JoAnn Wendt (3 page)

The stranger stirred on his pillow. Flavia held her breath. He mumbled, groped for her shoulder, patted it and then sank into deep sleep. Flavia watched him. Shame kindled in her cheeks as she gazed at him. Shame for her sin, shame for the feelings he’d awakened in her, shame that the rest of her life would be ruled by deceit.

Deceit.

If this night didn’t bring a child, she would be forced to... She wrenched her face away, her pillow rustling.
Dear God, no! No one else! Not after the wonder of tonight!
Heart hammering, she lay there praying for a child and alternately begging God
not
to give her one. She trembled at the thought of the duke’s shrewd eyes inspecting his heir. Suppose he grew suspicious? Panic surged. She must get back to Uncle Simon, back to the coach, back to Uncle’s house, where she was presumed to be spending the night.

The sea captain’s arm was dead weight upon her.
His breathing was deep, calm. She must go. Uncle would be pacing the alley, eaten up with worry. The hour was terribly late.

Flavia cast her eyes about the room, getting her bearings. The room was poorly lit. The oil lamp scattered grotesque shadows that changed form with each flicker of flame. She made out her cloak, lying in a dark heap on the floor. Petticoats and bodice topped a broken chair. Her chemise and stockings rested beneath his breeches on the floor beside the bed.

Holding her breath, she carefully lifted his leaden arm and inched out from under his hot embrace. Icy sheets met her legs, an icy floor her bare feet.

Escaping the bed, she dressed in haste. When a silk petticoat rustled going over her head, she caught her breath. She froze, her eyes leaping to the bed. But he slept on. Snatching up her cloak, she stole to the door. Her heart hammered as she eased up the heavy crossbar. Luck was with her. The battered old door with its decoration of knife scars opened without comment.

Hovering on the threshold, she permitted herself a glance at the figure on the bed. His hair was shockingly dark against the pillow. It had not seemed so when she was close. She had a sudden urge to cross the room and study the color of his hair, drinking it in, engraving the detail in her memory, where she could keep it and cherish it forever. But this she knew to be foolishness. Foolishness born of the stress of this unnatural night. Still, she hovered, gazing wistfully at him.

I
shall never see him again. Never.

She knew she should feel profound relief. But somehow the finality of it settled into her heart like a stone. She could feel tears gathering. She blinked them away.

“I don’t even know your name,” she whispered softly. “Only that you are captain of the
Caroline
...”

In the sputtering lamplight, he moved restlessly in his sleep. Flavia caught her breath. Sweeping her gaze over him one last time, she turned and slipped into a hallway that reeked of fried fish and ale. Soundlessly, she pulled the door shut.

Fighting tears, she flew down the ill-lit passageway, and, stumbling blindly down creaking uneven stairs, ran out into the fog and into her godfather’s comforting arms.

Chapter 3

September 1753

Almost two years later

Tewksbury Hall was ablaze with light. Set against the starless London night and the black flowing river, the seventy-room ducal mansion glittered like a fairyland.

Within, countless candles of the finest beeswax flamed in ornate silver and brass sconces. The melting wax sent up a delicate, expensive fragrance. In the east and west wing ballrooms, crystal chandeliers were springing to life. Footmen in black and gold livery tiptoed to each chandelier, lifting long brass candlelighters to candles nestled in crystal. The candle wicks caught fire one by one and prisms of light shot out from chandeliers and went spinning over a polished rich walnut dancing floor. The immense empty chambers reverberated with the discordant sounds of violins tuning up.

Out of doors, the dark rolling grounds of Tewksbury twinkled with diamond-like light. Brass lanterns burned everywhere: lanterns dotted the vast gardens; lanterns marched down formal French terraces to the river; lanterns converged on red-carpeted landings where wealthy guests would arrive in private river barges; lanterns lit a newly constructed gazebo at the water’s edge where additional violinists sent lilting tunes out upon the night waters.

The duke of Tewksbury had spared no expense to ensure that the first birthday of his heir, Robert Charles Neville Rochambeau would be the crowning event of London’s social season.

Flavia’s silver kid slippers clicked nervously down the marble corridor of the east wing. Obedient to the duke’s wishes, she’d spent the day under the exhausting ministrations of dress-maker, hairdresser, perfumer, jeweler—every sort of sycophant. Their incessant chatter, their bickering, had driven all rational thought from her mind. But perhaps that was to the good, she reasoned wearily. Tonight she must not think too much. She mustn’t brood. For this eve of her son’s natal day awakened all the old fears. It awakened all the old yearnings too, she was forced to admit.

It had been almost two years. Where was “he”? Was he alive and well? What might he be doing at this very moment?

The yearning that had been her legacy since the night on the quay, welled up. Fed by the festive occasion, the yearning throbbed with fresh intensity.

Oh, why couldn’t she forget the man!

With a vividness that made her ashamed, she remembered his gentle touch, his masculine smell. When she closed her eyes at night to sleep, he was there; and though she might weep in helpless frustration, she couldn’t help remembering his thrilling kisses.

Lost in memory, she shivered. The brisk click of her heels slowed. Her steps flagged. To remember such things was to open herself to jeopardy. To yearn for him was dangerous. What of her position? What of her parents? And Robert?

She drew a scared, determined breath. Above all, she must protect the baby. No hint of scandal must touch him. She was well aware that at his birth London wags had amused themselves by joking about the duke’s late-found virility. People had dredged up tittle-tattle about the duke’s previous duchesses.

Terrified that gossips might cast their malicious eyes upon
her,
she’d withdrawn like a turtle into its shell. Gradually, her warm, trusting nature had chilled to ice. In less than two years, the open-hearted girl had become the cool, unapproachable duchess of Tewksbury. If the metamorphosis had displeased her puzzled family and her friends, it had pleased the duke, Flavia mused unhappily. The duke disliked females who wore their feelings on their sleeves. The new, aloof Flavia was more to his taste. She realized he’d paid her the ultimate compliment when, during their dreary dinners in the immense dining hall, he’d begun to assault her with dry little histories of his jade collection.

Secure in the knowledge that an heir slept in the nursery, he’d dispensed with visits to her bedchamber. In this Flavia had felt relief, for his cold, efficient performing of marital duty left her sobbing into her pillow for that which was lost to her... for that which must
always
be lost to her if she intended to protect her son and herself.

Wearily, she sighed in resignation. If life was to be loveless, then so be it. There were other satisfactions. There was satisfaction in lavishing love upon her adorable son. There was satisfaction in seeing Papa prosperous and happy, in shepherding her younger sisters into good matches.

But, for herself? The question hung in the air.

She frowned in determination. Straightening the shoulders that felt so burdened, she said aloud, “I
shall
survive.”

“M’lady?”

A young footman with inquiring eyes bobbed out from his post in the corridor beside an enormous Flemish tapestry. Flavia stiffened, controlling the impulse to shriek in startled surprise. She’d not seen the lad, as his livery blended into a tapestry scene depicting the crusaders’ march to the Holy Land.

He ducked his head in a nervous bow. “M'lady?”

Flavia shook her head and granted him a chilly smile. It was a smile that served her well these days, keeping all persons—highborn or low—at arm’s length. The carefully cultivated smile isolated her, kept her safe from kitchen gossip and the more vicious snipes of the well-born. Head high, she swept past the boy without replying.

Her light step echoed down the corridor, carrying her to the balcony of mirrors that overlooked the white marble entrance hall below. A marble staircase curved downward from each side of the balcony. As she lifted her skirts slightly to descend, cloth-of-silver peeped from beneath her gown, swirling at her ankles. Clicking down the snow-white staircase, she anxiously studied her repeating image in the mirrored panels that followed her down. Her anxiety lessened with each candle-lit image.

She looked every inch the duchess. The duke would be pleased. Her girlish mass of red hair had been tamed to a sleek sophistication. Washed three times by a clucking covey of hairdressers, her hair had been brushed dry, then drawn to the crown of her head and coaxed into a tumble of Greek curls that emulated the Greek statues of Tewksbury Gardens. A tendril of burnished hair curled at each ear, softening the blaze of diamonds that trembled there.

Her gown was French, as the duke had commanded. An acclaimed dressmaker had been summoned from Paris. The result—dazzling. Even the difficult-to-please duke deemed it worthy of the occasion.

The gown was a sweep of ivory satin. The neckline was low and trimmed with flowerlike ivory satin petals. Each petal was encrusted with seed pearls and brilliants. Cloth-of-silver underskirts rippled at the hem of her gown as she moved, lending a silvery grace. She wore diamonds on her fingers, diamonds on her wrists and the famous Tewksbury diamond pendant upon her white bosom.

With a last anxious glance in the glass, Flavia stepped from the staircase, releasing her skirts. The heavy satin woofed softly as it settled round her. She hurried on, her step echoing in the entrance hall, her step clicking over a floor of snowy marble that had as its center the ducal crest worked in black and gold marble. From their posts near the tall, ornately carved double doors, footmen bowed as she passed. A glance out the Venetian glass windows assured her all was in readiness outside, too. The duke would find nothing to criticize. Torches flamed along Tewksbury’s quarter-mile carriage drive. Footmen waited in the flaring light to help guests alight from conveyances that would range from Uncle Simon’s modest landau to coaches crested and trimmed in gold leaf.

Flavia shivered. She wished the coaches, the river barges would never arrive. She dreaded tonight. She dreaded the natal day congratulations that would bubble so effusively from smiling mouths while malicious eyes narrowed and darted between her young figure and that of the aging duke. She shuddered. Then, sensing the eyes of servants upon her, she swept regally on.

The duke waited in the Hall of Portraits in the west wing. As was his custom in unoccupied moments, he was studying the heroic-size paintings of titled Englishmen and equally titled Germans. His own likeness, Germanic and severe, hung in the place of honor.

As Flavia entered, her heart drummed with the trepidation she always felt in the duke’s presence. Hearing the rustle of her gown, he turned abruptly. She dropped into a graceful curtsy. When she rose, he was fitting spectacles upon the bridge of his long Roman nose. Clasping his hands behind his stiff black brocade coat, he studied her without expression. As he did so, Flavia’s cheeks warmed in humiliation. She was the duke’s property. She was his to inspect. Still, she thought in a flush of anger, it is degrading. She fought the impulse to fidget under his gaze; the duke disliked females with fluttery hands.

At last he removed the spectacles, folded the wire temples with maddening slowness, and replaced the spectacles in an inner breast pocket.

“I approve,” he said in his chill, thready voice.

Flavia let out her breath in relief.

‘Thank you, sir,” she said softly.

“Not at all.”

He continued to inspect her, his cold eyes traveling from her crown of Greek curls to her silver slippers.

“I believe I shall have you painted as you are tonight. The new portrait shall replace the current one hanging in the Hall of Duchesses. That likeness lacks—” He tossed a ruffled wrist in an aristocratic gesture. “—lacks dignity,” he finished.

Flavia flushed. She knew the duke disliked that portrait. In it, she was all hair and eyes. And her face was not the oval perfection of her predecessors.

She swallowed. “My only desire is to please you, sir.”

It was true, fervently true, she admitted to herself. The duke displeased was a man to be feared.

“Of course.” He accepted the homage as his due. He granted her a rare, careful smile. “You
do
please me, my dear.”

Flavia’s eyes widened in surprise. The duke seldom praised. Hardly knowing how to respond, she lowered her eyes to the Oriental carpet that lay like an island in the huge polished hall. She curtsied once again.

“Thank you, sir.”

He gave a pleased nod at her response and moved toward her on thin legs that were almost comic in white silk stockings and enormous ribboned knee clocks. With stiff formality he offered his arm.

“Come, my dear. We shall greet our guests on this the first natal celebration of my son.”

His thready voice rang with pride, and obediently Flavia took his arm and moved with him to the corridor of bowing footmen.

“You’ve viewed my new jade piece, Flavia?”

Carefully, she considered her answer. His Grace was easily irritated at an ill-chosen word about his jades.

“The vase is magnificent, sir. It’s not nephrite jade but jadeite, isn’t it? If I’m not mistaken, sir, a vein of dark green imperial jade runs through the lip of the vase. Only a master craftsman carves imperial jade.”

His eyebrows lifted in pleased surprise.

“Very good, my dear. You are learning.” He drew a proud, deep breath. “The piece,” he said, “is a treasure!”