Judith Ivory (31 page)

Only Thomas was in the parlor when Adrien came in.

“You, I’ll deal with later,” he said. “Where is Christina?”

“She went for a walk. Out that way.” He pointed toward the back of the house. “I don’t think she wants to see you.”

Adrien left Thomas to gloat. He darted a look around as he passed through the kitchen. She wasn’t there. But as he bolted through the back door, he nearly tripped over her. She was sitting on the stoop, huddled in the same coat she had been wearing on her little trip to the barn—it was Thomas’s, he realized.

He squatted beside her. She jerked around to look—glare—at him.

“Well, that was quick,” she said.

“Christina.” He forced her to look at him. Shiny paths showed down her cheeks, but her eyes were dry now. He slid down to huddle next to her. “It’s cold out here. Let’s go inside.”

“It was warm enough in the barn a few minutes ago.
Why don’t you go back there? Or is she in your bedroom?”

“She’s gone. That is, she’s about to be. Sam will take her to the Belgium border.”

She queried him with a tentative look.

“I didn’t want her to see you,” he explained. “She doesn’t know exactly what you look like or about this.” He was allowed to touch her taut belly. Then he parlayed this touch into a full-scale wrapping of himself about her. “She’ll protect me again. She doesn’t dare do otherwise, actually. We had a bittersweet parting, with every assurance that she’ll say nothing.”

Christina didn’t seem able to believe this. “You’re just letting her go? But Thomas says she’s the one who turned you in.”

“What more can she do to me?”

“What she’s already done is enough.” There was a pause. She seemed to look at him, evaluate. Then she said, “No matter how angry I got at Richard, I wouldn’t try to get him killed.”

“Madeleine doesn’t think things out. You would have to know her to understand that. In her mind, she was just trying to get me in trouble, like a child tattling. She doesn’t think about consequences.”

“Maybe she ought to feel some.”

“I don’t want revenge, if that’s what you’re suggesting.” He made a dry laugh. “If you only knew all that Madeleine and I put each other through a dozen years ago…. Or how sour revenge can become when you’re glutted with it…No, I don’t want to hurt her. I just want to get rid of her. Madeleine’s finished business; reporting me to the French was the last thing she can ever do to hurt me.” He made a huge, happy sigh.

“My dear woman,” he continued, “I wasn’t angry with her. I didn’t hate her. And I don’t love her. I barely even
know
her, it occurred to me. I didn’t want to have to keep her here, for the obvious tensions that would produce.
So I took precautions to secure her cooperation. That was all. She’s gone. And my honor is intact. So help me God.” He raised a hand as in the swearing of an oath, then added a quick sign of the cross. Forehead, chest, shoulder to shoulder.

“Are you Catholic?” Christina asked.

“Church of England.” He made another sober swearing of oaths, hand raised.

He thought he detected a faint smile on her face. He felt his own smile grow so wide it hurt….

“Excuse me.” A voice behind them interrupted. “You’re going to be even more angry with me if you don’t see this fairly soon.”

Thomas stood in the doorway, blocking the light from the kitchen. He stepped out onto the porch, offering what looked like a letter.

Adrien rose, helped Christina to her feet. As they came up the steps Thomas flinched, took a step back.

Adrien made a dry laugh. “I’m not going to hit you, Thomas. Though you deserve it. That was a malicious thing to do; to set me up, then send Christina out to the barn.”

“We, all three of us, had a right to know how you’d respond to seeing Madeleine again.”

“Did we?” Adrien pushed Christina past them. “Perhaps you and I need to discuss exactly what rights we, all three, have.”

Christina took hold of Adrien’s arm.

“There’s nothing to discuss.” From the shadows, Thomas’s face came around into the light. He looked at Christina. The sadness in his expression was so large, there was no place to hide it. Christina had to turn from him.

“The Old Man said he knew I could locate you. He sends you this.” Thomas held out the letter.

Adrien took it. He broke the seal without taking his eyes off the other man; as if this, too, might be
another deceit. Then he dropped his eyes to the page.

He stepped, as he read, toward the open kitchen doorway. So that he stood in the wash of yellow light coming from inside, his face in sharp relief. Christina watched the chiseled features compress into a bitter look.

“Splendid,” he said, handing the note to Christina. “Just splendid. Isn’t that a work of art?”

As she began reading, he pushed his way into the house:

Christina entered the parlor half expecting to find Adrien distraught, dazed by the blow that had befallen him. But he was not.

“…then you will all leave tomorrow. M. La Fontaine will not be pleased by his state, eh, Grand-père?” Adrien was joking. He was actually joking. And making plans to return to England! “But better a sweet old woman sailing with her sons than a dead old man killed for his grandson’s sins. Christina will lend you some clothes. You won’t mind, will you, dear?” He called to her from across the room, but didn’t wait for an answer. He continued speaking to Philippe de La Fontaine. “I will hope to see you at the docks, that you will be able to meet Christina and me there in five days. We will have a grand reunion then. But you are safer split off from me.”

He walked over behind Christina, behind the chair where she’d more or less collapsed. Absently, he began massaging her neck and shoulders. “I would not split off my dear wife from me,” he was saying to the others, “unless Satan himself held a gun at my temple.” He kissed the top of her head.

Philippe was staring at her in a peculiar manner. Wife? Had Adrien said wife?

“Now, Le Saint. You are to go to Le Havre and find an English captain for the trip across. I want the marriage to be legally binding, so a French magistrate won’t do. Try Fenton on the
Silver Jack.
He’d know how to get the right papers in order, as well as how to keep his mouth shut. And I want duplicates made up. A set for me. A set you can carry separately to the registry. Oh yes, and let’s send Claybourne his own personal copy, to arrive, say, the same afternoon we do. Attach a note. Tell him to stuff them up his ass with my compliments.

“Then the rest will be up to Sam and the men. You have five days to spread everything into every tavern, every club, every public hall. The simple facts. Everything
we’ve done. There are people in England who should be grateful enough to come forward and corroborate. But it is up to you all to set the tone. Political opinion, since all these massacres—especially since Louis’s today—should run in my favor. The Madman must be such a public wonder that the Old Man won’t dare do much else but applaud when I arrive. He will, no doubt, stir up some trouble. But with war looking so likely, now should be as good a time as any to become a hero.

“Oh, and see if you can rally a small crowd at the docks on Thursday. Claybourne might meet me there personally with some mischief. We want everything public. If I am arrested, I want the newspaper there to cover it. Get the
Times
—see Mr. Tallying there—to editorialize on the subject of the Earl of Kewischester’s secret occupation this summer. Give Tallying any information he wants. He’ll be sympathetic; he’s a Burkite. Just make sure this doesn’t come out too quickly.

“The delicate part, of course, will be building the whole thing without tipping Claybourne off that I’m going home almost immediately. The less time he has to think of a countermeasure, the better—he might find one.

“Let’s see now. Oh, there’s my attorneys. They’ll need to be prepared. I want to spend as little time in jail as possible, if that’s the way Claybourne decides to handle it….”

He was in fine form. Making plans. Allowing contingencies for his contingencies.

Christina stood up, moving out from under his hands. She went back into the kitchen. She should have been happy, she thought. He was going to marry her. He hadn’t formally asked, but then he didn’t need to.

She scuffed about the table aimlessly while the men talked on. She made some tea and sat down with it.

But she wasn’t happy.

She would have to tell him.

Balancing her tea in her hand, she went back to stand in the doorway to watch him. His eyes were steady on a man standing in front of him, intent in conversation. Then they flicked up a second, over the man’s head. He threw her a moment’s recognition, a look of perfect, glancing intimacy. Like a small, weighted dart. Lobbed in her direction; easily hitting home. She stood, mesmerized by the zing of blue; shot through.

Then the baby inside her, oblivious to this moment, began to counterpoint it with a funny hiccoughing motion. The whole front of her jerked once, twice. The third hiccough was so violent as to rattle the teacup she had more or less balanced on the shelf of her belly. Christina patted her middle and turned away. Her off-spring was right. No lovesick delusions.

Yes. She would marry Adrien. She knew that. For the baby. For Adrien himself—he needed her most desperately now. She wouldn’t abandon that need. Then she laughed. She would even marry him a little bit for her father; no matter what mess ensued, he could not help but be pleased.

But not for herself. Not like this. And she had to tell him.

It was a little after three in the morning when Christina caught Adrien’s attention. Le Saint was just being packed off to Le Havre.

It had been decided that Christina and Adrien would travel to the Normandy coast in a day’s time. There, they would meet Le Saint and, hopefully, a willing, closemouthed captain. They would be married on board an English ship. Then it would just be a matter of waiting—while everyone else, having returned to England, would try to link Adrien’s name to the rising English public outrage against the “reign of terror” in France.

“I need to speak with you, Adrien. Before he leaves,” Christina called from the doorway of the kitchen.

He looked her way, one brow arched over a sudden, questioning awareness of her. But as he came toward her, his face changed; from questioning to irritatingly arrogant: The smile he wore said he knew the answer to the question before he asked it.

“You were hoping for a formal proposal?” She had
retreated into the kitchen. He had followed. He stood smiling, leaning against the doorjamb. “Will you marry me, Christina? I meant to ask you differently. But, well, circumstances being what they are—”

She shot him a contradicting look, then put on the kettle and got down another cup and saucer.

“I thought you’d be pleased,” said the man behind her.

“Do you want some?” She gestured to the teapot.

“No. Christina, have I done something wrong?” When she didn’t answer immediately, “Tell me. What?”

He was going to correct for it. A man who had been analyzing, categorizing, and solving problems all night. Christina wanted to laugh.

More a lament than a censure, she said softly, “If you had been listening for the last half-year, you would know.”

His smile became unsure, the half-smile of a man who hates to call the next shot.

Christina poured herself a cup of tea. Then she emptied her lungs with a deep breath and turned toward him. “I don’t want to be your captive for the rest of my life.”

“Oh, Christina, really—”

She sat down at the table with her tea. He walked behind her.

He spoke as he poured more water into the pot. “You’ve hardly been a captive,” he said. “Why are you so up in arms? Honestly, I’m sorry I didn’t have the opportunity to ask you on bended knee. But it’s not as if we’ve never discussed marriage. Or as if we didn’t both know you’d marry me—”

Their eyes met as he came around the table. He did a kind of double take, a blink. Then he asked, “You will, won’t you?”

“Yes, but—”

“Good.” His moment of doubt was over. He sat down
and put two huge spoonfuls of sugar into his tea. He was looking for the milk.

“I’ll marry you,” she continued. “I wouldn’t deny you what help I can be when you need it as badly as you do. But I won’t live with you. I want to set up my own household. With my money. Something I can afford; a nice country existence. I want to know what it feels like to be on my own, no one to order me about. Or sabotage my will with their sometimes-very-appealing, but very overbearing personality. I want out from under you, both figuratively and literally.”

All humor, any pleasure in the situation left his face. “Christina, things will be different in England. This has been such an unusual situation—”

“No.” She flicked her eyes up to him a moment, then back down to her untouched cup of tea. “I’ve been in England with you and—”

“And it
was
different, damn it!”

“And you hated it. I remember the conversation in the inn, Adrien.”

“You remember stupid things—I said stupid things. But I’m telling you now, I want to live with you. As your husband. I have wanted that for—”

“Oh, please, Adrien. At least spare me that!”

He had the good grace to stammer for an instant. “Wh-what—”

“Not two days ago you were beside yourself with joy when I abandoned the subject of marriage.”

He made a broad gesture of denial with one hand. “Well, yes. But that was before—”

“Before you needed an heir. Adrien, I understand your wanting to marry me now. And I don’t fault you for it. I would do exactly as you in your place. I’d grit my teeth and marry.”

“Is that what you think?” He pushed away from the table and stood. As he rose, his leg caught on the leg of
the table. “Well, it’s just not true!” His teacup overturned. The table banged down.

Hot tea steamed, poured off the table edge onto his empty chair. Then ran to the floor. A pathetic, drizzling sound that dominated the room for some seconds.

“Adrien,” she said softly, “this isn’t necessary. I said I would marry you.”

“But we will live together! If I’m your husband, you’ll have to. It’s the law.”

“And that’s the condition. I set up my house. And you don’t bother me or make demands that I live with you, as would be your right as my husband. You must promise. You must give me your solemn oath you will never take this favor I do you and turn it against me.”

“I won’t—”

“Then I won’t marry you.”

The look on his face changed. It became mildly incredulous; wounded. “But why?” he asked softly.

Christina sighed. “Your life is so complicated, Adrien. Your women. Your children. Your plots—I am sure this one will no sooner be over than you will devise another; you can’t live without the stimulation, the intrigue—”

“That’s not true—”

“Of course it is. But I find this all not very conducive to peace of mind. At least not to my peace of mind. In my whole life I have never been churned so, emotionally, as I have in the last eight or nine months.”

He turned his back. He went to the corner cabinet, and then returned to the table with a bottle of hard cider. He righted his cup and filled it to the brim. But he turned from her, taking just the cup in his hand. He took a small drink.

After a moment, he laughed; a quick, soft sound. “So the lawyer’s daughter would take the title and run.” He glanced over his shoulder. “And I’m not even to see the child?”

“You could visit whenever you wished. But you would have to send advance word. I would never be there when you came.”

“This is ugly. Do you know that?”

“It’s the way it has to be for me to be free of you.”

“What’s so wrong with being free in the same house with me? You could do as you liked. We could sleep together—when it pleased us both. You could have your—” His voice caught; a moment of tight frustration. He was looking for a word. “Fling”—he found—” with someone else, if that’s what you want.”

“That’s not what I want, and you know it.”

He turned and leaned on the chair-back toward her across the table. “I don’t know anything anymore.” She could see the anger just below the surface, the sharp concentration of his blue eyes. And while part of her cowered at the sight of this, part of her bristled. “I thought I knew you,” he said. “A gentle young woman whom I had every intention of asking to marry me for no other reason—”

She stood up with a scrape of her chair. “Adrien, if you throw that meretricious, self-pitying argument at me one more time, I shall walk out on this discussion altogether. You want to use me in this marriage. And, if I weren’t usable, I don’t doubt for one moment I’d also be unmarriageable.”

“You’re telling me I’m lying—”

“It’s no secret you’re a liar! You lie to your grandfather to get him across the Channel. You lie to your ex-wife, to get her quickly out of the way. And this isn’t the first time you’ve tried to lie to me—”

He eased back from across the table. If she had slapped him across the face, he could have been no more incensed.

“I see,” he said finally. He looked down at the cup in his hand, then drained it. He made a face into the bottom; a wince. His eyes teared for a second. He squeezed
them. “God, this stuff is awful,” he murmured, lowering his teacup.

He turned, setting his cup down with a clatter on the sinkboard. He ran his hand back through his hair. Christina felt a twinge of longing at the familiar gesture, at the careless grace that underlay even this simple movement. He stood in that position for some seconds, his hand holding the back of his neck. As if he were lost in some vast and uncharted wilderness; looking for a way out of hostile terrain.

Apparently, he found one. He turned back toward her, composed, his face calm. Cooled, in fact; distant. What the scheming sailor couldn’t fix, the earl would put from him, relegating it to a pigeonhole of unpleasant business.

“All right, Christina,” he said. “I have ruined your life long enough, haven’t I?” A mocking smile worked its way onto his lips. “So you shall have what you ask, except”—he exhaled, determined—“for two conditions of my own—presumptuous as it may be of me to bring any into this discussion.

“First, you must stay with me till the child is born. I want a London doctor to deliver it, not some country midwife.” He paced a step away, then turned toward her again. His face had grown harder, colder. “And, two: You’re getting a full-fledged title; I want a full-fledged heir. When the child comes, he lives the life he will inherit: He lives with me.
You
may visit.”

“Adrien, I can’t possibly—”

“If you’re going to raise an earl, madam, you can’t do it from some country squire’s roost. An eagle is raised in an eagle’s nest. It can’t learn to hunt and fly by pecking at the ground with chickens.”

With that pompous, superior comment, he exited out the back door.

He stayed out there a long time, not coming in till long after Christina had gone to bed.

The ceremony took place at nine o’clock the following evening on board the English clipper, the
Silver Jack.
It took only ten quick minutes to make a lawyer’s daughter into a countess. Lady Christina Bower Hunt. Papers were signed. Then signed again as duplicates were prepared. Afterward, the ship went out to sea, taking Adrien’s grandfather, Thomas, and the last of Adrien’s band. Only Le Saint remained in France. And, of course, the bride and groom.

Le Saint remained in Le Havre, to keep a watch on that port. It was from there they hoped to leave. While Adrien and Christina retreated to a little house—only two rooms actually—in the town of Honfleur. They arrived there late, knowing they would have at least three days—and nights—in confined quarters, alone together. With very little to do but wait.

And argue, Christina worried.

But she couldn’t have been more wrong.

Adrien put down their bag of food in the front room of their new residence, then followed her into the bedroom. There, he took off his coat, then undid his cravat. As he began to take his shirt from his pants, she asked, “Are you sleeping here, then?”

He looked at her over his shoulder. “Would you rather I didn’t?”

The neutral option this question seemed to offer left Christina in the air for a moment. But, in the end, she sighed and answered honestly, “No.”

He resumed undressing.

Christina walked to the window, wrapping her shawl more closely around her shoulders.

From her window view, high on the hillside, she could see the sea; the Seine emptying into the Channel. And she could see, across the wide mouth of the river, Le Havre, a boat ride away. There, in the distance, masts
of tall ships and the high pulleys and riggings of the docks pierced the horizon. The commercial port from which they would leave stood, like an ugly big sister, on the far bank of the river. While Honfleur, below, was picturesque.

Christina looked down over rooftops to the man-made basin below. It was nothing but sand and a motley collection of marooned small fishing boats now. Little boats, of all colors and shapes, tilted on their sides. The tide would rise in a few hours and right them. Christina only wished she could count on something like that; she felt like one of the little keeled boats. Stuck and waiting. Vulnerable.

Adrien came up behind her at the window. “Don’t jump,” he said. He began rubbing her back.

She made a surprised laugh and turned in his arms. “I wasn’t going to.”

His face was sober in the morning light. She realized this was their first opportunity alone, relaxed, without confusion all around them since Paris. Something tightened in the pit of her stomach. She realized, by her answer a moment ago, she had given him permission to make love to her. And that, all disagreements notwithstanding, he intended to.

“Adrien,” she asked with despair, “what can you possibly expect of me these next three days? This next month?” She had agreed to stay till the baby came. And agreed, reluctantly, that he should have the child for at least six months out of every year. With or without marriage, the earl had made his point; he had rights and would insist on them.

Adrien pushed his palm gently across her breast, massaging. It was here that his eyes remained as he spoke to her. “What I expect,” he said, “is for you to let me show you how wonderful it could be: the two of us, alone together, together in a life in London.”

“Oh, God,” she groaned. He pulled her to him, bent his head to kiss the hollow of her neck. She accused him softly in his ear. “You
have
started hatching your next plot, you wretch.” Her voice caught a second. “Against me.”