by Лорен Уиллиг
“Chancellor.” Robert nodded in greeting. Being a very grand personage, the Chancellor forbore to respond.
“A bit high in the instep, isn’t he?” Robert said.
“Always,” agreed Charlotte, her eyes glinting a pale, clear green in the icy air. “He utterly refused to play tiddlywinks and he despises having poetry read aloud. But he’s very good at sums.”
Tucking Charlotte’s arm against his side — for warmth, of course — Robert strolled along to the corner of the roof, where two satyrs with furry torsos and cloven hooves leaned precariously over the edge, playing their panpipes for the delectation of those in the gardens below.
“And who are these rascals?”
“My court minstrels, of course,” said Charlotte.
“Of course,” agreed Robert.
Charlotte leaned familiarly against the satyr’s furry arm. “They’re arrant knaves, both of them, but they play beautifully.”
She announced it with such conviction that Robert could almost picture the stone arms flex and the panpipes begin to play.
“You’ve spent a good deal of time up here, haven’t you?” he said. He could picture a miniature Charlotte spinning stories for stone statues and offering them a spot of tea.
Charlotte acknowledged the point with a wry smile. “It was one of the few places where Grandmama couldn’t follow. It was the one place that was wholly my own. And it makes a lovely spot for reading in summer,” she added more prosaically. “I still come up here when the weather is fine.”
Robert slapped his hands against his arms to warm them, his breath making white puffs in the air. “I can see where it might be nice — when the weather is fine.”
Charlotte wrinkled her nose at him. “Such a fuss about a light breeze.” She waved a hand at the sky in a sweeping gesture. “Just look up there. You don’t see stars like that in summer. Can’t you just imagine the Wise Men traveling through the night by the light of those stars?”
Robert suspected it would have been a hell of a lot warmer in Bethlehem. The stars, however, were everything Charlotte had said they were. In the clear, cold air, they looked close enough to pluck from the sky, like silver apples in a mythological goddess’s garden. If one were bold enough or rash enough to take them. His classical education was spotty, but he seemed to remember that those mythical apples always came with a high price.
“But this,” said Charlotte, maneuvering him towards the center of the terrace, where the ornamental pediment surmounting the garden front came to a sharp point, “is the very best part.”
Robert looked around and saw nothing to justify that statement. There were no philosophers, no satyrs, no mythological figures to enliven the view, just stone.
Charlotte poked him in the shoulder. “Not there,” she said. “There.”
Following where she pointed, he looked out over the edge of the roof and found the whole expanse of the gardens arrayed below. Below them stretched patterned parterres and whimsical follies. The topiary capered and posed for their delight; statues raised their arms in graceful arabesque, fighting to be free of their pedestals. At the verge of the garden, the lake glittered with reflected starlight, like gems on a bed of velvet, and the elegant summerhouse watched benevolently over the whole, its white columns stately in the moonlight, like a wise old chaperone settling back while her charges played.
But there was still more. Beyond that, he could see out over the fields and the patches of forest, down the muddy road, clear through to Dovedale village in the valley below, where the windows of the cottages glowed orange with firelight as, in house after house, the denizens of the village conducted their own celebrations for the last day of Christmas. The whole scene lay before them like a Christmas crèche, an entire world in small, the edges sharp and clear and glittering with a dusting of ice. It was a fairy tale kingdom, offered up for the taking. Charlotte’s kingdom, to be precise, and she was offering it to him.
Charlotte tilted her head, eagerly monitoring his reaction. “Isn’t it lovely?”
Her carefully arranged curls had been dragged to one side by her crown and whipped to frizz by the wind. Her cheeks were red and chapped from cold, her lips were bitten, and her nose was starting to drip. Robert had never seen anything lovelier. The starlit lake and perfectly trimmed topiary couldn’t even begin to compete. “It’s perfect,” he said.
It was quite clear that he wasn’t referring to the scenery.
“I am r-rather fond of it,” Charlotte managed. Robert could feel more than see the slight movement as her gloved hand tightened around the ledge of the roof, unconsciously seeking support.
It was a very odd sensation to be so attuned to someone else’s actions that you could divine the movements of her body without sight. In the past, that sort of awareness had only come to him in the presence of enemies, breathing the same breath as the man on the other end of a sword or a pistol, in a contest for one’s life.
Knowing that he was plunging into enemy territory, Robert carefully adjusted her garland, setting it farther back on the crown of her head — that’s right, a nasty little voice in the back of his head whispered, get it out of the way. The voice sounded unpleasantly like Medmenham’s. Robert ignored it. “Your coronet is slipping,” he murmured.
Charlotte looked up at him from under her lashes, eager and uncertain all at once. “It’s made of mistletoe, you know,” she said hopefully, tipping her head back at an angle as old as mistletoe itself.
A tender smile pushed at the corner of Robert’s lips. “Is it? In that case . . .”
His hand traced a path from her garland to her cheek, smoothing her tousled hair out of the way. His conscience gave one last, agitated bleat and went still. It wouldn’t do to ignore tradition, after all. Not at Girdings. What harm was a kiss, after all?
Charlotte’s lashes fluttered down over her eyes. They were touched with gold at the tips, he noticed, inconsequentially, before his own eyes drifted closed and there was nothing but touch. The slide of her hair beneath his fingers, the soft exhalation of her breath in the cold air, the brush of her lips against his, more warming that any number of well-stoked fires. He had meant it to be only a mistletoe kiss, a ceremonial salutation in honor of the season, but perhaps it was the sheer quantity of the mistletoe in the crown that betrayed them, kiss upon kiss multiplying until there was nothing ceremonial about it at all.
Charlotte’s crown jangled forgotten to the stone-flagged floor as she wrapped her arms securely around his neck, kissing him back with kisses that tasted faintly of wine. Above them, the stars whirled in dizzying circles in the perfect night sky and the faint sound of music rose from below like the chime of celestial harps.
They might have stayed that way for hours, drugged by kisses, spell-bound by starlight, if the wind hadn’t defeated them. Beneath the velvet of her dress, Robert could feel Charlotte shivering. He wrapped his arms more firmly around her, drawing her into the shelter of his body. While her dress might be made of a warm fabric, it left crucial areas uncovered. Robert warmed the exposed skin at her collarbone with a kiss and felt her shiver with something other than cold.
“You’re freezing.” For a wonder, he wasn’t. For the first time since returning to England, he felt warm. Too warm. That was the harm in a kiss. “We should get you back inside.”
Charlotte rested her head against his jacket, finding a comfortable hollow beneath his shoulder. “Must we?” she said wistfully. “Magic never fares well in the real world. I’m afraid that once we go downstairs, the enchantment will all fade away.”
“What makes you think it will fade away?” Robert asked, knowing he was flirting with danger. “What if it’s real?”
Charlotte blinked up at him, her voice slightly muffled by his waistcoat. “Do you mean that? Or are you just trying to get me inside so I don’t turn blue?”
Robert tucked a finger under her chin and tilted her face up towards his. “I like you in blue.”
He kissed her before sh
e could point out that he hadn’t answered the question. He kissed her, knowing that it was a knave’s trick, designed to buy time. He kissed her to avoid having to acknowledge that the most frightening answer of all was the true one.
When their lips finally parted, neither showed any inclination to move. Instead, they stood in comfortable silence, Charlotte’s head tucked beneath his chin, looking out over the sleeping gardens with their rose bushes tied up in burlap, over the dry fountains with their frost scarred bottoms laid bare to the elements, over the lake from which all the swans had fled — presumably to avoid being turned into a ducal dinner. In summer, the view must be dazzling. For a moment, he allowed himself to entertain an image of what it would be to stand so in summer, with the flowers blooming below and the fountains sending up their fine spray and the sun reflecting golden off the tips of Charlotte’s eyelashes.
Summer was a very long time away. In the meantime . . . Robert didn’t want to think of the meantime, of Staines and Medmenham, of promises still unfulfilled and dark deeds unpunished.
“We should go in,” he said, brushing a kiss across the top of Charlotte’s head to soften the sentiment.
“I know,” agreed Charlotte, and nestled deeper into his waistcoat.
“We could make a house up on the roof,” Robert suggested, only half jokingly. “And send down baskets for food.”
Reluctantly, Charlotte peeled herself from his side and shook out her skirts. “It would have to be a very long rope. And you would be very cold.”
“Shall we?” said Robert. There was, he noticed, a crease in her cheek from the seam of his coat. He lifted a hand to smooth it away.
Charlotte caught his hand and pressed the curled fingers to her lips. “Let’s.”
For all that it was warmer in the stairwell, he could feel a chill settle upon him as soon as they closed the door to the roof behind them. Charlotte’s hand nestled trustingly in his as they meandered very slowly down the long stair. He could feel the weight of it like a tug at his conscience. Would her hand rest so comfortably in his if she knew for what he really was? If she discovered that he wasn’t at all what she believed him to be, not a Sir Galahad but — well, a man. A man with a cluttered, untidy past and a million minor transgressions to his discredit.
She had hit far too close to the bone at dinner that night, when she asked about his departure from Girdings. He could still hear the clink of coins in his satchel as he had stolen away from Girdings that night, slinking off like a common thief with the four hundred pounds he had needed to purchase his commission as an ensign in the army. His father would have called it “borrowing against his inheritance,” which was probably why Robert preferred to think of it as it was. Stealing. He had spent years trying to sweat out the taint of it by working twice as hard as any other officer in the regiment, volunteering for the most exhausting treks, the most dangerous missions, the most tedious administrative duties. He had been promoted from subaltern to captain on his own merits — his own merits and the backing of Colonel Arbuthnot. It was a pretty sort of punishment that there was no way to make proper amends; the person to whom he would have to pay that initial money back would be himself.
What would Charlotte say if she knew? Would she care? He remembered her praise of that long-ago Lansdowne who had taken such shameless advantage of Sir Walter Raleigh and allowed himself to hope that she might see it in that light, as an expedient to a greater end, unimportant in itself. But even if she saw it through rose-colored glasses, he knew otherwise. He knew what he was and what he had done.
But he didn’t let go.
It was too tempting to hold on to Charlotte’s hand and her vision of what he might be, as though believing hard enough might make it so. He kept the conversation light as they strolled down the narrow stairway, hand in hand, sharing silly stories about nothing in particular and pausing frequently in dark corners. Robert knew he would have to pay the piper sooner or later, but for now, the shadows kept inconvenient realities at bay.
“I should fix my hair,” said Charlotte, dawdling on the first-floor landing, no more eager than he to abandon the shadows. She indicated the way to her rooms with a tilt of her decidedly lopsided coiffure. “And try to make myself presentable.”
Robert followed her into a wide hallway dotted with majestic-looking doors, not as majestic as the state bedrooms on the ground floor, including the gloomy ducal chambers that he currently inhabited, but still far grander than anything to which he had ever aspired. Accustomed by long usage, Charlotte didn’t even seem to notice.
Her sitting room looked just as he would have imagined it, decorated in airy pastels, with papers scattered pell mell on a writing table and books falling open on every available surface. He thought he recognized the battered binding of the book he had seen her reading in the gallery last week. Emmelina? No, Evelina. The memory brought a smile to his lips.
“Shall I wait for you?” he asked.
Charlotte clung to his hand as though she were going to agree, and then reluctantly released it. “It would probably be best if we went back separately. Just so that people don’t talk.”
She looked at him so expectantly that Robert wondered if he was supposed to argue with her and insist on not leaving her side, or whatever else it was that a proper knight errant would be expected to do. But what she said made sound sense. They had undoubtedly been missed by now. Tongues would have begun wagging, dowagers would be whispering behind their fans. Charlotte knew this world far better than he.
“All right,” Robert said, planting both hands on her shoulders and drawing her close for one last kiss. “I bow to your superior judgment.”
“The ballroom?” she said.
“I get the next dance,” said Robert. “Whatever it may be.”
This time, he had clearly said the right thing. Charlotte beamed at him. “It’s a promise.”
With a flurry of flounces, she flung her arms around his neck for one more last, absolutely the last, very last kiss. It turned into an almost the very last kiss, instead.
“The ballroom,” Charlotte repeated breathlessly, once the absolutely last kiss had been kissed.
Detaching Robert’s hands from around her waist, she swirled through the door of her sitting room, giving the impression of flying rather than walking. Flying did have its hazards. Robert caught a last glimpse of frothing petticoat and heard a muffled “Ouch!” as she stumbled over a book, and then the door swung shut behind her and he was left staring at a plaster panel.
Not just staring at it, beaming fatuously at it like the most mawkish sort of lovesick schoolboy. Robert hastily rearranged his face into more acceptable ducal lines.
Shaking his head at himself, he forced himself to move away from the door, step by determined step. Served him right to always be mocking Tommy and then to be hit by the fatal arrow himself. That it was fatal, he had very little doubt. Maybe Charlotte was right, maybe it was all an enchantment. If it was, it felt like a very durable one, solid as the stone of Girdings. Just so long as he could keep the past at bay.
Like the pictures in all illustrated paper, he could see their future all laid out, with captions. “Duke and Duchess of Dovedale Visit the Tenantry,” “Duke and Duchess of Dovedale Relax in the Library,” “Duke and Duchess Take Little Dovedales Unicorn Hunting.” Funny, how the prospect of being Duke became a great deal less daunting when Charlotte was in the picture as Duchess.
He was too busy mentally moving Charlotte into the ducal chambers to hear the sound of footsteps in the hallway behind him. And he was far too engaged in imagining what might come after to notice the long shadow fall across the floor in front of him.
He didn’t notice anything at all until a red-ringed hand descended upon his shoulder.
Chapter Ten
Robert grabbed for a pistol that wasn’t there. One tended not to wear arms in one’s own home, but his home, until now, had been an army tent, and there, one did. How in the blazes could he have allowed himself to go
off in the clouds like that? That was the sort of lapse that could get a man killed.
Reality came raging back with the force of a fist to the vitals. With a sickening wrench, Robert realized that he had come within an inch of forgetting everything that had brought him back to Girdings in the first place. Domestic bliss didn’t come into it.
“Ah, Dovedale,” drawled Sir Francis Medmenham. “Just the man I wanted to see.”
Robert couldn’t quite bring himself to echo the sentiment. Something about the arch tone of his voice grated on Robert even more than usual.
“Medmenham,” he managed to say, with every imitation of pleasure. “Enjoying the party?”
“Not so much as you, I expect,” said Sir Francis Medmenham, with an eyebrow arched in the direction of the bedroom doors. “A bit far afield from the ballroom, aren’t we?”
Robert managed to keep smiling, although he was not quite sure how. “You wanted to see me?”
Having found him, Sir Francis seemed in no hurry to state his business. “The little Lansdowne has also been conspicuously absent from the ballroom.”
Robert’s fists ached with the visceral need to seek out Medmenham’s face. He managed a shrug. “Crowded places, ballrooms. It’s hard to see everyone.”
Sir Francis’s smile was too knowing by half. “Indeed.”
Placing one hand on the other man’s elbow, Robert steered him firmly away from Charlotte’s door. “Were you looking for me, or for Lady Charlotte?”
Sir Francis made a show of polishing his ring against the side of one perfectly cut sleeve. “Under the circumstances, I had rather thought I might kill two birds with one stone.”
Men had been called out for less.
There was nothing Robert would have liked more than to suggest rapiers at dawn — or, even better, cannons at twenty paces — but he had no right to dice with Charlotte’s reputation. And he couldn’t afford to alienate Medmenham. It was, he assured himself, the former that concerned him more than the latter.