Christy English - [Shakespeare in Love 02]

by Love on a Midsummer Night

  But she was no ordinary woman. She was Arabella, the only woman on earth who mattered.

  Pembroke turned over on his side and covered his head with a pillow. Perhaps if he lay perfectly still, his body would grow bored of its hunger for her and go to sleep. He lay beneath the covers for an hour before sleep slowly stole over him, bringing him almost at once into a dream.

  He knew it was a dream because, in it, he was not angry. Though there was no moon, the windows of his bedroom gave a milky light. It was the dark of the moon, so the moonlight that covered his bed like an enchantment was simply a figment of his mind, a part of his dream.

  Pembroke knew he was dreaming because in the shadows Arabella stood before him in a nightgown only the most daring courtesan would ever have worn. At first glance, the lawn night rail seemed demure, save for a neckline that dove between her breasts, tied with a light blue ribbon beneath them. But when she moved, the gown caught the light, and he saw that it was almost completely translucent.

  Pembroke stared at Arabella’s body beneath the soft lawn as she stepped toward his bed. Her small breasts rose high above that blue ribbon, and Pembroke wanted to reach for her and unwrap her. He hungered to draw the gown open and to feast his eyes and his lips on the curve of her breasts.

  As if Arabella could hear his thoughts, she raised her hand to that ribbon, slowly untying the bow. The gown opened beneath her hands as she drew it back and down her shoulders. The lawn pooled at her feet, and she stepped toward him, raising herself onto his bed without hesitation.

  “Arabella.”

  She drew close to him on the bed, as naked as he was.

  There was no hesitation in her eyes, no pretense of modesty, no embarrassment. He feared for a moment that his dream would change, that Arabella would suddenly transform into someone else, one of the knowledgeable courtesans who so often frequented his bed. But Arabella did not leave him. She kept her shape and her soft blue eyes.

  For years he had remembered those eyes as being as blue as ice, like the winter that had descended over his heart. Since she had come back into his life, Pembroke had begun to think of those eyes as the color of light blue flame, a fire that might consume him.

  Arabella kissed him then, and it was not a courtesan’s kiss but the clumsy kiss of an innocent. Pembroke drew her against him, reveling in the feel of her curves. She was slight; her breasts rose in peaks to press against his chest. Her belly was soft, and her thighs beckoned him. He pressed himself against her but did not draw her beneath him as he wished. He did not want to frighten her.

  He bent his head to teach her how to kiss, and she followed his lead, catching on quickly, just as she had in the drawing room. The cavern of her mouth was sweet against his tongue, and she pressed her lips to his eagerly, opening her mouth under his to give him access to all her secrets.

  Arabella moved close to him, wrapping her arms around his neck and drawing him down on top of her. Pembroke tried to pull back, tried to keep his weight off her slender frame, but Arabella only smiled, coaxing him with her hands and lips to lie on top of her again.

  “I love to feel your body on mine,” she said. “I feel safe from all the world when you lie with me.”

  Pembroke shuddered, his control beginning to slip. He ached to possess her completely. A part of his mind urged him onward, telling him that one more conquest would count for little in the long, endless trek of his life. But Arabella was no conquest. Pembroke knew, even in the dream, that it was she who conquered him.

  He groaned and pressed his face into the soft satin of her hair. Her long hair lay against his pillow, spread out like a fall of honey against the white of his linen sheets. She shifted beneath him so that his erection fit between the contours of her thighs.

  “I do not mind if you hurt me,” she said. “I know that the marriage bed is pain. But you are worth it.”

  Pembroke kissed her then, his lips pressed hard against hers as if to eat up her words, as if to take away her years in her husband’s bed, all the years they had been apart.

  He woke abruptly to the light of dawn covering his bed. He turned from the rays of the sun toward his dream, but it was gone. He could not get it back. His body was still hard, aching with need for her soft sweetness. His heart ached more.

  He lay on his back as the hunger of his body slowly subsided. He thought of the empty years of Arabella’s marriage, and what those years must have cost her. Perhaps she was well paid for the pain she had caused him. Perhaps a duchess’s coronet was not the prize she had thought it would be.

  Pembroke told himself not to be a fool. Arabella had made her bargain years ago, and now they both had to keep it.

  But he found that he could not be angry with her anymore. Though his heart still bled, and no doubt always would, he did not have to cherish his anger.

  After all the years he had tried and failed to die on the Continent, every mad raid he had led, every cavalry charge that had left his men dead on the field while he still lived, now, finally, he could let his bitterness go.

  Perhaps the core of his fury had slowly burned away in the heat of countless battlefields, in the heat of brandy and women and gaming. Perhaps he had sinned enough to drive it out of his system, the way brandy dried out after a few days of sobriety.

  Pembroke had defined his life by his bitterness, by the woman he had lost. But now that Arabella had returned to his life, he wondered if he had more to live for than anger and regret.

  ***

  He found Arabella already seated at the breakfast table dressed once more in her demure gown of dark blue muslin. Her soft, honey-colored curls were caught in combs at the nape of her neck, and a ribbon of dark satin was woven through her hair. Her light blue eyes met his, and he felt the power of her gaze run through his body like lightning.

  “Good morning,” she said, smiling as if she had just awakened from a night of blissful sleep. For the first time since they had begun their trek into the country, she looked rested and almost happy. He could think only of how her hair had looked in his dream, spread out like a fall of honey against his pillows. His body hardened in response, and he cursed himself once more for a fool.

  “Tea?” she asked, completely unaware of the battle he waged silently as he stood in the doorway, unable to move either forward or back.

  “No,” he said, his voice sounding strangled to his own ears. “Coffee.”

  She did not wait for the footman to bring it but rose herself and poured his coffee from the silver urn that stood on the sideboard. She brought brioche and butter and placed both alongside the china already set down for him.

  She seemed calm, unconcerned, as if nothing at all had passed between them. And yet he stood in the same room, his lust riding him. He could not draw her into the vortex of dark desire and hedonistic pleasure that he lived in. Left unchecked, the darkness in his soul would eat her alive, just as it was devouring him.

  “Arabella,” he said. “I must apologize for last night.”

  She lowered her toast and jam, looking at him inquisitively, for all the world as if she did not remember to what he referred. She did not speak but set her toast down on the plate in front of her.

  “I took a liberty,” he continued. “I know you have no wish to be my mistress. In the future, I will respect that. I give you my word of honor that I will not touch you again.”

  A shadow crossed the light blue of her eyes, but it was gone before he could be certain of it. She smiled, calm serenity radiating from her.

  “I accept your apology,” she said. “But it is unnecessary. If you recall, it was I who kissed you.”

  Arabella sipped her tea, and the warmth in her eyes drew him in. “Sit and eat, Pembroke. I am heading out to my father’s house within the hour. Once I have his money in hand, I will be out of your hair and out of your life.”

  “I’m going with you.”

&
nbsp; She met his eyes, and it was as if their cornflower blue pierced his skin. Then she smiled, and he felt as warm as if he stood in the summer sun. No doubt he was losing what was left of his drink-addled mind.

  “All right,” she said.

  As he watched her delicately nibble on a slice of toast, he realized that he had no idea how he would keep his promise not to touch her.

  Twelve

  Though Arabella had not been on horseback in years, she could not stand to be confined to a carriage on that beautiful day. So she rode a gentle mare to her father’s house, as Pembroke rode his warhorse, Triton. The spring seemed to rise up out of the ground to greet her, the air so much gentler than the staid, closed air of London. She had been trapped in the city too long. She was happy to be free of it.

  Before breakfast, she had walked in the rose garden. The warmth of the day had come upon her like a blessing as she took in deep breaths of the fresh air rising on the breeze from the river. Pembroke’s mother was many years dead, but her roses still bloomed red, white, and gold, all different shapes and types, another form of immortality. Pembroke was another of that good lady’s contributions to the world. To leave the world a garden and a child was no small thing.

  Arabella found herself longing for her own mother as she stood among those blooms, thinking of the one time she had gone with her to meet Lady Pembroke. Arabella had been a child of five and her mother had brought her along on an afternoon call. The lady had been gracious, as her own mother was, and she had been kind. Arabella wondered if she might take a cutting of those roses for her own garden someday. She would ask Pembroke, once she knew where her cottage would be.

  Her mount, a white mare named Blossom, moved slow and sedate over the long, worn paths between her father’s house and Pembroke’s. During the summer they had spent together, they had walked those paths a hundred times. They had eaten picnics by the river and strolled beneath the spreading oaks.

  Pembroke and Arabella spoke little on their journey for he seemed lost in his thoughts. She hoped he was not still embarrassed about that morning or about the kiss they had shared the night before.

  Never in her life had she thrown herself at a man. She never thought to do so again, though the experience had been intoxicating. Pembroke had responded to her kiss and had even kissed her back, just as he had in her dreams. But he was used to women with far more wiles and experience than she would ever possess.

  She drew her mind away from such thoughts and looked at the verdant beauty all around her, the shades of green of the summer trees. If she never saw another city again, it would be too soon. Those ten years trapped in her husband’s townhouse had been all of any city she would need for a lifetime. She was contemplating the beauty of the country all around her when they crossed the gate onto her father’s land.

  Of course, it was not his land anymore. Her father was five years dead, and his estate had passed into her dower portion, which was a part of the larger Hawthorne duchy. Under normal circumstances, as far as she was concerned, Hawthorne might have kept her father’s estates and welcome. But he had forced her hand with his threats to marry her, by bringing a knife into her bed.

  Arabella had had her fill of those who would take from her, giving nothing back but grief. She would build a new life. Finding her father’s cache of gold was only her first step into a larger world, the world of her freedom.

  “Are you sure this gold even exists?” Pembroke asked.

  Arabella looked at him, raising one brow. He had spoken her thoughts aloud, as if they were in conversation already. He had done that many times when they were younger, but she did not like it that he could still do it now.

  “I am sure,” she said, keeping her eyes turned front. Her father was many things, one of which was cagey. He had never trusted another man in all his life. He had never trusted her. He had sold her to the duke, hoping for entry into the world of the ton, which would have no part of him, but as soon as the duke’s debts were paid with Swanson slave trade money, her husband had cut her father off completely, as if he had never existed, as if she had come from her mother alone.

  Her father had been bitter about that, no doubt, for he had always been a bitter man. After her wedding, she had never seen him again. But she had known him well, as any victim knows her master. She knew his ways and the workings of his mind. What once had been a matter of survival now would serve her well. She had watched him in secret and knew the combination of his hidden safe. Her father would never have told another living soul about it. If the house was still standing, that money was there.

  When they approached her father’s house, she stopped Blossom in her tracks and took a moment to catch her breath. Swanson House gleamed in the morning sun, its red brick warm and inviting. That facade was a deception, as it always had been throughout her childhood. Before her mother passed away, there had been love and laughter between those walls. Her mother had died the year Arabella turned six, and the sun had not entered those walls again.

  As she looked at the house that had been her prison until her seventeenth year, her scars throbbed against the soft linen of her chemise. She shifted her shoulders, but the pressure still lay on her back like the lash of her father’s riding crop.

  So be it. She was here. She could accept that her freedom must come at a price. The visitation of old demons was a small price to pay, though she was sure that it would not be the last.

  Pembroke had drawn his horse close to hers, placing himself between her and the house. He watched her face, and Triton stood still beneath him.

  The stallion’s stillness was not one of idleness but a deadly readiness that came before battle. He had picked up on his master’s mood and now stood ready to charge into the thick of an enemy’s lines. Arabella wondered what Pembroke had seen on the Continent, what he and Triton had lived through in their shared quest to set Europe free from the marauding armies of Bonaparte.

  “Are you well?” he asked, the smiling lines around his mouth suddenly grim. His blue eyes surveyed her as if looking for weakness, as if delving for answers to other questions he could not ask.

  “I am well,” she said. “It has been a long time.”

  “You did not come back after you married?”

  “Never.”

  That one word held more truth than she had ever meant to speak. She turned her gaze from the seeking blue of Pembroke’s eyes to the house behind him. The grouping of maples and hawthorns was simply a park, the graveled drive that led through the gate to the mansion simply a road. She squared her shoulders and kept her gaze on the redbrick house before her. She waited in silence until her demons fell silent.

  “I am ready,” she said.

  Pembroke nodded once then urged Triton forward. The stallion did not leap ahead but kept a slow pace in front of Blossom as if he meant to keep himself and his master between Arabella and danger.

  Perhaps she had grown too fanciful in the last week as she fled Hawthorne’s threats on her virtue and on her life. Whatever was true, she felt infinitely better that Pembroke was with her. No matter what else lay between them, he would protect her as much as he could. There was something solid and vibrant about him that drove away the darkness of this place. She was grateful for his strength as she stepped into her past.

  They rode to the stables and found them empty. No horses filled the many stalls, and no groom waited to greet them. Pembroke frowned, displeased, but Arabella was not surprised. Her husband had ignored this estate since it had come into his hands. The Duke of Hawthorne had no use for a smallish country house in the wilds of Derbyshire.

  “Follow me,” Arabella said. “If there is anyone still here, they will be in the kitchen building.”

  Pembroke seemed to disagree but said nothing as she took the lead. Triton did not like following Blossom but calmed at once when Pembroke murmured to him. Arabella ignored both the males in her company and r
ode on.

  She came to the kitchen behind the house. The small building with its garden was hidden from the mansion by a row of high hedges. The scent of boxwood filled her nostrils, taking her back to the carefree days of her early childhood, when her young mother had chased her among those shrubs on the way to find some bread and honey in the kitchen. It seemed that she might find her mother waiting for her around the next turn of the path. It occurred to her that the mother she remembered had been years younger than Arabella was now.

  She stopped outside the garden’s picket fence. The fence had once been white, but now the paint had peeled away, leaving the gray, weathered wood beneath. The garden still bloomed with thyme, rosemary, and marjoram. Arabella could hear the hum of bees from the hive just beyond the next rise. She waited as Pembroke got off his horse, tying Triton to a fence post. He looped the leading rein casually, as if he truly did not expect his horse to leave him behind. No doubt Triton never would.

  Pembroke reached for her and drew her down from the sidesaddle. Blossom stood as still as a post until Arabella was safely on the ground, then she lowered her head to munch the sweet green grass at her feet. Pembroke looped her reins over the fence as well, though she would not wander off as long as Triton was there.

  Arabella opened the kitchen gate and walked through the garden, careful to keep to the paths between the neatly laid squares of vegetables and flowering herbs. The scent of that garden gave her pause, covering her with the breath of the past.

  Mrs. Fielding came out of the kitchen then, still neat as a pin in spite of the pure white of her hair. The last ten years had aged her considerably, but the cook of Swanson House walked without a stoop, her slight, spry frame still wrapped in an apron that was too large for her. She bent down to pick a bit of rosemary, but one horse whinnied at the other, and Mrs. Fielding looked up, shielding her eyes from the morning sun.