The Duke's Wager (29 page)

But she had to follow him in as he simply walked off with her case of clothes.

He stood in the hallway and grinned at her. “If you’ll permit me,” he said, seeking to remove her dripping cloak.

“No,” she said in exasperation, clutching the sodden garment to her, “I tell you I am the wrong woman.”

“Oh no, m’am,” he said pleasantly. “I was waiting for you to come off the coach from Witney.”

Regina’s numbed mind began to respond. Could it be possible that Mrs. Stors had regretted her harsh words and had contacted this man? Could there be a new position for her here? She followed the landlord as he led her to the back of the stairs to a private parlor. There, he paused and knocked softly on the door.

He opened it slowly and bowed her in.

“The lady you was waiting for, Your Grace,” he said.

She stopped on the doorsill when she saw him. He was standing by the fire, and when he looked up, she found it hard to read the expression in his large blue eyes. But oddly, she felt only a vast sense of relief at seeing him. Seeing him, she thought irrationally, she felt a strange sense of homecoming.

He frowned, and came toward her.

“But you are frozen,” he said, and taking the cloak from her, he led her to the fire. Once she was seated, he signaled to the landlord. “Some good hot soup, I think,” he said imperatively, “and some other tempting foods.”

“At once, Your Grace,” the landlord replied, and bowing his way out, he closed the door behind him.

Regina lay her head back against the chair and relaxed. The fire was almost painful in its warmth. She felt a wave of tiredness sweep over her, but she opened her eyes to find him still frowning as he watched her. Somehow, he looked vaguely weary himself, she thought, the sensitive face looked paler, more thoughtful than usual, the cornflower eyes looked shadowed and were not lit with his usual inner humor.

“Yes,” she breathed. “Yes, Your Grace, you were right. You do win. I have lost. I am a long way from Canterbury. A very long way indeed.”

He did not reply, but stood close to her wordlessly until the landlord entered again with a full tray of dishes.

“First,” he said, in his distinctive whisper, “eat and drink a few things. Then you can rail at me. I often find that vituperation is difficult on an empty stomach.”

He guided her to the table, and she did eat some of the foods there, and drank some wine, at his insistence. But she found herself curiously lacking in appetite, and could not eat more than a few bites of any other of the array of foods before her. Then she sat back and looked at him again.

“I hope you haven’t sickened, Regina,” he said lightly, taking her hand and guiding her back to the chair by the fire.

“That would impair some of my plans, you know. It would be most inconsiderate of you. But you don’t know how to take care of yourself, do you? Why did you turn down the offer of Lucy’s bed? Foolish pride again?” he asked as he saw her eyes widen in surprise. “Or more of that sense of honor you do go on about? Oh yes, I was there. Snug as you can imagine, in the good lady’s best parlor. But I imagined that if you refused poor innocent Lucy’s bed, you could definitely refuse mine. And oh it was so warm and wide, but lonely, Regina. Alas, Lucy didn’t tempt me at all. But I watched over you. I saw you wrapped in little else but your much discussed honor, sitting up all the cold night. I could have discovered myself to you then and there. But I decided, instead, to let you run your string out. And so you have, haven’t you? For I know that you didn’t even have enough money left to pay the coachman. You made quite an impression on Jack Potter, and he guessed truly enough that you, as he so succinctly put it, had hardly enough coins to jingle together. But I played it out to the end, that you can’t argue. I waited to see if you could conjure up another Sinjin,” he paused as he saw her wince, “or Lady Amelia, before I drew the final curtain.

“But now it is ended. It is over. Or have you any further protestations?”

“No,” she said softly, “you are right. It is over.”

“What,” he asked gently, “no furious defense of virtue? No glowing plans for independence? No aspersions upon my character? I am disappointed. Truly. And here I looked forward to some superb operatic scenes. Perhaps you are too tired? Perhaps you would like to rest a while before you begin a tirade?”

“No,” she said again. “No, I am beyond tired. But you have won.”

He looked at her for another long moment. And she simply sat and gazed sadly back at him. He looked so complete, she thought, so elegant and in command. And so apart. His dark blue close-fitting jacket accentuated the fairness of his hair, the dazzling white of his neckcloth showed the purity of his skin. A fallen angel, she thought again, amazed again at how none of his career was written upon that disturbing and clever face.

“Why?” he asked, turning to gaze into the fire and prodding a wayward log with his booted foot, “were you on your way to Canterbury?”

“I thought you knew all,” she said.

“Why, so I do, but even I have some limitations. I knew all the facts, but there was no way of my guessing your intent.”

“I was on my way to join Miss Bekins,” she said. “But you knew that.”

“But surely you received her message.” He frowned, turning to face her. “I heard that it was glowing congratulations to you on having landed such an estimable position. She was so delighted to hear of your good fortune. Imagine, finding a position in a Duke’s household.

“But, never fear, I was careful not to specify exactly what sort of position it was, and since I rejoice in having fathered one small (although sadly trampled) creature to carry on my noble line, her assumptions about your future duties were of the most benign. And she could hardly have withheld the news of the good fortune that had fallen her way.”

Regina only looked up in stupefaction.

“I never received any message, she never replied to my letters at all. What good fortune?”

“Only that your estimable Miss Bekins is even now as we speak on her way to a marvelous job as a teacher in the New World, passage paid. Did you know that she always wanted to travel? A learned woman, your Miss Bekins, but a trifle too sober-sided for my tastes. A keen-edged hatchet mind like my own dear Miss Pickett is more to my taste. Still, she was adventuresome enough to leap at the chance to travel. You know, my love, it is an ill wind that blows no good at all. At least, my…arrangement with you resulted in some good. Miss Bekins would never have secured that exciting position in ah…Massachusetts, I believe, if it were not for certain intervention. And it was fortunate, imagine, she had only five hapless brow-beaten young ladies under her charge when I located her. No,” he said, watching her closely, “I never did promise that I play a fair game. I do tend to try to cover all exits and entrances.”

“But I never heard from her,” Regina cried in a small voice.

He turned to the fire again and asked in a low voice, “Who posted your letters, my dear?”

“Why, I gave them all to Sinjin and he—” She stopped and closed her eyes.

“Ah well,” he sighed. After a moment’s silence, he spoke again in a livelier, mocking voice.

“So it’s been out of the frying pan and into the fire for you, Regina, hasn’t it? You changed your mind about Sinjin’s vile offer, and escaped only to find yourself forced to comply with mine.”

“He told you about that?” she asked.

“Why no,” he answered, “rather I told him about it. It seems that St. John agreed to join our little game, to see if he could win you from me. Or from yourself. No matter, but it had become a three-sided venture. Did you not know? Then I imagine you made your choice out of affection alone. Whatever caused you to change your mind? The eternal fickleness of women? But you might have done better to stay with your original choice. He has a fine house in Curzon Street, you know. And I, well, I am erratic, I might just decide to incarcerate you in some pokey country abode, ringed around with daisies, far from the Opera, and balls and flash of the city. For I am very possessive, of my…possessions.”

“I didn’t change my mind,” she said, rising and walking hesitantly toward him so that she might better read his expression. “I never chose Sinjin, you know.”

He gave a little involuntary start. “No,” he said, “I didn’t know. Sinjin seemed to feel that you had, though.”

“No,” she said, “I gave him no answer at all. He took that for ‘yes.’ I suppose he couldn’t understand my not saying ‘yes.’”

“Neither can I,” he said quietly.

“I told you. I told you that I would never sell myself. Although,” she said, shaking her head, “I do see now that it was a foolish thing to say. You were right, I think. It is very easy to make claims, to say ‘never,’ when you don’t really know hunger, or desolation, or fear. Then it is very simple to say ‘never,’ very difficult to mean it. You were right.”

“No!” he exclaimed roughly, and swinging around, held her shoulders with his hands, seeming to have been shaken out of some rigid inner control. “No, Regina, I was not right. Not at all. I may be in control now. I may have the power, and the authority, and the facilities, but I do not have the right. Give up all else to me, but not that. I know full well that I do not have the right, and never did.”

She did not shrink back from him, or avoid his blazing eyes, only swayed a little, and said firmly,

“No. You are wrong, Your Grace. I was such a pompous little fool that night in your carriage. ‘I shall never sell myself, not for jewels, or comforts, or fine clothes. I shall not live a life of servitude.’ I said that, didn’t I? But I was wrong. I was, in the end, quite willing to sell myself—for security, for safety. You were right, you know.”

“I see,” he said, releasing his grip upon her, a look of infinite sadness upon his face, and turned from her again and remarked, in a hoarsely sorrowful voice, “So you do not come to me…precisely ‘intact,’ do you? What was it? I am surprised,” he went on, wheeling around to face her and saying in a savagely mocking voice, “at Sinjin’s ineptitude. Did he hurt you? Shock you? Have his tastes grown so bizarre that he put you off the idea of your new career entirely? It’s really rather too bad, now I shall have the task of reeducating you. It can be very pleasant, you know, if it is done right.”

“My Lord, Your Grace,” she laughed, putting her hands to her head, really the food and the warmth were making her dizzy with weariness. “You do have a lovely picture of me, don’t you? No, I’m sorry to disappoint you, Your Grace, but no, I did not…no, yours was the only lesson I received in…no, I am yet ‘intact,’ as you put it, in body. But, not in spirit. No, neither in principle.”

“What are you talking about?” he whispered furiously.

“I was, in the end, willing to sell myself,” she wept. “Do you know, Your Grace, I was. I thought, now this is a jest you will appreciate, I actually thought, when he said he had an offer for me, that it was an Offer. I thought he was asking me to marry him! And even though I did not love him, or really even know him, I was willing to say yes. For all those reasons I discredited earlier. For comfort, for security,” she wept openly now, “for safety.”

“Ah Regina,” he said, and gathered her close to him, and held her closely, and stroked her hair as she wept.

“But that is not,” he spoke softly as he comforted her as a brother might, “such a terrible thing. No, rather that is the way of the world. That is very acceptable, you know. Why half of England would not be wed today if that were not such a normal thing. There was no crime in that.

“And,” he said, holding her a little away from him and touching her teary cheeks, “every young woman has her heart broken at least once, you know. It makes you quite fashionable,” he said with a sweetly sad smile.

“No,” she smiled back—impossible, she thought, impossible not to smile back at him—“my heart was not touched. You do not understand. I did not love him. But my pride in myself, ah, that was broken. How could I have contemplated…allowing kisses, embraces…deceiving myself—all for only comforts and security?”

But he only gazed at her, his face unreadable, until he lowered his head and, holding her head between two hands, like a man holding a delicate cup, he kissed her long and longingly. “You learn quickly,” he murmured in an unsteady voice, raising his lips from hers. “Is it that I am such an extraordinary teacher, or is that you are such an apt pupil?”

Regina could only stand and wonder at the emotions he could so swiftly raise in her. He kissed her again and then put her away from him reluctantly.

When he stepped back, his eyes were dark and solemn. He pulled himself away from her and, walking to the mantel, struck a pose, one leg negligently thrust out on a low stool in front of it, his head thrown back, and that damnable mocking smile again in place.

“I would wish,” he began theatrically, “that at least there were a scribe here, or a witness. For I am about to do something so entirely noble, so full of loving kindness and bravery, that I expect at any moment to hear a choir of heavenly angels. Or at least see a brilliant shaft of sunlight suddenly appear. My dear Pickett would swoon with rapture and anyone of my acquaintance would dine out on it for a year. For I am about to make an enormous sacrifice, you know, and no one, no one would believe it. Least of all myself. But you have quite turned me around. You have evidently magicked me.”

“Regina,” he said in a softer tone, “the bargain I made with you was an unfair one. An evil one, if you will. But I was rather like that Chinese emperor who proudly trotted about his kingdom stark naked until one day, one innocent little boy pointed out the fact that he wore no clothes. And only then did he feel shame. Not that I can feel shame, mind you, for I don’t think I can call up that emotion at all, being a nobleman, you know. Yet I think I can still dimly perceive that elusive thing called ‘Honor,’” he smiled. “For you turned down Sinjin’s offer and mine as well, preferring to work at anything, even as a common kitchen wench, rather than accept our largesse for far less work, at least in our humble estimation. I did misjudge you, Regina, but then,” he mused, “females such as yourself are not thick upon the ground, at least not in the circles I have been traveling in. And they have been circles, it seems, all coming around eventually to the same starting point.”