At Your Pleasure

by Meredith Duran

  “I will consent to an escort,” she said at length—as though she had a choice in it. “But he must not interfere with my decisions regarding the management of the estate.”

  A laugh slipped from him, no humor in it. “And have you thought on the cost to be exacted from your estate by the war your family is plotting?”

  He felt her stiffen but she made no reply.

  Her silence was its own form of rebellion. Another man would have struck her.

  He was fit for this task, was he not? Or was he a great joke? Having abandoned his own faith, he found himself flummoxed by a woman of idiotic devotion. One might understand the appeal of such devotion—it might have proved very convenient and comfortable—if only it were to him.

  But it had never been to him. She had let him walk into Hodderby with a marriage proposal, knowing that her family intended to see that he never left it alive.

  Ah, well. He had loved and then detested her for the selfsame cause: the ferocity with which she did as she must for those whom she loved. Now he was going to have to break her of that trait. That was his duty. He should try to find pleasure in it. It wasn’t as though such wickedness would cast his immortal soul into peril: he had lost any chance at heaven long ago. No matter God’s churchly affinity, Adrian did not imagine that He approved of apostates.

  He reined up in the courtyard and turned to help her down. But she had already slipped off the saddle. As she walked away, she did not look back.

  Alone in her closet, the locks turned, Nora smoothed out the letter with shaking hands. The message was brief, written by someone who had no idea that her house now hosted the king’s men: tomorrow, under cover of darkness, a party would arrive to collect the arms and weaponry David had amassed.

  She had waited weeks for such news. The stores of gunpowder hidden amongst the wine were an ever-living threat to the safety of all beneath this roof. But what cursed timing! If only chance had brought them three days earlier . . .

  She fed the note to the fire. It curled and blackened, filling the air with a peculiar, sweet scent that made her sick to her stomach.

  She had no idea who would compose this party designing to appear. David had kept her ignorant of the names of his conspirators. But unless they retrieved her letter—and sometimes it took days for them to do so—they would enter unprepared for the welcome awaiting them. Blood would spill. They would die, and Rivenham and his friends would not require further evidence of her brother’s guilt: if caught, David would go straight to the block.

  Or David’s men would prevail. Then Rivenham and his men would be the ones to die.

  She sat heavily into a chair.

  It should make no matter if Rivenham was killed.

  But—yes, of course it should. She put her fist to her lips, pressing hard. If Rivenham died, news of his death would reach London eventually. That would bring more trouble. She had every reason to care about that.

  She shut her eyes.

  Adrian.

  The flesh was weak, but it was not dumb. It had its own animal intelligence. In her husband’s bed her body had felt like dead clay, but it had come back to life this morning in the apple grove.

  How had she forgotten such pleasure? It invigorated the senses and enlarged the lungs. Riding through the meadow, the air had tasted richer and the brush of his worsted jacket against her bare wrist had riveted her whole awareness. Even her silent, inward turmoil had felt bittersweet to her.

  She lifted her head to look into the fire. I could seduce him, she thought. Putting aside her own considerations, she could win him to David’s side—or, failing that, she could distract him from his aim.

  She pushed to her feet and grabbed the fire irons, stirring the flames to ensure not a scrap of writing had survived. To lie with him . . .

  The very thought weakened her knees.

  She stared at her hand clenched so tightly around the irons. Once it had been white and unblemished. Now her knuckles were red, her cuticles ragged, and the veins on her hand stood out prominently. She was no longer a girl. Yet her flaw remained the same.

  She had always been a wanton for him.

  Nothing, not her father’s rage or Adrian’s abandonment or her husband’s blame, had been able to transform her.

  She cast down the irons, making an angry clatter against the stone. Why lie to herself? If bedding him benefited David, then it would be an accidental profit—and not one on which she could depend. Rivenham had not come here for her: he had made that clear enough.

  O vanity! How it had once stung her. He had not abandoned his faith for her, though it had been the first objection her father had lodged against him when Nora had been forced to confess all. But he had abandoned it for his own gain. He had traded religions to please new friends.

  What could she expect from such a man as that? Such a man as would abandon his church would be able to take a woman to bed at night, then rise at dawn to run her brother through.

  Who could mourn such a man if he came to a bad end? Better he fail than others who fought for nobler ends, and for ideals loftier than mere material advancement.

  His German majesty means no good for our nation, David often said. His heart is in Hanover. He does not even speak the tongue! For England’s sake, we must oppose him. For our family’s sake as well . . .

  She wrapped her arms around herself, hugging tightly. If she could not assume that her letter would be received by the men who meant to come here tomorrow night, then she must assume they would come as planned.

  The only way to avert catastrophe lay in disabling Lord Rivenham and his men. If they were unable to oppose David’s friends, then blood need not be spilled, and both sides could be saved.

  All at once, she knew how she would do it.

  The only question that remained was who would save her if Rivenham realized what she had done.

  5

  All afternoon Nora found reasons to delay what she must do. The thought of speaking to him again was enough to unsettle her composure, and so she attended instead to every other matter requiring her attention.

  With one of Rivenham’s men in tow—a wiry, silvering soldier by the name of Henslow, who followed her with his jaw set hard against the indignity of his assignment—she exited the house to make her rounds of the outbuildings. The coal house and bake house were in a tumult due to the sudden increase in demand on their stores. She ordered the release of more grain despite Montrose’s protests.

  In the washhouse, she took spiteful pleasure in instructing the women not to worry too greatly about stains in the clothing of Hodderby’s uninvited guests.

  Outside the kitchens, in the small house garden, the gardener and his lads were covering roots while the cook’s assistant picked the last of the summer’s cabbages. Others tended to the lines of peas and lettuce and beans that would soon come into season.

  Let the sunshine last, Nora prayed. She stood a long moment in its mild warmth, gazing on the busy work before her, listening to cows low in the distance and the idle, cheerful talk of those tending the vegetables. Hodderby was a grand, largely self-sufficient estate; one day was insufficient to review all its operations. Tomorrow she would go to the apiary, to gauge the stores of honey and beeswax; the herb garden, which yielded the ingredients for medicinal tonics; the spinning sheds and the apricot and peach orchards. It would be time to take inventory of the larder, too.

  Apart from her worries of the weather, it was no burden on her. Even before her marriage she had overseen Hodderby in the way of a mistress. It had always given her a feeling of satisfaction.

  But this position would not remain hers overlong. David must take a wife. And she must marry again as well. David had assured her that she would be no small prize once James Stuart sat the throne. She would be daughter and sister to his chief councillor . . .

  She sighed. Then why can we not wait until that happy day? she had asked David. But he did not understand her reluctance to remarry. He had disliked Towe’s cruelt
ies greatly, but in the way of men, he imagined that the other pleasures of wifehood had atoned for it. I see how happy you are with a household to manage, he’d said with a frown. Surely you long for a home of your own.

  But a house was not always a home. Never in Lord Towe’s households had she uncovered the same kind of pride in governance that Hodderby afforded her. It was such a different thing to care for a place because somebody had acquired you for just that purpose—and, on the other hand, to care for the place where you had been born, nurtured, and loved.

  She took a deep breath of the rich, fermented air. It was not only the thought of leaving Hodderby that made her innards rebel. This morning’s mistake had resurrected some primal element within her, fierce and demanding. To put herself into Cosmo Colville’s hands—and his bed—seemed, all at once, intolerable.

  I deserve better—such a dangerous, mad thought for a woman to entertain. But was it so wrong to look for passion in a marriage? If she could feel such response to the man who had come to arrest her brother . . . good heavens. Surely she could feel something like it with some other man?

  She was resolved on it: she would tell David that Cosmo would not do.

  Hoofbeats interrupted her reverie. She walked around the house, Rivenham’s man on her heels, to discover a messenger being admitted through the front door.

  She followed him inside, then down the hall, and watched him disappear into her father’s library.

  He emerged not a minute later, and she stepped aside to give him passage, blackly amused at how he nodded to her as though she were his equal. In a minute or less, it seemed, Rivenham had managed to communicate to this stranger what little respect was owed to the Colvilles.

  The renewed anger strengthened her. She went to the library and did not bother to knock before opening the door.

  Rivenham was seated at the end of the room, behind the desk where her father had written letters and speeches and reviewed accounts, and occasionally had summoned her for a lecture—and once, on a very dreadful day, had cursed her as a jezebel and a strumpet, the ruin of her family.

  She disliked the things that stirred in her to see Adrian Ferrers lounging so easily in the chair of a man whose son he conspired to destroy. Contempt and rage should have been foremost. But the light flooding the mullioned window behind him lit the pure, pale gold of his hair and cast vivid shadows beneath the finely carved bones of his face. In his studious pose, he was beautiful as an archangel . . . or as the devil’s facsimile of the same.

  He was looking through correspondence that had just been delivered, too immersed in it to take notice of her. Instead, another man spoke from the corner.

  “Lady Towe.” Lord John Gardiner rose to his feet, making her one of those pretty, overcomplicated bows that court fops favored. “At your service, madam.”

  Lord John was as slim and neat as a whippet, elegantly turned out in green brocade and lace, his white wig freshly combed. The ladies at court thought his blue eyes beautiful, and so did he. He was no more at her service than the king of Poland.

  Still, she smiled. Her aim required a mannerly show. “Lord John,” she said. “What a pleasure to see you again.”

  His answering smile looked malicious, but that was merely his way; she could not tell if there was any particular design to it at present. “Likewise,” he said. “The court has suffered most sorely for your absence. We hardly know where to find our amusement now.”

  “Sir.” The quiet, hard word came from Rivenham.

  It had immediate effect, causing Lord John’s lips to tighten. He opened his mouth, no doubt to apologize, but she spoke quickly to forestall it. She was not in need of protection; cattish words gave her no trouble, and it was not Rivenham’s place to protect her anyway. “I am sorry to hear that,” she said to the boy. “I suppose it takes some wit to produce one’s own entertainment. Are you often bored?”

  Lord John blinked. A flush rose on his cheeks. She held his eyes even as she began to wonder at herself. In London, she had never bothered to make ripostes to tacit insults, and the boy’s evident surprise mirrored her own.

  As if that kiss in the apple grove had infected her, she felt hot and edgy, full of wild potentials. This was not London but her home, the one place where her worth was open to no man’s dispute. She would not abide insults here.

  Yet to indulge her new mood would not serve her. Of all times, it was now, with these men in her house, that she must depend on good sense for guidance. She made herself turn away from Lord John toward Rivenham—bracing herself as though to lay her eyes on the sun.

  She would not look at his lips. She would not recall how they had touched her today.

  She would recover her deportment and control.

  Manufacturing an amicable manner, she said, “I saw the messenger, Lord Rivenham. May I ask if he brought correspondence for me?”

  “No, he did not,” Rivenham said, not looking up from the paper in his hand. “Did you require aught else?”

  His manner was cold, as though he had forgotten the kiss, or been utterly unaffected by it. She ignored the strange emotions this idea inspired, a mix of envy and resentment and anger. How fortunate he was to be able to remain unmoved!

  “I require nothing,” she said lightly, “only, if it were possible, I would appreciate news, and company.”

  The surprise he must surely feel did little to alter his expression. But the wariness that followed it—she saw that clearly enough in the way he carefully lowered the letter to the desk.

  On a deep breath, she mustered herself to continue. “If you are to stay under this roof for so long, then we may as well coexist peaceably. Don’t you think?”

  Lord John did not like this. Coming up behind her, he said, “We are not here to entertain you, madam—”

  Rivenham’s brow lifted. Like magic, the boy once again fell silent.

  She had seen Rivenham work these spells on men before. It was something to do with how calmly he comported himself, how closely he observed those around him, and how economically he used his words—so that when he did speak, others held their breath, anticipating something of import.

  But as the silence extended, she realized with a start that Lord John had misinterpreted his master’s look: that lifted brow was not a challenge to him but a silent query to her. Rivenham was silently asking her what accounted for this abrupt change in her manner.

  She felt the blood rush into her cheeks at the intimate thought: I know how to read his face still. For what else was intimacy but this—the private knowledge of a person?

  Uneasy, she turned away, pretending to study the books that lined the shelves against the wall. Some of them, the older ones, had chains to fasten them in place, and these hung uselessly from their spines, like the broken wings of birds.

  “There is very little news of note from town,” came Rivenham’s measured reply. “But if you will sit, I will share all of interest.”

  Lord John’s snort spoke volumes of its own. “Oh, yes,” he said, “and let us call for tea as well. Is this a salon? Lady Towe, we might not have found aught yet to interest our king, but have no doubt that I believe you know exactly where we might look to find otherwise.”

  She glanced to Rivenham as she sat, but he seemed to have lost interest in defending her; he waited expressionlessly to see how she would reply.

  Very well. She met Lord John’s hostile gaze. “It would be unmannerly to contradict you, sir, but I fear your suspicions are mistaken. Of course, if you believe you have missed something, you must always feel at liberty to look again.”

  Rivenham smiled slightly. She found that smile puzzling, until he directed it without warning at her, and then it became something else: something too akin to a moment of uncanny understanding.

  He liked her wit.

  Just as quickly his smile faded, and he looked back to his letter.

  He did not want to like her wit.

  She understood his discomfort exactly.

 
She looked down to her lap, where her hands were twisting. Her breath was coming faster, as though she had done something daring or arduous, when in fact she hadn’t accomplished anything yet. She must sit here awhile longer before she posed her proposition to them, and even then, with Lord John sulking, it might not work.

  Clearing her throat, she tried for a way to smooth over the boy’s affront. She would appeal to his apparent belief that he knew more of her than she did. “Forgive me if my words caused offense, Lord John. We have met before, so you will know I am not the most . . .”

  “Politic,” was Rivenham’s dry suggestion.

  She did not dare look at him. “Politic of women,” she agreed. “I fear my tongue often miscarries the intention in my brain, which was only to say that, despite the circumstances, it is pleasant to have polished company, particularly after the long months of seclusion.”

  The boy settled like a chicken whose feathers were falling back into place. “Well,” he said, and sniffed—then sniffed again before rooting himself in a nearby chair. “I am not one to criticize a lady,” he said, an outrageous lie. She had heard him criticize any number of ladies in the past. “Lord Rivenham, do tell us the news.”

  She divined suddenly why Lord John’s mood had been so sour from the moment of her entrance: he, too, had received no mail, and must wait to hear the tidings like a boy with his elder.

  Rivenham shrugged. “Very little of political import—apart from the fact that Louis XIV is dead, and the duc d’Orléans has become the regent to France’s new boy-king.”

  Both men’s eyes swung to her, while she swallowed her gasp before it could escape.

  This was disastrous news. The duc was no friend to the Jacobite cause. Worse, the child-king’s health was notoriously poor. If he died, then by the terms of the Treaty of Utrecht, d’Orléans himself would take the throne—but he would need England’s support to enforce his claim. Otherwise Spain’s King Philip would no doubt seize the French crown.