The Arrangement (28 page)

“I have never expected Raoul to marry me,” I said, my voice steady even though my heart ached. “All I have expected of him is that he will find a new location for me to set up my business.” I laid my hand lightly on his arm. “And that job, I believe, he has delegated to you. Have you seen anything suitable, John?”

He let me change the subject and we spent the rest of the twenty minutes we were in the garden chatting about the two places for lease he had investigated and their unfortunate lack of suitability.

* * * *

The tea tray came in at eleven, and, after eating some fruit that I did not want, I collected a light from the table where the night candles were put out, wished everyone good night, and retired.

I cannot tell you how strange it seemed to walk through the rooms that had once belonged to Raoul’s wife. The morning room was done in pink silk and furnished with a davenport desk of rosewood with inlaid lines and brass handles in the form of lion masks. Twin pink-silk-upholstered Sheraton chairs stood along the wall, and flanking the wide, pink-silk-hung window were rosewood bookcases with front grilles. The paintings on the walls were pictures of great urns of multicolored flowers. When Ginny had taken me through the apartment that morning, she had said that this was the room the countess had used to write out her menus and to keep her housekeeping books.

After the morning room came the countess’s dressing room, which was absolutely sumptuous. The furniture was mahogany banded with satinwood and everything was covered with pale green silk: the walls, the windows, the chaise longue, the chairs.

“Georgiana had it done up to match her eyes,” Ginny had said, with an elusive trace of emotion I couldn’t place, and I remembered the beautiful green eyes in the portrait in the Melville gallery.

There had been nothing Georgiana could do with the bedroom to make it modern and elegant, however. The walls were lined with centuries-old tapestries, the furniture was heavy oak, and the room was solidly magnificent, not delicately elegant. The hangings on the bed where my child now slept were embroidered with silver, gold, and pearls, and Ginny had told me that they were more than two hundred years old.

Once, Raoul had lived with the woman who had inhabited these rooms. Once, he had loved her very much. Indeed, according to John, he loved her still.

Reluctantly my mind again summoned up the portrait in the Melville gallery. I remembered the smooth dark hair, the green eyes, the long, slim neck, the unmistakable look of aristocracy stamped on every feature of her face. It hurt me to think of her. It hurt me to think that Raoul had loved her, might love her still. I wished with all my heart that he could love me.

When I bent over the bed to check Nicky, I saw that he was fast asleep and breathing normally. I had been inspecting his breathing all day and had seen nothing to alarm me. It was true that he was sleeping a lot, but when he had been awake he had been perfectly alert. His only complaint had been of a headache.

There was no Mary tonight to help me undress, so I got out of my blue dress with a little more trouble than I had become accustomed to. My nightdress and toiletries were already laid out on the massive oak chest that functioned as a table, and I pulled my white cotton gown over my head, combed my short hair, got into the bed next to Nicky, and leaned back against the pillows, listening to his soft, even breathing.

It excited me unbearably to think that Raoul would be coming to bed in the room next door. I thought of what it would be like to be his wife and to lie thus every night, waiting for him, listening for him, and then I banished the thought from my mind.

Why torture oneself by dreaming of the impossible?

Nicky was lying on his side, and I reached over to put my hand on his shoulder, as if to reassure myself that I was still Gail Saunders and not some strange woman who was inhabiting my body.

I don’t know how much time passed before the connecting door between the rooms opened, as I knew it would, and Raoul came in holding a candle. He walked quietly on stockinged feet to the side of the bed and looked down at Nicky.

“Is he sleeping?”

“Yes. He’s been asleep since I got here.”

Raoul’s eyes moved from Nicky to me. “He’ll be all right on his own for a little while, Gail,” he said.

I drew a deep, unsteady breath. “I don’t know. I’ve been thinking about what you said last night, Raoul, and I don’t think I want to take a chance and leave him alone.” I swallowed. “What if someone
does
wish harm to him?”

In answer to that, Raoul went through the connecting door into the countess’s dressing room. I could hear him locking the door that led into the passageway. Then he returned to the bedroom and did the same for the door in there. “Now the only way to gain access to this room is through my room,” he said. He came back to the bedside and stood looking down at me. “Nicky is safe.”

He was convincing. “Well…if you are certain.” Slowly I pushed the lightweight cover off of me and swung my legs around to slide off the bed. My feet hit the carpeted floor and I looked up. Raoul towered over me. “Gail,” he said, and put his hands on my waist to lift me up to him. I reached up my arms to circle his neck and my feet came completely off the carpet. Our mouths met hungrily and we kissed like people who had been parted for years.

“Gail,” he said again, only this time it sounded more like a groan. We were still locked together, my feet still dangling free of the ground, when he began to walk toward the connecting door to his room. He stopped for a minute, and I felt his arms come under my knees, and then he was lifting me high and carrying me through the door and into another tapestry-hung room where a single candle was burning. He laid me down on the bed and stood beside me for a moment to rip his shirt out of his waistband and pull it over his head.

“I’m sure that is a very nice nightdress, sweetheart, but you are nicer by far,” he said. “Do you think we could have it off?”

“I might manage that,” I replied breathlessly. And as I divested myself of my prim nightdress, Raoul pulled off his black dress trousers. Then he joined me on the bed.

His hands were all over me, searching out the places where I most liked to be touched, caressing me with fingers that were surprisingly hard for the fingers of an aristocrat. I ran my hands up and down his back, over his ribs, loving his lean-muscled body, which glowed golden in the candlelight. I ran a tine of kisses up and down his collarbone, pressed my face against the hollow of his shoulder, and rubbed my hand across the breadth of his chest, feeling my fingers slide through the crisp golden hair that grew there.

There was nothing about him that was not beautiful.

His lips went to my breast, and I sucked in my breath and arched my back as shocks of sensation went from his mouth all the way down to my loins. I put my hands on either side of his head to hold him where he was, and, involuntarily, my legs began to part in welcome.

We said quite a few things to each other as the tempo of our drive toward consummation increased relentlessly. Finally the need became overwhelming and the force of his hard, powerful possession gave me an explosive pleasure that surpassed even what I had found with him before. Then, afterward, when he held me close in his arms, the cherishing warmth of his embrace was so sweet that it made tears clog the back of my throat. I closed my eyes and snuggled my head into the hollow of his shoulder.

I felt so safe when I was with Raoul.

Safe.
The very word brought Nicky to my mind.

“Raoul,” I said urgently. “I have to get up. I have to check on Nicky.”

He didn’t try to argue with me, just got out of bed and handed me my nightgown. Then he put on a dressing gown to cover his nakedness and together we went next door to check on my son.

Nicky had turned on his back and was sleeping with one arm thrown over his head. His hair was flung back from his brow, and in the light of the candle his long lashes cast shadows on his cheeks. Looking at him, my heart cramped with love.

And with something else.

“Do you really think the bridge was sabotaged?” I asked Raoul.

We moved away from the bed toward the window so that our voices would not disturb Nicky.

“I don’t know what to think,” Raoul answered. “John is emphatic about the trustworthiness of the two men who checked it last month. I know most of the workmen on the estate, but these two men are new, so I cannot vouch for them myself.”

“If they are new, then how can John be so certain of their trusthworthiness?” I asked sharply.

The moonlight coming in the window cast shadows on Raoul’s face. “Apparently they were recommended by someone John has a great deal of faith in. All I can surmise is that the men were not thorough enough in their inspection. I have told John to send other men the next time.”

I didn’t say anything to that.

“Quite probably I overreacted in suspecting foul play,” Raoul said. “I am spoiled by John’s efficiency. Things like that do not happen at Savile.”

I thought of what would have happened if that bridge had gone down with him and I shuddered. I did not think that Raoul was overreacting.

He said to me, “You’re cold. Where is your dressing gown?”

“No, I’m fine,” I said. “I’m just worried.”

He reached out to smooth away the worry line that I knew was etched between my brows. “I shouldn’t have said anything to you.” He sounded as if he was annoyed with himself.

I shook my head in disagreement.

In a sudden, complete change of topic, he said, “By the way, Gail, I have been meaning for some time to ask you the date of Nicky’s birthday.”

My whole body stiffened and I looked at Raoul suspiciously. “Why do you want to know that?”

He gave me his most genial smile. “Oh, we always have a party for the children’s birthdays and I don’t want to pass over Nicky’s.”

I knew very well that this was not the reason for his question. “Nicky was not born during the summer, so you don’t have to worry about that,” I replied shortly.

“Still,” he persisted, “I should like to remember the day with a small gift. I have grown quite fond of Nicky.”

We stood staring at each other in the moonlight coming in the window while I tried to decide whether it would matter if he knew the date of Nicky’s birth. Finally I decided it would not.

“Nicky was born on December twenty-first,” I
said reluctantly.

He nodded.

I realized suddenly that if he wanted to, he could easily look up the date of my marriage in the parish register at Hatfield and discover that Nicky had been born too early. I raised my chin and told myself that I didn’t care about that. After our nights together, it was certain that Raoul wasn’t harboring any mistaken ideas about my chastity anyway.

I said, “So you think the lack of repair on the bridge was an accident?”

He ran his fingers through his disordered hair. “It probably was, just as Squirt’s sudden colic was probably an accident as well. When you think about it, the bridge accident could not have been directed specifically against Nicky, Gail. Anyone might have used the bridge that morning.”

“True, except that that morning everyone knew the boys were supposed to be going from the temple to the Home Woods and in doing so they would naturally have crossed the bridge.”

“There is no saying that one of the other boys would not have gone first. The accident might not have harmed Nicky at all.”

“The whole bridge could have collapsed when one part of it went down and everyone could have gone in,” I argued.

“I suppose that is true, but I go back to my original question.” His eyes were golden in the silvery moonlight. “Who would want to hurt Nicky?”

That, of course, was a question I could not answer. Instead, I turned, went back to the bed, and stood silently looking down at my sleeping son. I felt Raoul come up beside me and then his arm came around me, pulling me against his side. I leaned against the long length of him, feeling his strength and his warmth. It felt so good there in the circle of his arm.

He said soberly, “You’ve been carrying too much weight for too long on these slender shoulders of yours, sweetheart. I wish you would let me help you.”

As soon as I heard my own thought spoken out loud, I knew how dangerous was the situation I had gotten myself into. I could not allow myself to begin to lean on Raoul Melville.
I
could not.

I stiffened against him and said angrily, “How many times do I have to tell you that Nicky is not a burden to me?”

Raoul bent down and kissed my temple, right in the hollow below where my hair began to grow. “I didn’t say that. I didn’t mean that.”

But I stood rigid within his embrace and would not relax.

“I know how much you love him,” he said. “I did not mean to imply that you resent him. All I meant was that there are times when you need help.”

I didn’t reply.

He sighed.

I said stiffly, “I think I had better stay here with Nicky for the rest of the night.”

At that, he turned me around, bent his head, and started kissing me. He put one hand on the back of my head to support it and slipped the other inside the opened top of my nightgown. He caressed my breast and slid his tongue into my mouth and all the resistance drained out of me.

It took exactly one minute before Raoul was carrying me back into his bedroom once more.

I had no defenses against the man. I lay back in his bed and opened my body and let him come into me, deeper and deeper, until we were so deeply joined together that it seemed nothing would ever part us. We rocked together, his hardness softening me and softening me until together we shuddered and cried out and the world dissolved into searing sensation and soul-shattering passion and we collapsed in each other’s arms, still one body, one fulfillment, but, unfortunately, not one love.

I was back in bed with Nicky before the sun came up, which was a good thing because he woke with the dawn, ready to rise and go upstairs to the nursery to eat. I persuaded him to remain in bed for another hour and then I took him upstairs myself and stayed to have breakfast with the nursery set.