Joy sat on a stool, gave her runny nose a good blow, and opened the book again: “The Duke of Dryden stalked closer to the girl on the bed. The closer he came the wider her eyes grew, the more intense her shivering fear. A tambourine jingled in her shaking hand. He smiled rapaciously. ‘Twas the smile of the Devil himself. He expected fear, submission. She raised her chin defiantly, her lips as red as summer roses—”
Joy turned the page and exhaled at the same time. She took another deep breath, sneezed into her hankie again, and read on: “He lifted his hand toward her, unaware he still held the crop, so mesmerized was he by the challenge he saw in the verdigris of her eyes. The tempestuousness of the chit! Her eyes darted to the crop and she gasped. He wanted her, and by God, he would have her! Bent on ravishment, he let the crop fall from his hand, and he grasped her up. The tambourine fell to the bed. He pulled her against his huge rock-hard chest, knocking the breath from her rose-sweet lips—”
“Bloody hell!”
Joy slammed the book closed with a bang and jumped up, staring at her husband and his purple neck.
“What in the devil are you doing?” His eyes locked on the butter churn; the bloody thing was pumping all by itself. He looked up to see a wooden spoon stir the soup on its own power, and there were bloody turnips—turnips?—floating around the room pursued by a flying knife.
Shaking his head, he closed his eyes, then opened them again. He took one look at his wife’s guilty face and crossed the room in two long angry strides, grabbing her shoulders. “You promised no more . . . no more . . . ” He waved one hand in the air, searching angrily for the word—that damned word.
“Witchcraft,” she whispered.
“That’s right! Damnation, woman!” He gave her a little shake—a hell of a lot littler than he would have liked. “You cannot do this sort of thing—especially in London.” He looked into her face. “Don’t you understand? Don’t you?”
She stared up at him, guilt and fright battling in her eyes. “I’m sorry.”
The fright was what did him in. He took three deep breaths, then released her shoulders and turned away, running a hand through his hair and pacing while he tried to think. He had to make her see that she couldn’t do this.
They had to go to London, snow or no snow, witch or no witch, duke or no duke. What the Prince Prinny wanted, he got. He turned back toward her and stopped cold.
Purple and white blocked his vision. He stepped back. A turnip hovered in the vicinity of his nose. He took another deep breath, seeking patience from somewhere, somewhere nonexistent.
He ducked under the turnip and dodged the bloody knife, then lost the little control he had. “God Almighty, look at this!” He pointed to the butter churn, then the spoon. “Look! This isn’t England! I’m in a bloody . . . bloody”— he looked out the window while he sought the word he needed—“fairyland!”
Joy said something.
“What?” Alec spun around, fuming.
“Nothing.”
“I want to know what you said.”
She sighed, which made him want to wring her neck.
Control, he needed control. He straightened up to his full height and crossed his arms, staring down at her. “I’m waiting.”
She didn’t speak, so he moved a step closer.
“I said fairies don’t live inside. They live outside, under the dewy green—Alec, I think you had better sit down. Your face is awfully red.”
He held up his hand, a signal she shouldn’t touch him at that very moment, and took in deep breaths as he counted.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, staring at the toes of her crinkled leather shoes. She stood there silent, then looked up and searched his face, staring at him as if she could see inside his head. “Are you counting?”
“Yes, dammit!”
“I thought so,” she muttered with a sigh, then righted the stool and sat on it, hooking the small heels of her shoes on the rung before resting her chin in her hand. “Let me know when you reach a hundred.”
Another turnip drifted past him. “Get . . . rid . . . of . . . the . . . turnips. And! The flying knife and the spoon and the . . . the—”
“Butter churn,” she supplied, moving toward the open corner of the room where she mumbled something and waved her hands around, then stopped suddenly and blew her nose.
A turnip conked him in the back of the head, twice. “Wife!”
“Oops. Sorry.” She tucked her hankie away, closed her eyes, and snapped her fingers.
In a flash all was normal, if his life could any longer be called normal. He rubbed the back of his head.
“Did it hurt you?” Searching his face, she moved closer to the narrow stairs.
“No!”
“Oh.” She waited a moment, her hand nervously rubbing the newel post, then added in a hopeful tone that did little to assuage his anger. “We could always look on the bright side.”
“There is no bright side.”
“Aye. There is.”
“I cannot wait to hear this bit of Scottish enlightenment.”
“It could have been worse.”
“Impossible.”
“It might have been the knife.”
He looked at her upturned face, dumbfounded. He’d married a crackbrain. He closed his eyes for a moment, unable to see anything other than the dire consequences they could face if she did not heed his warning.
She muttered something about jests not working unless one had a sense of humor.
“This is no jest.” He stepped toward her, angry and frustrated that she couldn’t comprehend the seriousness of their situation.
Her gaze never left his, but something flashed in her expressive eyes and suddenly her chin shot up dramatically.
Alec stopped and stared at her, confused—his usual state of mind since his marriage.
The look she gave him was all defiance.
“What the devil is that look for?”
She raised her chin higher yet, wiggled her nose, and sniffled some nonsense about a Gypsy just before she sneezed twice.
“Bloody hell!” A riding crop was in his hand. He stared at it for an unbelieving moment, then looked up at her, then back at his hand, then back at her.
“Oh, my goodness.”
He slowly lifted his hand, the crop lying across his open palm. He looked into her surprised face.
“Explain.”
She winced and sniffled.
He took a deep breath and rubbed his free hand over his pounding forehead, then looked up, expecting to find her in tears. Her eyes were moist, and she dabbed at her nose, but it wasn’t red from crying. She grabbed her linen hankie and covered her nose just before she loosed a huge sneeze.
An enormous vase of blood-red roses appeared behind her.
“Roses” was all he could say. He pointed at them with the riding crop.
She spun around, her hands pressed to her cheeks. “Oh, no, not that!”
“Not what?” he shouted and walked slowly past her, asking himself why her words had the same effect on his stomach as did the ague. He paused, then looked into the great room. There were red roses on the tables, red roses on the chairs, red roses on the counter. A rose bush—red— grew near the hearth as if it had been planted years ago. He looked up. Red roses sprouted from the bloody lanterns.
With more constraint than he’d used in an entire London season, he slowly turned back to her, trying to comprehend what was happening. This was no longer the world he knew, the one he could control.
“Ah fink ah haff a code.” The hankie was still pressed against her nose and mouth.
He couldn’t speak; he couldn’t move; all he could do was breathe.
“Ah . . . ” She raised the linen to her nose. Ah . . . don’t let . . . ahhhhh . . . sneeze!” She gasped, then sneezed anyway.
Alec’s arms were suddenly filled with roses—and a tambourine. For the first time in his life, the Duke of Belmore panicked. He dropped the roses as if they’d burned h
is hands. The tambourine clattered to the floor with a tinny crash that seemed to symbolize the end of his orderly world. He stood there completely confused. Very slowly he turned and looked at his wife. “You sneeze roses whenever you have a cold?”
She shook her head.
“What do you mean, no? There are roses everywhere. More of them materialize every time you sneeze!”
“Ah sneeze whatever is on mah mind.”
“God Almighty . . . ”
With the hankie pressed to her nose, he could see only her worried and helpless green eyes.
Visions—nightmares, really—played before his eyes: the hands of the clock tower at Windsor Castle spinning faster than Boodle’s roulette wheel; the Greek and Roman statuary in Hyde Park dancing across the promenade at precisely five o’clock; the prince regent levitating; the patronesses of Almack’s standing near the gallows to watch his hanging, their arms filled with unexplained roses.
The Duchess of Belmore sneezed whatever was on her mind.
Without a word, he turned and walked slowly away, as if he could walk away from what had turned his world upside down.
“Alec?”
He didn’t turn back.
“Ah’m sorry.”
He didn’t stop until he reached the door.
“Please.”
He opened the door and paused. He turned back. Roses were everywhere, and his wife was looking at him with bewilderment in her eyes, but he could see only chaos.
He couldn’t look any longer and turned away to stare out at the ice and snow. Odd that he didn’t see the cold frigid air, the bitter white ice that had almost killed them. He saw only solace and peace and escape.
He stepped outside and closed the door without looking back, seeking something, anything, but the confusion behind him.
Part III
The Mistake
All creatures have their joy and man hath his.
—Man’s Medley, George Herbert
Chapter Seventeen
Silence as barren and desolate as the misty moors of Scotland made the room almost unbearable. Joy sniffled, but she hadn’t sneezed for the last hour. She rubbed her itchy nose, then picked up their meal and carried the two plates of food, barely touched, to the kitchen. She stared at the uneaten food. The vegetables were congealing in stew broth, the butter she’d craved was now little more than yellow fat that turned her already tight stomach. The bread was as hard, dry, and crumbly as the basalt cliffs on the isle of Staffa; the absorbent heat of the inn’s fires had sucked it dry. Her mouth and throat felt equally dry. Unfortunately, her eyes didn’t.
It was a head cold, she told herself, not her heart breaking. She cast a forlorn glance at the chair where Alec had sat through their meal in stony silence.
Perhaps, it was her heart after all. She bit her lip and sniffed. She would not cry.
Turning away from the plates, she swallowed hard and stood there, alone in the kitchen where the savory aroma of food had aged into pungent odors, and the only sound was the occasional sharp snap of burning firewood. Try as she might, she couldn’t keep from looking back into the great room where Alec sat staring into the fire, his elbows on his knees, his face golden from the warm glow of the fire—an illusion, because there was no warmth in his face. He’d said little since he came back inside, but his actions, his face, his rigid stance, told her everything she needed to know.
The cold, hard duke was back.
They’d had two idyllic days together. He had softened a tad. His guard had been lowered, and she had caught more than mere glimpses of the man she sought. Now, as she watched him, her hope curdled inside her.
He must have sensed her look, because he glanced up for an instant, just long enough for her to reach out one hand toward him, to take one step, to say a quick prayer. He turned away. No emotion, no words. Nothing.
She could have taken his anger, but the silence, the silence tightened into a clenching fist that seemed to cry out failure. She took a deep breath for solace, then another. There was no solace. She moved around the kitchen, her refuge, cleaning and trying not to look at her husband.
There was none of the natural bounce to her step, no humming, no lilting tilt of her head. To anyone who would chance a look at her, she appeared a small, solemn figure who seemed to carry the weight of the world atop her defeated shoulders. If Alec had looked, he might have seen that she was not as ignorant of her actions as he thought. But he did not look.
So when Joy turned back for one more hopeful glance, she saw what she had seen before—he just continued to stare, unmoving, into the hypnotic colors of the fire.
Don’t kill the wee sparkle of magic we had.
But there was little magic in the tense silence of the room. She bit her lip and slowly turned away, knowing if she looked any longer the tears would flow. She went on about her work, dredging up some bit of hope from the dark pit inside her.
Half an hour later, with the kitchen clean and the fire banked, she bent to pick up her book. Slowly she straightened the pages with a reverent touch of her hand, pressing the bent corners and crinkled, thin paper. She closed the book then ran her fingers over the gold embossing on the letters: D-u-k-e.
With the book clutched to her chest she tiptoed out of the room and started to climb the stairs, figuring to leave her husband to his brooding silence.
“Joy.”
She stopped, one hand holding the banister, the other still hugging the book. She closed her eyes in dread. He had called her Joy, not Scottish. Her fingers tightened on the railing. “Aye?”
“Come here.”
She closed her eyes and made her wish: Please let him say all’s fine. Don’t destroy the magic because of one mistake. One fortifying breath and she turned, looking down as she descended those few stairs and tried to summon up the courage to look him in the face.
Her fingers whitened from her tight hold on the ragged leather-bound book. She didn’t notice. She moved unseeing, one small foot in front of the other, and too soon she was but a few feet away.
She waited, stared at his gray head, which was still bent in thought. His elbows rested on his thighs, his strong dark hands were clasped and hung between his knees, and his thumb tapped impatiently against a knuckle.
“Sit down.” He didn’t look at her, just gave a curt nod to the small willow chair nearby.
She sat down quietly, the book now flat on her tightly pressed knees, her damp hands folded atop the embossed letters. She waited for him to speak.
If there had been a clock in the room it would have ticked and ticked and ticked. As it was, she heard only the anxious thrumming of her pulse.
A burning log tumbled from the grate with a loud thud. She jumped. The fire sizzled and crackled and sparked. She wondered if his anger did the same.
He picked up the poker and shoved the log back onto the grate, jabbing and poking it into place far too fiercely. She had her answer.
“You’re still angry.”
He didn’t confirm her statement, but the look he gave her could have frozen the river Tweed.
“I don’t suppose counting would help this time, would it?”
He didn’t deign to answer.
Still no sense of humor. She stared at her hands. Maybe he was counting. She cocked her head and tried to see if his lips were moving. They were. She chewed on her lip, then counted the knuckle lines on her folded hands. Her throat felt dry and her nose itched again. She rubbed it and waited.
One quiet sigh, then another. She hated the waiting, sitting there so close physically yet emotionally as far apart as two people could be.
An impatient thought hit her. She truly wished he would just get it over with and say what was on his mind.
Then she sneezed.
Hands cupping her nose, she opened her watery eyes. A strange look passed over Alec’s face, as if a turnip had conked him again.
What had she been thinking? Oh, my goodness! She had wished he would speak his mind. She looked
up, panicked.
He shook his head once and stood up abruptly.
She mentally groaned.
He clasped his hands behind his back and—Here it comes—began to pace and talk. “I don’t believe you understand how serious this situation is. We have been summoned to London because the prince regent, our ruling monarch, such as he is, wishes to meet the Duchess of Belmore, not some Scottish witch!”
She winced at the volume of his voice. “Alec, you’re shouting.”
“Yes, I know, and it feels good.” He gave her a stern look and went on, “There are some two thousand members of the English ton, most of whom thrive on gossip and the misfortunes of others. Like Lady Agnes Voorhees, they seek out any tidbit they can find. Think about it. Think about what I have been exposed to in the last two weeks. Put yourself in my boots. What do you think would happen if they saw any of your . . . your zapping?” His eyes pinned her.
She opened her mouth to answer. His hand shot up to silence her. Her mouth slammed shut.
“I’ll tell you what would happen. They would lop off our heads quicker than any pompous knight.” He scowled at her.
She chewed her lip, remembering the intensity of the glare he’d planted on that statue. She glanced up.
Oh . . . it was back. “Well . . . ” she began.
“Or perhaps they’d hang both of us. That’s what they’d do. The Duke and Duchess of Belmore—Belmore!—but that would be after the trial, after the entire ton had chewed up our reputations and spit them out, and then . . . then the rest of London could start in!”
“But—”
“For seven hundred years!” He spun on his boot heel and shouted at the ceiling. “Seven hundred years we’ve been known as one of the finest families in England! The Belmore title is that old!” He turned back to her. “Do you realize how old a dukedom that is? Do you?”
“Well, the MacQuarries are—”
“‘Tis old, I’ll tell you that. The title is and has been more a part of England than the crazed Hanoverian House. For all those hundreds of years our family has been revered, respected, known for our . . . our . . . ”
With This Kiss: A First-In Series Romance Collection Page 23