At Your Pleasure

by Meredith Duran

  Nora could not believe the rumor. But it did play uneasily through her mind that the boy she’d known had never longed for power, whereas the man he had become seemed to glory in it. Why else had he cultivated the late queen’s favor, petitioning to play her diplomat at George of Hanover’s court?

  “I suppose you must have given thought to the other questions I will ask,” he said. “Shall we save trouble by skipping directly to your answers?”

  She pushed a hand over her brow. His manner was so strange, this scene so unimaginable, and the hour so late, that she felt a momentary, giddy wonder: perhaps she was only dreaming.

  “Speak,” he said sharply.

  She pulled herself straight. “You forget yourself!” She was not one of his servants. “I have no choice but to allow you to stay in my home, and to search it as you will. But his majesty cannot command me to tolerate your insults!”

  A brief silence passed, in which he did not move. And then she saw his fingers loosen slightly on the back of the chair, and it came to her that before this moment, he had been . . . braced for something.

  Why? What cause had he to find this meeting uncomfortable? He had ignored her with effortless skill for six years now. Was he angered by her refusal to be cowed?

  Or did this meeting seem as impossible, as mad and strange, to him as it did to her?

  “Forgive me,” he said slowly, as though the words of apology tasted foreign, and required special care in the pronunciation. “It is late, and my manners suffer from the road. I assure you, madam, that this occasion is no more agreeable to me than to you.”

  She swallowed. They were dancing nearer and nearer to the heart of the matter now. “Why are you here, then? Why has the king sent you?”

  He stared at her, still impassive. The long clock in the hall began to chime, its low, mournful notes marking the death of the day. “You were better to ask my intentions here,” he said. Some weight in the words bade her to take it as a warning. “Do you know where your family is?”

  What sort of trick was this? Everyone knew where her father was. In the newspapers, in the coffee and chocolate houses, his flight to France had sparked a thousand speculations. “Lord Hexton has . . . gone abroad.”

  He did not react. “And your brother?”

  She felt a sharp thump of panic. Why did he ask after David? “He has gone north to hunt. The grouse are in season.”

  “Indeed? An unusual time to absent himself.”

  She stared at him, unable to reply, but understanding his skepticism perfectly. The harvest was upon them, but it would soon become a season of death if the rain did not cease. Corn and wheat could not survive such wet, and without them, men did not survive the winter unless they were wise enough to have planted sufficient oats and potatoes besides.

  But Lord Hexton had never been one for farming. He had saved his strategies for court politics, and left his son to worry for the crops. David, in turn, had counted on the weather, and on the wealth in their coffers to purchase what stores they lacked. But the strongbox stood empty now, its contents having been spent on weaponry. Meanwhile, the tenants came to her each morning, their eyes shadowed by sleepless nights, concerned for the children they must feed.

  “It is September,” she said. “The grouse are thick on the ground. When else should he hunt?”

  Rivenham gave her a measured, cold smile. “With whom does he hunt, then?”

  “With friends.”

  “Which friends?”

  “Any number of them. My brother is not one to forget old affections.”

  The jibe slipped from her without conscious intention. She felt her heartbeat stutter.

  Adrian—no, she could not think of him so; she would only think of him as Rivenham—gave her a strange half smile. No longer the Queen’s Delight, he; now that George of Hanover had taken the throne, he had become the king’s own blade.

  “You understand,” he said, “that I am not one of those friends.”

  Her breath caught. So quietly he spoke, but there was something cold in his face and his eyes.

  For all the times that the sight of him had made her burn, she had never before been afraid of him.

  “Yes.” Her voice barely carried the word. She wet her lips and tried again. “I would never think otherwise.”

  “Then my plain speaking will not shock you,” he said. “I am here because of your brother’s dealings at Bar-le-Duc. Apparently the grouse are thick there as well.”

  Who had told him that David had been to France?

  Or was he only acting on a suspicion?

  She tried for a puzzled frown. “You confuse my brother with my father, sir.”

  “Your father is another matter,” he said with a shrug. “He remains safely ensconced in the Pretender’s court. Your brother, on the other hand, left James Stuart six days ago. He sails for England now.”

  She sat very still, praying her expression did not betray itself. How did he know these things? The last letter had been in code, and she had burned it directly. Who had betrayed David?

  Rivenham sat down across from her, his eyes never leaving her face. “It amazes me how well you guard yourself. I can tell nothing from your looks anymore.”

  Anymore. Such a small word to make her breath stop.

  He leaned forward. She began to tremble as his hand settled against her cheek. The pad of his thumb nudged up her chin.

  His touch was warm and light, but he might as well have held her in a grip of iron. She could not move. She stared into his eyes, green as emeralds, with the light of the fire dancing across them.

  “I can help you,” he said. “If you trust me. Permit me to help you now, Nora.”

  Her lips parted but she caught back the first syllable before it could escape. Adrian, she would have said. He had spoken her name and it unleashed in her throat the feel of his, the sharp vowels, the tripping conjunct. Adrian, Adrian.

  Now his palm, rough with calluses, cupped her cheek. A whimper lodged in her chest. This touch was a shock for which she could not have prepared. Her dumb flesh did not recognize or care that the man touching her so tenderly was her family’s enemy. It reacted only to the dim memory of affection—to how sweet, so sweet it had been, to be touched with care.

  She sat frozen in mortification as tears pricked her eyes. She had supposed this awful need had been crushed out long ago. She had thought herself wiser. Older. Beyond this hunger. Self-sufficient and untouchable.

  “Tell me,” he whispered. “What is David’s aim?”

  Her heart stopped. The next second it resumed with a thud, a painful blow that made her chest burn.

  He had spoken her name deliberately, to provoke and disarm her. He meant to trick her into indiscretion. Into betraying her own brother!

  He would put her brother’s head on the block.

  She recoiled from his touch, biting the urge to curse him when he sat back with no visible reaction. The hurt she felt was sharp, soul-deep, and it touched off a mortified rage. Why should she care if he meant to manipulate her? Six years! She was a fool to expect anything different! Children grew up. Men did not spend their lives mourning a trifling diversion that had begun and ended with one summer.

  “You see nothing in my face,” she said, low and harsh, “because there is nothing to see but bafflement. You speak a passel of lies fed to you by some mistaken idiot or malicious liar. I suppose I should not be surprised that you believe them: a fool’s mission requires a fool to lead it.”

  He sighed and rubbed his hand over his face; when it lowered, she saw for the first time how weary he was.

  Good, she thought. She wondered how far he had ridden today, how fiercely he had pushed his men, in his eagerness to destroy what remained of her family.

  “A shipment of arms was intercepted off the coast four weeks ago.” He waited a moment, during which she dared not breathe. “When put to persuasion, the captain spoke your brother’s name.”

  Horror clawed through her. Could D
avid have been so careless in his arrangements? “Lies! Someone, some enemy of my brother’s arranged for this—”

  He snorted. “So will go his defense, no doubt.” He pushed to his feet. “I will take it, then, that you are ignorant. If I am wrong, and you involve yourself in the pretender’s cause, then consider my gentle approach to be the courtesy you demanded from me earlier. So long as you make no trouble during my time here, you will be left alone.”

  Briefly she wrestled with her tongue. Nothing was to be gained by baiting him.

  But when he had almost reached the door, she leapt to her feet. Her venom could not be suppressed. “We are to be strangers, then? I am glad of it!”

  He stopped but did not turn.

  She stepped toward him. “You see, I dislike very much your cat-and-mouse games. They seem so womanish to me. I had thought better of you, but it was my mistake.”

  His head turned, showing her a three-quarters profile. “If we are strangers,” he said flatly, “it was by your choice, madam.”

  “Choice?” She took another step toward him. “What choice did I have in it? Oh, but I see—this is how you comfort yourself for what you do now. No doubt you think this charge laid on you by the king makes a sweet revenge for your wounded pride!”

  A muscle flexed in his jaw. He turned, his green eyes hard as they speared hers. “Pride has no place in it. I am here to arrest your brother on suspicion of treason and take him to London for judgment. That is my charge, and be damned to anyone who stands in my way. So take comfort, madam: if you had no choice then, you certainly have none now.”

  The door shut, closing her into midnight’s silence.

  3

  A braver or prouder woman would have turned down the posset that Grizel brought to her that night. One sniff and Nora knew there was a sleeping tonic in it. But she had never cared much for her pride, and if she had, that one touch in front of the fire would have shredded it to ribbons.

  She did not love the man Adrian Ferrers had become, but she was not unaffected by him. His touch stirred a part of her that she would rejoice to disown: to cut out with a knife, if only she could. This unwise and wild part of her had led to every mistake she’d ever committed. It had kept her unhappy in her marriage, where other women would have learned contentment. It had lured her to mad dreams and despair.

  She had thought it vanquished, but it awoke at the sight of him—as it always had.

  She drank the posset to the dregs and went into her solar to wait for its effect. By the window seat she kept a variety of instruments: her brother’s barytone stood in a handsome stand, and her mandolin and lute and tambour hung from pegs above. She took down the lute and strummed a soft tune as she stared into the featureless night.

  But music made its own thoughts, and after some minutes she realized with a black start where her fingers had led her: this plaintive tune she plucked had been accompanied in old times by Rivenham’s clever fingers on the mandolin.

  She replaced the lute and paced back into the bedchamber, where Grizel sat reading Psalms. The maid looked up, a question in her eyes, for her mistress was not accustomed to roaming at so late an hour. But any explanation would be an ill one.

  Nora climbed into bed and drew the curtains, sealing herself into darkness before she lay down.

  Even the silence seemed charged with significance. After all, Rivenham listened to it as well.

  She laid her hand over her eyes. Would that she could darken her memory so easily as her sight! The way he had spoken to her tonight . . . it made her grateful he had never spoken to her in London. To look into his face was to remember a time when he had viewed her as a wonder. The expression in his eyes, those many years ago, had seemed to confirm all her hopes and dreams. Having corrupted her own brain with tales of warrior queens, of lady pirates and adventurers who had slain dragons and traveled the world and brought kings to their knees, she had seen in his love the proof that she was no ordinary woman. For her, anything would be possible.

  Tears slipped through her fingers. Their hot progress down her temple reminded her of all the nights when she had struggled and failed not to weep. Silently she had curled at the edge of the mattress, trembling lest her husband turn in bed and feel the dampness on her pillow, for her tears had angered him immeasurably, and in his anger he had not been kind.

  How long did it take for dreams to die? She had thought herself beyond this girlish grief. Her fate had not been so cruel. Indeed, she might be counted fortunate. David was already planning her next marriage. What more could a woman wish for than her own household? This time he had proposed a cousin, Cosmo Colville. At least Cosmo did not seem brutish. He likely would not require her company in London, either. He did not believe it was a woman’s place to play hostess in political circles, and—as he had once told her—he found it becoming that she was no diplomat.

  His estates lay in a rainy, dark stretch of Yorkshire where the wind-scoured soil yielded little of beauty.

  She would rot there until she died.

  She took a sharp breath, forcing her thoughts away from this end, but they strayed directly back to Rivenham.

  A woman is no less than a man, he’d told her once. My mother might have been a general, were wits the main requirement.

  He had worn an unpleasant smile as he’d spoken—one that had made her hesitate to understand his words as a compliment. And I? she’d asked. Would I have been fit for a general?

  His smile had gentled then. Lightly, he had traced the curve of her cheek. I can imagine no alternative for you. You are destined to conquer the world just as you are.

  That touch . . . how fervently he had seemed to believe his words . . .

  The posset was unfurling through her, softening her brain. Misery loosened its grip a little, allowing a new restlessness to come over her. She stretched out her arms, measuring the width of the mattress. The carved oak posters supported a domed canopy of peacock velvet embroidered with golden leaves and scarlet rosebuds. Three men might have lain beneath it, their elbows never touching.

  This, surely, was the sweetest boon of widowhood: to have this space for herself. A hulking man who took up thrice the room his body required; whose heavy limbs fell across hers like weights to suffocate her: where was the comfort in that?

  She reached out to finger the lace that trimmed the bed curtains. Although she had lain with him, she had never slept at Adrian’s side. They had lacked opportunity. He had come to Hodderby as her brother’s guest, which in itself had been extraordinary enough: though their lands adjoined, his family, the Ferrers, were Catholic, and Catholic nobility did not often mix with outsiders. A chance meeting in London had led David to befriend him, after which there was no question but that he must pay a call, for only a day’s ride separated their holdings.

  She had thought him uncommonly handsome at their first meeting, but handsome men had not interested her. Having watched both her mother and elder sister die in childbirth, she had lived in terror of the prospect of marriage.

  But Adrian Ferrers, a Catholic, was no candidate for wedlock. And so his presence had not called for caution. That first night at dinner, when he had spoken of Continental philosophers, of foreign places and strange sciences, she had eagerly joined the conversation . . . And though David had laughed, Adrian had listened to her; he had listened carefully, and given such charming, thoughtful replies . . .

  Her eyes opened.

  The curtains were drawn back to show sunlight flooding the room, sparkling across the mother-of-pearl inlays in the heavy oak wardrobe.

  For a moment, she was as confused by the sun as gladdened by it. Surely the night had not passed so quickly? She had just closed her eyes. These possets always muddled her wits . . .

  Praise God it would not be another day of rain.

  A shout came through the window. A man’s shout.

  Rivenham. It all came back to her in a moment. She slipped from the bed and rushed toward the window.

  Two men we
re practicing combat in the packed drive, one dressed in rough-spun wool, the other in a suit with fine embroidery. Steel rang out as their swords crossed; the rough-spun man danced backward, shouting a taunt that ended in a laugh as the dark-haired fop cursed and pursued him.

  When the fop’s face came into view she recognized him as Lord John Gardiner. She remembered the boy as a vain, idle creature, always looking down his nose. Shortly before her departure from London, he and his father had sat down at her husband’s dining table with the condescension of conquering emperors.

  Her husband’s sycophancy had encouraged their airs. It had been clear by then that Queen Anne must die of her illness. Towe had been making a frantic search for new friendships that might preserve his power in the coming era of Whig rule. Nora had sat frozen, watching him grovel through nine courses of rich dinner fare, while Lord Barstow had toyed with his fork and smothered yawns. Lord John had spoken in his father’s stead, a torrent of sly insults that had made Towe’s face whiten.

  But her husband had conceded to their every demand. He had borrowed and begged and robbed his own tenants to pay for the Gardiners’ friendship. Shortly thereafter, in the Parliamentary debate regarding her father’s impeachment, that friendship had yielded a single boon. Lord Barstow had argued that the traitor’s kin should not be punished too sorely for his sins. May we not teach these wretched souls the value of mercy? May we not show them a true example of Christian kindness, so at odds with the wicked model of their father? In a self-congratulatory mood, the Whigs had agreed, allowing Hodderby and its environs to remain in David’s possession.

  Her husband had been pleased by this evidence of the Gardiners’ favor. But he had not lived long enough to test their continued affection. As for Nora, she had only seen Lord John once after that day. Evidently she had not greeted him warmly enough. What will it take for the Colvilles to learn their place? he had drawled. You look me in the eye when you would do better to thank me on your knees.