by Emily Larkin
The only reason she was in the carriage, the only reason she held her tongue between her teeth instead of crying out Stop! I can’t do this! I have to go back to London! was another memory.
It had been near the end, when her mother was ill, hollow-eyed and coughing up blood. You are my princess, ma belle princesse, her mother had said, and then she’d smiled, a trembling, beautiful smile. One day you’ll find your prince.
The words turned over in her head with each revolution of the wheels. Arabella stared blindly out the window, seeing her mother’s smile, hearing her words: One day you’ll find your prince.
Her mother had wanted her to marry—and that was the only reason she was sitting in this carriage.
* * *
ST. JUST’S HOME was near Haslemere in Sussex, a distance of some fifty miles from London. It was nearing four o’clock when the coach slowed and turned, passing from the lane into private parkland. Arabella began to pay attention to her surroundings.
A vista opened between the stands of trees. “That’s Blackdown,” Grace said, pointing.
Arabella blinked, surprised to see a hill of such height and wild beauty.
“The ridge overlooks the Weald,” Grace said. “The view is magnificent. I’ll take you up there, if you like.”
Arabella nodded. “Please.”
Woodland closed around them again, the trees almost meeting overhead—and then came another vista: rolling parkland, wooded slopes, and—nestled in a sun-drenched hollow—Roseneath Priory.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Grace said proudly.
The Priory was a low, rambling building that looked a cross between a small castle and an abbey. It was very gothic, with gracefully arched windows and a tower, but there was nothing dark or forbidding about it; rather, it looked friendly and welcoming. In the warm, late-afternoon light, the honey-colored stone glowed, as if Roseneath Priory was smiling at them.
The coach swept to a halt in front of the Priory. The two footmen leapt down from the rumble seat at the back, their feet crunching on the gravel. They opened the carriage door, let down the steps, and stood to attention, magnificent despite their dusty livery.
Arabella stayed where she was on the velvet-upholstered seat, her hands clenched inside the muff. I can’t.
The great brass-studded door opened, revealing a butler and a phalanx of servants.
Arabella swallowed. I think I’m going to be ill. And then she took a deep breath and stepped down from the carriage.
* * *
ADAM DIDN’T MEET his guests until dinner. They gathered in the round drawing room. He observed Miss Knightley as she examined the tall windows. Did she like the traceried stonework? The pointed arches? The quatrefoils of colored glass?
He discovered he was holding his breath. He turned away. He wanted her to like it. She had to like it.
Adam gave Lady Westwick his arm into the dining room. Dinner was an informal affair, with conversation across the table. Miss Knightley spoke little and ate even less.
The first course was removed and the second laid on the table. Adam took advantage of the quiet bustle of the servants to lean over to her. “Don’t be afraid,” he whispered.
She glanced at him. He saw the strain in her pale face, in her dark eyes. Her smile was fleeting and perfunctory. It didn’t reach her eyes.
She looked more than afraid; she looked terrified.
* * *
THE LADIES RETIRED to the drawing room after dinner. Adam lingered over a glass of port.
He was feeling distinctly nervous. Everything rested on his ability to prove to Arabella Knightley that there could be pleasure in sex.
He fiddled with his glass, turning the stem between his fingers. What if he hurt her? What if he couldn’t make it pleasurable for her?
That’s why you asked her for a week, he reminded himself as he poured another glass of port. Tonight he’d take her virginity as painlessly as he could—and then, at the end of the week, he’d show her pleasure.
There should be a hum of anticipation inside him; instead there was apprehension. How did one arouse passion in a woman who was afraid of sex?
He picked up his glass and sipped the port slowly, thinking. Arabella Knightley feared sex because of what she’d witnessed in Whitechapel—therefore he had to give her an experience that was as far removed from those scenes as possible. Which meant . . . what?
He had to come to her clean.
He had to be gentle.
He had to be sober.
Adam put down the half-empty glass and pushed it away. Sober. Clean. Gentle. She mustn’t feel threatened. She mustn’t feel dirty. She mustn’t feel that he could harm her in any way.
But it is going to hurt her; she’s a virgin.
He rubbed his face, blew out a breath, and pushed back his chair.
* * *
PIANO MUSIC WAS coming from the drawing room. Adam opened the door quietly so as not to disturb the performance. He hadn’t realized Grace could play so well.
But it wasn’t Grace who was playing, it was Arabella Knightley.
He stood in the doorway, not wanting to move, not wanting to miss one note, one chord, while seconds stretched into minutes. Miss Knightley wasn’t just good; she was superb. The music that came from beneath her fingertips wasn’t flat and emotionless, it was alive, it lived and breathed, it sang.
He realized that his lips were parted, as if he was trying to inhale the music.
Adam shut his mouth. He stepped into the room and closed the door silently and stood with his back to it, watching Miss Knightley’s face as she played. She seemed lost in the music, her expression almost serene.
She was so lovely, so untouchably beautiful, that his throat tightened and he had to look away. Adam swallowed. He focused his gaze on the room’s other occupants.
Grace and Aunt Seraphina were listening with rapt expressions, Lady Westwick was—
Adam blinked, and looked more closely at Lady Westwick. There was raw emotion on her face as she listened to her granddaughter play. He saw longing, regret, love.
She loves her granddaughter.
He didn’t know why he was astonished, but he was. He glanced at Arabella Knightley. Did she know her grandmother loved her?
The piece came to its end. Lady Westwick dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief. Adam stepped away from the door. “Miss Knightley, that was incredible,” he said, as sincerely as he’d ever said anything in his life.
“Wasn’t it?” Grace cried, clapping her hands. “I’ve never heard anyone play so well!”
Arabella Knightley accepted their praise with a small smile. The serenity had disappeared from her face. Adam glanced at her grandmother. Lady Westwick’s expression was politely approving. The handkerchief was gone.
* * *
“SLEEP WELL, MISS KNIGHTLEY,” St. Just had said loudly when he’d bowed goodnight over her hand. And then, too low for anyone to overhear, “I shall see you in an hour.”
Arabella had undressed numbly and donned a nightgown. She’d washed her face and cleaned her teeth and brushed and braided her hair. She had bid Polly goodnight. Now she sat curled up in an armchair beside the fire, trying to read the book she’d brought with her, Northanger Abbey. It was written with a light, humorous hand. The parallels should have been amusing—the gothic Abbey, the gothic Priory—but instead of being diverted, she found it almost impossible to concentrate. She bent her attention to the page and reread, for the third time, the same sentences. A lamp could not have expired with more awful effect. Catherine, for a few moments, was motionless with horror.
Arabella stiffened. Was that a footstep outside her door? She listened for several seconds, and then wrenched her attention back to the novel.
Darkness impenetrable and immovable filled the room. A violent gust of wind, rising with sudden fury, added fresh horror to the moment.
Arabella glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece. An hour, St. Just had said. Which was now.
; She shuddered and gripped the book more tightly. In the pause which succeeded, a sound like receding footsteps and the closing of the door struck on her affrighted ear.
Arabella leapt in the chair as the door to her bedchamber opened. Adam St. Just stood in the doorway, wearing a dressing gown of gold and red brocade. It looked like something the Marquis of Revelstoke would own, Arabella thought—and then her attention focused on his feet. They were bare.
Her throat tightened. She couldn’t breathe.
St. Just closed the door. “Good evening,” he said.
* * *
MISS KNIGHTLEY DIDN’T return his greeting. She closed her book and watched as he crossed the room.
Adam halted at the edge of the rug and stood looking down at her. Her face was as white as her high-necked nightgown. Even her lips seemed to have no color. Her eyes were black in the firelight.
He took a deep breath and held out the glass of port. “Here. I brought this for you.”
Miss Knightley looked at it warily. “What is it?”
“Port.”
She shrank back in the armchair and shook her head. “No, thank you.”
“Just a few mouthfuls,” Adam said patiently. “It’ll help you relax.”
“I don’t drink alcohol,” she said. “Ever.”
“Why not?” he asked, perplexed.
“My mother drank,” Miss Knightley said in a flat voice. “In the end, she couldn’t live without it. She needed alcohol more than food, more than air itself.”
“I see.” Adam placed the glass on the mantelpiece. “I beg your pardon.” He was at a loss. Now what?
He looked around him. The bedchamber was filled with candlelight and firelight and shadows. The four-poster bed with its heavy canopy of damask silk looked vaguely tomb-like.
Adam turned his back to it. How to get her to relax? Standing over her certainly wasn’t going to accomplish that. He sat down on the rug beside the fire, leaned back against the footstool, and tried to look comfortable. “What are you reading?”
Miss Knightley moistened her lips. “Northanger Abbey.”
“Is it good?”
She nodded. “You may read it if you like.” She politely held out the book.
Adam accepted it. Now what? he asked himself, turning the book over in his hands. He needed a subject that would get her talking. “You play the pianoforte extraordinary well.”
“Thank you.”
For a moment there was an awkward silence. Adam looked at her in frustration. Firelight gilded her hair and played across her pale cheek. Talk to me, Miss Knightley.
As if she had heard him, Arabella Knightley said, “My mother taught me how to play. Music was her passion. She played much better than I do.”
Adam placed the book on the floor. “She must have been very gifted.”
Arabella Knightley nodded. She looked at the fire. “Mother insisted there was always a piano in the houses we were in, and after . . . after Lord Crowe, when we were in Whitechapel, she found one in a church.” She glanced at him. “Every week we’d clean the church, and afterwards my mother was allowed to play the piano.” She smiled faintly. “And after she’d played, she taught me. We had two pieces of music: a prelude by Bach, and one of Handel’s airs.” The smile faded. “I still have them.”
“The piece you played tonight, is that one of them?”
Miss Knightley shook her head. “That was Beethoven. I like Beethoven. His music has been . . . a very good friend to me.”
“How?”
“Oh . . .” She grimaced. “My mother made me promise, before she sent me to Westwick Hall, that I would never lose my temper, or sulk or cry or behave badly in any way. Sometimes it was a difficult promise to keep.”
“I can imagine it was.”
Miss Knightley nodded. “When it was particularly hard, I played Beethoven.” She glanced at him, with almost a hint of mischief in her eyes. “Beethoven is very good to play when one is angry.”
“Is it?” he said, amused.
Miss Knightley nodded again. She smoothed her nightgown over her knees and fingered a fold of cambric. “Beethoven is also why my grandfather made me heir to his fortune.”
Adam’s eyebrows rose. “Beethoven? How?”
She pleated the fold of fabric between her fingers. “When I was sixteen, my cousin Frederick Knightley came to visit.” She glanced at him. “The one who inherited the earldom.”
“The ill-bred buffoon.”
Arabella Knightley smiled faintly. “Yes. That one.” She looked back at the pleated folds of cambric. “Frederick and his wife are like Sir Arnold Gorrie: vulgar and puffed-up and full of consequence. They’re quite stout, too.” She glanced at him. “My grandfather disliked stout people. He said it was a sign of weak character.”
“Spoken like a thin man,” Adam said, dryly, and won another fleeting smile.
“Mrs. Knightley went around the Hall fingering the curtains and asking how much the furnishings cost, and Mr. Knightley was full of the changes he would make. Everything was going to be newer, bigger, finer. My grandfather got crosser and crosser. It was very amusing to watch.”
“I imagine it was.”
Her attention returned to the cambric. She unpleated the fold of fabric. “And then one afternoon, while we were taking tea in the parlor, Mr. Knightley began talking about my mother. He called her a French whore and said it was well she was dead . . . and . . . and I was sitting right there in the parlor.” Her hand clenched around a fistful of cambric. “I was so angry I wanted to hit him. Except that my mother had made me promise—” She inhaled a jerky breath. “So I asked to be excused, and I went to the drawing room and played Beethoven.”
She smoothed the crumpled cambric. “I played Beethoven all afternoon, and when I finally stopped I found that my grandfather was listening.” Her mouth twisted into a smile. “He said that . . .” Her voice changed, she was quoting verbatim: “. . . that whatever my mother had been, my behavior was impeccable and that he was settling the bulk of his fortune and his properties on me, that his . . . his fat ill-bred buffoon of a cousin would get nothing except the title and the Hall—and much use either would be to him without any money!”
Adam grunted a laugh.
“And so you see, Beethoven has been my friend.”
“I do see.” He smiled at her. “Your mother would have been proud of you. Of your behavior.”
She raised a hand and touched the high-necked collar of her nightgown. “I hope so.”
Adam’s gaze sharpened. Was her mother’s portrait hidden beneath that fine, white cambric? “Are you wearing the locket?”
She nodded.
“May I see it again?”
Miss Knightley hesitated for a second, and then unfastened the buttons at her throat. She drew out the locket, opened the clasp on the gold chain, and held it out to him.
Their fingers brushed as he took the locket. The metal was as warm and smooth as he remembered. Adam opened the catch with his thumbnail and studied the portraits again. The faces smiled at him, so alive he almost expected to see them breathe. “You’re very lucky to have this,” he said, closing the locket. He looked across at her, seeing the dark eyes, the dark braid of hair, the pale skin exposed at her throat. “Come down here,” he said softly. “Let me put this back on you.”
She became very still, staring at him, and then did as he bid, uncurling her legs, climbing down from the armchair. She sat gingerly beside him on the rug and bent her head forward.
Adam placed the chain around her neck. “It’s the only thing I have from my parents,” Miss Knightley said, as he fastened the catch, his fingers lightly brushing over the nape of her neck. Her voice was faint and slightly breathless. He thought she shivered as his fingers touched her skin. Arousal, or fear? “That, and my mother’s books and music.”
He released the necklace, letting the locket fall back into its place. “Books?”
She raised her head and nodded, looking at the firep
lace and not at him.
Adam examined her nightgown. It concealed her from throat to toe, yards of fabric trimmed with ruffles and twists of ribbon. Long, full sleeves were fastened at each wrist. Adam reached out and touched the ruffled cuff of one sleeve. “May I unbutton this?”
He saw her swallow. She glanced at him, and then swiftly away again. “If . . . if you wish to.”
“Tell me about your mother’s books,” Adam said, taking light hold of her wrist and unfastening the first button.
Arabella Knightley moistened her lips. “My mother taught me to read from them. English and French and Italian.”
The second button slipped free of its buttonhole, the third. The cuff was fully undone.
“The Italian was Novelle by Matteo Bandello . . .” Her voice faltered as he began to roll the sleeve up her arm. “And the French one was . . . was Fables de La Fontaine.”
Adam rolled the sleeve up as far as it would go. “And the English one?” Her forearm was bare, the firelight burnishing her pale skin.
“The English was . . . was—” She shivered as he lifted her hand to his mouth and laid a light kiss on it. “The English was Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe.”
“Defoe?” Adam turned her hand over and pressed a kiss into her palm.
“Yes,” she whispered.
He stroked his fingertips up her arm, from wrist to the hollow of her elbow. So slender, so smooth. “How does this feel?”
“It feels . . . dangerous,” she whispered, not looking at him.
“Dangerous?” He trailed his fingertips up her arm again, and then bent his head to follow that same path with his mouth. He thought she caught her breath when his lips touched her skin. He felt her tremble.
Adam kissed his way from her wrist to the sensitive inner hollow of her elbow. He tasted her skin with his tongue, and felt her tremble again.