by Joan Wolf
The men went into the taproom and I followed the landlady up a set of battered wooden stairs to the bedroom. It was quite small, and the roof was low, and it had cracks in the plaster walls, and there was only one bed.
“Damn,” I muttered again.
“I’ll fetch you some water, miss,” the landlady volunteered. “You’ll want to clean up some.”
When I looked in the small mirror that was nailed above the clean but chipped washbowl I understood why everyone was urging me to wash. My face was indeed extremely dirty. My right shoulder had stiffened badly during the long walk, and when I examined it I could see the beginnings of what was going to be an ugly bruise.
I put myself to rights as best I could, and went downstairs to the taproom.
* * * *
Supper was not as unpleasant as I had feared it was going to be. Greystone had obviously resigned himself to the inevitable, and when I joined him at a small scarred wooden table set in the corner of the taproom, his smile was rueful. “I fear this is not what you are accustomed to, Kate.”
In fact, I had eaten in dozens of places like The Luster Arms, but I did not say that. I picked up my napkin and shot him a nervous look. I was acutely aware of the fact that I was alone with him. “Are you going to stay with the vicar, my lord?” I asked bluntly.
“You must remember to call me Adrian,” he said with the sort of kind smile he would probably bestow on a frightened child. “After all, I am your brother.”
I nodded, a little disarmed by the smile but not entirely reassured.
His eyebrows drew together. “I don’t want to leave you alone here, Kate. The landlord seems like a decent sort, but still...”
I bit my lip.
“You know, I actually do have a sister,” he told me. His eyes glinted with humor. “I promise that you can rely on me to behave.”
He could charm the birds out of the trees when he wanted to, and I felt myself responding with a shy smile of my own.
The fact of the matter is, I played my part to perfection that night. That I did so because I did not know that I had a part to play did not save either Adrian or me from the consequences of my uncle’s nefarious plot.
Chapter Three
“You can have the floor,” I announced when finally we stood together in the small bedroom under the eaves. “You were a soldier. You must be accustomed to sleeping on the ground.”
Adrian raised his eyebrows in amusement. “I was an officer, Kate. Officers do not sleep on the ground.”
My face must have shown that I didn’t believe him, for he laughed. “At least let me have one of the pillows. Is it clean?”
I inspected it closely, then lifted it to my nose and sniffed. In a lifetime spent largely in lodging houses, I had learned that smell is as important as appearance. “It is clean,” I pronounced with some surprise. “And you can even have a blanket,” I added generously. I stripped these articles from the bed and went to spread them out neatly on the floor for him. When I turned it was to find that he had followed me, and I was suddenly and acutely aware of how small I was beside him. I had to tilt my head way back to see his face. The eyes that looked down into mine were dark and unreadable. “Good night, Kate,” he said softly.
“Good night... Adrian.”
I took off my shoes, lined them up neatly beside the bed, and climbed into the bed in my dress. Silence descended. We had left the shutters open, and a line of moonlight slanted in through the window and fell upon the faded patchwork quilt at the bottom of the bed. I lay tensely awake, listening to his even breathing and thinking that I was never going to be able to fall asleep.
The sound of boots pounding on the uncarpeted wooden stairs dragged me back to consciousness. Alarmed, I sat up in bed, and was startled to find myself beholding an extremely broad, white-cambric-covered back. Adrian had stationed himself between me and the door.
Someone put a shoulder to the door and heaved. On the third push the lock gave, the door crashed open, and my uncle stood in the doorway, his face clearly visible in the bright moonlight that was now streaming in the unshuttered window. “Greystone,” he pronounced with every appearance of pleasure. Then, silkily: “What are you doing with my niece?”
A shocked male face appeared at my uncle’s shoulder. “Damn,” it said. “Don’t look like we arrived in time after all, Charlwood.”
Adrian slowly moved away from me to stand by the window. I felt the loss of his protection bitterly. I didn’t understand yet what was happening.
“Come in, gentlemen,” Adrian said.. I could hear the anger that lay beneath his level tone. He, of course, understood perfectly.
It was when my uncle said, “You will do the gentlemanly thing by my niece, Greystone, or I will blast your name all over London,” that I tumbled to what my uncle’s presence meant. My breath sucked in so violently that it had to be audible to the men, but no one looked at me.
Adrian was silent. I stared from him to my uncle. Charlwood was smiling, but there was a look in his eyes that caused my stomach muscles to tense in a way that had become all too familiar.
“How did you manage the axle?” Adrian finally asked. His voice held only a detached interest.
“Manage the axle?” I echoed. “Good God, do you think it wasn’t an accident... ?” My voice petered out. No one was paying the least attention to me.
“You’ll marry her, Greystone,” my uncle said. “I have a witness who will swear that I found you together in one bedroom. How will the great hero look when that gets out, I wonder?”
He sounded—vengeful.
Adrian leaned his shoulders against the wall next to the window and regarded me as if I were an interesting specimen of insect. “You were very good,” he said. “I suspected something when the axle went, but you behaved so naturally that I actually began to think it was an accident.”
I looked at my uncle. “Was it an accident, Uncle Martin?” I demanded.
“My poor innocent. Did he tell you the axle broke? It was just an excuse, Kate, to get you to come here with him.” My uncle’s eyes were bright with pleasure, and I knew that he was lying.
“Nothing happened,” I said. I looked from him to his witness-companion, who by now had come all the way into the room. Their presence seemed to suck up all the air, and it was difficult to breathe. “We are both fully dressed,” I said.
“Don’t matter,” the man returned. “You’ve been compromised, my girl.”
My uncle said, “Wayne is right, my dear. You have indeed been most thoroughly compromised.” His words were addressed to me, but his eyes were on Adrian.
“No one need know,” I protested.
“But they will. I will see to it that they know.” His eyes flicked over the small, shabby room, the unmade bed, then returned to Adrian. “I have been hearing rumors, Greystone, that you are interested in pursuing a political career. If that is the case, you have not behaved with a great deal of intelligence tonight. In fact, my boy,” he rolled the words out with obvious relish, “you have landed yourself in quite a nasty little dilemma. Marry her, and you have a wife who is nothing more than an Irish gambler’s brat. Refuse to marry her, and I’ll spread the story of this night all over London. That will effectively finish any hopes of a political career, won’t it?”
Charlwood’s face was full of smiling violence.
Adrian’s face looked as if it had turned to marble.
“What if I say I will not marry him?” I said defiantly.
The sea-green eyes turned to me. “You will do as I say, Kate,” Charlwood said softly.
I felt suddenly very cold. No one, before or since, has ever made me feel as physically threatened as my uncle could. Even later, when I was standing at bay with a gun trained at my heart, even then I was not afraid as I was in that bedroom. I realize now that the threat I felt from Charlwood was sexual, but at the time all I knew was that I was terrified. I didn’t answer him.
I’ll have to run away, I thought. I cannot possibl
y stay in this man’s power.
“I’ll marry her, of course,” I heard Adrian say wearily.
Charlwood laughed. The sound made me shudder, and it was then that I knew I would take the coward’s way out.
* * * *
The men went down to the taproom, leaving me alone. I got back into the bed, huddled under the covers, and tried not to think about the terrible thing I was going to do.
The landlady brought me tea and muffins for breakfast. I drank the tea but couldn’t eat. I got back into bed. At noon my uncle came to get me. He had procured a special license, he said, and Adrian and I would be married immediately. I changed the wrinkled dress that I had slept in for a fresh one from the case I had packed for the visit to my uncle’s mythical friends, and went downstairs like a sleepwalker.
The ceremony was performed in the taproom, which the landlord had thoughtfully cleared of local customers. It smelled of ale and mud and the manure that some farmer had dragged in on his boots.
It was a terrible place for the Ear! of Greystone to be married. I couldn’t look at him, I was so ashamed of myself.
When the time came for my response, I whispered “I will,” and hung my head.
It surprised me to find that the sun was shining when finally we emerged from the taproom. My uncle was being charming to the minister, his friend Mr. Wayne looked as if all he wanted to do was to find a bed and sleep, and Adrian’s face betrayed no expression whatsoever.
His phaeton was in front of the inn; evidently it had been repaired. The bays were harnessed and waiting. I stood in front of the inn, feeling like a package that nobody wanted.
“Get into the phaeton, Kate,” Adrian said to me. I glanced up at him nervously. His gray eyes were as dark and cold as the North Atlantic. “I am taking you to my estate of Lambourn,” he informed me in a voice that was as cold as his eyes.
I moved toward the carriage, then jumped when I felt my uncle’s hand touch my arm. “Allow me to assist you, Lady Greystone,” he said in a voice full of delighted malice.
“Stay away from her, Charlwood.” Two big hands grasped my waist and swung me up to the seat of the phaeton as easily as if I weighed nothing. A moment later Adrian joined me, and the bays trotted briskly out of Luster, moving as if their owner could not wait to leave the little village in his dust.
* * * *
It was a gloomy ride during which I uttered only two words: “I’m sorry.” The look he threw me was contemptuous. I didn’t blame him.
We stopped twice to rest the horses and to eat, but I couldn’t force a thing down my throat. If I had been the crying sort I would have been bawling my eyes out by the time we reached Lambourn. But, as I believe I have said before, I am not that sort. My eyes were dry and my chin was up as we turned into the long, beech-lined drive of Lambourn Manor, one of the many homes of the Earls of Greystone.
I noticed scarcely anything on that first arrival, but later I came to know Lambourn well and to love it dearly, so I will tell you a little about it now.
The house was old, and small for a lord’s, but its setting on the windswept, rolling Berkshire Downs was beautiful. The turf of the Downs actually came right up to the doors of the house, making it look as if it were part of the landscape. The inside of the house was old as well; the rooms did not look as if they had been painted in the last hundred years. But I thought the faded colors were lovely and restful—every room was soft with pastel shades of ivory, crimson, pink, and blue, all lightly dusted with gold.
Greystone rented out most of his land to tenant farmers, who pastured horses and dairy cattle and sheep on the lush turf and grew barley and wheat and oats in the limestone soil. The manor house was kept going by a small staff of permanent servants, and there were two grooms attached to the stables in order to look after the handful of horses that Greystone kept there.
All this, of course, I learned later. On this first day all I noticed was that the original stone of the house had faded to a lovely silvery gray, and that the servants were not able to suppress their astonishment when Greystone introduced me to them as his wife.
The housekeeper, whose name was Mrs. Noakes, showed me to my room. I learned later that it was small and shabby by the standards of the Earls of Greystone, but to me it was both large and beautiful.
“Since you have not brought your own maid, I will send Nancy to help you dress, my lady,” she said.
“I don’t have a maid, Mrs. Noakes,” I said, “and I am very used to doing without one. Please don’t bother Nancy.”
She stared at me in amazement. “It is no bother, my lady.”
I sent Nancy away, however, and when I was alone I walked around the large room, admiring its comfortable chintz furniture and faded rug, and looking for a connecting door to another bedroom. Aristocratic married couples, I knew, had adjoining bedrooms with a connecting door. There was no such door in this room. My heart lightened a little when I realized that Adrian had not put me in the master bedroom suite.
I went over to the old mullioned window and looked out across a wide expanse of the Downs. There was a window seat tucked into the window bay, and I sat down, folded up my feet, and regarded the peaceful vista of gentle hills and rolling turf. My heart lightened a little more.
I knew I had done a terrible thing, and certainly I was feeling both guilty and ashamed. On the other hand, the horrible, sickening fear induced by my uncle’s presence was gone. Guilt and shame were better than fear, I decided ruefully, and went to wash my face in the basin of warm water that Mrs. Noakes had provided.
Greystone and I sat in the pretty dining room, with its carved moldings and beautiful old Persian carpet, and made conversation while dinner was served. Nothing but cool courtesy showed in his face the whole while, and foolishly I began to think that perhaps what I had done was not so bad after all. Lambourn’s spell had already begun to trick me into feeling that I was safe.
It was nearly ten o’clock when we finished, and Grey-stone said to me, “Go upstairs. I will join you after I have had a glass of port.”
I felt as if someone had just punched me in the stomach. I could feel my eyes enlarge. He saw my look and raised an inquiring eyebrow. “Y-yes, my lord,” I stammered, and fled.
Mrs. Noakes once again offered the services of Nancy, and once again I refused. I waited until she was gone before I ventured out of my room to inspect the rest of the bedrooms on the corridor.
What I saw did not alleviate my alarm. I had not been put in the master bedroom suite because there was no master bedroom suite. The room I had been given was by far the largest on the floor, and with a sinking heart I realized that it must be the bedroom that was used by the earl.
Greystone’s brushes were laid out on a bureau in the small room that lay next to mine, but I was under no illusion that he planned to spend the night on the room’s chintz-covered chaise longue. This was his dressing room; he was probably planning to sleep with me.
You married the man, I told myself as I stood once more in the center of my pretty bedroom, staring at the wide, comfortable bed. What did you expect was going to happen?
The truth, of course, was that I hadn’t thought ahead at all. When one is running away from something, one often doesn’t take the time to consider what one is running to. This was the uncomfortable reflection that was in my mind when I heard the doorknob turn behind me. I whirled around in time to see the heavy oak door open and Adrian walk in.
The polite mask he had worn for the servants’ sake was gone. He was very angry, I realized, and my stomach muscles began to tense. I straightened my back, lifted my chin, and braced myself for what was to come.
He crossed the floor until he was standing in front of me. God, but he was big. I was tempted to throw myself on his mercy, to whimper that I was as much a victim of my uncle’s scheme as he was, but I could not get the words to come. They were untrue, anyway. We both knew that I stood to lose nothing by this marriage, while he had lost everything.
He
looked down at me, his face hard, his eyes narrowed. My stomach tightened even more. It was not the same feeling my uncle gave me, however, and I realized that I did not feel threatened by Adrian in the same way I felt threatened by Charlwood. This thought gave me a little courage, and I said, “I have told you I was sorry, my lord. I will do whatever you want me to.”
His eyes flicked to the bed behind me, then back to my face. “Will you?” he asked.
My heart began to thud. The thought of going to bed with such an angry male scared me to death. I do not welsh on my bargains, however. I made myself as tall as I could and said baldly, “Yes.”
“So,” he said, looking me up and down in a way that brought color stinging to my cheeks. “Are you pregnant, then?”
I could only stare at him, stupefied.
His mouth was compressed in a bitter line. “Charlwood would feel that his revenge was truly complete if at the same time he could saddle me with a wife I did not want and an heir that was not mine.”
I felt a healthy rush of anger surge through my veins. “I am not pregnant!” I shouted it at him, so furious was I at the suggestion.
“Are you not?” And before I realized what was happening, he had reached out, grasped my arms, and pulled me against him. Instinctively I tried to push against him to get away, but the hands that were gripping my arms held me immobile. The next day I would have bruises where he had gripped me. I opened my lips to protest, but before I could speak his mouth had come down on mine. I felt his temper in its brutal hardness. My own anger flared in response, and I tried to kick him. He lifted me right off my feet and held me against his chest, his mouth still clamped on mine.
He was holding me as if I weighed nothing. I was helpless and furious but—strangely—I was not frightened. I tried ineffectively to kick him once more.
Then, abruptly, something changed in the way he was kissing me. The pressure of his lips became gentler, and his body bent over mine in a way that was possessive without being threatening. I felt the angry resistance in my own body beginning to drain away, felt myself beginning to soften and melt into him.
