The Maiden's Hand (24 page)

“And what of me?” Oliver asked, squeezing her hand. “Can you trust me?”

Her eyes widened. “When have I ever failed to trust you?”

When you spurned my love,
he wanted to shout at her.
When you diminished it by saying it was easy.

No sound came out. Oliver felt himself teetering on the brink of a full-blown attack. He looked at the ground; it seem to tilt madly.

His hand waved away her question. After a long moment he managed to exhale. “’Twas a foolish thing for me to ask.”

Why is it so difficult for you to love me?

She fell silent. The boats slipped by. Gulls and kites screamed over the river. The barge returned from delivering Oliver’s gaming mates, and the oarsmen loitered on the quay, sharing a flask. The shadow of the sundial lengthened. Her hand was small and warm in his. He could feel her pulse beating softly against his own. He could feel his whole chest turning to stone, slowly, inch by inch, until he barely had the power to breathe.

He must tell her before it was too late. He must promise to become the man she could love. A man of honor and commitment. A man who adored her with his whole, aching, unworthy being.

“Lark?”

“Oliver?”

They both spoke at once, and she laughed. “What were you going to say?”

He kissed her brow. His numb lips could barely feel the texture of her skin. “You first.”

“Oliver, I—” She drew a deep breath.

Say it
, his heart urged her.
Say you love me.

“Yes?” he asked.

“I’m going to have a baby.”

The world fell still. It seemed that the leaves ceased to tremble in the breeze; the river halted its flow. Then a roaring started in his ears. A baby? A baby? Emotions tumbled through him like water over a cataract. Elation, dread, horror, and a terrible, heart-deep joy.

“A
baby?
” he heard himself say.

She sent him a radiant smile. “Aye.”

“But how—”

“Oliver, really.” She gave a nervous, awkward laugh.

“I mean, when?”

“It will be born come November.”

“But that’s less than five months from now. A baby takes what? Ten months? A year?”

“Nine months.” She seemed amused by his ignorance.

He hated her having this secret knowledge. Being part of a mystery he could never share. “How long have you known?”

She looked down at their linked hands. “I’ve known…for a while. Since we first visited Lynacre.”

The darkness raced at him. The attack was coming, barreling like cannon shot. Fear mingled with his rage. He clutched her shoulders and jerked her around to face him. The sweat poured down his temples.

“You are four months quick with my child and you did not tell me?”

“I did not know how, what words to say—”

“Jesu! Am I the last to know I’m going to be a father?”

“No, only Juliana—”

“Jesu,” he said again, and then he could speak no more. The black nothingness engulfed him, squeezing his chest, imprisoning stale air in his lungs. Never, not since boyhood, had he felt such an intense episode coming on.

Run, he commanded himself.
Run. Don’t let her see! Don’t make her watch you die!

He ripped his hands away from her and lurched to his feet.

“Oliver, please!” It sounded as if she were shouting down a tunnel.

He jerked away. Half-blind, he stumbled along the terraced garden to the water steps, nearly collapsing into the barge. A wave of his hand commanded the pilot and oarsmen to cast off.

Even as his vision dimmed, he caught a last, shining glimpse of Lark. Her eyes wide and shattered. Her shoulders trembling. Her mouth moved, but he could not hear her words. Then she lifted her skirts with one hand, put her other hand to her mouth and ran up to the house.

Lark could not sleep that night. She had taken supper quietly with Richard, listened to his reading of the scripture and excused herself early.

Nance Harbutt, yammering at the two footmen who worked the windlasses of her special lift for mounting the steps, had hobbled in to see the mistress off to bed.

The plump old harridan had thumped her cane on the floor and glared at Lark. “Where is he?”

Lark had winced at Nance’s accusing tone. Leaning toward Nance’s ear trumpet, she’d said, “Out. I know not where.” Then she had plucked courage from her own ire and said, “Your fair-haired lad can do no wrong, Nance, so you need not worry.”

“Humph!” The huffy sound held a world of accusation. Nance set aside her cane and began unfastening the hooks and laces of Lark’s buckram bodice and velvet skirts. As she helped Lark don a clean shift, she spoke once more. “I take it you’ve told him, then?”

Lark tipped back her head so Nance could comb out her hair. “Told him?”

“About the babe.”

Lark had whirled on Nance, heedless that the comb yanked at her hair. “How did you know about that?”

Nance guided Lark to the great curtained bed. “Lass, I’ve acted the lady’s maid since you arrived. I’ve bathed and dressed you, lacing and hooking day in and day out, laundering you smallclothes. You don’t show much, but I noticed.”

“You said nothing.”

“’Tweren’t my place. But the greenskeep saw the master go roaring off in the barge, and you standing there watching with your poor heart pinned to your sleeve, and I guessed that you told him.”

“Why are you angry at me?” Lark had demanded.

Nance had cradled her cheeks in palms molded by years of toil. “You should have made him stay, lass. You should have made him stay.”

Now, as she remembered Nance’s words, Lark pounded her fist into the bolster. “She knows better than that,” Lark said aloud. “No one can make Oliver de Lacey do anything against his will.”

She swung her legs over the side of the bed and jumped down. Nance would have scolded her for going barefoot on the cold floor, but Lark didn’t care. She paced back and forth, muttering to herself that life had been much simpler before Oliver.

Before she had known what it was to love a man.

Before she had known the terror and wonder of carrying a baby.

She could not deny it; her life held a richness now, a texture of deeply felt moments of pain and elation that had been missing in her former existence.

Being the object of Oliver’s affection was like being given a precious gift, only to find that the true cost of the gift was to be borne by her.

She tried to summon resentment, to feel horrified at his reaction to the news. For the moment, all she could think of were the things she loved about Oliver. She saw him in all his many moods and guises—laughing at one of his own jests; peering lustily at her above the rim of his wine goblet at supper; bowing solicitously over her hand as he invited her to dance; slamming Wynter up against the wall in defense of her; proudly introducing her to his friends and family. Perhaps, in his easy, affectionate way, he did love her. But was that love strong enough to embrace their child?

The truth was, he frightened her with his wild nature, his leaps from light to darkness, from torment to joy. He seemed to feel everything more intensely than ordinary men.

Everything but a sense of responsibility for his unborn babe, she thought, flopping back on the bed and scowling into the darkness.

She punched the pillow again and tried to decide how and when she could forgive him.

He sank into darkness, into gaping black vast emptiness where he found nothing but pain. The agony was intense: chest full to bursting, unable to expel and expand with new breath; heart pounding like a cudgel against the wall of his ribs; head so feverish that his eyes seemed to boil in tears.

He was aware of nothing else, no sound save the hiss of blood in his ears, no sensation save the blinding pain that seized and squeezed and shook him as if he were in the grip of some great, taloned beast of prey.

Time had no meaning. The moments were measured by the devastating peaks of agony and by the crazed hammering of his heart.

So this is dying, he thought, and then all thought was swept away on a great wash of torment, and naught formed in his head save a ceaseless, silent inner screaming.

The pain became a transcendent thing, and he rode high on its crest, sailing above it, weightless and numb.

Coolness spread like a balm through him, and suddenly the black void took fire, with blood-bright scarlet at the edges and the center burning white and pure. A splendid silence descended, blanketing him in a sense of fearlessness.

As from a great distance of time and space, he saw himself clearly, rakish as any common swindler, caring for naught, for no one save himself and his own pleasure. What a stupid, wasted life he had squandered on wine and women and wagering. What a desolate tragedy that the moment he had discovered true purpose with Lark and their child—when he’d learned that love was no easy sport, but a battle for the highest stakes of all—he should have it ripped from his grasp.

Of all his regrets, the most profound was that Lark would never know the sort of man he might have been.

Angry black broke through the white nothingness. The pain returned with a vengeance. He felt as if he had been dropped from a great height, landing flat on his back. The air emptied from him in a huge
whoosh
. The world returned, amber sky and sailing pink clouds, the gurgle of the river past the hull and finally, startlingly, a voice.

“My lord?”

Oliver saw a coarse red face, a broad brow pleated with creases of worry. “Bodkin?”

“Thanks be to God, my lord,” the pilot said. “We thought you’d…gone.”

Oliver became aware of the velvet cushions of the barge beneath him, the river-cooled air rushing over him. He forced a smile. His lips, his fingers and toes, were numb and cold.

“Nonsense, my good man.” He paused, gasped and hiccuped. “I was taken ill. Perhaps the oysters I ate today were bad.” With shaking, chilled hands, he pushed himself up and looked around. They were in the middle of the Thames, downstream from his house, drifting toward the south bank. The oarsmen gawked at him as if he were a ghost.

“Would you like us to take you home, my lord?”

“Not yet.” Oliver’s mind whirled, snatching at the strange incandescence that had engulfed him only moments before. Clearly he was about to die. He knew not how much time was left to him. “We shall return after dark. And my wife is not to know of this little spell. Do you swear?”

“Of course, my lord.” The oarsmen nodded.

Oliver knew he looked as ashen and exhausted as he felt. Lark would worry, unless…

The plan came to him, dark and deceptive as the whisper of a courtesan. Lark would hate him, but he couldn’t help that.

By the time the City bells clanged and a bellman called out the midnight hour, Lark had decided to forgive Oliver. She, too, had been shocked to learn of the babe. Perhaps he simply needed time to—

“I need more
wine!”
His rough bellow accompanied the opening of the chamber door. The fanning motion caused the fire in the grate to flare, and for a moment Oliver was bathed in gold.

The light outlined his unkempt hair and unfastened clothing. Forgetting her resolve to be patient and forgiving, Lark marched across the room and planted herself in front of him.

“You do
not
need more wine.” She stared into his hazy and reddened eyes. “You have already had plenty by the smell of you, and nasty, vinegary stuff it was.”

“Then give me good wine to cleanse my palate.” He sidled over to a table. His doublet was undone, flapping like a set of broken wings. Mud from the London streets and wharves clung to his boots, and his shirt had come untucked. He had lost his cap, and his hair was a tangle of golden waves.

No one, thought Lark resentfully, should look so comely when he was in this condition. Yet Oliver did. He resembled not so much a fallen angel as one who had willingly left his state of grace.

He scowled into the jar on the table. “Not much left.”

She advanced on him. “You don’t need another drop. You need to go to bed.”

He grabbed her and pulled her against him. “Aye. Bed. We—”

“Oliver!” She reared back, aghast. He reeked of cheap scent. The coarse, heavy odor of a woman like Clarice or
Rosie. Women who sat on his lap and rubbed themselves against him.

He spread his arms, looking the soul of innocence. “Is something amiss?”

“You smell like a woman’s perfume!”

“Then I’m improving. A moment ago it was cheap wine.”

She stared in horror at his ashen, exhausted, handsome face. The pain of betrayal drove like a lance into her. A burning wad of sobs constricted her throat. Calling on all her years of training for self-control, she swallowed hard, conquering her tears.

“You disgust me,” she said fiercely. “How dare you go out carousing on the very night you learn you are to be a father?” She stalked back and forth in front of him. “You spoke of wanting a child, but they were just words. Idle wishes. The actual fact frightens you, doesn’t it, Oliver?”