At Your Pleasure (4 page)

But time had made her wiser. She knew now that a man’s need for a woman was no special compliment. Men had endless needs. Her father, her brother, her late husband—all of them impatiently had required her attention day after day, year after year. She had grown wise enough not to be flattered by need. She had learned to be grateful, instead, for silence and indifference.

As she sat by the fire watching Lord Rivenham prowl the room, she was proud to find no curiosity in herself regarding his need to
speak
with her. Indeed, she took his words in the same manner that he had spoken them—coldly.

“How large is your household?” he asked. “Count those who sleep in the stables.”

“Forty-eight souls,” she said.

He nodded. His hand passed lightly over objects as he paced: the glass-fronted cabinet of china; the japanned vase that sat atop the small table by the window; the velvet-cut arras cloth that stretched along the wall. He looked out of place in the rough clothing of the road: high boots of brown leather cuffed above his knees; dark breeches, dark waistcoat, a black wool jacket that flared out to reveal the glint of his sword hilt as he turned.

He looked like a barbarian, and she loathed not only his questions but his very presence here. How easily he had decided, at his own convenience, that he no longer wished to ignore her! Worse, she had no choice but to accede to his decision, for he came from the king.

“I will allow you twenty people,” he said. “The rest, all who are not necessary for the running of the household, will be dispatched to their villages for the remainder of our stay.”

The order fired an anger that astonished her. It was not her way any longer to submit to tempers, but it took great effort to keep hold of her composure now. “There is no one who is not necessary to this household. Else I would have dismissed them already.” Moreover, most would have nowhere to go: after a summer of floods that imperiled the crops of corn and wheat, no household would welcome them.

“Then your decision will be difficult,” he said.

“So will your breakfasts and suppers,” she said, “and your laundering as well.”

The corner of his mouth lifted in acknowledgment as he turned toward her. She found herself resenting even the way he moved: with a sort of liquid grace that had won him a host of admirers, all the way up to her majesty, who had favored him especially for dancing. The Queen’s Delight, they used to call him in London. Her majesty had loved nothing better than the attention of talented, pretty men, and Adrian had always been that: tall and broad-shouldered, fashioned in lean, taut lines, with silver-pale hair and slumberous green eyes.

But
pretty
no longer described him. He looked weathered now, hardened, in the way of soldiers who slept in the open. Beneath the broad bones of his cheeks, his face hollowed; the set of his jaw conjured grimness, and his neck was corded with muscle. His eyes remained as
thickly lashed as a woman’s, but as he regarded her now they glinted with the sort of malicious intelligence that women were not allowed to claim.

He looked like a handsome stranger, and not a kind one.

“You will find a way,” he said. “All across the kingdom, the Marchioness of Towe is reputed for her housekeeping.”

But not for much else,
his tone implied.

Unblinking, she stared at him. She knew the low regard in which the court’s more glittering circles held her. Was she meant to care that his shallow, vain, foppish friends thought her cloddish?

Perhaps he did not allude to the court’s judgments, though. Perhaps he meant to wound her with an older reference. She could still recall the day she had railed at him in the wood.
I am to tally accounts and stitch seams until I am gray,
she had raged.
Counting bottles of port and overseeing the making of soap—if I am lucky enough to survive the childbed. What woman should look forward to marriage? Why celebrate such an end?

Childish complaints. But she still might have avoided that end, if only she had never met
him
.

The thought echoed in her head, growing ludicrous. No woman of sense would envy a spinster’s uncertain lot. She took a long breath to calm herself.
Reputed for her housekeeping.
The mockery seemed sharper by the moment, but she would not give him the satisfaction of seeing it register.

To her relief, he turned away to resume his inspection of the room. “When did you return to Hodderby?” he asked.

She sat back. She had returned as soon as she had been able, but her path had not been direct from London. Her mother-in-law had insisted on detaining her in Hertfordshire for three long months after Towe’s death, putting her every morning to prayer in the chapel, bidding her beg God for an heir, until finally it had become clear even to the old woman that Nora’s womb was empty.

The Marchioness of Towe is reputed for her housekeeping
. But for all her efforts, for all the bitterness she had swallowed to do her duties smiling, she had failed at the most important task of a wife.

The failure had not gladdened her, but there had been a strange justice in it, one that philosophers might have appreciated.

She cleared her throat. “Why do you wish to know?”

He paused before a portrait of an ancestor, stiff in an Elizabethan ruff. She watched him study the painting with growing anger.
Do not pretend such interest in it,
she thought.
You have seen it before.

“I didn’t know you had returned,” he said. “It interests me.”

“My decision to return interests you? Where did you imagine I would go?”

He smiled slightly. “What interests me is the fact that I did not know of it. Did you come in secret?”

She stiffened. “I did not. I came near to five months ago, with no small party of outriders. And why should it surprise you? Is it
your
call to keep track of me?”

“
My
call?” He turned toward her, lifting a silver-blond brow. Once these Gallic mannerisms of his had lent him
a fey air. But now that his face had become a man’s, the effect seemed more calculated and intimidating. “No, of course not. But you have always interested me, my lady. Perhaps you recall it.”

Her skin prickled as though someone had walked over her grave. His tone was a horrible mismatch to his words. He alluded for the first time in years to matters long past, but he did so lightly, mockingly, as though their shared history were a joke he had heard in a tavern.

She laid a hand to her cheek and felt the heat there. This evidence of her blush enraged her: it suggested he had some power over her yet. Worse, it showed to him that he might.

“You know my father is not here,” she said. “I fear the new king has sent you on a fool’s mission.”

He did not reply to this. “You say you came five months ago.”

After a moment, she nodded. Had her answer suggested something to him? She cast her mind back, but could think of nothing significant about April past, save that Parliament had finally set in motion the impeachment proceedings against her father. But Father had already fled to France by then. He was innocent of wrongdoing—a faithful member of the High Church, and a true servant to his country—but with his Whig enemies come to power under the new king, the verdict against him had not surprised anyone.

“I would have come sooner,” she said, “but after Lord Towe died, I remained with his mother for a time.”

“How dutiful,” Rivenham murmured.

It did not sound like a compliment, and she felt herself bridling again. How odd, after so many years, to converse with him in this way. From love to silence to hatred, with nary a word between.

One of his long-fingered hands settled on the back of a chair as he faced her, his heavy signet ring catching the firelight. Four years ago, the death of his elder brother had made him the earl. Some whispered that he had expedited this process by smothering his brother with a pillow as the man lay witless with fever.

Nora could not believe the rumor. But it did play uneasily through her mind that the boy she’d known had never longed for power, whereas the man he had become seemed to glory in it. Why else had he cultivated the late queen’s favor, petitioning to play her diplomat at George of Hanover’s court?

“I suppose you must have given thought to the other questions I will ask,” he said. “Shall we save trouble by skipping directly to your answers?”

She pushed a hand over her brow. His manner was so strange, this scene so unimaginable, and the hour so late, that she felt a momentary, giddy wonder: perhaps she was only dreaming.

“Speak,” he said sharply.

She pulled herself straight. “You forget yourself!” She was not one of his servants. “I have no choice but to allow you to stay in my home, and to search it as you will. But his majesty cannot command me to tolerate your insults!”

A brief silence passed, in which he did not move. And then she saw his fingers loosen slightly on the back of the
chair, and it came to her that before this moment, he had been . . . braced for something.

Why? What cause had
he
to find this meeting uncomfortable? He had ignored her with effortless skill for six years now. Was he angered by her refusal to be cowed?

Or did this meeting seem as impossible, as mad and strange, to him as it did to her?

“Forgive me,” he said slowly, as though the words of apology tasted foreign, and required special care in the pronunciation. “It is late, and my manners suffer from the road. I assure you, madam, that this occasion is no more agreeable to me than to you.”

She swallowed. They were dancing nearer and nearer to the heart of the matter now. “Why are you here, then? Why has the king sent
you
?”

He stared at her, still impassive. The long clock in the hall began to chime, its low, mournful notes marking the death of the day. “You were better to ask my intentions here,” he said. Some weight in the words bade her to take it as a warning. “Do you know where your family is?”

What sort of trick was this? Everyone knew where her father was. In the newspapers, in the coffee and chocolate houses, his flight to France had sparked a thousand speculations. “Lord Hexton has . . . gone abroad.”

He did not react. “And your brother?”

She felt a sharp thump of panic. Why did he ask after David? “He has gone north to hunt. The grouse are in season.”

“Indeed? An unusual time to absent himself.”

She stared at him, unable to reply, but understanding
his skepticism perfectly. The harvest was upon them, but it would soon become a season of death if the rain did not cease. Corn and wheat could not survive such wet, and without them, men did not survive the winter unless they were wise enough to have planted sufficient oats and potatoes besides.

But Lord Hexton had never been one for farming. He had saved his strategies for court politics, and left his son to worry for the crops. David, in turn, had counted on the weather, and on the wealth in their coffers to purchase what stores they lacked. But the strongbox stood empty now, its contents having been spent on weaponry. Meanwhile, the tenants came to her each morning, their eyes shadowed by sleepless nights, concerned for the children they must feed.

“It is September,” she said. “The grouse are thick on the ground. When else should he hunt?”

Rivenham gave her a measured, cold smile. “With whom does he hunt, then?”

“With friends.”

“Which friends?”

“Any number of them. My brother is not one to forget old affections.”

The jibe slipped from her without conscious intention. She felt her heartbeat stutter.

Adrian—no, she could not think of him so; she would only think of him as
Rivenham
—gave her a strange half smile. No longer the Queen’s Delight, he; now that George of Hanover had taken the throne, he had become the king’s own blade.

“You understand,” he said, “that I am not one of those friends.”

Her breath caught. So quietly he spoke, but there was something cold in his face and his eyes.

For all the times that the sight of him had made her burn, she had never before been afraid of him.

“Yes.” Her voice barely carried the word. She wet her lips and tried again. “I would never think otherwise.”

“Then my plain speaking will not shock you,” he said. “I am here because of your brother’s dealings at Bar-le-Duc. Apparently the grouse are thick there as well.”

Who had told him that David had been to France?

Or was he only acting on a suspicion?

She tried for a puzzled frown. “You confuse my brother with my father, sir.”

“Your father is another matter,” he said with a shrug. “He remains safely ensconced in the Pretender’s court. Your brother, on the other hand, left James Stuart six days ago. He sails for England now.”

She sat very still, praying her expression did not betray itself. How did he know these things? The last letter had been in code, and she had burned it directly.
Who had betrayed David?

Rivenham sat down across from her, his eyes never leaving her face. “It amazes me how well you guard yourself. I can tell nothing from your looks anymore.”

Anymore.
Such a small word to make her breath stop.

He leaned forward. She began to tremble as his hand settled against her cheek. The pad of his thumb nudged up her chin.

His touch was warm and light, but he might as well have held her in a grip of iron. She could not move. She stared into his eyes, green as emeralds, with the light of the fire dancing across them.

“I can help you,” he said. “If you trust me. Permit me to help you now, Nora.”

Her lips parted but she caught back the first syllable before it could escape.
Adrian,
she would have said. He had spoken her name and it unleashed in her throat the feel of his, the sharp vowels, the tripping conjunct.
Adrian, Adrian.

Now his palm, rough with calluses, cupped her cheek. A whimper lodged in her chest. This touch was a shock for which she could not have prepared. Her dumb flesh did not recognize or care that the man touching her so tenderly was her family’s enemy. It reacted only to the dim memory of affection—to how sweet, so sweet it had been, to be touched with care.