She steadied herself on Pembroke’s arm and strolled with him into the shadows of the tree-lined path that led back to Pembroke House, stepping into the forest of her dreams.
Fifteen
Pembroke and Arabella knew the paths along the forest well, for they had traveled them often together the summer they were courting. The summer air was warm, so Arabella allowed her shawl to fall to the crooks of her elbows, leaving her shoulders bare. She would have stripped off her kidskin gloves, but she had not brought a reticule to put them in, so she left them on.
The full moon was rising over the treetops, casting a milky light along their path. Arabella took in deep drafts of the night air, enjoying the freedom of walking in the country unencumbered. The path was lined in columbine and fennel, the scent of those flowers rising to greet her like old friends. She would never have had such freedom in her husband’s house, and after ten years of marriage, she found that she savored it.
It was so surprisingly easy to be in Pembroke’s company, almost like the peace of being alone, but infinitely better. There seemed to be no anger, no recriminations, no bitterness between them now. She knew that she must bring up that pain again and ask him about the letters she had sent. But instead, as they walked in the moonlight, Arabella pretended that they were ten years in the past, that all the years of pain and separation had never happened. She imagined that they had married and now walked this path alone as man and wife.
She knew she was a fool, but the moonlight and the mead beckoned to her, allowing both her worries and her scruples to slide away. Once they arrived again at Pembroke House, she promised herself that she would set such fantasies aside. But for now, she would live as she wished. Though reality waited for her on the other side of this forest, this was a blissful moment, an hour apart, and Arabella meant to relish it, to drink it in without spilling a drop.
She reached out and took Pembroke’s hand. His glove and hers separated them, but she could still feel the steady warmth of his touch.
Pembroke did not look down at her or speak but walked with her in silence. With the clean night air and the motion of her walking, the mead she had drunk began to burn away. She was left with a feeling of warmth and joy, but her senses had returned to her. She was grateful because she did not want to miss one moment of this night.
The spring green of the oaks and hawthorns around them was dimmed in the moonlight, turned to milky blacks and grays. Sunlight brought out the verdant greens of the land around them, but the night, with its scent of jasmine and the occasional swoop of an owl, had beauties of its own.
Arabella stopped beneath a king oak tree, the same great tree where they once had pledged themselves to each other.
She felt the ruby ring beneath the bodice of her gown warm against her flesh. She laid her hand over it, taken back as if by magic to the time in her life when the world lay at her feet, when the man she loved held her hand in his and all the joys of the world seemed possible.
Arabella looked up at Pembroke and saw a shadow of the boy he once had been. It was as if their younger selves had never left that place but had haunted it, suspended in time, caught in the moment before everything between them was shattered into dust.
Pembroke, standing beside her with his hand in hers, seemed to feel it, too.
Arabella looked up into his face, where the boy and the man both lay reflected in his eyes. She had not forgotten that boy. She would never forget. Once she left to build her own quiet life, she would never know another man like him.
She stood beneath the great king oak and wondered if she was bold enough to kiss him twice.
***
Pembroke stared down at Arabella, watching as the wind moved the shadows over her face. Her skin was as milky white as the moonlight that shone on her. He knew that she was flushed from drinking mead and from the walk, though he could not see the pink of her cheeks in that dim light.
He had knelt to her there once, long ago. He almost could not remember that boy, his younger self, who had been so full of plans for the future, so full of hope. It seemed as if that boy had not died, as Pembroke had always thought, killed by disappointment and betrayal and by all the sin that Pembroke had indulged in from that day to this. That boy had lived, waiting for him to return to the foot of the great oak with this woman beside him.
Arabella was the love of his life. Pembroke had always known it, even in the midst of his bitterness. He had always mourned her.
His friends changed mistresses and paramours as often as they changed hats. For years, he had done the same, hoping to set himself free from his obsession with her. But nothing he had ever done had been enough. There was no woman on earth who would ever be able to free him. Arabella was the love he had lost, and he knew, standing with her once more beneath that king oak, that he would never love another.
For the first time in his life, this realization did not bring pain with it. Now that his bitterness was gone, he no longer blamed her for the ruin of his life. But he knew just as well that he could not keep her with him, not in any form. He needed to be free of her. He needed to live without pain. He did not think it possible, but he had to try. And he could not do that standing here in the dark with her, the curve of her lips inviting his kiss.
He knew this, but he did not bundle her out of there. He did not walk away.
Her green gown was transformed into a milky gray, the sheen of her throat bathed in the moonlight. He had sworn that he would not touch her again, but beneath the magic of that tree, all oaths seemed superfluous. He knew he was a fool. Almost desperately, he searched his soul for the bitterness of his regret, for his anger at the loss of all the years of his youth. But he could not find them. All that mattered in that moment was the love he felt for her.
Pembroke fought himself even as he drew her close, his hands on her upper arms. Her flesh was soft, warm beneath his palms in spite of the cooling breeze that rose around them. He moved slowly, giving her ample chance to resist him if she wished, hoping that she would, but Arabella did not pull away.
Her lips were warm under his, as soft as a moth’s wing. She tasted of sweet mead and of the beef pastries they had eaten on the village green. He meant to kiss her only once then let her go. He meant to kiss her in memoriam for the past they shared, in an attempt to say good-bye.
But she did not let him.
***
Arabella felt a powerful warmth rising in her, a reckless desperation that seemed to take over her senses. From somewhere she took in the scent of night-blooming jasmine, its heady perfume filling her mind like a drug, like an enchantment meant to banish fear.
She knew all the reasons she should step back and away from him, all the reasons she should never have touched him to begin with. But she took in the scent of his skin with each breath, the cinnamon she had not eaten in years, because it had always made her think of him.
The past seemed to fall away from her as she kissed him, as if she had really sealed it away when she closed the door of her father’s house for the last time. There, beneath that tree, she felt as if she were under an enchantment, as if in the magic of that moment, she could have anything she wanted. And the only thing she wanted, the only thing she had ever truly wanted, was him.
She pressed herself against him, not as a wanton woman would but as a woman who had waited a long time to be kissed. She opened her arms to him, raising them to clasp his neck. Her fingers wove into his hair, the warmth of her touch making him shiver.
Suddenly as bold as another woman, as bold as the woman she longed to be, Arabella opened her mouth beneath his and ran her tongue along his lips. She felt him try to hold back, and she feared for one horrible moment that he would pull away from her. But then his mouth opened over hers, and she heard him groan as he surrendered.
Pembroke’s tongue plundered the soft, warm recesses of her mouth, driving into her even as he drew her hips cl
ose against his so that she could feel the strength of him burn through her clothes and his. She shuddered with sudden need as one of his hands reached up to cup her breast. She felt her need rise through the pores of her skin as he clutched her close, his hands everywhere at once. She felt as if she had been caught in a flash tide, as if the dam of her loneliness had burst, letting in a flood of warmth and light.
She moaned beneath the onslaught of his mouth, pressing closer, shifting against him, her body hungry for something she did not understand. Pembroke knew what she wanted though, and at first he moved as if to draw her down onto the leaves and the moss that grew against the base of the tree. But then he changed direction, moving with her as in a dance until her back was against the king oak, seeming too distracted to bring her body beneath him on the ground.
Instead, he pressed her against the tree, and her shawl fell away. She felt the rough bark dig into her back, snagging the silk of her one good gown. Pembroke’s hands moved over her, and her body cradled him easily, until she could feel the heat of his arousal nestle against the cleft of her thighs. He reached down, drawing her gown up as his hand slid along her leg until it reached her garter. She trembled with desire, and for one heady moment it was as if she stood on the edge of a cliff, ready to leap.
Then he pulled away.
Her body was hot where he had touched her. She could still feel his strength all along her flesh, a heat that she had longed for all her life.
“Make love to me,” she said.
She had nothing left to lose, and she knew it.
Pembroke stared at her, his eyes devouring her body beneath her gown. The cool moonlight filtered in through the branches overhead, no longer casting enchantment but counseling reason. She felt the cool bath of that light on her skin as she watched him fight for control.
“No,” he said. “You are not my mistress. You are not my whore.”
“What I am, what I will be, is my own business. Don’t leave me here with nothing.”
He turned and walked away. For one stunned, horrible moment, she thought that he would leave her where she stood, alone in the dark, with only moonlight and her own humiliation for company. He stopped at the edge of the clearing. No matter what else might be said of him, Pembroke would never leave a woman to walk alone.
“Come with me, Arabella.” He did not look at her but kept his eyes on the path that led back to Pembroke House. “I’m leaving this place, and you are leaving with me. This is madness, and we will leave it here behind us.”
“You’re doing this to punish me,” she said, not moving. “And maybe I deserve it. But haven’t the last ten years been punishment enough?”
He did not answer her. She felt the beginning of tears at the back of her throat, but she would not give in to them. She was cold now in spite of the warm breeze rising from the river, and the king oak dug into her back, giving her courage. She was sick of tears.
“Why did you never write to me?” she asked.
“I do not make it a habit of writing to married women,” he answered.
“I am not just any woman, or so you said. Was that a lie too?”
He turned back to her then, his eyes blazing across the distance between them. He took one step toward her but stopped himself. He stood in a pool of moonlight, and for a moment he really did look like Oberon. He had cast an enchantment on her all those years ago, and she was still trapped in it.
“You never answered my letters,” she said. “The day I was taken to London, I wrote to you. I wrote to your London house, to your father’s house in Derbyshire, even to your club. I never got an answer.”
She could not read his face, for a shuttered look came over him, as if he enclosed a great deal of pain, pain he would not let her see.
“I received no letter from you. Most likely because you never wrote one.”
“And now I am a liar, too?”
“You have always been a liar. You were a liar when you said you loved me. You were a liar when you said you would marry me.”
Arabella felt her tears rising, but she pressed them down. He had not received her letters. Perhaps they had been lost. Perhaps his father had burned them.
She bent down and picked up her shawl. It was light, summer-weight linen embroidered with bluebells and green leaves. She had made the shawl herself one lonely night in winter, sitting by a fire in her husband’s house. She wrapped that shawl around her now, wishing it was heavier, wishing it was armor that might keep out her pain. Though the summer air was warm all around them, she shook as with an ague.
Pembroke did not speak but walked to the path. She forced herself to move and to follow him. He did not touch her again but strode back to his father’s house in silence. She said nothing as she tried to keep up with him, for her mind was one great bruise.
If he would not listen to her, there was nothing left to say.
Sixteen
Pembroke watched as Codington opened the front door for Arabella, then he turned away. He walked to the stables, his strides devouring the ground beneath his feet. He wanted to run, to put as much distance between himself and the woman he loved as he could. But he knew from long years of running that he could not move fast enough or far enough to escape her.
He saddled Triton himself, dismissing the sleepy groom with a silent wave of his hand. His mount tensed under him as if ready for battle, until he smoothed a hand over his neck and murmured to him the old command to stand down. He had no battles to fight tonight. No battle he could win.
He rode into the village, the sound of Triton’s hooves on the rutted road like thunder in his ears, drowning out the hideous loop of thought that would not leave him. He tossed Triton’s reins to a boy waiting outside the inn, then strode up the stairs two at a time. Titania was in her sitting room, drinking a brandy, a second glass at her elbow as if she had been waiting for him.
“I already poured your favorite,” was all she said.
“I don’t take brandy any longer,” he answered.
“Leave it then. I’ll drink it later.”
He did not look at her but paced the small room like a caged lion, circling and coming back but never even looking at the chair she had waiting for him or at her new night rail of transparent linen and lace.
“You know you’re a damn fool,” she said, drinking her liquor.
Pembroke faced her then, taking in the soft fall of bronze hair around her shoulders, the deep shadow of her generous cleavage, the outline of her voluptuous body beneath her gown. There was a time when he would have had it off her in a trice, her body under his in the next moment. But now he stood and looked at her as at a sweet he no longer craved.
“I am a fool for not bedding you, you mean?”
“You are a fool to have love show up on your doorstep twice, only to turn it away.”
He did not lie to Titania. For some reason, he had never been able to lie to her.
“She does not love me.”
“I beg to differ, my lord.”
“Hearing you beg is always amusing, Titania, but I am not in the mood tonight.”
“That much is clear.”
He started pacing again, and she watched him. “She loves you, Pembroke. Only you’re too blind to see it.”
He stopped pacing and sat down beside her. For a moment, he considered drinking the brandy laid out for him, but though his hand shook with desire for it, with the thirst for that clean burn on his tongue, he fought it down. He did not touch the glass.
“She says that she wrote to me after her marriage.”
“No doubt she did.”
“I would have received those letters, Titania, at least one of them. She is lying for her own amusement. Or to make me suffer. Or both.”
“Hmmm…” Titania took a sip of her own brandy. “The duchess does not seem the vindictive type.”
Th
at word on his mistress’s lips seemed to snap something within him, some tether to the past, the last vestige of his fury. He watched it spin away, a splinter carried on an outgoing tide. He felt drained and listless, as if he had fought a long battle and lost.
He sighed and leaned his head against the tall back of the wooden chair he sat in. Titania was blessedly silent, and the only sound in the room was of coal falling in the grate. “She left me without a word and married another.”
“You still believe she married an elderly man of her own accord?”
“To become a duchess instead of the wife of a disinherited youth? Yes.”
But even as Pembroke spoke, his words sounded false in his own ears. He no longer believed that. As he sat, staring into the fire with his mistress beside him, he wondered how he ever had.
“I think you need to speak with her again,” Titania said. “And this time, do not run away.”
Pembroke did not say a word but stood at once, pushing his chair back from the table. He leaned over her, pressing a kiss into the softness of her hair. His lips just brushed her temple, and he felt no desire to kiss her mouth or to do anything else with her. The scent of cornflowers filled his nose, as if Arabella were standing beside him.
He left Titania sitting where he had found her. As he closed the door behind him, he heard her say, “Whatever happens tonight, don’t be late for rehearsal in the morning.”
***
Arabella did not sleep. She tried to lie down, but she knew it was a futile effort.
Pembroke had left her at the front door to go to his doxy in the village. As much as she liked Titania, the thought of him touching her, or any woman, made her throat fill with bile.
At least she preferred bile to tears.
So after lying for two sleepless hours in her borrowed room, she drew on a dressing gown and went down to the front hall. Codington had not gone to sleep either. She knew that he would not sleep until his master was home. She did not see him, but she sensed his presence as if he stood in the room with her. She ignored the thought of the older man who had once been her ally and kept to her seat at the edge of the entrance hall, as if she were a tradesman who would not be shown inside.
Christy English - [Shakespeare in Love 02] Page 14