He reached up and wiped her cheek with his thumb. It slid wetly across her skin. “It’s all right, Mother.”
Elizabeth’s voice was thick. “How can it be?”
How could anything ever be all right again?
Suddenly, there were two pairs of brown eyes staring into hers. “We’re men now, Mum,” Phillip declared with childish wisdom. His auburn hair glowed in the subdued light. “And men don’t belong at home with their mums. Though the countess does have a banging fine house,” he added wistfully.
Her sons, just as Elizabeth had prepared to leave for Eton the morning following Rebecca Walters’s confession, had mysteriously arrived on the countess’s doorstep. Lord Safyre had brought them down, they had merely said, because their mother needed them.
Elizabeth had cried the tears she had been unable to cry and endured the novel experience of having her two sons comfort her. Phillip had taken to the countess like fire to kindling. While she introduced Elizabeth’s youngest son to the Turkish bath, Elizabeth had talked to Richard—about his father, about the Uranian fellowship, about her bitter regret that she had failed to protect him.
That had been two weeks earlier and now here she was, acting like a child again instead of a responsible parent. She sniffed, released the steadying anchor of the leather chair arms, and wiped her cheeks.
Richard produced a large white handkerchief and held it to her face. “You need to blow, Mother.”
A choked laugh escaped the tightness of her throat. She took the handkerchief. “I can blow very well on my own, thank you.
“Don’t worry, Mum. I didn’t want a dinghy anyway.” Phillip rested sharp elbows on her left knee. “I’ve decided I don’t want to be a pirate. The countess gave us this jolly book called The Arabian Nights. I want to be a jinni. That way I can live in a magic bottle and make people’s wishes come true. They usually wish bad things so that will be fun.”
“Phillip, you are incorrigible.” Elizabeth could not hold back a watery snort of laughter. “I don’t suppose, you being a man now, that you would like a box of chocolates.”
Phillip dove for her reticule. “Would I!”
“I wouldn’t object to a box of toffees if you have one.” Richard’s voice cracked a little—not quite a man yet, no matter the circumstances.
“Excuse me, Mrs. Petre. If you would like a few more minutes . . .”
Phillip and Richard jumped up, both equally horrified to be caught in such an undignified position. “Men” did not kneel at their mother’s feet. Phillip whipped the box of chocolates behind his back.
Elizabeth took a deep breath and squared her shoulders. It was time to let go.
“No, thank you, Dean Simmeyson.” She stood up. “I must catch the train.”
“Have a safe journey, Mrs. Petre.” The dean, more bald than gray, bowed courteously. He did not mind associating with a woman, unlike Dean Whitaker at Eton. “Master Richard. Master Phillip. If you will grab your luggage, Masters Brandon and Lawrence will take you upstairs. You will have time to tour the premises before the noonday meal is served.”
The two boys turned like young soldiers marching off to barracks. One day soon Richard’s voice would no longer crack in that awkward stage between child and adult. Phillip, too, would grow up and would not need her to run interference for him.
But that day had not come yet.
“One moment, please,” Elizabeth crisply ordered. “Your portmanteau is gaping open, Richard.” Grabbing the box of toffees from her reticule, she leaned down and crammed it into his luggage.
When she straightened, Richard caught her up in a tight hug and buried his face into her neck. “It really is all right, Mother. I talked to someone and he made me understand about . . . things. Please don’t cry anymore. It’s over. Phillip and I are glad you are divorcing Father. If you aren’t happy, I will worry about you crying when I’m studying for exams and I shall never get into Oxford.”
“Well.” Elizabeth held back more tears, concentrating instead on the familiar smell of Richard’s hair and skin and the warm, moist gust of his breath. “We cannot have that, can we?”
“No, we cannot.” Richard rubbed his face against her neck, as he had when he wanted to wipe away tears; it had also made a handy handkerchief when he didn’t want to blow. “I love you, Mum. Please do not blame yourself for what happened. I don’t.”
And then he was gone even though she clung to him and an innocence that no longer existed.
The train ride afforded her flashing glimpses of a borough of Greater London instead of southeast Buckinghamshire. The rhythmical click of the wheels and the swaying of the carriage lulled her exhausted body into reluctant relaxation. Without warning, the man whom she had desperately strove to forget these past two weeks exploded into her unguarded thoughts.
This is the carriage in which I suckled your breasts until you orgasmed. I am the man who buried myself so deeply inside your body . . . that you screamed. Then you took me into your mouth and made me cry out. Yet you still do not trust me.
Why didn’t you tell me?
Would you have believed me?
Perhaps she would have believed him, she thought, eyes squeezing shut to block out the memories. If he had given her the opportunity.
He could have prevented her pain.
He could have told her and she would not have suffered the horror of witnessing her husband and her father in an intimate embrace.
He could have told her and there would have been no need for her mother to try to kill her because there would have been no secrets to hide behind.
Once started, the memories would not stop.
This bastard you rut with has lived in Arabia, where such things are looked upon differently than we do in England. Perhaps you should ask his preferences before you judge your father.
Why did you leave Arabia, Lord Safyre?
Because I was a coward, Mrs. Petre.
Then you are no better than my husband or my father.
I am a man. . . . Whether I am called a bastard by an Englishman or an infidel by an Arab, I am still a man.
Why could Ramiel not have lied, like her father had lied, like her husband and her mother had lied? She had not wanted the truth.
No one had ever touched her. No one but Ramiel.
But you would have taken him inside you last Saturday. You used the things that I had taught you that aroused me to seduce another man.
No.
But she would have.
Why didn’t you come home with me last night? Why did you risk death rather than come to me?
Her sons . . .
He had brought her sons home to her even though she had cited them as a reason not to commit herself to a Bastard Sheikh.
Whom do you have, Lord Safyre?
No one. That is why I know that sometime soon the pain will become too great for you to bear alone.
Elizabeth welcomed the noise and the smell of the train station. Soot and mist rained down on her bonnet when she hailed a cab, and she welcomed that too. She welcomed anything that turned her thoughts away from what was and what could have been but now would never be.
A carriage waited outside the countess’s white brick house. Elizabeth froze with terror at sight of it.
Her husband could still commit her. Her mother could still kill her.
As long as we are together, you will be safe.
But she did not have Ramiel to turn to anymore. It was time that she learned how to take care of herself.
She resolutely stepped out of the hack and paid her fare. At the same time, a woman dressed in stark black stepped out of the waiting carriage.
Elizabeth could not control her fear: She darted for the house.
“Mrs. Petre! Mrs. Petre, please wait!”
The sound of Emma’s voice did not reassure her. Perhaps Rebecca Walters had sent the maid to do her killing for her.
Elizabeth grabbed the brass door knocker.
“Mrs. Petre!” Harr
ied steps flew up the stoop behind Elizabeth. “It wasn’t me! I never told anyone about your meetings. It wasn’t me, Mrs. Petre! We wouldn’t have done that to you!”
More lies. Obviously someone had done that to her.
“It was Tommie, ma’am.” The heat of the maid’s body seeped into Elizabeth’s back. “Mrs. Walters asked me that Tuesday morning when you . . . you slept in . . . if you often took laudanum. ”Elizabeth had lied about taking the laudanum, as Emma had known. “I told her no, you were merely having trouble sleeping of late, that Monday morning you had taken an early morning walk because you could not rest. Mrs. Walters told Mr. Petre and he had Tommie follow you. I did not mean you harm, ma’am. I did not know. . . .”
Tommie. The groom. He had supposedly gone home sick the night of the fog. Elizabeth remembered the custodian. The watching eyes. The fear.
She closed her eyes against the distorted white face staring at her in the brass plate. Gloved fingers suddenly numb, she let go of the knocker and turned to confront the round-faced maid. Only her face was no longer plump. It was haggard—as Richard’s had been haggard two weeks before.
They were the same height, Elizabeth noted dispassionately. In the sixteen years they had been together, she had not even noticed that small reality.
“I have been coming here every day for over a week now. To explain,” the abigail said doggedly, her breath a plume of gray vapor in the early March air. Mist beaded on her black bonnet. “But you wouldn’t see me.”
The countess’s butler had announced merely that a woman requested to see Mrs. Petre. He had never mentioned a name. Elizabeth had thought it was her mother. She was not certain she would have wanted to see Emma any more than she wanted to see Rebecca Walters.
But yet . . .
If she had not gone to question the maid, she would not have discovered that her father and husband were lovers. And her sons would still be in danger.
Elizabeth tilted her chin. “You knew my mother blew out the gas lamp.”
“I suspected it, ma’am.”
“Then why did you not tell me?”
“Mrs. Walters hired me.”
“I see,” Elizabeth said. So much for Emma’s claims about not tattling on her.
“Begging your pardon, ma’am, but I don’t think you do. Mr. Beadles, myself, the cook, the housekeeper, the coachman—Mrs. Walters hired us outside a bridewell. Mr. Will, he drove Mr. Petre and he . . . saw . . . and heard . . . certain things. But if we had said anything, we would have been turned out without a character. These are bad times. Servants without a reference and with a criminal record would not have gained employment. And even if we had said anything, who would have believed us? But you, ma’am . . . We never intended that harm befall you. We quit our posts. It don’t matter much to me—I have Johnny now, but the others—they don’t deserve to suffer. Please, ma’am. Please give them references.”
Bridewells were local houses of correction for persons convicted of minor crimes. In the outside world, however, servants who were convicted of minor crimes had no better chance of employment than those convicted of serious crimes. Rebecca Walters had planned very carefully to keep the sins of her husband and son-in-law from the voting populace. No wonder she had been so disturbed when Elizabeth upset her plans.
She did not want to feel any more pain. But it was there, waiting, like night waited for the day to end.
“You want references,” Elizabeth said carefully, neutrally, “yet you all knew that Tommie was going to hurt me.”
“No, ma’am. It was Mr. Petre who had Tommie follow you. It was Mrs. Walters who wanted him to frighten you. So you would stay at home.”
And endure . . . what her mother and her grandmother had endured.
What crimes had Emma and the other servants committed that they would be put into a correctional institution?
Did it matter?
Elizabeth did not know who was at fault anymore. Herself, for refusing to see what should have been obvious. Her servants, for being ex-criminals afraid of losing their employment. The Bastard Sheikh, for not being what she had wanted him to be.
No one was what they seemed.
“Very well. Have them visit here on the morrow. I will give them references. You, too, if you wish.”
Emma curtsied. “Thank you, ma’am.”
Elizabeth suddenly felt as if a great burden had been lifted off her shoulders. The servants had not spied on her; at least, not the ones whom she had been on more intimate terms with. They had even, in the abigail’s case, supported her lies.
“Emma,” she said impulsively.
“Mrs. Petre?”
“I am glad that you found someone to care for.”
Emma lowered her head. “Johnny . . . he isn’t what you thought he was.”
“No.” Johnny had certainly not been a footman.
“He was hired to spy on Mr. Petre.”
The sooty mist metamorphosed into full rain. Icy water stung Elizabeth’s face. “By Lord Safyre,” she said flatly.
Emma lifted her head, anxiously peered into Elizabeth’s face. “He busted up Mr. Petre’s hand, ma’am.” Unbidden, an image of Edward’s bandaged hand resting above a nest of golden blond pubic hair flashed through Elizabeth’s mind. “When I told him who I thought had blown out your lamp . . . Well, he cares for you. You were a good mistress. You deserve happiness.” Putting her hands up to shield her bonnet, Emma darted down the stoop. A masculine arm swung the carriage door wide for the maid to enter.
You were a good abigail, Elizabeth thought. And a brave woman to choose love with a stranger.
What does it take to make you feel?
I feel, taalibba.
Ramiel had hired a man to spy on her husband—a man who had ultimately saved her life. He had provided the same safety measures for her sons at Eton.
So many secrets.
I know you hurt, Elizabeth. Let me make it better for you. Let me love you.
Elizabeth turned her back on the past. The butler opened the rain-splashed door even before the muffled thud of brass impacting brass was swallowed by the steady downfall of dirty water.
She handed him her dripping cloak and bonnet, black as had been those of Emma. “Where is the countess, Anthony?”
“She is in the sitting room.” The butler took Elizabeth’s gloves. “You should have taken an umbrella, Mrs. Petre.”
Elizabeth should have done many things. An umbrella was low on her list of priorities.
The countess sat near an Adam fireplace at an escritoire, writing. Her face, bathed by crackling heat, lit up when Elizabeth walked into the sitting room that was more Western than Eastern, more feminine than masculine.
The older woman had not once asked Elizabeth why she had left her husband. Or why Elizabeth did not go to her own mother.
“Would you help me seduce your son, Countess?”
A finely arched eyebrow rose. “Why?”
Because he had accepted Elizabeth for the woman she was instead of the girl that she had been.
“Because he does not deserve to be alone.”
And neither did she.
Elizabeth blinked at the radiance of the countess’s smile. Sometime later she faintly protested, “Are you quite certain that this will please him?”
Body glowing with Joseffa’s ministrations, Elizabeth donned a satin-lined black velvet cloak with bell-shaped sleeves. It belonged to the countess and was four inches too long. She was naked underneath it.
Stepping up into the carriage that waited for her in the dreary darkness, she carefully tucked the cloak about her lest the groom see more than what he expected to see. When Lucy the maid allowed Elizabeth entrance into Ramiel’s Georgian home and insisted upon taking her cloak, she almost ran back to the countess’s carriage. A lady, no matter her intentions, did not visit a man dressed as she was. Especially a man whom she had rejected so summarily and who could very well have found a less cowardly lady to comfort him. But the groom had raced
back to the coach when Lucy opened the door; seconds later a creak of leather and wood was accompanied by a “Get up, you nags!” and Elizabeth had nowhere to go but forward.
“That is quite all right, Lucy.” Elizabeth held the cloak against her body with both hands. “Is Lord Safyre at home?”
“He’s in the library, ma’am.”
“Then I will announce myself.”
“Very well, ma’am.”
It was now or never.
“Lucy.”
“Ma’am?”
“Please leave two bottles of champagne outside the library door.”
Lucy fought to keep a knowing smile from spreading over her face, but failed. “Very good, ma’am.”
Ramiel’s servants were as knowledgeable as had been the Petre servants. Velvet cloak trailing behind her, Elizabeth walked down the hallway that was paneled with mahogany wood inlaid with mother-of-pearl. And knew that she had come home.
She knocked softly, heart pounding. With desire. With fear. Consciously, she may have refused to think about Ramiel, but her dreams had been full of him and the ecstasy they had shared. Her body had always accepted him. If only—
A muffled voice bade her enter.
Taking her future into her hands, she opened the door. Before he could order her out, she closed it behind her and leaned against the solid wood.
Ramiel sat at his desk; a book lay open before him. A fire flickered and flamed in the mahogany fireplace while rain steadily pattered against the bay windows. Light from the gas lamp on his desk touched his blond hair with gold, his dark face with shadow.
Turquoise eyes flicked over her cloak, her damp hair that was loosely caught up in a bun. There was no welcome in his gaze. Or desire.
“What are you doing here?”
The old doubts reared their ugly presence. What was she doing here? To appease her passions, because once having experienced sexual satisfaction, she could not forgo it, like an addict craving opium?
Stiffening her spine, she pushed away from the support of the door. “I came here to give you pleasure.”
An ugly smile curled his lips. “Should you not first ask what my preferences are?”
Robin Schone Page 35
