his
innocent little Tallie earnestly and diligently learning how best to please him
in bed as those women had.

But he had to say
something, offer her some guidance to replace Laetitia’s poisonous advice. Only
what? How? His mind was a complete blank.

“Magnus?” she
prompted.

“Just…” He wiped a
hand over his suddenly damp brow. Lord, who’d have thought marriage would be
such a quagmire? It had seemed so simple and straightforward just a few weeks
ago.

“Just be yourself,”
he heard himself saying.

“But…”

“All I want from you
are your honest reactions.”

She looked back at
him, clear-eyed and doubtful, waiting for him to explain further.

“Don’t hide anything,”
he said, feeling suddenly as though he had stepped onto even more dangerous
ground. “Do and say exactly what you wish to. Honesty. That’s all I require.”

“Honesty?” she said
hesitantly. “That’s all you want from me?”

He nodded.

She beamed at him,
and it was like the sun breaking through the morning mist.

“Then that will be
easy.”

He stared back at
her, uneasy at her apparent confidence. If she could be honest with him, then
she would do more than any other woman in his life had done, his mother
included.

“Easy?” He raised his
eyebrows in doubt.

“Very easy,” she
said, smiling radiantly and wriggling her fingers into his warm grip. “A great
deal easier than the multiplication tables, I can tell you. I am always making
mistakes —especially with the eights.”

Magnus blinked for a
moment, then from somewhere deep inside him he felt laughter begin to well up.

“The eights?” he
gasped, grabbing her around the waist and pulling her down to the bed with him.
His laughter echoed around the room and she rolled with him, clutching him and
laughing with him. After a few minutes the deep chuckles slowed.

He lifted his head
and looked at her again, shaking his head.

“The eights?” he
repeated.

“Utterly impossible,”
she giggled.

His eyes darkened and
became intent.

“Then from now on,”
he said in a deep, slow voice, “I suggest you concentrate on nothing but addition,
starting from one plus one.” And he lowered his mouth to hers.

*
       
*
       
*

Tallie awoke very
late next morning. Sunlight streamed through the open curtains and lay in slabs
of gold across the floor of her chamber.

She stretched and
watched the dancing dust motes, feeling dreamy, pleasantly lazy and filled with
contentment. She was alone in bed, but she did not feel lonely. Her husband had
woken her at dawn and made love to her again. And then he’d kissed her and told
her to go back to sleep and he’d gone out.

She had learnt many
more things about the marriage act that night. The most important by far was
that once she stopped fighting her own reactions it was utterly, thrillingly,
splendid. She knew now why the vicar had said marriage was a holy estate, for
there had been times, when her husband was making love to her, Tallie had known
there could be no more wonderful feeling in heaven or on earth. And afterwards,
when she had lain silently in her husband’s warm strong arms, his hand
caressing her hair while she listened to the beat of his heart slowly returning
to normal, it had felt as if she was floating on a cloud, like the angels did.

She had been a little
frightened at first about the extremity of her reactions, but Magnus had
reassured her and encouraged her and continued that marvellous caressing and
stroking. And then he had become rather extreme himself, she reflected, smiling
a secret feminine smile. It was very exciting to think that a magnificent being
like Magnus could be brought to such a state by ordinary little Tallie Robinson,
she thought, snuggling into the pillows. She could still smell his scent on
them, and if she shut her eyes she could imagine he was still here in bed with
her.

“Milady?”

Tallie opened her
eyes. Her new maid, Monique, stood there.

“Milady, your
breakfast awaits you.” Monique indicated a tray containing Tallie’s favourite
French breakfast —sweet, flaky pastries and a large pot of hot milky chocolate.
Reluctantly she sat up, then, blushing, clutched the sheet to her, recalling
her nakedness. Monique showed no surprise, but came forward with a wrapper.

“Votre peignoir,
Milady.”

Tallie supposed that
a dresser was used to seeing people without a stitch of clothing; it was she
who had to get used to being seen. She was a long way now from Miss Fisher’s
establishment, where pupils had dressed and undressed beneath their voluminous
nightgowns behind curtained screens. Married women had no privacy at all.

“Milor’ d’Arenville
said you are to go shopping after breakfast, Milady. I have ordered the bath,
and laid out a gown for you. I thought per’aps we go first to the milliner, and
then later to the glover, and after that…”

“After that we shall
see,” said Tallie, deciding she needed to be firm about this shopping business.
It was all very well to shop, but she wanted to see more of Paris, too. She
wanted to experience as much as she could before they left for Italy.

“Where is my husband,
do you know?” she asked, picking up a pastry.

“E ‘as gone out,
milady. ‘E say to tell you ‘e will back in time to escort you to dinner.”

Dinner? She was to
wait until dinner to see him? Tallie was crushed. She did so want to see him
now, after all they had shared during the night.

“Oh, but—”

“We ‘ave Claude, the
footman, to escort us, milady,” Monique assured her. “Milor’ d’Arenville ‘as
left instructions that you are always to ‘ave ‘im as your escort, so you need
not worry. All ‘as been arranged by milor’.”

So it seems, thought
Tallie, disappointed. Escort indeed! A paltry footman instead of her magnificent
husband. She did not want to explore Paris with a maid and a footman —she
wanted Magnus.

“Very well, then, I
suppose we will have to waste the whole day shopping,” she said dolefully.

“Perhaps if we hurry
we can get it all finished and out of the way today.”

Monique gave her an
odd look, which Tallie ignored. She finished her pastries and the chocolate,
had her bath, got dressed and went downstairs. Her new personal footman,
Claude, awaited her in the hall.

She blinked in
surprise.

Claude was a most unlikely-looking
footman. He was short, with a barrel chest and long arms which hung down like a
gorilla. His face, too, had a simian quality; most of his teeth were missing
and his skin was badly pitted with the pox. He was quite the ugliest man Tallie
had ever seen in her life.

Wondering what on
earth had possessed her husband to hire such an odd-looking footman, Tallie
allowed herself to be escorted off in search of feminine falderals, Monique
tripping beside her, Claude trudging heavily in the rear.

Hoof-beats pounded
over the cold ground, echoing in the dim silence of the Bois de Boulogne. The
hooves of the sweating horse tossed up clumps of grass and damp earth. Branches
swatted its sides. But the rider held his mount with a firm hand and pressed
on, faster, harder, as if to outride the devil himself.

But it was not
possible to outride one’s own thoughts and fears, thought Magnus, even as he
spurred his horse to greater speed. He was on the brink. She’d driven him to
it. He rode onwards, oblivious of his surroundings.

Was this how it had
started with his father, too? With a declaration of love from an innocent
bride? A lifetime of control, shattered in an instant. He pulled up his
sweating horse, dismounted and led it to a stream.

The horse drank
thirstily. Magnus leaned against the warm, heaving flank and stared into the
fast-flowing water, listening to the burble of clear water over smooth round
stones. Her eyes were like that, he thought —dappled with colour, clear and
bright and glowing with life.

He groaned. Had his
father also felt this aching chasm open up in him? This void, this abyss of
need? Was this how it had begun for him?

He knew how it had
ended —a slow, inevitable descent into hell. A strong man of honour and dignity
reduced to —what? A beggar at his wife’s gate. A slavish worshipper, whose
happiness, well-being and position —whose very honour— depended, in the end,
entirely on his wife. A wife who cared for nothing but riches and the pleasures
of the flesh —with whomever her roving eye descended on.