Judith Ivory (5 page)

One good thing about the arrival of the earl and his entourage was that they all seemed to have a great deal to do. They hunted. They played tennis—the earl had the use of the Royal Tennis Courts less than two hours’ travel away. They played cards. They went off on little trips. In fact, most or all of the group disappeared together for many long hours at a time. Christina still had much the run of the house.

By the beginning of the week she was on her feet again. But the recovering ankle only allowed short walks. It was chiefly through this limitation—and a revitalized curiosity—that Christina began to explore the house itself. The house fascinated her since its owner’s return. Room by room, corridor by corridor, she began to know its libraries, halls, and public rooms. Today, she stood in the upstairs gallery.

It was a magnificent room. Long mahogany tables were set against each window, each window rising high overhead, patterned in hundreds of lead-mullioned diamonds. Draperies hung, from twenty feet overhead, down the edges of windows, along the legs of the tables,
to the floor. And light. The windows sparkled with it, as if they were made of cut crystal—though they were only clear and clean and catching an early morning sun. Window upon window ran along one wall of the upstairs gallery. It was literally a gallery. Christina stood—leaning her knuckles delicately on one of the tables—in a long, mirror-lined room. Behind her, in front of the mirrored wall and all along it, were Greek and Roman statuary; gods and goddesses in stony nudity. In front of her, through the window and below, was a view of Adrien Hunt and friends. They were up very early this morning, after the fox.

Thomas was at her shoulder. “You’re invited to go.”

“And decline.”

“Are you such a coward?”

“No. I don’t like killing animals as much as he does.”

“Honestly, Christina—” For the hundredth time, Thomas refused to discuss the dead mare buried out in the forest. “That’s not what I meant, anyway. Not the meet. Kewischester himself. You’re rude. You jump when he speaks to you. You refuse all invitations to be part of things.”

“I don’t feel part of things.”

“You make him feel like some sort of ogre.”

“He is.”

“Is not.”

She smiled at him for a moment, at the game from their childhood. They were getting on much better as the days went by. Much of their old affection remained.

She gave her attention back to the movement and people below her. “Who’s that?”

She pointed to a woman with blond, curling hair, blue velvet riding habit. Tiny, pretty.

Below them, everyone’s breath—even the horses—blew visibly in front of them. There was a subdued excitement in the air as well. Many more people than just
the visiting guests had turned out. Almost all of the countryside was there. Local squires, townspeople. Even farmers who couldn’t afford the horses and equipment to participate came out to watch. Horses pranced. People jockeyed their animals as they greeted one another. Grooms milling. Dogs barking as they were held back in their pack. For the first time, Christina realized, she longed a little to be with them.

Richard, very quickly after the marriage, had taken them “home” to south Kent. He was not as keen as Christina for social gatherings. Nor for her manner of socializing. Being the first on the dance floor was “calling attention to oneself.” Laughing too loudly, speaking too loudly, saying outspoken things, these all fell in a similar category; tasteless display. It had been several years since Christina had seen so many people all come together just for the purpose of having a good time.

Below, the horse of the woman Christina had just pointed out jostled the earl’s animal, for the second time. Both horses reared slightly. They were jittery, as eager as the people to be off. Christina watched Adrien stand in the stirrups and bend to calm the woman’s horse. A servant, one of perhaps a dozen circulating among the guests, came by with a tray of shot glasses, brandy. The earl reached for two and handed one to the young woman.

“Cybil Chiswell,” Thomas answered.

“Are they an item?”

“Who?”

She threw him a look over her shoulder;
don’t be dense.

“I don’t know.”

“Does he call on her?”

“Yes. I think he does.”

“They spend time together? Alone?”

“How should I know?”

“You know, Thomas. I know you know.”

“And why do you want to? For a woman who won’t let him visit or inquire how she is doing while she is in bed for a week. For a woman who runs the other way when she sees him coming.” He made a snort of a laugh at this. “Actually, it’s rather amusing. He doesn’t really know what to do with you. He leaves you alone since that seems to be what you want. But I get the impression he doesn’t like it. I think he is a little offended.”

“Are you going, then?” She turned fully. She leaned her arms on the table. Thomas was dressed for the meet but had followed her up here instead. The gallery was close to her new rooms.

“Would you rather I stayed with you?”

“Not particularly.”

He made a glum mouth.

She laughed. “You know Evangeline and Charles are coming this morning. I can’t wait to see her. Besides, she won’t let me talk to you anyway—once she comes. You know how she is.”

Something came over Thomas. His face changed. As if he hadn’t heard a word she had said. His hands took the edge of the table on either side of her, effectively barricading her against the piece of furniture. It seemed impossible, an almost laughable non sequitur, but he drew closer. And suddenly she believed he was going to kiss her.

On the mouth. “Tommy—” She turned away.

His face found hers again. His mouth, dry and warm, pressed against hers. Then his arms came around her, and his mouth wanted something less chaste.

She let him finish. Then she pushed him back gently. She bowed her head. “Why did you do that?”

“I don’t know. It’s occurred to me several times before.”

“That I’m fair game now?”

“No. But I know about your husband, if that’s what you mean. And I wouldn’t have kissed you if you
weren’t divorcing him. There would have been no point.”

Her eyes came up, wide. “What did you say?”

“You would have probably hit me.”

Her expression remained astonished.

He laughed. “Which I hope you are not still contemplating.”

“No. The other. About the divorce.”

“Evangeline told me. And I think you have every right to rid yourself of him—”

“Thomas.” She was shaking her head. “You don’t understand. It’s not that way.”

“I’m sure it’s more complicated than that. I don’t mean to oversimplify—”

She wanted to laugh, only she knew she didn’t dare. Sweet, dear Thomas. He would always give her the broadest benefit of the doubt.

“No.” She shook her head, smiling again. She placed both hands on his chest. “No. You don’t understand at all.”

“What then? Explain it to me.”

She laughed. “Dead horses, Tommy. We’ll leave it out in the forest; we’ll leave this conversation here.”

She turned, gave him her back again to watch out the window. The horns were sounding. And Adrien Hunt, she could swear, was looking straight up into the gallery window.

“Don’t do this,” she heard Thomas say behind her. “I’m not hiding things from
you
just on whim.”

“Nor am I you.”

“The other is not something I can discuss.”

“I understand. I was half killed by you and some of your friends, and you can’t offer me even a vague explanation. Fine. Neither of us needs to make explanations to the other.” She sighed. “And now, if you want to catch up to them, you’d better go.”

She stared out the window. And there, below her,
stood an absolute certainty. Adrien Hunt, half wrestling his horse to keep it facing the right direction, was directly below the window, looking up at them. Christina’s chest tightened. He was something to behold, she thought. He was beautiful.

An hour later, Christina was still waiting for Evangeline and Charles. They were late, which was absolutely typical. Christina surmised she would have several hours on her own to entertain herself. This was not something she minded. With everyone out hunting, the house was empty—only servants were about. And in the back gardens there would be no one at all. The gardener had gone to town on errands. Christina set off happily to wander through the immediate back portion of the estate.

Everything was lush. Spring had been early. And though it was only the end of May, summer had arrived. The garden was high and bushy and full of carefully groomed flowers. Christina made her way through the pristine rows and patterns to the huge fountain. There, water shot out from the wheels of a careering stone chariot, giving the impression of great speed on the surface of the pool. It was just beyond the fountain that rows of high rosebushes began. Strange bushes. Not like those she knew. They grew thicker, straighter.
Then, around one bush, she collided smack into someone emerging briskly from the other direction.

Adrien Hunt.

She was so taken aback she couldn’t speak.

He more or less had to set her on her feet again. “Are you all right?”

“What are you doing here?”

He smiled. “I live here.” He was still in his riding clothes.

“I thought you had gone hunting.”

Again, he smiled. His face was censuring but polite—it said he was not going to account for himself to her.

“And your friend,” Christina asked. “The one in the blue velvet riding habit. Is she with you?”

“Upstairs.”

“How convenient.” The casualness of his admission irked her. She was almost certain that, during the week since his arrival, he had not slept one night alone. The Chiswell girl had arrived the day before. And before that, there had been another woman, older, a woman who wore her hair swept off her neck in a chignon. “Well, then, run along. Don’t let me disturb your plans.”

He stood there, watching Christina. Quite softly, he said, “She’s broken her arm. Her horse threw her.”

“Oh dear.” Christina looked into the folds of her skirts. “I am sorry.”

After a moment, he snapped a rose off the bush beside them. “Here,” he said.

She looked at it as he handed it to her. “What’s this for?”

“To cheer you, I suppose.” He paused. “You always seem to take everything so seriously.”

She tried to give back the flower. “I have good reason.” He wouldn’t take it. “Life has been a little ‘serious’ for me lately.” She bent her head and began to pick at the petals.

“Evangeline’s told me,” he said. “About your marriage, that is. I’m sorry it has been such a bad disappointment for you.”

Christina glanced at him. “A ‘disappointment’? Is that how she describes it? Thomas was saying something as well. What is she telling people?”

He laughed. “She only hints a great deal. As if being very discreet. But I gather you are finishing it off with something of a frivolous skirt-chaser.”

Christina laughed, too. The antithesis of Richard. But she did not want to think about Richard now. She touched a long stem on one of the rosebushes. “These are very pretty. Though strange. Not like anything we had at home.”

“We grow them that way. It’s a hobby. I’ve been crossing them for several years now. Playing with the color mostly.”

She frowned at him. Liar, she thought. “Trying to make orange roses,” she said.

He looked surprised that she should know. “Yes.”

Who was he trying to impress with this? “It’s your gardener’s project.”

He looked at her, perplexed but cordial. He contradicted. “They’re my crosses. I write them out; he does them. He works for me.” He stopped to look hard at her, as if trying again to understand the measure of her. “It’s very much like Mendel’s work, only we’ve not been as lucky. We’ve gotten some decent sorts of things, like these.” He flicked something on a leaf—a speck, an insect—Then said quite innocently, “But every hybrid thus far has been sterile. The generations we need to refine color, shape, size, that sort of thing simply can’t be produced.” He shrugged. “A pity. Come, if you like, I’ll show you my favorites.”

She followed him, on a trace of guilt, a trace of curiosity.

He led the way deeper into the garden. Trees came up
to the path here and there. The bushes grew higher, denser. And the air was warm and perfumed with roses in bloom. Butterflies—the outlined contrasts of Clouded Yellows, the brilliant color of a stray Adonis Blue—flickered in the shade or darted in an erratic pattern through the sun that filtered down to the garden path.

She felt a fool. He was polite. He wasn’t disapproving or making harsh judgments of her. A gentleman, she realized as she followed him. Whatever else he was, he was that. Not a sham, no deceit, but something genuinely upper-class. Like the sound of his voice. She envied his speech. It had taken her so long, and several girls’ schools, to achieve something similar. She chastised herself. Who was the liar really? All her life she had been masquerading, trying not to let people see…

They went around the last bend in the path, and, there, stood a little house. It was made of nothing but panes of glass.

“What—?” She halted.

He held the door open.

Inside, it was warmer. Though a gentle breeze cut through: Some of the panes opened out, hinged at the top.

“They’re toward the back.” He motioned, then guided, putting her in front of him. His hand touched lightly at her back. It sent a shiver through her. The first inkling she was out of her class, out of her league.

The glass house was not particularly small, but it was crowded with shelves of plants. Orange trees bloomed. Lemons. Pineapples. And at the rear, a wall of roses. Beautiful peach-colored blooms. He pointed to them.

“There.”

“Oh—They’re lovely!”

He moved around her, brushed her shoulder as he passed. She was more aware of him—of his body, its solidness, its peculiar grace—in the crowded quarters. She felt herself flush as he bent toward her. His chest
came up against her arm and breast. He murmured an apology, as if this were perfectly excusable. He picked up some shears from the workbench.

One. Two. Three. A dozen. Methodically, he cut the flowers. When he offered them to her, she didn’t know what to say. His smile, his pleasant friendliness, his sharp features were so magnetic. She damned all handsome men as she stood in a cloud of confusion. After a moment, she reached out. Then stupidly, promptly dropped the roses on the floor.

“Ah—”

Blood oozed from the tip of her middle finger.

His hand wrapped around hers. Smooth, dry fingers. He took her finger into his mouth.

She was stunned.

His mouth was warm. She could feel the gentle pressure, a drawing of his teeth and tongue. It took her much too long to retrieve her hand.

“Sir,” she reprimanded softly. She looked away.

The floor of the house was raised, a solid foundation. Dirt and dried leaves were scattered about. Buckets half-full with water. Empty pots. Chaos on the floor. Then suddenly that thought seemed horribly prescient. As if he might throw her right there on her back, among the dried-out leaves. A stupid thought. But she couldn’t quite get rid of the image. And worse, she couldn’t quite decide if it repelled or attracted.

She looked up, blushing, tongue-tied; vaguely angry. She suddenly wanted out of the miserable little house. Why, in God’s name, had she come back here? With a known philanderer? But she was anchored, without the first notion how to hoist free.

He bent and began picking up the flowers at her feet. A sudden ray of sunlight came over the workbench, cut across his head and shoulders. Then a butterfly, as if on that beam of light, made its way through the opening of the window. It swooped and danced over his shoulders.
The broad shoulders. The arms that could pick one up as if one weighed no more than a feather pillow….

The breeze died. The little glass room began to feel close, overly warm. He was picking up the flowers—six, seven, eight—and aligning them. Christina flattened her hand into her skirt to hold it back, to avoid stepping on his hands. She tried to take a step back, but a low shelf caught her, pressed into her bottom. It was strange, but this was somehow alarming. She felt agitated, fidgety. She looked at her finger. It had begun to throb lightly. There was a pinprick of blood.

He stood, the bundle of roses in his hand, and reached above her, his chest against her face. The smell of him again. Soap, tobacco, leather. Was he doing this on purpose? Christina felt suffocated by him. She held her breath, rather than breathe in his warmth, his humidity. She raised her hands. Lightly against his chest. Not knowing how to push him back without touching him. Then, on his own, he moved back. As if it were nothing. As if she weren’t there. She was nonplused, a woman left in midair. She couldn’t look at him. Yet, in nervous glances, couldn’t keep from keeping track.

He was wrapping a piece of paper about the stems of the roses. He set the tidied parcel on the workbench, then took another step back. He rested an elbow on an upper shelf and looked at her. There was a faint, ironical smile on his lips.

“I’ve frightened you,” he said.

She was quick to shake her head. “Oh, no—”

He laughed. “Oh, yes. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to.” He reached and caught her hand again.

She was half-flustered, half-piqued at the apology followed by the same trick. She flinched as he turned her hand over and studied it. Her hand was clammy. It shook slightly. His was steady, smooth.

He let go. She huffed a wounded breath and pressed her palm to her chest. “It will be all right,” he said. He
cocked his head to the side. “The cut, I mean.” As if he could have meant something else. “And I am sorry for a moment ago. Only your finger just suddenly looked—” He shrugged, smiled—“It’s what I do to mine. Honestly.” His smile broadened—a flash of white teeth as brilliant as a bolt of electricity through the sky.

Christina blushed, turned her head away. She caught sight of the door, at the far end, down the corridor of plants. She really must leave, she thought.

Then she heard him laughing. “If you make a break for it, I’ll drop you to the ground flat out. Wrestling team, you know, all the way through university. I’m a smash at a takedown.”

Her eyes went wide.

His soft laughter again. “Sorry.” He made a self-conscious apology with his shoulders. “Only pulling your leg. You look so bloody green.” More soberly: “But I’m just a little insulted: What you must be thinking.”

“I wasn’t thinking anything.”

“Only that I’d as soon rape you as look at you. Which is not true. I find looking at you exceptionally pleasant.” He paused. “Why did you come out here with me if I frighten you so?”

No answer. Though it remained a very good question.

The breeze picked up. A long time seemed to pass with just the gentle movement, the soft brush of something leafy at the other end. Some of her tension dissipated down to something easier to cope with—the level of bees buzzing somewhere near the citrus blossoms. Then he broke the spell.

“Here,” he said. He bent down, this time staying where he was. He brought out a book from beneath the workbench. He opened it. It contained entries in a neat hand. Latin names, cross-marks, lines. At the end of every page was written “will not set hips.” Then, as he turned the pages, “sterile.”

“It’s my writing,” his voice teased. “Shall I demonstrate?”

“No.” She glanced at him. He seemed to be asking for something now; so sincerely, so guilelessly. She laughed. “You are a proper scientist, then. The new Mendel.”

“No. A dilettante. With a hundred hobbies. But, yes, I would rather be taken a little more seriously than a simple cad. Thank you.”

There was a nice moment. More silence. In which she began to look at the book again. She turned a page, ran her finger down it.

“I’m barren,” she said. It came out without design or reason. “The nonsense of my divorcing my husband is Evangeline’s doing. My husband is divorcing me.”

As soon as she had uttered it, she wished she could call it back. What a thing to tell someone. Why had she said such a thing to him?

But he seemed to understand too well. “He’s a fool,” he murmured. He touched her. His hand ran along her arm. It sent shivers through her; goose flesh. Then he took that arm, turned her by it, and pulled her to him. She found herself bracing her fingers on his abdomen. Her arms pushed. She held the distance.

He glanced down. “Am I supposed to force you?” he said. “Would that make it all right in your mind? I’m going to kiss you, you know.”

“I wish you wouldn’t.”

He whispered in her ear, “No, you don’t.”

His lips were warm and sure. They knew what they wanted. They moved against her lips, feeling their shape, their softness. His tongue briefly tasted these edges—then, with perfect boldness, his kiss pressed her mouth open. His tongue went deep into her mouth, taking every square inch. Christina squirmed a moment. Everything seemed to be turning over on itself. A kind of horrible yet fascinating movement at her core; like oil rolling up over water. Something rose in her chest, sunk
in her belly. Her breath felt tight, compressed. Her breasts tingled against his chest. She was suddenly aware of the texture of his silk cravat, of the smooth, soft wool of his coat, of her own cambric dress. As if, on their own, her arms, her breasts, her belly could take notice of such things. Her whole body, in fact, seemed to come alive in a way that made her feel a stranger in it. Her heart pounded. Her head swam. Her legs wanted to buckle—

After a time, his arms loosened. Just a hand ran down her arm. She exercised the option this gave her. She stepped back to lean against the workbench. Then, another touch; he had to steady her for a moment or she would have fallen against it. She couldn’t speak. She couldn’t breath properly. She put the back of her hand to her cheek—her hands were ice, her cheeks on fire—and looked at him.

He was frowning. His chest was noticeably rising, falling. He closed his eyes and made a noisy exhalation of air. “I keep underestimating you,” he murmured. It took him several seconds more to continue, “You’re so beautiful, no—” he actually took it back with a shake of his head—“much worse than beautiful. You feel—” he couldn’t quite find words—“extraordinary in my arms.”