by Jo Beverley
He was speaking of them. She tried to form a message that would penetrate his thick skull. “I do, Major. Those who love deeply enough have only to wait until they come of age.”
“And before that,” he said, “there is Gretna.”
“Don’t speak of such scandalous goings on!” Ella commanded and directed conversation firmly onto the new exhibition of sculptures in artificial stone.
Mara returned her attention to little Amy, but winced at having let Berkstead trap her into conversation. She simply wasn’t good at being rude. But did he really imagine she would climb down a ladder in the night to run off to Scotland with him?
She sent an urgent appeal to Jancy, and soon they were taking their leave. In the carriage, Simon chuckled. “Another suitor, Mara?”
“He was one reason I was eager to leave Ella’s house. The man believes himself in love with me.”
“That’s not uncommon.”
“But he believes me in love with him! He chooses to see us as Romeo and Juliet, thwarted by my cruel parents, who forbid me to marry far from home.”
“What gave him that idea?”
Mara hoped any blushes were taken as agitation. “He proposed and wouldn’t take no. So I offered that as explanation—you know it’s more or less true. So now we’re star-crossed lovers.”
“Poor Mara,” Jancy said, but she was fighting laughter.
“It is funny. I see that, but it’s a tiresome trial.”
Simon said, “I’m surprised he hasn’t called at Yeovil House if he’s so besotted.”
Mara put on a bland expression. “He doesn’t know Dare.”
“Berkstead said something about encountering Dare in the run-up to Waterloo. But if not, knowing you would be excuse enough.”
Did Simon suspect anything? He’d never suspect the truth.
“I hoped he’d realized his cause was hopeless,” Mara said.
“A man in love is rarely sane.”
Mara hoped that was the end of it, and in a way it was, but Simon added, “Dare’s home is in Somerset. Almost as far away as Northumberland.”
She’d stumbled into the discussion with Simon she’d been avoiding, but he seemed calm about it. “He intends to buy an estate near Brideswell.”
Then she realized they’d never discussed such a thing.
“Fair enough,” Simon said, “but he could inherit the dukedom.”
“Gravenham has two boys already.”
“Stranger things have happened. Look at the way Father became Earl of Marlowe. Besides, if anything should happen to Gravenham, Dare might feel obliged to move back to Long Chart to help raise his nephews, especially if the duke dies.”
“Stop predicting disasters!” Mara exclaimed.
“It’s not impossible,” Simon said. “How would you feel in that situation?”
It took only a moment’s thought. “Dare would need me even more.”
Simon nodded and the debate seemed over.
“Did I do wrong, Simon? He did ask me to wait for him. Isn’t that the same as asking me to marry him?”
“Not quite, but he wants you as much as you want him. Tread carefully, however. Stress and strain seems to make everything harder for him right now. The sooner we move to Marlowe House, the better. We’ll stop by and see how things are.”
Mara wanted to protest—she could easily have burst into tears—but neither would do any good.
All Mara had seen of Marlowe House before had been the high stone walls that surrounded it and a glimpse of the Grecian house through the gates. It didn’t improve on closer inspection.
Though not as monstrously chilly as Marlowe in Nottinghamshire, the London mansion had mostly been decorated by the same taste. It was classically beautiful and completely soulless. Its chief sin for Mara, however, was that as soon as it could be lived in, she’d be forced to leave Dare’s home.
They went into the problem room, the library. It was more formally furnished than the one at Yeovil House, with impressive ranks of volumes in matching dark blue leather bindings.
“No smell of gas,” Jancy said.
“The flow of gas was stopped days ago,” Simon pointed out. “I’m not sure we should remove the system, you know. Gas gives an excellent light for reading and in time it will be safer.”
Mara saw Jancy being swayed. “It might leak again,” she said.
Simon frowned at her. “It can’t.”
But Jancy said, “The thought does make me nervous.”
That settled it. “Then we’ll have it all out,” Simon said, mostly suppressing a sigh. “Come on. We might as well do a quick tour of the house while we’re here. You can decide where to use all those silks, Jancy. The place does need cheering up a bit.”
After the tour, Simon went to give orders about the gas, leaving Mara and Jancy in a chilly gray-and-white reception room.
“The rooms are a good size for entertaining,” Mara said.
“Don’t remind me.” Jancy was only half joking.
“Don’t worry. I’ll be by your side, and you’ll have the Rogues as support, too.”
“I know. But Simon’s talking of hosting a ball for Hal and Blanche.”
Mara wanted to bash her brother over the head with a brick. A challenge like that was no initiation for a novice.
“That would certainly be a fiery introduction for a hostess,” she said, “but it won’t be so very terrible. I’m sure the servants here are competent, and you’re sure to have a squeeze because the inheritance was so dramatic. The worst calamity is empty rooms. The Rogues will recruit all the influential people they can to help Blanche. It will be the event of the season!”
Jancy shuddered again.
Chapter 18
Mara had expected Dare to behave differently now they were secretly betrothed, but she was disappointed. He took dinner with them, but behaved in exactly the same manner as the night before. They played cards again. She played the harp again. When she saw Dare becoming strained, she claimed tiredness. He escorted her to her room.
She wondered whether she should raise the subject of the rose silk on the way, but it was no time to deal with any tricky subject. She said good night and went into her room as miserable as a woman could be who was promised in marriage to the man she loved.
A door shut next door. Simon and Jancy had come up. Dare’s room was too far for her to hear the door, but he was probably in there preparing for his nightly battle.
Last night he had probably been coming to the ballroom for his jumping around. He’d been dressed strangely. The pantaloons had been loose to the ankles and the shirt very plain. Something definitely did go on.
Ruth left. Mara waited longer than she had the night before and then left the room. The corridors were dimly lit, but she had no trouble in finding the set of service stairs that should lead up to the musician’s gallery. They were dark, however, and she wished she’d brought a candle as she felt her way up them, feeling for doors. She found one.
Dry mouthed, she turned the knob. As soon as she opened the door a crack, she heard thumpings and grunts. She slipped in, but couldn’t see anything but a thread of light. There must be a heavy curtain at the front of the shallow gallery.
She stepped cautiously forward, groping for chairs or other objects, then closed the door behind herself. The thumps and grunts continued, making her wonder if she truly wished to see what was going on. She couldn’t turn back now.
She shuffled her way forward, then froze when Dare gasped, “Damn you!”
Oh, God, what was happening?
She groped forward as quickly as she could, aiming for that thin crack of light. Dare cried out in pain. She almost ripped the curtains apart, but managed to restrict herself to making the tiny gap a few inches wide.
After the darkness the ballroom beneath her seemed brilliantly lit, though in fact only two stands of candles shed light. In that circle of unsteady light, she saw Dare, wearing the strangely loose pantaloons he’d worn the last tim
e but no shirt at all. He was fighting Mr. Feng, who was dressed in similar pantaloons, but of red.
Mara simply gaped as the two kicked, struck out, whirled, leapt, even. She’d never seen anything like it, but at least no one was being tortured.
Her stunned brain began to sort out some of what was happening. They were fighting but not fighting. There was no intent to hurt or defeat.
Though Dare looked strong and skilled, Feng Ruyuan was his master. He seemed almost fluid, and when Dare’s hands or feet connected with him, it was by Mr. Feng’s will. She saw the way Mr. Feng sometimes halted a blow of his own that could have been ferocious if it had landed. Dare cursed him then.
Mara sank to her knees so she could just see over the balcony rail and watched, not knowing whether to smile or weep. Dare’s chest heaved and sweat glistened, but he never paused. It was as if he were fighting something other than his opponent, something that must never be allowed to win.
Opium.
She swallowed. That chest was magnificent in ways not obvious when hidden by clothing. Dressed he seemed simply lean, but now she saw the defined muscles that slid and rippled with the complex movements. She also saw a jagged white scar down his side.
His leaps and turns meant that his legs were as strong. Of course he’d always been a rider, but she felt sure he hadn’t been built quite like this a few years ago.
Twice Mr. Feng landed a blow and Dare cried out in pain. Mara had to fight not to leap up and protest.
Once, only once, Dare landed a true blow on his teacher’s flank. He yelled, “Ha!” in triumph. Mr. Feng bowed, smiling.
Time ceased to have meaning, but Mara wondered at the stamina of both men. They had to cry halt soon. They did, but not as she’d expected.
A sharp command from the Chinese man brought Dare to a stand, feet slightly apart, hands joined as if in prayer. Only his chest moved, heaving in and out. The teacher faced him in the same pose, breathing hard, but able to speak. Mara thought it was English, but his voice was so soft she couldn’t understand the words.
He spoke at length, in a calm flow that was almost a chant. When both men’s breathing had calmed, he took something out of a pocket. A box? Yes, like a snuff box. He opened the lid and offered it to Dare, who closed his eyes.
Then Mr. Feng walked closer, still talking, in a glide like a cat, the box held out so it ended up close to Dare’s face, right beneath his nose.
And Dare began to gasp for breath again, shaking all over.
No. Mara only mouthed it, probably because she felt breathless herself. No!
The man was offering him opium. Tempting him with it, now, long after his last dose of the day. He was crooning temptation as he waved it slowly before Dare’s face. Dare’s hands were still pressed together, but Mara thought she could see the desperation in every line of his vibrating body.
She wanted to leap off the balcony and run to his aid. This was cruel torture. She only gripped the top rail harder and harder, struggling with Dare, trying to lend him her strength.
This must be a torture he had chosen. It was part of his battle—the one for which she had so lightly offered him a lady’s favor.
Sweat poured off him now and muscles jumped in his arms and face.
Eventually, eventually, the master glided back, closing the box and sliding it into his red pantaloons. Then he flowed behind Dare and put his hands on his shoulders. Mara thought he could probably push him over with little effort, but instead he massaged, speaking again, this time soothingly. Dare shuddered, but in a different way, his head bending, his hands dropping to his side.
Mara drew slowly back, letting the curtains fall closed, and crept back to her room. What a child she had been.
Dare lay on the narrow bed as Ruyuan pummeled the beast out of his flesh. Overwhelm it. Overwhelm it in body and mind.
Under Ruyuan’s tutelage, as his body had regained its strength, so had his mind, and that was his only true hope. He’d studied addiction and he knew that many won the bitter physical fight but fell back into the pit because they’d neglected their mind and will.
In many ways that had been the harder struggle, because he’d once been physically strong, but he’d never paid attention to the deeper mental strengths.
He appreciated them now, just as he appreciated muscles and sinews that worked well, but he was going to be a strange sort of Englishman at the end of this. Rather like Nicholas, for he suspected he was deeper into these philosophies of mind and body than was obvious.
Each night, Ruyuan tested his will, and for twenty-two nights now he’d had the strength to resist. It had been a close fight tonight.
It had been a bad day in many ways, but heaven and hell combined. Mara had promised herself to him, but she didn’t know what he was. How could she? Her image came from the past, from what he’d been before, like that miniature portrait she’d been admiring on her first night here.
She didn’t know the addict who acted out his days and dragged himself through the night in a war it seemed he could only ever survive, never win. She didn’t see him shake and sweat not to grab the relief Ruyuan offered. Or the times he’d broken and taken it.
He carried Mara’s brooch, her favor, in his pocket at all times, and it gave him strength. He would become worthy of her. He must, for she was a devil-haired St. Bride and she’d persist in loving him.
Please God let that be so, but he must be worthy. He must never defile that trust.
The massage gentled and the music started, the Oriental flute that swooped and flew in ways so different to Western music. He wasn’t sure he liked it as music, for it often seemed infinitely sorrowful, but it soothed his tormented mind.
Tonight, it made him weep.
“What have you been doing to yourself?” Ruth demanded the next morning.
“Not sleeping,” Mara replied, feeling as if she’d been rolled down a hill in a barrel of dust.
“What’s the matter, then? Toothache?”
“I just couldn’t sleep.”
“You always sleep.” Ruth poured the washing water, but looked Mara over. She had eyes like a hawk for symptoms and problems.
What did a woman look like who was desperately in love with a man in desperate torment? Who wasn’t sure who that man was anymore, but loved him anyway? Who wasn’t sure how to help him, but had to try.
Mara yelped when a wet cloth was wiped around her face. She grabbed it, and rubbed around her neck as well. “All right, all right. I’m up.” She scrambled out of bed. “Why am I up?”
“You’re going to the mantua-maker’s with Lady Austrey.”
“Oh, yes.” Mara’s eyes tried to close again.
“Do you want to go back to sleep, milady?” Ruth was looking truly concerned now.
“No.” Mara stripped and began to wash.
“Very well, but what kept you awake, that’s what I’d like to know. You been up to something else in the night you shouldn’t?”
“Absolutely not!”
But Mara had been kept awake in the night by guilt. Even though it had been obvious that Dare’s struggle was hard, she’d chosen to see it as a simple matter. That was because he’d carefully shown her his calmer faces—most of the time—but she should have known better even so.
She dressed and sat to her breakfast, wondering where he was now. How did he spend the rest of his nights? Did he return to fighting? Did he sleep at all?
Opium was supposed to make people sleepy, but in that case, why the jumping around in the ballroom? She wished she knew more. She stilled in pouring chocolate. That was what she must do—learn all about opium.
From whom?
The calm features of the Chinese man came into her mind. She would talk to Mr. Feng Ruyuan. No, Mr. Ruyuan Feng, apparently. Why was everything so complicated?
She filled her cup and drank, comforted by a plan. But when Mara set out with Jancy, she would much rather have been staying behind, under the same roof as Dare.
From a rece
ption room, Dare watched Mara leave, feeling both abandoned and relieved. Her presence in the house had become like an omnipresent melody—sweet, but playing so constantly in his mind as to create dementia.
Mara. Ademara. Ademara Saint Bride.
He’d written down what he could remember of their crazy plotting of The Ghastly Ghoul of Castle Cruel as a way of revisiting that magical time in the Yeoman’s Arms. He’d added a few twists to share with her. A suit of armor that came to life and attacked. A faceless woman in a black dress. A ghostly child who wept in the night.
He’d tossed the papers in the fire because they’d sucked him into his own hell—The´re`se, opium-dulled pain, and crying children wailing miserably as a child will when beyond hope. In time, they’d learned to weep in silence, and that had been even worse.
The children would be all right. He’d vowed that. They rarely shrank from strangers anymore, except women in black. They could be happy away from him for hours on end. They laughed and, move significantly, risked defiance. That, at least, he might be doing well.
Mara—that he was not doing well.
He should never have asked her to wait. It had plunged them deep into a thicket of thorns. Nor should he have danced with her in the moonlight. He certainly should not have kissed her.
He should have known how fiercely the fire would burn at a touch, at a taste, when distance from the drug stirred wild lust. If he’d not found strength to resist, God knows what he’d have done.
“Dare?”
Dare turned to face Simon, trying to conceal any trace of his thoughts.
He’d never been short of friends—sometimes these days he felt overwhelmed by them—but Simon was different. Despite their long separation, he was the closest, the best, the one to be trusted above all. He mustn’t be hurt, mustn’t be betrayed.
“A bad day?” Simon asked, too wise to ask if he was all right.
“A bad night, perhaps.” Dare found some sort of smile as he crossed the room. He made a sudden decision. “So the women are away and we men may play?”
Simon’s eyes showed a flicker of surprise and then instant delight. “An excellent idea. What do you fancy?”