by Jo Ann Wendt
"That was foolish, Dove!"
"Yes? Well not half so foolish as what you're doing. New York. It's on the other side of the world. Damn it, Jericho, I'll worry about you!"
She curled her hand into his, and they walked on, crunching through ash and debris. The wind had deposited half of London on the south shore.
"I'll worry, too," she confessed. "I'll think about you and worry about you every day of my life."
His hand tightened around hers. "Stay in England! Marry John. We couldn't be together. But at least we'd be in the same country. We'd see one another now and then. Talk to one another now and then."
She shook her head. A trickle of collecting mist ran down the inside of her hood. "It wouldn't be fair to John. I've slept with you. John knows it. He hasn't said so, but I know he knows. I see it in his eyes. Maybe it wouldn't matter to him now. But later, after we'd settled into the marriage and grown used to each other, it would matter. He would know I loved you first and best. And it would matter. It wouldn't be fair."
"So you'll not marry?" he demanded, tense as a wire.
She looked out across the river. The Guildhall was the only building left standing in the walled city. A sad forlorn sight, it reflected what was in her heart.
"I'll marry someday," she admitted softly. "I want children, Dove."
Dove was taken aback. A pleasing image flashed in his mind. Jericho, surrounded by a passel of moppets, each of them with obnoxious red hair, freckles and pansy blue eyes . . .
Jericho watched him tensely, hoping he could see things her way. After a tense moment, his eyes softened and a smile flickered there.
"Little grub worms, little pansy eyes. I suppose you'll want about a dozen, eh?"
Relieved that the tension between them was broken, relieved that they were going to remain friends, she smiled, too.
"A dozen to start," she admitted. "More if I can have them."
He put his arm around her shoulder and they walked on, easy and affectionate with each other, the tension gone. They talked now in a calmer vein about her going to New York. Dove urged her to scotch the idea. When she would not, he urged her to accept financial help from him. Or from John if she didn't want it from him. She refused. She didn't want charity. Finally, in exasperation, he turned on her.
"Jericho! New York's on the other side of the world! How in hell do you expect to get there without help? Skate over on your own spit?"
"I'll figure out a way." She had a plan. But she knew Dove wouldn't like it.
That night she supped with Dove for the last time. He didn't know it was the last time. But she knew, and when they parted to go to bed, she felt the parting as keenly as a child of eleven—a bondchild in agony, standing in the March wind on a rainy New Amsterdam wharf, watching the master she loved sail out of her life forever. The pain was identical. Immense, bewildering.
In the darkness of her chamber, she grieved like a child. When she was done, she put her childhood behind her once and for all. Determined, she made her preparations for the coming morning. Then she sat on her bed and waited for the inn to fall asleep. When it did, when men's snores buzzed like woodcutters' saws in the common sleeping room, she slipped out of her room and out of the inn.
She hurried across the misty stableyard, as if heading for the privy. When the privy loomed up in the mist, she darted into a stand of trees. Keeping to the trees, she made her way along the perimeter, then dashed across the remaining bit of yard to the stable. Dove slept there. In the hayloft. Aristocrat to the core, he'd objected to the common sleeping room. He'd opted for the privacy of the hayloft.
She lifted the latch carefully and let herself in. The stable was dark and smelled of hay and warm animals. She paused to get her bearings. Horses filled every stall. Most of them asleep, one hock flexed. One or two munched hay. She found the loft ladder, shucked shawl and shoes, and climbed. At the top of the ladder, she crawled into the springy, whispering hay.
Dove slept sprawled on his cloak, lying under a misty window in gray rainy light. She gazed at his familiar beloved sprawl of golden hair, and her heart thrashed against her ribs. Was it so wicked to want one beautiful memory? Was it so terrible to want one night of love to remember?
On Wattling Street, she'd been a virgin, awkward and unsure. She wasn't a virgin now. Now she knew what passion was and what it was like to have the man you love in you, filling you with his own hot passion. She crawled through the whispering hay, stopped at a safe distance and raked her trembling hands through her hair.
"Dove?"
He sat up like a shot, grabbing for his sword. "Who's there!"
"Dove? It's Jericho."
Bleary with sleep, still his eyes brightened to the luster of jewels. He threw his sword away and crawled through the springy hay to her, grabbed her and crushed her close.
"My mate, my mate," he said hoarsely. She didn't know what he meant, but she exulted in the way he'd said it. Crushing a kiss to her mouth, he lowered her into the hay, his sensual, sleep-warm body atop hers. He wrapped his legs around hers. He moved in sexual rhythm, his hot groin seeking hers. The crushed hay sent up a sensual, heady fragrance.
He kissed her, then plunged his tongue into her eager mouth, and with that there began a night so ardent, so passionate, she soared. Sensing her willingness, Dove became a man on fire with love. He did things to her that she had never imagined in her wildest sexual imaginings. Wild and ardent, he kissed her entire body—her breasts, her toes, her fingers, the delicate soft skin of her inner thighs. He worshipped the birthmark on her breast with his mouth. He worshipped her nipples. He sucked the soft velvet hair of her intimate place and gave her such wild pleasure with his serpentine tongue that her head thrashed back and forth in the whispering hay like a madwoman's.
He entered her again and again, as if he could not get enough of her. He was tireless, his hazel eyes bright as jewels. He was like a young stallion mating, spending his seed in her in wet passionate spurts.
It was wonderful. It was heartbreaking. It made her a crazed woman. She grew crazed, knowing this was the last time, knowing this was the end. Each time he kissed her, she kissed him frantically, fearing this was the last kiss. Each time he entered her, she locked her legs around him and held him with all her strength, fearing this was their last embrace. Each time he spent in her, she arched to receive it, fearing this was the last.
Driven by her need, they made love until Dove collapsed of it, gathered her close and clamped her to his heaving breast.
"My mate—my mate—" he whispered into her hair as he drifted to sleep. "Oh, Jericho—you are truly my mate."
Panting toward sleep, clutching him close, she whispered, "Dove, I love you . . . Dove, I love you . . . Dove, I love you . . ."
Just before daybreak, as Dove lay sated and sprawled in dead sleep, Jericho quietly arose and dressed. Crawling through the whispering hay, she stole down the ladder. She slipped on her shoes, took her shawl, let herself out of the stable and ran back to the inn through the rainy drizzle.
In her room, she washed, then quickly dressed again. She threw on her cloak, buttoned it against the rain. Her heart ' ached. She didn't want to leave him like this, without a goodbye, without explanation. But she had to. For if she didn't leave him this minute, she never would. She would become his mistress.
Cloak buttoned, she seized the bundle she'd prepared and stole out of her room and out of the inn. She hurried through the drizzle to the river. At first light, she hailed a passing waterman and haggled with him until he agreed to row her to Westminster for a few pence.
Alighting at Westminster, she paid the man and hurried on through the awakening city until she found the great road from London. Then she slowed down. Nibbling the bread and cheese she'd brought with her, she determinedly set her face to the west and began to walk.
Chapter Twenty-Two
"Come in, my dear. I am delighted to see you. Come to the fire, come. Warm yourself, my dear. The night is chill, rainy. Come, co
me, do not be chary of my puppies."
"Yes, Your Grace."
Jericho curtsied, did as she was bade. But warily. "Puppies"? She would not call them that. She moved to the fire. The wolfhounds watched. Not with Pax's friendly gaze, but with huge bulging eyes that protruded from under a fringe of wolf shag. Their jowls looked powerful enough to snap her in two.
Still, the fire's warmth was welcome, penetrating her cold wet cloak, her damp petticoats, her sodden shoes and stockings. For a moment she felt lightheaded. She was so tired. Walking all the way to Blackpool Castle.
But now that she was here, she had the unnerving feeling that she shouldn't have come. She felt a sense of things out of kilter here. Spooked by the feeling, she sent a swift scared glance over the great hall. Ancient armor glowed in firelight. Dogs milled. The man she did not like, Fox Hazlitt, hovered behind his master's chair, as slavish and attentive as any dog. Only two items in the rich hall gave her peace. Two portraits. One of the duchess—beautiful and sad-eyed, painted in her prime—and one of Lord Aubrey, a mended portrait. How handsome and merry-eyed he'd been in his youth. She glanced at his likeness with affection, then carefully brought her eyes back to the duke.
The duke of Blackpool lounged in a Russia-leather chair, one slim leg elegantly crossed upon the other. He was smiling pleasantly, but the smile did not reach his eyes. His eyes remained curiously untouched by it, remote, cold.
"My dear, Fox tells me you have come.to accept my offer of hire. To serve and companion my duchess. I am delighted. The salary suits you?"
"It is more than generous, Your Grace."
"You will find my duchess in ill health."
Jericho's thoughts jumped from her own uneasiness. Poor lady.
"I am sorry, Your Grace."
"Yes. Her constitution has ever been . . . frail." He said this not with pity, but with annoyance. She glanced at Lady Angelina's portrait. Such a cold husband. "In her ill health, I fear Her Grace's mind also has become ill. You must grant no credence to any strange things which she may say. She tends toward . . . hysteria."
"Yes, Your Grace." Jericho already knew that, remembering the conversation she'd had with the duchess in Arleigh Castle.
"Fine . . . good . . . excellent." The duke gestured in dismissal, his wrist lace billowing. "Then I charge you to take good care of my duchess, my dear. I want you to be her constant companion. Stay at her side day and night. In short—" Amused at some inner thought, he smiled. "—behave to her as lovingly as a daughter might."
Amusement flickered on Fox Hazlitt's weasel face, too. Jericho saw nothing funny. What was funny about a kind, gentle lady who was sick? She answered earnestly.
"I will, Your Grace."
"Excellent, my dear. I am quite sure everything will work out exactly as I have planned. You may go to her now. A footman will show you to her chambers."
Dismissed, she hurried to the door, glad to go. She disliked Fox Hazlitt. She disliked the huge dogs. As for the duke? He was such a strange cold man that he gave her chills. Following the footman through the corridors, she made herself a firm promise. The moment she'd earned enough money for ship passage to New York, she would leave Blackpool Castle and put all of it—including Dove—behind her forever.
As the door closed behind the redhaired bitch, the duke of Blackpool smiled thinly at Fox. Fox smiled back. Rising, strolling to the largest of his wolfhounds, the one who'd followed the girl halfway to the door, the duke affectionately scratched the hound's ear.
"You picked up her scent, Hunter, did you? Did you? Remember it. Soon . . . very soon . . . you shall have her."
"What are you doing here!"
Jericho had knocked softly on the duchess's door, then entered. She'd found the sickroom in melancholy darkness, the fire dying on the hearth and the duchess standing at the rain spattered window in the cold room, listless and pale as a lily.
"I am here to take care of you, Your Grace," Jericho answered gently. Shedding her damp cloak, she rolled it and set it on the brick hearth. Kneeling quickly, she put kindling wood and logs into the dying fire, took the hand bellows and energetically pumped the coals into flames. The room was much too cold for a frail sick lady.
"Who sent you! Did Aubrey?"
What a strange hysterical thing to say. But the duke had warned her. Jericho rose from her knees and gently approached. She took care to speak softly, as she might to a sick or troubled child.
"Your husband hired me, Your Grace."
"Why? Is it a trick? A new way for him to torment me?"
Jericho's lips parted in astonishment. She didn't know what to say. In the light of the fresh fire, the duchess's lovely face shone pale as death. And she'd lost weight. She was thinner than ever. Firelight played upon her burgundy silk chamber robe and illuminated the few threads of silver in her brown hair.
"There is no trick, Your Grace," she said gently, retrieving the wool shawl that had slipped to the floor and putting it around Lady Angelina's thin shoulders. "His Grace has hired me to serve you, to companion you. His Grace cares for you."
"He cares for no one," she said bitterly. "Least of all, me. I am nothing more than a possession he once decided to acquire." The duchess listlessly let her gaze return to the falling rain, to the raindrops spattering the window. "Were you wise, child, you would leave Blackpool Castle at once. Now. Tonight. He is a wicked man. He plans something wicked for me, I know he does, I feel it."
It was such a feverish, disjointed thing to say, that Jericho discreetly scanned the room for the cause of it. Had the duchess been drinking? She saw no evidence of it, no wine cup or bottle. Tenderly, she glanced back at the duchess, and suddenly she spotted the cause. The duchess's right arm hung limp as a bird's broken wing. A bandage of blood-spotted linen bound the limp wrist. She'd been bled. Jericho's heart opened in sympathy.
"My lady, you've been bled. Please let me help you to bed. You should rest."
The duchess swayed dizzily, hand to brow.
"Yes. Please."
Jericho caught her just as she crumpled. Supporting the duchess's limp weight—she weighed nothing!—Jericho helped her to the silk curtained bedstead, helped her up the velvet covered bed step and into bed.
When she'd settled the duchess in, piling goosedown quilts on her cold shivering body, she ran into the adjoining garde- robe room, found the long-handled brass warming pan in a cupboard, filled it with hot coals, and tucked it into the bottom of the bed, near the duchess's icy feet. Waiting for her to warm, Jericho knelt on the bed step and gently stroked her brow.
"My lady? I want to go down to the kitchen and make you a hot nourishing posset drink. It will build up your blood, strengthen you, my lady."
The weak lovely head moved on the linen covered, goose- down pillow, eyes closed in weariness. "Why bother?" she said listlessly. "In a month he will order me bled again. And the surgeon will do it. The surgeon always obeys the duke."
Jericho was aghast. The duchess was too thin to be bled.
"I won't let him," she said softly. "I won't let him." She hoped she would have a say in it. As companion to the duchess, she might have a say in it.
The duchess smiled weakly, her lovely eyes fluttering open, then closing again.
"You are so pretty. I have thought of you constantly since Arleigh Castle. She . . . would've been your age . . . had she lived."
She? What was the duchess talking about?
"Yes, my lady. Rest, rest." Best to agree with anything that was said, no matter how hysterical.
"But you are not my daughter, are you ... my daughter is dead . . . dead . . . dead."
The hair on the back of Jericho's neck prickled and rose.
Lady Angelina was ill in the mind. Such addled, disturbing talk.
"Rest, my lady." She smoothed the lovely brow. "Rest. Do not tire yourself with talk. We will talk tomorrow. For now, my lady, rest. Rest. Rest."
"Yes ... I must . . . rest . . ."
When the duchess dozed off, Jericho
went to find the kitchens, keeping a wary eye out for the huge ugly dogs. As maid to the duchess she had free use of the kitchen. When she'd fed the posset drink to the duchess and had put her back to sleep, she removed the duchess's stained wrist bandage, gently cleansed the surgeon's incision and rebound it with clean linen. Then, bone-weary, hungry, she ate, drank. She stripped off her own damp clothes, hung them to dry, washed herself and donned a warm nightrail she'd found in a maid's cubbyhole in Lady Angelina's garde-robe room.
There was a trundle bed under the duchess's grand bedstead. Quietly, she pulled it out and got in, utterly exhausted. Overtired, too tired for sleep, she let her thoughts drift wearily. Dove. Had he been upset, waking to find her gone? She hadn't done it to worry him. She'd had to make a sharp clean break for her own sanity. A tender farewell and she wouldn't have been able to leave him at all.
Her thoughts drifted wearily to the duchess and to the duke and to the gloomy, shadow-filled castle and to the unnerving dogs. She would leave Blackpool Castle as soon as she could. She would leave as soon as she'd earned enough money. She would leave ... she drifted into dreamless sleep.
"I adore your stories of Dutch New Amsterdam, Jericho. They raise my spirits. They make me laugh. Tell me again how Dove won you at dice. Did he really throw your drunken master into the canal?"
"Exactly so, my lady." With a fond smile, Jericho glanced up from the petticoat lace she was mending. They were sitting in the garden, taking an airing on a mild autumn day. She had been at Blackpool Castle a month and it was October.
Autumn leaves drifted down. Every day she grew fonder of the duchess. It would be difficult to leave her.
Prompted, Jericho lightly retold the familiar story and was rewarded by Lady Angelina's soft laughter. Jericho smiled happily. She was doing her work well. The duchess improved in health daily. The only sadness Jericho felt was the memory of Dove. And of course she would never get over missing Black Bartimaeus . . . Pax . . .