Lady of the Butterflies (22 page)

He gave a brief grin. “I am far too good a horseman to have misjudged that jump so badly. Though I had intended a softer landing in the water.”

I was incredulous. “You could have been killed.”

“I do not think so.”

He looked up at me with eyes that were fathomless in the silvery darkness. There was a graze on his temple and I wanted so much to put my lips to it.

“We only have one life,” he said. “And to love and be loved, that is all there is.”

“Hush.” I could not resist stroking his black curls, glossy with river water. “You must not say such things to me. You must not. You know I am promised to Edmund. You know we are to be married within a sennight.”

“I know it. And it makes me wish I had broken my neck just now.”

“Never say that. Don’t even think it.”

“I can’t help it.”

“Richard, you hardly know me.”

“I know you well enough to know that Edmund is not the man for you.”

I smiled. “If you had not just fallen from your horse, I would scold you for being so presumptuous.”

“It is not presumption. You forget how well I know him. And I know him to be the most solid, steadfast, even-tempered man I have ever met.”

“Most women would think themselves fortunate indeed to find a steadfast and even-tempered husband.”

“But you are not most women, Eleanor. You have a heart that is all on fire.”

I felt it hammering so hard now it was like a throbbing pain in my chest, and I was sure he must feel it, must see the tremors of it.

“You have an energy and a passion for life,” he said softly. “A capacity for love that a man like Edmund could never understand. That he can never match.”

“Oh, and you could, I suppose?”

“Yes,” he said levelly. “I could.”

“You judge Edmund unfairly. He is a good man.”

“Meaning that I am not?”

I said, half smiling, “I don’t think you can be. If you were a good man, you would not be having this conversation with your friend’s betrothed, especially after that friend has just saved your life.”

“It takes two to make a conversation,” he said softly. “I was not aware that I had been talking to myself. You like talking to me, I think.”

“You are being presumptuous again.” Except that I understood the reticence in his smile now, understood that the confidence and swagger he so often displayed were just a shield. His glamour and vulnerability were two sides of the same coin and, to me at least, made him utterly irresistible. “I do like talking to you,” I admitted gently. “Very much. Of course I do. And I hope we shall still talk to one another after I am married to Edmund.”

“I love you, Eleanor,” he said desperately. “I think about you all the time. I cannot sleep for wanting you. I don’t know what to do.”

And I did not know what to say, but my soul was singing with the irresistible joy of being so needed and loved.

“I think I loved you before I even met you,” he said. “When Edmund told me how he had found you in a little rowing boat, in the mist, at dawn. I pictured you like a water sprite, with your gold hair trailing down your back and only the swans for company. When I met you, when I saw you skating, I saw that wildness in you and I was captivated. I knew you were the only person I should ever love. That you had ruined me for anyone else.”

“Don’t.”

“You love me too, don’t you? I can see that you do.”

I gave a small shake of my head. “No.” I did not mean that I did not love him, only that I could not. “I love Edmund.”

He suddenly heaved onto his side, winced and clutched his arm around his ribs, pain evident on his face as it had not been before, almost as if it was what I had said that had wounded him. I took hold of him to make him be still. “Don’t try to get up. Wait for the cart.”

“I cannot wait.” He pressed determinedly down with his hand on my legs and struggled to sit, grimacing with pain.

“Where does it hurt?”

He touched his hand to his right side.

“Let me see.”

I knelt by him, undid his coat with shaky fingers, pulled his shirt free from his breeches and pushed it up. Even by the light of the moon, the red-purple welt that ran along his rib cage was clearly visible. I touched the edge of it with my fingertips and he jerked away from me. “For the love of God, stop!” He dragged down his shirt, as if the touch of my fingers on his bare skin was too much for him to bear.

“I’m sorry.”

He drew up his knees, then supporting himself with his hand on my shoulder, struggled to his feet. I stood with him, let him lean on me for a moment. He staggered and I tried to take hold of his arm. He gave a grunt of pain.

“Your arm is hurt too?”

“My shoulder,” he said carelessly. “I expect it will mend.” He shook me off and walked unsteadily to where his horse was waiting peacefully now, tethered to a willow.

“Where are you going?”

He unhooked the reins and turned to me. “I shall go back to your house, unless you have any objection to that. I do not think I am fit enough to ride back to London tonight.”

“Of course, I didn’t mean . . .”

“I know you didn’t.” He put his boot in the stirrup and with a grunt, clutching his arm around his ribs, managed to heave himself into the saddle. “I would offer to let you ride back with me,” he said, taking up the reins. “But I don’t think it would be wise. If I had you close to me for one more minute, I am not sure that I could answer for my actions.” He walked the horse up to where I stood, and looked down at my upturned face. “I’ll try not to cause you further embarrassment. I shall leave at first light. Please don’t come to bid me farewell. I do not think that I could bear it.”

I did not think that I could bear it either. But I must. What other choice did I have?

EDMUND AND I LEFT for London three days later in a smart blue post coach which Edmund had hired, and as it rocked over the uneven road that linked the straggled cottages of Tickenham, I had leaned my beribboned, ringleted head out past the canvas screens for one last glimpse of my home while it was still mine. My last glimpse of home as an unwedded and unbedded girl.

Everything was golden, a burst of shining yellow. In the water meadows celandines and dandelions gleamed like small suns, whilst the rivers were edged with yellow flag irises. For a moment I thought I saw one of the first yellow butterflies of the spring, dancing in the churchyard, but it was just the bright bloom of a kingcup.

As we passed onto the Fosse Way, which would take us east, our guide told us it would take three days to reach London. I couldn’t imagine being on the road so long. Near Winchester we were stuck in the mire for six hours without food or water. We arrived at the inn by torchlight when it was too late for supper and next morning were woken to get back into the coach before dawn to make up time. We were jolted and shaken and before we reached Guildford, we’d crashed headlong into a great pothole that caused the leather straps to break, sending the coach careering off its wheels and entailing another long wait for it to be mended. I felt battered and bruised and weary. It was by no means a smooth and painless journey to the altar for me, but today was the end of that journey and the start of another one, from which there was no turning back. Today was my wedding day.

I rested my head against the velvet seat of the swaying carriage and thought of my father’s fantastical story of transformation, tiny caterpillars weaving their mythical little coffins. Today it was I who was to be transformed, about to enter holy wedlock, to pass from one state to another. Dressed in my gown of cherry silk with scarlet and silver brocade and gold lace, I was as bright as any butterfly and this carriage might as well be my coffin. I would emerge from it to take my nuptial vows, after which I would not be as I was before. I would have a different name. I would be expected to adhere to a higher standard of virtue. My good name, and that of my husband, would depend upon my housewifely accomplishment and modesty.

I had no mother to tell me how to be a good wife, but I was thankful that at least I had had Bess, married for years now and twice as experienced as me in the art of love. She had instructed me on how to fulfill my marriage duties and make my husband happy on his wedding night. I smiled to myself as I remembered the advice she’d given me the previous night when we’d lain awake in bed together, talking beneath the sloping roof of the inn.

“Every man knows that we women have much stronger carnal appetites than them,” Bess said. “Since they can only reach a peak of pleasure once at a time but we can do it over and over again. So he’ll expect you to look as if you’re enjoying yourself. You will, eventually, but you might not the first time because it’ll hurt. Just pretend it hurts much more than it actually does. Moan and sigh as though you are in the most dreadful agony and he will think you are in an ecstasy of pleasure. Before you know it, he will be moaning and groaning too.”

It seemed very comical, not to mention complicated, but I’d do my best. I slid my eyes across for a peek at Edmund. The sprig of willow I’d tucked into the scarlet ribbon of his hat was nodding and jigging to the movement of the carriage.

Bess was sitting opposite me in the carriage, beside Mr. Merrick. She and my guardian, together with Mary and John Burges and Edmund’s brother, were to be our only guests, unless Richard came too, which I very much doubted. He had been invited. Of course he had been invited, and he had not sent word that he would not attend, but somehow I knew that he would not be there and I was doing my very best not to think how I felt about that, to not think about him at all.

Edmund’s father still suffered badly from gout and was unable to travel any distance, so it would be a quiet wedding, but I didn’t mind so much now. I was on an adventure, the farthest I had ever traveled in my life.

“Are we nearly there now?” I asked Edmund, for what must have been the tenth time.

“Your nose will tell you,” Mr. Merrick instructed me. “You smell London long before you see it.”

“There’ll be nothing but fresh countryside smells in Marylebone,” Edmund reassured. “Though it’s on the outskirts of London, it’s in truth a small rural village, entirely distinct and separate, divided from the metropolis by acres of green fields.”

I was crestfallen. “You mean we shan’t even see the river and the Palace of Whitehall and the lions in the Tower?”

He patted my arm as if I was a small child, and I suppose I was behaving rather like one. “We can take a drive to see the sights tomorrow, if you’d like.”

I sighed and stared out at the woods and rivers and fields. The countryside was not as flat as Somersetshire, but somehow less interesting for it, and I felt suddenly very homesick. I slid up closer to Edmund and whispered in his ear. “Let me see my ring?”

“Certainly not.”

“At least tell me what it’s like. Does it sparkle?”

“It does.”

“You mean it has diamonds?”

“Wait and see.”

“Do you know where diamonds come from? Do you know how they are made?”

He smiled his broad, jovial smile. “Can’t say I’ve ever thought about it.”

I retreated back into my corner as if I was traveling in a stagecoach with only strangers for companions. While the potholes grew more numerous the nearer we got to London, and the coach jolted on, the questions started up inside my head again, clamoring to be heard. What was the point of living if it was not to learn? There were things I wanted to know, that I couldn’t live without knowing, couldn’t die not knowing, or at least without trying to find out. I did not think that, as my husband, Edmund would try to stop me, but nor did I think he would encourage it. And I would have liked to have been able to have discussions with him.

We were passing a great park at the edge of which was a gabled brick mansion as sumptuous as a royal palace, but which Edmund told me was the Manor House of Marylebone. It made the little manor of Tickenham look no more than a cottage. We carried on past it and I waited to see how similarly grand would be the church where I was to be married.

Presently I saw a humble chapel, built of stone and flint, standing entirely alone in a field, except for the crooked gravestones that surrounded it. It looked as if it was hundreds of years old, had been there since before the Reformation. It had small arched windows and a little pinnacled tower on top of which was a weathercock. We were approaching it up an ancient, narrow, winding track and had to stop twice to let a horse and cart pass, and then a farmer driving a herd of cattle. As we came nearer I saw that it stood on the banks of a little burbling brook that ran down from the slopes of undulating hills to the north.

Surely that could not be it.

“St. Marylebone,” Edmund announced.

It was a somewhat unpromising start to what I’d hoped would be my bright and colorful future.

THERE WAS NO SIGN of Richard, and I told myself I was relieved rather than disappointed. Edmund acted as if he were totally unsurprised. “He is the son of a Cavalier, after all,” he said flippantly, as though that should be explanation enough. “We all know there’s only one thing upon which you can utterly rely in a Cavalier—and that is that he will be utterly unreliable. He’ll probably turn up halfway through the service, or more likely sometime next week. I did write to him twice to give him the details but he has no notion of time, no concern at all for instructions, or for duty and responsibility for that matter, especially if he can wash it all away with a bottle or two of sack.”