Flowers From The Storm (68 page)

He climbed the stairs, past the salon where the extra staff had already arrived and begun sweeping.

Another floor seemed almost too much, but the dressing room where he’d been sleeping for the past month was full of chairs and flowers.

His valet appeared from the back stairs. Christian shook his head, dismissing the man. He leaned on the newel post and looked up. One more flight. And Maddy would be there, in the guest room. He wanted to lie down with her and go to sleep. Enough of the strange distance between them.

That kiss. His pulse warmed. Tonight—

Actually, it was morning. He smiled to himself, pulled his neck cloth free and climbed the stairs.

In the upper hall, a fan of early light spread on the rug from the open guest room door. He hesitated outside it, trying to gather his muzzled wits. It seemed suddenly a little embarrassing, after so long, just to walk in upon her. Perhaps he could pretend that he’d forgotten to order two spare rooms made up.

Perhaps he could just kiss her again— arousing thought—just take her down on the bed and kiss her.

The spirit was willing, anyway.

He heard a soft female murmur from inside. With an effort, he put his body in motion again, pushing away from the wall.

“Maddygirl?” He looked in the doorway, a little sheepish, without excuse or rationale—not precisely one of the proverbial lords of creation.

The guest room, fitted up in stylish feminine taste, was all sunny pink chintz undimmed by any use. In a diminutive puff of an upholstered armchair sat a girl Christian had never seen before.

She held a baby—the source of the murmurs—that batted with awkward arms at the ribbons on the girl’s cap.

For a moment he had the odd sensation that he had walked somehow into the wrong house. The room was unfamiliar, the girl a stranger, and the baby…

He gazed at them.

“
Damn
!” he exclaimed, and went two paces into the room. On the bed lay a metallic shimmer of fabric, Maddy’s ball gown, with the tiara and a sealed note atop it. He whirled on the girl. “What’s the meaning…
this
?”

The baby stopped babbling at the sound of his voice. The girl, who had not yet moved, moistened her lips and said, “The mistress told me to wait here for Your Grace.” She rose, adjusting the child against her shoulder, and curtsied. “This is the little girl, sir. Mrs. Sutherland left yesterday, and said I was to bring her to you.”

Christian grabbed the note and ripped it open. His right hand was awkward, shaking; he tore the paper half down the middle and then couldn’t seem to get the parts together. He couldn’t make his brain decipher it. He heard himself making distraught noises and swallowed against the panic, leaning over the dressing table, smoothing the page flat, but the words just slid and tilted as he looked at them.
Christian
.

He read his name. He saw letters that said things, things he didn’t want to hear.
I must leave thee now.

It was wrong. Thy world, the wedding, illegal, nullify. Thy daughter
.

He closed his eyes, hanging his head over the note. All his breath had left him, like a great blow to his chest.

“Go… out,” he said. “Next room. Away. Go away.”

“Yes, sir.” The girl passed him quickly. He heard a door open and close.

Maddy, he thought. Maddy, Maddy…

Christian yanked the bell-rope. He would go after her. Bring her back. Explain. He started out of the room to the stairs, slamming the door behind him.

In the other room, the baby instantly began to wail. The sound stopped him dead. He had a wild thought that it was all a mistake, that Maddy must listen to him if he could say that it was a mistake. The baby was Eydie’s; she ought to have taken it, but there’d been this misunderstanding—unfortunate—unfortunate—misunderstanding.

He threw open the bedroom door. The girl looked up wildly as the baby’s howl burst on him. “I’m sorry!” She shifted the child in her lap. “I won’t let her cry! She’s very good, Your Grace!”

Her look of terror made him halt on the doorsill. Just as abruptly, the wail ceased. The girl had the infant supported, sitting halfway up against her, revealing the small face.

The baby whimpered. A pair of tear-filled button eyes gazed at Christian, fixing him with anxious concern. Its forehead puckered in a tentative question, like some omnibus passenger who’s just got down and found himself stranded at the wrong stop.

And with an uncanny sting of recognition, a revelation, Christian saw his own self. Not in the round, featureless infant face, the indistinct thatch of hair; not in the physical shape of it that could have been any baby in any random cradle. What he saw was that small worried bafflement: the dawning knowledge that the world was a strange and capricious place, the slightly foolish, helpless sensation of having perhaps just walked into quicksand.

He knew it, that feeling.

His hand opened. He let go of the door and took a step nearer. The round, unblinking eyes followed his motion with ardent perplexity. The baby gazed at his shirtfront and his black coat, regarding him as if he were an object of great but unfathomable importance.

She looked up into his face. And then her sudden smile broke out glowing, the way a lover would turn to discover him in a crowd.
You’re here
! The silent message lit her up like a candle, caught him up instantly in it too.
At last you’re here
!

The infant arms flailed, and she began to coo excitedly.

Christian backed away, shocked at the sensation that seized him.

“The deuce take you,” he said low, and the baby laughed at him.

“Sir?” His valet’s voice behind him made him jerk around.

With a wrench, Christian focused on the man. “Duchess…” He realized that he would have to suffer the whole house knowing. Anger rose in him. “When she left! Find out.”

“Your Grace—the cook said that Mistress departed through the kitchen two hours ago, and forbid anyone to follow her.”

Christian knew where she’d gone. To her Quakers—the dark thee-thou sobersides who’d been here yesterday.

Or to Richard Gill.

Silent violence exploded inside him. Let her go, then! Let her go; let him have her. Christian struck the door with his forearm, sending it slamming back to the wall and bouncing off. The baby began to wail again.

“Hush, hush,” the girl urged, and it screamed louder. She stood up and hiked it onto her shoulder. The infant kept howling. “She’ll quiet when she’s put down,” the girl said over the wails. “If I could just put her down somewhere. I’ve been carrying her all the night.”

“Put down then!” Christian waved at the bed. “There.”

He reached for the bell-rope as she obeyed him. This baby, this damnable baby—Richard Gill—Maddy… Maddy… she wouldn’t have to put up with the Mule’s by-blows, would she? Pious prick, he wouldn’t know how to—

Christian flushed with rage, thought and image freezing him.

His;
she was his wife. He wouldn’t suffer Gill to touch her. He yanked the bell-pull. “My cloak,” he snapped at his valet. “Call up the carriage.”

Beneath one of the long arched showrooms of Butterfield’s Lambeth nursery, flanked by rows of potted flowers, Christian stood waiting, his foot propped on the end of a bench. He leaned on his knee, slapping his riding whip lightly against his leg as the Quaker came toward him down the length of the greenhouse.

Gill stopped. Christian did not straighten, only looked at him sideways.

The last echo of the gardener’s footsteps died away down the arched cavern. He returned Christian’s look with a restrained, slightly questioning expression—no triumph, no defiance—and Christian knew she was not here.

He dropped his eyes, his fingers loosening on the whip. With the tip of it, he nudged between the blossoms of the pink-and-white carnation, staring in silence at the petals. He had a great urge to cut the whip across, snapping the blooms off all the flowers in reach.

He did not do it. He put his head down and rubbed his hand over his eyes.

“She has left thee,” Gill said.

Between his fingers, Christian saw only the black silk of his full dress against a background of gay peppermint-striped petals. He moved the whip, stirring the foliage. He thought that the scent of humid soil and carnations must make him ache with shame and anger for the rest of his life.

“She has not come to me,” the Quaker said. “Does thee know what Meeting she attended?”

Christian shook his head.

“I can learn,” Gill said. “I will send thee notice that she is safe, if thou wish it.”

Christian felt himself left outside a high wall, the gates closing, dark-coated sober figures drawing them shut against him.

Maddygirl, he thought helplessly. Maddy.

She had gone through of her own will and left him here. He could not learn her ways, he could never be the man she would esteem; evidence enough of that wailed at the top of its lungs in his guest room. His life repelled her—it was this serious God-fearing gardener, this plain modest pursuit of virtue that she wanted.

He looked at Gill and thought: you will never make her laugh, will you?

You’ll be kind and constant and wise—wiser than I am— and she’ll respect you. Damn you. Damn you.

A better man.

Christian threw back his cloak and stood straight. He turned away. He stopped as he pushed open the door, holding the whip and his hat in his hand. “She’s afraid of thunderstorms,” he said, something that Gill might never find out for himself.

And ghosts
, he thought as he stepped into the early frost— but he did not give Richard Gill that hint.

Full morning shone through the crack in the guest room curtains, casting a bar of bright light across the bed and the pillows that bolstered the baby. Christian leaned one hand on the bedpost.

He glanced at the girl sitting in the corner, noticing for the first time how weary she appeared.

“Eaten?” he asked her softly.

“I nursed her and cleaned her just a half hour ago, sir.”

He hadn’t even thought of that. “You… I meant.”

She said quietly, “Last night. The mistress bade me eat when we come in.”

“Go down now.”

“Oh, sir—I can’t leave her alone.”

“I’m here.”

“You, sir?” In the darkened room, she looked more than a little dubious.

“Ten minutes,” he said. “Eat!”

She dropped a bow and scurried to the door.

Christian closed it. He went to the foot of the bed and stood looking down at the infant as it lay in the middle of the bed on its back. He’d wakened it; the small arms waved, and a whimper bid fair to become a cry.

Arrangements. Scotland. He’d have to write the Sutherlands. It made him tired to think of it, trying to write. It made him tired just to stand up.

The girl seemed responsible; perhaps she could be paid to escort the child. The whining sound it made rose, like a creaky door, and it began to bawl in earnest.

He shoved away from the bed and went to the curtains, pulling them closed, so that the bar of bright light vanished. In the deeper darkness, the baby still cried, not screams, but a forlorn baaing sort of sound, like a sheep out on the hills.

It had only the girl’s shawl overtop it. He thought the room was cold without a fire and shrugged out of his coat. As he laid it over, the button eyes turned toward him. The crying stopped, replaced by that pucker of befuddled worry. He stood back, and it began to sob again.

Fed, clean, warm: he didn’t know what the devil more an infant required. Picking up, perhaps—not that he was going that far. He should have called another maid; he wanted to lie down before his body and his brain collapsed in weariness.

He thought of leaving it here—it looked safe enough. He could lie down in the bed next door. The girl would be back in a few minutes.

It just kept crying: long, fragile, lost-soul sobs. He leaned over it again, trying to see if there was something truly wrong or if this were only some female trick that they all knew from the cradle.

It looked at him, weeping as if the whole world were just too miserable to bear. The bed gave beneath his weight, and he sank down onto his elbow.

The baby closed its mouth, staring at him with hope and small hiccups.

“Jesus,” he said. He lay down on the bed, pulling the pillow under his head, and drew the whole bundle of coat, shawl and infant up against his shirt. A tiny hand closed tight on the lace. One sob erupted, and then changed midbreath to a soft sigh.

Women, he thought sardonically, sinking in the bedclothes, with sleep revolving and closing in his head.

He moved one finger, feeling a cheek as soft as down.

What’s your name?

Ask the girl. Remember that…

Maddy…

It was wrong. I must leave thee now.

Don’t cry. Don’t cry, little girl… I’m so tired. I never deserved you, did I? Maddy… but I loved you.