Flowers From The Storm (27 page)

Anne Trotman peeked at her. She looked quickly toward the duke and away. “Yes,” she said, barely whispering the word.

Maddy arranged two chairs near the fire, and placed one for herself a little back. The girl immediately started to take the one at a distance from the others.

“Please,” Maddy said firmly, determined that Jervaulx and his betrothed should come to know one another as well as they might before embarking upon an entire life together. “Do have this seat. Next the fire.”

Anne Trotman reluctantly took the chair Maddy indicated. She sat straight, her face lowered, her hands in two white fists. Maddy looked up at Jervaulx, who merely looked back at her with that sarcastic half-smile. She frowned at him a little, moving her chin to hint him into the other chair. He lifted his eyebrows and stayed where he was, cool defiance, a complete disavowal of any obligation.

Maddy sat down in her place. She had to lean forward a little to see Anne Trotman’s features. “I’m Maddy Timms,” she said.

The girl nodded. She gave Maddy one wild glance and then dropped her eyes to her lap again.

Mercifully, the tea tray arrived. For a few moments, that provided distraction, as Maddy poured and inquired about milk and sugar. The young lady would not take a plate.

“I’m afraid I—could not eat,” she said in a low voice.

Maddy prepared a cup and carried it to Jervaulx. He leaned against the window draperies, accepting the tea but making no move to drink it.

She went back to her chair. The stilted silence lengthened. Maddy rued her lack of art for idle talk.

“The duke is fond of mathematics,” she said finally.

The girl looked at her as if she’d spoken in some language out of darkest Africa.

“He and my father have developed a new geometry,” Maddy continued stubbornly. “They received a standing ovation at the Analytical Society. Are you mathematical, Anne Trotman?”

The girl blinked. “Not at all.”

“I can give thee some books on the subject. It ought to be a pleasure for married people to enter into one another’s interests, ought it not? I am a gardener, myself. What dost thou enjoy to do?”

Anne Trotman wet her lips. “Go to balls,” she said. “And dance. Although—I haven’t been to one. I’m not yet out. Mother said—that now I should come out when…” She shot a glance toward the duke and away. “Afterward.” She lifted her head a little. “I shall be presented at court, with a satin gown and a train. I shall wear feathers in my hair, and diamonds.”

Maddy rose. She walked halfway to Jervaulx, stopped and said clearly, “Anne Trotman enjoys dancing at balls.”

He looked up from a deep contemplation of his teacup.

“Dance,” Maddy repeated. “Anne Trotman likes to dance. She likes balls.”

Jervaulx lifted his brows in exaggerated astonishment at this news.

Maddy returned to the young lady at the fire. “The duke has been—quite ill. If thou wilt but speak slow and distinct, he can converse with thee.”

“He is mad, isn’t he?” Anne Trotman came to vehement life. “His sister called yesterday—she told me that he nearly killed a footman!”

“He is not mad.”

The girl was trembling. She exclaimed beneath her breath, “They put him in a madhouse! He was in chains. Isn’t that true?”

Maddy pursed her lips.

“It is true!” Anne Trotman dropped her cup onto the tray and stood, turning on Maddy. “I can see it by your face!” She looked beyond to Jervaulx. “It’s ghastly. I don’t want to converse with him. I don’t want him to touch me!”

“Then perhaps thou shouldst not consent to marry him,” Maddy said quietly.

Anne Trotman tore her gaze from Jervaulx. “Everyone says that I must.”

Maddy could not support disobedience, nor argue against the wisdom of the girl’s parents; it would be wicked. She could only hope that the child would find her own way in the Light.

“I must. I will be a duchess,” the girl said. “A duchess.”

Jervaulx smiled, a slow sneer. He left the window, walked past Maddy, making a leisurely stalk of Anne Trotman as she backed away, her pink cheeks going to burning ruby against white.

“Don’t!” She came up against a gilded table. “Don’t touch me!
Miss Timms
!”

The duke caught her chin hard between his fingers. He made her look up into his face, held her there as she panted in hysterical dismay. He touched her, spreading his hand at her wide ribbon sash, his fingers strong and dark on white satin. His palm moved upward in a licentious exploration that ignored all the ruche and ruffles, that outlined her bosom in flagrant depravity.

As she tried to slip sideways, he gripped her arm. He forced himself against her, his whole body a barrier pressed to hers. The girl struggled, gasping.

“You are indecent!” she cried. “Let me go!”

He held her fast in spite of her strain. “
Touch
… when… please.”

The brutal inflection of his words froze her. She held her breath, staring up at him like a petrified animal.

Maddy came to her feet.

“Jervaulx,” she said.

He let Anne Trotman go. She scrambled aside, brushing at her silk and ribbons as if she had been dirtied. With a wordless, frantic glance at Maddy, the girl picked up her skirts and fled the room. The door shut on a resounding boom.

“Anne
Rose Bernice
Trotwan.” His right fist opened and closed rhythmically. He glanced at her beneath dusky lashes.

“Thou frightened her by intent.”

“Bitch,” he said clearly. An ugly smile curled his lips. He reached to the mantel and picked up a china figurine of a young girl. He dropped it on the hearth. Maddy startled at the shatter, then took a step forward to prevent him as he reached for another of the set.

The second figure smashed against the stone. He caught up a third, held it suspended in his hand, taunting her. Maddy halted.

He dropped the statuette. It burst into fragments that arched and fell at her feet.

“
Mine
,” he said. “Break.” He swept a look around the ornate room. “Break
all
.”

Maddy turned away. “Very fine! Thou art the duke! Thou canst break it all!” She looked over her shoulder at him. “And now she will not wed thee, and thou wilt go back.”

“Anne
Rose Bernice
Trotman,” he jeered, and flicked at the fragments with his boot.

“They will send thee back.” Her voice rose with emotion. “Back!”

That caught his attention. He narrowed his eyes. “No.”

“No marriage. Back.”

He scowled. “No… mar… ?”

Maddy gestured toward the door where his betrothed had escaped. “She will not wed thee now!”

In a long instant of hesitation, he concentrated on Maddy’s face… and then suddenly gave a laugh.

“No?” He shook his head and sprawled in a golden-legged chair. “Mad… ghastly…
touch
!” He made a face of revulsion, pushed his palm away as Anne Trotman had done. He laughed again, bitterly.

“Maddygirl. Think won’t… wed?”

The dowager duchess came to Maddy in the wildly ornate dressing room, just as she had finished her tray of supper. The duchess asked that they kneel and pray together. In a long discourse, she thanked God for Miss Anne Trotman, and for Dr. Timms and his assistants Larkin and Miss Timms, who with the permission of kind Providence, without which all human aid would fail, had set her son on the path of restoration.

Maddy recognized that she was meant to accept this as a personal acknowledgment, which made her feel uncomfortable and subdued. After the final amen, while the duchess took the single chair in the room, Maddy got up from beside her cot and sat on the edge of it.

The duchess laid her hands together in her lap. “Miss Timms, I’ve had a long interview with your uncle, and I don’t scruple to say to you I’m distressed that my son is to be taken from care at Blythedale. I think you must know who is responsible, but we’ll say no more of that. I will tell you now, as I told Dr.

Timms, that I consider the whole situation an experimental one.” Her fingers moved in a restless pulse, as if she were picking out odd notes on a musical instrument. “The duke should be married; there is no question of that. It is the only reason that I allow this plan to go forward. But if there should be the slightest recurrence of ungovernability, then Dr. Timms believes, as I do, that my son should be returned to the asylum. I speak of this to you because it is intended that you will stay with us through the wedding—perhaps even a little after. I believe that Miss Trotman has asked that you not be let go until she is consulted, which I think we can agree is quite wise of her. She seems a steady girl for her age, a good Christian girl. Of course, I had never thought—my son’s bride—” She pressed her lips together.

“Her background isn’t what anyone could have envisioned, but we must count ourselves fortunate in her, considering the situation. Miss Timms, I cannot tell you how many nights I’ve prayed that he would see the error of his ways. I cannot tell you—”

She lost her voice. Maddy sat quietly. The duchess lowered her face, with silent tears slipping down her cheeks. She stood up abruptly and went to the hallway door.

“His aunt—” she said, facing away from Maddy, “—Lady de Marly thinks only of the title, but I know in my heart that it is too soon. He should return. I really think that he will. Blythedale offers the best of moral treatment. He should be in your care there. Perhaps—under Dr. Timms’ supervision— he might visit his wife when it is appropriate.” She held the doorknob and looked back. “That would be better for everyone.”

“Lady de Marly has promised him differently,” Maddy said.

“Well,” the dowager duchess said, “we shall see. We shall see. You are to keep me informed of his state of mind, Miss Timms. Lady de Marly has her whims, but I am his mother. I understand his welfare better than anyone. I feel quite certain that I can bring Miss Trotman to agree with me after they are married. It will be her decision then. Even Lady de Marly must admit that. And Miss Trotman is such a good steady girl.”

Christian stood and let himself be dressed for his wedding: his court suit, deep brown velvet, silver buttons, a waistcoat long and trimmed with heavy pattern. Breeches, cutaway embroidered tails—and over it all, the blue Garter ribbon and silver starburst of the Order pinned across his chest. Feudal, unremittingly antiquated, right down to the diamond shoe buckles.

Maddy had been wrong. The girl wanted to be a duchess too badly to bolt.

Mad ghastly lunatic. Commissioned mad, tried and hung: he was theirs now; he had no existence.
Stripnaked strangle castrate
—
powerless
—
dead
!—but he couldn’t think of that—the outrage still burned him, scorched heat and shame in his skin. ,

Didn’t want him to touch her, did she? When she was just the sort of silly green giggle calf he most despised, all dress flounce airs, no wit, primed to dance at balls and swoon on cue.

She was his fate and always had been.

He understood his aunt. It was a family matter, cold-blooded business that went beyond Christian’s personal inclinations—it was
duty
, rock hard and unforgiving—seven hundred years of the unbroken name of Langland.

Beyond that, it was Jervaulx Castle in the hands of strangers. It was the mad place, losing himself, the cradle and the straitjacket and the chains.

He’d thought it through, thought about it all night and the night before that, lying in his father’s and grandfather’s bed. Marry, breed, heir; his own blood at Jervaulx. He wasn’t accustomed to looking at himself in that way; he’d always left it to the women in his family, obsessed as they had always seemed with the notion.

Mate with a bought mare. He envisioned bedding Miss Trotman, realized the horse pun in her name. His mouth curled: vicious humor to contain the ferocity he felt. Good reason to be afraid, Trot-calf-duchess; good reason to snivel.

He would bed her, get a son—God would remember him that far, surely—and go home to Jervaulx with the boy. She could stay in town and dance her feet off, play duchess till she died. And Maddy…

Maddygirl he would take. He couldn’t live without Maddy. Jewels, kittens, kisses, whatever he had to give her.

Quaker thee-thou, she wouldn’t like to be a mistress; he didn’t like it himself, but it was crucial. It was necessary. And he would not take her virtue without giving back anything, everything she wanted.

They could live at Jervaulx with him, she and her father and his heir. And Christian thought, with a kind of bewilderment, that it would be all right. It would be a sufficient life. Different, utterly, from what he’d anticipated; existing by halves, as he was half of himself, but the best he could conceive now.

He tried to think of his wedding lines and couldn’t find the start. But that was all right, too. When he heard them, he could do it.

The valet began to brush his coat. Christian looked at himself in the mirror. He looked like a half-man there too, not-real on the right side. It made him uneasy, and he looked away.