Laura Kinsale (24 page)

Zenia carried Elizabeth into her room and bounced her down on the bed. “You’re mine,” she said, wiggling her daughter’s feet. “Mine, mine, mine. Isn’t that right?”

“G’ dow’!” The toddler immediately rolled over and maneuvered herself to crawl off the edge. She was a wayward and strong-willed child, inclined to tantrums if she was thwarted. Zenia caught her before she fell off the high bed, rolling her three times over to the bedstool, where Elizabeth very cleverly managed to climb down herself. She instantly headed back for her spoons, giggling wildly as she avoided Zenia’s pass at catching her.

Zenia let her go, untying the black ribbon on her bonnet. Her fingers were not quite shaking, but they were still clumsy. He was back. He had come back alive. She threw the bonnet on her bed and rang for her maid.

The girl who attended her was silent but for a brief question of what ma’am would like to wear. Zenia stared into her wardrobe. All of the gowns were black or gray or lavender—at the end of a year Lady Belmaine had supposed, in her calm way, that Lord Winter’s widow would not care to go entirely out of mourning. At first Zenia had not minded, but lately, she had begun to think wistfully of colors like the other ladies wore.

That was before they had learned that she was not, after all, a widow. Or even a counterfeit widow. Zenia had had two weeks to become accustomed to it, and still she had felt as if something was clutched about her heart, stifling its ability to beat. And the moment she had heard his voice in the church—she was surprised that she had not crumbled into a thousand quivering pieces.

He had taken a week longer to come than expected. A week longer in which to wonder how he would look, what he would say, whether he would denounce her openly as a fraud. Lord Belmaine said nothing of that to her; he had simply nodded to her and murmured, with a slight acidity, that they were all gratified by the news that Lord Winter had not after all met an untimely end. He seemed so unconcerned about his son’s arrival that he thought nothing of suddenly plunging most of the great house into a state of repair and renovation, closing wings and giving over bedrooms to painters and carpenters. They were hammering now in the chamber beside hers.

Dressed in the least morbid of the dusky lavender gowns, with a small lace cap and her hair pulled back to fall in curling ringlets behind her ears, she hugged Elizabeth. She covered her daughter’s face with desperate kisses in spite of wriggles and protests, and put her down. Zenia walked out of the room before her legs could fail her and descended the stairs.

Swanmere was the sort of house she thought her majestic mother must have grown up in. There was a great fresco, a tumble of activity among gods and goddesses and lesser creatures that cascaded all across the walls and ceiling of the grand staircase. At the foot, standing unsmiling beside a painted spaniel, a servant waited to escort her to the saloon they called the King of Prussia room, named for some visit of state a century before. He opened the tall door, bowed, and closed it behind her.

Lady Belmaine ceased speaking in her level, modulated voice, that tone that could sting with such discreet, unerring accuracy, and cast a glance at Zenia.

“Ah,” Lord Belmaine said pleasantly. “Here is your wife.”

The room seemed to be a hundred miles long. Zenia walked forward, her feet silent on the carpet, past gilt furniture and straw-gold drapes, to where Lord Winter stood leaning casually against one of the white columns that flanked the windows at the upper end of the room. She stopped, managing to look as high as his plain dark waistcoat for a moment, and sank into a curtsy.

“Never mind the formality,” he murmured dryly. “We’ve met.”

She lifted her eyes.

“I want to see my daughter,” he said.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

“She is sleeping,” Zenia said quickly.

“Then I’ll go to her.” He had an implacable air, standing up straight from the pillar. “If you will pardon me.”

Zenia felt a wave of anxiety. He seemed too ruthless; his expression too hard and unfeeling; she thought that he would frighten Elizabeth. As he walked past her without a look, she turned hastily to follow.

“She is not in the nursury, my lord,” she said as he mounted the stairs. “She stays in my bedchamber.”

He stopped with his hand on the carved banister, looking back at her. “Where is your bedchamber, Lady Winter?”

Zenia flushed at the question and the implication in his eyes. “On the second floor. The westernmost.”

He seemed for a moment to consider that. “I see.”

He turned, going up before her two steps at a time. In her voluminous skirts, she could not follow quickly enough to keep up. “My lord—please!” she called. “If you would wait—” But by the time she had reached the top of the grand staircase, he had disappeared up the back stairs to the uppermost floor.

She met the nurse in the hall. The woman was closing the door, but she paused as she saw Zenia and dropped a curtsy, smiling. “Her papa!” the nurse whispered, with a bouyant look. “Perhaps they will do better alone for a moment, ma’am.”

Zenia ignored her, pushing open the door. She was in time to see Lord Winter lower himself onto the floor cross-legged next to Elizabeth. The little girl looked up at Zenia. She said, “Mama,” with a smile, gave Lord Winter a brief distrustful glance, and turned back to her spoons.

“What is that?” Lord Winter asked, bending over Elizabeth’s lap, his back to Zenia.

“Mah,” Elizabeth said.

“She can’t talk yet,” Zenia said firmly. “She’s only eighteen months.”

“Spoons,” Lord Winter said, tapping the silverware as if she hadn’t spoken.

“ ‘Poo,” Elizabeth said.

“Spoons!” he said.

Elizabeth handed them to him. He accepted the spoons and held his forefinger between the handles, making them chatter against one another. Elizabeth burst into a smile. She grabbed the spoons back, and then handed them to him again. He rattled them, and she seized the silverware, instantly offering it back again. ‘“Poo!”

For ten rounds, the spoons went back and forth, Elizabeth punctuating every exchange with an emphatic, “Poo!” Then Lord Winter held up the pair and brought it chattering up to her face, catching her nose between the bowls.

Elizabeth yelped with pleasure. She seized a spoon in each hand and waved them at his face, crawling forward. She trundled herself into his lap and shrieked joyfully when he toppled backward, carrying her up in his hands so that she sailed above him.

Zenia bit hard on her lower lip. She had a passionate desire to rush up and snatch Elizabeth away. She was a difficult child. Everyone said so. No one had ever played on the floor with her daughter but her. No one else could make Elizabeth laugh so happily.

“She should take her nap now,” she said.

“Go away.” Lord Winter wriggled Elizabeth and swept her in wide circles and dives above him as she giggled and hiccupped. She was growing too heavy for Zenia to do that easily anymore.

Zenia leaned her back upon the door. She was not going to leave Elizabeth alone with this man. This stranger. “She will be sick if she continues to hiccup in that convulsive manner.”

Elizabeth made a plunging descent, her squeals of laughter echoing from the walls. For an instant she lay facedown against his shoulder, nuzzling against him. He lifted his hand and cupped her head, his long desert-hardened fingers spread amid the honeyed curls as hiccups rocked her.

Zenia took a step forward. “She is inclined to emotional paroxysms if overexcited. I really think it would be better if—”

“Don’t you have a ball to attend? Some calls to make?”

Elizabeth tired of her momentary stillness and pushed up to her feet. She looked down at her father with such a glow that Zenia’s heart wrung. With pudgy arms outspread, Elizabeth pitched forward and let her dead weight fall onto his chest.

“Ummph!” he said, with a grimace that his daughter thought hilarious. She did it again. And again, and until he held her off, turning onto his side with a stiff, painful move.
“Allah yesellimk,
beloved. Let’s try something else.”

“Do not speak Arabic to her, if you please,” Zenia said. “It will confuse her. She is not to learn Arabic.”

He lay still a moment, while Elizabeth tried to reach him past the length of his hold. When her struggles began to grow frantic, he leaned forward and brought her up close, burying his mouth in the lace beside her ear and muttering something that Zenia could not hear.

Zenia frowned, and then walked to a chair and sat down. Her daughter and Lord Winter paid her no mind, playing on the carpet. They progressed to blocks, the viscount lying propped up on his elbow as he built a tower for Elizabeth to hurl down. After several steeples had gone to pieces, she abruptly turned and came to Zenia, crawling into her lap and reaching for her collar button.

Zenia felt a flood of mortification. Elizabeth lay down, snuggling in anticipation. Lord Winter sat up and turned toward them.

“Mama,” Elizabeth said insistently, “Mama!” reaching again for her buttons and pressing her face into Zenia’s breast.

Hastily, Zenia reached for a towel and spread it over her shoulder and Elizabeth. She looked down, unbuttoning her dress underneath. Her daughter, batting the towel aside, contentedly began to nurse.

For a long time, Zenia was too chagrined to raise her eyes. She felt all her face and neck burning with embarrassment. “You need not stare,” she said angrily.

“You’ll have to forgive me. It’s an unprecedented moment in my life.”

She pressed her lips together, keeping her face down.

“She’s beautiful,” he said quietly.

“I suppose you think she is much too old to be nursing still.”

“I can’t say that I’ve thought about it at all.”

“Lady Belmaine disapproves.”

“Well, then. I approve, out of mere perversity.”

Zenia allowed herself to peek through her eyelashes up at him. He was sitting on the floor, his ankles crossed, his elbows about his knees. His fingers were interlocked in a strong, easy grip.

“Who named her?” he asked.

“She is named for Miss Williams,” Zenia said, with a touch of defiance, “and my aunt Lucy.”

“Miss—ah. Your mother’s maid. My parents raised no objection?”

“No.”

“And she was christened as a Mansfield?”

“Yes.” Zenia drew a deep breath. Her milk was growing more scanty. Elizabeth gave up suckling and sighed sleepily. “Yes, she was.”

Zenia rebuttoned herself and looked up. He was gazing at her, an unnerving stillness in his face.

“Everyone thought you were dead,” she said. “Your father insisted on it. And I did not wish my daughter to be—without a name.”

The question hung between them, unspoken.
Will you take it away from her?
She was afraid to ask it. She did not know him. And it was not his daughter only—it was her, Zenia, that he must accept. She could remember clearly all his biting opinion of women—most especially deceitful women. She could see that he detested his own mother. And yet he had played with Elizabeth, he seemed to like her.

A new and horrific thought burst into Zenia’s mind. Could he somehow keep Elizabeth and not her? Could he send her away from her daughter?

“I came near to dying,” he said in an even voice, watching her.

Zenia remembered a darkened saddle, and blood on the white hairs of a camel. She remembered him running toward her; the rough thrust as he shoved her into the Egyptian’s arms. “I’m sorry.”

One side of his mouth lifted in an ironic smile. He looked at her steadily. “Sorry for what? That I made it after all?”

“Of course not. I’m sorry that you were hurt. And I thank you for—what you did for me.”

He frowned. “You should not have been there,” he said in a rough tone.

She gathered Elizabeth tight against her. “I had no desire to be there, you may be sure! It was you—”

“Because you lied to me.” He thrust himself to his feet, his mouth drawn taut. “The way you’re lying now, damn you. Lady Winter! The perfect mother! My parents say you’re devoted.” His lip curled. “My God, you’re so damned good at it,” he said viciously. “I don’t even know you.”