The Indian Maiden (24 page)

“I heard voices,” she said at once, in a little voice, with such a palpable plea for absolution in it that he knew that somehow he had stumbled across the right path to take to lead her to reassurance, at least, “and noises, dreadful noises, too. At first, I thought he was beating her. She looked in pain. I didn’t see his face, but he seemed insensible, unreasonable. Luckily, even though I was only a child, something in the drama of it, something in the steady pace of it, alerted me, so that I knew it was none of it for me, and ran.”

“You weren’t snooping, love,” he assured her gently then. “Unfortunately you were only looking for comfort at the same moment they were.”

Heedless of her gasp, he went on lightly, never giving a hint as to how he groped for wisdom, knowing only as he heard each word he said that he was saying the right thing because it sounded very right to him. He could do no more for himself, and no less for her, than to trust his own innate good judgment now.

“It’s odd actually,” he said thoughtfully, “because when we imagine our ancestors’ lovemaking, it’s the epic stuff of high romance. When we consider it between our grandparents, it’s quaint, but when we think of in between our parents, it’s obscene. It’s not, of course, it’s only shocking. And in your case, unfortunate. Still, it’s strange, even for you bold Americans, to find a couple, bare as Adam in the garden, disporting in the salon at midnight.”

“Of course they weren’t bare,” she snapped at once, surprised to find herself defensive. “They were completely clothed, or as much as they could be under the circumstances, I think. Well, I’m not an expert in the matter, and it was night, and there wasn’t much light, only now and again lightning flashes, but there wasn’t much question what was happening. Or,” she admitted more quietly, seeing at last just why she’d finally told the thing she’d never let herself so much as reflect upon before, “well, when I saw that couple tonight, I finally knew exactly what it was I’d seen then, only I suppose at that time I’d guessed and heard more than I’d actually seen.”

“I’d suppose,” he said carefully, “that you guessed a great deal more.”

He wished he had the age or sagacity or expertise to explain the matter to her and himself, because he so badly didn’t want to fail her. And then, because it meant so much to her and to him, he told her precisely that, and added, “I’m at a disadvantage, because it’s scarcely the sort of thing gentlemen and gently bred women are supposed to talk about together, although I imagine they should. But Faith, I don’t think it really mattered what you saw that night, not at all. It’s what you thought you saw that matters. And I believe that would depend on what you saw afterward. If, in the morning you’d seen your parents smiling and behaving lovingly or even pleasantly to each other, you’d have put the thing away and counted it a dream. But if you saw them battling still, your father swaggering and triumphant, and your mother bitter and resentful, for example, why then
...”
He let his voice trail off.

“I’m no all-seeing eye,” he admitted as she stared at him astounded. “Will told me how it was with them. But good heavens, girl, if their entire life together is an angry contest, what would you expect their lovemaking to be like? It isn’t how it should be, or could be, or is, for everyone. Faith, no more than every marriage is the same. Or every act of love. But you never saw an act of love, my girl. Methley took you to see what money can buy. Those years ago you chanced upon an ugly glimpse of sudden lust. Neither night had anything to do with the way it could be for you.”

And me, he thought, but there his courage failed him.

“Faith,” he said seriously, “we humans don’t learn everything by direct observation of our parents. It may well be why we make so many of the same mistakes, but,” he grinned unexpectedly, “it may also be why we make so many wonderful new discoveries for ourselves as well. I should be very surprised if you looked forward to wedlock after witnessing the battle your parents were locked in for years. But,” he added, determined to be absolutely frank with her, “I’d also be more astonished if you threw over the whole idea of it because of them.

“And,” he said with conviction, “if you’ve used what you saw one stormy night as a reason to shun all of us fellows all of your life, why, Faith, I tell you, you disappoint me. Because it was never those few moments you spied by chance that was half so obscene as what went forth between that man and that woman for all those days and nights, through all those years of your life. And that, my dear, is what you oughtn’t to have seen.”

Then he rose to his feet before her and spoke like a pretentious orator because he was weary with solemnity. “And as a male,” he intoned in aggrieved accents, “I speak for all of us when
I
say that it’s hardly fair to us. We’re an excellent group, as a class, and just because some of our efforts in certain physical matters aren’t always considered to be particularly picturesque, we oughtn’t to be dismissed as totally unseemly. Besides, most of us are wonderful creatures. There may, of course, be a few whose behavior doesn’t speak well for the rest of us. But I resent your being so prejudiced against us because of the actions of one, or perhaps two ... or maybe three, no more, surely than four ... or possibly five or six of our number.”

She didn’t know how she could laugh so heartily now. She’d supposed he’d guessed it might have been her own attitude that had prompted the earl’s actions. She’d as much as confessed her aversion to intimacy to Barnabas, and he hadn’t turned a hair. Then she’d told him the most dreadful thing, and immediately experienced deserved shame and embarrassment, along with feeling terribly traitorous and foul-minded. But then he’d taken the incident as commonplace and when it was discussed as a commonplace, for the first time, it seemed to become one. Then he made her laugh at the absurdity of it, and himself, and herself, and the whole foolish world she’d taken too seriously, it seemed, for far too long.

“Now,” he said, nodding in approval at her merriment, and then listening to his mantel clock strike two long, lonely notes and looking down at his bare feet, “time to prevent your peeking further at my lovely ankles, wicked thing. I’m going to get dressed and roust Will up and tell him about this night. Not all about it, of course, there’s things in it that only concern we two,” he said at once, before she could ask him to keep her confidence, “and I want you to sit back and be comfortable, and do not stir, and certainly do not leave this room under my threat of several instant and extremely creative forms of death.

“And oh,” he added, as he began to exit, making a show of wrapping his robe around himself with such exaggerated prissiness that she had to hold her hand to her mouth to smother her mirth, “if any young women happen by on the way back from an abduction, with a pressing problem or two to thrash out, please give them each a number and a chair, and tell them to wait for me. I shan’t be long.”

He’d reached the door when he heard her say in a small voice, “Barnabas?”

“Yes?” he answered, instantly serious, instantly concerned.

“In the morning, in
t
h
e daytime, shall you be shocked
at me?”

“No, Faith,” he said, the warmth in his voice as evident as his relaxation, “no. The time of day makes no difference in my attitude. I’m tediously constant, unvarying as the evening star, which shines in the day just as it does in the night, whether you can see it or not. I’m not shocked at you now, nor will I be tomorrow.”

I only shock myself, he thought as he took the stairs two at a time, and congratulate myself, too. For in all this time, from the moment you sat in my chair, I never once touched you, as I longed to do.

At three hours into a new day, Lord Deal and Mr. Will Rossiter escorted Miss Faith Hamilton to the Duke and Duchess of Marchbanks’ London home. It was a quiet, if
a
spectacular reunion. There seemed to be a great deal more left unsaid than ever was spoken by any of the persons in the ornate and echoing entry hall.

Lord Deal explained simply and smoothly the great good fortune of their happening to meet up with Miss Hamilton shortly after she’d gotten separated and lost from her companions in the crush at the Vauxhall Gardens. As he went on to explain, it seemed quite natural then that the three of them should have decided to order dinner and wait for the duchess, Lady Mary, and the earl to return. After the concert and the dancing, they’d waited until almost every last soul had strolled out of the gardens and the management had almost begun to fold up the tables, stars, and grass about them before they’d decided they’d not likely find her companions at Vauxhall again this night. Then they set out to return to the noble Bolton townhouse.

And then, of course, only foul luck, in the form of a shoe cast by the leader of the team that graced Lord Deal’s carriage, prevented them from carrying out their plans immediately. After the horse had been tended to, after it had been replaced, of course, they’d come directly to their destination. But how time flew!

A red-faced, confused duke accepted the tale, the trio seemed sincere, Lord Deal was a nobleman, and there was no evidence of anything else besides. It was irregular, but it would do. But all during the narrative the duke continued to dart suspicious glances to the others who’d been standing watch with him for Miss Hamilton’s return.

The duchess then explained again, with a self-correction
as
frequent as a stammer to impede her speech at every other word, that as Miss Hamilton had gotten herself lost, she and her daughter had gone on to their appointment at the Swansons’ in the hopes that the earl, who’d stayed behind to find their guest, would soon deliver her to them there. The earl, strangely subdued, only said that it was incredible he’d not come across the trio, since he’d thought he’d covered every inch of the place twice over in his night-long search for the young woman.

And Lady Mary said nothing, not even to Will when he looked at her with all his heart plain in his eyes, but only stood white
-
faced and hangdog until Miss Hamilton bade everyone good night and begged and got leave to go to her bed.

“Faith?” Lady Mary said in a choked voice as she touched the other girl’s sleeve tentatively when they’d reached the top of the stair. Her guest wheeled about so sharply that the fair-haired girl almost toppled over and tumbled down the stair, and wished she had done when she saw the look blazing in her American guest’s eyes.

“Not a word,” Faith managed to threaten through her tightly clenched teeth. “Tonight, please not one word from or for you, my lady. I dare not begin. I am, after all, a guest in this, your house. But tomorrow, perhaps. Now good night, my lady, and,” she spat with enough force to make her listener wince before she spun around and marched to her room, “sleep well!”

The duchess said nothing further to her husband on the matter, but left him to a lonely glass of port, protesting a headache so profound that he might have been forgiven if he’d called a surgeon to see to her on the instant. Instead, he made no reply, but sat glowering and thinking deeply for another long hour of the night.

Will Rossiter went alone and silent as well, but only to a seat in the carriage outside the Boltons’ door. For his host had stayed a moment to speak with the other departing gentleman, The Earl of Methley.

“We need to meet, I think,” Lord Deal said coldly as he faced the other gentleman on the pavement.

“Is it to be pistols or sabers? At dawn tomorrow, or the next day?” the earl asked humorlessly.

“I have no wish to be exiled at the moment,” Lord Deal replied in a tone of voice that was in itself an insult, “so it is to be now, and for the time being at least, only to exchange words. And a very few of them at that. You don’t require me to tell you how ugly a trick it was. But perhaps you do need me to tell you that I will finish you if you ever attempt such a thing again—if you ever come near her again.”

The earl was paler than was even his natural wont, and his long frame stiffened as he gave in reply, just as tersely, as deep an apology as he was capable of ever giving this gentleman, even though it was delivered in as harsh a manner as a snub might have been.

“It was never intended to be more than a lesson, and it was, I can see now, a miscalculated and miscarried one. I shall apologize to her for that. Indeed, I think I have never been so sorry for any mischance I’ve caused. But
I
did not touch her. And I will see her again, I don’t think you have the right to prevent me. Only she does, and if she does, I’ll not trouble her again. But if she does not, I can only assure you that I intend to go on as I should in the matter, as a gentleman.”

“And as a suitor?” Lord Deal asked icily, his last word as sharp as a slap.

“And as a suitor,” the earl replied coldly, and then he smiled bitterly as he added in farewell before he turned and ended the interview, “I may be only a mundane earl, and not a dashing farmer, but stranger things have happened, Deal, odder pairs have formed beneath your, and my, very noble noses, as you and I may do well to remember.”

“Methley,” Lord Deal murmured unheard after a pause, to that gentleman’s retreating back, “she is long dead. Bury her, as I have done, perhaps only just tonight.”

Then he joined the sorrowing Will in the carriage and they rode home in silence. For Will was busily making up excuses for his lady so that he would not grieve for her lapse. And Lord Deal was preoccupied with his lady, who was never a lady, but rather something, he thought, a great deal better.

It had been
an
extraordinary night for discoveries, for himself as well as for his wild Indian maiden. Because, as he’d always lamented the fact that he was not susceptible to such a tender passion as love, he supposed it was only fair that he now found himself to be suffering from the malady. It was also ironic, after all his smug complaints about his imperviousness to the disorder, that he should find the particular strain afflicting him to be a virulent one that was not only incurable, but doubtless fated to presage a long and painful lingering ailment. For it appeared that even if she could ever learn to reciprocate his feelings, his poor love could not bring herself to physical love with any man.