Flowers From The Storm (56 page)

He’d rather hang.

He leveled the gun, an unrifled, short-barreled wickedness that didn’t need much aim to take down the nearest man and more. As his lips drew back, Manning seemed to comprehend. He suddenly lost all his color.

“Don’t.”

It wasn’t Manning. It was Maddy’s voice, clear and high, a shock like a reveille trumpet in the frozen silence. She stood in the doorway, stern plain propriety and sense in her gray gown, with Calvin and three footmen ranged behind her.

Christian exhaled a long, soundless breath of deliverance. He smiled slowly at his brothers-in-law.

Maddy stood back and lifted her hand. “Ye men will leave now. The duke wishes ye promptly gone from the premises.”

He sat in a chair, unloading the pistol, working with slow care, his head turned to see it better, heedful of the percussion cap. When he had it safe, he laid them both aside and slanted a look at her. “You should be… at… Papa.”

“The further away we got, the more I thought—thou needed me more.” She lowered her lashes. “I am thy protection. I ought not to have left thee.”

He allowed her to think it. He didn’t say that he’d have chosen the pistol, Calvin and three sturdy footmen over her for protection any day. He wished that she had not even been there at such an unpredictable moment. It had come down to what he’d known it would: the balance of force against force.

“They wished to take thee?”

“Manning… jumps. Stoneham, Perceval… not so sure. You… Calvin… change their minds.” He smiled dryly, and gave her that. “Glad you came.”

“Yes. I won’t leave thee again.” She looked shaky in the aftermath. “They will remember it. It was not wisely done of thee, Jervaulx—the gun.”

He shrugged. “Defense.”

“Peaceful conduct is thy best defense.” Her voice was audibly quavering in belated reaction now.

“Easy… say!” He stood up and lifted her hands out to her sides. “Great hulking brute… as you. Look!

Scare… little children. Dogs tails down… you walk past. Ground shakes. Easy to be… peaceful…

you!”

She swallowed, compressing her lips, humor gaining ground against her nerves. “Thou art buffle-headed.”

He was glad to see her. He was so glad to see her. “Aye. My head is… buffled.” He brought her hands together and kissed the backs of her ringers. “Rest… in working order.”

Her hands closed, but he held them. Her mouth was barely, shyly smiling; her straight sweep of lashes made a veil of gold over green.

He pulled her a little toward him, hungry with relief and the release of tension, with her unexpected presence. He was still free and alive, and he kissed her, sucked her lips as if he could have the breath from her and held her hard against him. Without words he lifted her. Doors and hall, her mouth, her body in his arms—his bed.

He spent no time on polite preliminaries: he took her with rough vigor, reclaiming what was his, while she twined her hands around him and pulled him down with an urgency that seemed the same.

In the morning, Maddy was put to work over breakfast writing out a pointedly polite suggestion to a partner of Hoare’s Bank that he present himself without delay in the duke’s drawing room—an objective she was pleased to pursue, since in the meantime they were living off the two hundred eighty-seven pounds left from Jervaulx’s buckles, a sum which no longer seemed huge to her but appallingly inadequate to the duke’s expense.

As soon as she completed that wording to Jervaulx’s satisfaction, she had to write a notice to be inserted in the newspapers that the Duke of Jervaulx no longer chose to honor Mr. Torbyn, land agent, with the exercise of his business affairs. All queries and interests should hitherto be directed to Belgrave Square, and no expense or commission undertaken save by the duke’s personal authority. She was then allowed a respite while the duke went upstairs to be shaved and dressed.

In the back parlor, a comfortable room fitted out in daisy yellow, overlooking a barren garden court and the wall of the mews, she indulged in a second cup of tea. She started a letter to her father, knowing that after Jervaulx returned she would likely have little more time for it.

She was in the midst of the second page when Calvin slipped into the parlor with a silver tray balanced on his hand, closing the door behind him. Maddy looked up reluctantly.

The butler bowed. “The duke is not with you, Your Grace?”

She felt that neither she nor London Calvin quite knew what to do about one another: as something of old antagonists who had found themselves standing firmly together last night, they seemed now in an odd suspension of hostilities that might turn into peace or war at a feather touch. Maddy sincerely preferred peace, so when he addressed her solemnly as “Your Grace,” she almost didn’t object. It was becoming a true cross, this worldly title, which was what made her certain that she ought to bear the consequences of denying it.

“I wish to be called ”Mistress,“ Calvin,” she said, in her most amiable manner. “If thou wilt remember, I cannot give nor accept any such compliments as the other.”

She fully expected him to stiffen and look down his long nose—just like Calvin Elder’s. It was provocation enough, she knew, to set them at odds for good and all. But instead, the dignified set of his jaw seemed to temper a fraction. “I remember, Mistress,” he said.

He surprised her with this easy capitulation. “Thou art not offended by it?”

“It would be impertinent of me to be offended by anything you expect, Mistress.”

Maddy lowered her chin, dubious.

He made a bow. “After begrudging a proper address to His Grace, if you now set yourself up as worthier of it than he—in that case I should have been offended. However, since you are no more than consistent, I must instead appreciate the reliability of your conduct.”

She chewed the end of her quill. “Dost thou like to wear hair powder?”

She startled him with that, she could see. He lowered the tray. “I had not thought as to whether I liked it or not. I suppose… it makes the hair unpleasantly stiff, after the paste is applied. And it has to be washed out every evening, which must sometimes lead to colds.”

“Well, if thou dost not like to wear it, thou needst not. Jervaulx does not care, and I think it a silly waste of money.”

Calvin bowed.

Maddy hid a smile. “Thou ought not to bow to me, either,” she said.

He half-bowed, and caught himself. “As you say, Mistress.” He straightened. “The duke, I apprehend, has gone upstairs?”

“Yes. Is there something I can do instead?”

“You need not bestir yourself, Mistress. Merely an early visitor for His Grace.”

“Oh dear.” Her heart dropped. “The dowager duchess?”

“Certainly not. I should never ask her to wait in the hall!” He lifted the tray a little. “I might mention,” he added, in a confidential manner, “that I’ve not known the duke to encourage his mother to call in this house. He goes to her.”

“I see.” This lack of filial hospitality seemed undutiful, but perhaps not entirely unjustified. Maddy bit her lip. “I suppose—I think perhaps—Jervaulx wishes me to speak to these people.” She stood up.

“Perhaps I ought to make his visitor welcome, if thou wouldst see him in here to me, until the duke comes down.”

Calvin cleared his throat. “You would do well to ask His Grace’s desire in this instance, Mistress. May I go and inquire for you?”

“In this instance?”

“In this instance, yes.” He shut his mouth up tight, with the look of a man who had spoken all that he was going to say.

“Oh. I hope—thou dost not think it rude to keep the caller waiting?”

“I will inform the duke, Mistress.” He made another bow, caught himself in the midst of it again, and closed the door.

She was left perplexed, not knowing if Calvin had some objection to this particular visitor or if he feared that Maddy would disgrace herself and the house on her first trial. She wondered that Calvin had not put this person in the breakfast alcove where Maddy had always waited. It seemed a deliberate indignity to leave him standing in the hall. That, and Calvin’s strange attitude, made Maddy tend toward the conclusion that it was the caller who was more questionable than herself.

Just as she was tentatively settling on that, the door cracked. “Christian,” said a playful feminine voice.

“It’s Eydie.” The door swung farther open. “Come, I know you’re here—”

The caller stopped on the threshold, dressed in elaborate mourning black, her veil thrown back to reveal a delicate face and striking yellow hair in ringlets down her cheeks. For an instant this Eydie seemed startled, taking in Maddy from head to toe. Then disinterest came into her face.

“Ah,” she said. “I wish to see your master.”

“The duke is upstairs.” Maddy kept her voice steady, determined not to make a complete botch of this first encounter with his society. “I’m Archimedea Timms—that is… I am his wife.” She extended her hand in greeting.

The woman had been looking in her reticule; at the same time Maddy offered her hand, the caller lifted hers. “You will take this—” The lady looked up, arrested in the act of handing Maddy a note with a half-crown prominently displayed under her glove. “What did you say?”

“I am Archimedea.” Maddy tried to make her lips form a smile, without much success. “The duke’s wife. It is a surprising thing, I know.”

Eydie seemed to think it more than surprising. She seemed to think it hilarious. She turned back her head and burst into a high-pitched, nervous laugh. “This is a joke,” she said.

“No,” Maddy said.

The note and coin slid to the floor. “He’s paid you; he’s paid you to sit here until I came, and say that to me. It is a joke.”

“No. I fear—it isn’t a joke.”

Eydie shook her head. “Yes. Yes, yes, yes. It’s a joke.”

Calvin appeared in the doorway. He was rigid as stone, utterly without expression.

“His Grace is not at home, madam,” he said to the visitor.

Eydie gazed at him.

“He is not at home,” Calvin repeated firmly.

She began giggling in the most dreadful way, falling into a chair as if some skittish puppet-master had dropped her. “It is a joke!” She lay back in the chair and kept giggling in that strange manner, growing more agitated. “It is a cruel trick.”

“Mrs. Sutherland, I must see you out directly,” Calvin said.

“It is
cruel
!” she screamed, throwing back her head. She flung herself from the chair and ran past him to the hall. “Christian!” Her voice and footsteps echoed in the marble stairwell. “Christian, it is cruel! Do you hear me? It is
cruel
!”

Maddy hastened out after Calvin, in time to see Eydie rush halfway up the curving flight of stairs.

“Do you hear me?” she shrieked, holding her skirts high as she ran upward. “It is a
lie
! You are not married!”

Amid the reverberating shrillness of her voice, Jervaulx strode out to the top of the stair. He was in boots and shirtsleeves; he caught the wrought-iron and gilt balustrade and held there, his fingers white with the strength of his grip.

“Christian!” She stopped below him. “It is not true.” Jervaulx didn’t move. He stood looking at her, with stillness setting into every line.

She hung against the inclined rail, curling her hands around it, leaning her head down on her outstretched arms and looking up at him like a puppy crawling forward to beg affection. “Please don’t tease me this way. Please tell me.”

“True,” he said, in a low voice that filled the hall with hushed sound.

Eydie let herself collapse onto the steps, breaking into the same hysterical giggles. “But I gave you everything. Ch-Christian!”

Her laughing sobs echoed against marble. Maddy realized that Jervaulx’s valet was standing in the upper hall behind him; all three footmen were in the lower hall and the chambermaid and cook had come to the door of the back stairs: everyone paralyzed and staring.

Maddy picked up her skirt and mounted the stairs. She heard Jervaulx make a wordless sound, but she went to the weeping lady and knelt on the stairs beside her. “Come,” she said. She took Eydie’s black-gloved hand and drew her up off the cold stone. “Come, thou must not make thyself ill.” Eydie was limp, breathing in gasps. Maddy sat on a step, slipping her arm behind the wretched lady, pulling Eydie against her shoulder, rocking her. “I’m sorry. It shouldn’t have happened this way. I’m sorry.”

The other woman was crying in earnest now, frenzied tears and great gulps of air, like a child in a tantrum. Maddy met Calvin’s eye and moved her head, asking him to clear the hall. He looked as if he had just witnessed a terrible accident, moving in a stilted, shocked way to obey her.

“I—hate—him,” Eydie mumbled. “I—
hate
—him. I hate you!”

Maddy let her talk, holding her, staring at her own knees before her and the rich lace on Eydie’s black gown. The other woman’s hat brim pressed painfully into Maddy’s neck.

Eydie whimpered, a long, aching sound of grief. “It should have been me. It should have been… me.”