Lovesong

by Valerie Sherwood

  She knew that Rye Evistock had gained them entry into all these great houses during Christmastide. But Rye was only here for the holidays—he lived in Barbados or some such place. And who was to know whether he would drop the Colonial minx or not, once he got what he wanted? For to Nan Tarbell’s earthy turn of mind, men were interested in only one thing and once they got that, they would like as not cast you aside. And if he did cast the girl aside and went back to wherever he came from, come summer would the Tarbells be as popular with the county gentry as they had been at Christmastide? Would they still be invited everywhere to everything? Or would they be included only in those large crushes where people hardly knew one another?

  Pondering that, Nan had been surprised to see Rye and Carolina leave the house and go into the maze. Her window looked straight down upon the maze—indeed it was a window from which the former master of the house had often chuckled at his bewildered guests’ efforts to find their way out of this clever labyrinth of boxwood. She watched them go into the center of the maze and stand conversing a moment—the girl would catch her death out in the snow without a cloak! And then in shock she saw Rye open a purse and pour glittering gold into Carolina’s hands.

  Money—he was paying the wench! For services rendered? Nan reeled with the shock of it. All week long she had watched with fury as Carolina flirted with Rye. They seemed to be constantly disappearing, leaving Reba somewhere else. She had more than half expected a betrothal announcement. And now he was giving her gold!

  She tried to regain her composure as behind her the maidservant trying to mend her torn train said anxiously, “If you could hold still but a moment—when you jerked away from me just now, you tore my needle from my hand and now I must search for it.”

  Had she been looking up, the maidservant would have been appalled by the expression on her mistress’s face—but she did not; her busy fingers were searching for the needle in the thick green Aubusson carpet.

  Carolina felt shame scorch her face as the golden coins cascaded down into her cupped palms. “I am sorry for what I thought of you,” she whispered, and he nearly melted at her tone.

  Then he reminded himself that she was but toying with him, that she was another man’s woman, had been all along, that—most galling thought of all—it was not even his personal charm that had enticed her to do this. She was casually making a mockery of him to accommodate a friend.

  “And this,” he said—and he could not keep the raw emotion out of his voice, “was the toll I intended to take of you for saving your life and restoring to you your winnings.”

  He swooped down and pressed his lips upon her upturned mouth. He had intended it to be a savage kiss but her mouth was so soft and warm and tremulous that his own lips moved caressingly, turned sideways, and involuntarily his arms went round her, cradled her.

  Carolina, who all week long with maidenly modesty had avoided kissing him—it was bad enough to be lying with her eyes and her voice, she had felt, without adding the lie of caresses—now felt a flame of feeling consuming her. Like the crackle of a fire on the hearth it seemed to heat her skin and ripple along her feminine torso—and melt her resolve. The strength of his sinewy body was real and reassuring, the grip of his long arms warm and comforting and his roving mouth promised endless delights.

  Her slender form was pressed close against his, her soft breasts in the thin velvet bodice tingling against his velvet coat. Beneath that coat she could feel the strong rhythmic beating of his heart.

  She felt seared by large emotions—and dizzy, as if her senses were melting. The world was slipping away. There was only Rye—and he was everything. Her fingers released the gold, and the jingling coins fell in a shining shower to the icy trampled path. Her soft arms stole around his neck, pulling his head down further. And now she was kissing him back, kissing him with all the fiery fervor that was in her.

  His arms tightened and he bent her backward, deliberately probing past her lips with his tongue, exploring her mouth thoroughly and impudently—and feeling the hot breath gasp in her throat as she quivered. And at the same time his hand had found its way inside her bodice, his fingers were working their way inside her lacy chemise and now he was stroking her tingling naked breast.

  She had forgot the world. She moaned softly in his arms. Her body sagged against him in surrender. She would not, could not lose him. All through the Christmas season she had been dreading this moment, fighting it, and now that it had burst upon her she was wrapped in splendor.

  She would tell him she loved him, she would show him she loved him, she would make him understand— about Thomas, about everything, she would go with him to Barbados or the moon, she was his!

  She was gasping, unable to speak for the searing emotions that had held her in thrall, when Rye lifted his head. He kept her face pressed against his chest so that she would not see how shaken he was, how haggard his expression. “God, ye’re a hot wench,” he muttered, and there was in his yearning voice the same storm of desire that she herself felt at that moment.

  She opened her mouth to tell him then, to admit that she loved him, to tell him how wrong she had been.

  “Close your eyes,” he instructed as he pushed her from him. “For I’ve one more gift to give you.”

  Carolina did as she was bid. She closed her eyes— and she put her gloved hands over her face to hide the sudden scarlet that she knew was staining her cheeks. For her body in that close embrace had sent him a message—and the message was clear.

  “This will take a little time,” he said. “And you will not open your eyes until I tell you to open them. No, lift your head.”

  She thought he was going to slip some trinket around her neck, something she could treasure. Or perhaps a miniature that she could lift up and smile upon. But what did she care for gifts? The only gift she wanted was the gift of his love and that, she knew triumphantly, was hers already. Oh, she could not wait to tell him how she felt—how, she now realized, she must always have felt—about him. Her heart sang.

  Yet she would play his game to please him, of course she would. She held up her head as instructed. He seemed to be moving around in the snow and she wished he would come back, but her thoughts were so tumultuous, the blood pounded so loudly in her ears that she could not focus on whatever he was doing. She knew only that that deep chest and those warm arms— arms that had been forbidden but that now would enfold her forever—had been withdrawn.

  When Rye spoke again his voice seemed to come from some distance away, on the other side of the hedge.

  “Open your eyes, Carolina,” he commanded harshly. “Did you really think I’d marry you? You’re a hot wench but not a true one. I’ve had dozens of hot wenches and can have dozens more—they come cheap.”

  Her gray eyes snapped open, first in confusion—then in shock. Then they sparkled an indignant silver in the cold moonlight at his tone.

  “How can you say that?” she gasped, turning about to confront him. She had been about to add raggedly, “Don’t you know I love you?” But he was not there. She was standing alone in the center of the snowy maze. Tall walls of snow-encrusted boxwood rose up around her, high above her head. The moon shone pitilessly down, sparkling off the gold coins that had fallen upon the trampled snow. “Rye!” She looked about her in panic. “Don’t leave me here!”

  His voice sounded a little farther off. It was hard— hard enough to shod hooves. “Find your own way out,” drifted back to her.

  Carolina picked up her shirts, and ran in the direction of the sound. “Rye!”

  She thought she could hear the crunch of his boots ahead, striking against an icy portion of the path, and she stopped to listen. “Rye!” But there was no sound except a sudden sighing of the wind through the branches and a sudden fall of snow from one of them that bent the boxwood up ahead.

  She kept going—and suddenly she came up against a dead end where the towering boxwood enclosed her on three sides. No way out here.

  “Rye!”
She was almost sobbing.

  Common sense came back to her. The snow! It would be easy to find her way out, she had only to follow the tracks they had made coming in. She ran along where the snow was beaten down until she came to a place where the paths crossed—and her heart plummeted. The tracks went both ways. And now she remembered the snowy boots. Rye had been out here ahead of her, making tracks in the snow, preparing the maze so she would not easily find her way out.

  He had found out about her deception somehow and he was getting his revenge!

  She turned and stumbled back the way she had come, found herself once again standing by the sun dial in the center of the maze. He would come back to show her the way out, she told herself. He would!

  Below her in the snow lay the forgotten golden coins. It was all the money she had in the world and the sum had doubled and redoubled and doubled again now that it included her winnings at the Star and Garter. She would wait for him here, she told herself resignedly. When his temper had cooled, he would return. And to that end, she bent and picked up one by one, with freezing fingers, all the gold coins that had slipped from them while he kissed her. She slipped some of the coins into her gloves and some into her shoes. Then she tore a lace ruffle from her chemise and wrapped the rest in it and tucked the makeshift purse into one of the panniers at her side.

  From the window above Reba’s mother watched with fascination.

  “Rye!” Carolina called again. And again, hopelessly, “Rye!”

  From a distance, standing outside the maze entrance beside one of the giant oak trees, Rye heard her and his grim mouth took on an even grimmer line. She had led him down a path—and now he had led her down one! Let the lying wench find her own way out!

  From that upstairs window Reba’s mother too heard her call—although it was lost to the merrymakers downstairs for there the sound was obscured by the music and laughter and clinking glasses. And hearing it, Nan Tarbell’s mouth formed as grim a line as Rye’s.

  Down in the center of the maze, turning round and round as she called to him, Carolina realized that—for whatever reason—Rye wasn’t coming back. She must find her own way out or be found frozen here in the snow tomorrow morning. For who was to miss her? Reba was wrapped up in her own affairs and would tumble into bed without coming in to say good night. The servants were new and disorganized. Mistress Tarbell wouldn’t care if she did freeze. And neither . . . apparently ... did Rye.

  The pain of that knowledge cut through her, but her situation was desperate and she tried to put it from her mind.

  Grim and intent and silent now that her life hung on her next moves, she tried to find her way out of the maze. It would take time. She broke sprigs from the boxwood and laid them down across the path to block off every path she had explored that led to a dead end. It was slow work, but she was making progress.

  Outside the maze, standing in the shadow of the big oak, Rye had begun to worry. He had expected her to come out long before this, because he himself knew every turning of that maze so well. He had intended to frighten her, to make her suffer some small part of what he was himself suffering—but he had never intended to let her freeze to death, forgotten in the maze. He was already striding forward to rescue her when he saw her stumble, shivering, from the maze and run toward the house.

  The instant he saw her, he stepped back into the shadows. Gasping in the cold, her teeth chattering, Carolina did not see him. For his resolve, it was just as well. At that moment, had she turned toward him with a woebegone face, he might have melted.

  As it was, he watched her run into the house and his heart froze up again. With never a backward look, he found his horse and rode back to Williston House where he bade his host, who was still up with an attack of the gout, a warm goodbye. Asked whether he would be back soon, he evaded the question, saying vaguely that he had received word from home that must take him back to Colchester this very night. And Sir Kyle had only to look into Rye’s set face to surmise that there had been a lovers’ quarrel at Broadleigh’s Twelfth Night Ball and, wisely, to refrain from inquiring too much into the cause of his guest’s sudden leave taking.

  “Ye’re always welcome here, Rye,” he was told heartily as Sir Kyle—guessing he might not see Rye soon again—wrung his hand.

  Those were the last words he heard in this part of Essex as he headed his horse through the cold night toward Colchester.

  By the time Rye Evistock had reached Colchester, the bright anger that had driven him had become a dull ache. Life, which had long ago dealt him a strange hand of cards, had taken yet another swipe at him. And this time, he supposed, he deserved it for believing in miracles. Like some lovestruck boy, he had believed for a fortnight that his world could change, that he could be lucky at last in love. Worse, he had believed that Carolina Lightfoot could love him.

  He would not be such a fool again, he told himself as he prepared to say his goodbyes to his family. There was a finality as he made those farewells, for in his heart he did not expect to see any of them ever again.

  He had come back to England intending to change his reckless life, to marry an heiress and settle down, become the country gentleman his father had always been—assume the role that was his natural heritage.

  Instead he had met a wayward wench and fallen head over heels in love with her—only to find that she was playing him for a fool.

  Now he straightened his broad shoulders and reminded himself that there had been another girl once. A warm beautiful girl whom he had intended to marry. And while she lived she had been true to him.

  Oddly, he found little comfort in that.

  Before the sun was high he was aboard a fresh horse, saddle bags packed and on his way to London. He would reach the Windward Lass before she sailed. He would leave England behind him. Forever.

  Meantime in London, Lord Thomas Angevine, who had found Northampton boring and had returned to London after a mere three days there, was just turning over in a warm bed when he encountered his latest mistress’s naked thigh.

  “’Tis time I got up, Polly,” he muttered without much conviction. “Your sister may be coming home.”

  “Oh, Thomas,” she said, pouting from her pillow. “You don’t love me or you wouldn’t even think of rising!”

  “I do love you,” he maintained sturdily. And he did, for he had known her but four days and his ardor had not yet had time to cool.

  “But”—she gave him a slanted look in the pale dawn and reached over to slide a caressing hand along his stomach and groin—“I thought there was that schoolgirl . . .”

  “What schoolgirl?” asked Lord Thomas thickly. “No schoolgirl is of any importance to me!” Quick to respond to her seductive impudence, he rolled toward her, buried his face in her cloud of dark hair, found her ruby lips. “Let me assure you, Polly, if ye’ve any doubts at all, that for me there is but one woman and that woman is yourself. I have never loved anyone as I love you at this moment!”

  “Oh, Thomas,” she giggled. “You say that to all the girls!”

  “Never,” he said devoutly. “Never!”

  Lord Thomas was back in London—and back at his old tricks.

  And at Broadleigh, in Essex, the house was settling down after the Twelfth Night Ball—but there was one guest at Broadleigh who would not sleep that night. Carolina had burst in through the side door and raced up to her room in sodden slippers to wrap her freezing body in a blanket and throw herself face down into the big feather bed. Tears streamed down her face.

  She was still shivering uncontrollably, but long after the shivering had stopped her slight figure was wracked with hard dry sobs that would not seem to stop.

  She had lost something precious to her and she knew in her heart that the loss was irrevocable. Rye had left her to die there in the maze. He would never come back.

  And by his going he had left a hole in her life that nothing would ever quite fill.

  In the morning she got up tiredly and took off the wrinkled ice gre
en ballgown. She stared at it as if it were somehow to blame and then she hung it in the big press along with those other gowns of Reba’s that she had been wearing as if they were her own. But she wondered as she pushed last night’s velvet ballgown in among the others if she could ever bear to wear ice green again—for she had worn ice green when she met him and ice green when he went away. . . .

  Wearily, as she dressed to meet the new day, Carolina told herself it was over with Rye—and as she thought about it, she decided she had gotten but what she deserved. Rye must have somehow overheard her brief conversation with Reba last night on the stairs—and what a shock it must have been to him! She felt deeply ashamed of her part in the whole affair. And the worst of it was that she had fallen in love with him—and that was treachery to Thomas, who deserved better!

  It was Thomas she must think of now, for Thomas was her future—and not some dark, too attractive stranger, who had snatched her from a gaming table debacle and made her holidays bright. A stranger who was gone with Twelfth Night just as the holiday season was gone, but who unlike the holidays would not be back come another year.

  As she wandered disconsolately down to breakfast she told herself that she must fight to overcome this ache in her heart, this dull sense of loss that seemed to overshadow everything. She must forget him. And perhaps . . . someday . . . she would.

  She would try to forget him in London.

  But her hostess, she learnt when she came downstairs, had other ideas.

  Nan Tarbell had risen early for she had much on her mind. She swept in as the girls were eating breakfast.

  “Both of you, wait for me in the library after breakfast,” she told them tersely.

  Carolina, who had been pensively regarding her food with downcast eyes, barely heard her. But Reba, who was almost as gloomy as Carolina, although for a different reason, looked up in alarm.