by Kruger, Mary
“Mr. DeVilliers?” Thea sounded startled. “No, of course not. I don’t intend to marry anyone. But if I did, Jeremy.” Her voice grew stern. “It would be my choice, no one else’s.”
“I understand that, Thea.” He looked up again at the ancient stone walls that brooded beside him. “But please think carefully before you do anything. I don’t wish to see you unhappy.”
“I know Mr. DeVilliers hasn’t the best reputation, but then, Jeremy, neither have you.”
Jeremy winced slightly. “I suppose I deserve that. No, my life hasn’t been blameless, Thea. Lord knows I’ve made my share of mistakes.” He gazed intently down at her. “And there’s one, if I could undo it—”
“Jeremy.” Thea took a step back, unnerved by the way he was looking at her. There was a warmth there she’d never seen before. “Are you saying our friendship is a mistake?”
“Not our friendship, Thea.” There was a wealth of meaning in his tone as he approached her, slowly, one cautious step at a time, as one might approach a frightened bird. “Maybe it was never meant to be just a friendship.”
“Jeremy.” She stepped back again. Why she looked up just then she never afterward knew, but look up, she did, at the high stone wall behind them. What she saw made her freeze. High above, at the top of the wall, a block of stone tottered, teetered, and then fell free, directly above Jeremy’s head.
“Jeremy!” she shrieked, and launched herself at him, throwing him to the ground, as the stone came whistling down.
Chapter Eight
Bodies atop him, everywhere, and the smell of death in his nostrils. Nearby, a horse screamed, dying on the field of Waterloo, just as so many of his compatriots had died. Jeremy panicked. He had to get free, else he’d die here, suffocated by the press of bodies that had fallen on him when the shell had struck them. Someone screamed his name, a woman, though that was impossible, a dream, a dying wish. No, he was not going to die! Rearing up, Jeremy threw all his weight upwards, and suddenly the suffocating pressure on his chest was gone.
“Jeremy!” The woman’s voice spoke again, startled and horrified, and his vision cleared. He was not at Waterloo. He was, instead, within the peaceful precincts of a ruined castle, lying on thick, lush grass, unhurt except for having the breath knocked out of him. Just a few feet distant sprawled Thea, clumsily pushing herself up to her elbow and staring at him, her eyes wide, her face pale. Her dress was rucked up to her knees, he noticed almost dispassionately, displaying a lace-trimmed petticoat and an expanse of silk stockings.
“You have fine legs, Thea,” he said.
She drew back, scrambling to her knees. “Jeremy!”
“What?” He braced himself on his elbows, and for the first time the strangeness of the situation struck him. “What the devil did you do that for, Thea, knocking me over like that? Don’t you know I could have crushed you?”
“Oh, Jeremy.” A hand to her mouth, she pointed. “It nearly hit you.”
Jeremy turned his head. With that same strange feeling of unreality, he noted that there was now a huge block of stone embedded in the turf, just a few feet from where he sat. Now he remembered, the whistling noise he had thought was a shell, the thump that he had thought was the explosion of gunfire. It had been the stone, hurtling down from the castle wall. “What the devil—”
“I looked up,” Thea babbled, going up on her knees. “I looked up, and I could see it starting to fall, and I realized it was coming toward you, and—oh, Jeremy!” She launched herself on him again. He fell over, the breath knocked out of him again, her body a warm weight atop him. “You might have been killed!”
“But I wasn’t.” He was alive. Death had nearly caught him and he had cheated it again, all because of the woman soft and warm in his arms. Slowly he reached up and tucked a tendril of hair back behind her ear. “You saved me, Thea,” he said, gravely.
“I had to. Jeremy, I couldn’t lose you, I—”
“What, Thea? No, look at me.” He caught at her chin, forcing her to meet his gaze. Her eyes were vulnerable, turbulent and dark with emotion, the same emotions that were raging through him. In that moment they were completely open to each other, saying with their eyes all that they dared not say with words, sharing everything, holding nothing back. He might have been killed. He might have died, but instead, he was alive, gloriously alive.
His hand caught Thea about the neck in a grip that was almost savage, and his lips strained to hers. Thea made a startled sound in the back of her throat and pulled back, but he held her, fast. Alive, he was alive, and the kiss celebrated that fact. No gentle kiss, of wooing or seduction; his mouth opened over hers, his tongue demanding that her lips open. Again Thea made that noise, and yet her lips softened, opened, her body relaxed upon his. He took immediate advantage of her surrender, plundering her mouth with his tongue, gripping her head so that their lips met just so. He wanted her, with an ache he’d never felt before, not even in the frantic passion of the months after his return from the war. All those women, all those wasted nights. It was Thea. He’d been searching, and she’d been here all along. “Thea,” he murmured, and she jerked her head back.
“Jeremy.” The hands that had been cradling his face suddenly came up and pushed at his shoulders. “No, Jeremy, stop, this is wrong—”
“It was you, Thea.” Denied access to her lips, he reached up to press hard kisses on her throat. “All along, it was you. Why didn’t I see it?”
“Oh, Jeremy. No. No!” This as he reached for her mouth again. She arched her head away. “Jeremy, let me go.”
“You feel it, Thea, too. Don’t you?” His eyes burned into her, an almost tactile sensation. “You feel what’s between us.”
“You’re engaged, Jeremy,” she said, flatly, and pulled back. Perhaps because he hadn’t been expecting it, his hands loosened, and he let her go. She scrambled to her feet and then stood a few feet away from him, eyeing him warily as he rose. “No, stay away—”
“Oh, the devil.” Tugging at his neckcloth, Jeremy wheeled away, before she could realize the obvious effect she had had on him. “Damn it, Thea. I’m sorry.” He turned his head. “I never meant to treat you like that.”
“You’re engaged,” she repeated.
He closed his eyes. So he was. In the eyes of his world, that didn’t always mean anything. There was no love between him and Evadne, while what he felt for Thea—well, what did he feel? Desire, certainly, but that wasn’t new. This need, this strange new urgency, was. He wanted her. God, he wanted her, not just for a friend, not just for an affaire. But what he could offer her, he did not know. “I don’t love her.”
“I didn’t love Hugh, but I stayed faithful to him.”
“No one would think anything of it, Thea.”
“I would. And so would you.”
“Would I?” He considered that for a moment. In the past, he wouldn’t have thought twice about entering into an affaire. Not now, though. She was right. It would bother him to be unfaithful to Thea. To Evadne, he corrected himself. “You’re right. God help me, I don’t know why, Thea, but you’re right. God.” Pulling at his neckcloth again, he walked over to the block of stone. His legs, he noted dispassionately, were unsteady, whether from his brush with death or passion, he couldn’t say. “How the devil did this fall?”
Thea hesitated, and then walked over to him. In the light of what had just happened between them, the stone seemed a safe subject. “It must have been just ready to go. Of all the miracles—”
“Unless someone pushed it.”
Thea’s breath drew in. “Why would someone do such a thing?”
“I don’t know.” Like the soldier he had been, he studied the wall, looking for other signs of crumbling and decay. “I’d wager there are stairs on the other side.”
“But why, Jeremy? And who?”
“I don’t know,” he said again. “But we were lucky.” His eyes caught hers, and again that silent communication passed between them. Thea, as lost to him a
s if the stone had found its mark. “Perhaps we’d best return to the others.”
“Yes.” Thea’s voice shook a bit. “I think that would be best. Oh, dear, Jeremy, you’re covered with mud.”
“It can’t be helped. Shall we?”
Thea hesitated, and then put her hand on the arm he held out to her. “Yes.”
The sun had come out again, its rays golden as it touched on the ancient stone, making the turf glow a brilliant emerald. It illuminated the group of people that had gathered a distance from the ruins, highlighting the bright pastel frocks of the women and glinting off gold watch fobs. Lord Pelham and Lady Catherine were missing, Thea noted, likely still exploring the ruins. Everyone else was present.
The duchess was the first to see Thea and Jeremy, glancing over as they neared. Her eyes, usually so heavy-lidded, widened as she took in their appearance, and she hurried over to them. “Good heavens, what happened to you two?” Her smile turned arch. “We were wondering where you were.”
“A stone from the ruins nearly fell on us,” Jeremy said, curtly, and startled exclamations broke out from the group. If he looked just a little harder at people, only Thea seemed to notice. “No, no, we weren’t hurt. Mrs. Jameson is a bit shaken up.”
“Of course, who wouldn’t be?” Moira took Thea’s arm. “Come, my dear, what a nasty experience for you.”
“Yes,” Thea murmured, watching Jeremy as he crossed to his fiancée. Just a moment before he had been kissing her, her, as if she were his only hold to life, and now it was as if she didn’t even exist. It hurt. It was as things were, as they should be, but it hurt.
“Stanton!” Evadne pulled back from the hand Jeremy held out to her. “But you’re all over mud!”
Jeremy dropped his hand and stepped back, a cool smile playing about his lips. “Forgive me for appearing before you like this. I’ll change when we return to the castle.”
“I should hope so! Why, if I got mud on this gown Mama would be furious.”
“He could have been killed!” Thea exclaimed. Her voice was under control now, but, now that he was safe, now that they were back among other people, she kept seeing the stone falling, and Jeremy, helpless, beneath it. “And you complain that he’s dirty—”
“Well, he wasn’t killed, was he?” Evadne glanced at Francis, who was frowning. “He says he’s not even hurt.”
“Of course he would. It’s a miracle he wasn’t.”
“How did it happen?” Roger asked.
“Ahem.” The duke cleared his throat. “Afraid stones come loose from time to time. Ruin’s not safe anymore. My apologies, ma’am, that it happened when you were near.”
“Well.” Moira spoke briskly. “Stanton and Mrs. Jameson won’t wish to be standing around discussing it. It’s time we returned to the castle, at any rate. Come, Lionel.”
“Yes, m’dear,” the duke said, surprisingly meekly, and turned to follow her.
“What about me?” Evadne said, stamping her foot, and Francis, taking Thea’s arm, turned.
“Oh, by all means, Miss Powell,” he said, coolly. “Come along, as well.”
“But—” Evadne protested, staring after them. Moira was leading the way over to the horses and the others were following. No one was left to take her arm. “Oh, very well,” she said, though there was no one to hear, and followed behind them, pouting.
“Damned odd thing to happen,” Chatleigh commented to Jeremy as they mounted their horses, held by grooms. “Damned odd house party, if you ask me.”
“Rather.” Jeremy turned to ride beside Chatleigh. “Did you happen to notice where DeVilliers was when all this was going on?”
“So that’s the lay of the land, is it?” Chatleigh glanced toward Roger, helping Thea to mount her horse. “Sorry, Stanton. Afraid I don’t pay too much attention to him.”
“Neither do I, usually. But the stone could easily have fallen on Thea. Mrs. Jameson, I mean.”
Lady Chatleigh, riding at her husband’s side, leaned forward, her auburn curls dancing with the motion. “Then you must watch out for her, sir.”
Jeremy’s eyes were grim as he watched Thea and Roger ride off together. “I intend to.”
By Saturday afternoon, tensions were running high in Rochester Castle. Both Lord Pelham and Lord Ware continued to pay court to Evadne, which upset Lady Catherine considerably and annoyed the duchess; both saw Lady Catherine’s chances of at last marrying slipping away from her. Francis, who before had been one of her admirers, now tended to stay with the other men, playing billiards or cards or even listening to the duke telling one of his interminable hunting stories. The Chatleighs were bored, though of course they took great pains not to show it, and Thea kept to herself, very quiet. Only Evadne seemed untouched by the tension, and there were few who thought that was to her credit.
Jeremy sought escape from the group in his host’s large, well-stocked, and little-used library, hoping to find peace and instead mulling over the situation. Thinking about what might have happened, and how it had made him feel; thinking that he had wasted his life this past year and that it was time to grow up. Remembering how Thea had reacted to the fall of the stone, and contrasting that with Evadne’s reaction, and wondering if he had made a horrendous mistake. Usually he didn’t let himself remember what had happened to him at Waterloo. Usually, he suppressed all memories of the shell, ironically from the British side, that had wreaked such havoc, wounding him, killing his horse, and burying him beneath a pile of dead and dying men. Trapped at the bottom, there Jeremy had stayed, in pain, sweltering in the heat, and, to his eternal shame, panicking. It had been hours until the bodies above him had been removed, hours in which he had known he would die, too. That first breath of fresh air had been very, very sweet.
Since then he had found he could not abide crushes, the crowds fashionable London hostesses were so proud of attracting to their balls and routs. Nor did he enjoy being indoors when he could be out, and, in a place such as Rochester’s ruins, he felt no awe, only a sense of the walls closing in on him. He knew, now, why he had been so restless these past months. A woman’s hand clinging to his arm suffocated him; a woman’s demands made him feel trapped. Only with Thea could he breathe freely, and, for a moment at the ruins, even her presence had been too much to bear. Only for a moment, though.
The incident at the ruins had been passed over as an accident. A terrible accident, of course, and much discussed, but surely nothing more than that. If Jeremy had his suspicions, he kept them to himself, glancing only occasionally at DeVilliers. Even he, however, found it hard to believe that DeVilliers would do such a thing deliberately, for revenge. Unless, Jeremy mused, there was some present motive.
Frowning, he rose and left the room. Earlier in the day he had heard Thea offer to help arrange flowers for the ball to be held that evening, and so his steps took him down the corridors leading to the ballroom. The great castle was eerily quiet; like him, most of the others had sought their own counsel. Today was the last day of the house party. The ball would be held tonight, and by tomorrow the guests would start to leave. Jeremy would be glad to return, at last, to Moulton Hall, his estate on the Kent coast.
He paused at one of the doors leading to the ballroom, looking in. The French windows in the room were open, the drapes drawn back, dust motes dancing in the golden light of late afternoon. From his vantage point Jeremy could see Thea, not only from the back, but reflected in the pier glass hanging above the marble shelf, where she stood arranging flowers in a brass urn. Her slender figure moved gracefully as she set stalks of lilies and irises into the urn, and the sun touched lightly on her hair, turning it to a flame whose brightness outshone the gilt of the mirror. She was frowning slightly with concentration, her lower lip caught between her teeth, and Jeremy was transfixed.
He had made no sound, but suddenly Thea looked up. Her startled eyes met his, reflected in the mirror, and she turned. “Jeremy! I did not hear you come in.”
“My apologies, Thea.”
He crossed the room, the heels of his hessians clicking on the parquet floor. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”
“You didn’t.” She picked up another lily, concentrating on it instead of him. “What do you here, this time of day?”
“I came to talk to you, about the other day.”
“Oh?”
“Yes, I—damn it, Thea, I’m trying to apologize. The way I behaved—it was unforgivable.”
Thea’s eyes were wary. “Very well,” she said, finally. “We’ll forget about it, then.”
“No, damn it, Thea, I don’t want to forget.”
“I think you haven’t a choice, sir.” Studiously avoiding looking at him, she placed another flower in the urn. “You’re engaged.”
“And you are carrying on a dangerous flirtation.”
That made her look up. “What are you talking about?”
“You and DeVilliers. Don’t pretend, Thea. I’ve seen you two together.”
“I wasn’t aware it was any of your business.”
“Oh, very cool, Thea. I am aware I gave up all right to
speak out some time ago.”
“Yes. What have you against Mr. DeVilliers, Jeremy?”
Jeremy shifted to his other foot. “Let us just say I know things about him to his discredit. Believe me, Thea, I wish only to spare you pain, but if you care about him—”
“Do not be more foolish than you can help!” she exclaimed, thrusting a flower into the urn with unnecessary force. “I do not care a fig about him! But it is very pleasant to be courted, Jeremy.”
“Are you so desperate you’d settle for him, Thea?”
“Jeremy!”
“You are an attractive woman, Thea. You could do better.”
But I couldn’t, she thought, her heart suddenly aching. Not now. “Why are you saying these things to me?”
“Because I care about you.” Thea’s eyes flew to his. “Thea—”
“Oh, Stanton, there you are!” Evadne called from the doorway. Thea started and dropped the remaining flowers, and Jeremy turned, as Evadne floated across to them.