Christy English - [Shakespeare in Love 02]

by Love on a Midsummer Night

  “Perhaps.”

  “Her Grace clearly wishes to avoid him. Why she wishes to do so is not my affair. But if you were to perform one night for the joy of it, your time in the country would be explained away. Hawthorne is a patron of the theater, but he hates all plays. He would never come to Derbyshire simply to watch you make a fool of yourself.”

  Arabella flinched at Titania’s choice of words, but Pembroke’s face lightened a little. The tension in Arabella’s shoulders eased. “You begin to make sense, Titania.”

  “I always make sense, Pembroke. You just don’t always attend to what I am saying.”

  “So your troupe will come here and perform one night of Shakespeare with an amateur. Will that not cost you good money?”

  “It will,” she said. “But between us, there need be no talk of price.”

  It was Pembroke’s turn to look embarrassed. Her fear of Hawthorne and her speculation about the ton of London was burned away. There was a heavy tension in the air that seemed to press on Arabella’s lungs. She felt like an intruder. She was tempted to rise and leave them to each other, but her jealousy held her in her chair.

  Titania’s voice was as soft as Arabella had ever heard it. This woman slept with Pembroke for money, but it was clear that she loved him, too. Somehow, that made it worse.

  “Rehearse with us now and then, when your affairs allow. Let my company camouflage your real reason for being here.”

  Pembroke sat in silence, his eyes on Titania’s. Arabella did not think she could bear one more moment of that silence. Pain had come to twine with jealousy, and she had to fight them both to breathe. She could not bear the silence another moment, so she broke it.

  “I would dearly love to see the play,” Arabella said.

  Her voice was quiet, but it severed the connection between Pembroke and his mistress. He turned to her as if he had just remembered that she was in the room. He smiled, and she felt the new, unaccustomed heat of desire begin in her toes, rising to cover the rest of her body like a river of fire.

  “Will you help me learn my lines?” he asked.

  Arabella forced a smile. His eyes had taken on a gleam of mischief, and for once she would meet him in the same spirit. She ignored the pain lodged in her throat, the jealousy that made it difficult to swallow.

  Arabella reached for her spoon and took up a bite of the melting ice. The sweetness of the strawberry burst on her tongue, and for a moment she thought the pleasure of it would overwhelm her. It served its purpose though, to take her eyes and mind away from him. When she spoke, her voice sounded almost light, almost carefree.

  “Of course I will help you if you need it. You will make a wonderful Oberon.”

  Titania’s voice boomed. “Excellent! Then we will have a play. Good thing, too, since my troupe arrives in the village first thing tomorrow.”

  ***

  Titania did not stay past dinner. Pembroke offered to walk her to the front door. He stood close to her in the entrance hall, and Arabella found herself listening from the drawing room to all they said.

  “Will you not stay?” Pembroke asked.

  Titania waved one hand, but she spoke quietly. “No, indeed. One woman in the house is enough.”

  He did not answer that, so she went on. “I am perfectly comfortable at the inn.”

  A silence fell, and Arabella stepped to the door and peered out. Pembroke was kissing Titania, his lips lingering over hers as if to drink her in. Arabella made a concerted effort to turn back, to look away, but she could not seem to take her eyes off Pembroke and his mistress. It was Titania who drew back and who sauntered calmly to the front door, leaving her lover behind.

  “Good night, Pembroke. See to your guest.”

  The door closed behind her, and Codington bowed himself out of the entrance hall as if he had seen and heard nothing. Arabella wondered how good servants learned that cool air of detachment and if Codington might be so kind as to teach it to her.

  Arabella turned away from Pembroke and his entrance hall and went back into the drawing room. A few candles were lit, but clearly the staff expected them to go to bed early. It had been a long day, and she was sick at heart, but she knew that if she retired after watching Pembroke kiss his mistress, she would not sleep.

  Brandy and two glasses had been set out on the sideboard. Arabella crossed the room and poured herself three fingers, as she had seen Pembroke do.

  The scent of the brandy was harsh in her nostrils as she sniffed at it. She had never cared for the smell and cared for the taste even less. Still, she tipped the glass back and downed it.

  “Arabella!”

  Pembroke crossed the room in three strides, taking the now empty glass away from her. The heat of the brandy burned like fire in her throat and created a roiling mass of heat in her stomach, lingering with the remains of her dinner.

  Arabella took a deep breath, determined not to be sick. She moved the French doors, pushing them open so that she could feel the cool night air on her face. She had not choked on the brandy, though she had wanted to. As she drank, she had not been able to draw enough breath to choke. As she felt an alcoholic languor coming to claim her, she laughed, taking in the scent of roses from the garden beyond.

  Now that she had her breath back, Arabella also found her voice. “Will you drink with me, my lord?”

  “No, Arabella, I will not.”

  She turned to face him, the breeze from the garden at her back, moving the silk skirts of her gown against her legs.

  “I do not recall giving you leave to use my given name.”

  “I am your only friend in the world. I will call you anything I wish.”

  “Not harlot,” she said. “Not mistress.”

  There was a long silence that seemed to twine itself around them, stuffing itself down their throats. Arabella wished for another glass of brandy. The drink had freed her tongue and had made her limbs heavy, but it had not touched her heart. Her heart was still broken. Perhaps that was why Pembroke had stayed drunk for so many years. Drink did not alleviate pain but simply made it bearable.

  “You saw me kiss her,” Pembroke said.

  “Yes. Not that it matters to me.”

  “Of course it matters. It was rude of me and callous. I apologize, Arabella.”

  “You owe me nothing.”

  She closed her eyes as if to blot out the words they had spoken as well as the sight of him. As she listened, he crossed the room until he was standing directly in front of her. The warmth of his body surrounded her. When she opened her eyes, he stood less than a foot away.

  “I’ll go to my father’s and find his money,” she said. “I’ll be gone soon after, and you need never see me again.”

  “But what if I want to see you again?”

  “That would not be a good idea,” she said, her voice harsh in her own ears, like the voice of someone else.

  “Do you hate me then?” he asked.

  “I hate myself.”

  “We have that in common.”

  She laughed, and she heard her own pain in it. “You hate me, too?”

  “No,” he answered. “Self-loathing has been my only companion for years.”

  “And Anthony Carrington,” she quipped.

  He did not rise to the bait but nodded. “Yes. Except for Anthony. And now for you.”

  “You have your mistresses to keep you company.”

  “One woman is much the same as the next.”

  Arabella wanted to make some clever retort, but her wit failed her.

  “All women are alike, but for you,” Pembroke said.

  “I’m the one you never had.”

  “The one I loved once.”

  The finality of the word once was what undid her. She began to slip down against the French door, as if her knees could no longer hold her up. She
had the good sense to slide into a Queen Anne chair that stood to one side of the garden doors. The soft cushion seemed to buoy her up, even as the hard back of the chair dug into her spine, reminding her that she had a backbone and that it was her choice whether she would use it.

  With the death of her husband, her world had changed. With the Duke of Hawthorne chasing her out of London, she had been swept into another world. She had grown up under the harsh reign of her father and had languished in silence for ten years beneath the boot of her husband. But neither man had ever threatened her life. The duke had threatened her very existence, and nothing would ever be the same.

  As she sat in Pembroke’s drawing room, Arabella began to wonder if the path she was on was not a disaster. Here in this place, beyond any future she had ever imagined, she saw for the first time how much she hated her life. That quiet life of desperation, taking whatever scraps were offered, was gone forever. If she chose, she could build a new one.

  The brandy had given her another gift, the ability to face her life as her own responsibility. She could no longer look to her father, her husband, or even to Pembroke to give it shape. She would shape it herself.

  After ten years of being entombed alive in marriage to an elderly man who could not love her, a vibrant new life beckoned to her. She did not know what that life would look like, but she knew that she wanted it.

  Pembroke had not spoken again. He stood staring down at her where she sat, helpless in his Queen Anne chair. She saw him differently, too. He was a casualty of her father’s cruelty, just as she was. She had always blamed him for not coming to her rescue so many years ago, for believing the worst of her, for not answering her letters, for turning away. But now, as she sat drunk in his country house, that old anger began to slip away.

  “I am sorry,” she said. “I am sorry that I hurt you.”

  He stiffened, his back straightening against the onslaught of her simple words. It was as if she had stabbed him, as if she had taken a knife out of her reticule and driven it into his heart. He still felt something for her then, if only anger, if only pain. She was responsible for that pain as much as her dead father was. She stood, unsteady on her feet, and went to him.

  There were few candles lit, so the room was bathed in shadow, with pockets of warm light given off by a candelabrum by the door and another by the window.

  The silk of her gown brushed against her skin like the touch of a butterfly’s wing as she began to walk to him. Her stays hugged her ribs beneath her bodice, but instead of a confinement, they felt like a lover’s embrace. She had never been embraced by a lover, save in her dreams of Pembroke.

  Pembroke stood in silence, watching her.

  Arabella felt the lawn of her shift brush against her thighs. The silk of her gown whispered as she moved, and she wondered why she had never noticed that sound before. The room was strangely silent, a quiet so deep that she did not know if they would ever find the end of it.

  The ruby Pembroke had given her so many years ago seemed to burn like a brand against her skin beneath the bodice of her gown. She did not feel as if the ring would stop her, but that it urged her on.

  Arabella raised herself on her toes, laying her hands on the solid firmness of his upper arms for balance as she took in his scent of cinnamon. Pembroke did not pull back or push her away but stood frozen in place as if he had been encased in a sheath of ice. He did not even seem to breathe as Arabella pressed her lips against his.

  She did not know what else to do, so she kissed him, putting all her love, all her loss and sorrow, into the pressure of her lips on his. She knew that she was clumsy. She also knew that no one would ever love him as much as she did, that day or ever.

  Pembroke gripped her arms, his strong hands making her feel even smaller than she was. She had begun to totter on her toes, for she had to stretch far to reach his lips. But instead of pushing her away as she had been so certain he would, Pembroke drew her close, bringing her into the circle of his arms, lowering his head, bending down to take her lips with his.

  His kiss was gentle, as soft as hers had been, but the heated touch took her breath, and she gasped, opening her mouth beneath his. Pembroke pressed inside, stroking her tongue as if to soothe her, as if to savor her, as if she were the one taste he had hungered for all his life.

  His hands pressed against the small of her back, drawing her flush against him as his lips devoured hers. As she followed his lead, she remembered the dream of Pembroke in her bed, and she kissed him as she had learned to kiss him in that dream. At first, he jolted a little with shock, but in the next moment he drew her even closer, his hands moving up her back into her hair, trapping her head so that she could not pull away from his questing lips even if she wanted to.

  He tasted of the strawberry ices they had eaten. He tasted of mystery and danger, as if he held a whole world within the circle of his arms, a world she had never seen, not in her dream and not in the years she had spent in her husband’s bed.

  She soon forgot both her husband and the dream she had of Pembroke. There was only the man she loved, his arms around her, his chest pressed hard against her breasts, and his thighs bracketing her own so that she could feel the heat of him through the soft silk of her gown.

  For one heady moment she thought he might draw her down into the shadows of the settee before the unlit fire, that he might cover her body as he had in her dreams. Instead, Pembroke moved back, but he did not let her go. He stared down at her, drinking in the sight of her face just as she drank in the sight of his. Arabella smiled at him, unable to hide her delight, not knowing why she should feel as she did. Nothing was solved between them, and nothing ever would be. But he had given her one of the greatest gifts of her life. She would remember their kiss until the day she died.

  Her body was uncomfortable. Her gown and stays, which before had felt so sensuous against her skin, now felt too tight and hot, as if she had worked in the garden during the heat of the day. Her mouth hungered for another taste of his. She could still feel the contours of his tongue as she ran her own over the smoothness of her teeth.

  As she was thinking these things, Pembroke took a step back from her. He kept his hands on her arms in case she faltered. She saw the unhappiness in his eyes, and she pressed her fingertips to his lips. She spoke quickly, before he could give voice to his thoughts and ruin the moment for her.

  “It’s all right,” she said. “I won’t throw myself at you again.”

  In the end, it was she who stepped away from him. She took up one of the candles by the door to light her way to her room. Arabella moved into the corridor beyond the drawing room and began the long, slow climb up the wide formal staircase. She did not look back because she did not want to see Pembroke’s eyes. It pained her that the kiss that had brought her so much joy had brought him only regret.

  Arabella pushed the thought out of her mind. She had had enough of pain. She renounced it. From now on, she would embrace joy. There was so much joy in the world, and she wanted more of it.

  Eleven

  Pembroke watched Arabella walk up the staircase of his father’s house, the short train of her evening gown trailing behind her on the mahogany stairs. He stayed in the doorway of the drawing room for a long time, listening to the tick of the grandfather clock on the landing above. When it finally hit the stroke of midnight, he forced himself to walk up the stairs to his bedroom, alone.

  Arabella slept in the room he had set aside for her, the room he had decorated to match the color of her eyes. Her room was down the hall from his own bedroom suite, something he had not considered until the moment she kissed him.

  He could still taste her lips if he closed his eyes. He could smell her light perfume. Or perhaps she wore no perfume at all. Perhaps if he divested her of her silk and lawn, her skin would give off that perfume simply of itself. The thought made Pembroke catch his breath, and he cursed himself.

>   Reynolds seemed to catch something of his mood, for his valet helped him undress in silence. Wearing only his trousers and lawn shirt, he dismissed his man, who bowed once before leaving for the night. Pembroke prowled the edges of his bedroom, crossing into the sitting room where he kept a bottle of brandy.

  He poured himself a liberal amount, half a glass, before setting the decanter down. Pembroke warmed the brandy between his hands, lifted it to his lips, but he did not drink. The scent of the heavy liquor turned his stomach. All he could think of was the way that same brandy had smelled on Arabella’s sweet breath when she had leaned up on tiptoe to kiss him.

  She could still turn him inside out. Years later, after she betrayed him and left him for another, she need do nothing but crook her little finger and he came running, a dog come to heel.

  He set the glass down and forced himself to lie on his bed. He stared up at the gold-and-white canopy above his head, alone in the vast expanse where he slept and where he indulged in love play. Never before had he faced a sleepless night in that bed, for always when he came to the country, he brought a great deal of distraction with him to drown the silence.

  He thought of throwing on a coat and going to Titania in the village. He might sate his longing for one woman in the body of another. He might even stay out long enough in the morning for Arabella to know that he had been gone.

  He wanted to hurt her. He wanted to smash her calm, to decimate the serenity of her smiles. He could not bear to see that calm, that serenity, when he was left with nothing but pain.

  Why had she kissed him? Why, after days of protest and slurs against his whores, had she pressed her lips to his? Did she hope to muddle his mind? To wreak havoc on what was left of his life? If so, she had done it, in spades.

  Pembroke lay against the bolster holding his breath, listening to the silence of the house as if he might hear Arabella’s soft tread on the carpet outside his door. He had left his door unlocked, as if in a mad, vain hope that she might come to him. Had she been any other woman who had offered herself to him, he would have gone to her.