Ah, it was so beautiful! she thought with a gripping pain of love and nostalgia. It was so gracious, so fine. Unlike Chatham, it was not an ancient structure, having been built at the beginning of the century during the reign of James the First. Her great-great grandfather had been a Frenchman, assigned to service in the household of young Mary, Queen of Scots, when she had spent her brief time as the French queen, until her husband’s death. On Mary’s return to Scotland, Deauveau had come to Edinburgh Castle to serve; in time, he had become invaluable to the young James.
Mary’s son, and again, in time, had come with him to London on his first ascension to the throne after the death of Elizabeth the First.
It was then that he had been granted his lands, and was proclaimed Duke of Rochester. That founder of the English line had built not for defense, but for beauty.
Deauveau Place stood tall with turrets, but they had been fashioned for view onto the gardens and entry. Her windows were arched and mullioned, her lines entirely graceful, and her stones were whitewashed. The great entry always stood open, as it did now, so that guests would first come into a courtyard, where they could be met at the main door by the master.
Master! That Raoul could ever think to claim such a title!
She stiffened then, biting her lips for redness, pinching her cheeks for color. She passed then through that elegant entry in the courtyard, and within the house, she knew, servants would be running to inform either her uncle or Raoul that a carriage was arriving. They would, perhaps, await her entry. Or perhaps curiosity would bring them to the entry steps, frowning to see who might have come and for what reason.
The carriage came to a halt. She didn’t wait for her driver, but pushed open the door and alit, pulling the silver fox more tightly about herself as she stared up at her home. It was so beautiful, shivering and shimmering beneath the frost, so very much like an ice palace.
The great arched and carved entry doors opened, and Jem, her father’s aging valet, stood there, gaunt and wrinkled, showing his years as he had never before. He stared at Ondine for long moments, seemed to waver and go pale, and then he came down the steps, shaking and still white.
“Ondine?” He whispered her name incredulously, with the greatest reverence.
She smiled, ready to cry at this tender welcome. The old man came to her, and she put her arms around him, hugging him vigorously, then easily, for it seemed that his bones had gone very brittle and that scant flesh remained to cover them.
“Jem!”
He pulled away from her, and she smiled radiantly with tears stinging her eyes. She’d come with no real plan—except to face those who had wronged her. In these few seconds she felt that whatever she suffered, whatever road she might have taken, this was the right thing to do, for in that brief reunion with Jem she knew that neither she nor her father had been forgotten.
“Lady, lady, lady!” he gasped, still grasping her hands, still staring as if she were an apparition. “We’ve searched half the country for you! Prayed and begged before God! At times all sense decreed we give you up for dead, but I never could do so in my heart! When I heard of your father, I was ill, for never was there a better master. To this day I puzzle over it! I cannot believe him a traitor! He would not vote to kill the old king, why the new? And you, lady, part of it all! Never!” Panic lit his crinkled old face suddenly. “We should hide you—”
“Jem!”
The irate order came from the doorway.
Ondine stiffened at the sound of her uncle’s voice. She realized that the hood of her fur covered her hair and that he could see none of her yet.
“If we’ve guests,” her uncle continued, “bring them in, man! Don’t stand there like a dolt!”
Ondine turned slowly, casting back her hood to face her uncle.
William was no Deauveau, except by some distant relation. Ondine’s grandfather had married William’s mother after his first wife’s death, and William had taken on the name Deauveau. He had been raised with Ondine’s father, treated as a full brother. He had, in turn, served his stepbrother. As a child, Ondine had never realized that William raised his own son in the presumption that the two children would be wed, and that Deauveau Place would fall to him in that manner. She ground her teeth together even as she smiled at him, for she wondered sickly whether her father might still be alive if she had only agreed to marry Raoul. Anything might be worth the price to bring him back to life.
But she hadn’t known, she hadn’t even imagined that such a sinister and devious plot had brewed behind William’s smiling swarthy features.
He was a man of near fifty years; yet with rich dark hair still, and slim features that held his age well. His nose was very long and slim; his lip, too, was narrow and could curl with cruelty, for his humor was quite dry. He was very tall and slender and, in his way, a man to be reckoned with.
“Hello, Uncle,” she said simply.
“Ondine …” He said her name as if he, too, gazed upon a vision. And perhaps she was, having dressed most carefully for this day. Beneath the frothy silver of her fur cloak she had chosen to wear all white—a full white velvet skirt over a bodice of white linen and lace. The only color about her was from her eyes, her cheeks, and the sunburst spray of her hair against the fur when she cast the hood back.
After all that time in which he had surely become convinced she had been eaten by some wilderness beast, she was back, decked in splendor, all elegance and all beauty.
William’s eyes narrowed sharply; his hand came to his heart, and though Ondine continued to smile sweetly, she hoped inside that he was about to suffer apoplexy. For long moments silence surrounded them, silence, and the gentle fall of snowflakes, crystalline and beautiful.
“You live,” he said at last.
She laughed softly. “Aye, Uncle.”
“And you dare to come here, traitor!”
Again she laughed, but this time with an edge. “Come, Uncle, ‘tis me to whom you speak! Not some misguided fool!”
He looked quickly from her to Jem, then thundered out with obvious annoyance, “Get in the house! What we have to discuss will be done in private. Jem—see to your lady’s things. Ondine— come.”
She smiled, lowered her head, collected her skirts, and started up the steps. At the top he grabbed her arm in a thoughtless gesture, his long fingers biting into her so that she almost cried out her loathing. She reminded herself that she must play her game most carefully, buying time.
“Into my study!” William rasped harshly into her ear.
“Yes, Uncle,” she said demurely.
They came down the entry hall, bypassing the great room to their right. Ondine gazed inside and briefly saw that nothing had changed since that long-ago day when she had left. A fire burned from the wall-length grate. The long Tudor table still occupied the middle of the room. The sideboard was still neatly decked in her mother’s finest Irish lace, and the silver services still gleamed from atop it.
“Come!” William said sharply, urging her along so quickly that her feet could barely tread the floor. With her head still lowered, she smiled grimly, glad that he was anxious to remove her to privacy before more of the household met her.
He threw open the door to his study—his! ‘Twas her father’s study, in fact, she thought painfully. A long window looked out upon a row of secluded hedges; the rest of the room was lined with cases and books, French mostly, for William always believed that things French gave him an air of sophistication.
Ondine heard the door snap shut behind her. She continued on to the windows and stared out at the beautiful falling snow, aware that he watched her.
“Where the hell have you been?” he snapped out.
She turned, negligently slipping from her fur and allowing it to fall upon the window seat.
“Many places, Uncle, among them hell itself, I do believe,” she replied casually.
Eyeing her warily, he strode across the room to where a score of bottles, various wines and var
ious ports, were kept within a recess of the wall. He stared at her while he poured himself a shot, drank it, then poured another.
He seemed to find a grip on himself. He shoved back the chair to his desk and sat in it, waving an arm for her to sit.
“Don’t be uppity with me, Niece,” he warned her narrowly. “I have it in my power to snap my fingers, call my men, and have you hauled off to the Tower. I have, at my disposal, proof positive that you conspired with your father to assassinate the king.”
Ondine started to laugh. “Oh, come, Uncle! We’re alone! Who is this act for? We both know that neither my father nor I conspired to kill the king! You, Uncle, rather, conspired to steal my father’s place and property.”
He rose, smiling then with the cruel curve to his narrow lips. He poured her a small glass of his port and brought it to her, not batting an eye as he stared into hers.
“Ondine, I have felt the majority of my life that a good switching would have done you incalculable good. You are a fool. If you lived, you should have preserved your life. You were a fool to come back here. You may talk yourself blue, you little bitch, but you’ll not change what appearances are. Your father died in his pathetic attempt to kill the king. We, your family, live out of favor because of it. The king is aware that I have documentation that proves your complicity. He knows, too, that doting uncle as I am, I am loathe to bring this forward. Charles has a softness for women, Ondine. Especially young, beautiful ones—led to wayward actions by their misguided elders.”
He paused for a moment, calm now, pouring more port and lifting his glass to clink against hers.
“You had your chance, Ondine. Marriage to Raoul. This house united. But you spumed my son. It will cost you your life. You know that I cannot let you live.”
Her heart was thudding madly. She smiled and drained her port, hoping the fiery liquid would give her courage.
“Will you slay me, here, then, in your study? I think that the servants would definitely talk!”
She smiled vaguely and walked past him, idly thumbing the accounts that lay on the desk. Then she swirled around to him again. “I remind you, Uncle, that while I do live, I am the Duchess of Rochester.”
“But I am your legal guardian, until your twenty-first birthday. Two more years, Ondine. Are you so anxious, then, for the Tower and the headsman’s ax?”
She came around, seating herself at the desk, changing their position, and smiling most sweetly.
“Nay, Uncle, I am not eager for death. And that is why I have returned.”
He went still for a moment, then came to the desk, planting his hands upon it while he leaned close to her, watching her for some trickery.
“You mean to marry Raoul?” he demanded thickly.
“That was the arrangement you proposed all along, was it not? If I marry Raoul, this ‘proof you propose to present to the king will disappear. That is correct, is it not?”
There was a sharp rap at the door before he could answer her. “Who is it!” William thundered out impatiently.
“Raoul.”
William emitted some sound and came to the door, ushering his son inside, then quickly closing the door behind him. Raoul did not even glance at his father, but strode to the desk, staring at Ondine.
He was very much like his father: tall and slim, dark haired and complected, mahogany eyed. He might have been a very handsome man, were it not for the sly cast to his features, a look of cruelty not unlike William’s, and understandably so, for it was the father who had bred avarice into the son. He had been using the family fortune well, Ondine observed, for his pants were of the softest fawn, his shirt was thickly laced at collar and sleeves, and his surcoat was of the richest brocade.
He stared at her as the others had done; disbelieving her presence, amazed to see her so. He reached out to touch her hair, a free cascade that fell down the velvet softness of her gown in a crescendo of sun and fire, and the expression in his eyes changed completely, frighteningly so, for she saw in it a lust that made her blood run cold. She almost cried out at his lightest touch, one that merely assured him she was real and no mirage.
“You are back!” he said.
She was glad that the desk separated them. Once he had been her friend, a surly one at times, but a companion of youth. She had not known until that terrible day at court that he had meant to possess her and all that was hers at any cost.
“Aye, she’s back,” William said crossly from behind him. “And showing no signs of wear!” William had lost his sense of amazement at her appearance and felt no qualms about accosting her. He strode around the desk, catching her chin in his hand, twisting her face to his none too gently, and staring deeply into her eyes.
“You come in even richer apparel, my dear, than that in which you left us. I repeat, where have you been?”
“Uncle,” she said softly, with all the regal dignity she could muster when she chose, “do not touch me. I have come to deal, and that you should keep your bloodstained hands from me is my first demand.”
He laughed, shortly, with little humor, but he released her, seeming oddly disconcerted despite his bluster. “Girl, to live you will marry Raoul, and I assure you, as his wife, you’ll give yourself no airs!”.
She lowered her eyes, wishing she might tell him she would be instantly and violently ill if it ever came to the point that she should share a bed with Raoul. Always, always, she would see her father’s blood upon both their hands!
But that was not something she could say now. She kept her eyes lowered then, afraid that she would give herself away.
“Uncle, I am not yet his wife. And when I am—” She shuddered inwardly. Oh, she despised them both! But she must carefully play this game. “It will be his touch, and his alone, that I endure. Until that moment, I demand that I be left in peace!”
“You demand—!” Raoul snapped in a whirl of fury, but his father pushed past him, planting his hands upon the desk once again.
“You demand, Ondine?” he asked softly. “You have no demands! You have come here—given yourself into my hands! It is at my whim whether you live or die, and you still think to speak to me as some crystal-pure princess! I will make the demands, Ondine, and you will jump to the tune of my voice.”
She leaned back sedately in the chair, eyeing them both most serenely, though her heart continued to plague her with its erratic beat. “Raoul!” she said softly. “We are not, as yet, wed. And until we are, I do have demands!”
He did not touch her, but he came so close that he well might have done so, and it was all that she could do not to shrink away in fear, for he bore no resemblance than whatsoever to the childhood companion she had once known. She wondered at the things she saw in his dark eyes, rage, frustration, greed—and even a certain pain, something that might have been coupled with loss. She wondered, too, if at some time he might have really cared for her, and if that caring had twisted to something more deadly.
“Cousin, I see your feelings for me, yet I care not what they are. Scream if you will when I touch you, still I will do so. Most pleasantly, my dear love, God has made it that you maintain your beauty, despite your mouth. It will give me the greatest pleasure in the world to mold you into a good wife—to break you, Ondine. And don’t delude yourself, sweet innocent. Tis more than possible that I can also turn you into the most ardent of lovers. I want you, Ondine. Let it suffice at that I want you, and I want the land.
That last I shall have one way or another. The other, well, it is by your choice. My kiss, or that of the ax.”
She pushed the chair away, rising as calmly as she could to escape them both. She tried to keep her fingers from shaking as she poured herself another badly needed drink.
“It is not completely my choice,” she said, her back to them both. “We must see if an agreement can be reached.”
“Agreement!” William thundered, coming to a red-faced rage again. “I remind you: I hold the cards—”
“Let’s hear her out, Fathe
r,” Raoul said smoothly with a tinge of humor to his voice. “Don’t you wish your victory complete? None could wrest the title or the land from us—ever!—if she were to be my wife!”
So! Ondine thought, quickly lowering her eyes. They were afraid! There were cracks in this ploy of theirs, and it seemed that even her uncle would rather have her alive than dead. It was true, a marriage would secure the claim.
“Duchess!” Raoul sneered nastily, bowing to her. “Let us hear your demands.”
She spun around, uplifted by the port—and the added faith that she could play for time.
“One month.”
“One month?” William queried warily.
“One month. I will marry Raoul one month from today. In that time he will not touch me; nor shall you. I will live here again as is my right and—accustom myself to the future.”
“And why,” William asked, “should I give you any time at all?”
“Because, if you do not, I will scream ‘traitor’ all the way down the aisle. I will tell the servants, I will shout to anyone that I see, that you were the ones to attempt to kill the king. I might well reach the Tower, but it will not be silently, I do assure you! The servants here, they loved my father well. Give them but a chance, and they will all be surly and suspicious. Give me the time I ask, and I will keep silent, and perhaps”—she sighed, then cast Raoul a hesitant smile—“perhaps we might consider it a normal betrothal time, in which two people come to know one another before their nuptials.”
Ah, how quickly Raoul took the bait! She might almost have pitied him for the hope that leapt into his eyes, except that it was true, she would never forget the blood that stained his hands.
“A month, then,” he said huskily, stepping forward.
But his father waylaid him, pointing a finger upon Ondine’s breast, despite her demand that she not be touched.
“Not so fast, Raoul! You all but drool, yet you do not know the facts. I want to know, Ondine, where you have been all this time!”
She sighed once again, very wearily. “I told you, Uncle, many places. I hid with thieves in the forest for a while. I—I found work in one of the north country manors—”
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