Moonlight Mist

by Laura London

  “Well said, my dear, but to the wrong man. You are courageous, resourceful, and independent. Do you think that I would wish you to alter those things? Follow your own path, Lynden, but be grown-up enough to realize that there are certain boundaries of acceptability that you cannot violate. I’m willing to place those limits at the outward bounds of conventional practice. However, I cannot, and will not, give you sanction to court scandal that would destroy your reputation. Do you think that it is my pleasure to play schoolmaster to your schoolgirl? Nothing could be more repugnant to me. I’ve told you before that I’ve had no wish to come the tyrant over you. Perhaps it is my fault and I ought to have done so, despite my distaste for it, because you seem to interpret my lack of verbal authority as unconcern and a signal for you to go your length!”

  He reached out a long, well-shaped hand to cup her chin in the branch of his thumb and forefinger, drawing Lynden’s affronted features further into the dancing firelight. “Lynden, you and I can deal better than this. You are impulsive, but not, I think, flighty. I appeal to your sense of fair play. You’ve had secrets since your arrival—highwaymen, tinkers, and their wives seem to swim in and out of your perimeter like migratory fishes. However the catch mixes, you must see that when things come to a pass where you are from your bed and probing the countryside at midnight, you must bring yourself to confide me the tale.”

  It bothered Lynden to reject a plea to her sense of fair play, and Melbrooke’s words in praise of her character had not gone unnoticed. It was unfortunate that they had come in the context of a home-felt lecture. There was no joy, either, in being called a schoolgirl, as it had lately been her most unhappy fear that this was how she must seem to him. There was nothing agreeable in appearing unpolished in his cultivated vision.

  Then, too, years of living with Uncle Monroe had taught Lynden to react to opposition like Hadrian’s Wall standing against northern invaders. She lifted her chin sharply out of his touch and stepped back, her face serious.

  “I won’t. If you keep asking me, I shall only lie.”

  The attractively molded features of Melbrooke’s face hardened, giving him the impersonal look of an Olympian Apollo. “Sometimes, Lynden, I find you less than delightful. Tonight, were you with a man?”

  “A man?” said Lynden. For a moment she was too surprised by the accuracy of his guess to heed its implication. The first thought that occurred to her was that he might have somehow found out about Kyler, impossible though it seemed. “What do you mean?” she asked him, with frightened caution.

  The apparent guilt on Lynden’s face did nothing to negate Melbrooke’s question.

  “You were bitterly unhappy to give yourself to me in marriage. You’ve shied from its consummation, spend long hours away in the daytime—and now at night. Lynden, I’ll honor your virtue enough to believe that you’re not cuckolding me, but I must wonder if, when you were forced to marry me, there was some man you loved who might have followed you here, and whom you continue to see?”

  Lynden stood for a few moments, stiff with disbelief. Then a great weakening wash of anger splashed over her, causing her legs to lose strength under its weight, and she caught the back of a chair to keep herself from being swept away. “You… you rake! I’m not the one who is notorious the length and breadth of this country for libertine propensities! Just because you’re ready to play Roman candles with half the females in the British aristocracy, don’t assume that I’m equally eager to soothe my sorrows with the male half.”

  “Much less than delightful,” said Melbrooke icily.

  Lynden was nearly breathless with wrath, the hurt welling up in her, bitter tears stinging her eyes. “I don’t care. I hate you, anyway.”

  It was as though sparks were struck in Melbrooke’s flint-toned eyes. “I’m tempted,” he said, “to find out how true that is.”

  An angry sob burned Lynden’s throat. “You have no right…” she began.

  He reached for her wrist, catching it in a grip like steel wrapped in velvet, but steel nonetheless. He drew her to him.

  “My dear little bride, it’s not wise to taunt me with my rights when you know that on that subject I’ve been more patient with you than is required by the church, the law, or the expectations of society. My rights still exist, even though I haven’t chosen to assert them—but you seem to have forgotten that I have any.” One hand pressed her waist, bringing her softness against his still, firm length. “Patience has been a spectacular nonsuccess, my sweet. Let’s see how you like the opposite.”

  Holding her resisting body with ease, he brought his kiss to the tender curve of her neck. Her skin burned wherever it knew the possession of his mouth. She sought now in good earnest to free herself from this thrilling contact. Lynden’s wrist twisted uselessly against the clamp of his hand as his lips traveled to her earlobe. Sobbing with frustration, she bent her head from him, trying to flee that attentive, insistent mouth, but then his lips caught her sensitive, exposed throat, searing a trail of flame to her chin.

  And his hands, his fingers! He touched the swell of her hip and she felt a deep, wrenching internal tremor that reached into her soul. She half-turned her body from him, only to feel his hand flat below her breasts, sending vibrations of warmth and passion into her. His lips moved to caress her thick, still-wet curls, then kissed the tears that fell from her angry eyes.

  “Melbrooke, have you gone mad?”

  “No. Yes.” She felt his clean breath at the back of her neck, felt his broad, burning hand through the satin skirt covering her tautly muscled stomach. “Lynden, little Lynden. Aren’t you tired of being curious about this? Don’t you want to know?”

  “I’m not curious, I’m not!” said Lynden, straining against his grasp. “I don’t think about it—hardly ever. Let me go!”

  He applied a firm pressure to the side of her hip, turning her back to him, and gathered the luxuriant mass of her hair, forcing her to look helplessly into his eyes. “Why let you go? You’re not sure where you want to be.” And his mouth met hers in a long, open kiss—a kiss she tried to escape, to turn from, but which held her trembling lips with hypnotic power. His hand imparted a fusing, downward pressure on the low slope of her back, pushing her to him. Finally he freed her from the deep, clinging kiss, and she arched away from him, gasping. It took her a moment to regain her breath, and then she spoke.

  “That’s not true! I know where I want to go—I want to go to bed! I… Melbrooke! What are you doing? Oh! Put me down! I meant I wanted to go to my own bed… alone… to sleep!”

  He had lifted her body with such ease that she felt weightless, suspended, a sensation so unnerving that she gave a tiny shriek and clutched her arms desperately around his neck. Then she was being whirled about on the magic carpet of his arms as he carried her across the room. Helplessly her small fists pummeled his hard chest. Then, like a leaf being carried on an autumn breeze, she was let down rapidly, fragile and trembling, in the center of her lush, cream-velvet draped tent bed. He held here there by her widely flung wrists as she squirmed and wriggled.

  “Melbrooke! Get off!” she said, panting from exertion.

  “Come, so distant? I thought I was Justin,” he said, his voice muffled as he kissed her shoulder.

  “Not to me, because Lorraine says Justin is Latin for ‘the just,’ and you are not! Except that you are just intolerable.”

  She heard his husky laughter, and kicked at him with new vigor, causing the wooden frame of the bed to shake beneath them as her willow-green satin skirts billowed and flounced around her legs. He took advantage of the disarrangement of her skirts to draw his hand up her prettily exposed outer thigh.

  She tried to sink from him, to disappear into the mattress. “Stop!” Her voice was sharp with alarm. “I’m warning you, if you don’t release me immediately, I shall scream at the top of my lungs to Mrs. Coniston that I’m being ravished!”

  “Fine,” said Melbrooke. “But don’t be surprised if she doses you with licorice
infusion like she does the ewes at breeding time.”

  Her reply, whatever it was to be, was prevented by the new pressure of his lips on hers, searching and kissing her resisting mouth; his hands were stroking, massaging her trim body; he pulled the gown from one soft shoulder. She shivered as he traced an intricate pattern on her exposed pale-rose flesh. Again she pulled away, and his fingertips ran softly over her quivering dusky lips, keeping them supple until he could find them again with his own. He pressed her to him, murmuring endearments and love talk, biting gently on her naked shoulder.

  Then, suddenly, an unexpected, penetrating throb of pleasure raced through her as he moved his hand from her shoulder, down the swell of her breast. Her skin was leaping, swelling unbidden under his touch, which sent circles of tingling sensation through her. She put one hand on his arm to push him away, but instead found herself holding on to his wrist; and, using the other hand to push against his chest, she was strangely aware of the living, warm muscle beneath his shirt, and then a slight movement of his brought her hand flat against the base of his throat, and she felt the pulse that beat there. He had such beautiful colors in him; she was noticing the amber of his hair, the dappled gray of his eyes, the dark wheat of his brows. The light played over his molded cheekbone as he bent his head to kiss the inside of her wrist. Her hand was taken by his, and she closed her eyes, alone, away from the external world, feeling only the mobile, rhythmic search of his mouth in the cup of her palm.

  Lynden’s transport was followed by a correspondingly strong reaction of guilt and self-disgust; she had vowed to be strong, she had vowed to resist him. But it happened. She despised herself for being as easy for him as were Lady Silvia, Aunt Eleanor, and the scores of other females whose names had been linked with his through society’s gossip. Surely now he would know that she cared for him, too, that she was another marionette to respond desperately to his tug upon the strings. Why must he humiliate her with his lovemaking when he was already in love with another woman? Tears appeared on her lashes and streaked down the side of her face into her thick dark curls.

  “Justin, you’re not kind, not kind,” she whispered. Her low voice cracked on the words.

  Resting on his elbows, he slowly dried the trails of tears on her face as he studied the fresh pain in her luminous, widened eyes. “No.” His voice had a certain gentle timbre. “Sometimes it’s not possible to be kind. No one can always be so.”

  She turned her head away from him looking into the fire. A tear rolled quickly from the bridge of her nose to be absorbed into the cream-velvet bed cover. “You make me unhappy.”

  Melbrooke swung his legs gracefully to the edge of the bed, sat up, and turned to her, smoothing her hair with his hand. “It’s not my wish to.” He pulled her chin around carefully, trying to look into her face.

  She closed her eyes against him, heard him sigh, and felt him gather her into his arms and pull her to him. The soft touch of his lips was in her hair as he massaged her back soothingly. “What am I to do with you, Lynden?”

  After a moment he laid her gently back upon the bed and kissed her on the forehead. The mattress gave a bounce as he left her. She heard the door to his room click shut.

  He was gone. Lynden stared at the ceiling, a devastating loneliness growing within her. She had won; she had gotten rid of him. Why was victory so bitter?

  Chapter Fourteen

  The days that followed held Fern Court in an abstracted tension. Lorraine, missing Kyler, settled into a state of calm melancholia. A new and even more impenetrable formality characterized Lord Melbrooke’s behavior. Lynden owned a superficial composure that had a tendency to slip into belligerence over trivial irritations. She had devised ingenious strategems for avoiding her husband and was both relieved and hurt when they succeeded. They met only at dinner, where Lynden cunningly led involved discussions on the best political direction for the Whig party, the stability of the pound relative to the franc, and the economic benefits of the West Indies trade, thus rendering mealtime an impressively high-minded, if rather dull, experience. There always came a time, however, at that delicate interval between the removal of the entremets and the arrival of dessert, when Lynden ran out of probing political questions to her husband’s deft answers and there was nothing further to say. Lynden would sit, staring into her plate, hideously conscious of the silence and her husband’s nearness, though Melbrooke never let the silence continue to unbearable lengths before asking her, perhaps, if Mr. Coniston could procure her anything on his trip into Penrith on Wednesday, or whether or not the baying of the foxhounds on the fell-side had waked her that morning.

  Lorraine and Lynden spent the days near Fern Court, leaning over rough stone walls to watch the farmers muck their fields. Often the twins were invited to enter the cottage kitchens through low, slate thresholds to snack on goat cheese, oak cakes, and home-brewed ale. On days of inclement weather they laid claim to the music room, and while Lorraine coaxed haunting melodies from the pianoforte, Lynden thumbed diligently through complete works and anthologies, tirelessly selecting and then discarding countless verses mentioning spring flowers from Chaucer, Donne, Milton, Pope, and Burns.

  She was not alone with Melbrooke until the night of Lady Silvia’s ball. At eight that evening Lynden sat before her gold-trimmed mirror, splendidly dressed in a high-waisted gown of lake-red shot silk, with a low-sloping décolletage trimmed in a narrow frilling of white lace. Her maid, having finished dressing Lynden’s hair in clean falling curls, had gone to Lorraine’s room to assist her. Lynden had shyly slipped onto her finger the ruby-and-diamond engagement ring when Melbrooke himself knocked on her door.

  Tonight, in his dark-blue jacket, waistcoat of white-on-white embroidered satin, and tasseled Hessians, he was a picture to make a maiden’s heart flutter—and Lynden was no more immune than the next maiden. She inadvertently drew her knuckle to her lips, then nervously extended her hand to him.

  “Good evening, My Lord. You look very elegant tonight, I think.”

  He dropped a cool kiss on her fingers, released them, and smiled, the gray eyes remaining distant. “Next to you, My Lady, I am a poor patch of seed grass near to a rose bush in full blossom.”

  “You are gallant, My Lord,” observed Lynden, fighting an unseemly and rather girlish urge to cover her plunging bodice. “But—is it time to leave already? I thought we were to go on the quarter hour.”

  “We are. But I wanted to give you this before we left.” He handed her a small box trimmed in black velveteen and engraved in gold leaf with the name of a well-known Bond Street jeweler. “They complete a set with your ring.”

  She looked at him, eyes widened in surprise, setting the box carefully in her lap. Then she slipped off the tiny clasp and opened it. Against the black-velvet interior of the little box, lying in a shimmering network of light, were a bright, crescent-shaped gem hairpiece and dainty twin earrings which matched a dancing river of rubies and brilliant diamonds set in a necklace of delicate white gold filigree. She looked at Melbrooke, her mouth open slightly in amazement.

  “You shouldn’t buy me things like this,” she said, a rush of emotion bringing a prickle of tears to her eyelids.

  “Nonsense, my dear,” he said with slight amusement. “I shall often buy you things like this. How else should I spend my royalties?” He picked the necklace from its plush ebony bed; she bowed her head and felt the deliberate movements as he clasped it at the back of her neck. When he was finished, he rested his palms on her shoulders and they looked at the reflection of the necklace in the mirror until Lynden noticed he had shifted his gaze to her face. She blushed and looked down again.

  “Lynden, I…” began Melbrooke. His conversation was interrupted by Lorraine’s perfunctory knock and entrance into the room. She wore a summer-sky-blue gown and her grandmother’s pearl set. “I’m ready, Lynden,” she called, “and several minutes early, so…” She broke off with dismay when she saw Melbrooke in the room. “Oh dear! I’ll return later!
”

  Melbrooke sanctioned her presence with an admonishing wave. “No need. Ladies, shall we go?”

  * * *

  The great banqueting hall in the solar of Crant Castle had been transformed into a ballroom. A false floor of oak planking had been laid across the uneven stone to accommodate the dancers; a modern orchestra in formal evening wear sent stately harmonious chords wavering through the throng; the walls were hung, no doubt at Lady Silvia’s orders, in yards of gold sateen; and Lord Crant’s bizarre collection of footed chairs had been removed to the nether regions of the house to be replaced by up-to-date sofas, ottomans, benches, and single chairs.

  Lady Silvia was receiving guests in a clinging gown of silk gauze of a color politely called Cupid’s pink, but more accurately termed flesh, which made her seem in certain postures and turns of lights to be wearing nothing at all. She greeted Lorraine and Lynden with condescending smiles and Melbrooke with a delicious heavy-lidded gaze.

  “Lady Melbrooke!” she purred. “How delightful you look. Our young men will be quite smitten, I vow. I hope you have come prepared to dance every set.”

  “I was prepared, but after climbing your steps, I feel I will collapse after the first measure.” Lynden’s tone was sadly lacking in cordiality.

  Lord Crant stood at Silvia’s side. In response to his sister’s words, he said, “Wit and beauty in one small frame. It is what one finds so particularly… taking in you, Lady Melbrooke.”

  Lynden arched her brows in what she hoped might be a fair imitation of Lady Silvia’s style and proceeded to embark upon flirtation with Lord Crant calculated to show Lord Melbrooke (not that he seemed to entertain any doubts on the matter, she thought wrathfully) that she was as likely as he to pursue and be pursued by the opposite sex. Lord Crant, in a spirit of appreciative mischief, soon proved himself an able, if rather frighteningly unreliable, ally in this object. He obliged Lynden with an exchange of dalliance strong enough, surely, to raise Lord Melbrooke’s ire—finally discomforting her completely with a remark that succeeded in reminding Lynden that Crant was both a scoundrel and a blockhead. Crant, out of nowhere, said that he was considering adding to the family collection some examples from the Flemish school of interpretative architectural representation. Surely, being such an expert, she could advise him? Lynden was sure it would have aroused more of Lord Melbrooke’s ire than she was willing to deal with if he learned about the visit Lorraine and she had made to Crant Castle—and heaven knows what sort of difficult suspicions!