[Samuel Barbara] Lucien's Fall(Book4You) (4 page)

"When I’m gazing at you," he continued in his slow, quiet voice, "I’ll be touching you in my mind. Your nose and hair, your throat. And I’ll be thinking you are ever so much more beautiful than Juliette, who has stolen your light for far, far too long."

She hid the trembling of her fingers inside her shawl and managed to say calmly,

"A good choice, sir. You are very observant to have seen so much in so short a time." Her courage ran out, and she turned from the balustrade. "Amusing as it’s been, I must return to my guests."

"By all means do not neglect your marquess." He gave her a short, stiff bow.

Madeline hurried away, relieved when she was again safely within the brightly lit salon, embraced by the frivolous notes of the quartet. Lord Esher frightened her.

And yet, she had no choice but to meet him toe to toe. Otherwise she’d disappear as certainly and quickly as claret on a gamblers’ table, lost to the extraordinary appeal of him.

She had no choice but to fight him—on his ground.

…

Lucien went to sleep well enough but awakened sometime before dawn, in the blackest part of the night, haunted. Music rang in his head, shattering sleep and thought, riding on a sharp blaze of light-struck pain.

There—there were the oboes. He winced and blinked, trying to push them away.

But in came the cellos, the drums, the clarinets. They crowded in, triumphant in spite of the port he’d drunk, the food he’d eaten. They came, his demon notes, to haunt him.

Over the years, he’d learned that there was only one cure for them, one way to drive them from his mind. In his nightshirt, he stumbled from the bed and lit a brace of candles. He flung his hair from his eyes and began to write.

When he was finished, he burned the pages completely, thoroughly, to curled black flutters.

The headache ceased.

Lucien slept.

I dare not ask a kisse,

I dare not beg a smile;

Lest having that, or this,

I might grow proud the while.

—Robert Herrick

Madeline, dressed in an old,
worn gown, made her way to the gardens long before the rest of the house stirred. Dew clung to the grass, wetting her slippers and dampening her hem. A blackbird sang from some dark and hidden place, the sound wistful in the still morning. As she walked, she pulled on cotton gloves that cost the earth, and yet were necessary to help protect her hands.

Thin mist clung to the landscape, and Madeline felt a catch in her chest—she had missed this place! All through Europe she had hiked, visiting out of a sense of duty the main sights thought to be suitable for a young woman. In truth, she’d gone for the gardens—and everywhere had found people sympathetic to her passion, those willing to share it by showing off their own gardens. It had been singularly pleasing. Sharing those well-loved places, Madeline had finally come to a clear sense of herself as apart from anything anyone else expected of her. And in this garden, she would please her own expectations.

Basket and shears in hand, she knelt in one of the small wing gardens that offset the maze on all four sides. Each plot had once been designed to illustrate a different sort of lace, but at the moment, most of it was unrecognizable for the weeds and overgrowth.

As the sun rose and the mist burned away, she clipped lavender borders and dug out the tiny paths between clumps of flowers to illustrate the lace pattern. In two hours, she managed to remove enough debris and unruly growth from a three-foot section so that it at least began to resemble the pattern. Rocking back on her heels to admire it, she wiped the back of one hand over her forehead, and felt a gritty mark streak her skin.

Yes, it would take some time, but she would restore the gardens at Whitethorn.

They were her legacy.

Perspiring and hungry, she picked up her basket of tools. Shaking her skirts to loosen the grass and leaves clinging to it, she looked up and was astonished to see Lord Esher approaching. It couldn’t yet be eight, and yet he was immaculately dressed in a dark blue coat and breeches, his hair neatly queued and tied with a bright ribbon that fluttered on a current of wind. On his feet were tall black boots.

A quiet stir touched her blood at the way he moved, so loose and free, and as he came closer, she thought of his wild leap over the hedge yesterday, of his rich shout of laughter as he reached the very height of the jump. He could not have known, in that moment, whether the horse would find its feet— whether he would live or die. It hadn’t seemed to matter.

There was no hurry about him. When he was a few feet away, she slapped her gloves together to shake some of the damp earth from them. "Rare for a gentleman of leisure to rouse himself so early, sir."

"I like to ride before the day is too long." With the insouciant ease that marked his every movement, he glanced around him. "It is unfashionable, but I find I enjoy the morning, before the tedious noise and babble begins." He smiled to take the sting from his words.

Madeline smiled. In the kindly light, he looked far less dangerous than he had the night before, his eyes clear, his complexion hale and healthy. She shifted her basket on her hip and used her scissors to cut a late blooming rose for him to put in his lapel.

"Yes,"
she said, handing him the flower. "I can’t stay in bed past dawn most days.

I’d rather be out here."

He smiled, tucking the flower into his coat. "Beware," he said, "you’ll give me tools to aid me in my seduction of you." But his smile was rueful, self-mocking, and she took the words as the light jest he intended.

"So be it." A tangle of weeds had grown around the rosebush. Fronds reached strangling arms clear to the top. Madeline frowned and set down her basket so she could wrestle the vine from the bush. "It would be impossible for you to stay long at Whitethorn," she said, "without learning my primary interest is in gardens."

"Ah." He looked around him. "It would seem you have quite a job ahead of you."

"You have no idea." Madeline dropped the uprooted woodbine to the ground. "If I were to do nothing else, just the maze would take me a year."

"It alone looks well tended. Surely there isn’t that much work to be done."

"Looks can be deceiving." She hadn’t intended the double meaning but heard it as soon as the words left her lips. She cocked her head toward him, grinning.

"Truer words were never spoken." For a moment he gazed at the maze. "Will you show it to me?" A glittering challenge lit his eyes.

"Another time," she said, lightly. "I’m afraid I’m quite famished."

"Pity." He lifted one perfect brow. "I have weakness for these old gardens and would have enjoyed a tour."

"Leading a rake into the maze, Lord Esher? Alone? The rake’s book of rules would surely insist that such a gesture is an invitation to certain ravishment."

"You
speak boldly."

"It saves time."

"Yes." He lifted his hands as if in surrender, and backed away with a short, quick bow. "I’d hoped for a narration of its virtues, from someone who obviously loves it well, but perhaps you’re right. I’ll go alone."

"Impossible. You’ll be hopelessly lost."

He gave her the faintest hint of a smile. "Then I suppose you’ll be rescuing me before supper tonight."

Madeline hesitated. She genuinely loved the gardens, and as anyone did, loved to share her knowledge. Was his interest genuine, or a ruse to lure her into a secluded place?

She didn’t know. "Most find the old style of formal gardens a bore nowadays."

"Yes, I know." He clasped his hands behind his back, that restless gaze traveling over the ragged topiary all around them. "My boyhood home had formal gardens of this sort. My father had them razed and replanted in the new style after my mother died." He looked at her. "It was a gruesomely destructive act."

"My stepmother would do the same here." Somehow, they were walking slowly toward the entrance to the maze. "It would be a tragedy. This hedge is nearly a hundred years old."

"Show it to me," he said again. "I vow the place will be your ground only. Within, I’ll be only Lucien, your friend."

"My friend." She drawled the words with as much skepticism as she could muster, stripping her damp gloves from her hands. "All right," she said. "If you misbehave, I’ll simply leave you in there to starve."

His crooked smile flashed. "Very well."

"Choose your path."

He considered and pointed. "The left."

Together they entered the hallways of green. Immediately all sounds were muffled. The sun had not yet warmed the paths here, and shreds of mist clung to the ground and hung in streamers around the small, secret beds planted here and there.

"Do not attempt it alone," she cautioned seriously. "Once, there were markers to help the alert, but most are overgrown now. The right side is better, more easily navigated."

"Why is that?" Lazily he plucked a bud from a clematis vine and lifted it to his nose.

"The first earl of Whitethorn had a passion for puzzles. The two sides meet at the center, but it’s impossible to get from one side to the other except there. On the right side, you alternate turning first left, then right."

"But how does one remember?"

"Carefully."

"And on this side?"

Madeline gave him a smile and tapped her forehead. "The pattern must be memorized."

"And you have?"

"It’s been my retreat since I was a child." Here, on her own ground, in the one place on earth that belonged to her, Madeline felt calm. Lifting her head, she inhaled the scent of the yews, and the damp, bruised grass under their feet. It was longer here, unkempt, and her feet were quite wet before long. As they rounded a corner, Madeline gave him a secretive smile. "The
claire-voies
in this maze are extraordinary," Madeline said. "There are more than twenty of them."

"Claire-voies?"

"Yes." Madeline lifted a hand to indicate he should precede her around a corner, and he did.

There, framing a view of great expanse of the wild gardens beyond, was a window cut into the hedge. Lord Harrow paused midstep. Madeline thought he looked almost stricken before he recovered and glanced down at Madeline. "Breathtaking, isn’t it?"

She looked at the view, painted pale gold with the soft fingers of morning, the greens in hues from gray to yellow, the stillness unbroken but for a cluster of ravens, shiny black, picking in the grass for breakfast. "Yes," she replied. "The whole maze exists only for the sake of beauty. It’s extraordinary."

He lifted a brow. "You strike me as a woman who’d find beauty for its own sake a wasteful thing."

"No. Oh, no," she said, and let her gaze touch the exquisite view framed by the
claire-voie.
"Is beauty not the easiest of all things to claim? It’s there for anyone."

Madeline felt his restless body quiet. In a resonant voice like a cello, he quoted:

"Full many a glorious morning have I seen

Flatter the mountain-tops with sovereign eye,

Kissing with golden face the meadows green,

Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy."

Shakespeare. Madeline recognized it immediately, but in his mouth, the sonnet sounded unlike it had in her own mind when she read it. He somehow gave the words a life and music she’d never uncovered. The lyrical rhythm stung her.

With a sharp breathlessness, Madeline looked at him. His head turned and their gazes collided. In the good, gray light, she saw that his eyes were quite remarkably beautiful, dark blue studded with sparks of yellow and green that seemed to have their own source of light.

Jeweled.

Abruptly, she turned around and started walking the direction they had come.

Foolish of her to think there was any hope of resisting a man as accomplished in the art of seduction as Lord Esher.

"Lady Madeline! Wait! Why do you run?"

She whirled. "It was unseemly to bring you in here. I was wrong to do it."

"I’ve frightened you," he said. "I vow that was not my intention."

"It
is
difficult to seduce a terrified woman," she said acerbically.

He touched his chest and held out his hand in a gesture of sincerity. "Nothing I did here was for intent." He glanced over his shoulder and back to her. "I swear by my mother’s grave I’ll not try to seduce you here."

Again he looked back, toward the path leading inward, to the heart of the maze, with a yearning Madeline recognized on some wordless plane.

He waited, without moving or cajoling, only watching her with that pained, jeweled gaze. The stillness was gone from his body, and she felt his need to go on as clearly as a shout.

She was mad to do it, mad to open even the slightest hint of trust, but she sensed they were alike somehow, in some way hidden deep within both of them, and she wanted to find out what it was they shared. "All right," she said. "The maze is neutral ground."

"Not even simply neutral," he said soberly. "It’s yours."

The
claire-voie
pricked music to life in his nerves. New notes, notes that he’d not heard. The ravens, so black against the green, the sky pale above, the dazzling butter yellow sunshine—all framed with the stillness of the living window, green and silent, made music burst to life in him.

And from his heart, or his chest, or whatever place it was the music lived, he heard notes. Violin. He frowned. No, viola. . . yes, and now a horn, soft and faraway.

As he stared through the opening, with Madeline wary and yet curious beside him, a raven lifted and flew into the morning sky, and with the bird’s flight came a swell of notes. Lucien hummed them softly, catching them.

How long since music had come like that, without the breach of liquor? So long.

And yet, he could not seem to resist it.

With a rueful smile, he offered his arm to the decidedly grimy Madeline. From her dress and skin came the earthy scents of bruised grass and hard work. Long untidy tendrils of hair escaped her cap to hang on her shoulders, and he wondered again what that hair looked like free and brushed to shining.