Love on a Midsummer Night (Shakespeare in Love #2) (19 page)

Pembroke and Arabella went down to the village, so that he might rehearse with the Shakespearean troupe, as he had promised Titania he would do. Arabella took up her script once more and watched him perform the role of Oberon, telling herself that she could not leave the village until Mrs. Bonner had finished with her new, modest wardrobe. She pushed the shadow of Hawthorne and his coming out of her mind and instead raised her face to the warmth of the sun, taking in the beauty of that summer day.

She watched the play, rarely needing to refer to the text, for after the first rehearsals, no actor seemed to need to call for a line. They moved in Shakespeare’s world with ease, as if the dream the playwright had created was the real world, and the world beyond the stage was the illusion.

Arabella was not sure how, but the whole group seemed to sense the change between them. Pembroke was discreet, but his eyes lingered on her even though his hands did not. Titania seemed to know that she had been temporarily replaced. If she was jealous or angry, Arabella could see no sign of it. The beautiful actress simply pressed her lips to Arabella’s cheek. “I knew you’d have him. I knew it the first time I laid eyes on you together.”

Arabella laughed. “I wish you’d have told me.”

Titania smiled as if the love between Arabella and Pembroke were somehow her doing. “And spoil the fun? The gods must have their way with us. There is no use in rushing fate. The fates rule our lives. We are but their playthings.”

Arabella did not agree, but she pressed Titania’s hand. “I am grateful to them then. I have never been so blessed.”

One of the other actors overheard her words and spat into the dirt at her feet. “Avant,” he said. “Don’t tempt the gods. They cannot bear too much happiness.”

Arabella did not believe in the old gods either, but she smiled and nodded at the actor just the same, for Barnabas seemed intent that she believe his words of warning. After a life of grim survival and disaster, for that one day, she savored her joy. Even Cassie’s glare from across the village green could not dampen her spirits. Love colored her vision and touched everything she saw and every person she spoke to. She felt as if she lay under an enchantment indeed, but one not from the gods or from the fairies. An enchantment Pembroke had cast on her.

Though rehearsal went on, Pembroke came down from the stage and took Arabella’s arm. She smiled up at him, bemused, as he led her to his phaeton without even a by your leave. Titania waved to them as they left, and Arabella was surprised to find a picnic basket tucked away behind the seat of the carriage. Pembroke sang in a deep baritone, bringing the birds down from the trees as they passed, carrying her into the countryside away from the village where no actors or villagers would follow. The light carriage had no top, and the early summer sun warmed them.

He brought out a picnic that Mrs. Marks had packed and spread a blanket for them on the grass beneath the oak tree where they had first pledged themselves to one another.

He offered his hand to her. “We never were allowed to dance, Miss Swanson. May I have this waltz?”

Arabella laughed and stepped into his arms. There was no music but the sound of the wind in the trees over their heads, and the sweet music of the river running nearby. Arabella fell into step with him easily, for though she did not know how to waltz well, Raymond did. She followed his lead and let herself move without thinking, an unaccustomed luxury.

The warm sun caught in the green of the leaves overhead, setting dappled shadow to dance across her face as Pembroke held her in his arms. He waltzed with her over the uneven ground as if tree roots and broken leaves did not exist, as if they were alone in a world of their own making.

He stopped suddenly but did not let her go. He held her close so that she could feel the heat of his body against hers and the beat of his heart.

“I had better stop,” he said. “There are no Almack’s ladies to keep me on my best behavior here.”

“I find I like your roguish ways, Raymond. Feel free to practice them on me anytime you wish.”

He laughed then, helping her down onto the picnic blanket. He handed her a glass of crisp white wine, pressing his lips to hers. They sat beneath the spreading arms of the old oak, sunlight filtered through the verdant green of the leaves as the wind moved the branches overhead. Arabella felt as if all the world offered its blessing to them, the great oak, the wind, and the sky. She kissed him, her lips lingering on his. It was Pembroke who pulled away, raising his glass to her.

“To Lady Pembroke, the only woman I will ever love.”

She raised her glass to him and drank. “I had no idea you still held your mother in such high esteem.”

“I mean you, minx, and you know it.”

“I will be the lady of your heart, but I will bear no other title.”

“I have loved you all my life. I will always love you. You’ll marry me. You’ll see.”

She laughed, breathless. “No, I will not.”

He leaned over and kissed her again, his lips tasting of the tart wine. She sighed against his mouth. “You will find I am very persuasive,” he said.

“I have no doubt of that.”

He took the wineglass from her hand and pressed her down onto the blanket, heedless of the fact that they were outdoors, heedless of the fact that anyone might come upon them and be shocked, as she was.

His lips lingered on hers with feather lightness, but his body bore down on hers, making her breathless. Desire pooled between her thighs as if he had conjured it by magic. She felt the warmth suffuse her body, making her pliant beneath him.

He drew back, his eyes on hers. “I will persuade you.”

“No, you will not. But if this is a sample, I hope you keep trying.”

He laughed then and bent to kiss her even as he raised them both up to sit. As they sat and ate together, his hands stayed on her, his warm touch lingering on her body as they ate, a glancing touch on her thigh, on her breast, on the softness of her hair. She wanted him with a consuming hunger, but she did not throw herself at him. She merely sipped her sweet wine and ate another strawberry.

He laughed at her restraint before taking her wineglass from her. He drew her close, and she let him, pressing her down against the nest of soft blankets beneath the tree.

His hand rose up under her skirt, caressing first her calves, running up over her stockings to her ribbon garters. Her heart pounding, she thought that he might loosen them, but he did not, his hand moving across her thigh, brushing against the thatch of hair hidden beneath the linen of her drawers. He reached up and began to slide his fingers past the linen, into the warmth of her body.

She gasped and half rose as if to escape him and the pleasure he offered, but he bore down on her as he had in her bed, pressing his body against hers, holding her prisoner as his knowing fingers played within the sweet warmth of her body. She cried out, and his lips swallowed the sound. She murmured and moaned, writhing beneath him as if to get away, but everywhere she moved, he moved to meet her, so that she came closer and closer to the bliss he offered.

She screamed once and shuddered beneath him, and his lips drank in the sound like wine. He did not stop moving as her pleasure crested but played her body as he might a violin, until the last note of her ecstasy had sounded and she lay limp beneath him.

“I love you, Arabella. And I will not let you forget it.”

She pressed her lips to his throat, the only place she could reach. “What can I give to you, Raymond?”

He laughed, his body vibrating over hers. “I have had pleasure enough. Today, let me give to you and be content.”

She did not agree with him but was too tired and replete with her own bliss to argue with him. She knew that he loved her, but she also knew that he meant to tempt her to abandon her future, and to join her life to his.

But she had been married once already. A wife belonged body and soul to her husband. She did not exist under the law but could be put away or ignored at his will. She could be cut off without a penny, no matter what dowry she brought to the match. A wife was nothing, a nonentity, a ghost. As much as she loved Pembroke, as much as she always would, she was alive. She had fought hard for her life, and she would keep it.

Even if Hawthorne were vanquished tomorrow, Arabella would never live under the boot of a man again.

***

As the month of June wore on, drawing ever closer to Midsummer Night, Arabella chastised herself for being a fool. She knew that Hawthorne would come looking for her, and that she needed to be gone long before he arrived. Once she disappeared, Pembroke would no longer be a target of Hawthorne’s wrath. And if she hid herself well enough, Hawthorne would never find her.

She saw the logic of this and knew that her father’s golden guineas were enough to live on for the rest of her life. She must take them and go. So she told herself every morning as she woke. And every morning, she woke by Pembroke’s side, and every morning he kissed her, and she was left telling herself that she would leave… tomorrow.

Their time together was a stolen season.

Since their picnic in the Forest of Arden the week before, he had not mentioned marriage again. For some perverse reason, this pained her, though she reminded herself that she could not marry him, or anyone, so it was just as well that they did not keep discussing a fruitless subject.

As long as she lingered there, Arabella had wanted to enjoy the village of her childhood as she had never been able to do while her father was alive. She had wanted to exercise her new freedom that Sunday and go to the village church, but Pembroke had kept her in bed. When he went out to the players on the green that afternoon, she went down to the kitchen to make a tart, using one of Mrs. Fielding’s recipes. If she had not had the sense to leave by then, she would go to church next week.

As Arabella stood in Pembroke’s kitchen, the sunlight slanted in through the great wide windows that looked out on the herb garden. Mrs. Marks clicked her tongue to have a duchess below stairs making pastry, but Arabella ignored her.

She hummed to herself at the little wooden table Cook had set aside for her use. Her pastry was ready to go into the oven. She was making strawberry tarts as Mrs. Fielding had taught her to do, long ago. She slipped her pastry into the corner of the oven Cook had set aside for her, then turned back to her table to clean up the flour and bits of crust she had left behind, when a flurry of noise caught her attention.

Angelique Beauchamp stood in the kitchen door.

Arabella laughed with joy to see her, taking her friend into her arms with no thought for the floured apron she wore, or for Angelique’s fine blue traveling gown.

“I should have sent word,” Angelique said. “But I did not want Hawthorne to get wind of my doings.”

“You are here, and I am glad to see you. Nothing else matters.”

Arabella looked around the kitchen then and noticed that the under maid, Anne, had come down for her lunch but had chosen to linger, listening to them. Cook also listened as she basted the great goose that they would eat for dinner that night. Every evening meal was a feast in Pembroke’s house since he had come home.

“Mrs. Bellows, we will go upstairs to the sitting room,” Arabella said. “Please let Mrs. Marks know, and ask her to send up some tea and some of your good biscuits.”

Arabella unwrapped the great apron she wore, laying it carefully across her wooden table. The kitchen staff bobbed curtsies as she passed, and Angelique spoke low in her ear.

“I don’t know how you’ve gotten Codington wrapped around your finger. He not only allowed me to come down to the kitchen to find you but had a maid leave her duties to escort me.”

“Codington owes me.”

Angelique raised one elegant brow.

“I’ll explain later. It is too fine a day for melodrama.”

“Speaking of penny operas, you and Pembroke are the talk of London. Hawthorne is livid to find the rumors he spread about you are coming true. Everyone says that Pembroke has spirited you off and made you his mistress.”

Arabella laughed. “Well, I seduced him. He put up more resistance than one would think.”

Angelique laughed with her, the seductive tones of her deep voice reverberating in the upper corridors as they climbed the stairs to Arabella’s sitting room. “He loves you. No doubt that made things difficult. And you plan to marry,” Angelique said.

“No. I’ll never marry again.”

“But you’ve loved this man all your life.”

“And I always will. But love isn’t enough, as you well know.”

Angelique’s face darkened, and Arabella caught her hand. “I am my own woman now, or will be as soon as I get Hawthorne off my scent. I intend to stay that way.”

As they came up the servants’ staircase, Arabella opened a hidden door into the main hallway. She crossed to her favorite sitting room, the parlor that looked out over Pembroke’s mother’s rose garden. She opened the door only to find that the room was not empty.

A young woman dressed in a traveling gown of soft brown trimmed in gold, her long blonde hair caught up in a snood shot through with diamonds, sat holding a fat little boy who looked to be about a year old. The baby lay sprawled against his mother’s breast, breathing deep as he dozed. He had soft blond hair as his mother did, left to curl against his forehead and above his ears. Arabella caught her breath at the beauty of the picture the two made, and she felt a sudden longing for a child of her own. She pushed away the idea as ludicrous. A woman alone could not have a child.

“Good afternoon,” Arabella said. “I am so sorry. I did not know Pembroke had visitors.”

The beautiful woman rose to her feet and smiled, the warmth of her brown eyes seeming to take in Arabella all in one moment, as if she were pleased with what she saw. Arabella was not a formal woman for she was out in company very rarely. Her father had kept her mostly at home, and her husband had done the same. But she was sensitive to the moods of her friend. Angelique had not entered behind her but stood in the doorway, transfixed by the sight of the beautiful blonde woman, as still as if she had seen a ghost rise up from the mahogany boards at her feet.