The Devil and Drusilla
Page 27
‘I don’t think so,’ she said as her butler entered with the welcome news that Lord Devenish had arrived and wished to know whether madam would receive him.
‘What luck,’ exclaimed Giles eagerly. ‘Of course she will. Send him in at once. He’s sure to have news about the fire. What a pity I was stuck in bed that night and couldn’t ride out to see it. Jack Clifton did…’
‘Hush, Giles, don’t pester him about it when he comes in.’
The butler coughed. ‘Ahem, madam. M’lord wishes to speak to you alone—to begin with, he said.’
Giles’s face fell. ‘What can he have to say to you that I can’t hear? Oh, well, if that is what he wishes. But don’t forget to ask him about the fire, Dru, before he goes.’
Drusilla rose and waited for Hal to come in, her heart beating furiously. He had not forgotten her, and by asking to speak to her alone she could guess what he was about to say to her.
Apart from his face showing the lines of recent strain he was his usual immaculate and calm self. No one seeing him could have thought that he could ever resemble the ragged vagabond she had met on the road to Tresham.
She would not have thought him either calm or immaculate if she had seen him arguing with Rob and the doctor earlier that day. He had collapsed on rising the morning after his return home and Rob had sent for the doctor, overruling all of his protestations.
The doctor had condemned him to remain in bed, and, again, over his protests, Rob had kept him there by the simple expedient of locking him in his room for the next two days.
He had felt too weak to do more than grumble at them both, but on the third day he felt himself recovered and announced his intention of rising and going to Lyford House as soon as he had finished breakfast.
‘That you won’t!’ Rob was downright. ‘Some light exercise today and perhaps an outing tomorrow…’
He got no further. Devenish walked over to him, caught his right arm in a painful wrestler’s lock, and announced civilly, ‘Say that again, Rob, and I’ll do you a mischief.’
The doctor threw up his hands. ‘Pray do not over-exert yourself, m’lord. You might harm yourself severely.’
‘Oh, I’ll not do that,’ Devenish assured him cheerfully. ‘No over-exertion is ever needed with this grip. And the harm will be all Rob’s and not mine.’
‘I see that you are quite recovered,’ Rob ground out. ‘Have it your way, and don’t blame me if you fall off your horse before you reach Lyford.’
‘Be sure the groom will pick me up if I do, so no need for you to worry.’
He released Rob and said, ‘Now send my valet to me. For once I would value his assistance in dressing me.’
None of this showed as he bowed to Drusilla—other than a self-satisfied gleam in his eye which puzzled her a little.
‘You are in looks, Mrs Faulkner. Night riding in boy’s clothes obviously suits you.’
‘Thank you, m’lord. And spending a few days in Marsham Abbey’s gaol before undertaking a long walk home has done wonders for you, too.’
They both began to laugh together. ‘Why did I never meet you before, Drusilla? You are quite unlike any of the women I have encountered since I reached my majority.’
‘May I again return the compliment, m’lord. You are quite unlike all of the men I had ever been acquainted with before you arrived at Tresham Hall.’
‘Ah, madam, you relieve me, and make my task easier. Proposing is something I have never done before and I have no wish to make a botch of it. Pray sit, so that I may kneel before you and take your hand while I do so. I believe that is the proper form.’
Eyes alight, Drusilla did as he bid her. She spread the narrow skirts of her dress about her, placed her hands demurely in her lap—and looked up at him worshipfully.
His lips twitched. ‘Minx,’ he told her as he went down on one knee, regardless of his tight white breeches. ‘How can I be serious when you look at me like that. Stop it at once or I shall fall upon you—you are temptation itself in this mood.’
She closed her eyes, lifted her head, opened them again and said, ‘Better?’
‘No, not at all. I preferred you the other way, but unfortunately, it deprived me of sense. Now we must both be serious. My dear Mrs Faulkner, Drusilla if I may so call you, it is my dearest wish that you will accept my hand in marriage and make me the happiest man in England. Pray, will you marry me, your most faithful and humble servant?’
‘Yes,’ she said simply.
‘Yes, simply yes, after all my eloquence? Drusilla, my heart’s delight, cease to tease me. I can scarcely hope that you love me as much as I love you…have loved you almost from the moment that we met…’
She put a gentle hand over his mouth to silence him. ‘Oh, Hal, I love you so much I can scarcely speak, let alone compose a serenade to my happiness in accepting you. Rest assured that to be with you deprives me of sense. I had not known that I could feel so much for another being. My feelings for poor Jeremy were on quite another plane. When Rob told me that he thought that some calamity had overcome you, I nearly ran mad.
‘That is the truth—does it satisfy you, sir?’
He kissed the palm of the hand she had placed over his mouth before saying hoarsely. ‘Promise that you will always tease me and bring me down to earth. You have taught me to love again. My grandfather taught me only how to hate and to dominate. Until I met you I had forgotten how to love as I once loved my mother and my little brother who, because I could not earn enough to feed my mother, died of starvation when her milk dried up.
‘I have been raging against heaven ever since, but no more, I promise you. That is over—and if I backslide you must stop me. Whilst I was a prisoner at Marsham I could only think and dream of you, and what we would do together when I escaped. It was always when, never if. I took you to Venice in my dreams and will take you there in reality. And Tresham shall be our home, for it is a fine place to bring up children…and for you to teach me to be kind.’
Drusilla leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek. Truly, for the moment that would have to suffice, but the desire to be one with him was stronger than ever since he had told her a little of himself.
‘How strange,’ she said, as he rose to sit by her, and take her in his arms. ‘In my dreams while you were captive I was in Venice with you. I have never been there, only seen engravings of it, but in my dream it was coloured, and…’
‘And I was loving you—like this,’ he said.
They were lost to the world, only knowing one another when Giles came in.
‘So that’s what you’re at,’ he exclaimed as they sprang apart, Drusilla rosy-cheeked and Devenish with colour in his face for the first time since he had escaped from Marsham. ‘I might have guessed. You are going to make an honest woman of her, Devenish, I trust, for I should hate to call you out. You’d be sure to shoot me, or run me through—or something—and I shouldn’t like that at all. Oh, and by the by, can you tell me anything about the fire?’
‘Giles!’ exclaimed Drusilla.
And, ‘Dear boy, I shall tell you anything you wish—if you will only go away—immediately,’ drawled Devenish.
‘Certainly—but I shall hold you to that promise.’
‘And now to work, or rather play,’ Devenish said when the door had closed behind Giles. He took Drusilla into his arms again where she fitted so sweetly that it was a good thing, she afterwards said, that she was there for life.
The Devil never visited Surrey again. Hal took Drusilla to Venice for their honeymoon and they walked hand in hand by the Grand Canal. Later the kind grass grew over the ruins of Marsham Abbey and Hal and Drusilla watched their children playing around them in the gardens of Tresham Hall. At night, safe in Drusilla’s loving arms, Hal’s unhappy dreams of the past were banished forever.
ISBN: 978-1-4268-2065-6
THE DEVIL AND DRUSILLA
Copyright © 1998 by Paula Marshall
First North American Publication 2008
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