Judith Ivory (4 page)

Consciousness spread slowly, as if only the surface of her mind thawed. All was quiet. There was a slight chill, dampness from the ground, from her sweat-drenched clothes. But something was wrapped around her, keeping her warm. For a long time, Christina knew only the slow rhythm of her own breathing, a feverishness in her eyes, and a deep, contented lethargy.

In time, a soft conversation drew her head around. She unfolded further, turning on her shoulders to see behind her. Her tormentors were perhaps thirty feet away, congregated around the whimpering horse. She was lying at the opposite edge of a small clearing.

Of the men, the one who squatted beside the animal’s head was talking. He was somehow the center, the focal point for the rest. Every other man’s face was turned toward his.

He was a curious man, the one stroking the wounded horse’s neck. Unlike the others, he was missing his coat. This gave his white shirt a dazzling conspicuousness. Billows of sleeves escaped from a snug waistcoat.
Mounds of white neckcloth. And over his high collar lay hair as shiny and black as anthracite.

The man stood. And another difference. He was taller than the other men. Very slender, but somehow solid. And there was something a shade foreign about him. He wore the brown, dull colors of an English country gentleman, but there was an excessiveness of lace, of cravat that was not strictly English. Christina linked this, if her memory could be trusted, to the baffling French that had been spouted at her.

The man turned. He seemed to catch sight of Christina in her new position, and was on his way over. Christina had the strangest sense suddenly…déjà vu.

As he stooped down beside her, the slightly dandified impression was again evident. He smelled of a spicy sweet water, though the smell was somewhat subdued by scents of the outdoors that clung to him. Leather, horses, grass, sun, perhaps tobacco.

He smiled. “You’re not in very good order after all this, are you? Can you stand?”

Again, the sense of something familiar flickered. But, uppermost, she was wary of his concern. “I doubt it. My ankle—”

His immediate and rather businesslike examination of her lower legs startled her—partly for the loss of sensation in one foot.

“I’ll cut the boot off if you have no objections,” he said. He called back over his shoulder, “Someone find me a knife.” Back to her: “Here, sit up a little.”

She jerked away from him as he reached to help her.

He paused, gave a mildly put-out look. “Are you going to panic again?”

“Not so long as you don’t shoot anything out from under me.”

“Yes.” He made a pull of his mouth. “How
did
you get hold of that horse?”

It hit her. She had been a bit slow, but there it
was. He looked different. Thinner. More tense. And something—what? More serious. Yes, the Earl of Kewischester looked infinitely more serious, sadder, than when she had last seen him at the dinner party.

“Your grooms lent it to me.”

He was taken aback. It was the same game all over again. He didn’t know her.

Then she thought perhaps he did. “You?” He gave a puzzled frown. “Oh God. You’re the woman Evangeline has put in the house. Now I understand where you came from.” He muttered and shook his head. “None of us could figure it out. I had completely forgotten—”

And it seemed, conclusively, he had. He did not know the woman he had almost kissed three years ago.

A knife arrived. The man who brought it remained, with downcast eyes. Like a convict awaiting his sentence. Or a chance to escape.

“Thomas,” the earl addressed the one who had brought the knife. “Is this the woman you thought? It’d be a bit hard to tell, I’d think, with all the bruises and swelling.”

Christina looked up. She hadn’t seen Thomas Lillings since her wedding. But it was a huge relief—and a puzzling sense of having misunderstood something somewhere—to see him now.

He ignored her. “It is,” he answered. “It’s not a mistake I could make.” Then, with a painful sigh, a pained expression: “For God’s sake, what are you doing here, Christina?”

“I should be asking you.”

“You almost got yourself killed, you know.”

“By you?”

“By your own insanity. You damn near made us all into murderers with your craziness—”

“My craziness! You idiot! You chase a woman down, shoot the horse out from under her, then have the nerve to suggest—”

“That’s enough.” Adrien interrupted. “You were set upon by thieves, and we came to your aid.”

“What?” She pushed herself all the way up onto her arms so as to look at him. “You what?”

He looked her right in the face and said it again. “You were set upon by thieves, and we came to your aid.”

Her fear and confusion fused into anger. What kind of game was this? And Thomas, her friend. She could feel even his complicity against her somewhere. She looked around. The other men stood back. They wore hangdog expressions, a sense of wrongfulness that, though weary, seemed determined to stay wrong.

It was the earl who appeared to be their spokesman. She addressed him. “I know perfectly well by whom I was ‘set upon.’ And I don’t intend to participate in any hoax to save anyone’s good name. I want to know what is going on.”

He eased the last of the boot from her ankle. Her foot was swelling badly. She looked down the length of herself. Her dress was ripped and dirty. Her hair hung down in ratty knots. And there was blood on her skirts.

She pulled away sharply, as again the earl reached for her.

“Easy, my dear. I am only pulling the coat—”

It was his coat she’d been lying on. He brought it up over her shoulders.

“Now.” He began to lecture as one might to a slow child. “This might all seem very unfair to you. But we are going to stick fast to our story of thieves. The nine of us. If you want to try to concoct a different story, that is up to you. But no one will believe you.” He made a tired, rather nasty facsimile of his former smile. “And I am a wonderful liar, madam. I know just the sort of details to lend a story credibility. So give up. We will take very good care of you, see that you are comfortable, and right
this unfortunate incident as best we can. Don’t ask for more. You won’t get it.”

He got up abruptly. “You talk to her, Thomas. And can you bring her back on your horse? I thought I might go prepare the way.” Then, once more, the earl turned to her. And with the logic that was now becoming characteristic of this encounter, he blurted something at her in French, something about a meeting;
un rendez-vous.
His face waited for a response.

Christina threw a rock at him. A fist full of leaves. Whatever was at hand. “What? Do you think you are a bloody prince! You pompous bully! If you think I am going to go along with any harebrained whitewash of what you’ve done…They should have finished you in France!”

He was watching her. “Should they?” Again, he said something in French, as if they might actually have a conversation in the language. What could she possibly know, she understood him to say, about the people in France?

But the use of the foreign language only infuriated her. Sometimes she understood a sentence in French, sometimes a word, and sometimes nothing at all in whole mouthfuls of the gibberish. “Speak the King’s English,
s’il vous plâit.
I don’t speak the bloody language.”

He smiled then, possibly at her accent. She had a bad one, she knew. In any event, this seemed to satisfy him. He turned, only speaking again as he mounted his horse. “I will see you all back at the house.” To Christina, he made a mock bow from the saddle. “And you, madam.
Je vous souhaite la bienvenue.
”

Welcome home.

Birds somewhere had decided it was safe to sing again. The sun flickered through the trees above, making patterns, phantasms, on the forest floor. The woods were quiet. The other men had followed Adrien Hunt back to the house. Only Thomas remained, fixing his saddle, moving a travel bag around to make room for two.

Christina sat on the ground. Her head hurt. Her swollen ankle had begun to give off a dull throb. She was covered with scratches and bruises—there seemed hardly a place she didn’t ache or sting. But what was hardest to bear was Thomas. Testy and secretive, her old friend was no better than the rest. He wouldn’t say why, or even
what
exactly, had happened to her here in the woods. Worse, his mood seemed to say that he owed her an explanation—perhaps out of loyalty—but that it was all her fault that he should owe her something so impossible to give.

“Let it be, Christina. You’ve stumbled onto more than is good for you,” Thomas said as he lifted her into the saddle. He looked up at her. “If I thought for a moment
anyone would benefit by my satisfying your curiosity, I would empty my soul to you. But it would serve no one’s best interests.” He steadied her a moment, then swung up behind her.

“Especially not His Lordship’s.”

Thomas made an irritated sound. “You’ve not the first inkling about him, Christina—” He paused. “Or do you? Do you know him from”—he made a gesture with his hand that supported her back—“somewhere?” There was an implied incredulity in the wave of his unseen hand.

“No. Why?”

“Nothing. It was he who picked you up and carried you to the clearing. I don’t know.” She felt him shrug. They began, at a slow pace, to make their way out of the trees. “It seemed to me he fussed over you a lot.”

“Guilt.”

“Perhaps.” He paused. “Or he just liked messing about with your legs and skirts.”

She didn’t like that—the way Thomas had said it. “Actually,” she said more honestly, “I met him once. But he seems to have forgotten. I suppose it was nothing.”

They rode in silence.

Thomas broke the awkward quiet just as they were approaching the house. “I beg of you to cooperate with us, Christina. I can’t explain. Only I wish you would trust me.” He paused. “And Adrien is truly a nice chap. Better than that actually. He’s first-rate, top-drawer. I wish you would give us all a second chance—”

“Top-drawer people don’t go about shooting horses out from under people.”

“He didn’t shoot the animal.”

“He’s taken the responsibility for it.”

“Yes, he has, hasn’t he?” His tone sounded as if he had won some sort of point on this issue. Then, a more pleading tone; the old Thomas. “Christina. If you only knew what all he has on his mind, what he has been
through. He’s handling some very touchy, rather complicated business, and doing damned well with it. Incredible, in fact. And more than just the eight of us are grateful and dependent on him for it—”

They were at the house. Thomas slid from the horse, then carefully took her from the saddle and into his arms. Then something odd. His face came very close to hers. And he did an even more peculiar thing. He bent and whispered to her, “I had forgotten how beautiful you were, Christina.” He laughed softly. “Even messed up a bit.”

She sighed and turned her face into his shoulder. Yes, she had forgotten too. She only knew its absence when she felt, suddenly, its presence again: It had been a very long time, but in Thomas’s arms she felt feminine and lovable again.

The real injustice was that everyone believed the earl’s story of thieves, just as he’d said they would. By the time she arrived, it was pat; done. The house was swarming with friends. She was carried in, looking more like she had been dragged in by the cat, feeling awful. She was simply too tired to explain in the face of all the sympathetic strangers who seemed to “already know, you poor dear.”

Yet, even this wasn’t enough. When she told Thomas where her rooms were, he began cursing under his breath. Bloody hell. Carrying her in his arms, he stomped up the stairs in a silent fury, as if she were the worst traitor in the world.

Her sitting room now had a giant, carved desk planted awkwardly in its midst and yet more trunks and boxes. Then, the most surprising addition of all: Adrien Hunt was in her bedchamber. He turned as Thomas marched in with her. The earl’s breeches were open; he was tucking in the tail of a fresh shirt.

“What is this?”

There was a brief moment where no one said anything. An awkwardness that seemed larger than the sum of three bewildered adults. Christina squirmed. She felt helpless somehow in Thomas’s arms.

Irrationally, she demanded, “Put me down!”

Thomas, with equal reasoning, did so.

The ankle didn’t even consider supporting her weight. She flinched and, with a small cry, toppled. It was the earl who caught her.

He held her weight against him. “What’s got into you, Tom? Will you at least slide over that chair—”

Christina’s hands gripped the man’s shoulders. She tried to turn her face, too aware of him. Beneath her hands, she could feel the fluid movement of his muscles as he stretched across the length of her body—Thomas, irritatingly, had put the chair only within arm’s reach. For an instant Adrien Hunt’s hips—and the open pants—pressed against her. No amount of tucked and folded linen could quite obliterate the fact from her mind. The chair scraped on the floor. The muscles of his shoulder contracted; his grip around her waist tightened. Christina clung for an instant, her face muffled against crisp, fresh-pressed linen; his shirt gave off a warm, masculine smell. Then she was lowered into the chair.

Adrien Hunt drew away from her, leaving behind a flush of embarrassment that radiated over her skin. He felt so different, she thought. Different from Thomas, different from Richard. Why? His movements…The texture of him…Even the smell of him…

He turned away slightly and went at the buttons of his pants. He, too, seemed a little self-conscious in this regard. There was an unexpected shyness to him, an ill-at-ease quality that she at once liked in him. Then it was gone. He ran a hand around the waist of the breeches
and looked from her to Thomas; back to her, back to Thomas. “So, what sort of problem is there now?” He extended his arms behind him.

A manservant appeared from the recesses of the room with a fresh waistcoat. He helped the earl into it. Then Adrien glanced over at Christina’s meager little pile of trunks now standing in the corner. He looked at her.

“They’re your things?”

She couldn’t meet his eyes.

He laughed. “We couldn’t be getting off to a much worse start, could we?” He shook his head. “I couldn’t understand—When I saw the trunks and that sweet little nightdress—”

“I was told to come to these rooms,” she said defensively.

“Not by me.” He was still laughing. The quiet laugh she remembered from the entrance room at the Baysdens. “Though I don’t mind if you stay. But as you can see, these are my rooms, and I don’t plan on vacating them.”

It was Thomas who objected. “This isn’t funny, Adrien.”

The earl threw him a look. “Indeed.”

He seemed relaxed again. More like the man of three years before. He turned and began taking watches that were held out to him on a tray. He tucked one, two, three into the pockets of his vest. His man came around, fastening the chains through buttonholes. The earl raised his arms.

“Chapman,” he addressed the servant, “as soon as you are done here, find Lily for me. We’ll get Mrs. Pinn another room. Then I want to speak to the housekeeper.”

A coat was held out behind. The earl put his arms into it. The servant took up a set of brushes. With brisk, even sweeps, the man began to eliminate lint, any tiny
speck of imperfection from the exterior of the Earl of Kewischester.

“Thomas, has anyone sent for the doctor? I think someone should look at Mrs. Pinn’s forehead and ankle.”

To Christina’s surprise, Thomas answered in French. A burst of fast words said in anger.

Thomas had, she knew, studied art in France, but it had never occurred to her this meant he would speak the language.

The earl laughed. A pleasant enough laugh. He said something in return. There was an exchange. The word
elle
—she—was bandied about. But Christina couldn’t find a key word. She was lost.

After a minute, Thomas seemed marginally pacified. “I’ll see to the doctor,” he said in English.

The manservant followed him out, presumably to find Lily. Christina was left alone in the company of Adrien Hunt. In his bedchamber.

“I think,” he addressed her, “you should settle down in here for the afternoon. It will take several hours for them to open up another apartment. The other guests have spread out to fill all the available rooms. But I won’t be here, and I wouldn’t mind at all if you would like to lie down on the bed. Shall I help you?”

“I shan’t lie on your bed,” she said tartly.

“It hasn’t bothered you till now. I don’t see—”

“I didn’t realize. I’ll wait in the sitting room.”

He was going to argue for a second, then changed his mind. He shrugged. When he bent toward her, she braced herself away, pushing herself up into the back of the chair.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“I was going to take you to the sitting room.” He slipped an arm around her back, the other under her skirt and thigh. “Now, if you will put your lovely hands about my neck once more—”

He lifted her. Again she was in his arms. She cooperated, but didn’t in the end know really where to put her hands. She cast her eyes down. His back, his shoulders were so broad…. His hair felt cool and dry as it curled over the silk of his cravat and onto her fingers.

There was a French chaise in the sitting room, also a new item. He put her into it, but rose frowning, staring. He looked at her for several seconds before he seemed to collect himself from whatever bothered him. Then he moved out of sight. He returned a moment later with the cover from his bed.

“Why are you doing this?” she asked.

“I think I had something to do with putting you in this situation. It seems only right I should help a little to get you out of it.”

“I won’t like you for it. It doesn’t make it all right.”

He smiled. “You don’t like me much to begin with. So I won’t worry.”

A small man came into the sitting room, a balding man with a thick black book. Adrien acknowledged him. The book was opened, and the little man began to write as the earl spoke.

“Tell Mansville I’ll need a carriage for tomorrow, Thursday, and Friday. Then draft a note to Prince George. Tell him we will have a group on the courts Thursday if he wants to play. Oh, and the Princess Flavia is hinting broadly at her birthday again. Is it this month?”

“The fourteenth, sir.”

“Find her something nice, would you? Then let me know what it is.” He went to a trunk, opened it, and threw most of its contents onto the floor, searching for something. Gloves. He found gray kid gloves.

“How much, sir?”

“Oh, I don’t know, you decide.” He was putting the gloves on. “Find out what her husband’s giving her,
then aim just under that. We must please one without offending the other. Anything else, Dobbs?”

“The gardener has asked for the third week in August off. His daughter is getting married.”

“That will be fine.”

The housekeeper had come to the doorway. She stood there, not entering without permission, yet staring into the room. Her eyes touched each piece and parcel of it, including Christina, in her peculiarly objective manner.

Adrien Hunt almost brushed by the woman as he was leaving. “Oh, Mrs. Jameson, there you are. I’m dismissing you. I will have a letter of reference ready for you by tomorrow, though I am afraid it will be rather brief and qualified. This incident of the rooms has been most embarrassing to Mrs. Pinn—”

The woman was open-mouthed. “I only thought—”

“I pay you to know, Mrs. Jameson. And if you don’t know, to ask. But we both know this is not the first confrontation we have come to, is it?”

“I was being discreet.” The woman was going to argue with him. “The last several ladies that have come on their own—”

Christina could not see his face, but she saw that he pointedly stopped to look at the woman. Her face lost all its defiance. She stammered and retreated into silence.

“Dobbs will prepare the letter. I will sign it in the morning. I have arranged for a carriage to take you to your daughter’s or wherever else you’d prefer. You can have this month’s wages. Mr. Dobbs will give them to you. Have you anything else to say to me?”

She had bowed her head, displaying a hitherto unknown meekness. She spoke very softly. “No, Your Lordship. That would be fine. Thank you.”

“Good. Dobbs,” he threw this over his shoulder,
“you’d best set up some interviews. Meanwhile, Lily will have to manage. Oh, and Mrs. Pinn—”

Christina stiffened. She felt suddenly like one of the others, called to account.

“I am most sorry for your discomfort today,” he said to her. “All of it. If there is anything I can do…”

He took perhaps three seconds, a pause designed to imply that she might, at this very moment, ask something of him and he would comply.

But then he was gone.

As he went down the stairs, Christina could hear more people stopping him, his laughter, his low, deep voice responding, joking.

She looked around her. The man, Chapman, and Mr. Dobbs had begun to go through the sitting room, deciding what should go where, discussing the earl’s preferences as knowingly, as lovingly as if they were their own.

Through the afternoon she watched the room take shape. And, in the course of the next days, something parallel happened to the whole of the house. What had hitherto been a jumbled confusion of décor took on an unforeseen character. The number of “things” did not decrease; in fact, the earl added to them. But a loose, almost mystic coherence developed. The interior of the house, room by room, became more livable. It was busy—literally with people and figuratively in its design. It was occasionally overwhelming in its profusions. But it also became comfortable to move through, elegant to the eye. As if by some sleight of hand or optical illusion. The huge house was like a picture that had been hanging a few degrees off center. It came into proper focus—unique and rich, made up of myriad idiosyncratic details—only after it had been set at the right angle. Only after it had been touched by the right hand.