Judith Ivory (19 page)

Christina. Adrien’s mind blanked for a moment. He was going to have to leave her. With no further
ado. The thought, oddly, made his throat constrict.

“I can’t go,” he told the Old Man. “Not tonight.”

“You have to,” The Old Man’s mouth compressed. He wagged a finger. “So help me—” he threatened, “if you don’t go voluntarily—”

“I need one more day. I have business….”

The Old Man squinted and tilted his canny little face at the younger man. “It’s the woman upstairs,” he said quietly.

Adrien threw him a surly look. “Bug off, Edward. That’s my personal life. Which you’ve invaded quite enough for one night.”

Christina saw Adrien’s outline through the common room window. A sigh of relief went through her. Then a little wave of foolishness. She had come downstairs, attired only in her dressing gown, her hair undone and wild about her shoulders. An unsettled, ominous feeling had made it impossible to stay waiting in the room any longer. She had to look for him. But there he stood. Alone, outside in the drive. Perfectly fine. She didn’t know what she had expected—Adrien gone? Hauled away in chains? Or perhaps his inert body lying dead upon the floor? Their visitor of the wee hours, that peculiar, official-looking old man, had profoundly upset her.

Yet, there Adrien was. Fine. Standing. Tossing stones across the puddles in the driveway.

He seemed neither to hear the door open nor notice the little bit of light that came through as she stepped out. She came up behind him. “I expected you to come back upstairs,” she said softly.

He’d turned with a start. Then, in a gesture of acknowledgment, threw his handful of pebbles across the road. They splashed noisily into a puddle, like a shower of raindrops shaken from a tree. “Will you look at that?” He motioned toward the horizon. “I came out here to be
depressed and am thwarted even in that. Look.” He turned her attention east.

The sun was rising. Sunlight, split, prismatic, was making a rainbow at the edge of the land.

She smiled and took his arm. “It’s lovely.”

“What I have to tell you isn’t.” He didn’t hesitate, but plunged in. “I’m leaving. Tomorrow morning. It can’t be helped, and it can’t be delayed.”

She stood there, trying to absorb this. She was glad for the demi-light. Her face, she knew, had gone ashen. Her hands felt clammy as dew. She dug into the firm flesh of his arm, as if to reassure herself that he was there, that the whole summer wasn’t going to fade suddenly like the trick of light there on the horizon.

It was no trick, no phantom that drew her around to him. He traced her neck with the edge of his thumb, then the fine, chiseled detail of her mouth. Then his fingers ran lightly across her closed eyes and into her hair. He took her head and kissed her. Tender. Lingering. Thoroughly. This seemed to be all he wanted. He kissed her mouth for a long time, as if he might memorize it, hold its sensation in his mind. Afterward, he simply took her against his body and held her.

“He makes me nervous,” she murmured against him.

“Who?”

“That old man.”

He laughed. “That makes two of us.”

“I don’t want you to get involved with him.”

“Too late.”

“Then get uninvolved.”

“That’s impossible. At least for the present.”

“Adrien?”

“Hmm.” He stroked her hair.

“Thomas had a cousin once who—who preferred men. A male cousin. Do you know what I mean?”

“Yes.” He backed away a little and laughed. “Only I
am a little shocked you would talk to Thomas about such things.”

“Everyone knew.”

He shook his head at her, drew her against him again.

“That old man,” she continued. “He watches you in a peculiar way.”

Adrien laughed. “He is peculiar. But not in the way you’re implying, I don’t think. I do appreciate your concern though. I shall try not to be too naive.” He made a low, ironic chuckle. “Lord, if Claybourne knew anyone had even suggested such a thing about him….” He changed the subject. “Shall we go upstairs? See if we can get the glass out of the bed?”

“André has already been up. He and Marguerite changed the bed. He was quite worried—he’s afraid of that man, too. Who is this Claybourne?”

“The King’s minister I went to see today. The English Minister of Foreign Affairs.”

Foreign affairs. This could only mean one thing. “France, again,” she sighed.

“Shh. Cornwall. Remember what you promised. I’m going to France under an assumed identity; an English aristocrat can’t travel where I need to go. While I’m there, it must appear that I am still in England. You will help me with this, won’t you? I thought perhaps, if you moved into my house in Cornwall—”

“You want me to go to Cornwall, to live there alone?”

“Sam would take you. I would visit as often as I could.”

Christina frowned. She still wasn’t wild about this idea of his friend Sam. And living alone in Cornwall, for an indefinite period of time, did not sound very much like making a new life, becoming a happy and independent woman….

“I’ll have to think about it,” she said.

In her arms, she felt his muscles tighten. He was disappointed she was so noncommittal.

It dawned on Christina that the trouble Adrien was in reached far—into the high echelons of British government—and wide—spilling over into a revolution on the European continent. This realization, in the light of Adrien’s own uneasy concern, made Christina aware of another unpleasant reality: The smoothest, cleverest man couldn’t control every situation. Under the right circumstances, even a smart man—especially a smart man—knew enough to be afraid.

Adrien’s barber and Mr. Dobbs, with his little black appointment book, could be seen pacing across the far opening, the archway, to the dining room of the Kewischester house. Both were being held off by dark forbidding scowls. Adrien and Christina were having breakfast and trying to maintain the illusion that time and circumstance were not pressing in upon them.

They had left the inn almost immediately, arriving home to wide-eyed stares. Christina, with just a simple dress clinging limply to her figure, no cushioned muslin or halfskirt to hold it out. Her hair was down. There had been no time to fix it; Adrien had been too impatient to go. He was unshaven, rumpled—though the household seemed accustomed to his unconventional habits of arrival and departure. He had received not one raised brow, but rather a quick response to his quiet requests. A large breakfast was served, almost before they could get their wraps off and themselves into the dining room.

Adrien pushed his plate away. “I’m going upstairs to
start with Dobbs.” He made a wan smile. “I’ll see if I can’t get through his list while I’m being shaved. Then I have to go into the west wing to see what can be done about the Cornish problem. Will you look for me, one place or another, when you’re finished?”

Christina had to cover a yawn. “No, I think I’d rather sleep while you arrange your estate matters. I’ll see you this afternoon.”

And see him, she did. Asleep. She found him, just past noon, soundly asleep on the divan in the library. He lay under a clutter of papers, his pen gone loose in his hand. He looked exhausted.

She checked on him periodically. But, just as she had slept all morning, he was out all afternoon, asleep like the dead. And thus their last day went. Lost in the out-of-step rhythm they had somehow fallen into.

It was almost dinner time when she returned to the library and found him gone. Only the papers, in an orderly stack, remained. It took another half hour to locate him, and then, only by luck, did she spot him in the greenhouse.

He turned as she entered.

“Are you avoiding me?” She smiled.

The guilty look that crossed his face changed her teasing tone to a more serious one.

“You are,” she said with surprise.

He shook his head; no explanation. He put his pen down. He’d been writing. “Look.” He reached for a long flower-stem and bent it forward. The end of the stem, where the rose petals had fallen off, was as fat as an acorn.

She didn’t understand at first. “Is something wrong with it?”

He made a wry laugh. “It’s set hips. They’re all over.” He held out his hand. “Bloody bush. I have no idea which crosses are which, or even if any are mine. The
bloody thing has taken up with unknown pollen, with loose-living bees.”

They both laughed. “Well, you should have some interesting crosses.” She smiled at him.

“Without the time to work with them.”

“But the seeds can be dried and saved.”

“Yes.” He let out a long breath. “They can.” He held his hand out to her. She took it, and he brought her near. He touched her face. “You are, I think, the only business I don’t know how to tally up in neat columns. Can you be dried and saved?”

She laughed. “No.”

“Will you be going to Cornwall?”

“No.” She had decided against it; it didn’t make sense for her. “Why should I go to the ends of the earth”—literally, Land’s End was where his property lay—“for a man who won’t even explain exactly why he should need this sacrifice?”

He accepted this as a statement, not a question. “All right,” he said. “Then stay here. Not for me so much as for your own good. Let me protect you in the only way I can while I’m in France.”

She hadn’t thought of this. She hadn’t thought of anything. “I can’t promise—”

“You have plans to leave?”

“I have no plans. I’ve not been able to see anything beyond the day you’re going.”

“Well, I wish you would consider staying on the estate. Richard would have a devil of a time getting at you here. And Samuel—”

“Richard?” She looked at him sharply. “He’s not going to bother me. And I’ve told you my feelings about your friend Samuel. I won’t—”

“We’re not going to get into this again. He’ll be here in the morning. You can meet him. You’ll see, he’s a fine fellow. Pleasant, quiet, almost courtly in his politeness.
He’ll cause you no more inconvenience than your own shadow.”

With that, he kissed her. The woman in his arms took his advice very much to heart: Why get into this again, indeed? She would do as she pleased. And he would be gone, with no say in the matter.

He murmured something. In French, she realized. When she looked at him, he apologized with a squeeze and a helpless shrug. “I was thinking of an old ballad. Though it sounds a little vulgar in English: ‘I will go, but the taste of you will linger still full in my mouth.’”

He was up before dawn, packed, his few small bags loaded onto the carriage. There was a chill in the air, the first real hint that even nature considered the summer over. Christina went down with him in her dressing gown, then had to send up for a cloak.

They waited, the horses, the driver, Adrien himself anxious yet delaying. Christina didn’t understand why until she saw the reason arrive. Charles—Evangeline’s husband of all people—and another man rode up, dusty, dirty, as if they’d been riding all night.

Adrien made brief introductions. The much-talked-about Samuel Rolfeman had arrived in the flesh. He was a plain man, tall, heavy-boned. He had not a single feature one could call blatantly unattractive, yet Christina found the man exceptionally unappealing. The way a prisoner might find his jailer to be, on the whole, a rather gruesome-looking fellow.

She gritted her teeth, nodded politely while the man apologized for being so down-to-the-minute in arriving. “I had expected, you will remember, to not be needed for several days.”

Adrien was solicitous, even grateful. Then Charles and Mr. Rolfeman went inside, and Adrien grabbed hold of the sides of the open portal of the carriage. He heaved himself in.

Christina could feel her hackles rising. Yet, she kept telling herself, Not here, not at this moment.

Adrien leaned out to her. “I’ll try and get away within the month. For a quick visit. You’ll be here?”

“You’ll be able to find me, if you want to.”

“I want you
here.
Where you are best protected from Richard—don’t discount him, Christina. Stay in my apartments. Make over the adjoining bedchamber. Do whatever you need to be comfortable; just talk to Dobbs or Lily. But stay where I can protect you most easily.”

“You want me contained, shelved. That would be convenient for you—”

“I want you guarded. A woman roaming about on her own isn’t safe. I want you close enough to Samuel that if Richard decided to do something foolish, he could stop it.”

“Adrien.” She looked at him. “You can’t scare me or bully me into doing what I don’t want to do.”

He frowned. “Get in the carriage a moment, will you?” It was with resentment that he added, “Please.”

Several moments later, Samuel Rolfeman came out and knocked on the side of the carriage. “You’re supposed to be there by ten, Adrien. You’re already going to be forty-five minutes late.”

Christina reached for the door handle, then looked back. Adrien was sitting back in the farthest shadows of the carriage, stewing in his own unique brand of fury. She wasn’t going to stay where he wanted her. She wasn’t going to let Samuel tag along. And she had further turned on him:

“This is a fine note to leave on,” he said.

“Well, you have slept with her, haven’t you?”

“You know I have. What is the point?”

“She will be there. I will be a hundred miles away—”

“Nadine is in Vienna.”

“Then someone else. I won’t be pining away for you
here, manipulated into a nice, convenient little waiting room while you are out doing God knows what.”

“For godssake, Christina, what do you want?” He heaved a frustrated sigh. “Everything has been too rushed. I’d hoped we’d have some time alone together these last days, but that’s been denied us. All I can promise now is that if I have only six or eight hours on English soil, I’d like to beat a path straight back here and spend them with you. If you can’t appreciate that, then by all means go. If you’re not here, I will understand the message.”

“Now you’re making it out that if I leave, I’m putting an end to the whole thing. You’re trying to bind me here. Why?”

“Oh, for godssake, leave.” He gave the door a shove. It gaped open. “I don’t give a damn. I want you to leave. Go on. Get out. Pack your things and leave. There, does that prove that I care for you better?”

Care.
The missing word left a space, a void into which Christina stepped out. She wrapped the cloak up tighter against herself and put her foot onto the gravel drive. She turned, still holding onto the door handle.

“Adrien.”

“What?”

She didn’t know how to tell him. “I could love you.”

The door was grabbed away from her. “Lovely. Let me know if the conditional ever makes it into the present tense. Driver.” The door slammed shut. The carriage sprang forward; it left with surprising swiftness and finality.

Christina stood there, riveted, telling herself, “He’s gone.” But she couldn’t really believe it. It was one of those facts that had to be lived to be understood, she realized.

Then, as the dust settled, what she really couldn’t believe was how she had sent him off.