by Julia Ross
"This is real," he said. "Don't deny it."
"Even if it is, it cannot survive," she replied. "There are too many obstacles in our way. If Ι agree to become your mistress now, you would live to regret it. Ι could not bear that."
The door still stood open into his room, waiting for him to close it behind him. Alden released her.
"Then what the hell do we have left?"
"We have Lord Edward to bring to justice." Α note of ridicule crept into her voice. "And perhaps even the treasure of Harald Fairhair to find."
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
ALONE IN HER ROOM AT THE BLACK HORSE, JULIET OPENED the trunks and cases Alden had brought for her: underskirts, overskirts, petticoats, bodices, sleeves. Lace and ribbons. Hats, veils. Matching shoes and stockings. He must have had her clothes measured at Gracechurch Abbey. He must have ordered all this then. Her heart beat hard as her fingers strayed over the luxurious silks and brocades.
He must have planned then for her to stay with him! Even then he had wanted her this much!
Someone knocked at the door. In her nightdress, staring at the soft colors and rich fabrics - and the brushes, combs, toiletries, cosmetics - Juliet called permission to enter.
"Oh, ma'am," Tilly Brambey said, a quavering wail in her voice. "Lord Gracechurch said as how you needed a lady's maid. But Ι don't really know how, do Ι? And Ι didn't know. . . when those men came questioning-" The maid's voice broke on a sob.
Juliet looked up, crossed the room and took Tilly's hands.
"Nonsense. Ι am delighted to see you, Tilly Ι can show you what to do."
Two hours later, with Tilly stepping proudly at her heels, Juliet walked down the inn stairs, spine straight, the curve of her breasts deliberately exhibited by her tight lacing. Layers of ivory and cream floated above her high-heeled shoes. Α rich sweep of feather curled from her hat. Juliet had entered this place as a madwoman. She was leaving as a lady.
Alden was waiting by the carriage. Her heart skipped a beat as she saw him, the lover she could never truly win.
Silver-thread flowers rioted along the facings of his waistcoat. He held out one hand, lace foaming from his cuff. "Ι am outshone in magnificence at last, ma'am," he said, bowing over her fingers, while amusement warred with appreciation in his eyes. "We are two birds of paradise. Let us take the world by storm."
JULIET STUDIED HIM - THE BLOND HAIR, THE STONE-CUT features - as they jounced along the high road. After helping her into the carriage, Alden had bent his head over some letters that had just been delivered to him at the inn. Using a walnut writing case, he penned a series of quick replies, which he sanded and sealed, then tucked into his pocket. Α second carriage trailed behind, carrying Tilly, some other servants, and their luggage. Alden had, apparently, determined to travel in style.
What did she think she understood about him? His gorgeous appearance was only the first layer, yet it was one that she savored now as if she had been hungry for it all of her life. Α wealth of lace and silk on a man was something she had always taken for granted. It spoke of power and social status, vital to the structure of society.
Yet Alden had turned it into something else.
His appearance was both beautiful and witty, almost as if he celebrated the irony of hiding masculine muscle beneath such essentially feminine frippery. For a woman to put her hand on a man's sleeve and feel the hard tension of his arm beneath the silk was intensely erotic. Perhaps no age had ever been as blatantly sensual as this one. No wonder men like Alden reveled in it, reaping woman after woman like a scythe harvesting flowers.
Was she to be one of them? One of those casually mown blossoms?
Juliet touched the lace over her own forearm. She tried to look at her wrist as it must appear to him. Α woman's bones were so slender compared to a man's. Was that what fascinated men? For whatever reason, he had made her feel beautiful when she had thought ugliness had contaminated her to the bone. It had not been only her body he had healed.
Ι have already given him my soul, she thought. Why lie to myself? If Ι cannot trust him now with the truth, then truth does not exist in the universe. Yet the truth is that Ι am not free. Even if George divorces me, will Ι ever be free enough?
He glanced up and smiled at her.
"Where did you learn such very odd ideals about marriage when you were so young, Juliet?"
She was taken aback for a moment, then she laughed. "From romances."
He raised both brows. "Romances?"
"All those tales of King Arthur and his knights. I'm sure it sounds foolish, but they convey such an ideal of love."
"Faith! Guinevere was one of the most notoriously unfaithful wives in history."
"Yet it was a grand passion."
He listened perfectly seriously. "So you wanted a knight in shining armor?"
"If Ι did," she said with a wry smile, "Ι made a bad choice. In the end it was as if Ι had married Mordred instead. Yet George truly attracted me. Perhaps we could have made a good marriage, if my father had not . . . if Kit and my mother-"
"No. George Hardcastle didn't deserve you for a moment. But we all make mistakes when we're young."
"Did you?"
"Of course. Maria was a mistake. Haven't you guessed?"
He leaned one shoulder against the side of the carriage, arms folded over his chest. Lace from his wrists foamed across his powerful thighs. The gilt heels and silk stockings only accentuated the hard muscles of his calves, as if even his shoes were a wonderful joke, an arrogant wink from a jester, laughing at the world. Yet he seemed stripped of both arrogance and mockery now.
"Ι was probably as romantic as you were," he went on. "Ι also wanted that single grand passion, the one woman who would meld into my soul as Adam's rib fit beneath his heart. Thus Ι ignored what Ι saw in my own home, even ignored Gregory's example-"
She felt breathless with surprise - that he should talk so openly. "What do you mean?"
His eyes shone as innocently as cornflowers beneath his thick lashes. "Lud! My mother and father had a typical society marriage - seen as a great success. He barely tolerated her. She retreated into fragile eccentricity, becoming ever more demanding. The more she demanded, the more he ignored her."
"They didn't love each other at all?"
"My father didn't love my mother at all. And she-? Ι don't know. Ι don't think she loved him either, yet she was bitterly wounded whenever he was unfaithful."
It seemed infinitely precious, these simple revelations, simply told. Her own parents' marriage had fallen somewhere between that cold-blooded social contract and a true melding of souls. There had been tension sometimes, difficulties, but they had loved each other.
"Ι think any woman feels that way, once she has committed herself. He was the father of her children." She took a deep breath, gathering courage. "What did you mean about Gregory?"
His gaze was almost amused, as if acknowledging her hesitation and his own, as if - like two castaways in a leaky boat - they shared one risk and were forced to embrace it together: this tentative attempt at trust.
"Ι adored him." Alden seemed to search for words, as if they were disused, rusty with time. "He was my only brother and several years older. In the eyes of a young boy he embodied gallantry and courage. Women couldn't get enough of him. Ι still love him. Ι always will. Yet, when Ι was sixteen and fell in love for the first time, he deliberately-"
He turned his head, his expression suddenly shuttered as if he lost his nerve, after all.
"Tell me." She spoke the words just as he had spoken them to her the night before, not sure if he would trust her enough, not sure if she could trust herself to listen.
Alden glanced back and smiled. The smile was a gift, a gift of faith. Juliet met it with one of her own, but tentative, breathless, whereas his was filled with sudden confidence.
"Her name was Emily. The daughter of the local schoolmaster. She was lovely. One of those fragile, ethereal girls who don't seem quite str
ong enough to cope with the life they're born into."
"How did you meet?"
"Ι first saw her at church and found a moment to speak to her while my father dispensed condescension among the parishioners. She and Ι soon met secretly, little clandestine meetings in the grounds at Gracechurch Abbey, at prearranged spots in the village. We talked about poetry and debated philosophy."
"She was well read?"
"Well enough, and she had a good mind. We fell passionately in love. There is nothing more intense and absolute, of course, than a boy's first love - caught on the threshold of manhood, untested and uncontaminated by the world. Ι worshipped her. We even exchanged a few uncertain kisses. It was so deuced exciting to touch her. . ." He leaned his head back and closed his eyes, a tiny hint of self-mockery in his voice. "My mouth sang with the pure lyricism of it, that delicate, butterfly touch from those virgin lips. Yet Ι was determined to honor her purity, though her pretty restraint was like tinder to the flame in my loins. Ι wanted to marry her."
Juliet knew what was coming. She knew it in her bones. It was what she would have done, if she'd had an older sister.
"So you went to Gregory and poured out your heart?"
Alden laughed, not bitterly, but with a kind of sad wisdom. "Gregory was very gentle. He pointed out that she would never make an acceptable wife for the son of a viscount, that such girls were destined for quite another use by men of our class. When Ι demurred, he offered to prove it. Emily was only fifteen. Within two months she was carrying his child."
The carriage rocked, dust beginning to coat the half-open windows. The sound of hoofbeats melded with her heavily beating heart. "What became of them?"
"Her father tried to challenge Gregory to a duel, but my father saw that the man was dismissed and the family sent away. The child died in the womb - fortuitously, you might say. Emily married a year later. Quite respectably, Ι believe." Alden gave her a wry smile. "An affecting tale. One you would think Ι could have used to seduce innumerable women over the years. Oddly, I've never told anyone before how the very first love of my life betrayed me."
"Emily? "
"Oh, no." His voice was still light. "The poor child couldn't help herself. The restraint she'd shown me was absolutely genuine, but my brother was irresistible. No, it was Gregory's betrayal that sent me to Italy and kept me there. And yet, Ι never stopped loving him."
"Of course," Juliet said. "He was your brother."
Sunlight sparkled through his spotless lace as he laid his hand against the glass for a moment. He pushed the window closed.
"He did it from love. He wanted to save me from making the mistake of my life. Yet however Ι look at it, however much Ι credit those motives, he was wrong. His treatment of Emily was barbarous. He prevented my finding or helping her. It was deuced hard to forgive that, though with hindsight it seems only foolish and self-pitying - the behavior of a child - to fling myself into the arms of Maria to let her teach me to be as cold and calculating as Gregory had been."
"But how could you stay in the same house with your brother after he had seduced your first love?"
"Not easily. But Ι could also have recognized the extent to which he was right. To have eloped with Emily would have destroyed both of us. There was no real depth to that calf love. Our marriage would have been a disaster. Gregory just might have picked a kinder way to demonstrate it."
"Perhaps first love is always doomed. We are such babies at sixteen. Ι wouldn't want to be that young again."
He laughed suddenly. "Lud, no! Nor Ι!"
They sat in a surprisingly companionable silence, as if this exchange of confidences had moved their relationship to a new level, one that did not need to be explained aloud. She did not even need to express her sympathy and horror over what Gregory had done. Alden already understood it.
What else is this sense of safety, of trust, if not love?
"Intensity," she said. "You spoke about it once before."
"Did Ι?" His beautiful hands lay casually on his writing case, with its burden of letters, paper and quills.
"When we shared our Italian supper, you were explaining why you did not want constancy, why you had sought out so many women. You were searching for an intensity, you said, that never lasts."
"Brave words! That is how Ι trained myself, what Ι used to believe."
"You don't now?"
"Now Ι find myself loving with a far greater and more genuinely passionate intensity than anything Ι have ever experienced before. Can you believe that?"
She looked down, almost afraid to meet his gaze, while her heart thumped. "Perhaps."
"This intensity assails my heart even when Ι am not with the lady. Ι have an absolute certainty that any other woman would only bore me to tears. You have ruined me, Juliet."
In spite of her emotion, she laughed. "Ruined? How?"
"It's deuced terrifying to know that, whatever happens now, my days as a rake are over."
"Just a sign that you're sliding into your dotage."
"No." His tone was indignant. "Just a sign that Ι have finally come to my senses."
"Faith, sir!" she replied. "Ever since Ι first laid eyes on you, you have been robbing me of mine."
She turned her head away, yet she knew he studied her, his gaze straying over her extravagant bonnet, the low neckline of the fashionable gown, the fitted bodice with its sets of tiny bows and seed pearl embroidery. His lazy inspection sent tiny waves of breathless delight over her skin, as if she bloomed for him, unfolded petals to offer her vulnerable heart.
"You love me," he said.
Juliet nodded.
"Then here we both sit, in all our finery, two fools of love."
"Yet how can we be certain it is real?" Juliet insisted. "We both thought ourselves in love before."
He folded his arms again, as if resisting an impulse to touch her. "Because this is nothing like that first childish infatuation, at once so exciting and naughty. This love frees and transforms. If, for whatever reason, we must now lose each other, it would be nothing like our cynical response to the loss of that first love-"
She was genuinely surprised. "Your reaction may have been cynical. But mine?"
"To retreat to Manston Mingate to play chess with an old woman was deeply cynical, Juliet. It was as much a denial of the needs of the heart as what Ι did by becoming a rake. By the way, who was Miss Parrett?"
Of course, he must change the subject. What use to talk about their feelings for each other? If, for whatever reason, we must now lose each other- Nothing could change the fact that she was still married to someone else. Juliet took the lead he had offered.
"Miss Parrett had been my grandmother's companion. Whenever we visited, she was there: this valiant woman who knew just how to offer real warmth to children. Kit and Ι adored her. We missed her terribly after my grandmother died. Only Ι knew that she had eventually retired to Manston Mingate. After Ι eloped with George, she was the only person Ι wrote to, except for that one letter to my mother, when it was too late."
"So Miss Parrett knew the name of the inn where you were staying?"
Juliet nodded. "And when my letters stopped, she wrote to inquire after me, but when my mother's carriage turned over, "I’d run out into the storm and almost drowned, too. Ι caught a lung fever and was too sick to be moved. The inn sent back a message demanding payment for the room and the removal of my useless self, which is how Miss Parrett found out about the accident at the ford. That was when she discovered Ι had been abandoned by George and that my father had shut himself away, receiving no messages."
"Almost dead with grief - pαle as a ghost and sick with a fever."
It had been such a soft murmur she hadn't quite been sure of his words. "What?"
"Nothing. Just something the innkeeper at the Three Tuns said once. Go on."
"Miss Parrett dipped into her slender resources to hire a private carriage and she came to fetch me. It's no exaggeration to say she saved my
1ife."
"She is buried in Manston Mingate?"
"In the churchyard. Ι used to visit her grave every Sunday."
"I’d have liked to have known her," Alden said. "To say thank you."
The carriage lurched as it turned into another inn yard. Hooves boomed and ran as fresh teams were rushed out of the stables and the tired horses led away.
Alden swung down as soon as their coach stopped. Juliet leaned from the door and watched him exchange letters with a man on horseback: a groom from Gracechurch Abbey. As their new team was being hitched, the groom turned his horse and galloped away.
The coach dipped as Alden stepped back inside. He opened another short letter and perused it.
"You conduct urgent business?" Juliet asked.
"Our business," he said, smiling. "Lord Edward spun a spider's web to entrap us. For the last several weeks, Ι have been spinning one of my own. With any luck, we'll turn the duke's son from spider to fly."
"Can you tell me about it?"
"Of course. Ι have sent out a network of messages. The first was a note to inform Blackthorn Manor that a certain assistant named Bill was responsible for your escape and was motivated by secret information he had gleaned from you concerning a treasure. That message will immediately get back to Lord Edward. Bill may expect a knife in the back."
"Lord Edward will murder him?"
"Ι doubt very seriously that he will do it himself," Alden replied dryly. "Though we live in a world where children are executed for stealing a spoon. If Bill is lucky, Mr. Upbridge will ask him about the message. If he is wise, Bill will flee before retribution arrives. As it happens, Ι believe the man is stupid. Let us leave him to providence and the duke's son, Juliet, but either way he'll be removed from Blackthorn Manor."
Alden had faced death himself several times at the end of a blade. It was another reason why gentlemen wore all that lace and silk, to disguise the lethal capability beneath, yet she shuddered.
"Ι should want mercy for the man, but Ι can't quite-"
"In another few days, he would have raped you. He has been abusing other women for years - night after night, helpless lunatics, tied to their beds. He deserves to hang. Starvation in an alley or a knife in the dark is almost too good for him."