[Samuel Barbara] Lucien's Fall(Book4You) (28 page)

"Aye." The woman bobbed crisply and left, and brought back Madeline. She wore a flowing white night rail with a gauzy white wrapper, tied with ribbons, and her dark hair fell around her shoulders and down her back like a river. She carried a brush and had a ribbon tied around her wrist, so Juliette knew she had been in the midst of her bedtime routine, but not yet abed. "Are you all right?" Madeline asked, taking Juliette’s hand.

"Yes," she said, her voice soft and quivery like an old woman’s. "I just want to talk to you."

The maid left them, and Juliette urged Madeline to sit on the side of the bed. "Let me watch you brush your hair," Juliette said. "You are such a beautiful girl."

Madeline smiled. "Thank you. You’re rather a beautiful lady."

"Have you done most of the shopping now?"

Madeline took a breath. "I have another fitting with Madame General tomorrow."

She giggled, like a young girl, at the name she and her maid had given the dressmaker.

"Then nothing more until they finish the wedding dress next week."

Juliette nodded. "You have not seen Lord Esher, have you?"

"No!" Madeline looked stricken and Juliette regretted her impulsive words. "Why would I?"

"He’s bound to be in London. His father will have cut him off by now, and wouldn’t allow him to go to the house at Monthart."

"What you did was wrong."

"You will understand one day, sweeting." Juliette took a breath. "I called you in so I might tell you something, my dear. It is not easy for me to say it, but I need for you to know."

"What?" A quizzical and worried look creased Madeline’s smooth white brow, and for one blazing minute she so resembled Juliette’s mother that she could not breathe.

"An old, old secret that you may keep or tell as you choose." Juliette took the brush and bade Madeline turn so she could braid the hip-length tresses for her. "I met your father, the earl, outside a bakery. I had an armload of three new dresses I was delivering to a lady nearby Saint James’s Park, and he was off to some engagement.

Neither of us were looking where we were going, and he knocked me down. I fell face first into the gutter—skinned both elbows and my chin, and ruined the dresses."

Madeline glanced over her shoulder. "I’ve heard about the dresses. I didn’t know about the elbows."

"Oh, yes. Your father was beside himself. He was not a young man anymore, even then." She smiled, thinking the earl had been about her own age now—thirty-six—

but she’d thought him very old indeed. "I burst into tears when I looked at the dresses—

it’s hard for you to imagine it, but the disaster might have ruined us. My mother had died shortly before and I was working morning till night trying to make enough for us to eat."

So, so long ago, but Juliette remembered every detail with a clarity made sharp by sweetness. That accidental meeting had changed her life. "He was quite handsome, and he was contrite at the mistake— and without vanity, I think I can say that at fourteen I was an extraordinary beauty, although I did not know it truly until the earl became so besotted."

Ordinarily, she stopped the story there, moving lightly over the intervening months when the earl had seduced her, given her more money than she’d seen in her life, fed her until her skin smoothed and her body filled out. Her father looked the other way, seeing a way out of their poverty, but it had not sat well with him, a God-fearing Christian man.

"I found myself with child," she said quietly, pulling the brush through Madeline’s dark tresses, willing her not to turn around until she could finish. "As did the earl’s
wife.
He cared for us both, tending to her needs as well as mine. He established rooms for me, and a midwife, and a girl to come in and help. I was to be his mistress, you see, and I was quite willing."

"His mistress, and pregnant," Madeline repeated.

"Yes." Over and over she brushed, watching candlelight shimmer in Madeline’s hair. "And each of us gave birth to a child, mine a little sooner than hers. We both had daughters with a lot of hair."

Madeline turned, her expression very sober.

Juliette met her gaze. "The countess of Whitethorn died in childbed. Her baby lived only hours."

"You are my mother?" Madeline asked and touched her eye.

"Yes." Juliette swallowed. "You must understand how deeply the earl and I loved.

It was a risk, but we both knew it was worth taking. His wife and daughter were buried together, but all thought the babe was well. He fetched you and gave you to the wet nurse. Within months, I, too, lived at Whitethorn, as wife— not mistress."

Madeline closed her eyes and swayed forward to put her head against Juliette’s bony shoulder. "You are my mother."

Juliette clasped her close, smelling in with gratitude the scent of her thick hair.

"Yes." After a moment, she asked, "Do you mind?"

"No."

A vast, enveloping weariness filled Juliette, mingled with relief. Her whole body began to tremble with the effort of holding herself upright, and she gently released Madeline. "I must rest again," she said. "Perhaps tomorrow I’ll feel well enough to go abroad with you."

Madeline rose. She tucked the quilts closely around Juliette, and pressed a kiss to her brow. "’Night, Mama," she whispered.

Juliette, her heart unburdened, slept.

Our passions are most like to floods and streams,

The shallow murmur, but the deep are dumb.

—Sir Walter Ralegh

Lucien, having no choice,
let his rooms go. He would have let the servants Delwin and Harriet Green go, too, but they cornered him on his last day in the apartment.

It was a dark, hot day, humid and oppressive. Lucien thought, looking over the unmoving treetops, the day fit his mood. The oppressive stillness without reflected the dead silence within. Even when he was drunk, his music did not stir.

He could not remember a summer that had been so dark and wet and gloomy as this one. He’d hoped August would be better, but it showed no signs of improvement yet.

His neck prickled with perspiration and he scratched at it irritably, packing his favored books— things he’d not allow another soul to transport for him—into wooden boxes. There were pages and pages of music here, written by friends and by great masters and some even by Lucien himself as a youth. Carefully, he sheaved it together, wrapping it in a layer of fabric before putting it away in the boxes. The music itself meant nothing, but there was some sentimental value in the pages, in the days he’d spent in Vienna. They had been, after all, the only days in his life that he ever felt happy or whole or as if he belonged somewhere.

Not like London. He shook his head. If one wanted to laze around and drink and play cards, London was a fair-enough place to light. Lucien’s trouble had always been a higher than usual level of energy, and it drove him mad to be idle. He could only sit long enough to play cards if he’d had enough exercise the rest of the day. He liked the robust feeling walking gave him, and riding his horse. He had, much to his surprise, also enjoyed the work in the gardens at Whitethorn. It was a satisfying activity—something you could
see
at the end of a day.

And now it seemed he would have his chance to learn how the world lived, for he would not, as he’d always imagined, be the next earl of Monthart, but only henceforth Lucien Esher, modest holder of a handful of properties in outflung areas of England, and a little land in Russia that was willed to him through his mother. He also owned outright a small house with a walled garden, Rosewood, on the outskirts of the city, that he’d purchased for his liaison with Lady Heath so many years ago. The lot of it would give him a few hundred pounds a year; enough to live comfortably but not richly—not as a lord.

Delwin crept into the room about three. "Would ye like some tea, milord?"

Wryly, Lucien smiled. "Were you thinking of brewing the paper here?" His supplies had dwindled rapidly, and the first rents would not come in till September. Until then, he’d be hard pressed even to buy food—all the more reason, he supposed, to find some way back into society. For a few weeks, he could let the countesses and ladies of London feed him. If he could find one to invite him, the rest would quickly forgive him.

And too, he’d heard Madeline and the countess were in town, making preparations for the wedding. The wedding. He lifted his head and focused on the trees standing at attention beyond his window, breathing carefully and slowly until the knot in his lungs broke up and moved away. He just wanted another single glimpse of Madeline before she married. One glimpse.

He’d forgotten Delwin until the servant spoke. "Er, no sir, we brought some tea from home," Delwin said. "And Harriet baked some cookies, too. She didn’t want ye going out on such a dank day without something in yer stomach."

Lucien straightened, and rested his hands on his hips, taking the man’s measure.

Delwin was in his late fifties, still tall and relatively trim. He’d have the Englishman’s jowls in another few years, but just now, the flesh was merely soft. Behind him, his wife of thirty-odd years poked her head around the corner, eyes open and curious. "Well,"

Lucien said. "Brought it from home, hmm?"

"Yes sir."

"Well," he said again, and waved at Harriet. "Bring it in then, but only if you’ll both share it with me."

"Yes, milord. We’d like a word with ye."

Too surprised to make a protest, Lucien sat down with the pair and listened to their plea. They’d been out to Rosewood twice to cart his belongings, and he’d noticed then their murmurings as they tromped off into the wooded glade that led to the meadows and ponds, and examined the two-story stable. He had a hunch he knew what they were about to say. "I’ll tell you honestly I’ve no blunt to keep you on. ’Tis a sorry fact, but my father’s cut me off and I haven’t a farthing without him."

"Beggin’ yer pardon, milord, but ye do," Delwin said. "Have a farthing, that is."

"Pardon me?"

Delwin nodded at his wife, and she placed a box on the table, and lifted its lid.

Within was a sizeable pile of coins. Gaping, Lucien asked, "Where did it come from?"

"It’s yours, milord. You dropped it here and there, out of your purse at night, most like, and in your shoe—" he glanced at his wife. "We allus figured the shoes were gambling winnings ye hadn’t wanted to claim. Sometimes, there was a fair piece o’

change in there."

Lucien laughed at the acuity of this observation. And he’d simply forgotten it most of the time. It seemed decadent to him, now that his circumstances were so reduced, that he could ever have been so careless. He swore, wiping a hand over his face.

"Weren’t just you, neither," Delwin confessed. "Yer friends and the, er, ladies left a bit here and there, too. We’ve just been scooping it up and saving it all this time, to use in case of emergency or suchlike. I reckon there’s a few hundred pounds."

Lucien narrowed his eyes and touched the pile of coins. "No one gave it to you and bade you give it to me?" He would hate it if someone pitied him to that degree.

Delwin frowned. "I tell ye it’s as I’ve just said. Ye dropped it all over the place when ye were in yer cups. We just collected it proper."

Stunned to silence, Lucien stared at the money. Was it possible he and his friends could carelessly drop this much money over the course of ten years? With his index finger, he poked the pile, gauging the amount to be more than three hundred pounds.

Incredible they hadn’t even missed it.

He looked at the earnest pair. "Considering all you’ve endured at my hands these many years, I believe you should keep this money yourself."

Harriet gave her husband a beatific smile. It was smug.

"She said you’d say that, milord," Delwin said, "but we ain’t interested in the cash as such. We’d like to come with ye to Rosewood and live in the rooms above the stables.

Aren’t many that treats folk the way ye do, and we’ll work for room and board till yer back on your feet."

Shamed by their devotion when he’d been nothing but a drunken lout most of the time they’d known him, Lucien nodded. From the box he grabbed a handful of coins and held them for a moment, gauging what they would buy—meat for poor children for months; gin for a working man for a year; a roof for a family …

Or a single pair of gloves for a society girl like Madeline. With an odd sense of freedom, he smiled. "I think I’m glad to be done with the lot of them," he said, and put the money into Delwin’s hand. "You take this and put it away, and you may come to Rosewood with me."

So it was he went to live at the picturesque but tumbledown cottage of Rosewood.

The Greens spent their days cleaning and fixing the stable, while Lucien chopped the wild growth out of the garden, which was, of course, filled with roses. There was one blooming that was the exact vivid shade of the one he’d plucked at Whitethorn—that impossibly intense magenta—that glowed against the gray morning. He touched it to his nose and breathed in the musky sweet smell. At the power of it, he closed his eyes …

And was filled with a sense of Madeline, all around him. Her skin, like the petals of the rose that he rubbed over his mouth. Her hair, smelling of sunshine and earth and roses, her laughter, surprisingly robust. He thought of her struggling with the violin, and thought of her struck dumb in the hall as Juliette and Jonathan made love in the library.

He thought of her in a thousand ways, a thousand lights, a thousand moods.

He could not move while the longing washed through him. Under his feet the earth gave out the moist, rich smell of possibility, and he scented dew on grasses and heard the bright twittering of hidden birds—finches and sparrows, tiny and industrious, seeking their breakfasts. Caught in the silence of his soul, with hunger so deep, he knew he had to see her.

Lucien Harrow, late the worst rake in all of London, had fallen in love.

Too late.

…

One August morning filled with damp and heat, Madeline peeked in on Juliette.

She slept quietly, her breath rasping as she exhaled, the sound rattling in the quiet.