Virtue's Reward

by Jean R. Ewing

  With a smile Helena combed out her hair that night, thinking about some of the things John had said. He had all the family wit. He had even made up an impromptu poem. Richard never had told her the end to those verses he had begun that day in Exeter.

  She shook her head and looked at herself in the mirror. A single candle burned in front of the glass. She was wearing only a light silk nightrail, since the dancing flames in the fireplace cast a warm glow over the room. The daily walks in the brisk air had brought color to her face, but she was paying for it in the inevitable entanglements that resulted in spite of the bonnet she wore. She was proud of her hair, but otherwise she really was quite ordinary looking. Was Marie a great beauty?

  She ran the comb carefully through the last of the tangles.

  Something moved in the shadows near the window.

  The breath froze in her throat.

  The shape solidified into the tall figure of a man. He was clad from head to toe in black, a midnight coat over dark breeches, plain black riding boots. Darkness sank into long, deep dimples carved on each side of his mouth. Black hair lay like soot on his brow.

  The constriction in her throat threatened to suffocate her.

  “Don’t stop,” he said. “Your hair is irresistible. It’s like a sheet of golden silk. I have never seen you comb it before.”

  “What are you doing here?” she whispered as the breath came back. “How did you get in?”

  Shadows ran gaily up the creases beside his mouth as he smiled.

  “The traditional method, of course,” he said. “Up the ivy. I didn’t particularly want to be seen.”

  Her heart bounded like a landed fish. Her limbs felt paralyzed. How did he expect her to react?

  “So the house is to be broken into once again?” she said shakily. “At least Sir Lionel didn’t go rattling to the floor and shake the rafters this time. But suppose I had cried out and roused the household?”

  “But you didn’t. Thank you for your forbearance.”

  She watched him in the mirror, a mad, desperate craving beating at her senses—for a man’s touch, a man’s strength. She had been left alone all this time. Why question the reason for this strange visit?

  He took the comb and bent to kiss her hand as he did so. His hair spilled forward over her fingers like ink.

  “I have been wanting to do this for a very long time,” he said. “It’s so beautiful. I can’t decide if it reminds me more of gold or of celandines.”

  Without a murmur of protest she let him comb her long hair over and over again, back away from her forehead, until it fell like a waterfall to her waist. She closed her eyes. The feeling was delicious.

  I have been so longing for this, she thought. I can’t make any protest now!

  The comb fell unnoticed to the ground as, still standing behind her, he gently slipped the silk from her shoulders. His long fingers smoothed her hair over her bare skin. Helena bit her lip to stop herself from moaning aloud as the stroking reached lower. At last, at last, he brushed over the soft flesh of her breasts. Heat ran in rivers through her blood when he at last, at last, with infinite gentleness massaged their hardened tips. Her moan could not be suppressed now. The sound eased from her lips as if it came from the depths of her soul.

  She lifted heavy lids and watched in the mirror as he bent his head—the wild, wicked strangeness of sooty hair instead of gold against her skin. Cupping both breasts in his hands, he kissed the back of her neck, then the pulse where it shook under his lips at her throat.

  By the time he bent her head back to his and kissed her full on the mouth, she was vibrating in his hands like a violin.

  “May I take you to bed?” he asked.

  Helena could only nod and bury her face in his strong neck as he lifted her from the stool and carried her across the chamber.

  He laid her on the sheets and smoothed her hair out over the pillow, while he quoted softly from ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream.’

  “ ‘And all the faith, the virtue of my heart, / The object and the pleasure of mine eye, / Is only Helena.’ ”

  Chapter Thirteen

  “And what,” she said lazily some time later, “have you done to your hair?”

  “I have dyed it black, sweet wife,” Richard said, sitting up in the disordered bed and swinging his legs to the ground. “Thanks to your foresight, the materials were to hand.”

  “You mean you took some of my galls of Aleppo? I thought I had been shorted by the man at the fair.”

  “I plead guilty. I thought it might be better not to have such an obvious and garish yellow flag on my head for a while. As it happens, I was right.”

  “You didn’t dye your hair black for a whim. Richard, what’s going on?”

  “I don’t know, to be honest. But there’s no danger anymore. You must trust that I can take care of myself. I’ve been doing it for a very long time.”

  “There is more that you could tell me. Richard, for heaven’s sake, there is some huge mystery here, isn’t there? And there is obviously terrible danger. Don’t you think I have a right to know?”

  “Don’t, Helena! I can never tell you.”

  Helena closed her eyes for a moment. How could he make love to her as he had just done and then shut her back out of his life?

  “But you stay in London?” she asked at last.

  “Helena, you must understand. There are some things that in all honor a gentleman cannot tell his wife.”

  “Of course,” she said. “I didn’t mean to pry.”

  How could she have been so clumsy? Whatever else was going on in his life, no man ever told his wife about his mistress. And maybe there really was no danger any longer.

  Yet, if so, what had lain between him and Harry?

  Perhaps Harry was only jealous of Acton Mead and there would be no more attacks as long as Richard didn’t live here. In which case, if Richard stayed in London and lived quietly in disguise with Marie, Harry would leave him alone.

  None of it made any sense at all.

  Only one fact remained clear: Her husband would rather live in London with a courtesan than at home with a wife.

  “You must believe, Helena,” Richard said at last, as if inexorably reaching the same conclusion, “that I would never deliberately hurt or deceive you. You are my wife and I owe you the honor that the title implies. If I were free to do so, I would be here with you at Acton Mead. It was my original intent, but there is something that binds me to London just now. Be patient, I beg.”

  If he would not tell her, there was nothing more she could do. To continue to press him would only drive him further away.

  So instead she said, “Did you hunt tigers from the backs of elephants in India?”

  He turned to her, surprised. “What?”

  “I have been reading your books. In the library. The maharajahs go on great elephant hunts after tigers. Is that how you learned about elephants?”

  He laughed. “Let me get a dressing gown and I’ll tell you.”

  With that he strode to his own chamber, his body as lithe as a panther’s in the flickering firelight. While he was gone, Helena slipped from beneath the sheets and recovered her night rail where it lay abandoned by the dressing table and her own silk gown from its hook on the door.

  Richard came back and led her to the chairs by the fireside. He had brought wine from his room and he poured two glasses.

  “I learned to ride elephants from an old rascal in Bengal. They are remarkable beasts. And yes, I’m afraid I was obliged on later occasions to ride with a certain maharajah after tigers. Though it seems a sin against nature to try to bring about the death of such a terribly beautiful creature, for a tiger hunt they go to great and fascinating lengths of pomp and circumstance. Nothing could have kept me away. It was like being fed on a diet of syllabub for days at a time.”

  And with that he began to tell her about India, a place where the light itself is different. A picture of the exotic subcontinent began to weave itself
at Helena’s hearth like a rich silk tapestry. The colors, the smells, the hubbub; towering mountains, dusty deserts, strange beasts, flowering plants; the life of a people with entirely different beliefs and culture and a unique view of the universe—nothing had escaped his notice.

  “We have gone into their country with unpardonable arrogance,” he said at last. “With the view that England can teach everything to the world. But India is a great and ancient civilization, and I believe she will outlast us in the end.”

  He knelt and put more wood on the fire, then turned and looked at Helena. She sat spellbound, her lips slightly apart.

  “We have made the most dreadful mess of your hair,” he said, and reached up to brush it back from her face.

  She laughed, surprised. “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Good, because I think we might do it again.”

  With that he pulled her from the chair to join him on the rug in front of the flames.

  Helena was not sure later how they had finally moved again to the bed. She knew only that she was being peeled like a withy, layer after layer, until her innermost soul lay stripped in his care.

  With my body, I thee worship, she thought abstractedly. I never understood that before.

  * * *

  They awoke to the sound of rain gurgling in the gutters. A dull light seeped into the room. Wrapped in his dressing gown, Richard strode to the windows and threw back the shutters. Then he rebuilt the dying fire before he came and sat on the bed beside her.

  “I think I understand at last something that I heard in Exmoor,” he said, twining a strand of blond hair around his fingers.

  Helena gave him a puzzled look. “What was that?”

  “When Captain Morris introduced me to his future wife, he said: ‘She is my peace.’ Of course you know her, don’t you? Amelia Hunter.”

  Then she remembered. He had visited David Morris at Fernbridge and met the Hunter sisters there. Catherine had written to her about it, and Richard had mentioned it himself when they first met at Trethaerin.

  “Amy Hunter isn’t a terribly peaceful person, though. She’s as giddy as a top.”

  Richard smiled. “That’s not what he meant. Are you ready for breakfast?”

  His grin told her that he was not thinking immediately of food.

  Helena reached up to touch the warm strength of his chest.

  “I’m starving,” she replied.

  He slipped out of his dressing gown. At the sight of his body in the clear daylight, she gasped aloud.

  “Good heavens, Richard! That’s a new scar. And this! And what happened to your shoulder?”

  “Nothing very much, luckily. I was a little clumsy, that’s all, and was unfortunate enough to be punctured.”

  He did not tell her that he had then been very ill. Charles de Dagonet had nursed him solidly through a dangerous fever. His sword had picked up some unwelcome filth on the streets of London before his attacker had sunk its blade into his flesh.

  “You were attacked again? You said there was no danger.”

  “Whoever dislikes me so intensely is looking for a yellow-headed gentleman, not a black-visaged vagabond. I am quite safe. I’m staying where no one will find me.”

  Helena fell silent and dropped her hands. Distress flooded her eyes and she turned away.

  Richard ruthlessly suppressed his desire, though it burned fiercely. Did she know how deeply he prevaricated? She must—even if she did not know the true cause. In which case, how could he allow himself to make love to her again? Yet he craved her softness, her generosity. The yearning left him speechless.

  He smoothed the hair back from her nape and kissed her lightly on the shoulder, then stood up and shrugged into his dressing gown.

  “What are your plans now?” she said at last.

  He strode away across the room. “I am going to France.”

  His illness had delayed him in his search for the unknown enemy. But it was time to move now. There was nothing more that England could tell him. The answer could lie only in the French capital. Dagonet had contacts with London’s underground and would pass on any information he could find. He had already discovered that the ruffians who attacked Richard had indeed been paid to seek him out. It was not a random attack motivated by robbery, but Richard had never thought for a moment that it was. Yet no meaningful identity of the paymaster could be gained. The description could fit any of a hundred men.

  So it was time to return to the lion’s den: Madame Relet’s nasty little brothel in Paris.

  “To France?”

  “I couldn’t leave without saying good-bye,” Richard said.

  “Is that why you came here last night?”

  “Among other reasons. Unfortunately, however insistent those reasons may be, I must leave again. I hadn’t meant to stay here so long.”

  And Helena grasped at the one thread of happiness offered. Even if he felt he must leave again, he had stayed with her the entire night and slept until morning in her bed. No nightmares had come to disturb their sleep. He hadn’t thought it necessary to protect himself from her when he was at his most vulnerable. He might not be able to share with her the fact that he kept a mistress and presumably was staying with the delectable Marie in London. Perhaps he would never accept the perfidy of his brother. Yet he had broken his own rule. He had shared his sleep.

  She sat up in the bed and smiled at him. “Do you think I wish to drive you away?”

  He spun back to face her. “What? No! I wish the hell I could stay, but—”

  “But you can’t.” She slipped the covers away, leaving her dressed in nothing but her hair. “And you must be hungry, so you might as well have some coffee and eggs before you go.”

  Richard laughed and walked back to her. He gazed into her eyes for a moment, then kissed her on the mouth.

  “Yes I am,” he said. “But it’s not coffee and eggs that I have in mind.”

  * * *

  They went down together to the breakfast parlor at last. John was already sitting at the table stuffing his mouth with toast. As they came in, he leaped to his feet and hurled himself at his brother.

  “Richard! Helena said you weren’t here. What have you done to your hair? Are you in disguise? Oh, this is capital!”

  “And what in heaven’s name are you doing here, young man? Why aren’t you at school?”

  John shuffled his feet and refused to meet the eyes that were so like his own. Then he sat back down at the table and tried to look nonchalant.

  “I ran away, if you must know.”

  “Then you are about to return. Today.”

  “Richard, you won’t make him? They’re going to beat him.”

  “All the more reason! I can hardly believe that a brother of mine would be too much of a coward to face just punishment.”

  “But it’s not fair at all, sir,” John wailed, and the story he had told Helena poured out.

  To her surprise, Richard didn’t seem in the least amused or sympathetic.

  “Your reasons make no difference at all,” he said sternly. “You took an action of your own free will and that action had consequences. A gentleman does not run away from what he has done because the results are unpleasant.”

  “But it was for a noble cause,” Helena said. “John wanted to teach a bully a lesson.”

  “And did so, perhaps. But the virtue of his intent isn’t relevant, nor is the efficacy, or otherwise, of his revenge on Master Harris. There is a price to be paid for well-meaning actions as often as for wrong ones. A man of honor is prepared to pay it, not bewail the fact that the world isn’t fair. And he certainly wouldn’t hide behind the skirts of a lady.”

  “I’ll get another drubbing for having run away,” John said sulkily.

  “And I trust you can face it like an Acton, sir.”

  Helena laid her hand on his arm. “Richard, this is intolerable. A note from you explaining John’s side of the story would surely be all that’s necessary? And he’s here at my
invitation. If I had known he would be punished for that, I would never have let him stay.”

  “You should have sent him back right away, Helena. By shielding him you have only made it worse. John, go and get ready. We leave in half an hour.”

  “Yes, sir!” the boy said, and with one apologetic look at Helena, he left the room.

  “Richard, for heaven’s sake! Why are you so hard on him? John is not even to be commended for trying to stand up against bullying? He’s barely more than a child and he worships you.”

  “Then I have a responsibility to see that he develops into a gentleman of honor.”

  “Yet you will allow Harry anything, any license—even to attack you and wound your horse! Was Harry at the end of the blade in London? Is he the cause of the scars on your shoulder? Does his honorable development not count?”

  “Stop! Helena, I have told you before that Harry is as trustworthy as I am myself. If you will not believe it, there is nothing more to be said.”

  “Then perhaps neither of you is to be trusted. Why did you send Harry here to spy on me?”

  Richard looked truly astonished for a moment, but then his expression closed like a door.

  “I asked Harry to make sure you were all right, that is all.”

  “Then why is he so friendly with Nigel Garthwood?”

  “What?” Richard said.

  “He has been asking Mr. Garthwood about me and Edward. Was that also at your request? It’s unconscionable!”

  If she could only make him see that Harry was a threat to his life. He must be put on guard against his brother. But instead, she was only destroying whatever understanding they had reached that morning and the night before.

  John reappeared in the doorway.

  “I am sorry if I caused you any trouble, Lady Lenwood,” he said formally, and gave her a contrite little bow. She noticed with some satisfaction that his neck was considerably cleaner than it had been when he arrived. “Is it still all right if I come at Christmas?”

  “I shall be devastated if you don’t,” she replied. “I must win back my money.”