It occurred to her as she wheeled Tulip toward Paul’s tidy Georgian home that stood at the edge of the small village of Strafford on Baird, that Paul might not be at home. After all, unlike herself and the rest of the gentry, he could not very well tell someone who was ill that he didn’t feel like taking care of them.
They had not had much time together since Josette’s death. Today she felt that she must see him, just look at those beautiful brown eyes of his, and let her frustration and despair flow away. Oh yes, he could make her forget her own name. She thought about the fishpond, how he had loved her, understood her fear of men, and given her finally a woman’s pleasure. She had liked that very much. She thought it could easily become a craving. She wanted it again and again.
“Now, Tulip, you can rest your tired bones,” she said, turning her mare into the small yew-tree-lined drive. “Even though I don’t see how any bone in your big body can be at all tired.”
“Afternoon, milady.” She was hailed by a sturdy sandy-haired boy, tall and gangly framed, nearly of an age as Arabella. She’d known him all his life.
“It is good to see you again, Will,” she said as the boy limped forward to take the reins of her horse. He’d broken his leg when he had been quite young. “You are looking quite fit. Is Dr. Branyon at home?” She realized after a moment that she wasn’t breathing. He had to be here, he just had to be. She needed him. It was an alarming realization, but true nonetheless.
“Aye, milady. Just returned from Dalworthy’s. Crotchety old bugger broke ’is arm.”
“Excellent,” she said, not caring if Dalworthy had broken his neck. “Please give Tulip some hay, Will, but not too much. She’s been eating her head off.”
She slid gracefully to the ground and very nearly ran to the three narrow front steps. To her surprise, Mrs. Muldoon, Dr. Branyon’s fiery, fiercely loyal Irish housekeeper, did not answer the knock.
“Ann. What a surprise. Good heavens, my girl, whatever are you doing here?” Dr. Branyon stood in the open doorway, his frilled white shirt loose about his neck, the sleeves rolled up over his forearms, his face alight with astonished pleasure.
Lady Ann stared up at him, not a single word forming in her mouth. She ran her tongue over her lips. She realized he was staring at her mouth. “I wanted to surprise you, Paul,” she finally said. Goodness, she sounded like a twit.
He smiled at her, still staring at her mouth. “Ah, I’m rude, Ann. Do come in.” He wanted to carry her inside. He then didn’t want to put her down except on his bed. He wanted to kiss that beautiful mouth of hers, touch his tongue to hers. He shuddered. “I’m sorry. But Mrs. Muldoon isn’t here. I’ll make tea for us if that is what you would like. Mrs. Muldoon’s sister has the mumps. Isn’t that distressing?”
“Very distressing,” Lady Ann said, about as distressed as her mare, Tulip, who was probably neighing with pleasure over her oats. She followed Paul into the front parlor, a cozy, light-filled room that she quite liked. It wasn’t an immense empty tomb like Evesham Abbey.
“I suppose I like your riding hat,” he said. “May I remove it for you?” He wanted to kiss her and he didn’t want to have to find his way around a pile of black velvet.
She nodded mutely, raising her face. He didn’t kiss her, but it was close. He pulled the narrow ribbons apart and lifted the hat from her head. After all his care, he couldn’t prevent tossing the hat on a nearby table. “Now, come sit down and tell me what new calamity brings you here.” Something had to have happened, he knew it. He supposed the kisses would have to wait. He sighed. “I’m fortified. No, you wouldn’t come here just to surprise me, would you?”
22
She gave him a delicious smile. “No, I am here just to see you. Well, I suppose I did have rather a loud argument with Justin over Arabella. I hadn’t meant to, but it happened. Then she even came into the chamber. She was terrified of him, Paul, terrified. As for the earl, God knows what was in his mind. But you are right, you know, about all of it. He believes that she has betrayed him with the comte. But he wouldn’t tell me why exactly he believed it and that is what I wanted from him. But he wouldn’t tell me. However, I do know him well enough to realize that if he believes something so ridiculous then he must have a reason.” She sighed. “I wish he had confided in me.”
“I wonder if he has yet ordered that young man from Evesham Abbey. He should, you know. Then perhaps he and Arabella can get this wretched misunderstanding all straightened out.”
“I hate Evesham Abbey. Now it is even more cold and empty than before. Even when people are walking around, it is still empty. God, I have hated that place forever.”
“Then you will live here with me.”
She looked startled, then laughed. She looked about the drawing room, loving every piece of furniture, each drapery, each small sculpture or drawing or painting that was here. “Would you really let me live here with you? You wouldn’t make me live somewhere else, somewhere you thought was grand enough for me?”
“No, you will be here, with me, and Mrs. Muldoon will bully both of us and love you, but like a mother would, not like I, who would be your husband and your lover. I know you enjoy this house, Ann. I also know that if it didn’t please you, you would tell me. Eventually, anyway.”
She rose from the settee and skipped to where he sat. She eased herself down on his lap, wrapping her arms around his neck. “Yes,” she whispered against his ear, “I would tell you eventually if something displeased me. However, right now, I cannot think of anything.” She kissed him. Lady Ann, that very proper, very beautiful woman he had loved since he had met her when she had just married the Earl of Stafford, nineteen years before. God was beneficent. “Oh yes,” he said into her mouth.
When she finally raised her head, she was breathing more quickly, her breasts were heaving a bit. He was so happy he thought he would burst with it. “I don’t suppose you want that tea, do you, Ann?”
“I forgot. If you would take me to Mrs. Muldoon’s kitchen and show me the tea, I will endeavor to make some for us. That is, if you would like some boring tea.”
“As opposed to what?”
“As opposed to me,” she said, and sank down against him again.
He didn’t want to make love to her here in the drawing room. No, he wanted her in his bed, where she would sleep every night for the rest of her life. He wanted her very badly. “Will you come with me, Ann?”
“To that wretched kitchen?”
“No, to my bed.”
She was stroking her soft palm over his cheek. “I believe I would even go to Talgarth Hall with you.”
“It’s love then,” he said, and rose, holding her tightly against him.
She was laughing. It was the most beautiful sound he had ever heard.
He took the worn carpet stairs two at a time, reminded fleetingly of the interminable years of nights he had walked weary and alone up these same stairs to his bedchamber. Soon, he would never walk them alone again.
A very replete hour later Lady Ann whispered against his neck, “I’m a loose woman. If you don’t marry me then I will have to cast myself into a ditch. All that guilt and remorse for my sins, you know.”
He kissed her, but didn’t laugh. He was as serious as a man could be when he said, “You are prepared for the malicious gossip of our neighbors?”
She hadn’t thought of it, but she knew it would happen. She thought about it now for all the time it deserved—about five seconds. “They can all go to the devil,” she said, and he was so startled that he did laugh then.
“And Arabella?” he said then.
“I’m not worried about her, at least with regard to us, Paul. Surely she’s guessed. Even Justin has. She is very fond of you. Why should she care if her dear mama finally finds happiness?”
He wanted to tell her that it was very possible that she would hate him as much as she loved her father. But he didn’t know. Everything was strange now, nothing as it should be, except for them, he thought, ki
ssing the tip of her nose. No, this was a perfect strangeness.
He helped her to dress. He found it very enjoyable, working all those little buttons back into their holes. They left his house together.
* * *
Lady Ann arrived at Evesham Abbey in barely enough time to change her clothes for dinner. “I shall join you shortly, Paul,” she whispered. Turning to the butler, she said, “Crupper, do tell Cook that Dr. Branyon will be joining us for dinner this evening.”
“Yes, my lady.” Crupper nodded. He wasn’t a blind man. His mistress looked more beautiful than he’d ever seen, and it was all due to Dr. Branyon. Oh Lordie. Well, who cared?
Crupper eyed Dr. Branyon as he presented him with a glass of sherry. Though the doctor was not a lord, he was nonetheless a fine gentleman. It was the first time, he thought, ruminating on the situation as he descended the flagstone steps into the kitchen, that he had ever seen the Lady Ann so very, not just beautiful, but sparkling, yes, that was it. True it was but a short time since his lordship’s death, but what matter? Lady Arabella was settled with the new earl, and life was too short anyway to worry overly about such things. He smoothed his sparse gray hair and wondered if the two of them would live here at Evesham Abbey after they married.
Had Lady Ann not felt so unbearably happy, she would have felt the undercurrent of tension at the dinner table. She saw the participants at the large table through a pleasant blur, their words and tones softened by the time they penetrated through the haze of contentment. She wanted to leap up and shout hallelujahs when Paul folded his napkin, cleared his throat, and rose to his feet.
“Justin, comte,” he said in a clear voice, “before the ladies adjourn to the Velvet Room and leave us to our port, I should like to make an announcement.”
The earl looked up, searched Lady Ann’s face, and smiled. Not a full smile, for there was that coldness about him, but it was a smile and it was a pleased smile. He nodded. Arabella looked up, not caring, just wanting to leave the dining room, to get away from him.
Dr. Branyon cleared his throat. “Lady Ann has done me the honor of accepting my proposal of marriage. We shall wed as soon as possible and, of course, live very quietly until her nominal year of mourning has passed.”
The earl rose quickly and raised his own glass. “My congratulations, Paul, Ann. It is no great surprise, to be sure, but still a welcome occasion. I propose a toast—to Dr. Branyon and Lady Ann. May you have a long lifetime of happiness.”
Arabella sat frozen. No great surprise? Her mother and Dr. Branyon? No, it couldn’t be true, it simply couldn’t. Her father had just died. His body was rotting in some forgotten ruin of a village in Portugal and her mother was calmly planning to marry another man. She couldn’t bear it.
Anger rose like bile in her throat. She gazed across the table at her mother and saw with barely contained fury the delicate pink of her cheeks, the new brilliance of her eyes. She was nothing more than a damned trollop.
“Arabella. The toast, my dear.” She turned her head to stare at the earl. Her husband. The man who hated her, the man who would punish her the rest of her life for something she hadn’t done. She heard the command in his voice. By God, he approved this travesty of a marriage. She turned her eyes to Elsbeth and Gervaise. With her newly acquired insight, she saw them almost as one being, Elsbeth’s dark eyes and hair blending, as if with the same artist’s brush, into a blurred mold of Gervaise. It was as if one pair of almond-shaped eyes regarded her, their focus as one, their thoughts as one—their bodies as one. No, surely not. Elsbeth and Gervaise? But who else? No, Suzanne was surely right. They were lovers.
She thought they showed mild surprise, nothing more. Was she the only one who had not guessed?
“Arabella, child, are you all right?” Her mother’s gentle voice, so vibrant with concern. Was there a pleading note? Was she seeking approval from her daughter, seeking forgiveness for her betrayal? Her blindness had known no bounds. She realized she’d been so very locked into herself, into her own misery, that she had missed what everyone else had clearly seen. Yes, she been a wooden puppet unseeing, her very thoughts frozen inside herself. How very surprised Dr. Branyon appeared at her silence. Or was he? Surely he would know how she missed her father, how she loved him beyond life itself. He had betrayed her. Both of them had betrayed her. And her father. Had they been lovers for years? Had they merely waited for her father to leave before they went to his bed?
“Arabella.”
The earl’s voice again, condemning her now. But then he had condemned her since they had wed. How could she expect him to see the truth, to understand that they had done?
Arabella rose unsteadily from her chair, her fingers clutching white on the edges of the table. She felt crushed with the weight of her own unawareness, the weight of their betrayal. So much betrayal, she thought, only she was innocent. They were not.
Her voice sounded out as a fallen autumn leaf, its spine snapped and broken underfoot. “Yes, Mother, I am quite all right. Did you call for a toast, my lord? I’m sorry, but you see, I don’t have one.” She heard a shocked, sharp intake of breath—from whom, she did not know. Only vaguely did she see the earl move angrily from his chair. She whirled about and raced from the dining room.
Justin threw his napkin down upon the tabletop. “Paul, Ann, do not attend to her. Please, all of you, take your coffee in the Velvet Room. If you will excuse me now, I would speak to my wife.”
Lady Ann’s face was perfectly white, her lips drawn in a thin line, but she didn’t cry. She saw the wild anger in the earl’s eyes. Oh God, she had to protect Arabella from his anger. She had never seen him so near to the edge. She stumbled from her chair, her hand toward him.
“Justin, wait. There is no reason for you to be upset. It is a surprise to her. Surely you know how much she loved her father. No, please—” But he was gone from the dining room without a backward glance.
Dr. Branyon walked to her side and clasped her hand. He said very quietly, for only her ears, “I was afraid of this. You know that Arabella isn’t happy. I believe that she held to her father’s memory to help her during this time with Justin. Please, Ann, don’t let her hurt you for she doesn’t mean to. There is such rage in her, such pain. Come, let’s go into the Velvet Room and try to act natural, at least around Elsbeth. As for the comte, I could wish him gone right this instant, but it is not to be. Come, love.”
Lady Ann said sadly, “How very stupid of me not to have realized, even foretold Arabella’s reaction. I suppose I didn’t want to delve too deeply. I just wanted to hug my own happiness close.”
The comte was so startled by Arabella’s outburst that he acquiesced with a mere nod. He slid Elsbeth’s arm through his. As they followed Lady Ann and Dr. Branyon past the wooden-faced footman who’d heard everything that had happened, Elsbeth suddenly tugged at his arm, holding back.
“Oh, Gervaise, whatever shall we do now?” She was close to tears. He couldn’t allow her to fall apart in front of Lady Ann or Dr. Branyon. He clasped her hands in his, squeezing them nearly to pain. “Listen, Elsbeth, as I told you earlier, it is as nothing. I will think of a plan. Do not worry. Here, straighten yourself. Don’t cry. Do not enact an ill-bred scene like your half-sister just did. You are above that. You are gentle and kind and you will keep control of yourself.”
“Yes, Gervaise, yes, all right, I will try.” She sniffed, wiping her hand across her eyes, as would a child. He felt something deep and painful move within him. “Yes, I thought Arabella’s behavior was shocking. Why did she do that? Our father wasn’t a loving man, you know that. He hated me. Oh, all right, he loved Arabella, but still, how could she behave so horribly to her own mother?”
Justin strode into the main hall and made directly for the staircase. He took the steps two and three at a time and was midway to the first landing before Crupper realized his destination. He waved his hand at the earl’s back, shook his head when there was no response, and turned back to his post by t
he front doors. He simply refused to shout after his lordship. Such a thing wasn’t done, certainly not done at Evesham Abbey.
The earl’s anger was evident even to Grace, Arabella’s maid, who scurried from his path the moment she saw his face. His nostrils flared and angry cords stood out taut on his neck. His hands were shaking, he couldn’t help it. Damn her, how dared she serve her mother such a devastating blow? Had she not eyes in her head to see where Lady Ann’s affections were so obviously placed? He would strangle her.
Justin jerked at the handle on the bedchamber door. It was locked, as of course he had expected it to be, but his futile fumbling at his own bedroom door only added to his anger. He flung into the adjoining room and sent his valet, Grubbs, staggering back in surprise.
“My lord, what is wrong? What has happened?”
Justin paid him no heed, and but an instant later stood in the middle of the earl’s bedchamber. He wanted to bellow out her name, but saw that the room was quite empty. “Bedamned,” he said quite softly as he turned on his heel and strode back downstairs.
“Crupper, have you seen her ladyship?”
“Why, yes, my lord,” Crupper said, with complete composure.
“Well? Where the devil is she?”
“Her ladyship left the house, my lord. Very quickly, I might add.”
“Damnation, man, why the hell did you not tell me that little bit of news before?”
Crupper drew to his full height. “If you will pardon my liberty, my lord, your lordship was near to the top of the stairs before I was even aware of your presence.”
“This is damned ridiculous,” the earl nearly shouted as he strode past his butler into the warm night.
It did not occur to the earl to simply let her return whenever she wished to. He mentally reviewed her favorite haunts—the old abbey ruins, the fishpond, perhaps even the Deverill graveyard. For some reason he could not define, he knew that she would not be bound for any of her usual places. No, he thought, he knew she was trying to escape—from Evesham Abbey, from her mother, but mainly she would want to escape from him.
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