The kinder his words, the more she sobbed. He held her to him, murmuring sweet, soothing sounds, rocking her back and forth till her tears seemed to subside.
Then he pulled back a little, and he raised her chin with his fingers. “My Joanna. My brave Joanna.” His fingers stroked the tear stains from her face and gently traced the outline of her trembling lips.
They gazed at each other in the candlelight for what seemed like a very long time. Slowly, as if a magnet were drawing them closer, their lips found each other, and then there was no pulling back.
Joanna, Joanna, I shall go mad. I’ve lived like a monk for eight years. And now here you are in my arms, and your lips are soft….
“So soft,” he found himself murmuring. “So soft and good.” He lost himself in the warm wetness of her mouth. His hands, tangled in her hair, held her head in place as he thrust his tongue deep into her inviting mouth.
She did not fight him. She seemed beyond fighting. All he felt was her hunger, her need of him, which seemed every bit as desperate as his own.
He felt the wondrous warmth of her body through the thin cotton fabric. Her breasts were even fuller, more womanly than before. If this is what motherhood does to a woman’s body….
For eight years, the only human body he had touched was the gaunt, bony, unyielding frame of the Duchess. The difference now was like a miracle to him.
He could clearly see the dark pink aureolas of her nipples through the thin cloth. All he could think of was how much he desired her. He wanted to mount her—yes, like a beast in the field, as his wife had accused him on their wedding night. He wanted to mount her, to ride her, to guide the rise and fall of her hips beneath him, to make her take his hot seed into her—
Joanna came to her senses at that moment and pushed him off her. “No, Christopher,” she said. “We can’t. We don’t have the right to this anymore—”
“We have the right to whatever happiness we can take, Joanna. We deserve it.” His words were slurred. He felt half drunken with his unfulfilled desire of her.
“No, Christopher. I won’t make that mistake again. What would come of it? Another child, more shame for me, more hardship for that child and for Hannah? I love you, Christy—” He noted with joy her use of her old pet name for him— “but I’m no whore. I need a man by my side, in the eyes of all the world. If it can’t be you, on those terms, then I will have no man at all.”
“But you love me, Joanna? Truly? Because if I know that, if I can be sure of that, I need nothing else in life. I will wait. And someday I will find a way for us to be together, openly and honestly. I swear it to you.”
“I love you, Christy.”
Long into the night, then, till the candle sputtered and went out, they held each other wordlessly. No more words were needed.
Little Hannah had slept deeply through the night, completely unaware that not just her mother, but her father, too, was there to protect her.
Christopher slipped away before dawn, down the maids’ hallway and to the family’s chambers below.
It was not unusual for some of the servants to be about long before dawn. Their duties started early.
The Duchess’s personal lady’s maid—the one who ran her baths and styled her coiffures and listened to all her mistress’s petty little secrets—was on her way back from the kitchen with a pot of morning tea for Her Grace. She saw His Grace the Duke coming down the stairs from the maids’ quarters as the first touch of pink colored the morning sky.
The Duke knew she had seen him. He did not care.
* * *
“You say you saw His Grace slipping away from the maids’ chambers at first light?” The Duchess was livid with rage, although trying not to let it show before the help.
How dare he? Humiliating me in my own household, before my own staff!
“I’m sure of it, My Lady. And it gives me no pleasure to bring such news to Your Grace. I can’t bear to cause such a good mistress any distress. But I thought you should know.”
“Absolutely. I’m glad you came to me. And don’t worry, I am not the one who will be in distress over this.” Christopher will be begging for mercy by the time my father gets through with him.
“But tell me,” the Duchess asked with a casual air, “do you have any idea who the hussy is? Among the maids?”
“Well, of course, I couldn’t swear to this, Your Grace. But we’ve never had a problem with any tomcatting about by His Grace—begging Your Grace’s pardon!—in all the years I’ve been here. So it can’t be anyone who’s been with us a long time. If you asked me, Your Grace, I’d say it would have to be that new woman. That gypsy wench. ‘Joanna,’ she calls herself. She already has one brat out of wedlock, maybe she’s trying for another. She parades around as if she were the Duchess here, Your Grace. Cook practically curtseys to her. It’s as if she knows she can’t be dismissed, no matter what she does. Not with the Duke bringing her to live here.”
“I thought it was Cook—”
“Anything that Cook does, she does because the Duke asks her to. She was his old wet nurse when he was little, or something like that. Mark my words, if she hired that little gypsy slut—who knew nothing about housework or service when she got here, believe me—it was because the Duke wanted it so.”
“All right, then. Enough on the subject. You can be sure I will take care of matters. Now run my bath, and use the rose-scented oil today. And put out my blue velvet day gown, I think. Off with you now, get to work. There’s been enough chatter.”
The Duchess had sent her personal maid away, because she wanted to be alone to think. Is he really bedding that insolent wench, the haughty one with the strange, flashing eyes? She’d be to his taste, I think—low and dirty, but with ambitions far above her station.
It was not that the Duchess cared if the Duke bedded other women. She was not jealous. She did not love him—indeed, she despised him. A night in the marital bed was as unpleasant for her as it obviously was for him.
But that’s just the point. All these years, I assumed he was uninterested in my charms because he was a poor excuse for a man—someone unable to feel the proper passion for a woman, even one obviously as desirable and beautiful as I was when we first wed.
Could it be, not that he failed to find women attractive, but that he simply didn’t find her attractive? That with a different woman, one he desired, he could be as hot-blooded and besotted as any other man?
Surely not. She had been raised to believe that any man she looked at would consider himself lucky for the attention—that any man who won her would, in fact, be the luckiest man on earth.
Had she been wrong? Could a man look at this lowborn, flashy hussy and see more to desire in her than in the Duchess of Gresham?
Before she entered her bath, she looked at herself in the long cheval mirror. She was as trim and firm as ever. One of the benefits of never having had a child. This wench had a baby—would she not now be flabby and overplump in a man’s eyes? How could he want her and not me?
The thought tormented her all day. By afternoon, she was thinking of summoning this Joanna to her, to get a better look at her, when by chance she met her on the main staircase.
“Do the lower servants now use the main staircase?” the Duchess inquired in her most elegant, nasal voice. “Do we not have a back stairs, so that people of quality don’t have to look upon their unwashed servants?”
Joanna just smiled mysteriously. Nothing could spoil her mood today, not after the magical, albeit ultimately chaste, night she had spent in Christopher’s arms.
“We polish the brass stair rails and finials at this time of day. It would be hard to do that from another location.” Joanna used no courteous title when she replied to the Duchess.
“Indeed. Insolent as ever! We’ll see what can be done to break that stubborn streak in you. ‘A servant shall be humble and lower her eyes before her mistress,’ the Bible says.”
“I must say that I have read the Bible fro
m cover to cover, and I have never seen that particular verse within its pages. Perhaps we read from different Bibles,” Joanna said primly.
I cannot abide this! To be spoken to so familiarly, so arrogantly, by a low, ignorant woman whom my husband would rather visit at night than his own wife! This insult cannot, it shall not be borne!
“Dirty slut! How dare you address me so? Do you think I have no idea what evil you’re up to, here in my own household?”
“I know that it is the evildoer himself who is often first to accuse others of his own sins. And that is in the Bible, Your Grace.”
“Why, you little…you little bitch!” The Duchess reached to push the other woman. They were at a bend on the grand staircase.
Joanna lost her footing when she was shoved. She fell backwards, tripping over her cleaning bucket and brushes, rolling down the steps and cracking her head against the rails. Her body came to a rest at the foot of the staircase. Her head and her limbs were twisted at odd angles, and she lay there, completely still.
The foyer was full of servants, who had interrupted their various tasks when they heard the yelling. They had witnessed everything. They were silent now, their mouths open in shock, as they stared uncomprehendingly at the Duchess.
A junior footman escaped unnoticed from the crowd.
* * *
“You must come, Your Grace. Forgive me, but you must come right away!”
“What is it, lad?” The Duke was occupied with a sick calf. This was not a good time for interruptions.
“Your Grace, forgive me, Her Grace your wife, she—”
God forgive me, but can my prayers have been answered this quickly? Has something happened to the Duchess?
“Is she injured, boy?”
“No, Your Grace. She’s—forgive me, but she’s gone and injured someone else. That new parlormaid, the one with the sweet little daughter. Her Grace became enraged over something, and she pushed her down a flight of stairs. I don’t know if the maid is alive or dead, Your Grace, but I thought I should fetch you right away—”
“You did the right thing, lad. Take me to her. Now.” The Duke was on his feet, breaking into a run ahead of the footman. The suffering calf was nothing to him. Joanna was everything. Joanna, my love, please still be alive.
They reached the kitchen, still running. The young footman was winded, but the Duke was oblivious to anything but his fears. He found Cook.
“Quick. Tell me. What happened? How is she?” Please, God…
They both knew he didn’t mean the Duchess.
“I had some of the manservants carry her carefully to the little sick room. She’s there now. She hasn’t awakened, Yer Grace, nor moved a muscle, since she was pushed down that staircase. I’ve sent for the physician, told him to get here right quick.”
“‘Pushed,’ Cook? Not ‘fell’? You’re absolutely sure of that?”
“As God is my witness, Yer Grace. An’ I’ll swear it in any Court ye ask me to, Yer Grace, if it comes to that. As will at least six other servants who I know saw it all with their own eyes.”
The kind old lady’s mouth was trembling and her eyes were filled with tears, whether from grief or rage, the Duke could not be sure.
“All I can think, Yer Grace, is what will happen to that lovely child if she loses her mother?”
And what will happen to me? I can’t live without Joanna, now that we’ve found each other again.
The Duke put his arms round the old lady’s ample shoulders. “We won’t let her die, Cook. We just won’t. Now take me to her. And send in the physician as soon as he arrives.”
* * *
“She’s in here,” Cook told the physician. “And His Grace with her.”
When the worthy physician arrived—he must have flown, so seriously did he take Cook’s commands—the Duke was kneeling by the young woman’s bedside, openly holding her hand. The parlormaid was deathly still, her bosom barely rising in breath. Her lovely face, the physician noted, was as white as the sheet beneath her head.
The Duke rose when the physician entered.
“Go outside, now, Your Grace. I’ll need a few minutes to examine the patient. Cook, perhaps some strong drink for the Duke, just for medicinal purposes. He’s had a shock.”
Much like Cook, the old country physician had been in this world a long time, and he could reach fairly accurate conclusions with just a brief glance at the situation. He did not need anyone to put into plain words for him that the pretty parlormaid was someone very important to His Grace.
Which would perhaps explain—although not exonerate—his wife’s murderous rage.
A little while later, the physician emerged from the sick room. The Duke was sitting at the rough oak kitchen table, his head in his hands. Clearly, in front of such a loyal old retainer, the Duke did not need to hide his feelings.
“How is the lass?” Cook asked.
“Well, now.” How much to say to loved ones—that is always the question, isn’t it?
“The good news is that her neck is not broken. There’s a bad fracture to one arm and wrist, where she took the weight of her fall. But that will heal with time. She’s been a very healthy young woman—she has that working in her favor now.”
“But?” the Duke asked, getting right to the heart of things.
“But—she has taken a severe blow to the head. She is badly concussed. She is running a high temperature, which suggests a brain fever setting in. Fluid in the skull may be building, pressing on vital areas. To put it plainly, Your Grace, we cannot be sure she will ever awaken. Or if she does, that she will have the fully working brain of a normal woman. I’m sorry.”
“What can we do?” Cook asked.
“Keep her comfortable. Wrap her head in ice, to bring down the fever and to lessen the fluid buildup. But if she starts to get the chills, stop the ice for a while and keep the fire as hot as possible. Tonight will tell us a lot. If we can just get the fever to break….”
* * *
For five nights and days, Christopher never left Joanna’s side. He remained sitting or kneeling beside her, holding her hands, stroking and kissing her dear face, murmuring encouragement to her. The Duchess’s personal maid reported it all back to her.
“The Duke says, ‘Come back to me, Joanna. Come back to Hannah and me. We cannot survive without you. Please, please just try, my darling….’ And the kitchen maids gossip that sometimes it seems like she might hear him. That a happy expression passes over her face when he says he loves her.”
The Duke’s behavior was an open scandal. Apparently, everyone in the house knew of it. He made no effort to hide his grief or his devotion. He did not change his clothes. He mindlessly swallowed a few morsels of food, if Cook left them by his hand.
It seemed, if her personal maid was to be believed, that almost every servant in that household was openly praying for the poor Duke and the gypsy parlormaid. The Duchess could feel where the household’s loyalties truly lay. Each time she walked into a room, she felt the servants’ hatred, like the blast of a cold wind.
After several days of this, the Duchess decided it was time to take matters into her own hands. She visited the kitchen sick room, where the hussy was laid out like a saint on an altar. There were bunches of wildflowers all about the room. No doubt from the giddy little kitchen maids, who must be enjoying this situation as if it were a cheap ha’penny romance novel.
“Duke, leave this room and go change your clothes,” she said to her husband—who did not drop the slut’s hand, even in her presence. “This must all stop, this instant. You are making a complete fool of yourself before your entire household, who fear you have gone mad. And you are publicly humiliating me, your lady wife—”
“Humiliating you!” The Duke’s roar could no doubt be heard as far as the stables, and beyond.
Then he lowered his voice, and his tone became like ice. “Publicly humiliating you? You murdering, frigid bitch. You have a lot more public humiliation to come. Mark my wo
rds, Duchess. If this young woman dies, I will see you publicly hanged on the gallows for it. And if she survives, I will divorce you. Remember, your own fortune, and your rights to your father’s inheritance, have all been signed over to the Dukedom. I’ll see you both penniless before I’m done.”
“Ha! And on what grounds will you divorce me? Infertility? When you scarcely came to my bed for eight years, and even now deny me my wifely conjugal rights so you can sleep with a kitchen slut?”
“No, Duchess. I will divorce you for incurable mental infirmity—for insanity. I have at least seven witnesses who will swear that you attempted outright murder, merely because it annoyed you to find a servant at work under your vision, in a public part of the house. I have physicians who will confirm that, with your propensity for murderous rages, it is not safe to permit you to remain at large among society. You certainly cannot be permitted to have any children. Now get out of here. Go to your chambers. I don’t want to see you again unless I summon you.”
And the Duke brazenly turned back to the sleeping parlormaid, and took her hand in his once again.
* * *
The Duchess was white-faced and shaking with anger. And, she had to admit, with fear. My husband has never dared to speak to me like that before! He has changed.
He will divorce me—he will have me committed—my name will be dragged in the dirt, and my enemies will openly rejoice in my downfall.
So she went again to her father. Truly, he was the only person she could count on, in all the world. He would do anything to protect her.
* * *
Mr. Coleman had been waiting for his beloved daughter to come to him and ask for help. He had kept abreast of all the fuss over the gypsy wench. He had no quarrel with his daughter for trying to kill the woman—if only she had accomplished it privately!
Tamed By The Marquess (Steamy Historical Regency) Page 22