Flowers From The Storm (44 page)

“Mmm—yes. I see it.”

“Dog. Dragon. Henry Tudor beasts.”

“Which Henry?”

“Henry… seven. Lily’s.”

“Ah.” She had become quite familiar with Elizabeth, that lively wife of Francis Langland, the first Lord Jervaulx, who, in return for her husband’s docile compliance in the matter of her allowance, had not hesitated to further the family interests by becoming a clandestine mistress to their mysterious and clever king. Between Lily’s wealth, discretion and beauty, and her husband’s astute loyalty to a monarch who had come from the same mists of Wales as the young knight himself, the dynasty established by Francis Langland enjoyed an auspicious beginning.

“Gray… dog.
Greyhound
… dragon… look to the side.” He twisted his head around on the floor. “Lily.

See?”

Under the firm guidance of his hand, Maddy contorted herself. “Oh yes!” There was the lily, hidden amid the heraldic carvings until one looked at it at just the proper angle.

“Henry sent a… to cut. A man to cut wood.”

“A carver.”

“Carver.”

“Was it a secret trick?”

His head was turned around close to hers. “Secret,” he said. He slipped his hand into the curve of her waist. Maddy shrieked at the tickle, her voice echoing around the vast hall. She skittered away, but he caught her, rolling half on top of her, teasing her waist with one hand and clasping her cheek with the other. Maddy struggled, but not too hard. She was about to be kissed, and she liked it.

His mouth touched hers, warm in the cold hall, as velvet gentle as the stone beneath her was hard. He stopped the tickling. Her body softened; she closed her eyes and felt him over her, breathed his heat in the chilly air, heard the low sound of pleasure he made as he explored her. She had not kissed him back; she had not quite yet—but she was going to soon.

It was singular, this being wife and not-wife, free to be kissed, to tussle about the floor like puppies. It was not chaste; she knew that well enough. But he did it so sweetly, so playfully, that she never found a place to demand that he stop. “No bed,” he promised her, whenever she drew back— and that eased her. It was only trifling, and pleasant, and if it was a worldly and carnal pleasure, then at least it was only for a little while, and then she would go back to being ordinary, scrupulous Maddy Timms. Exemplary Maddy Timms, with a secret memory of her own to keep, a lily hidden among the dragons of virtue.

She lifted her chin and kissed him back.

He had been her teacher: she knew how to taste his mouth, search the corners while he grew still, his lips parting a little. His body seemed to respond with a slow tautness, a tightening over her; his hands pressed into her skin. Yet he lay motionless, suspended, his mouth acquiescent to hers, as if his whole concentration was on what it felt like. His lips opened more with each contact, allowing her to seek further—inviting it.

She touched him with her tongue. He was foreign and familiar, so close and yet so strange to her. A nobleman, with fairies and Welshmen and kings in his history, lord of this hall and castle, but most alien and potent of all: a man. Sandalwood and strength, an aggressiveness she could feel held in check. His breath mingled with hers, light with anticipation.

Maddy tasted deeper. He met her with his tongue, with a visceral note in his chest and a penetrating answer. He took command of the embrace. His body closed with hers. On the floor of the hall, with his weight pressed down on her, he kissed her wholly, all play and lightness vanished.

And she returned it, opening her mouth across his. The low music beat against her, a primitive sound in his throat.

He responded to her, taking what she surrendered as easily as if he knew her mind, knew the moment that her body and her heart awakened to sensation.

He locked his hands with hers and spread them out on the cold stone. His signet ring drove into her finger, caught between his hand and hers, painful pressure down to the bone, but she wanted it. She wanted it there, as she wanted him. Everything inside her arched upward to meet his kiss. It seemed that she had been bound up, held tight by threads that he had broken with a touch.

She heard herself, like a whimpering child, moaning with the terrible pleasure of it. She moved; she could not help it, taking the rhythm that he gave her with his tongue, arching to find more.

“
Most
edifying.” Lady de Marty’s voice was like a cascade of ice water.

Maddy jerked. Jervaulx stilled for an instant—but instead of springing away, he held tighter against Maddy’s convulsive effort to extricate herself. Without looking up, he kissed her ear. “Calm,” he said, muffled against her. “Calm, Maddygirl.” Then he kissed her briefly again, and lifted himself away.

She scrambled to her feet. Jervaulx stood. Lady de Marly, with a maid behind her and her stick planted in front, was a white, grim face painted upon a black statue.

“Aunt Vesta,” Jervaulx said, with a slight bow. He took Maddy’s arm. She could not move of her own accord; he pulled her closer to him and drew her forward. “Welcome,” he said, amazing Maddy with his composure. All of her own self-possession had vanished. “Pleasant…
trip
?”

Maddy saw the way his speech caught Lady de Marly’s attention, a gratifying respite from focus on herself.

The elderly woman stared at him, a long and arctic scrutiny.

“You are recovered,” she said at last.

“
Better
,” Jervaulx said. The pressure of his hand forced Maddy forward. “Duchess… Arc…
mede
.

Honor of…
wife
!” His speaking had regressed. With Maddy alone, he could already express himself more smoothly than that.

“Not much better,” Lady de Marly said dryly. She glanced at Maddy. “And you, Miss. You have outfoxed us all indeed. I had not taken you for an adventuress.”

“
Duchess
,” Jervaulx said, with an emphasis more of warning than of effort.

“Where are the documents?”

Jervaulx smiled darkly at her. He said nothing.

“Impudent boy,” she snapped.

“Legal,” he said. “Age. Resident. Special… paper. Church. Witness. Register… write sign. No lawful…

stop.”

“Except perhaps your sanity,” she responded, but it sounded less a threat than a grumble. “Bedlamite.

You might have taken the girl you were offered and saved us both a peck of trouble.”

“Miss… Trothorse.”

“Miss Trotman. Whose father threatens to sue you for breach of promise.”

“Me!” He laughed outright. “You promise. You…
pay”

By the set of her jaw, it was obvious that he had made a point. She hit her stick on the floor, and the sharp sound echoed round the hall. Maddy found herself the object of that cold-hearted stare. “I will retire to rest. You, Miss— Duchess. You will attend me in one hour in my chamber.”

There was no evading it. Maddy nodded.

Lady de Marly creaked and tapped her way across the hall. The maid, almost as elderly as her mistress, gave Maddy a quick glance, and hurried after. Strangely, it had almost seemed as if the maid had smiled.

“Call you…
duchess
,” Jervaulx looked at Maddy sideways. “She will… conceded.”

Occupying all of one of the oldest ranges of the castle, Lady de Marly’s customary apartments still had the chill of disuse. Blanketed and swathed up to her chin, she had established herself in the inglenook of a mammoth hearth. The fire was robust, but in most of the room one’s breath still frosted.

Lady de Marly might have conceded that Maddy was the duchess, but she gave no extra deference to the fact. Under the all-encompassing title of “girl,” Maddy was ordered into a straightbacked chair that did not quite fit into the nook, where in a very short time, her front was roasted and her back freezing.

With no other overture, Lady de Marly said, “I took pains to stop at this St. Matthew’s on my way. The marriage is registered in the parish book.”

“Yes,” Maddy said. She had signed herself there—the worst and most concrete of her offenses, she feared.

“I also inquired into the Notice Book at Doctors’ Commons. The issuance of a special license for the marriage of the Duke of Jervaulx and Archimedea Timms is duly remarked. ”Twould appear that it is as he said. All is in order.“

“Is it?” Maddy knew nothing of the formalities of the process outside of Friends. She felt an odd relief that Durham had after all been truthful.

“That comforts you, I see. Did you think it was not?”

Maddy looked at her skirt and then up again. “Verily, it would not have surprised me to find it unlawful in some way. It was—done in much haste, at Durham’s urging.”

“And was it indeed?” Within the hood of her shawl, Lady de Marly’s eyes were sharp.

“Yes.” Maddy took a deep breath. “Thou knowest that the duke will do anything to avoid confinement.

He has done this in order that I may help to protect him from it. I would not have consented—I would have searched for another way, but with half a dozen of thy men breaking in at the door of the church—”

“
My
men? Breaking in? You’re mistaken, miss. No one in my service had to do with this debacle.”

“There were men there—intent to take him.”

“Take him!” Lady de Marly hunched down in her blanket. “His mother is a fool.” Her lips wrinkled in contempt. “As if he were a common criminal. I knew nothing of this.”

“Durham told us that when he returned to London, hirelings had been asking after him and the duke. He feared that they would follow him out of town, and he could think of no answer but to arrange for the special license in case they should, so that someone might be able to say them nay.”

“Cocklehead! He should have come to me! I could have said them nay, and soon enough.”

Unexpectedly, the old woman chuckled. “But Jervaulx prefers to hide behind a prettier face, does he?

His appetites outweigh his judgment. Those jackals that his sisters married will have him yet, if he don’t show more wit. Mark me, if there were hired men brought in, we can guess who put that pretty notion into his mother’s head. Wretched vulgarians. Hired men, do you believe it! We’ll have a reward in the newspapers next. Wanted—the mad Duke! It’s a blessing that his father never lived to see this, God rest him.” She took a deep inhalation of salts, and then her hand disappeared among the blankets and shawls again. “The new petition for a writ has already been filed. Did he have you first before the wedding, or after?”

“Have me do what?” Maddy asked.

Lady de Marly snorted. “Have relations with you, Duchess,” she said in an ironical tone.

As if her body understood before her mind, Maddy grew flushed all over. When full comprehension of the question burst upon her, she had to make a conscious effort to keep herself still in the chair, although it scraped back over the hearth a little with the force of her reaction. She was vividly aware of the maid sitting somewhere further from the fire and Lady de Marly’s acid surveillance. “Not before,” she mumbled.

“Tell me the truth—and speak up, girl. I’m not interested in your morals. I’m interested in an heir.”

Maddy lifted her chin. “Not before,” she repeated, with more emphasis.

“When was your last monthly?”

“Thou art intrusive!” Maddy said.

“When one becomes a duchess, my girl, one finds oneself intruded upon in these matters. When?”

Maddy stayed stubbornly silent.

“I wonder at your reserve, considering the public display to which I found myself treated this afternoon.”

Lady de Marly leaned back and pushed the shawl from her head, revealing a black cap and jet ribbons.

“Although I suppose it bodes well for the fruitfulness of the marriage. Tell me about Jervaulx. He is much restored.”

Maddy was relieved to go on to another topic. “Yes. He’s better even than thou hast heard, when he is at ease.”

Lady de Marly nodded. “I’d pondered bringing in another physician—but where’s the good of it?

We’ve had a hundred. I think he does well enough with you.” She lifted one white, twig-like finger.

“Make no mistake, girl. This marriage is a disgrace. I’d have had better for him, but as long as it’s been made legal—one breeder’s as good as the next in the circumstances.” She shrugged. “He seems to like you well enough.”

“Your mother sent a letter,” Lady de Marly announced in the drawing room after dinner. She produced a paper from beneath her shawl and held it out to Jervaulx. Just as he was about to take it, she held it back a little. “Shall I read it for you?”

He plucked it from her hand. “I…
read.”
He took it to his chair and sprawled there. He held the sealed missive between his hands, then put it on his knee. Lady de Marly watched him intently, as if to judge whether he was truly going to read it or just make the motion.

He turned the letter over. He pushed it onto his other knee. Finally he stood up, brought it to Maddy, and commanded, “
Open
.”