Laura Kinsale (22 page)

On the journey home, he had longed for England. It was a new emotion, but this time the desert had nearly eaten him. He felt how close he had come to some fatal edge of his identity. He wanted home. He wanted the places that he knew by heart, the language that was his. And as he had traveled, gradually his sense of himself had been restored to him. His tongue remembered not to speak Arabic; his fingers remembered how to button his waistcoat and hold a fork; his body grew accustomed again to coat and confining boots. He recalled the things that were important to do and say with the European passengers.

Now and then, an abyss would open beneath him. He would face some trivial occasion and for an instant be unsure of the proper action: should he help himself to the dishes on the table or wait to be served? Should he shake hands? His hand would move—and he would have to consciously think the moment through. Small things, tiny things, but underneath them lay a black well of uncertainty.

Even now, he hardly knew where he was going. The streets were familiar; he knew the way home—but he was barred from the road north for a sennight.

He felt dispossessed. Bewildered.
Lady Winter
at Swanmere. Miss Elizabeth Lucinda Mansfield in the nursery. Clearly Lord Winter himself was not overly welcome in this cozy menage. Bruce had all but said so to his face.

He had a spiteful thought of riding through the night—he could be at Swanmere by dawn, and let them discover just how strong their hearts were. He wondered by what means she had convinced his father that she was his wife. It must have taken some profoundly clever talking. His father was no fool.

But then, Selim had duped Arden without much difficulty, and Arden didn’t think he was entirely a fool either.

At Hounslow, as the houses fell away from the road, Arden pressed the hack to a canter. The little mare followed like a ghost, her breath sparkling puffs of vapor against the backlit glow of the city. He was denied the gratifying outlet of shooting any footpads. Nothing more interesting appeared on the road but a little late traffic.

At Longford, he pulled up at the crossroads. It was rising midnight, and his last easy point to turn north and make Swanmere by morning.

He imagined walking into his “wife’s” bedroom. And quite as suddenly his nerve failed him.

A crowd of reasons why he would be a fool to do it pushed into his thoughts. The servants would not know him; he had not been back for nearly thirteen years. He might find himself ignominiously denied entrance to his own home—worse, he would have to ask where his supposed wife was sleeping. He sat still, appalled at the thought of trying to explain who he was and what he wanted to some pinch-lipped hall porter of the sort his mother always hired to keep the inferior classes at bay.

Beyond that, there was the abyss. Who was she? What would she look like? He couldn’t remember her.

He only remembered that she had said.
What difference does it make?

He turned the horses west, away from Swanmere.

At the ungodly hour of five a.m., Sir John Cottle was roused out of his warm bed by a shout. He threw open the window, squinting down through a spitting mist, and saw two shadowy forms in the half-light of his yard.

“By George!” he uttered. “What the devil is it?”

“I’ve brought your mare,” came a rough voice. “The String of Pearls.”

Sir John sucked in his breath. For a long moment he stood very still. Then he shoved his feet into slippers, grabbed a coat and ran down to the hall. A sleepy butler came up from the back stairs just as his master threw back the bolt.

He hurried out onto the steps. “By God! Bejesus! Winter! Is it you?”

“Yes,” Viscount Winter said, with a tinge of irony. “I realize it’s a shock.”

“And the mare—is that her, by Jove? Look at her! What a little darling!” His voice had a strange, anxious affability. “Winter, by all that’s holy! We thought—well, never mind that, my good man! Would you mind—shall we just come away from the house a little?”

He trotted right past the horses, back down the drive in his slippers. Lord Winter looked after him, his brows rising, and then turned the hack and followed after.

When the house had vanished in the mist, Sir John turned. His round face was so full of distress that he seemed almost ready to burst into tears.

“I can’t have her!” he cried. “I’m sorry!” He stood back, as if he did not even want to touch the delicate mare that watched him with ears pricked.

“What’s amiss?” the viscount asked softly.

“I’ve married,” Sir John said in despair. “I’m sorry.” He lifted his hands helplessly. “I had to sell off all my stable. She won’t have it. Hates racing horses with a passion. Oh, Winter, I could weep. Look at her! Look at those hocks!”

Lord Winter watched the ridiculous figure of Sir John in his nightgown and cap, standing in the drive.

“Gresham?” he asked, after a silent moment.

Sir John made a faint keening noise. “Duel. He’s bolted to the Continent.”

The viscount sat gazing at Sir John, such a forbidding expression on his face that the man in the nightgown and coat wet his lips.

“I’m sure I can find a buyer for you,” he said quickly. “Nothing easier!”

With a faint laugh, the viscount shook his head. He turned the horses, wheeling past Sir John. “There is no need. Good day to you.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

“The Lord lift up his countenance upon you, and give you peace, both now and evermore. Amen.”

“Amen,”
intoned the congregation. The minister turned up his palms, signaling a general shuffle and rising. As the mourners in the forward boxes began to file past the veiled and black-clad family, each bending briefly to express their sympathy, Zenia waited, her hands cradled in a sable muff. Her breath made faint clouds in the cold air. Beside her, the countess Belmaine was still and silent, her face composed, watching each row stand up in turn.

“We seem destined to meet at funerals,” murmured a dry voice behind Zenia.

She knew him instantly. She had known he was coming; for a fortnight she had known, but not when. Her heart began pounding in her ears as she rose from the church pew.

His mother surely had heard him also, but the countess did not betray so much as a flicker of emotion. She simply gathered her skirts and stood, walking out of the box as the usher opened it. Zenia could not be so stoic: she turned her head, looking back from beneath the ebony curl of an ostrich plume on her bonnet.

Lord Winter was dressed in black, with proper crape ribbon on his arm and hat, a perfect gentleman. But his skin was deeply tanned and his blue eyes striking—she had never forgotten his eyes. He was looking at her with cold intensity, with no more emotion than his mother revealed.

“My lady,” he said softly, holding out his hat to direct her to go before him.

My lady.
Zenia felt him fall in behind her. She felt his presence at her side as she took the hands of the family; she saw their reddened eyes and looks of shock at Lord Winter—few of them so lost in grief that they did not notice him. The deceased had been the scion of a county family; member of Parliament, supporter of Corn Laws and Tory causes. As a compliment, Lady Belmaine herself had arranged for the white sprays of flowers from Swanmere’s succession houses.

The newly bereaved widow kept hold of Zenia’s hand, and impulsively caught Lord Winter’s in her other. “Oh, praise God!” she said brokenly, looking up at him through her veil. “I had heard the news, but—oh, how it does my heart good at this moment, to see you safe home with your dear, good, sweet wife, and your little girl!”

Lord Winter stood with his hand in the widow’s. “I’m glad,” he said brusquely, at the same time that Zenia said, “I’m so sorry.” She glanced at him, flustered, and again at the widow. “For your loss,” she added.

The widow was already looking beyond them to the next mourner. Lord Winter took Zenia’s arm and drew her down the aisle after his mother’s straight-backed figure.

“My dear sweet wife and little girl?” he asked tightly.

She felt unreal, walking through the vestibule and into the frigid air with his arm under her hand. The whole world was shades of gray; the somber stone of the church, the silver clouds, the bare trees.

“Yes,” Zenia said. “I have a daughter.” She did not dare look sideways at him under her bonnet. “You are her father.”

He put his hand over hers and gripped. It was not a comforting hold, or a loving one. It was pure violent force, wordless. She could not tell what he felt, only that he hurt her.

His mother was waiting on the church steps. She gave Lord Winter a bleak glance. “How dare you choose such an occasion for your reappearance?” she asked in an undertone.

“I am so happy to see you also, Mother,” he said mildly.

“For God’s sake, Arden! Mr. Forbis’s funeral! What will people think?”

He smiled slightly. “I suppose they’ll think that I’m not nearly as dead as he is, poor devil.”

“Save your impiety for your club. I will speak to you when we return home.” She turned and walked toward her carriage.

“I wonder I don’t run away again,” Lord Winter murmured, watching his mother enter her coach, “with that treat before me.”

Zenia said nothing. She looked down at her muff. A chill breeze swept her dark skirts. All the carriages waited in line behind the family’s vehicles and the hired mutes with their draped staves and professionally solemn faces. At the head of the procession, four glossy black horses arrayed in black plumes and harness stood motionless before the ready hearse.

“I brought my own landau,” he said. “Will you ride with me, Lady Winter?”

Panic consumed her. “I believe Lady Belmaine expects me to—”

His hard grip arrested her attempt to walk on. “No doubt Lady Belmaine expects all sorts of things, but you may find that the wishes of your
husband
and your mother-in-law are seldom quite in harmony.”

Zenia looked quickly up at him. “I—”

“Not here,” he said, drawing her with him as he bestowed a curt nod on a couple clearly bent on accosting them. He walked her down the long line of carriages, all the way out of the churchyard and across the village green to the last vehicle.

She was trembling by the time they reached it. He helped her up the step and sat down on the seat across from her. A footman in the Belmaine livery closed the door.

“Lord Belmaine insisted that I live—” she began, but he cut her off.

“God, how long will this take, do you suppose?” He looked out the window. “I detest funerals. Have you been unhappy here?”

“No.” Zenia shook her head. She gripped her fingers together inside her muff. “No.”

His jaw seemed to tighten. She gazed at his profile. The sun had burned lines about his eyes and mouth. His cheeks were as lean as a Bedouin’s, the planes of his face more severe. The father of her child.

“It is so difficult to believe that you are here,” she said.

“Is it?” He slanted her a look. “Am I very
de trop?”

She had not thought Elizabeth resembled him at all, but her heart seemed to contract in the fleeting moment of likeness, the vivid image of her daughter somehow crystallized in an expression that was more than his blue eyes and black hair; his high cheekbones and hard mouth. He was entirely a man, sunburned and savage—and his plump, dark-eyed, rosy-cheeked daughter looked like him.