Judith Ivory (10 page)

“Only vaguely. He has gambling losses. I don’t know how heavy, but I’ve seen him at the tables in London.”

“And you?”

He squinted at her. “I have my gambling losses as well. You’re turning out to be one of them.”

“Did it ever occur I might want to help?”

“Me?” He stared at her.

“Are you in some sort of trouble?”

He stood there. Tight-lipped. Immovable. Pigheaded. Like a recalcitrant child confronted with a deed he would never own up to. “You can’t help,” he said. “Just don’t create interest in me in your circle of barristers, solicitors, and—what?—inquirers? I’ll lend you whatever you want.”

“You make it sound like blackmail.”

“It is.”

“Then I don’t want it.”

He looked at her. “Where will you get the money, then?” he asked.

She shrugged. “My father.”

“And what will he want in the way of interest?”

He did not mean money. She knew what he meant.

“And what would you?” she asked.

He let out a laugh. “Nothing. How much do you need?”

“At least a hundred pounds. To begin with.”

“I’ll sign a draft this afternoon. You can pay it back at your convenience.”

She couldn’t believe he was talking of lending her the money. And so easily.

He handed the letter back. “And you should stay,” he said. He ran his hand back through his hair and looked about the room as if just realizing where he was. “Among other reasons, I’m leaving. That is the problem, isn’t it?” He glanced at her. “My being here?”

“Where are you going?”

He sighed. His hands went out for an instant, a vague gesture of helplessness. “France, again. Bloody France.” Then he dropped into a chair that faced her. “Do you mind if I stay here a while?”

She frowned. She didn’t know how to deal with this. Now that she had stopped his tirade, was she going to have trouble getting him out of her room? “Why?”

“No one will bother me here.”

He looked more than bothered. He looked exhausted.
And very comfortable, settled there in her chair. Even a little intractable. She didn’t want to tangle with him further.

“All right. I still have one or two things more to pack.”

But she didn’t budge. He was slouched down in the chair, his legs stretched out in front of him. They seemed to go for yards. And he was staring at her.

She was afraid to move. She settled back an inch, perched on the edge of her upended trunk. Everything she needed—her gloves, her hat, her nightclothes—were in the bedroom. But she was afraid to walk by him, afraid to walk near him; afraid he would follow. Or, perhaps more, afraid that even if he didn’t, she would walk into that room thinking of him, this image of him: Loosened, stretched out, at rest in a private way that made her remember the unique grace of his body in even the most awkward of circumstances.

It was he who broke the silence.

“Your hair,” he said. “I’ve never seen that color on a woman before.” He was thoughtful for a moment. “You know I used to dream of a woman when I was ill. They gave me opium, and I thought it was the drug that induced her image. She used to taunt me a little. I would ask her name, but she wouldn’t tell me. Every time. She would only smile.” He left a little pause. “When the opium began to not be my friend, I began to use the little fantasy. It was the one thing I could do better without the drug than with it. I used to make love to her. I used to lie in my bed and summon her, let her occupy my mind. It rather got me through.” He paused. Then he shook his head in wonder. “She looked exactly like you. I can’t explain it, but she looked exactly like you. It’s why, I suppose, you so take me aback every time I look at you. I have the eeriest feeling when I see you sometimes. As if I’ve imagined you into existence. I keep wanting to touch you to see if you’re real.”

The blood flowed into Christina’s face. She bowed her head. The little revelation embarrassed her. But it also unaccountably, overwhelmingly flattered. She would have explained to him, tried to straighten out the funny trick his memory had played on him—

Only he was waving his hand, as if to dismiss the whole thing. “Sorry.” He changed the subject. “Has your host provided you with any brandy? Sometimes there is some by the bed.”

“I’ll send for some.”

“No. God.” He rolled his eyes, then closed them. He leaned his head back. “I don’t want to give a single clue where I am.” Then he squinted up at her. “Would you mind terribly if I went to sleep?”

Whether she minded or not, he had come to his feet again. She watched as he stoked the fire in the hearth until it flamed and crackled.

She glanced at the door. It stood ajar, her last bag perched a few feet in front of it. There was her letter on the desk. A nightdress and chemise, a book, her hat and gloves were only a few yards around the corner. Why didn’t she fetch them? She could feel the heat, the imminent stuffiness of the sitting room as he continued with the fire. He was making it into a blaze. The carriage would be there soon. But she remained, fascinated. The earl, unkempt, undone, was hiding in his own house. And she was the retreat. She had been so before, in an opium dream, without ever knowing it. She wanted to put the feeling from her, but she couldn’t. She felt sought out.

He threw his coat and waistcoat over the arm of a sofa. Then he disappeared behind it. He had stretched out on the stones of the hearth. Too close, she thought. Christina wavered.

“Well, I have to get my things, then,” she said.

“Would you let the drapes down as you go by?”

She did so. And it gave the whole room a cavelike darkness. Only the fire for light.

She stood, playing with the drapery pull for a moment, watching him. Almost immediately, he was still. And as his features, his limbs relaxed, something about him changed. Suspicion, contrivance, convention all seemed to fall away from him. In sleep, he looked strangely innocent.

Christina turned quickly and went into her bedchamber.

The moment disconcerted her. Going to sleep in front of her had suddenly seemed more intimate—more forward—than anything he had yet done. Only a wife, a woman who loved a man, had a right to see such things. His ease in front of her inspired sympathy and concern. She couldn’t be properly wary, properly angry. Lying on her floor, he didn’t seem so much the highhanded earl, the man who knocked her down among trees and rosebushes or came pounding on her door…. No. In that moment, he had seemed more like a lovely, benign stranger. A shipwrecked sailor washed up on her shore.

When her carriage finally arrived, she had been waiting for it—gloves, hat, and baggage—by the front door for more than an hour. There had been trouble with the rear axle, the driver explained. He had had to fix it on the road.

“I’m sorry you had difficulty.” Christina was more than polite. It was such a relief to simply get in the carriage and move away from the house—and the man who made her feel so helplessly caught in something too large for her to control.

The offer of a loan was nice, she reflected. She was intrigued. But still, she wanted to consider the whole prospect from a safer distance. She had decided not to go to her father’s nor stay at the earl’s. She would contemplate her options from a boardinghouse for women in London.

Then, two miles outside the Kewischester gates, her new plans dropped abruptly out from under her. With a sharp crack and a long groan of splitting wood, Christina’s carriage seat took a plunge. Her stomach stayed in the air. Her head was thrown backward, with a bash,
against the back of her seat. And the carriage, its rear portion dragging on the roadbed, came to a bumpy halt.

Christina scrambled to a window.

Outside, the driver was yelling, trying to calm the horses. They were rearing and whinnying their disapproval: Something, some strap of the harness, had given under the impact. The carriage traces pointed straight up to the sky. The horses were wild to be free of the straps that were trying to pull them into the air.

Christina pried open her door and stepped out. Into thick mud. This had apparently proved the final strain. She bent to look beneath the carriage. There, the axle, in two separate pieces, lay sinking into the ooze.

“Oh, Lord.” She jerked her skirts up. But it was too late. She had stooped the front of her dress into the mess. Her shoes were bogged in the sludge. Her skirts and petticoats were caked. “Good Lord,” she repeated.

And just as she thought things couldn’t be worse, there was a violent lurch of the vehicle. The driver leaped back. He had been trying to release the poor horses from the disabled contraption that held them. But, alas, they had released themselves. The last strap that held the team to the carriage broke, and the spooked animals bolted.

“We’ve broken an axle,” she told the butler who greeted her. “The driver is down the road about two miles trying to chase down his horses. My bags are sitting in the middle of the road unattended.” She had decided to ask for the favor all her shrewder inclinations had advised her to avoid. “I need a carriage.”

The servant looked at her more as if she needed a bath. “My sympathy, madam,” he offered. “Of course. But one would have to speak to His Lordship about such a thing.”

“Fine. Where is he?”

The butler’s expression took on a mildly uncomfortable air. “No one knows, madam. He came home early this morning. No one has seen him since.”

It didn’t seem fair, she complained to herself. She’d gotten by this once. But now she either had to go upstairs and confront him again—she knew perfectly well where he was—or else risk not getting a carriage outfitted soon enough to still travel by daylight.

Christina left her damp shoes by the door, left her hat and gloves, and dusted her dress-front the best that she could. Then she made her way up to her old rooms. She had had one successful conversation with Adrien Hunt. And one debacle. As she went up the stairs, she was trying to ascertain what she had done differently in each of the two private meetings with him.

Yet, as soon as she entered the room, all rational analysis evaporated. No logic could take into account the full impact of his presence, what he could do to a room—and particularly what he had done to her own sitting room. She had opened the door onto a wall of stuffy heat. Hot, dark, it was like walking into a tomb. The fire had burned down a little. A more moderate blaze. Then she caught sight of him and stepped back against the door.

He lay on the stones of the hearth, one arm thrown over his eyes, a knee in the air. Shadows from the fire danced across his white shirt. It was eerie. In the hot, dark room, the macabre feeling of a tomb came to mind again. Then she realized there was something more that conspired to make this true. Under his right hand was something bright red. Christina went closer. It was a scarf. Crumpled under his fingers, spread under his wrist like blood.

She frowned. The smell, the atrocious fragrance that had been all over him this morning, was even stronger coming from the scarf. It was a woman’s scarf.

Christina suddenly had a lot less sympathy for his exhaustion. She reached over, about to wake him.

Then she stopped. She grew warm, much warmer than from just the fire. His arm had risen. He peered at her from beneath it.

Everything scattered. She couldn’t remember why she was there, what she was doing, or even that she disapproved of this man and everything he stood for. She could only stare at him. The heavy eyes, shadowed by the arm. The face, caught for a moment without defense, without guise; the dazed expression of a man aroused from sleep, of a man aroused…

And, where first she had been held only by his gaze, suddenly she found herself in a more tangible grip. His hand wrapped itself around her upper arm. She was being pulled down on top of him.

Her first reaction was to laugh. “What in the—”

She caught herself on her palms. He had the devil’s own temperature. He was hot to the touch. Everywhere, he was heat. His chest. His shirt. Both arms went around her—the skin of his wrist burned where it lay against her neck. His fingers spread into her hair.

All humor left. “What do you think you are—”

But it was obvious what he was doing. He was pulling her down. His hand held her head.

His mouth was hot, dry, as if he ran a fever. Then his tongue, not dry at all. So warm; a liquid heat shot through her. Christina began to shake. Every sensation from the greenhouse—every stupid reason why she should have been ten times more careful, slammed into her with one manifold rebuke. You idiot, her mind screamed at her.

You clever, clever creature, her senses murmured.

The dichotomy she wanted to deny opened its mouth and breathed like a dragon through her. As real as fire. As sharp as teeth. She detested this man, she told herself; she pushed at him. He was a horror—the smell of
the vulgar perfume, engulfing her, attested blatantly to the fact. But she was also hopelessly attracted. His sheer carnal appeal raged against her, to the point of blurring her mind and melting all reason.

She made a weak gesture of complaint. “Let me go—” She struggled for breath, for control, for coherence itself. She could feel the beating of his heart, the movements of his body, and her own responses to these. “No!” There was a catch in her voice.

“Scream.” His voice was husky from sleep. But alert. He knew what he was doing.

“What?”

He made a line of kisses down her neck as he spoke. “Prove to me you’ll really scream. Summon help.”

“What? Ah!” She arched her back, rigid. His hand had slipped under her tumbled skirts and run up the back of her thigh.

“God,” he said under his breath, “your skin is like silk.”

Out of the corner of her eye, she could see the red scarf. She shoved harder against him.

He only laughed. And tightened his grip at her back. “You honestly confuse me. I don’t know if you’ll scream or not. But let’s find out.”

“No!”

“Poor thing”—another low laugh—“you don’t know either.”

She tried to pull away with a jerk. But his arm tightened until no struggle was possible. Then, very slowly, he rubbed his free hand over her buttocks; just the thin fabric of her chemise….

“Oh—” she groaned; pleasure, anguish. His touch was so damned appealing. She loved it. And she hated herself. What had she done? She should have opened the drapes, opened the windows, put air in the room. Or called to him from the doorway, asked to speak to
him more publicly. But instead she had enjoyed being closeted for the moment alone with him. She had tiptoed around him, spied on him, run her eyes over him as if being there alone with him gave her some private right. And now, God, he was having his own private privileges.

She twisted her hands, tried to free them. But they were trapped between his body and hers. He held firm. “No! Oh, God,” she whimpered, “I came back for a carriage. Mine broke down. Please. I just want out of here—”

“You don’t know what the hell you want.”

“I do! I want out!”

“Then scream.”

Her eyes welled. Her voice faltered. “No—”

He kissed her.

She tried to fight this, but nothing would stop the pleasure that came over her, wave upon wave, with increasing tenacity. Both his hands slid under her skirts. He cupped her buttocks, pulled her against him.

“Oh, please, don’t do this to me. I can’t.” Her voice trembled, cracked. “I’m not this sort.”

“You’re very much this sort. You’re beautiful. Don’t be an idiot—”

“Don’t laugh at me!”

“I’m not. Only I’m not awarding you sainthood either. Can you be such a fool?” He spoke directly into her face, “Scream, if you want to. That would stop me.”

He seemed about to kiss her again, with a belligerence that bordered on violence. When, suddenly, he jerked, blinked. A tear had dropped smack onto his cheek. Then another one. He wiped at his face, then looked at his hand as if he didn’t believe it.

And Christina let out a sob. Followed by a whole concatenation of sputtering, hiccoughing tears.

“Oh, splendid.” There was apparently something else
that would stop him. “All right, enough.” He sat up and reached for his coat. “Here.” He handed her a handkerchief. “You are really peculiar, do you know that?”

Reluctantly, she took the handkerchief he offered. She blew her nose.

“What frightens you so?”

“When I’m not being raped?”

“You know what I mean. The act itself? Are you frightened of the act itself?”

“No.” She tried to avoid his eyes.

“What then?”

She was silent. She didn’t know.

He took her jaw and shifted her face to look at him. “Talk to me or let me put you on the other side of this foolishness—”

“You,” she said bluntly.

He was taken aback. Then immediately recovered with one of his charming—rather self-aware—smiles. “I don’t think so. I think if it were just you and I, we would have been to bed a week ago.”

She raised her brows. “A week ago—” The absolute nerve of the man! But she refused to be distracted by such a preposterous suggestion. “It’s you,” she insisted. “It’s who you are.”

“It’s who
you
are,” he countered. “The prim, priggish Mrs. Pinn. Why don’t you relax a little? Thomas says you used to be able to.”

“You have no right to discuss me with Thomas!”

Again the confident, easy smile. “I might say the same thing—with Evangeline. Or the Earl of Martingate. Or Lily on her morning rounds. Or anyone else you happen to corner for ten minutes—which, luckily for me, is not too many, since you seem afraid to mix with people in even the most trivial of social circumstances. Why, Christina? You want to sleep with me so badly you can’t see straight. And I’m keen to accommodate you—”

“Accommodate me!” She gave him a violent shove
and tried to scramble to her feet. But her wet, stockinged feet slipped on the floor. Humiliation added to humiliation. She recovered herself on her knees and plunked back to sit on her heels. “You ass! You pompous, conceited ass! I have every right to protect myself.”

“From what?”

“From—” She couldn’t find words miserable enough to fix him. “From—from what consorting with the likes of you would make me!”

“Happy, for just a short space of time?”

“No. From what you, what other people already suppose a divorced woman must become.”

“Which is?”

“A pitiful, lonely woman or”—she spit it at him—“a whore.”

She had done it. His face lost all expression; he was astonished. “Christina, no one would speak ill of you. I wouldn’t allow it.”

“You can’t control what people think.”

“I don’t care what people think. You shouldn’t either.”

“But I do! I care what
I
think.
I
would think badly of myself, don’t you understand? I don’t want to feel pitiful. Or sluttish. There must be something else besides wife, spinster, or rich man’s mistress.”

“A nun,” he offered dryly. “A blessed nun.”

He was getting up. Rather awkwardly. His one leg appeared to be difficult for him to move.

He stood over her. “Christina,” he added, “sometimes you must come up with a few answers of your own. And be willing to live with other people’s relative inability to comprehend. It’s called growing up.”

She didn’t like that. It felt much too true. That he was older, more grown-up somehow than she was. And she resented his saying so, especially when she sat there crying like a child.

“What’s wrong with your leg?” she asked.

“I should go.” He moved. But she saw him flinch slightly as he put weight on his left leg.

“What’s wrong with your leg?” she repeated. She had to twist around. He had walked out of her line of vision.

“I was injured.” He made a dismissive wave of his hand. He was picking up his coat. “It only bothers me when I get very tired. Usually the fire helps. Where’s my waistcoat?” It had slipped to the floor. “Would you be so kind as to hand it to me?”

She did. He took it and then her hand. He pulled her to her feet.

With the toe of his boot, he lifted the hem of her dress. “What on God’s earth happened to you?”

She looked down. “Oh, dear. It’s the reason I came up here.” She looked at him, helpless. How could she ask for his help now? “The carriage I hired broke down a few miles from here and—”

He laughed. “You came here to ask me for a carriage?” She nodded. “To leave?” Again, humor had asserted itself into the features of his face. “After trying to sneak off, first when I was gone, then when I was asleep?” He shook his head in mock impatience. “Honestly, Mrs. Pinn, you are the rudest guest—and least accommodating woman—I have met in a long time.”