And how the crowd had loathed him for it! How they had howled when he denied them their fun! That gut-curdling din had killed the last of her hopes. After the disturbances in the north, London was furious for recompense. Only her brother’s blood would satisfy it.
David had passed onward, out of sight, half of the crowd trailing him, the rest dispersing sluggishly, discontentedly, having hoped for a better show.
She had stayed in the bell tower for a very long time, waiting for her nausea to subside and her heart to slow.
But now, when she put a hand over her breast in the luxurious quiet of this gilded room, her heart yet raced. Could a heart wear out from grief? Could it beat itself to death, like a bird snared in a trap?
“He reached the Tower safely.”
The quiet remark startled her; her fingers curled into a fist. She swallowed past the lump in her throat and turned to behold her husband.
Full dress became him. His long, curling wig highlighted the stark angularity of the bones in his face. The powder emphasized the full line of his lips and lent an impossible vividness to his green eyes.
He held himself differently in the maroon brocade suit, more languidly, the height of his heels shifting his balance, putting him taller than nature designed any man. There was great skill to cutting an elegant figure in such heavy embroidered costumes, to maneuvering gracefully in a full-skirted coat. Adrian had mastered it. He came toward her in long, easy strides, his skirts swinging, the brawn of his calves flexing beneath dark silk stockings.
A short distance away, he stopped, perhaps alerted by her lack of greeting to the mood that troubled her. He studied her for a long moment, and she held his gaze, hoping, unfairly, that he might divine the truth and spare her the need to speak it. She would not keep secrets from him any longer, but if she tried to say now what she had seen this morning, she feared she would weep . . . or scream.
It was not his fault.
It was not his fault.
But oh, God, it would be so easy to blame him for it! His actions had set in motion the course that led her brother to London today.
Her own actions at Manston House had ended her brother’s hope of escape.
She would never regret it. She would have made the same choice again and again. But it would haunt her. It haunted even this vast and fathomless love that overwhelmed her when she gazed on her husband.
Mayhap her face did speak for her, for Adrian took a long breath before he asked, “Are you well, love?”
His concern undid her. She rose, drawn across the silk carpet toward him. How to answer him? Was she well? Would they be well? This love was a miracle, but she was no saint; perhaps she was inadequate to its grace. Could their love have a happy destiny, when its second life had been authored by the events that ensured her brother’s death?
Very carefully she touched the gold braid that trimmed Adrian’s coat. The warmth it carried from his body made her acutely aware of the chill deep within her. For so long, in their separation, she had gazed across rooms at him, watching from the corner of her eye or beneath her lashes, and the sight of him, turned out so splendidly, golden as an angel, had sawed like a knife in her heart.
Now she could touch him, for he was hers—could touch every part of him, even roughly if she liked, these gold-plated buttons, this intricate Valenciennes lace that spilled from his upturned cuffs. He had stripped off his gloves before coming to find her. His wrist was warm and hard, lightly dusted with hair. She laid her fingers atop his knuckles.
When his hand turned in hers, closing in a hard grip, she knew the answer he must give of what had happened at court. “He says he cannot interfere in these matters,” he said evenly. “Parliament must be allowed to proceed as it sees fit.”
“Ah.” She swallowed hard, but his grip seemed to squeeze her next words from her. “I went to see him. I watched him be brought into the city.”
The signet ring on his fingers pressed hard into her bones, an accidental pain that somehow satisfied. It matched the ache inside her. So much happiness to be had from his touch—and so much grief to countermand it. She felt physically torn, as though her soul were breaking.
“Shall we prosper?” she whispered. “After he is . . . dead?”
“Nora,” he murmured, the word less sound than breath, but she heard in it so many things: a chiding scold; loving affection; and, hardest to bear . . . compassion. He had no hope to offer in regard to her brother.
She closed her eyes as he drew her against him, satin and lace rustling between them. He smelled of court, of musk and cloves and sweat, for it was always crushed in the state rooms, sweltering from the press of ambitious bodies.
Had there only been a levee, she would have gone with him. But the German king was not sociable, and his next levee was not scheduled until December. One could not impose oneself on a king—particularly one said to hate public displays. Yet if David still lived in December, she would make her own tearful plea for clemency, and be damned who saw her, or what they thought; she would fall to her knees and beg the German . . .
Adrian’s lips touched her temple. She turned her cheek into his throat. A light dusting of powder fell across her temple.
“That was rash of you,” he said softly, “and dangerous, to go alone into the city. Had you told me you needed to see the procession, I would have taken you.”
These kind words sharpened the ache in her. Did she deserve such kindness from him? She grieved for a man who had tried to kill him.
On a hitching breath, she schooled her mind to his concerns. “Did the king say aught of Barstow’s deeds?” Ugly rumors were circulating—a broadsheet that spread foul lies, no doubt of Barstow and Lord John’s devising. It made the same claims they had asked her to support, and new ones besides: Adrian had conspired with her brother; David’s escape from his custody had been no accident; Adrian, too, thus belonged in the Tower.
“There is no worry on that account.”
“But all the talk—”
Adrian set her away from him slightly, to show her the dark edge of his smile. “Lord John persuaded his father into a poor gamble. He supposed their friends would approve an attempt to see me laid low. No doubt they would have, in other times. But with the public mood so vicious . . .” His smile faded. “No one wishes to enlist in a bargain that might spare your brother a traitor’s end. Not even if it ensures my downfall.”
“Of course.” To her own ears, her voice sounded scraped raw. She tried to smile. “That is fortunate for you. For us, I mean.”
He gathered up her hands again. “Will you be all right tonight?”
She grimaced. He had committed them to some private assembly before they had learned that her brother would enter the city today. “I fear not,” she said. She had yet to make a social appearance, but she remembered well what compassion awaited her in court circles. “I would not be fit company—”
“I think you must,” he said gently.
The edict seemed odd and cruel. She pulled her hands free of his. “You expect me to laugh and dance while the town screams for my brother’s head?”
His expression turned grim. “Nora, you must. With the broadsheets on the street, and Barstow’s failed conspiracy, it is crucial that we be seen. Your absence would feed rumors that might yet trouble us. But your tears—they would not be so harmful. Rather the opposite, for some would think them owed to my opposition to your family.”
How fluently he understood the twisted logics of political society. “Yes, of course. They would relish my tears.” She heard how bitter she sounded, but she did not care. London had ever been cruel to her. To face it now, when she was little better than an open wound—
“Trust me, love.” He tipped up her chin, catching her in an intent, somber gaze. “I promise you will not regret it.”
Nora remembered her old lessons of London. She smiled through the veiled insults to her brother, and through jokes of executions. Though Adrian abandoned her to speak with a mini
ster, leaving her at the mercy of the laughing group that enclosed her, she kept a smile fixed on her lips. She was still smiling when she turned on her heel and walked away from them and him both, desperate to escape the staterooms.
The great heat generated by the crush was as wet and thick as steam. Candle smoke combined unpleasantly with the sweet stink of cologne and sweat and powder, so that each breath felt harder to draw than the last. She dodged around silk-clad hoops and jabbing elbows, gesturing hands and sloshing glasses of wine. A large knot of women, their plumed headdresses waving, unwittingly concealed her passage from Adrian, who stood in deep conversation with the Groom of the Stole.
She would find him again soon enough. For now, what she needed was a private corner in which to steel herself again to this task.
Chatter jammed the space of Lord Fairfax’s double-story hall, clashing with the ring of crystal and the frenetic lilt of a harpsichord. But the air was purer here. As she took a deep, grateful breath, a sudden clarity fell over her, as though she were coming awake.
Trust me, Adrian had told her. He had earned her trust a thousand times over. But why must she be here tonight? All London knew her brother had been imprisoned today. Next week, or the week after, then she would put herself to this test. But why tonight?
At the far end of the hall, a couple was dancing, or attempting to; their lurching movements suggested that wine had overset them. No one spared her more than a passing glance as she brushed past them toward a darkened hallway.
She did not stop until she was well down the corridor, and then only because the silence revivified her senses. Holding very still, she listened to the sound of her own breathing. Her head was calm now, but it seemed that her body was not. She was panting like a cornered dog.
Her knees folded under her. In astonishment, she observed herself collapse.
The stone tile felt cool beneath her palm.
This is real, she thought. I am sitting on the floor.
She took a hard breath through her nose and tried to marshal her resolve. She was a practical woman, and this behavior did not become her. Adrian had explained the advantage in attending this party, and she must honor his wishes. She would be a good wife to him. She loved him. This was horrifically scrubby behavior, not becoming of Lord Rivenham’s wife. If somebody saw her, the gossip would lacerate her afterward.
Besides, her skirts would be crushed.
But a weird lassitude was spreading through her. She felt as though she could sit here forever.
“Nora.”
Adrian’s quiet voice came at her ear. When she summoned the will to turn, she found him crouching beside her, the skirts of his emerald silk coat spilling carelessly across the tiles.
“I cannot do it.” She meant to speak calmly but her voice was choked, angry. “You knew it when you wed me. You knew it long before that! You knew I was no hand at these affairs—society, and court, and politics, and polite company. And I cannot pretend! Not when he is so nearby, and suffering—”
He caught her hand and kissed it. “I know,” he said. “I knew. And it matters not.”
“Then why?” She let him keep hold of her hand, but now that her anger was uncovered, it flooded her like a toxin, making her vicious. “Why this charade? To torment me?”
He made no reply to that. “Who offended you?” he asked instead.
“It makes no matter!”
“It matters,” he said flatly. “I am a man who keeps careful tally of such things. Tonight is for a different purpose, but tomorrow, I will settle scores.”
“What purpose? And if I tell you a dozen names, what then? For I cannot recall all the people who scorned me before, and I have no cause to think that the list will be shorter now I have returned!”
His eyes narrowed. “Do you not? Then come,” he said, rising, still keeping hold of her hand, forcing her to scramble to her feet. “Let me instruct you differently.”
“I do not require it,” she said through her teeth, but his hold on her was implacable; with his other hand at the small of her back, he urged her back into the entry hall. “Find a person,” he said at her ear when they neared the staterooms. “Any person whom you recall treating you rudely before. We will see how they greet you now.”
His goad panicked her. “No! Adrian, I know they respect you. I do not require you to parade me like a possession!”
“But that is what you are.” His voice was hard. “A precious possession. Whether you choose to make them see you differently, to respect you as your own woman, will be your choice. But, by God, they will respect you as my wife.”
“You cannot make them—”
“I can.”
Looking into his face, she saw the seriousness of his intentions. For her sake, he would use all his power to bring London to her feet.
A curious shock moved through her.
When last she had been in this town, she had been alone. Someone’s wife, yes, but alone all the same.
No longer. She would never be alone again.
A breath escaped her, and her anger seemed to go with it. She reached up to touch his cheek. “You needn’t,” she said softly, and could not stop herself, despite the public setting and the eyes surely upon them, from stroking his lower lip with her thumb.
How could she let the slings and arrows of vapid fools wound or deter her? None of these people mattered. She had him.
A muscle still ticked in his jaw. “Tell me who insulted you,” he said.
She surprised herself with a laugh. “You are like a dog with a bone,” she said. “I won’t tell a thing to you. But take me back into the staterooms.” She knew her duties to him. “We have yet to greet our host.”
As he led her back into the sweltering, smoky warmth, she marveled at her sudden calm. Adrian was beside her. His loyalty was to her, as was hers to him. Who could touch them? The sidelong glances, the glimpses of teeth as smiles flashed over her, did not cause her heartbeat to stutter. So often as a girl she had felt in such settings removed from herself, distant and numb and out of her own control, but now, in this moment, she felt fully present, self-possessed and strong.
The test was not long in coming. Their own host delivered it. As Adrian turned away to speak with someone, Fairfax laid a hand on her arm and purred, “Families are so troublesome, don’t you find?”
She was conscious of painted faces inclining to watch her, glittering eyes and carmine lips. In the flickering candlelight, the salon’s cinnabar walls looked the shade of dried blood. “I suppose they can be,” she said calmly. “Do yours trouble you, my lord?”
“Ah, whose does not? But then, you are fortunate,” Lord Fairfax said smoothly. “Your troubles are nearly over, I believe.”
For a moment, the cruelty left her as stunned and blank-witted as a doll. A titter went up from a lady nearby—perhaps at some other remark. But perhaps not. La la la, what a clever joke.
Nora cleared her throat. “I was about to compliment you on your marvelous hospitality. But I see you have other lessons to teach me.”
Her husband’s hand closed around her elbow as he turned back. “What are we speaking of?” he asked.
She met his eyes. “Family. Lord Fairfax finds it quite troublesome, and envies my impending happiness in being rid of it.”
His brow lifted. “I have no wonder that his mind travels in the domestic direction.” To their host, he said with a slow smile, “His Majesty informs me that your cousin is close friends with the Swedish ambassador—and that you recently had him to dine. Evidently you are most faithful to the bonds of blood.”
Nora blinked. Earlier in the year, London had been full of rumors that claimed a group of Tories had approached the Swedish ambassador to test his country’s support for an uprising against the new king.
The reference rightly caused Fairfax to stiffen. “Indeed not,” he said sharply. “I have washed my hands of my cousin, and the whole kingdom knows it.”
“Ah, yes,” Adrian murmured. “Forgive
me, I am confusing my news. It was not the ambassador you had to dinner but the much-heralded oracle, Mr. Smithson—although I believe his talk against our king has seen his popularity much reduced—”
“That was my wife’s business!” The paint on Fairfax’s face could not conceal his rising flush. “I had nothing to do with it! And how do you know these things? What damned spies—”
“I begin to understand your distaste for family,” Adrian interrupted. “It seems yours quite outstrips your ability at governance.”
Fairfax’s scowling reply was interrupted by the appearance of a footman, whose whispered message much improved his mood.
“What ho,” he said to Adrian. “Governance domestic, eh? I would say your difficulties far outstrip my own, sir. I have just had very interesting news.” But it was to Nora, not Adrian, that he directed his next remark: “David Colville has escaped.”
Through the ringing in her ears she heard Adrian laugh. “Never say it.”
“I would not look so cheerful,” Fairfax snapped. “One wonders who accomplished it.”
“Indeed.” Adrian shrugged. “Were the Gardiners about when it happened? They do seem to enjoy misplacing him.”
A dumbfounding intuition struck her. She looked sharply at him, and received a lifted brow in reply. “But this news overwhelms Lady Rivenham,” he said. “God save us if the knave comes crawling to our door. Fairfax, you will have to put up with us for another few hours at the least—we must give the Watch a chance to recover him.”
Taking her arm, Adrian steered her firmly away—and then pulled her to a stop by a footman bearing a tray of wine. “Drink,” he said in an undertone, “and then think before you speak.”
The canary was thick with sugar. She applied herself to it, staring at him wide-eyed. Was this some fevered specimen of her imagination? Or did these tidings leave her husband peculiarly composed?
The last sip of the wine set the whole world to spinning. She handed him the empty glass. “Do I now know,” she whispered unsteadily, “why we needed to be seen publicly tonight?”
At Your Pleasure Page 29