by Jane Feather
“Partnership,” he murmured against her mouth. “In this and in everything, Theo. Join with me, and I promise I’ll show you a landscape you wouldn’t believe existed.” His fingers parted her, opened her, moved within her, and Theo heard her own ecstatic cry shivering in the moonlight.
He held her against him until strength returned to her limbs and her breathing slowed. He ran his flat palm over her mouth, and her own scent and taste was on his skin. Then, smiling, he tilted her chin. “Are you willing to renegotiate, cousin?”
Theo nodded slowly. In this strange half world of rose-scented moonlight, when she no longer seemed to know exactly who she was, when all the tumbling confusion and distress of the last days receded into the mists of fatigue, it was a decision that seemed to make itself … a decision that now seemed inevitable.
“Partnership?” His voice was low and intense, his thumb caressing her mouth, his eyes smoky with passion.
She could partner this man. They were alike in so many ways. Perhaps that was what she’d been resisting, what had frightened her with its power. “Partnership,” she agreed in a low voice.
Triumph and a sweet wave of relief surged through him. He’d snatched victory from the jaws of defeat. “Good,” he murmured with quiet satisfaction.
He gathered her to him again and kissed her, this time with a gentleness that startled and delighted her as much as the earlier fierceness.
And then he released her, putting her away from him, wrapping her cloak around her. “You must go to bed now, Theo. We’ll talk to your mother in the morning.”
She allowed him to escort her back to the house and up to her room, to remove her cloak, to tuck her into bed as if she were an exhausted Rosie.
“Sleep,” he said softly, kissing her brow.
And she did.
“THEO … THEO, LOVE, are you awake? It’s gone nine.” Clarissa’s voice from the doorway brought her sister swimming up from the depths of a black and dreamless sleep.
She opened her eyes, stretched, and yawned. “Is it really that late?”
“Yes, and you went to bed so early.” Clarissa came into the room, an anxious frown between her eyes. “Emily and I wanted to come to you last evening, but Mama wouldn’t permit it.” She sat on the edge of the bed, regarding her sister with the same anxious frown. “Are you feeling quite well?”
“Yes, of course.” Theo sat up, blinking the sleep from her eyes. “I feel a bit as if someone hit me over the head with an ax, but … Oh, God …” She stared at her sister as memory flooded back. No wonder she’d slept so late; it had been almost three before she’d gone to bed … been put to bed.
“What is it?”
Theo combed her hands through her hair, tugging at the tangles. “I believe I said I’d marry Stoneridge,” she announced slowly. “Clarry, I must have been mad.”
“Oh, Theo, are you all right?” Emily spoke from the door before Clarissa could respond to Theo’s startling statement.
“I don’t think I can be,” Theo said. “I’m heading for Bedlam. Oh, God!” She fell back on the bed and pulled the covers over her face. “Tell me it didn’t happen.”
“What didn’t happen?”
“She agreed to marry Stoneridge,” Clarissa informed her elder sister with a grin.
“Oh, I am glad,” Emily said with heartfelt warmth. “He’s such a nice man, Theo. I’m sure you’ll suit … and you won’t have to leave the manor now.”
Theo flicked the covers from her face and said vigorously, “Stoneridge is not a nice man…. He’s many things, but nice is not one of them.”
Clarissa nodded. “Yes, I agree. It’s too … too sloppy a word to describe him.”
“Well, forgive me,” Emily said with some asperity. “I don’t have your linguistic precision, clearly. Anyway, I like him, and so does Mama.”
“But I don’t,” Theo wailed. “I detest him.”
“But you can’t,” Clarissa said practically. “You wouldn’t agree to marry a man you detested.”
“Oh, you don’t know how persuasive he can be,” Theo said bitterly. Those moments in the rose arbor were embarrassingly vivid, his hands on her, inside her. Dear God, how had she ever let it happen? But she hadn’t let it, It had just happened.
“Well, it’s understandable that you’d have cold feet,” Emily said with the brisk wisdom of one who’d been there before. “When Edward and I agreed to marry, I felt sick with nerves for days … worrying whether I was doing the right thing.”
“Edward is not Stoneridge,” Theo pointed out. “Edward is a nice man.” She pushed aside the covers and got to her feet. “I’ll have to tell him I made a mistake.”
“Theo, you can’t possibly do that!” Emily was genuinely shocked. “That’s just like a common jilt … a flirt … Mama would never permit it.”
“Mama wouldn’t expect me to marry a man I loathed just because of an indiscreet moment,” Theo stated.
“An indiscreet moment?” Clarissa inquired, her eyes alight with curiosity. “What happened?”
Theo felt herself blushing. “Nothing … it was nothing.”
“Oh, come on, Theo. What happened? I’d dearly love to have an indiscreet moment.”
Clarissa on the track of truth was like a terrier with a rat.
“I expect Theo means that the earl kissed her,” Emily said with the same knowledgeable air as before. “It’s perfectly proper between engaged couples…. It’s not at all indiscreet.”
“But perhaps Theo means the earl kissed her before they became engaged,” Clarissa said with a gleam in her eye. “Now, that would be indiscreet, wouldn’t it?”
“Oh, be quiet, both of you!” Theo pulled off her nightgown and went to the dresser, bending to splash cold water on her face.
“Well, did he?” persisted Clarissa.
“If you must know, he did a great deal more than that,” she said, her voice muffled by the towel as she dried her face. “Theo!” exclaimed Emily.
“What did he do?” demanded Clarissa, regarding her sister’s naked body with a new interest.
“I’m not saying.” Hastily, Theo grabbed her chemise and pulled it over her head.
“Well, of course the earl is quite old,” Emily observed judiciously. “A lot older than you, and much more worldly, I’m sure.”
“Well, he would be—he was a soldier,” put in Clarissa. “But so is Edward.”
“And I’ll lay odds Edward’s a lot more worldly now than he used to be,” Theo said, glad to turn the spotlight away from herself. She rummaged through the armoire for a dress … something as plain as she could find. When she told Stoneridge she’d made a mistake, she didn’t want him to remember what had led to the mistake. “Have you told Mama yet?”
“No … it only happened a few hours ago. Everyone was asleep.”
“You had an assignation in the middle of the night?”
“Not exactly…. It wasn’t an assignation … it was an accident.” She pulled a hairbrush through her hair before deftly plaiting it. “In fact, this whole damn business has been one mistake after another.”
“That’s a bad word, Theo.”
The three sisters whirled to the door. “Rosie, you really must learn not to creep up on people,” Clarissa scolded. “I wasn’t. What’s a jilt?”
“How long have you been hiding there?” Theo demanded, her mind racing backward, trying to remember what they’d been saying. It definitely hadn’t been suitable for the child’s ears.
“I wasn’t hiding. I was just standing here,” Rosie protested. “Is anyone going to come and catch butterflies with me?” She flourished the white net she held.
“No, not at the moment,” Emily responded distractedly. Like Theo, she was trying to remember exactly what they’d said.
Rosie came into the room, hitching herself onto the bed. “So what’s a jilt? Is Theo going to marry the earl?”
“One of these days those big ears of yours are going to get you into deep trouble,” Theo
threatened, scowling fiercely at her little sister.
“Is this a private party, or can anyone join in?” Elinor appeared smiling in the open doorway. “I was wondering why I was breakfasting alone. How are you feeling, Theo, dear?”
“I haven’t been ill, Mama,” Theo said.
“No, she’s going to be a jilt,” Rosie said. “But they won’t tell me what that is…. Oh, and she’s going to marry the earl.”
Her elder sisters sighed; their mother frowned. “Theo isn’t marrying anyone, child, without my permission. And since there’s been no discussion in my hearing on the subject, you may assume you misheard. Is that understood?”
“Yes, Mama.” Chastened, Rosie slipped off the bed. “I just wanted someone to catch butterflies with me.”
“Off with you.” Her mother shooed her out the door before turning to the others. “Clarissa, Emily, I’d like to talk to Theo in private.” The two exchanged a quick look with Theo and made themselves scarce, closing the door behind them.
Elinor sat on the window seat, regarding Theo gravely. “Now, perhaps you’d like to tell me what’s going on.”
Theo sighed and flopped onto the bed. “It’s a mess, Mama….”
Elinor received a greatly edited version of the previous night’s events, but if she guessed at the missing pieces, she gave no indication.
“So in the cold light of day you’ve changed your mind?”
“Yes,” Theo said baldly.
“Then you’d best explain that to the earl with all dispatch,” Elinor said, rising to her feet. “It’s a most unpleasant thing to do to anyone under any circumstances, and you owe it to Stoneridge not to leave him in ignorance of the true state of your regard another instant.”
“You’re vexed,” Theo stated.
Her mother turned at the door. “I simply wish that you had managed things with more principle, Theo. To agree to marry a man in one breath and withdraw it in the next smacks of an indelicacy that I find hard to accept in one of my daughters. I’m not going to imagine what went on between you and the earl last night, but if it gave him permission to believe you held certain feelings for him, I trust you will find it very uncomfortable to disabuse him.”
She went out, leaving Theo ready to weep with frustration. Her mother had put her finger on the problem with disturbing accuracy…. And why was Elinor so set on this match? Theo was in no doubt that her mother was on the earl’s side and had been from the first minute.
So it was going to be uncomfortable telling him. But better to endure even excruciating embarrassment for a few minutes than a lifetime of misery. Her face set, she went downstairs in search of Stoneridge.
Foster hadn’t seen his lordship. He didn’t believe he’d breakfasted as yet, although it was nearly ten o’clock, and his lordship was known to be an early riser.
Puzzled, Theo went back upstairs, pausing outside the closed door to the earl’s bedroom. It opened as she stood there in frowning indecision, her hand half-lifted to knock.
Henry came out, closing it softly behind him. “Can I be of assistance, Lady Theo?”
“His lordship …,” she said. “I need to speak with him urgently. Could you ask him to spare me a moment?”
“His lordship is indisposed, Lady Theo,” Henry said. He’d known the worst the moment he’d entered the earl’s bedchamber at sunrise. As he’d moved to open the curtains in his customary fashion, a thread of voice had spoken from the darkness of the bed curtains: “No light, Henry.” It would be many hours before the Earl of Stoneridge was fit to talk with anyone.
“Indisposed?” Theo blinked in surprise. Men didn’t become indisposed … at least not strong, powerful men like Stoneridge. Indisposition was for gouty old men like her grandfather.
“That is so, Lady Theo,” Henry reiterated, politely but firmly indicating that he wasn’t about to expand on the statement. “If you’ll excuse me.” He bowed and slid past her toward the stairs.
Theo stared at the closed door. What abominable timing! Why couldn’t he have become indisposed … or whatever it was … an hour or two later?
She went downstairs to the breakfast parlor to discuss the earl’s puzzling condition with her mother and sisters.
Stoneridge lay in the merciful dimness, fighting the nausea that increased with each knife of pain slicing through the right side of his head. Retching exacerbated the pain to an intolerable level, so that if he had the strength, he would scream, would bang his head against the bedpost—anything to divert the agony. But already the insidious weakness was in his limbs, even though they could find no rest, and the debilitation would get worse until uncontrollable tears would squeeze between his eyelids.
The door opened and Henry padded softly to the bed. “Will you take some laudanum, my lord?”
“I’ll never keep it down,” Sylvester said. It worked only if he could take it the minute the warning signs appeared, but this morning he’d awakened, as so often happened, when the attack was well established, and there was nothing now that he could do except endure.
“Lady Theo wished to speak with you, sir,” Henry said, laying a cloth soaked in lavender water over his temples. “She said it was urgent.”
Sylvester lay still; for a second the throbbing eased. He knew it merely heralded renewed violence but was pathetically grateful for the tiny respite. Why would Theo need to speak to him urgently? Second thoughts?
The pain overwhelmed him in a throbbing wave, and he moaned, grabbing for the bowl beside the bed, retching in desperate agony as the pain pierced his skull as if nails were being driven through the bone with a hammer.
Henry held the bowl, it was all he could do. And when it was over, he wiped his lordship’s gray face, offering a sip of water. Sylvester lay still, trying to concentrate.
“Henry, I want you to ride to London immediately.”
“To London, my lord?” The man’s surprise was clear in his voice.
“Deliver an announcement to the Gazette. It must be there tonight so that it can appear tomorrow.”
He held the pain down, ignored it, his hand reaching to grip Henry’s with convulsive pressure. “Go immediately.”
“But I can’t leave you, sir.”
“Yes, you can…. Just tell Foster no one … no one … is to come into this room unless I ring. Now fetch paper and pencil, I’ll tell you what to say.”
“Very well, my lord.” Henry fetched the required items. Arguing would only make matters worse.
Sylvester endured through a fresh wave of agony, and then, his voice a mere thread, dictated: “The Earl of Stoneridge is honored to announce his engagement to Lady Theodora Belmont of Stoneridge Manor, daughter of the late Viscount Belmont and Elinor, Lady Belmont.” He waved a hand in weak dismissal. “That will have to do. See to it, Henry. And bring a copy of the Gazette back with you in the morning.”
“You’ll be all right, my lord?” The valet still hesitated.
“No, man, of course I won’t. But I’ll live. Just do it!”
“Aye, sir.” Henry left without further protest, delivering his lordship’s orders to Foster. Ten minutes later he was riding toward the London road, the announcement of the earl’s engagement to his distant cousin safely tucked into his breast pocket.
Theo spent the rest of the day close to the house, waiting for the earl to reappear. Her mother refused to discuss the issue, and her elder sisters wanted to talk about it ad infinitum, and she found both attitudes a sore trial, since they merely highlighted her own confusion. She paced the corridor outside the earl’s closed door, questioned Foster twice as to Henry’s exact instructions, and tried to imagine what could have felled a man like Sylvester Gilbraith so suddenly and so completely.
It didn’t occur to her to wonder where Henry had gone. The man was not yet part of the household, and his comings and goings were of little concern.
By evening she was feeling desperate. With each hour that passed, the engagement seemed to become more of a fact and less of a fl
oating proposition. Every hour that Sylvester continued to believe they were to be married made disabusing him more and more difficult—not to mention unprincipled and hurtful.
She contemplated writing him a note and slipping it under the door but dismissed that idea as the act of a coward. She owed him a face-to-face explanation.
But what was the explanation? She didn’t like him? She didn’t want to marry anyone? At least not yet? She couldn’t contemplate living her life with a Gilbraith? She was afraid of him?
There was some truth in all of that, but most important, she was afraid of him … of what happened to her when she was with him. She was afraid of losing power, of losing control over herself and her world. And if she lost it, Sylvester Gilbraith would take it. He would immerse her in that turbulent whirlpool of emotions and sensations into which so far she’d only dipped her toes. Part of her clamored for that immersion, and part of her was terrified of its consequences.
She went to bed with nothing resolved, to spend the night tossing and turning in a ferment of indecision—one minute clear and determined, her speech prepared, firm, rational, kind, and sympathetic—and the next minute the words lost themselves in confusion as she thought of what marriage to Sylvester Gilbraith could bring her. Stoneridge Manor and the estate, certainly, but more than that, much more than that. He’d awakened passion, shown her a side of herself she hadn’t known, taken her to the brink of a sensual landscape she was impatient to explore.
If Theo had seen the object of her fear and confusion during the long, dreadful hours of the night, she might have felt less fearful.
The man was a husk, immersed in pain, blind to anything but the dehumanizing agony. He was swallowing laudanum now in great gulps, no longer rational enough to know it would do no good until the hideous nausea left him. Perhaps a little would stay down, enough to take the edge off, even for a few minutes. He knew he was crying, that ugly animal moans emerged without volition from his lips, but he was too debilitated to keep silent, thankful only that there was no one to witness his shameful weakness. He gave no thought now to his marriage, to Henry’s errand, to Theo, or to what action she might be considering. He begged only for surcease.