A buzzing started up in Philippe’s ears.
“Is it Elise?” Philippe said abruptly.
The footman looked astonished. “Eli— No, sir. No, sir. Well, sir. I’m so sorry to trouble you, sir. I wouldn’t if—”
“Out with it, Ramsey.”
“Young Master Fountain is missing.”
Philippe’s heart froze. “Jack?” The word was hoarse.
“Mrs. Fountain went to look in on him after dinner, and he wasn’t in his bed. We’ve searched the house over, every closet and cupboard, and called and called for him. We even . . .” He gulped. “. . . well, the foot of the stairs. In case he—”
Philippe gave his head a rough warning shake. He didn’t want to hear the end of that sentence any more than the footman wanted to utter it.
The buzzing in his ears was louder now, and his heart was slamming as hard as boots coming down in a military parade. All at once he could feel Elise’s terror as tangibly as if it were a coming storm, and it wound around his heart like a snake. He knew a peculiar cold fury that anything or anyone, the universe or fate, would dare to harm her. Or Jack.
He would make it right.
“Does Mrs. Fountain know you’re here?” he said sharply.
“No, sir. She wouldn’t have liked me to trouble you. So I left without her knowing . . . she’s still searching through the house, sir, and calling his name . . .” Ramsey swallowed.
Philippe reached out and briefly gripped the man’s shoulder. “You did the right thing,” he said distantly.
Which is nothing a Lavay would have said or done to a footman prior to the revolution.
Prior to Elise Fountain.
Some notion was moving in the shadows of Philippe’s mind, and he fixed on it, desperately willing it into focus, as if it were prey.
“It’s very unlike Master Jack. It’s been nearly two hours, sir. Maybe longer. We don’t know for certain. She’s distraught, Lord Lavay.” His voice nearly broke. “It’s hard to bear. I like her, you see. She’s been grand to all of us.”
“Philippe?” came an irritated, brittle voice. Alexandra’s. Accompanied by the clicking of slippers in the foyer behind him.
“Be quiet,” he said abruptly. Shrugging it off as if it were a mosquito. Hardly registering that it belonged to anyone he knew. He was thinking.
Her shocked gasp hardly registered, either.
“I’m not a subaltern or one of those scruffy heathens on your ship, Philippe. You cannot speak to me that way.”
“Silence,” he said anyway. He couldn’t help it. She could have been anyone talking; he would have said it to the king.
Because Philippe had at last drawn a bead on the idea.
And then he had it.
His issued orders came swift, hard, furious, and incontrovertible.
“I know where he is. Go get Mrs. Fountain and bring her to the church, Ramsey. Now. Now, man.”
The footman turned and bolted as if shot from a cannon. Behind him, the footman who had brought Philippe the message at dinner was already holding his overcoat, and Philippe shrugged into it.
Philippe seized one of the mounted wall lanterns and bolted out the door.
“Phili—”
Alexandra’s voice might as well have been the wind.
Chapter 23
HE RAN IN LONG, ground-devouring, lunging strides, across the downs in the dark, the lantern in his fist quickly snuffed by the rain slashing down at him, his boots sinking into the mud. He felt none of it. He felt no pain. His breath roared in his ears. The vicarage seemed so close and yet so terrifyingly far away, and there was no light at all, stars and moon all blanketed by a fat, surly rain cloud.
He never stopped until he reached the door to the bell tower, which was, as he suspected, open just a crack.
And then he scaled in huge bounds the winding steps all the way up to the bell, two at a time, guided more by instinct than anything else. When he arrived he paused, heaving for breath.
He paused and listened. He saw the great, calm, still mass of the bell. He heard the rain striking the wall and the wind rushing through the crevices.
And then at last he heard a soft rustling sound.
Accompanied by sniffing and soft sobbing.
And there against the wall Jack was slumped.
The blood nearly left Philippe’s head in relief. He dropped to his knees.
“Master Jack. Are you hurt?”
“Good evening, Giant,” the boy sniffed. “No. And I’m not crying.”
Lavay turned and sank down next to him and pressed his back against the wall, gulping huge breaths.
“Of course not,” he wheezed out.
“I can’t get the bell to ring,” Jack explained. He sniffed. “I tried. It just won’t go. I can’t do anything. I won’t amount to anything.”
“Aw, Master Jack. It’s frustrating, I know. So many things we have to wait for in life, and it’s one of the hardest things in life to learn. Even now, I’m still waiting to be able to do things, and I am a grown man. Here, why don’t you warm my coat up for me?”
He peeled off his wet oilskin overcoat and laid it on the ground, then shook himself out of his dry coat and wrapped it around Jack, engulfing him. Jack’s head poked out from the dark wool and shining buttons.
They sat together in silence for some time. Philippe’s ragged breaths seemed to echo in the bell tower.
“Giant?”
“Yes, Master Jack?”
“What is a bastard?”
Philippe closed his eyes.
Oh, God.
He felt as though he’d just been stabbed clean through again.
“A bastard,” he said slowly, “is a person who wishes to make someone else unhappy by saying unkind things. That is what a bastard is,” he said with feeling. “Where did you learn the word?”
“From Colette, from Miss Endicott’s. She’s so pretty, Giant. But she says a bastard is someone who doesn’t have a father and will never amount to anything. And she says I’m a bastard.”
Colette.
Alexandra’s sister.
And how would Colette know anything at all about Jack’s parentage?
A sizzling, nasty suspicion started somewhere in the recesses of his mind.
And that is the reason Colette is at Miss Endicott’s Academy, he thought grimly. The place specialized in difficult girls.
The person to whom Elise must have spoken out of turn was Alexandra.
He shoved this realization aside to revisit later.
“Ah. Well, Jack, that is another meaning for the word, but it isn’t a kind one. You know how words can sometimes have two meanings, and other words we ought not say in polite company? It’s like that.”
“Like ‘duck.’ It means a bird, and it means to do this.” Jack ducked into Philippe’s coat and vanished. “And like the bark on a dog and the bark on a tree.”
“Precisely. And you are a kind boy, so you won’t use that word to describe anyone.”
Jack’s head popped out of the coat again. “The one that starts with a B?”
“Yes.”
They sat together for a time.
“I don’t have a father,” Jack said miserably, his voice a hush, as if he were confessing a shameful secret. “Almost everyone else does. I think I’m supposed to.”
And then Philippe could almost literally feel his heart breaking. Cracking like the surface of an ice pond.
He fiercely gathered Jack into his lap, wrapped his arms around him, and rested his chin on top of Jack’s head. And this was how one put hearts back together again, he thought. By simply loving.
They were quiet together for a time. Jack’s sobs were tapering off into ragged hiccuping.
“I don’t have a father either, Jack.”
&
nbsp; “Did your father go away, too?” Jack sounded sympathetic.
“In a manner of speaking.”
“Are you a bastard, too?”
“Some might say, Jack. Some might say. But here is the important part about not having a father. And I want you to listen closely, because I’m a clever man and I speak only truth. Do you believe me?”
Jack nodded.
“When you don’t have a father . . . you must learn to be stronger and braver and more resourceful, which is a word that means you will always know best how to take care of yourself and the people you love. And sometimes it’s a bit lonely to not have a father, but when you have a big heart, and you do, you will never be lonely for long.”
He could tell Jack was listening intently. He’d gone mostly still, though he’d begun to pluck at one of the buttons on Philippe’s coat.
“The thing is, Jack, your maman loves you enough for two people and . . . I’ve never met anyone who loves as well as your mother does. Her heart is enormous, and she is as good as a mother and father all put together. You are so fortunate, Jack, and so special, and that is why the two of you were given to each other to love. And you will amount to anything you want to be. I know you will be a fine man indeed, because you are already strong and brave and resourceful, as well as bold and kind and clever. And we shall pity and be kind to Colette, because only unhappy people say such unkind things, oui? All right?”
“Oui.” Jack sounded considerably cheered. He heaved a great sigh and leaned back against Philippe’s chest.
“Sometimes we feel things very strongly, non? So strongly that we want to run away from them, or throw things. But you must stop and think before you do to decide whether someone who loves you might be scared or miss you. You can always tell your maman what it is that is troubling you. Your mama is very worried, Jack. And . . .” He hesitated. “. . . and so was I.”
“I’m sorry, Giant.”
“I will take you home now, all right?”
“All right, Giant.”
Neither Jack nor Philippe hadn’t even noticed the sounds of the footman and Elise climbing the stairs, following the flickering light of the lantern in the window.
THE RAIN EASED a bit after the initial vomiting downpour, and despite the vicar’s pleas for them to wait by the fire in the vicarage with him and his wife until morning, they all just wanted to be home.
Lavay carried a sleeping Jack all the way across the green, and Elise carried the lamp, which managed to stay lit.
They were silent the entire way. It was a subdued, humbled, awed, soft, very resigned silence.
Neither of them felt the cold.
Philippe hadn’t thought. He simply hadn’t thought.
He’d simply bolted through the dark, like an animal sprung from a trap, because he would do anything for her. He simply could not differentiate what was best for her or for himself, because they seemed one and the same.
And he supposed that was what happened when someone else was your heart. You couldn’t help what you did.
And he suspected Elise had heard everything he’d said to Jack.
A cloud whipped past a half moon, exposing its face long enough to give them light for the walk home.
“I’M SORRY, MAMA. I love you, Mama.”
“I know, sweetheart. I love you, too. You won’t do it again?”
“No, Mama,” Jack slurred sleepily.
Elise had peeled Jack’s wet clothes from him and scrubbed him down with a dry warm cloth, then installed him in a warm sleeping gown. She put him to bed with hot bricks and a cup of sipping chocolate and his lion.
And she held him in her arms until he fell asleep again, which was nearly instantly.
She listened to his even breathing. She counted his breaths, as if she could make up for the ones she’d missed while he’d been in the church tower, futilely trying to ring the bell.
Trying to amount to something.
And that’s when she started to tremble.
She slipped out of bed, undressed, and unbound her hair. She shook it out until it poured down her back.
She wrapped herself in her night robe and lit a candle, then made her way down the stairs, almost like a sleepwalker, toward the one person in her world who felt like safety.
SHE TAPPED ON his door three times. Softly.
There was no reply.
So she tried the handle.
It gave.
She pushed it open a few inches, and it went without squeaking.
Philippe was sitting by the fire in his great wing chair, a snifter of brandy cupped loosely in his palm.
Looking into the fire the way she’d once seen him look out the window. Perhaps he hadn’t heard the soft knocks over the rain, which had started up again with a biblical vengeance. He’d changed his clothes, and he sat now in a shirt and trousers, bootless, his hair still a little damp and curling almost whimsically at the temples.
He looked up.
And then went still.
He lowered the brandy snifter carefully to the table next to him.
His eyes tracked her slow progress to him as if she’d been a holy visitation.
She stood before him long enough to allow him to see the shadowed outline of her body through her night rail.
She looked down into his beloved eyes, which were heated like the brandy and reflected the dancing flames.
If nothing else, her tenure here had resulted in reliable fires in all the rooms.
Both of the literal and figurative varieties.
She dropped to her knees before him and lay her head on his lap. He stroked her hair, gently, softly, in silence, for some time.
She didn’t know when she began weeping, only that she was, and she couldn’t stop. All the terror and not knowing, the shame of the word “bastard.” She couldn’t bear it if she was the reason he lost everything he wanted. Everything poured out at once.
He stroked her hair softly, murmuring endearments. “Chérie, do not cry. Ma coeur, it is safe now. He is safe. Shhh . . .”
“I was so afraid.” She was shivering and shivering, a delayed response to terror.
“I know. I know. I am sorry. Come here. Come here.”
He raised her up and pulled her across his lap, wrapping her tightly in his arms, willing the warmth of his body into hers until the shaking subsided and the sobs at last had their way with her.
And in silence, for some time, she leaned her head back against his shoulder and was held. She remembered wondering if any woman had ever taken refuge there.
It seemed like the whole world took refuge there.
“I tried for so long to protect him from that word, Philippe. He was hardly likely to be judged at the vicarage. It is my fault. I have done this to him.”
“You have done nothing but love him. His father did this to him. You cannot protect him from the world. But you can teach him how to move in it. You can teach him that he can still be kind when other people are not. And who knows that better than you?”
She turned her head to look into his eyes. With a single finger she traced the line of his jaw, and then the lyrical shape of his mouth, and he let her. He simply watched, his eyes hot, the reflection of the fire dancing in his pupils. For a while they simply gazed at each other. Who ever would have dreamed that a man this hard would have a heart so vast and beautiful?
She kissed him softly on the mouth.
And then she reached for the button on his shirt.
Time seemed to have slowed to a velvety crawl, and she thought she might remain in the Purgatory of the Undone Button forever.
And the button at last gave way.
She spread his shirt open with a sigh of relief and slid her hands down the satiny, hard chest and sighed. She kissed him.
“How I want you,” she murmured
.
He threaded his fingers through her hair as she placed a single kiss at the base of his throat, where his heart was drumming hard, fast and fiercely, appropriate to the warrior he was.
And as their lips met and blended, as the kiss became hungry and fierce and tender, her fingers softly followed the seam dividing the smooth muscles bisected by a scar. The wound could have killed him, but it was the road that had brought him to her, so she skated her finger over it softly. It was a bit like following the path that had led her to this moment.
He shifted as his cock swelled and stirred.
She slipped from his lap, kneeling between his thighs so she could trail her tongue along that fine seam of hair that disappeared into his trousers.
And then reached for his trouser buttons.
Which fortunately surrendered quickly to her awkward fingers.
His cock sprang free into her hand, and she closed her mouth over it.
His breath sawed in sharply, then.
She dragged her mouth down over the length of it, following it with her fist. And did it again.
And again.
He arched upward with a soft moan, his hands twisting in her hair. His head went back hard, the cords of his neck taut. His words came in short harsh bursts.
“Mother of God . . . so good Elise . . .”
And his excitement banked her own, until she could feel her body taut and shivering now, not with fear but with power and savage want.
She did it again, with her mouth, her hands, her tongue, dragging her tongue along the swollen shaft, tracing the contours of the silken dome.
His hands reached out and seized the arms of her night rail.
“Take it off,” he ordered hoarsely. “Or I will rip it from you.”
She staggered to her feet and pulled it off. It dropped into his hands as if it stood in the way of everything he’d ever wanted, which in some ways it had, but being a night rail, it didn’t go far. It fluttered like a shot pigeon to the ground, and he gave a short laugh.
“Oh, my love, dear God.”
It sounded like a hosannah. She liked it, so she stood before him a little longer, nude, utterly vulnerable, as his hot eyes feasted.
It Started with a Scandal Page 25
