[Samuel Barbara] Lucien's Fall(Book4You) (15 page)

A crooked half-smile lit his face. He found his balance on the wall. Slowly he walked toward her. Most of it was a gentle slope upward, but the few yards were a hard climb—Madeline knew, for she’d done it as a girl and been petrified—over jutting stone held in place only by crumbling mortar.

Lucien tackled it boldly, seeking purchase with his hands and feet. Once he stepped hard on a stone and it crumbled, nearly taking him with it. It skittered out from under him and his body swung out with it. Only sheer luck gave him help. At the last possible instant, he caught hold of stone yet firmly mortared in the wall.

Madeline slapped her hands over her mouth to catch her scream. His feet dangled in the open air, his body tilting at a mad angle as he looked for a better grip with his hands. The stone that had come loose hit the piles of crumbled rock below with a thudding crash, and Madeline gave a sharp cry. Briefly and cowardly, she closed her eyes.

When she opened them again, he had somehow managed to regain his balance, but rather than retreat, Lucien simply steadied himself and moved forward once more.

With her breath held back in her throat, Madeline watched as he topped the highest portion of the wall, standing alone sixty feet in the air. He rested there a moment, gazing around him in obvious enjoyment. "It’s rather magnificent," he said to Madeline.

"Yes" She gripped the edge of the wall. Small dusty rocks bit her fingers. "Do take care! I wish you’d climbed the stairs."

He seemed not at all bothered by the great height, but sat comfortably on the broad wall, feet dangling down on either side. He looked at her, his eyes a hard bright blue in the sunny afternoon. "Have you never climbed the wall?"

"Only as a child, but I didn’t truly understand the danger then."

"But ’tis the danger that makes it so thrilling." With a sudden, graceful move, he shifted his feet and cautiously, confidently stood.

A hard pain stabbed her. She covered her mouth with both her hands to keep from gasping or screaming.

"Shall I run to you?" he said, that crooked smile devilish.

She shook her head, unable to speak.

"Perhaps walking is enough," he said agreeably. There were perhaps three yards of high wall between him and Madeline. He stood a moment with his arms outstretched, his chin up as if scenting the air. A slight breeze ruffled his full white shirtsleeves and lifted a lock of dark hair on his shoulder. His feet were one in front of the other in the scuffed boots.

And he began to walk, swinging one foot out and around and putting it down, and then the next, and the next, just so. Madeline’s chest hurt with watching, but she could not stop. She feared with some illogical part of herself that she must keep her eyes on him or he’d fall to his death.

One booted toe kicked a loose stone, and it dislodged without a sound, breaking free to tumble down, down, down. The sudden movement threw Lord Esher off balance and he suddenly squatted, grabbing the wall for a moment. There still was no fear on his face, only a wild light of joy. He stood up again and lightly dance-walked the rest of the way to the tower. He leaped nimbly to the stone ledge and walked toward her.

"I am the prince of Gobbledegook," he said with a bow, "come to save you from the evil king, my dear princess." His eyes glittered.

Madeline stared at him. How had he known the game she played so often here as a girl? "You might have been killed," she said.

"Yes, I might have been." Slowly, he walked around the stone circle. "But one must do what one must to save endangered princesses."

Reluctantly, Madeline smiled.

"Ah, there it is!"

"What?"

He stopped a foot from her, too close, really, but Madeline didn’t move away. Her heart beat hard. "Your smile, Madeline. You have such mischief in your smile."

"Must you ever be on the prowl?" she asked in exasperation. "I’d not mind your company nearly so much if it weren’t plain you only speak to a woman in order to bed her."

Lucien laughed. "Is that so? Do I thus speak to your stepmother? Or Lady Heath?"

"I assume you never count any woman outside your realm." Madeline turned away from him to lean her elbows on the wall. "It is rather tiresome. However, I somehow have a tendency to like you in spite of it."

"Do you now?" He, too, leaned on the wall, and Madeline didn’t dare look at him.

He kept his distance, but she felt his heat and presence brushing her, bumping her as distinctly as if he were pressed against her. "Then if I am your friend, I have a better chance of bedding you, am I correct?"

She gave an exaggerated sigh and shook her head. "You’ll not bed me at all, no matter what technique you pull from your arsenal, Lord Esher. My heart belongs to the marquess."

"Oh, good." He settled on the wall. "I admit that gives some relief. It’s a burden to bed every woman one meets, but what is a rake to do?"

Madeline laughed at the twinkle in his eye and shook her head. "I hereby grant you leave to consider me a lost cause, and therefore a friend only."

"Graciously granted." The aerial view seemed to strike him again. "This is magnificent. Who lived in the castle?"

"I’m sure there are records, but I don’t know. The first earl of Whitethorn was given the land by Queen Elizabeth, in return for some service he performed, and the castle was already in ruins by then."

Meditatively, he gazed at it. "Odd that entire generations lived and ate here, danced and dreamed and"—he shot a glance at her—"made love here. And now they’re lost to all of time."

"Like Pompeii," she said quietly. "You never did say what bothered you about it."

"The same things you mentioned. The suddenness, the completeness. It seems unfair that all at once, all their lives were gone. So fast, so utterly without hope of escape." His voice deepened. "Why does God, if he is truly in his heaven, allow such things to befall people?"

Pierced, she looked at him, and saw anew the haggardness at his jaw, the carelessness of his dress. In her mind’s eye she saw his wild walk along the wall, as if he dared death to snatch him. "Perhaps it is too large an answer for our small minds to grasp," she suggested.

Shaking his head, his eyes trained on the treetops, he said, "It never bothered you, this castle?"

"Oh. yes, it did." She rubbed a hand along the wall, moving dust and grit. "It brought on the melancholia deeply when I was about twelve or fourteen. I’d come here and think of my mother and weep." She smiled, quickly, remembering. "Young girls are often melodramatic. If there had been no castle, I’d have wept over something else."

"Do you remember your mother?"

"Not at all. There is a painting of her on the wall in the library. She’s beautiful and delicate, and it’s plain she would not have lasted long whether I was born or not."

"She died in childbirth?"

"Yes. And they thought I would die, too, but I did not. I believe that is why my father married Juliette so quickly after—it was quite the scandal, but he had need of a woman to raise his daughter."

"Scandal," he said mildly. "My father scandalized his set with a marriage, as well.

Married a Russian noblewoman twenty years his junior."

"Juliette was not even a foreign noblewoman, but a dressmaker’s daughter."

"So I have heard." He turned toward her. "She has been good to you, though."

Madeline nodded. "Yes."

A bank of clouds suddenly obscured the sun, and Madeline looked up in surprise to see a storm was moving in. "Heavens!" she said. "We’d best get back."

"Yes." He straightened and turned away from her.

"Where are you going?" Madeline asked. "The stairs are this way."

His devilish smile flashed. "Back the way I came."

Impulsively, she caught his arm. "Please do not. I do not think I can bear to watch again."

"So do not watch."

"Please," she repeated.

His smile deepened. "It seems we must bargain again."

"No," she said, taking her hand from his arm and stepping backward. She rubbed her fingers against her side, trying to remove the impression of his flesh below the fabric of his shirt. "I am finished with bargains."

"All right, then. Back down the wall I go."

Madeline let him walk away, and gripped her hands together. He paused at the edge of the wall, as if to give her one more chance, and she simply stared at him.

But then he leaped to the top of the tower wall and her heart stuck hard in her throat and she was moving before she knew she would, rushing toward him. "Lucien, no!

Please don’t do it again, I can’t bear it!"

He turned, so quickly he nearly overbalanced. For a long, agonizing second, he hung between earth and sky, wavering over a vast drop to a painful and horrible death.

Then, like a cat, he found his balance and jumped nimbly to the stone ledge within the tower. A blazingly satisfied smile touched his mouth, and even reached his eyes. "You’ll bargain with a rake, then?"

"Depending upon what he asks."

"Oh, it is a small, small price I ask, Madeline—I may call you Madeline, may I not, since you have used my Christian name?"

She blushed but held her ground.

He stepped close, so close his body nearly touched hers. Only a small outstretched hand could have fit between them. Madeline had to tip her head backward to look at his face. "What I wish, Madeline," he said slowly, touching her neck where the mark was, letting her know he’d seen it, "is one kiss, of my choosing, redeemable whenever I wish it."

"I—

"One kiss, Madeline, that’s all, I swear it."

She stared at him, sensing some trick. But the narcotic spell of his nearness enveloped her suddenly and she could not quite catch her breath. Her eyes seemed to focus, all without her help, upon his mouth—firm for so dissolute a man, perfectly cut, and as she knew, capable of giving great pleasure. "Just one kiss?" she asked.

"Yes."
He moved his finger down her throat in a slow line. "One kiss. And you needn’t give it to me now."

"You mustn’t redeem it in front of other people."

He smiled, and his hand slipped from her neck, over her shoulder, along her arm, perilously close to her breast. "Is that your only requirement, that no one must see me take it?"

Madeline roused herself to think for a moment— should she require anything else? "Yes, that’s all. It must be done privately."

"Very well," he said, "I will not walk the wall in return for a kiss from you at a time of my choosing, and in private."

"Yes."

"Shall we go down the stairs, then?"

A whistle again broke the quiet day. Madeline looked down and saw Anna, Juliette, and Jonathan grouped at the foot of the wall, staring up at them. Juliette did not look pleased.

"Let’s get down the stairs," Madeline said abruptly. "It’s going to storm."

"Yes," he said lazily, "I believe it will."

…

Late that night, after all had retired, Juliette dismissed the maid who had helped her undress and tended her clothes. Alone, she stripped away her undergarments until she stood nude in the cool room. Rain fell outside the windows, pattering and clean. Juliette washed carefully and applied scent to her elbows, knees, breasts, and ears. A little rubbed along her upper lip, a dab on her thighs and in her navel.

She donned an elegant blue dressing gown, trimmed with lace, and patted her hair, which was perfectly arranged from the evening. She stepped back from the mirror to admire herself. Oh, yes— he’d not resist this easily.

Into the silent corridor she crept, her bare feet making no noise. She passed Madeline’s door, and Anna’s, and the spare guest room now standing empty and silent in the midnight light.

At Jonathan’s room, she paused, aching, wondering if he still waited for her—and if he did, what he wore. Anything? In her mind’s eye, she saw his sleek, beautiful body washed in moonlight. A wave of longing so wild it took her breath swept through her, For a long, fiercely painful moment, she wavered. If she did not go to him tonight, it might well be over between them. If he learned what she was doing instead, it would be over.

She swallowed, thinking of Madeline and Lord Esher on that castle tower this afternoon. Madeline was quite massively smitten. Lucien Harrow would have her in his bed in no time unless Juliette took pains to prevent it.

Purposefully, she moved down the hallway and stopped at Lord Esher’s door. She scratched the panels. There was no immediate answer, and she scratched again.

All at once, the door was flung open, and a very drunk Lucien Harrow glared at her. "What is it?" he said. Then he saw what Juliette intended, a long bare length of thigh, poking out from between the folds of her gown, and a generous section of unharnessed breast almost carelessly showing. A dark look flooded his eyes, an expression measuring and furious and calculating at once.

Dryly, he said, "What have we here?"

"Whatever you like." She smiled her best smile and smoothed the silk over her body suggestively. "Might I come in and share your port?"

He was shirtless, his hair loose, and Juliette didn’t wonder that Madeline was smitten. He wasn’t Jonathan of course, but he was beautiful nonetheless. And the darkness in him was exciting. Lazily, he leaned on the doorjamb, bottle in hand, and let his gaze rove over her. Juliette inclined her head, but a flush began on her neck; she could feel it creeping up her face, to her ears. Men did not consider her a bawdy in a whorehouse, but leaped upon her as if she were the choicest morsel at a feast. His slow reluctance shamed her deeply.

"It isn’t that I wouldn’t like to," he said at last, "but I value my friendship with Jonathan."

Just then, a door opened down the hallway, and Jonathan stepped into the dim corridor. Juliette bolted forward, shoving herself between Lucien and the doorway, scraping her arm rather viciously as she did so. She plastered her back against the inner wall and listened to see if she could tell where her love had gone. Silence echoed back.

"Where did he go?" Juliette whispered.

"Downstairs I believe," he said. "You’ve time to get back to your room, I’d guess, or into his—or even to the library."