by Edith Layton
“Annabelle and Severne comprise one team, Father and I another,” Sybil went on, noting her sister’s interest. “The duchess is entertaining her children, and so won’t come within leagues of the target area, and Torquay has said that he will only play if the teams are even. You, of course, will be on Father’s side. And then the duke must take Severne’s team. They protested that the odds would be uneven, with two men on one side and only one on the other, but Father only agreed, saying that once you took up the bow, all the others were lost Severne,” Sybil said, as she began to step out into the hall, and Leonora followed, so anxious to hear what was going to be said next that it was as though she were drawn from the house on a long invisible lead, “Severne did not believe this, and has offered to bind up one arm to make the odds more even.”
“Oh has he?” Leonora said militantly, forgetting that it was a gentle spring afternoon, and that all the words, as well as the tourney itself, were jests.
“Yes,” Sybil replied, nodding, as they walked across the rolling green lawns, and she looked with approval at the high color in her sister’s cheeks, and the proud way with which she stepped across the evenly scythed grass. Leonora wore a classic draped white flowing frock and as she approached the impromptu tournament grounds, she took off her sash and tied it about her dark hair in a circlet above her forehead. So that after she greeted the others and took up her bow, she looked, as she stood upon that sunlit sward and took her position, and raised her dark head haughtily as she sighted the target, like some incarnation of the huntress Diana herself.
Or so the Marquess of Severne thought as he watched her draw her bow. It seemed to him that she had all the voluptuous and savage beauty of the goddess. The play of sunlight and shadow that chased over the dappled lawn betrayed the filmy material of her gown and outlined her high full breasts where they rose from the clean line of her slender body. And yet as she bit down upon her full and rosy lower lip and frowned in concentration, she looked fierce. The glint in her deep brown eyes shone through the lacy curtain of her lashes as she narrowed her eyes to study the target, and there he saw the classic contradiction of the wondrously feminine body steered by the strong and forceful mind that personified the huntress deity.
He held his breath as the bow tensed. Then, when the arrow flew, it went straight and true and to the heart of the target. He cheered just as the others did, forgetting that she was his foe in this game, and that such marksmanship must surely defeat him.
The duke was a strong athlete. But as the viscount said, in his white shirt, with his glowing hair reflecting back the sun, he made a prettier picture than he did a competitor. The marquess had always prided himself on his ability, but he too hadn’t held a bow since he was a lad, and when he went to the mark it wasn’t long before the viscount remarked wistfully that he wished the pretty fellows would be done with posing for marble busts so that he and his daughter could get down to some real sport.
When Annabelle’s turn came, the viscount held his tongue. She had to be shown how to hold the bow and nock the arrow into place. In the end, the marquess had to stand behind her and help her draw the bow taut, as she had not the strength in her slender arms to do it. He stood behind her in his shirtsleeves, with one hand upon hers to pull the string back and the other around her to steady her hold upon the bow. As they stood thus, in the instant before he let her let the arrow fly, Leonora saw that the lines of strength in his arms were no less taut than that of the bowstring.
Annabelle’s pale hair blew in drifts across his shoulders, and her wan face lay close to his even as her frail body seemed to nestle within the cage of his arms. Even at the moment of highest tension, before they loosed the arrow, she seemed to languidly float within his encircling arms. Leonora turned away to see the arrow’s flight, so that she would no longer look upon what seemed to her to be a curiously intimate moment With all of Severne’s help, Annabelle still could not even touch the target Leonora knew that it was only that Annabelle had never had the leisure to learn such sport. And she knew that there was nothing remiss in her relative’s having entered into the tournament despite her lack of skill, since it was quite proper and even desirable for a young female to be utterly incompetent in such matters. But as Leonora went up to her mark again, she did not recall the poor showing of skill at all, but only remembered the luxurious way in which Annabelle had leaned back into the marquess’s embrace, and how he had gently sheltered her there.
“Three dead on center!” the viscount exulted. “My girl’s not forgotten her touch. You chaps will have me in champagne for the rest of my life unless you stop wagering on us. The House of Talwin is unbeatable, my lads!”
“Another wager? I’d not offer up a button ever again on our chances against you two, Robin Hood and his merry maid.” The marquess laughed.
As they grouped around the target to marvel at the accuracy of the father and daughter who had just so roundly routed them, Leonora was so busy noting how Annabelle stayed close to the marquess, as though he were already her partner in life rather than just an archery match, that she was not aware of her host’s approach until he breathed, “Well done.” Then he added, with every evidence of vast amusement in his clear blue eyes, “It was as though you were inspired.”
“Ah well,” Leonora answered, bowing her head, “it was only luck.”
And so she replied to the duchess’s and her sister’s congratulations as well. For she had not the strength to say any more. She felt curiously weak now that the rage had swept over and past her. And she was certainly unwilling to admit that when she’d needed it the most, inspiration had indeed come to her—when she’d suddenly seen the red center of the target become blue. As light and mild and staring a blue as Annabelle’s wide, unblinking eye.
It was a quiet hour in the countryside. Cattle were coming in from the fields, birds were returning to their nests to salute the oncoming night with soft regretful evensong. At a gentleman’s country house, the day was ended gently as well. Dinner was being prepared, ladies of fashion were being prepared for their dinners with as much close attention as the main courses were being given, and gentlemen were either washing or shaving or napping to be in readiness for the evening to come.
But not everyone at the Duke of Torquay’s country estate was abiding by fashion’s rules. The duke and duchess themselves did not. The pair, who always dispensed with Nurse at this hour, having read their two sons half a tale of ogres with the remainder promised for the morrow, and having kissed and cuddled the gentle blond-haired one before tucking him into sleep, and having just done with giggling and wrestling with the rowdy red-headed one before splashing him from bath to bed, were now occupied with making lazy love together in their own rooms in the long hour before dinner.
The duke’s daughter was having dinner in her rooms with her dear companion-governess, Miss Pickett, and laughing over how silly her friend Mary had been at that tea party at her house today. The viscount was strolling the grounds deep in thought, and his daughter Leonora was ghosting about between the library and the back garden and back again, looking for a book or a refuge and wishing that the week was up.
Only the viscount’s wife and elder daughter and her husband were behaving precisely as they ought, as they always did. The viscountess, having woken from her afternoon nap, was being massaged and powdered and dressed for the main event of her day, her evening. Her daughter was debating over whether the azure or the apricot frock was more flattering, and the noble Lord Benjamin was dozing and blissfully dreaming about a wicked little minx in Curzon Street, whose name he’d dare not mention if awake.
And the Marquess of Severne was strolling in the rose garden with Miss Annabelle Greyling, and wondering why in the name of thunder he could not bring himself to give her a word of encouragement as to their mutual future. She’d given him every excuse and opportunity, he thought, as he paused to watch some golden fish bubble up at a petal that had fallen in the basin of a wide white fountain. She’d mentioned
she didn’t know how long she’d be staying with her cousin, she’d made it painfully clear that since her time was measured in insults and tears, it might not be too long before she’d be off about her sorrowful travels again. And only just now, she’d sighed that she’d miss a great deal once she’d gone, and looked at him, and then ducked her head and sighed again.
Now, he knew, here in this soft garden in the scented twilight, was the time and place for him to catch her up in his arms and promise her surcease from her weary travels and a safe port for the rest of her life. Wasn’t that why he’d been visiting with her, and visiting his attentions upon her for these past weeks? He’d raised expectations that he knew he ought to try to fulfill, for her as well as himself. The problem was, he thought, as they walked slowly and wordlessly, that he hadn’t the slightest desire to catch her up in his arms for any reason.
She walked, as she so often walked with him, with her head bent and her eyes averted, so that he could look down upon her unobserved. She was intelligent and kind, and poor and oppressed, and very sweet, he thought, nerving himself to say the first word. But even in her thin white dress, even here in the dying light that softened every outline, there was nothing about her that enticed him. There was, he had discovered, even something about her that repelled him. Now there, he thought, angry with himself again, was a true perversion of spirit.
But when he waltzed with her, and then again today, when he held her and her bow for the archery contest, her bones had felt so small and brittle, her body so light and hot, that he had felt only a shamed sort of discomfort at their intimacy. Perhaps it was that she made him feel so fatherly toward her that the idea of making love to her was as abhorrent as the idea of that aberration would be. Or perhaps it was that she appeared to be so beaten that the notion of making any advances made him feel like a persecutor and not a lover. No matter what the reason, there was no doubt that his unwillingness to take her physically would be, he thought now, on the rising of a bizarre chuckle that he quickly suppressed, some obstacle to their marital success, at the very least.
Was he fated, he wondered sadly, watching the young female he felt he ought to feel some passion other than pity for, to marry females who bred this reluctance, this impotence in him? But he argued to himself, this female was no Sylvia, for this girl was learned, well read, and had a mind that dovetailed with his own in her every choice of art and literature.
Was he then, he brooded, as he watched the delicate girl pause at the fountain, doomed to always endure this split between the longings of his mind and his body? For when he thought of who it was that he would wish to be holding tightly against himself now, here in this dim garden as he had in that other nighttime garden, he felt an arousal so strong that it was as if it was she who stood before him, and not this good pale girl whom he knew he ought to desire.
So when Annabelle looked up at him with a reasonable question in her mild eyes, he knew he could give her no answer. Not now. Not until one way or another he had exorcised the dark passion the dark lady had aroused in him. So he took out his pocket watch and pretended to read it in the vague light, and exclaimed over the hour, and walked her back to the house, and left her to go to her rooms to prepare for dinner. And was so furious with himself for his need to conduct the elaborate charade that when he strode into the gardens again to think, and he instead encountered Leonora as she was about her agitated pacing, he stood and glowered at her as though she were some sort of infernal visitation.
But so she was in that moment, to him. He continued to gaze at her as she halted and stared back at him. He knew how subtly malign and infinitely cruel she could be from all of poor Annabelle’s hesitantly told tales, and he knew from his own knowledge of her history how reckless she was. So then as he saw her there in the deceptive fading light, with her dark hair and eyes and impossibly ripe figure, it wasn’t hard to imagine that she was some mythic personal succubus, sent to drain his soul and turn his life inside out.
They did not speak a word to each other. But it was as though they didn’t have to. For then he came to her, and took her into his arms and swept the hair back from her brow and looked down into her wild eyes and then closed his own to keep from drowning there and then kissed her plush lips as he had wished to do since he had seen her in the morning. And she moved against him like dark water flowing to carry him away. Until she ended the encounter as all such desperate acts end, with pain.
For she bit down hard upon his lip and pushed him away from herself.
“Damn you,” she hissed at him, as wild in words as she was in appearance now. “I am not here for your taking when you weary of my gentle cousin. I am not here for your entertainment. And I know no more of such matters than she. I am not the creature all this makes me appear to be,” she wept with fury, holding her hands wide to display her body.
He stared at her, still without saying a word. She looked up into that confused, angry, dear face, still suffused with desire and frustration, and seeing the blood well up on his lip, she shuddered and, weeping openly now, said, “Take her if you must and be done with it, but leave me. Leave me, if not for my sake, then for hers.”
Only then did he move. He blinked as though awakening. Then he bowed, as though he’d just left her at some formal affair, and then, turning upon his heel, he left her alone at once.
When the Duke of Torquay’s guests at last assembled themselves in the drawing room for their cordial before dinner, there was a certain tension apparent among some of them. The viscount appeared more thoughtful than usual. His younger daughter was as white and silent as though she’d borrowed her companion and cousin Miss Greyling’s complexion for the night, as the duke remarked sotto voce to his dear duchess. And that young woman, he begged his lady to note in the same whisper, went about the room as smoothly and sweetly this evening as if she ran on small greased wheels.
But it was not until they had all seated themselves at the great table that the more interesting transformation came over all of them. For as they were shaking out their crested embroidered napery, their host said in his hushed tones that made everything he uttered sound deliciously clandestine, “Oh, yes. I suppose you’ve all noted that we have one less among our number tonight. Yes. The Marquess of Severne is regrettably no longer with us. No, no, dear gentle people, he yet breathes, but alas, not in our vicinity. He came to me not an hour past, and said that he’d received a summons home to clear up some family business with his father. Nothing dire, only estate matters, and he bade me make his good-byes. But surely, we can make merry, even with our diminished numbers,” he smiled, noting how each of his listeners remained silent at his news. And seeing how some of his guests still sat stunned even though the soup was being served, he added sweetly, “But my friends, it is still springtime, and we are only one less in number.”
It was while the duke was happily undressing his duchess that night as they prepared for bed, that he remarked reminiscently about the reaction of some of his female guests at the table that night “I felt,” he mused as he raised his lips from her creamy shoulder, “rather like the host at a Christmas dinner when the turkey got up and slowly walked away.”
TWELVE
Joscelin Peter Kidd, Fifth Marquess of Severne, approached the door to the Viscount Talwin’s London town-house with a book in his hand and an offer of marriage upon his lips. The book was for the young woman that he felt was one of the few in the world who would appreciate its truth and beauty precisely as he had. But however lovely a gift, he believed it to be but a poor shadow of what he might have given her if his world and circumstances were different. For the offer that should have gone with the book was for a different young female. And where the book was to be given gladly with a free and open heart, the offer, he told himself, had to be made simply because he saw no other honorable recourse open to him.
There was a limit, after all. Strictly speaking, he ought to have offered for the lady after he’d embraced her so passionately at her own ball in her
own garden. But society seldom concerned itself with such strict speaking. There were always mitigating circumstances that stretched truths, and softened liabilities that allowed certain interesting peripheries to exist. The Lady Leonora had been well over the age of consent, and she’d also been sent home from her first Season years before because of some interesting behavior. Even if that were not the case, the polite world would politely look the other way at any liberties taken with a young woman of her age and wisdom who choose to step out into the blatant moonlight with a divorced gentleman of dubious repute. There were, after all, limits to any protection policy, and the social contract was no different in that benefits were revocable if the injured party had acted in a markedly unwise and irresponsible manner.
But accosting the young woman again, this time when under another nobleman’s roof, put an entirely different construction upon matters. There were other, more telling differences. Even though she had eventually responded, it was undeniable that he’d not stolen kisses this time, but had thrust them upon her. And her denial had the ring of truth. Provocative or not, once she’d left his arms he’d realized it was her very existence, not her vast experience, which had ignited him. It had been his best friend’s home that he had dishonored as well as the young lady, and her father had also been a guest at the time, and her father was a gentleman to whom he owed a great deal of respect and fealty.
The marquess had taken a week to review his situation, and had opted to make the only honorable and sincere restitution that he could. Even though he had thought to wed another, he would take the young lady in holy matrimony.
His spirit should have been heavy as he approached the lady’s door, but instead, it bore less weight than did the slim volume he held in his hand. This absence of despair perversely bothered him, since he saw it as another example of his perverse desires. Though he told himself over and again that today he would be giving up all hope of wedding a gentle, intelligent creature who was a match for his intellect, he could not help remembering that he was about to procure himself a wife who was equal to all his darker desires. This, to the detriment of all his good opinion of himself, did not displease him at heart as it ought to have done. For search as he might, he could find nothing but excitement at the thought of her being entirely his.
