Touch of a Lady

by Mia Marlowe

  “But I’m the bigger fool,” she whispered to the darkness before she covered her face with her hands.

  Chapter 5

  “Honestly, Del, I wish I was as brave as you. Imagine, getting locked into a wardrobe with Lord Edmondstone!”

  Harmony hugged her knees to her chest and rocked in excitement. Delphinia and her friend shared a room at the Duke of Seabrooke’s sumptuous estate. There were undoubtedly enough chambers in the capacious four-storey manor house for all His Grace’s guests to have their own room, but it seemed only women with ‘Lady’ before their name rated private accommodations at this house party. It was a not-so-subtle reminder that she and Harmony existed on the edge of Polite Society and should have been grateful to be housed in a broom closet so long as it meant they were included in this assemblage.

  “He’s so wickedly handsome,” Harmony went on. “I’d probably faint dead away.”

  Delphinia felt as though she had fainted while she was with Tristan, at least a little bit. For those heart-stopping moments when her limbs bucked and her insides pounded, she might have left her body for a breath or two and gone straight to heaven.

  Now she was unmistakably down to earth. She sank down onto the bed she shared with Harmony.

  “It wasn’t brave,” Del said. “It was stupid. We might have been caught at any moment.”

  Harmony rolled her eyes. “And what’s wrong with that? If you were found in an indelicate situation, the worst that would happen is that tongues would wag and Lord Edmondstone would have to marry you.”

  Her heart surged upward in hope for a moment, then plummeted back to her naked toes. She tucked her feet under her billowing nightrail.

  “I don’t want to trap a man, Harmony.”

  “That wouldn’t be trapping a man. It’d be trapping a viscount.”

  “He’d hate me for it.” She rose and paced at the foot of the four-poster.

  “Maybe for a little while, but once you present him with an heir, I expect he’ll forgive you.”

  Tears gathered at the corners of her eyes. “I don’t want to be forgiven. I don’t want to be his second choice and I certainly don’t want to be forced upon him. I want to be loved.”

  Harmony shrugged. “If it were me, I’d take Lord Edmondstone any way I could get him.”

  Delphinia wandered to the unshuttered window and looked down into the garden. At least their room had a lovely view of the garden maze. The tortured puzzle of greenery was silvered by moonlight with just a hint of mist gathering at the roots of the hedges. Her life was felt as convoluted and unsolvable as the maze. “It’s not supposed to be this way.”

  “How would you know how—oh! You’ve had one of your little flashes, haven’t you?”

  “More than that,” Del admitted. Harmony was the only one who knew she received snippets of insight when she touched certain objects, but she didn’t know that Delphinia always cut off the contact before she received a full-blown vision. When Tristan’s signet ring battered down her defenses in the gypsy tent, she hadn’t been quick enough to shut her ‘gift of touch’ down before it swamped her. “For the first time today, I let something tell me all it wished.”

  She shared how the ring had poured its knowledge into her—scenes from Tristan’s childhood, the struggles of his manhood, every memory creating a conduit into his very heart—till she felt she’d known Tristan all her life. She even sensed the tug of his conscience over pursuing a loveless match, but his father’s estate still needed the duke’s money. His sense of responsibility made him shut down the desires of his heart.

  “We are supposed to be together and it is supposed to be joyous,” Delphinia said clenching a fist so tightly her nails bit into the heel of her hand.

  “What do you need to do to make it so?”

  “That’s just it. I don’t know. But somehow we have a long life of love together before us. I’m as sure of that as I’m sure of the sun rising.”

  “So Lord Edmondstone’s ring showed you a future with him and didn’t show you how to get there?” Harmony climbed out of bed and crossed the room to join Delphinia by the window. She put her arm around Del and gave her a quick squeeze. “Welcome to life as the rest of the us live it. None of us know what’s around the bend. Why should you be any different?”

  She shouldn’t be, but she was. Delphinia hadn’t asked for this foreknowledge. In fact, she’d fought against it until that very afternoon when Tristan’s ring overpowered her. She couldn’t help that she knew things she shouldn’t. But she was burdened with knowing.

  And with the knowing of what could be, came the responsibility for making sure it would be.

  “Look,” Harmony said, pulling Del out of her musings. She pointed to a cloaked figure making his way across the garden and heading into the maze. “Unless I’m much mistook, there’s your viscount now.”

  Tristan walked with purpose, stomping along the pea gravel path. Delphinia could feel frustration roiling off him, even at a distance. He disappeared into the maze.

  “Do you suppose he’s meeting Lady Florence for a midnight tryst?” Harmony asked.

  Del shook her head. “No, he’s just trying to work through something in his mind. The puzzle of a maze helps him concentrate.”

  “My, my, you did get to know him through that ring, didn’t you?” Harmony looked impressed. “I’d have bet anything he was hoping to meet someone in the grotto that’s in the center of the maze. It’s quite lovely. Lord Sanders led a group of us to see it before I came to collect you this afternoon. The grotto is all studded with quartz around the entrance. I’ll bet it sparkles like a fairy castle in the moonlight.” She sighed. “Soooo romantic.”

  A little doubt wiggled its way into Delphinia’s mind. What if Tristan was meeting Lady Florence there? Their whole lives could be ruined in a single night.

  “Is the maze hard?” she asked.

  “Fiendishly. I couldn’t begin to tell you—oh!” Harmony skittered over to the vanity in the corner where her combs and rouge pots were laid out. She scooped something up and hurried back. “Maybe this can. A bit of pink quartz that had come loose from the grotto. I picked it up as a souvenir. Come on, Del. See if you can squeeze a secret from this rock.”

  She pressed the uneven stone into Delphinia’s hand.

  Usually, Del steeled herself each time she came into contact with a new object she suspected might try to communicate with her. This time, she opened herself completely. The stone spoke to her in brittle tones about time and pressure and deep places in the earth. As it droned on, it sent her flashes of the grotto rising in the garden, a secret place of delight. The quartz also showed her the plan for the maze, laid out with string and measuring sticks long before the hedge had been planted and grown to man-height.

  The pattern was convoluted, but Del memorized each turn.

  Then the quartz started sending impressions of countless couples who’d used the grotto as a trysting spot. Desperate couplings, tearful arguments, one near strangulation—all that the quartz had recorded in its hard heart poured into her. The images began coming too fast, one blurred vision on top of the next. The world stopped spinning and began to shudder. Del felt herself falling, but she couldn’t seem to break free.

  “Del, oh, Del.” Harmony’s voice came from a great distance. “I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have goaded you into it. I didn’t mean this to happen. Oh, I’ll never doubt you again.”

  She opened her eyes and found she was splayed on the floor. Harmony was kneeling over her, chanting a prayer, the quartz clutched in her fist.

  Delphinia pushed herself into a sitting position. “Well, that was illuminating.”

  “When you started shaking, I thought you were having an apoplexy. Then you just sort of collapsed.” Harmony dropped the stone and threw her arms around Del. “What happened to you? Please tell me you’re all right.”

  “I’m better than all right,” Del said, patting her friend on the back. It was true. She felt as if she’d
slept the clock around. Or had just returned from a peaceful ride through a light-dappled meadow. If she decided to run to the nearby village and back and discovered she could do so without breaking a sweat, she wouldn’t be the least surprised.

  In a single day, she’d had two experiences that stood her world on its head. First was the devastating power of pleasure Tristan had initiated her into while they were in the wardrobe together. A locked door had opened inside her heart then and there was no closing it again. Likewise, her willing acceptance of a vision from the quartz threw wide another portal, only this time in her spirit.

  Like her eye-popping experience with Tristan in the wardrobe, accepting her gift had connected her body with her soul in a deeper way, as if she’d finally realized that the strange flashes of insight and the ability to receive information from the things she touched didn’t mean she was odd. They were as normal for her as being able to see or hear or taste was for most folks. It was simply the way she was. It was no different than if she’d been born to favor her left hand instead of her right, or with blue eyes instead of grey.

  Of course, she’d still have to guard her unique ability from those who might not understand, but at least now, she understood. She was no longer irritated by the small voices that pushed against her mind. She’d fought them before. Now she realized she could let them in, albeit for short periods of time.

  “I woke as soon as you took the stone from my hand, didn’t I?” she asked her friend.

  Harmony nodded, her expression stricken.

  “Thank you for that. Honestly, that quartz would have still been waffling on if you hadn’t taken it from me.” Next time, Del needed to make certain she could release an object at will when the visions became too much. There was a lot of work ahead of her, but she was certain that eventually she’d be able to both embrace her gift and control it.

  “So, this rock did tell you something then?” Harmony said, staring down at the silent stone in her palm.

  “It did.” Delphinia looked out the window at the silver-edged garden. “For starters, I know how to reach the grotto in the maze.”

  Chapter 6

  The crunch of gravel under Tristan’s feet almost drowned out the little night noises, the patter of the garden fountain, the distant call of an owl, the rustling of tiny nocturnal creatures venturing out regardless of the danger because they must. The mathematical precision of the maze calmed his mind as he counted the turns—left, right, two lefts, straight through at the next juncture. Then the pattern reversed and finally ended in a flurry of alternating turns that brought him to the grotto.

  The symmetry was flawless. Would that his ledger books were so precise.

  It always comes down to a question of money.

  If he’d been the one to squander away the family’s wealth, he’d feel his fate was justified. But why should he have to sacrifice his happiness when he hadn’t even been alive when his grandsire first crippled the estate? The injustice of it all stung.

  He leaned a hand on the entrance to the quartz-bedecked grotto. If only those sparkling crystals were diamonds, he’d be tempted to pocket a handful, enough to put Devonwood back on an even footing.

  Of course, if I wed Lady Florence, I’ll be able to settle the accounts, lay something by for lean days and still have enough left over to shower her with diamonds, thanks to her father’s purse.

  Marrying the duke’s daughter was the only logical thing to do. Both families wanted the match to happen. When he spent time with Lady Florence, she seemed attentive and pleasant, the sort of person he could walk beside through a lifetime and never have a quarrel.

  By contrast, the first time he spent more than ten minutes in Delphinia Preston’s presence, she was chiding him for his plans and teasing him beyond bearing, till he was rolling on the ground kissing her senseless. Then after their time in the wardrobe together, when all he’d done was try to give her pleasure, she’d called him a fool.

  Perhaps he was. Only a fool would continue to moon over such an inappropriate commoner with no dowry and slim connections, when the daughter of a peer of the realm was his for the asking.

  He leaned against the crystal-studded grotto, welcoming the pinch of pain that accompanied each jab to his spine. He deserved it. Perhaps it would sharpen his thinking.

  It didn’t help. He was thinking about Delphinia so hard, he’d actually conjured her in his imagination. There she was, making the final turn into the center of the maze. She walked toward him, her wrap floating in the slight breeze, her slim feet making no sound. Then as she drew near, he heard the soft crunch of the pea gravel and realized she was no apparition.

  Delphinia was really there. She stopped an arm’s length away. Her hair was unbound, the thick dark cloud framing her angel face and curling over her shoulders.

  “It’s no good, you and me,” he said miserably. “It’ll never work.”

  “Do you want it to?”

  “More than my next breath.”

  “Then it will work,” she said softly.

  He grabbed her and pulled her roughly to him. “In God’s name, how?”

  “I don’t know yet,” she said. “Maybe we aren’t meant to know. Maybe we’re meant to trust.”

  “In what?”

  “Love,” she said, tipping her chin so her lips were a mere finger-width from his.

  “If we try to live on love, we’ll be skinny as snakes,” he said.

  She smiled up at him. “Perhaps. But we’ll be the happiest skinny snakes anyone ever saw.”

  Tristan laughed. He couldn’t help himself. Then he sobered in an instant. “How can I purchase my happiness at the expense of everyone and everything else I hold dear?”

  “You’re so doggedly responsible. Oh, I love that about you.” Del hugged him fiercely, then she released him and held him at arm’s length, her grey gaze rooting him to the spot. “But I want you to trust me when I tell you everything will turn out all right.” She cocked her head to the side. “Have you heard any rumors about me?”

  “You mean the ones about you being part witch and knowing things you shouldn’t?”

  “Yes, those. I hope to heaven there are no other rumors circulating.”

  “If we’re caught in this grotto at midnight, there will be,” he said wryly.

  She rolled her eyes at him. “In any case, I want you to know the rumors are true. At least partly. I can’t claim to be a witch, but I do have ways of knowing things. Things past and things future.”

  He tugged her close again. “So you really are Madame Zola?”

  “I’m trying to be serious here. I want you to believe me when I tell you that you will not be sacrificing the well-being of your family by choosing to be happy.”

  “I want to believe you, Delphinia, but—”

  She pressed the hand that bore the signet ring between hers. Her eyes seemed to unfocus for a moment and she stared at a point over his shoulder. Finally she blinked twice. “I know about the China Dog, Tristan.”

  “What?”

  “It was your mother’s favorite piece, but your brother Thaddeus was rough-housing in the parlour and broke it. You knew your father would whip him when he found out, so you told everyone you did it.”

  Tristan’s jaw dropped in surprise. She was telling the truth. She did have ways of knowing things.

  “Thad was contrite enough about breaking the damn thing, but Father has always had a heavy hand. My brother was never strong and he always took a beating so to heart,” Tristan said softly. “It was a small matter for me to take one for him.” The previously hazy memory leapt into his mind, sharp-edged and bristling with fresh bitterness over the way his father had treated his weaker younger brother. “But how could you know about that? I haven’t even thought about it in years.”

  “It doesn’t matter how I know it. I only tell you so you’ll understand that I do know things.”

  “And this knowing of yours goes into the future as well as the past?” By now, if she’d t
old him she could fly, he was half-disposed to believer her.

  “It does.”

  “Then what does the future hold for you and me?”

  Her lips curved into a sly smile. “I see you spreading your cloak in the grotto. And then I see us lying down together. And when we rise again, I shall no longer be a virgin.”

  “Del …” His voice caught in his throat. She was giving herself to him without reservation, without conditions. But if he took her, he’d place enough conditions on himself.

  She smiled at him.

  She was obviously smart enough to know that about him.

  “If we . . . I promise . . . ” Suddenly words were no match for the storm in his heart. He dragged her into the grotto, tearing off his cloak and tossing it to the ground. She was in his arms then, kissing, caressing, meeting his desperation with her own.

  There was no question of disrobing completely. His urgency was too great. He kissed down to the lace at her neckline and tugged the satin ribbon free with his teeth. When the knot unraveled, he parted the thin muslin and bared her breasts. They fit his hands perfectly, her tight little peaks hard and hot against his palms.

  Even as he bunched her nightrail and wrapper in his fists and raised her hem to her waist, she was busy undoing the buttons at his hipbones to drop the front of his breeches. When she plunged in with both hands to cup his ballocks and stroke his cock, he feared he might lose control and spill his seed like a callow youth.

  Her mouth was the whole world. He dove into it, his tongue showing her in slow strokes what he wanted to do to her once another part of them joined. They sank as one to the spread out cloak and rolled together.

  Tristan pressed a knee between her legs and her thighs parted. He swept a hand over her belly, into her secret folds.

  She was wet. So wet. Her body wept for him. He responded to her need with a quick pulse or two, so he forced himself to concentrate on lowering the rising pressure in his shaft. He trailed two fingertips through those silken valleys, coating every sweet bit of her with that hot moisture. Her little ‘pearl’ was fully exposed and she moaned into his mouth when he stroked it.