The tenderness on his face pleased her. "I’m very glad. The feeling is quite mutual."
With a gentle squeeze to his arm, she looked away again. "Shall we take the path down the avenue? Everything else will be too wet."
"Fine." He pointed out a large broken tree limb. "You’ve a good deal of work ahead of you."
Madeline nodded, wondering how the gardens had fared.
"Where did your stepmother go? Rare of her to disappear like that."
"Rude is what it was." A vision of the coupling in the library flashed in her mind, and she pushed it away.
"I expect she had her reasons."
"Yes, I’m sure she did," Madeline commented dryly.
For a time, they walked on in silence. Darkness grew thick in the shadows and spread from the corners across the vast grounds, until everything was the same color—sky and ground and trees and shrubs a colorless gray. Crickets sang in the underbrush, and the lawns were littered with birds dining on the worms soaked out of the ground. Their whistles and coos added sweet music to the evening. With a strange twinge in her chest, Madeline thought of Lord Esher, closing his eyes by the windows, telling her to listen.
"Madeline," Charles said, "I must return tomorrow to Kirkton. This hail will have devastated many of the crops, and I’ll have to see what I can do about all that."
Surprisingly, Madeline felt a small pang of regret.
She looked up at him. "Will you come back when you’ve finished your business?"
"Would you like me to?"
"Yes."
He paused. In the creeping darkness, with shadows obscuring his plump face, highlighting only the strength of his nose and brow, and the surprisingly firm lines of his strong chin, he looked almost handsome. The sherry-colored irises darkened. "Madeline, I think it’s no secret I’d like to marry you." He held up a hand. "Don’t speak yet. I want you to think what it would be like, truly, to be married to a man as dull as I am."
"You aren’t dull!" She touched his arm. "You’re exactly the opposite—concerned and caring and passionate. I love that you’re willing to return to your estate to look after the farmers who’ll be fretting. Many lords would not bother with such squirish chores."
"Still," he said with gravity, "I mean what I say, Madeline. Think on it. Think if you may be fond enough to make a solid marriage between us. I only wish it if it makes you happy."
He bent quickly and pressed a kiss to her mouth. It was not without expertise. Madeline waited for the congestion she’d felt when Lucien put his hand on her shoulder. It didn’t come. Charles’s kiss was pleasant and tender, but not at all arousing.
She missed most of all the scent of Lord Esher. Somehow, she’d thought it was a smell men all carried when a woman got close enough to them. Foolish of her.
Disappointed and trying not to show it, she lowered her head. "Perhaps we’d best get back," she whispered.
"Yes, perhaps we should."
At the top of the stairs that led inside, Madeline paused. "I’ll think on it," she said, and lifted on her toes to kiss him again, allowing her body to come into contact with his. Again the sensation was pleasant, nothing more.
At least it wasn’t repugnant.
* * *
From the shadows of a turn in the wall, Lucien watched the marquess and Madeline.
Sweet the way they made protestations to each other. The marquess was so earnest a man could almost feel sorry for him, and would, if the woman he courted were anyone else. Not Madeline. At any other time, she’d be the perfect wife for the marquess— honorable and kind and good. Responsible, intelligent, pretty. Together they would tend the vast estates of Kirkton and Whitethorn with democratic grace and care.
Cynically, Lucien leaned on the balustrade above them, confident he would not be seen, as they paused on the steps to the hall. Yes, he could see them in their old age, clucking over the antics of the children, a pack of hounds sprawled at their feet, relics from the ancient world littering the mantelpieces.
Madeline bent her head, and the last dying gleam of day caught on the column of her neck, white and curved, unbearably tender at the nape. He thought of her standing in the muddy, sopping-wet greenhouse in her fine brocaded gown, her breasts near to falling out of the bodice in spite of the careful placement of the fichu. In memory, the scene was rendered in green and gray, rose, and cream and sable.
Desire moved in him. What could she hope to gain with such a bland alliance with the marquess? How could she hope to ignore the passion that seeped from her very pores like the fragrance of a moonlit night?
He narrowed his eyes. She did not know it lived in her. Nor would she ever unless Lucien led her to it.
How would the marquess have handled that little scene in the greenhouse, with Madeline looking so delectably wanton in her ruined gown, a muddy smear across her chin and another adorning the swell of one nearly wholly exposed breast? Or worse, the one in the hallway, when Madeline had witnessed the sybaritic scene in the library?
When Lucien had come around the corner, she was staring like an owl, two bright slashes of color on her face, her bosom rising and falling in quick pace. The tiny scratches on her cheeks and the bloody lip, together with the pounding of the hail overhead and the love cries from the library, had aroused him as nothing had in more years than he could remember.
And in the greenhouse, he’d fully intended to begin his earnest seduction. He prided himself on exquisite seductions of great care and great rewards—when she fell to him, it would be a moment she remembered for the rest of her life, a moment of such passion she would not truly be able ever to regret it. Ever.
There in the moist, gray-colored greenhouse, with her hair coming loose, her mind filled with sexual images of an extremely passionate nature, Madeline had been ripe for the plucking. He’d planned to rouse her so thoroughly she couldn’t breathe—the first step in any true seduction.
And yet, he had not done it.
The reason terrified him, sent him pacing here tonight. When he’d touched her plump lower lip and watched her eyes drift closed, a bolt of music so pure and clear he almost wept for the beauty of it had sounded in his mind. It was made of the sound of the gray-green rain, and the sharp red of Juliette’s cry, and the umber warmth of the smell of damp earth and humid growth in the greenhouse. The violins and cellos hummed low.
It was exquisite and whole, and meshed in some way with the ravens on the grass the morning Madeline took him into the maze. And while it was on him, he could not bear to be cruel.
The trouble was, he had not written the other bit down and burned it, as was his habit. He let it play when it would, let it ring as he lay awake at night. He was afraid if he wrote it down, he would not then burn the music. And he didn’t know what that meant.
Now, with both pieces humming, twirling, dancing in his brain, he was getting drunk. Only drinking could let him sleep on such a night. Only drunkenness could completely drown the sounds. Gratefully, there was already a blunting to the shimmer of colors; already they were fading.
Oddly, watching Madeline and Charles, he considered allowing them to go on, unmarred by his intention. He thought it would be a kindness to allow them their simple happiness, the steadiness that was apparent in every move both of them made.
But then he thought again of the undiscovered passion in her, the blaze in her eyes he caught sight of now and again, and he thought it would be a great tragedy to let her go peacefully into her life without ever tasting that fully. A tragedy. And perhaps it might even serve the marquess, for he might, too, be ready for an awakening.
Well pleased at this tangle of justifications, Lucien went to bed and passed out.
The music awakened him before dawn. His head ached massively, with the edging of color and light that warned he would be ill with the headache, and all through it was the sound of the gray-green music. Queasy, blinded by the edging of light in his eyes, he dragged himself to the small desk in his room and dipped his quill.
The devastation in the garden the next morning was overwhelming. Madeline could not even do any work at first—she just wandered, first through the rose gardens. The roses she had managed to get pruned were fine. Many of the others had been violently torn by the wind and hail. The wounds showed like split skin. From the roses, she walked the length of the meadow. Everywhere were tree branches and broken shrubs and the assorted tangles of debris left by nature’s frenzy.
Into the protected maze Madeline retreated. Aside from an occasional branch in the path, most everything here had been little marred by the storm. It gave her a sense of calm to find it untouched, and she found herself letting go of a breath too long held.
The strange wild swollenness of the day before had broken, leaving behind a clarity of thought as crisp as the new-washed air. The scene she’d inadvertently witnessed in the library, the oddly passionate and not passionate moments in the greenhouse, now seemed fogged, as if they were the product of a summer afternoon’s slumber.
A perfect Michaelmas daisy bloomed against a gray stone bench. Madeline bent to pluck it and held it to her nose idly, wandering through the maze until she came to a claire-voie that faced the meadow. At this early hour, there was naught but stillness over the landscape, stillness and the impossible green of copious rain. The shining air was washed clean of impurities.
As her mind had been.
She felt an almost fatalistic sense of destiny. Fate had sent the storm to force her hand. The mullioned windows of Whitethorn had been as devastated as her gardens. She’d sent the butler around this morning to Lount and didn’t look forward to the tally. There was no money to pay for such extensive repairs. Already, Juliette had sold off a magnificent diamond necklace given her by the earl in order to pay for this summer fête and the clothes in which to dress the prize— Madeline.
Thinking of that sacrifice, Madeline knew a painful slash of guilt over the rose silk she’d ruined yesterday. Perhaps it could be salvaged. Often Jenny, the cook’s helper, could perform miracles with her brushes and potions. Still, it had been uncommonly thoughtless of her.
With a sigh, she meandered farther into the maze. Boss, the cat, sat in the middle of a path, cleaning a paw. He stopped to yowl at her, plaintively, and she chuckled. "Didn’t much like the storm, did you?"
He yowled again and bumped into her skirts. Madeline bent to lift him into her arms, the big lug of a tomcat, battered and arrogant and yet still in need of attention. As she rubbed his massive head, a ragged purr rattled from his throat and he tucked his nose into the hollow of her shoulder.
She laughed. "Silly cat."
Some disturbance in the ordinariness of the maze caught her eye. Madeline looked back, letting her eye rove slowly over the details she knew so intimately but didn’t immediately see anything amiss. A sprinkle of blackish feathers, rather mangled, lay on the grass, evidence of Boss’s breakfast. "I thought I smelled bird breath," Madeline said.
Boss meowed in reply but didn’t lift his head. Luxuriously, he settled more closely into the crook of her arm.
Madeline started to walk on, thinking she must have imagined the disturbance, when a slight, uncommon sound came to her. It sounded like a moan.
With a frown, she headed for the center of the maze, wondering if some new servant had become lost and had had to spend the night in the place, in that cold and horrible storm. "Hello?" she called.
There was no answer.
Boss stirred at her hurrying steps but made no move to get down. She was glad of his heavy warmth and didn’t even mind the small pinpricks of his claws as he held on. "Hello?" she called. "Is anyone here?"
Sounds traveled oddly in the maze because of the claires-voies and the muting of the bushes. It was impossible to pinpoint where a sound originated. But Madeline had not imagined it. That moan had been as human and real as her own breath.
She checked every hidden spot along the route, some behind a simple wall, others in hidden circles accessed from secret places—tiny mazes within the maze. She found no one. At each window cut into those hedges, she paused to look through, calling out.
Nothing. Until she turned the last corner into the very heart of the maze. There, looking for all the world as if he were dead, lay Lucien Harrow.
Madeline froze, clutching the cat to her chest as if he were some living shield. He protested mildly, touching his cold wet nose to her neck in reminder of her human duty to felines. Absently, Madeline rubbed his body.
Lord Esher lay flat on his back on an old gray stone bench, one leg bent at the knee to brace him from toppling onto the ground, the other flung along the length of the bench itself. One hand touched the earth, the bright white of his lace cuff making his brown, graceful fingers look even darker. He wore only a cambric shirt, unlaced at the neck, tight dark breeches, and a pair of muddy boots. His hair had come loose and spilled over the gray stone in glossy abundance, and his jaw was covered with a dark shadow of bristly beard. In the center of that roughness, his beautifully cut mouth was vulnerable.
The sheer length and breadth and stillness of him took away her breath. She thought he must have stumbled here drunk and passed out, and the moaning she had heard was only the well-deserved misery of too much drink. Still she couldn’t seem to move. That hard pulse pounded, that painful aching that seemed to shimmer to life every time she saw the big, lazy, drunken oaf. It made her chest hurt.
Abruptly, she put the cat down and launched herself forward, moving over the grass in a blur, halting only as she came up even with him. Clutching her skirts, she said, "Lord Esher! Wake up!"
He did not move. Not a muscle or a twitch of a finger. But his eyes opened. The color was almost green, the color of the sea, and the whites were bloodshot in the extreme. She noticed his flesh looked quite pale and was drawn tight over his cheekbones. Well she recognized the signs of debauchery on a man’s face— heaven knew, she’d seen it often enough as a girl.
"Get up," she said harshly. "I dislike drunks littering my garden with their foulness."
He still said nothing. Only gazed at her. It was disconcerting.
"Are you deaf? Get up."
Very slowly, he dampened his lips with his tongue. And in a voice rasping almost unrecognizably, he said, "I would love to oblige you, dear lady, but I do not believe it will be possible for me to move."
With a disgusted sigh, Madeline held out her hand. "I’ll help you."
"Oh, not even a hand will do." He had obviously aimed for an amused, sardonic tone, but the last words were a deep ragged whisper. He closed his eyes.
Madeline made a move toward him. He opened his eyes suddenly. "Please unless it is your pleasure to torture a man—do not put your hands on me."
She frowned. "Am I to leave you here to starve, then?"
"Your cook gave me a potion the last time. Ask her for me what it is."
"A cure for your excesses? You might simply try drinking less." Her gaze fell on his lashes, lying thick and black on his face. A hard line of tense muscle corded from temple to jaw, and there was a faint, unhealthy flush on his skin. He looked feverish and in pain.
Holding up her hand, she said, "I only want to touch your head. I’ll not jolt you, I swear." Without waiting for a reply, she gently opened her hand against his forehead. His skin felt taut and overly stretched, and she thought him a little feverish.
He tensed at first, but eased. She felt the tension flow from him. "The music," he said. "This is the price I paid for it."
"The music?" Madeline said, touching his temple, his cheekbone.
"Yosef told me it would ask a price." He lifted one hand and put it over hers, pressing her palm closer against his head. "Your fingers are so cool."
"It is a fever, Lord Esher."
"No." He opened his eyes, and for a moment, Madeline had the impression that light sharded there as if on Juliette’s prized crystal goblets. "No," he repeated. "It is my punishment."
"For overindulgence?"
He gazed at her steadily. She saw him swallow. Under her hand, the bones of his face seemed fragile. "Yes. The music."
Almost absently, he pulled her hand down and pressed a kiss to her palm, then tucked her hand under his chin. She felt the prickles of dark, unshaved beard against the back of her wrist, and the sensation was oddly, sharply erotic.
Violently, she yanked away. "I’ll go for the cook."
He moaned, and as if the motion had sent him completely off balance, he rolled to one side. His hair tumbled black and thick and glossy around his face, over his shoulders. Madeline clasped her hands together.
As he slowly braced himself on the bench and struggled to his feet, she found herself staring at his legs, lean and long and muscled beneath the tight, dark breeches, and his buttocks, so firm and round, and his long, elegant back. With a sense of horror, she realized she wanted him with a surprising force. He seemed to know it. He found his footing and turned to face her. The cambric shirt gaped, open to the waist, and Madeline felt a blaze of shock jolt her at the intimate view of his chest and stomach. Her entire body reacted with a ripple of heat and longing.
His chin tilted sardonically, and even though his mouth was drawn in some pain, he was unbearably desirable, standing there like that. "It’s in your eyes, Madeline," he said, still with that ragged edge in his voice. "All that passion you want to deny. Do you think it would be the same for me to kiss you as it is with your marquess?"
She took a step backward and found the hedge at her back. Branches stuck her. "I should not forget, Lord Esher, that you still need my assistance to leave this maze."
"Do I?" The careless, aloof expression flickered, and Madeline watched as he lifted an almost involuntary hand to his head. His shoulders seemed bowed with the weight of his head. Still, his lips twisted. "I’ve practiced. I know how to get out."
Torn between wanting to help him and needing urgently to escape him, Madeline found her feet frozen in place. "Are you so sure?"
He moved with excruciating slowness to point vaguely at one of the openings cut in the hedges. "The claires-voies must stay to one’s left. The small rooms are always to the right."
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