The Passion of the Purple Plumeria (24 page)

“He didn’t come back, did he?” William’s hand tightened around hers. He said, conversationally, “Is it wrong to want to punch a man for something he did twenty years ago?”

“The two weeks passed, then a month, then two.” Gwen stared woodenly ahead of her, seeing, not boxwood and marble, but the walls of her old bedroom, the flowered hangings on the windows. “And I found I was with child.”

She had been so lonely those long, awful months. So scared. Her brother had just married. She remembered her sister-in-law’s titters and sideways glances, her father’s rage, her brother’s smug delight.

Gwen stared straight ahead, out over the bushes. “Even then I was stupid. My family spirited me away to an elderly cousin on the Isle of Wight. I was to be a young widow, and the baby taken away as soon as it was born.”

William’s arm curved around her shoulders, offering her the support Tim hadn’t. “I can’t see you submitting to that.”

“No.” Her voice broke on the word. “It was easy enough to escape. They hadn’t thought I would try. I had more than enough money—my father had never kept me short of coin. I made my way to Tim’s old lodgings and was told he could be found at a place called Hadley Hall, in Hereford. It had been,” she added, with clinical detachment, “seven months since I had last seen him.”

“What happened?” Gwen could feel the flat of his hand on her back, moving in slow, soothing circles.

She was dimly aware that she didn’t deserve this sympathy, but she was in the grip of the past. The images, so long denied, rolled over her. She could see it as if it were happening now, the pretty brick house with the white woodwork, an open carriage harnessed and ready before the house, with lap rugs and hot bricks in plenty.

It had been winter. There had been frost on the ground, nipping her cheeks, making her nose drip, her belly heavy and uncomfortable beneath her shawl. She had climbed the stairs awkwardly, and then, just before she reached the top, the door had opened.

“I arrived just as they were going out for a drive. The maid opened the door, and there they were, the two of them, Tim all smiles, with his arm around her waist. She was wearing figured brocade. Blue.”

Not that it mattered now, but the details were engraved on her brain, like a print from a morality tale. Blue, and her blond hair in long curls. Her face was plain, but that didn’t matter. The sapphires around her neck more than made up for any defect of countenance.

Gwen looked up at William, all the anguish of memory in her eyes. “It was his wife. They had married three months before.” Her hands clenched into fists at her sides, the nails biting into her palms. “Married while I was waiting for him to come and take me away, more fool I.”

“What of the child?”

The sympathy in William’s eyes nearly undid her. Gwen looked away. “The child came early.” With a macabre attempt at humor, she said, “Falling down the steps probably didn’t help.”

She could still remember the feeling of falling, her foot slipping on the step, her clumsy body bearing her backwards, arms flailing, the world circling past her, and Tim, Tim, just standing there, standing at the top of the steps, making no move to help her. She had landed with a jolt that had jarred her to the bone. Jarred her to the bone and jarred Tim’s baby from her womb.

Not at once, of course. The pains had started hours after. She had scarcely felt them. What was physical pain compared to the agony of the soul? She had vowed never to expose herself to such pain again.

William drew her against his side, making a comfortable place for her head against his shoulder. “Did he acknowledge you?”

“Are you mad?” Gwen’s laughter had a wild edge to it. “He told her I was a cousin, a poor cousin, on my own in the world. I don’t know if she believed him.”

His cheek touched her temple. “He must have led her a merry dance.”

“I had a lucky escape. I know,” she said flatly. She had been told so time and again. “But my pride stung all the same.”

She could feel his breath against her hair. “Better your pride than your heart.”

“No,” said Gwen, and pulled away, nearly bumping him on the nose. “Don’t you think I haven’t thought that myself? But it’s wrong, all wrong.”

She had spent all these years atoning. And for what? For nothing. For less than nothing. For a man who hadn’t been worth it in the first place. She had confused infatuation with affection and spent twenty years paying the price.

“A broken heart might have been preferable. At least then it would have meant there had been something worth having,” Gwen said passionately. “Rather than simply having been made a fool.”

William threw up his hands. “And haven’t we all been? There’s no one who hasn’t been made a fool for love at some time or another.” His expression sobered as he added, “We all have moments in our past of which we’re not proud.”

“Jack’s mother.” Gwen’s throat felt scratchy and dry. She pulled back, her eyes searching his face. It seemed only right that since she’d bared herself to the bone, his secrets should be forfeit as well. “That was what you said the other night.”

“So I did.” For a moment, she thought William meant to leave it at that, but with a sigh, he detached himself from her, running a hand through his already rumpled hair. “I’m not proud of my behavior—although I wouldn’t give Jack away,” he added hastily, “whatever trouble he may have caused.”

The exact nature of that trouble lay unspoken between them. That would wait for later, for the intrusion of reality. For now, they were divorced from the world, marooned in the summerhouse with the gardens lying all around them.

William leaned his elbows on the balustrade. “It was just after my Maria died. I was living at the bottom of a bottle, half-soused most days, except in the saddle. My commanding officer sent me off on a diplomatic errand to a petty Rajput warlord who was in the process of signing a treaty with the Company. He meant to do me a kindness.”

“I take it that it didn’t turn out so?”

“No.” William’s expression was wry. “We were entertained lavishly. Quite lavishly.” Gwen frowned at the emphasis on those last words. “I stumbled out into the courtyard, looking for a bucket into which to stick my head, I was that drunk. There was a woman there. I thought she must be one of the dancing girls. She certainly gave me that impression.”

“But she wasn’t.”

“No.” William’s face was grim. “She was the pampered youngest daughter of our host. He’d arranged a match for her with a neighboring landowner, a gentleman of a certain age, and it was that displeased about it, she was. She wanted to get some of her own back. I didn’t know that at the time, you ken.” He frowned. “It was an odd thing for a gently bred lady to do, but Juli was—” He wrestled for words. “I suppose you could call her volatile. She’d never been refused anything before, and she was mad as fire.”

“Not that I’ve ever known anyone like that,” murmured Gwen.

She wondered whether she would have gone to bed with Tim if her father hadn’t so vehemently warned her off him. Perhaps. She had certainly been infatuated, and Tim had been persuasive. But it was pique more than passion that had pushed her to make that final leap into his bed.

“Her father caught us together.” As Gwen glanced sharply at him, William said hastily, “It wasn’t what you think! It was— You might call it an embrace, if you will. A rather enthusiastic one, but clothed, for all that. But it was enough.”

Gwen pictured a younger William, drunk and confused, caught, metaphorically at least, with his breeches down. “What did he do to you?”

“He couldn’t take it out on me—not officially. I’d have preferred that. A good whipping was what I deserved, but he had his own reasons for wanting to stay on good terms with the Company. So he cast her out. She’d defiled herself, he said. She was dead to him. And I was welcome to take her with me, if I liked. As a gift.” William shook his head, incredulous. “His own daughter, and he threw her away like a horse that had cracked a bone.”

“So you took her with you.” It wasn’t a question.

“What else was I to do? She’d been thrown out into the world, and it was all my fault. There was nothing else for it.”

Once again, Gwen was struck by the basic decency of the man. He’d had no ties to this girl, nothing but a kiss, and yet he’d taken her home with him, taken her in.

Tim had watched her tumble down the stairs, his child in her belly, and never held out a hand to help her.

She wasn’t entirely naïve. She imagined the girl must have been attractive enough. But even so.

William looked at her with eyes like a lost puppy put out on the stoop. “I’d have understood her being unhappy. It can’t have been easy, going from being the favorite daughter of a man of property to—well, to being the concubine of a foreign cavalry officer with two motherless children to be cared for. I tried to make it as right with her as I could, but . . .”

“You couldn’t have known that one night’s overindulgence would land you in such a situation,” said Gwen briskly. “It was as much her doing as yours.”

William shrugged, uncomfortable with her reassurance. “It was difficult for Alex and Kat as well. She could be charming, you see, when she was in one of her happy moods. She’d sit them on her lap and tell them stories. But when she was in a rage, she’d call them foreign brats, wouldn’t touch them, wouldn’t even speak to them. One day she’d be in high spirits, the next day she’d be tearing the canes from the windows and smashing the rods, just to hear them break.” William bowed his head, his entire posture an expression of defeat. “She killed herself when Jack was two years old. Took a knife and drove it through her breast.”

Reaching out, Gwen rested a hand against his chest. “I’m so sorry.”

The words were painfully inadequate.

“So was I.” William looked up at her, his face bleak. “The worst of it was that I was glad to be rid of her.” He swallowed hard. “I’ve always wondered, if I’d been more patient, if I’d been kinder—”

“No,” said Gwen firmly. “If someone wants to wound himself, he will. Does Jack . . .”

William caught her meaning without her having to say more. “Has he his mother’s moods, do you mean? No. If he’s angry, no one can say he hasn’t had reason for it.” He mulled it over. “If anything, he’s almost frighteningly self-contained. I imagine it’s something to do with his mother. He was just old enough to have the sense that something was wrong with the way she swung up and down.”

Watching William’s face as he spoke of his son, Gwen felt her chest tighten with an entirely unfamiliar emotion, a fondness so intense that it bordered on pain. This wasn’t about lust or passion. She wanted to cradle his head to her chest and stroke his silvered curls. She wanted to soothe away the cares of all those past years, to make comforting noises and press kisses to the top of his head. It was an utterly unaccountable sensation.

It took Gwen a moment to identify it as tenderness. It was just—just that he was so good. She couldn’t find the proper words for it. He might play at being devil-may-care, but in the end, when it came down to it, she’d never met anyone who cared so deeply.

The knowledge of it shook her to her very core.

William was looking at her, his eyes the pale blue of a spring sky. “Now you know the worst of me,” he said.

“You haven’t a very good definition of ‘worst,’” Gwen said unsteadily. She felt a little punch-drunk, as if the night air had gone to her head. Tentatively, she reached up and touched his cheek, feeling the faint graze of stubble against her knuckles. “You’ll have to work on it.”

Gently, he took her hand and lifted it to his lips. He didn’t press a kiss to her palm, that rogue’s trick. Instead, he brushed a kiss across her knuckles. It was a courtly gesture, and it made Gwen’s knees wobble in a decidedly undignified way.

As she stared at him, trying to think of something to say, something witty and cutting, he leaned forward and, very gently, kissed her. It was a kiss for sunlit meadows, for lost innocence, for all the courtships she had never had, delicate and tender.

One would never have imagined that they had rolled on the ground together in pure carnal madness just the night before.

His lips, feather soft on hers, lifted gently away. Gwen slowly opened her eyes to find him looking at her. He still held both of her hands in his, lightly. All it would take would be for her to step away. She knew, without being told, that he would make no move to hold her. It was all up to her.

“There’s no fool like an old fool,” she said helplessly.

William’s eyes crinkled at the corners. He was still holding her hands, and now he tugged her closer. “Is that me you’re talking about?”

Gwen looked at him and knew that she was lost. Whatever she had felt for Tim, it was moonlight to sunlight, small beer to brandy. Love, that most inconvenient of emotions, was determined to make a fool of her. Again.

More fool she. “I was referring to myself,” Gwen said shakily.

William drew her closer; her borrowed skirts whispered around his legs. “Then shall we be fools together?”

By morning, the enchantment had faded. The trees and the hedges, the follies and the maze, were again the plain gray walls of their cell. But Sir Magnifico had found the breach in the defenses, and it was he who led the way through the gap in the wall. Down the slope, just ahead of them, lay verdant trees, not an illusion this time, but healthy and true, laden with ripe fruit. They had only to cross the river to reach them, to be free of the dread enchantment that clung like soot to the very air around the doomed tower.

But Amarantha was still inside, and they would neither of them leave her to her fate. It was with a heavy heart that Plumeria set her steps again towards the Tower—although this time, she did so with the assurance of Sir Magnifico’s sword by her side as they girded themselves for one great, final battle.

—From
The Convent of Orsino
by A Lady

W
illiam woke with an indefinable sense of contentment, the likes of which he hadn’t experienced for some time.

The bedclothes were warm and soft and faintly scented with lavender, and there was a head pillowed in the curve of his shoulder. As from a dream, snippets of the night before came back to him, less memories than the impression of emotion, hurt and confusion and pity and tenderness, and, in the wake of it all, the wonder of discovering each other, a long, leisurely exploration without hurry or shame.

William remembered, from very long ago, the words of the marriage service, pronounced in a sweltering box of a church in Madras:
With my body I thee worship
. There might not have been a priest to solemnize their arrangements last night, but the words seemed to apply all the same.

In sleep, Gwen’s face seemed softer, devoid of the wariness it wore in waking hours. It didn’t surprise William that she should be wary, given what he now knew. The thought of the betrayal she had experienced at the hands of that Timothy, that rotter, made his hands itch to form fists.

Too late to track the man down and thrash him now, sadly, at least not without compromising Gwen’s reputation further. Still, it seemed unlikely a man like that would confine his attentions to the home. William hoped, devoutly, that this Timothy had contracted a nasty case of the French pox. In India, he’d seen more than one man suffering the effects of sexual incontinence, and the even nastier mercury cure that followed.

The thought cheered William immensely. Yes, a course of mercury applied to a tender spot of the anatomy would serve that Tim just right.

What kind of man denied his own unborn child?

It was worse than repugnant. William glanced down at Gwen’s sleeping face. A lucky escape, indeed. That would have been no life for her, yoked to a man like that; she was too intelligent not to have seen eventually what her father had, that the man she thought she loved was a two-bit fortune hunter with no more character than a slug. She would have come to despise him and herself with him.

Not to mention that she wouldn’t be in bed with William right now. Odd the twists and turns through which one wandered to come to where one was. Right now, all the reversals, all the disappointments and missteps, felt like nothing but a prelude to this, this moment, this bed, this woman.

The object of William’s sentimental musings made a sort of snorting noise and rolled violently over, pulling the covers with her. The tangle of black hair disappeared under the sheets, accompanied by disgruntled murmurings.

William regarded the palpitating sheets with amusement. Not a morning person, was she?

“Good morning,” he said cheerfully, and was rewarded with strange wigglings and an exceedingly grumpy mumbling noise from beneath the covers.

After a few minutes of rustles and grumbles, one baleful gray eye emerged from under the corner of the sheet.

“It’s almost dawn, isn’t it?” she mumbled.

“Regrettably, yes.” The sky was turning a pale gray around the edges, the yellow-gray that was the first herald of dawn. “A pity it is that there’s no way to turn back the sky as one might a clock. Can’t you just see the stars and the moon, all spiraling back into night?”

William could picture it as he said it, the clouds, the stars cartwheeling past, and they still warm and safe in their bed. It couldn’t last, of course. Sooner or later, they would have to emerge from their cocoon. There was still Lizzy to fetch and missing jewels to find. But for now, just for now . . .

“Backwards or forwards, the hour is what it is.” A tousled Gwen emerged from the covers, fighting her way through the nest of linen. She reached for the candle on the nightstand, lighting it with a quick flick of the flint. A pale golden light diffused itself along her bare arms and shoulders. “Either way, it’s only borrowed time.”

If their time was borrowed, they might as well make the most of it. Her skin was like honey in the candlelight. William tugged her down to him, the sheet tangling around her waist, her hair falling around them like a veil.

“No regrets?” he said huskily, once his lips were his own again. She was leaning over him, her elbows resting on his chest. It made his just-healed wound ache, but not enough to want her to move.

Gwen shook her head, her hair brushing his chest. “No. No regrets.” But her face was troubled. She rolled over off him, back onto her own pillow. “Only . . .”

William propped himself up on one elbow. He could feel his muscles protesting; this was a form of exercise he hadn’t taken in some time. “Only what?”

Gwen stared up at the ceiling, at the ornate plasterwork arrangement of fruit and vines. “Our lives are neither of them uncomplicated.” Her expression was wistful. “If we were twenty and unencumbered . . .”

William didn’t think she would have liked him much at twenty. He had been an insufferable peacock back then, brash and sure. He wasn’t sure why his Maria had put up with him, but for the fact that she was younger still, and no judge of character.

He twined a strand of Gwen’s hair around his fingers, dark against his tanned skin. “We would neither of us be who we are,” he said. “I wouldn’t want to go back to twenty. Would you?”

Her lips pursed together in thought. William knew that expression now, as he did a dozen others. “No. If I’d had the life I wanted at twenty—”

“You wouldn’t be here,” he finished for her, stretching back against the pillow, his arms up over his head, like a self-satisfied pasha.

“You do think highly of yourself, don’t you?” Amusement fading, she propped herself up on one arm, her black hair falling down around her shoulders. “There’s no hope in it for us, you know. Perhaps a few more stolen nights, but once we get to Selwick Hall, you’ll have your Lizzy back and . . .”

She made an expressive gesture, indicating absolutely nothing.

“I doubt my daughter is that easily scandalized,” said William. Not if they kept their bedroom door closed and their voices low.

“Hmph,” said Gwen. “Being your daughter, perhaps not.”

“As for stolen nights . . .” William grimaced at the words.

There was something repugnant about the image, something hole in the corner that sat ill with him. As for a few nights, he wanted more than that; he wanted months of them, years of them. Just what the corollary of that was, he couldn’t quite bring himself to say.

So instead, he said, “We’re both of age and free. Where might the barrier be?” A thought struck him. “Is it my family situation? I know I’m not what you might call eligible. I’ve been an adventurer and a wanderer, with no family name to speak. If that’s it—”

“No! That’s not it at all.” There was something rather reassuring about the haste with which she said it. “If you’re an adventurer, then so am I.”

He reached up to touch her cheek. “Two rogues together.”

For a moment, Gwen leaned into his touch. Just for a moment.

She squirmed to a sitting position, tugging the sheet with her. “It’s no good. We only came back to find Agnes. Once Agnes is safe—and the jewels,” Gwen added as an afterthought, “Jane will want to go back to France.”

William felt a deep sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. Bath was one thing. Paris felt very far away. “And you with her?”

“She can’t stay at her cousin’s house without a chaperone. Even in Paris, that might raise eyebrows. If she goes, I go back with her.”

“You don’t sound altogether delighted by the prospect.” William tried not to sound too glad of that.

Gwen shrugged, hitching the sheet higher with a quick, impatient gesture. “It’s important work,” she said defensively. “I am good at it.”

“Of course you are,” said William. “I’ve seen you at it. But is it what you want?”

Her face was troubled. “I thought it was.”

“What’s changed, then?” William tried to sound as though the answer didn’t matter, as though it were purely an abstract inquiry, as if the thought of her going away across the Channel, away from him, wasn’t making his stomach twist.

Gwen made a dismissive gesture. “It’s foolish.”

William captured her hand, twining his fingers through hers. “And wasn’t last night proof enough that folly is better than sense? Tell me.”

Not that he necessarily thought that he would be the cause, but . . .

Gwen leaned her head back against the carved headboard. “We founded the League together, Jane and I—and her cousin Amy, the one at Selwick Hall. You’ll meet her today,” she added as an aside.

“Hmm,” said William, trying not to look as disappointed as he felt.

“I’d thought we were equal partners, but it seems Jane doesn’t feel quite the same way. She’s cut me out, kept information from me. It’s her League; she’s well within her rights.” Gwen’s face was bleak. “But I’d believed she thought better of me than that.”

William struggled to a sitting position. “Just a moment.” Disappointment warred with confusion. “That child is in charge of your operations?”

“That child, as you call her, is one of the foremost spymasters in France.”

“Good God.” So much of what he’d seen the past few weeks began to make sense, the odd deference shown to the girl, Gwen’s concern. She wasn’t that young when one thought of it; at twenty-three, he had been leading men. His Jack was just about the same age as this girl, and he’d already run off with the jewels of Berar. “It’s genius, it is. Who would ever suspect a slip of a girl like that?”

“That,” said Gwen austerely, “is exactly the point. That is what has kept us safe for the past two years. Bonaparte hasn’t the highest opinion of women. As for a young and pretty one . . .”

It really was a rather brilliant conceit. “But what about you?” he asked.

He still couldn’t quite get his head around the idea of Gwen following the Wooliston girl’s orders. Even if he had seen the evidence of it with his own eyes, it was hard for him to imagine his Gwen playing second fiddle to anyone.

The thought caught William up short. When had she become his Gwen? The surge of possessiveness was as strong as it was unexpected. He wanted to wrap his arms around her and defy anyone who tried to take her from him.

Fortunately, Gwen was too caught up in her own thoughts to notice his abstraction. “I’d thought I was indispensible to her.”

William squeezed her hands. “Cut you out, has she?” he said sympathetically.

“I was never in.” There was a world of pain and confusion beneath Gwen’s jaunty facade. He had seen the look before, in soldiers who woke from a drugged sleep to be told they’d lost a limb. “Apparently, I’m too impulsive.”

“Charmingly impetuous,” William substituted gallantly, repressing the urge to shake the cool and composed Miss Wooliston.

Gwen’s lips twisted in something that wasn’t quite a smile. “You’re not helping.”

“You don’t have to go back with her,” William said. The words were out of his mouth before he could stop them. Once out, there was nothing but to say, “You have a home with me. Should your Paris plans fail,” he added quickly.

“You haven’t a home for yourself,” Gwen protested. “You can’t offer what’s not there.”

William leaned forward eagerly. “That’s not entirely true. When I haven’t been pursued by ruffians, I’ve spent a bit of time looking into purchasing a cottage somewhere. I’m not entirely without funds, and—” He broke off, realizing just how foolish it must all sound to her. “A cottage must sound deadly dull after the life you’ve been living.”

“With you in it? Not likely.” Realizing what she had said, she swung her legs over the bed, retreating in a tangle of hair and a flurry of sheets. Leaning over to scoop them off the floor, she tossed William his breeches. “You’d best get back to your own room before anyone comes to wake you. We don’t want to shock the younger generation.”

William buttoned up his breeches. “I don’t know,” he said thoughtfully. It might do that Miss Wooliston good to realize that her chaperone wasn’t entirely without other options. All of them last night, with the smugness of youth, had treated Gwen as their own personal Methuselah, firmly on the shelf, past the age for human emotions. She might not mind, but he minded on her behalf. “It might do them good. Shake them up a bit.”

Gwen ignored him. “There are your shoes, under the bed,” she said, kicking them out from under. She peered around the room. “What did you do with your jacket?”

“You mean what did you do with my jacket?” William cocked a brow at her. Her own garments were scattered with betraying abandon across the floor, his shirt intimately tangled with her chemise. “I seem to remember you removing it somewhat impulsively. . . .”

“Shirt,” said Gwen, and shoved the aforementioned item at him.

William shrugged into the shirt, tugging it down over his head. “I wasn’t suggesting that we pose for them in flagrante,” he said innocently. “Just a few rumpled bedclothes, some lingering looks . . .”