A Reckless Desire

by Isabella Bradford

  Yet the more time he’d spent in her company, the less plain and untempting she’d become. He couldn’t fathom it. He’d concede that she could amuse him; she was surprisingly clever with words, and her inventive storytelling last night had kept him so enthralled that he’d regretted their journey’s end.

  But she still dressed like a drab lower servant with her hair scraped back beneath that dreadful white cap. Her eyes were still too big for her face, and her body too slight for her clothes. She still scurried rather than walked, and this afternoon she’d devoured his entire tea.

  Yet that last time when she’d walked across the carpet toward him she’d been so delicately graceful that all he’d been able to do was stare, as if she were some sort of ethereal sprite dropped into his green parlor. Her dark eyes were like magic, drawing him in, and when she’d sunk into a curtsey at his feet, he’d nearly gulped aloud at the grace and vulnerability of the pale nape of her neck.

  Her neck. Damnation, what kind of fool was he?

  He swore crossly at himself, remembering exactly what kind of fool he had been. He’d told her how to make herself irresistible to audiences, and she’d listened, and done it. He simply hadn’t expected it to work on him the same way.

  As a result, he’d blustered and stammered and then fled to the dubious blandishments of the Hunt’s turtle feast, abruptly leaving her in a confusion that she hadn’t deserved.

  Now he half-expected to learn that she’d disappeared, too, gone back to London instead of being trapped here with him. He could hardly blame her if she had.

  Glumly he left his horse at the stable with a sleepy groom, and headed into the house, where he was greeted by an equally sleepy footman. Only the night lantern was lit in the front hall, casting angular shadows across the old portraits that were gloomy enough by daylight. In their stiff ruffs and pointed beards, the portraits were never good company, but as Rivers climbed the stairs, he decided they were likely no better than he deserved.

  Perhaps in the morning he’d know what to say to Lucia.

  Perhaps with a good night’s sleep, the right words would come to him, and they could begin afresh.

  The hall to his bedchamber was even more murky and shadowed, lit only by the moonlight through the diamond-paned windows. He should have stopped for a candlestick, but hadn’t bothered, and now he’d have to rely on his familiarity with the old place to find his way. He smiled, remembering how as a boy he’d been convinced the Lodge was haunted by those old Elizabethans in their fussy ruffs.

  He heard a door open behind him, and turned swiftly at the sound. A figure in white with long trailing hair raced toward him through the shadows, and instinctively he drew back, too startled to reply.

  “Lord Rivers!” Lucia called breathlessly as she hurried toward him. “At last you are returned, my lord. I’ve been waiting and waiting to speak with you, and I’m so glad you’re finally here.”

  Candlelight from her open bedroom door sliced into the hall, and by it he could see that she wore only her shift, with the coverlet from the bed wrapped haphazardly around her shoulders. Her hair was combed out, falling like a dark cloak nearly to her waist, and if he’d thought her eyes seemed too large for her face by daylight, now in the near-darkness they truly belonged to another world.

  “It’s very late, Mrs. Willow,” he said, striving to regain some semblance of propriety. “Whatever you wish to discuss can surely wait until the morning.”

  “Forgive me, my lord, but it cannot,” she said with dramatic conviction. “There are things that I must say to you, things that cannot wait.”

  Damnation, here it was. Of course she wanted to speak to him after he’d left her with such awkward haste. He couldn’t avoid it, or her, any longer. He was going to have to apologize now whether his apology was composed or not.

  “Very well, then,” he said reluctantly, pushing the door to his rooms open. “This way.”

  Gathering her coverlet-shawl more tightly about her shoulders, she swept ahead of him, her bare feet making no sound on the floorboards and her dark hair streaming behind her. The first of his rooms was a small chamber where he often took his breakfast and read his mail, and there close to the banked fire sat his manservant, Rooke, asleep and slumped to one side in a chair, his mouth open and his wig askew.

  “Rooke!” he said sharply, more irritated at himself for forgetting Rooke would be here waiting to help him undress. “Rooke, wake yourself.”

  The manservant jolted awake and rose immediately, unperturbed as he straightened his wig.

  “My lord,” he murmured, his glance flicking past Rivers to Lucia. So much for discretion, thought Rivers with dismay; the rest of the household would know by morning that Mrs. Willow had been in his rooms in a state of undress in the middle of the night.

  “You may retire for the night, Rooke,” Rivers said. “I’ll look after myself.”

  The servant bowed and backed from the room, closing the door quietly after himself. At the same time, Rivers hurried to close the other door, the one to his adjoining bedchamber. The last thing he needed now for a difficult conversation with a young woman was to have his bedstead looming in view as an unwelcome intruder.

  But then, he had to recall that was what Lucia was: a young woman of a dubious foreign family with equally dubious morals. She wasn’t a lady, which was why she thought nothing of coming alone to the country with him, and standing here in his room wrapped in a bedcover, and why, too, she hadn’t seemed distressed by having Rooke see her. When she’d complained about her reception by Mrs. Barber, her reason had been because the cook hadn’t liked her, not because the woman had believed Lucia to be his mistress. If she didn’t care, then he shouldn’t, either. Her virtue didn’t need protecting by him, if her virtue even still existed—a possibility that he realized he’d never considered until this moment.

  It was also a possibility that his conscience now heard in his father’s voice. Father would understand none of this. Of course it would come as a warning, sternly admonishing Rivers to take care not to put himself in a difficult situation with a vulgar creature like this, to stop squandering his time on cunning playhouse doxies and instead consider a suitable young lady as a wife.

  Irritated more than was reasonable, Rivers jabbed at the banked fire with the poker to bring the coals back to life, and lit one of the candles from the flame. He was twenty-six years old. He could do as he damned well pleased. He set the candlestick on the table between a pair of chairs, and motioned for Lucia to sit.

  “No thank you, my lord,” she said, shaking her head for extra emphasis. She seemed to be vibrating with inexplicable energy, unable to keep still. “I needn’t sit, not for this. I don’t believe I could sit now anyway, I’m that on edge and turned about.”

  “Then it’s up to me to begin,” he said, not sitting, either. If she insisted on standing, then he would, too. It was already disconcerting enough standing here in the middle of the night, still in his riding boots and spurs, while she had clearly tumbled directly from her bed. If he weren’t feeling so guilty about disappearing this afternoon, he would never have agreed to anything as inappropriate as having her here at this hour.

  “I can only imagine what you must think of me, Mrs. Willow,” he continued, “after my, ah, hasty departure earlier this afternoon. It was an, ah, a very low thing of me to do.”

  “Oh, but it wasn’t!” she exclaimed breathlessly. “That is, at first I thought so, and I felt sure you’d left because you were angry with me for having eaten your tea.”

  “Not at all,” he said, surprised. “You could have consumed every last crumb in Mrs. Barber’s larder and I wouldn’t have objected. You’re my guest here, and I do not wish you to be hungry.”

  “Thank you, my lord,” she said, and he could tell by the slight tremor in her voice that at last she’d blushed; strange how he’d already learned that of her. “I waited for you for a bit in the parlor, hoping you’d return, and when you didn’t I went upstairs to pa
ck my trunk, because I thought you’d send word that you wanted me gone.”

  How could she be so mistaken? “I would never do that,” he said. “We had—have—an agreement, and I gave you my word.”

  She smiled wistfully, making it obvious without words that she believed a gentleman’s word to be an untrustworthy thing where she was concerned.

  “It doesn’t matter now, my lord,” she said, so swiftly that it clearly wasn’t of any consequence to her. “Because now I understand. I understand everything.”

  “Do you?” he said, taken aback. Again he had to remind himself that she wasn’t a lady, but a young woman whose life had been spent in the tiring room of a theater. She might well understand more than he did himself.

  She nodded, taking a step closer to him in her excitement. “While I was packing my trunk, one of the footmen brought me your book with the Hamlet play, as you wished. And I read it, my lord, I read it all the way through and I did not stop until I was done. And, oh, my lord, it was glorious, just as you said it was!”

  “Ahh,” he said with guilty relief. “You mean you understood the play.”

  “Yes, my lord, yes, yes,” she said. She reached up to tuck her hair behind one ear, the coverlet slipping to reveal her bare collarbone and the slightest swell of her breast. By the candlelight her skin was like polished ivory, and with effort he made himself look once again to her face. “It’s perfect and sad and tragic and filled with swords and knives and death, and the crowd will love it.”

  “They already do,” he said. “It was written over a century and a half ago, and it’s been vastly popular ever since.”

  “It should be, my lord,” she said eagerly. “And now that I’ve read it all, I understand why you left as you did, and what you wanted me to learn.”

  He frowned, again not following her. He’d always considered himself a clever man, but she could make him feel like the most ignorant fool. Fortunately in her excitement, she continued, so he didn’t have to admit it.

  “Oh, yes, my lord, I can see exactly why you did it,” she said, nodding sagely. “It was wicked clever of you, too. First you made me act like a fine noble lady, such as Ophelia was, and then you scorned me, same as the prince did to her, so I’d feel like her.”

  He stared, stunned. He’d inappropriately lusted after her, fled in cowardly fashion without any explanation, and this was how she’d interpreted it? That he’d intended it all along as another acting lesson?

  “O-FEEL-i-ah,” he said, correcting her pronunciation to avoid confessing why he’d truly left. “That’s how you say it. Not Opp-HEL-yay. O-FEEL-i-ah.”

  “O-FEEL-i-ah,” she repeated carefully, and nodded with satisfaction. “It’s a peculiar name, one I’ve not heard before. Ophelia. But now I understand, my lord. I understand her, and what that passage you gave me to learn means.”

  “What does it mean, Lucia?” he said, intrigued, and forgetting to use the name he’d concocted for her. “What do the words say to you?”

  She tipped her head to one side, unconsciously making her eyes glow in the flickering light as her hair rippled over one shoulder. He couldn’t fathom how he’d once judged her to be plain, not after he saw her like this.

  “It’s what the words mean to Lady Ophelia, my lord,” she said firmly. “She’s so in love with the prince that she can’t believe he’d be this hateful to her. Instead she thinks he’s lost his wits. She loves him so much that it makes her sad for him, and breaks her heart to see.”

  He nodded. She had, in fact, deciphered the meaning of the passage on her own, without any assistance from him. He was proud of her cleverness, very proud, though a small part of him regretted that there’d be no chance for him to be her attentive tutor—at least not for this.

  “You’re entirely right,” he said. “Not even Garrick himself could explain Ophelia’s lines here any more clearly.”

  She grinned shyly, and the last of those harsh cautionary thoughts in his father’s voice vanished. How could they possibly survive in the face of a smile like hers?

  “I can speak it much better now, too, my lord,” she said. “I can recite it for you here, if you please.”

  Without waiting for his consent, she turned her back to him, all shining dark hair and lumpy coverlet. He wondered where she’d acquired this habit of turning away to compose herself, like a conjurer who didn’t wish to reveal the secret behind a trick.

  Except that she was the conjurer, and the trick was how she’d transformed herself so completely. When she turned around again to face him, she’d become the image of Ophelia’s heartfelt sorrow: her shoulders were hunched by the weight of her distress, her features pinched by it, and her eyes seemed filled with the horror of what she’d just witnessed.

  O, what a noble mind is here o’erthrown!

  The Courtier’s, soldier’s, scholar’s, eye, tongue, sword,

  Th’ expectancy and rose of the fair state,

  The glass of fashion and the mould of form,

  Th’ observ’d of all observers, quite, quite down!

  And I, of ladies most deject and wretched,

  That suck’d the honey of his music vows,

  Now see that noble and most sovereign reason

  Like sweet bells jangled out of tune and harsh,

  That unmatch’d form and feature of blown youth

  Blasted with ecstasy. O, woe is me

  T’have seen what I have seen, see what I see.

  She buried her face in her hands, a fitting close to the passage, and stayed that way. She wore no fancy costume, and her cheeks were free of stage paint, and yet by the light of the single candle and the embers in the hearth, she’d managed to create a more convincing show of loss and suffering than he’d ever seen on the stage. He was amazed, and proud, and pleased as well, to think she’d taken his advice yesterday so thoroughly to heart.

  But most of all, he was touched by the raw emotion that she’d dared to display, here, just for him. It was something he’d never forget. When he’d begun this experiment, all he’d considered was the wager. Now he realized that Fortune had granted him something much richer. This wasn’t a game any longer. Lucia di Rossi possessed all the natural gifts to become a true leading actress, and he felt privileged to have just seen her, in twelve lines, become Ophelia.

  He raised his hands and slowly began to clap, giving her the applause she so richly deserved. Her head jerked up, and instead of the elegant curtsey of acknowledgment that he expected, her infectious grin returned, accompanied by a joyful little hop that reminded him of just how inexperienced she truly was.

  “It was better, wasn’t it, my lord?” she asked proudly. “I had to read the rest of the play to learn why Lady Ophelia was so upset, and then it made sense how I was to speak her lines.”

  That made sense to him—too much sense, really.

  “Why do you say that?” he asked. “About how you needed to know the character before you could recite her part.”

  “You told me to do so, my lord,” she said promptly. “In the green parlor. You said I should act the way Mr. Garrick advises, and forget Madame Adelaide.”

  “That’s very flattering, but I’m not so sure it’s the truth,” he said, walking back and forth before her. “You’ve already proved you learn quickly, and I trust that I am an adept tutor, but for you to make such progress in a single day would be prodigious indeed.”

  “Ahh,” she said, a single syllable of wariness. “Is it good to be prodigious, my lord?”

  “Oh, yes,” he said evenly. “Very good. Remarkable. Extraordinary. All of which your performance was. But I don’t believe I can claim it was all my teaching. Rather, I think you’ve had a bit more experience to make you so…so prodigious.”

  In three quick steps she was standing directly before him, blocking his path.

  “But how could that be, my lord?” she demanded defensively, her hands bunched into two knots beneath the coverlet. “You know my family’s company as well as I. The Di R
ossis are dancers.”

  He shook his head, unconvinced. “That tale you spun for me last night in the carriage,” he said. “The part about how the famous Mrs. Willow began her career standing on the back of a wagon, reciting poetry to make the women weep. That wasn’t an invention, was it?”

  “But there’s never been a Mr. Willow, my lord, because I’ve never had a husband, not then nor now,” she said with a frantic edge to her voice that hinted at a half truth. “I vow I wasn’t lying, my lord, not to you. I’ll swear to it, whatever way you wish of me!”

  Oh, hell, he hadn’t even considered some ne’er-do-well playhouse-husband lurking in the shadows of her past. He hoped she was telling the truth about that much.

  But a blasted husband. No, he didn’t want to imagine her with a husband, or any other man, either.

  “Hush, Lucia, please,” he said, striving to sound more calm and measured than he actually felt. “I never accused you of lying. All I wish to know is this: have you ever before given a performance before a crowd?”

  She went very still, so quiet that the pop and hiss of the fire was the only sound between them.

  “Lucia,” he said softly. “The truth.”

  “You will not be angry, my lord?” she asked in a small voice. “You will not claim I have spoiled your wager, and turn me away?”