The Deception

by Joan Wolf

  James marched out, relief evident in every line of his back.

  “You hurt his feelings,” I accused Harry.

  He shrugged. “Who cares?”

  “I care,” Adrian said, still in that same quiet voice.

  I looked at him in surprise. He was watching Harry. “We have an obligation to those who depend on us for their livelihood, Harry,” he said. “Great privilege also means great responsibility. I would like you to remember that.”

  Harry looked a little sulky. “I wasn’t going to ask you to fire the bloody footman, Adrian.”

  “There is a lady present,” Adrian said. “Watch your language.”

  I looked around for the lady.

  Harry hooted. “He means you, Kate.”

  “Oh.” I felt extremely stupid, and to disguise my discomfort I went to the fireplace and stared into the two flames.

  Adrian said, “What would you like to do, Kate? Do you play cards?”

  “I play whist,” I said, “but you need four players for that.” I blinked, trying to clear my vision so that there would be only one fire. “To tell you the truth, my lord, I don’t think I could concentrate on cards just at the moment. I feel strangely light-headed.”

  “You’re foxed, Kate,” Harry said. “It was the second glass of wine.”

  “Do you think so? It’s not at all an unpleasant feeling, Harry. Perhaps that’s why gentlemen drink so much.”

  “Very likely,” Adrian said. He came over to me, took my hand, and placed it firmly on his sleeve. “Come along, Kate,” he said, “I am going to take you up to your room. A good night’s sleep will cure your light-headedness.”

  I walked with him to the door. “Good night, Harry,” I threw over my shoulder just before we went out.

  His response floated after me into the great hallway, and for a moment I felt a cowardly urge to turn and run back into the shelter of Harry’s presence. The man beside me was not a safe brother but a very unsafe husband. I heartened myself with the memory of his remark about my getting a good night’s sleep, however, and when we reached the door of my room, I bade him good night in a reasonably steady voice.

  To my relief he did not come in, saying only, “I’ll send for someone to help you undress.”

  I wasn’t too foxed to undress myself, but I wasn’t at all averse to acquiring the reassuring presence of another female. “Thank you, my lord,” I said.

  In five minutes the maid who had helped me to dress appeared to help me undress. Her name was Nell, and we chatted away while she took the pins out of my hair. She was from Newbury, she told me, and her father was a blacksmith.

  Finally I was in my nightgown and in my bed and Nell was gone. The fire was still blazing, and I contemplated my snug warmth with pleasure. In most lodging houses the bedroom fires were out by eight o’clock, and here it was almost ten and the fire was roaring away.

  There was no sound from the room next door. I put my arms around my pillow and went to sleep.

  * * * *

  “Kate.”

  Someone was calling my name, and I struggled to fight my way out of the comfortable soft darkness of sleep and into the light.

  “Kate.”

  The voice came again. Not urgent, just steady, calm, and immensely authoritative. I opened my eyes and found myself looking at Adrian. I blinked, and he was still there.

  “I was beginning to think you were never going to wake up,” he said.

  “You told me to have a good night’s sleep,” I said crossly. I yawned. “Why are you waking me up in the middle of the night?”

  “It’s not yet midnight, sweetheart. Hardly the middle of the night.”

  I struggled to sit up against the pillows. My head felt fuzzy. “What are you doing here?” Then I registered the fact that he was wearing a dressing gown. My lips parted in a soundless O.

  He sat on the side of the bed and looked down at me gravely. “If we are going to make this a real marriage, then this is something we have to do, Kate.”

  My mouth made the same soundless O as before.

  He smiled and reached out to smooth a strand of hair away from my face. I felt his fingers brush against my cheek. “It will help if you’re still a little foxed,” he said. His voice was soft and warm, the voice I had heard him use to Elsa. He had put a candle on the rosewood table beside my bed, and its light picked out the cleanly chiseled bones of his cheeks, nose, and jaw. A lock of pale gilt hair had slipped over his forehead, and it gleamed in the candlelight. This was the first time I had seen him without a cravat, and the bare column of his neck looked very strong.

  It was a cold night, but the room was warm. I looked over his shoulder and saw that the fire was still blazing. He must have made it up. Even though I was wearing a warm flannel nightdress, I shivered. I brought my eyes back to his and said bravely, “I know how horses do this, my lord, but I’m not quite certain about people.”

  He laughed softly. “Don’t worry, Kate, I’ll show you.” And he bent his head and kissed me.

  It was more intoxicating than any wine could ever be. As he felt me respond he deepened the kiss. I felt my lips parting, felt his tongue asking to come inside my mouth. He leaned me back against the pillow and I opened my mouth to him, lifting my hand to the back of that strong neck, to caress his skin with my fingertips.

  His kisses were making all my senses reel. I moved my hand higher and buried it in the thickness of his impossibly fair hair. It had the texture of heavy silk, and I let it slide through my fingers, buried my hand and let it slide through again.

  His own hand moved, coming between us to cover my breast, and I was shocked by the spasm of pleasure that touch sent all through me. He moved his mouth from mine and began to kiss my throat. His hand moved caressingly on my breast, his thumb stroked my nipple. A pulse began to beat between my legs. Of its own volition, I felt my body lift toward his.

  “Sweetheart,” he said in a voice that sounded decidedly unsteady, ‘‘let’s get this nightgown off.”

  “Off?” I repeated. I sounded as if I were in a daze.

  He was pulling my gown up even as I spoke, and I raised my arms obediently and let him lift it off of me completely, baring me to his eyes. The most amazing thing about all of this is that I wasn’t embarrassed. I wanted him to touch my naked flesh. I had never dreamed that a man’s touch could feel this wonderful.

  He stood for a moment to shed his own dressing gown, and I stared in wonderment at his body, at the broad chest and shoulders, the narrow waist and hips, the long, muscled legs. I saw that he was aroused, but it didn’t frighten me. He was too beautiful to be frightening.

  He came back to the bed and I reached up to touch lightly the crisp silvery hair on his chest. My touch made him shiver, and that pleased me. He said, “God in heaven, Kate, but you are beautiful.”

  I almost said “So are you,” but before I could speak he was kissing me again.

  He kissed me and kissed me, until I felt I was drowning in a sea of intoxicating sensations, sensations that rolled through my entire body, drawing me to him with the same ineluctable power with which the moon draws the advancing tide. The pulse between my legs beat more and more insistently. Then he touched me there, and the intense pleasure of that touch made me whimper, partly in wonder and partly in fear. I did not quite know what was happening to me.

  “It’s all right, sweetheart,” he said. “Trust me, Kate. It will be all right.”

  I lay there, utterly open to him, my heart racing, my breathing quick and shallow. The whole lower part of my abdomen was filled with a relentlessly rising tension, a tension that was being fed by Adrian’s stroking finger. I was completely concentrated on that feeling, reaching and reaching for something I desperately needed, when the explosion hit me. I gripped his shoulders and held on as a wave of intense pleasure flooded through my body, radiating out from that single epicenter. When he parted my legs and moved between them, I wanted him there. I arched my back and waited.

  I
t was all right at first. He was filling my emptiness. Then he muttered, “Hold on, sweetheart,” and drove.

  The pain was a complete surprise. My breath sucked in and I must have made a sound, for he said breathlessly, “I know, Kate. I know. Just hold on and it will be all right in a minute.”

  The pain got worse, but I clamped my teeth together and was silent. I did not try to push him away. He had said that this was something we needed to do, and I accepted that. I endured.

  At last it was over. He withdrew, but before I could feel used and abandoned, he had gathered me close in his arms. He was breathing as if he had been running, and I could feel his heart hammering against my shoulder, I was glad. He had done such a stupendous thing to me that I felt it was only fair that I should make an impact upon him. I pressed my cheek into his sweaty shoulder, shut my eyes tightly, and let him hold me.

  “It will be better the next time, Kate,” he said after a while. His voice sounded normal again.

  “It won’t hurt?” I whispered.

  “No, sweetheart.” He touched his lips to the top of my head. “It always hurts the first time. I’m sorry.”

  I felt so cherished there in his arms—so safe. I said sleepily, “Does it hurt men their first time?”

  “No, it doesn’t.” I could hear the amusement in his voice, but I was too drowsy to protest.

  “Not fair,” I said.

  “I suppose it isn’t.”

  I thought about saying something else, but before I could manage it I went to sleep.

  Chapter Ten

  I was awakened the following morning by a chambermaid coming into the bedroom with a tray of hot chocolate and muffins. The room was warm and I was all alone in the big bed. I had a vague recollection of Adrian waking me in the dark to put my nightgown back on, but I thought he had stayed with me. I sat up against the pillows and drank my chocolate while the maid added a new log to the fire. It had obviously been made up once already, and I asked her for the time.

  “Nine o’clock, my lady.”

  I almost spilled my chocolate. “Nine o’clock! It can’t be nine o’clock! I never sleep until nine o’clock!”

  The maid did not reply to this singularly inane comment. Obviously, I had slept until nine o’clock this morning. No wonder Adrian had gone. I took a small bite of the muffin and chewed. It was delicious. While I ate my muffins and drank my chocolate, I discovered that the maid’s name was Lucy, that she was the daughter of a Newbury apothecary, and that she had two older sisters, one married and one not.

  Lucy went to the window to open the curtains and the sun came pouring into the room, making a pool of light on the rich cream-and-blue rug. I felt energy running like spring sap through my veins and longed to be outdoors in the crisp, clear air, but I knew I ought to begin my career as Countess of Greystone in a more fitting manner. Feeling extremely virtuous, I put on a morning dress and went downstairs to interview the housekeeper.

  Mrs. Pippen had a sitting room all to herself, and it was far cozier than the rooms the family was forced to inhabit. She invited me to sit in a comfortable, cushioned chair before the fireplace and sent one of the maids to fetch tea. Then she settled her stout figure into the chair on the opposite side of the fire and regarded me politely.

  I smiled at her. Her hair was black as ink and oddly light-less. I wondered if she dyed it. I began, “Have you been at Greystone a long time, Mrs. Pippen?”

  She was reticent at first, answering questions but volunteering nothing. I talk so much, however, that eventually people have to start talking back, just to maintain their sanity. By the time we were on our second cup of tea, she was gossiping away. When I confided that I knew very little about the way a house this size functioned, and was depending on her to be my guide, she became positively voluble.

  I spent an hour in the housekeeper’s room, and by the time I left my outside was overheated from sitting too close to the fire and my inside was awash in tea, but I felt it had been time well spent. Mrs. Pippen had none of the motherly qualities of Mrs. Noakes, but she seemed to be a decent, competent sort of woman. We parted friends.

  I passed through the green baize door that separated the servants’ part of the house from the family’s and almost ran into Walters.

  He apologized profusely, then told me he had been coming to seek me out. “His lordship has been looking for you, my lady. He is in the library.”

  I thanked him and went along the high-ceilinged, portrait-hung corridor in the direction of the library. I am not usually a shy person, but suddenly I felt absurdly shy of meeting Adrian. How could one act normally with a man after one had done that with him? I pushed open the library door and peeked in.

  It goes without saying that the library was an enormous room, but the books that covered three of its walls from top to bottom made it seem much warmer than the rest of the house. Adrian was sitting behind a large desk placed in front of one of the windows that were set into the fourth wall. The desk’s surface was covered with stacks of paper, and he was writing. He looked up as I came in. “There you are, Kate,” he said. He put his pen back in the inkwell. “Where have you been hiding yourself?”

  “I was talking to Mrs. Pippen,” I replied. Slowly I crossed the carpet, a brilliantly colored affair of scarlet and blue. The sun coming in the window behind him lit his head like a halo, and suddenly my chest felt constricted and my breathing quickened.

  He smiled at me, but his eyes were grave. “How are you feeling this morning?”

  “Fine,” I croaked.

  “I expect you’re too sore to feel like riding, but I’d like to show you Euclide.”

  I felt color flood my face at his mention of my soreness. “That would be nice.” Between embarrassment and other, more violent emotions, I was terser than I usually am.

  He looked concerned. “Are you certain you are all right?”

  I struggled to find my normal voice. “Of course I am all right, my lord. And I would love to see you ride Euclide.”

  He made a comical face and stood up. He was wearing country morning dress: a riding coat and top boots without spurs. “Can you possibly know how reluctant I feel to ride in front of you?” he asked.

  “Nonsense.” The talk of horses was helping me enormously. I could always talk about horses. “The Portuguese would never have given you one of their precious stallions if you were not an extremely fine rider.”

  “I have learned to be a decent rider,” he said. He came around the desk to stand beside me, and his closeness affected my breathing again. I was both annoyed and alarmed by this phenomenon. How could I hide my feelings from him if I went all breathless every time he came within two feet of me? He looked down at me. “But I am not the rider you are, Kate.”

  “Papa was an excellent teacher,” I managed to say, I had the most dreadful desire to put my arms around his waist and lean my body against his. I crossed my arms firmly in front of my chest to keep them from doing anything silly.

  He said, “Shall I have Euclide brought to the house, or would you like to see the stables?”

  “I’d like to see the stables. But first...” My voice trailed off as I wondered if he would think that the request I was about to make was presumptuous.

  A single eyebrow lifted. “Yes?”

  “I was just wondering about your collection of Saxon artifacts,” I said diffidently. “I didn’t notice it on the house tour you gave me yesterday.”

  He regarded me for a moment in silence. I was beginning to think that I had been presumptuous when he asked, “Would you like to see it?”

  “Yes,” I said, “I would.”

  He took me to one of the small bedrooms in the nursery suite on the third floor. The room was furnished with ancient-looking oak furniture and a threadbare rug, but I only noticed these later. What you looked at when you first came into this room were the walls, which were hung with a dizzying display of spears and swords and shields and daggers and battle-axes. There were other, less bloodthirst
y artifacts also. Reposing on what looked like a handmade shelf over the narrow box bed were two garnet-encrusted golden drinking cups. A scarred sideboard held an assortment of other items, and I went over to examine them. Displayed on the open shelves were a silver drinking horn, a jeweled belt buckle, a bronze bowl, a bridle bit, and two gold armbands.

  “How old is that bit?” I asked.

  Adrian laughed. “Why did I know you would ask me first about the bit? “ He lifted the bronze bit from the shelf and put it into my hands. “It dates from Roman times,” he told me.

  I looked it over carefully. Then I said, “Tell me about the rest of these things.”

  It took us an hour to look at everything. He knew all the different kinds of swords and spears, which ones belonged to the early Saxons, which to the Vikings, and which to the later Anglo-Saxons. After we had examined each of the weapons, he lifted a saxe dagger from the wall and held it balanced between his fingers. “When I was seven I found this dagger up on the Downs,” he said. “I wanted to know where it came from, and my mother helped me to trace it. When I discovered that it belonged to the early Saxons, I wanted to know about them.” He shrugged. “One thing led to another, and that is how I became a collector.”

  I looked around the small, crowded room. “Was this your bedroom when you were a boy?”

  “Yes.”

  “It doesn’t look as if there was much space left in here for you.”

  He shrugged again. “There was nowhere else to put the things.”

  I thought of this enormous house. I thought of the bright, eager, curious child he must once have been. I said, “When you build the new family wing, you must set aside a room just to display this collection.”

  A voice spoke from the doorway. “I’ve been looking all over for you two! Have you shown Kate that Lusitano of yours yet, Adrian?”

  Adrian said, “No, Harry, I have not.”

  “We’re going just as soon as I change,” I added.

  “Good,” Harry said cheerfully. “I’ll come too.”

  * * * *

  The Greystone stables were half a mile from the house, on the far side of a small park of carefully planted chestnuts, beeches, and limes. There had been a thaw during the last two days, but the path from the house was graveled, so we did not dirty our boots with mud.