“I beg to differ, my lord. I will marry no one.”
She stared at Pembroke as if she could force him to look into her eyes with the strength of her will alone. After a few moments, she began to notice the awkward silence in the room and that Angelique and Caroline were exchanging wary smiles.
“Your personal affairs are your own concern, Your Grace,” Ravensbrook said. “But the ton has heard of your foray into the world of the arts, Pembroke. It seems that most of our friends and acquaintances, even one or two of our enemies, are interested in seeing you play the King of Fairies on Midsummer’s Eve. So interested, in fact, that they are all coming here.”
Pembroke laughed, but his grip on her hand did not loosen. “Good God, you can’t be serious. I’ve come all the way to Derbyshire to get away from those people. Surely they will not travel three days to see one performance.”
“Indeed they will,” Anthony said. “And the new Duke of Hawthorne will be among them.”
Arabella took a sip of tea to tamp down her panic. When she set her empty cup on its saucer, she saw that her hand was shaking.
Angelique touched her arm before pouring fresh tea for everyone, beginning with Arabella. She pressed not one biscuit but two onto Arabella’s plate before offering the tray to everyone else. Pembroke took two, eating them in quick succession as if to fuel himself for battle.
“Well, Hawthorne may come here if he wishes,” Pembroke said. “If he wants to speak to you or even see your face, he will first have to come through me.”
Angelique caught her eye. “He will have to come through me as well.”
“There will be no need for such theatrics,” Ravensbrook said. “My man will dispatch him if it comes to that.”
“Or I will,” Caroline Carrington said, dandling her infant son on her knee. Baby Freddie, who had been listening solemnly to all that was said as if he understood it, caught sight of his mother’s beatific smile and gurgled with glee.
“I am sure that when His Grace is presented with our united front, he will simply retire from the field,” Ravensbrook said.
The assurance in his voice, his utter confidence made her wonder if he was as powerful as he claimed or simply mad with overconfidence. Arabella caught Angelique’s eye. As two women who had always been on their own, manipulating or dodging powerful men all their lives, they both knew that Hawthorne would not be so easy to dissuade.
Arabella drank her tea in two gulps. The warm liquid fortified her before Caroline leaned across the distance between them to place Baby Freddie in her arms. The weight of the child seemed to soothe her, and Arabella felt herself calm down as she looked into the baby’s blue eyes. She felt anchored by the child in her lap and protected by the people around her. But she knew that protection was an illusion. In spite of their good intentions and all their resources, they did not know Hawthorne as she did. They had not seen the light of possession in his eyes as he tried to take her on her husband’s bed with a knife in his hand. In spite of the warmth of the midsummer day, in spite of the baby in her arms, Arabella shivered. She needed to be gone. She had wasted too much time already.
Twenty-three
Angelique refused to stay the night at Pembroke House. Anthony and Caroline had a guest suite set aside for their permanent use in Pembroke’s home, and Angelique seemed to know that already. She kissed Arabella by the front door and took her own carriage back to Pembroke village, where she had leased a cottage for the week. Arabella wondered if it was the cottage she wanted so. She would visit her and find out.
Angelique left early, saying that she had business with Titania, for she was one of the first shareholders in Titania’s Shakespearean company.
Arabella saw the lines of strain around her friend’s eyes and knew better than to press her to stay. The sun was beginning to set when Angelique left just after supper. Arabella stood on the steps of the house, watching the shadows thrown by Angelique’s carriage lamps fade as she drove away. Pembroke stood beside her, stepping out into the gloaming. Fireflies had begun to dance above the tops of the trees, lighting the night as fairies did in Titania’s play.
Caroline and Anthony had retired directly after supper, and the baby had gone to sleep, whisked away by his nurse hours before, so Arabella and Pembroke stood alone on his front steps. Oaks and hawthorns cast deep shadows over them as evening fell.
“Shall we walk in the forest?” he asked her.
She took his hand in her small one. His fingers dwarfed her own, his great paw covering hers with a blanket of comfort and warmth. She did not know how she would leave this man, but she knew that she must.
She also knew that she would not leave until the morning. This night belonged to her. It belonged to them.
“No, Raymond. Stay inside with me. I want a finger of brandy.”
He laughed. “Since when have you become a drinker, Arabella?”
“Since you gave it up.”
She drew him back into the house, making him follow her step by step into the sitting room that looked out over his mother’s rose garden. Codington stared at her as she passed and she nodded to him in an attempt at civility. They had not spoken since he had revealed the letters. She supposed it was just as well. Pembroke would need him when she was gone.
She closed the door to the sitting room in Codington’s face, sealing them off from the world. Pembroke ignored the brandy on the sideboard and stood staring out at the garden. A dish of roses had been cut and stood on the table before the fire. Arabella went and arranged them again, pleased that the sugar water she had poured had kept them fresh. Cut flowers were not meant to last, but these might last until morning.
She lifted one and crossed the room to him, careful to keep the thorns from stabbing her. He turned to her when he felt her warmth beside him, and she reached up and ran the soft petals of the rose across his lips.
“Red roses are for love, are they not?” she asked.
“So I have always heard.” His voice was husky when he answered her, strangled with longing and with all that they could not speak of again. He seemed to realize that to coax her to stay, to bully or cajole her, would leave them both with a headache. Though his longing to keep her was palpable, it matched her longing for him.
She pushed aside all thoughts of tomorrow and lowered the rose to her own lips. “I love you, Raymond. Now and forever. I think that love is eternal for me.”
“You never aged in my mind, Arabella. You have always been that slender young girl who lost her bonnet in the river.”
She covered the rose with her hand and tore the petals free of their thorny stem. She cast the stem onto the Queen Anne chair beside them and took his hand in hers.
She brought him with her into the room, to the soft rug that lay before the fireplace. There was no fire in the grate, but she wanted one.
She tossed the petals onto the carpet, heedless of the expensive weave. She knew that he could afford to buy another one. She also knew that once she was gone, he would keep this rug where it lay.
Codington ran the household well. Though the fire was not lit, it was built properly in the grate, ready for a match. She took a taper from the box on the mantle and lit the kindling. It did not smoke but caught right away as she nursed it carefully, allowing the flames to grow.
Pembroke watched her light the fire in the grate. “Is there anything you cannot do? Bake pastry, light fires with the first match you strike, steal my heart.”
She turned to him and took his hand in hers. She pressed it against her breast so that he could feel her heart beating. “You have my heart, Raymond, for as long as I draw breath.”
“An even trade then,” he said.
“I cannot say, though I am a tradesman’s daughter.”
He kissed her then, his lips lingering on hers as if he knew she would not stay, as if he knew he could not keep her. She opened her mouth bene
ath his and touched his tongue with her own, beginning the warm dance that she had come to love, the dance that she would never make with anyone but him.
She pulled back long enough to help him take his coat off, but he would not strip any further than that.
“Here?” he asked, cocking one eyebrow at her.
“Here,” she answered. “I want to smell the roses and the smoke of the fire together.”
He kissed her again, his hands running up her arms, down her back, drawing her bottom against him so that she could feel his manhood rising. He teased her with his kisses, his lips toying with hers, only to pull away a little, the softness of his lips moving to glance over her cheek, her temple, to skim over her hair. All the while his hands moved over her, drawing her skirt up, even as he pulled her down onto the rug covered with rose petals.
“Codington will not like it,” Pembroke said, his clever fingers searching for her through the linen of her shift.
“Good.” She laughed, her breath leaving her lungs in one long sigh as he found what he sought.
She did not lie still beneath him. This time she wanted him to fall into pleasure with her. Her fingers were clumsy but determined as she fumbled with the fastenings of his trousers. He laughed at last and helped her, freeing his erection so that she could touch it, a swelling of heat in her hand.
She laughed for joy then too as he fell silent, his breath coming in gasps as he tried to control himself. She felt him fighting her and his own desire, and this time she would not let him.
She pressed her body against him, drawing him closer. The warmth of the fire covered her, raising a sheen of sweat along her temples and along the edge of her bodice. She thought she might suffocate from the tightness of her stays, but she knew she did not want to take the time to loosen them.
She raised her legs even as she coaxed Pembroke to lie on top of her. She raised her knees, pressing her slippered feet into the small of his back, bringing him inexorably down to her.
Pembroke laughed again, still breathless, and kissed her. “If that’s what you want, Arabella, you shall have it. Never let it be said that I said no to a lady.”
“You cannot say no to this lady,” she answered him, slipping her hand between them, drawing his erection to her sheath.
He took her hands and raised them above her head, sliding home in one stroke that left her gasping. Her body stretched to welcome him, and she laughed again, this time with a joy she never could have imagined even a week before.
He began to move inside her, but this time she could not bring him to do as she wished. She wanted him to move faster, to draw her deeper and deeper into pleasure, but he would not. He rose over her, her hands still clasped in his above her head, her breasts rising before him.
He kept her wrists pinned in one hand as he drew down the front of her gown with the other. He did not bother to unbind her laces but pulled down the front of her bodice so that her breasts were before him. He blew on one nipple and then the other until they were both rigid peaks. Arabella moaned as he took one into his mouth, laving it with the tip of his tongue, only to follow with his teeth.
He rode her even as he did this, his rhythm still slow, building a relentless pleasure within her. He feasted on her second breast then met her eyes, raising one brow. “Is that what you had in mind when you pulled me down onto this rug, Your Grace?”
She could not answer him, so she raised her hips to his, drawing him in deeper, tightening her inner muscles around him. It was his turn to lose the power of speech, and his control seemed to slip away with it. He drove into her, raising her hips to meet his, letting her hands go. She clutched his shoulders as he buried himself within her, using his body to draw out her bliss in one long spiral. She felt it then, the rising she had come to know only with him. This time, the spiral mountain rose higher, taking her with it.
She screamed his name, and he did not stifle her cries but seemed to revel in them. She did not care if Codington or anyone else heard her. She did not think of them at all, only of the man inside her, the man she loved more than her own life, the man she would give up to keep him safe from Hawthorne’s madness.
It was Hawthorne who sobered her in the end. She clutched Pembroke close and listened to him gasp against her hair. They did not move for a long time but stayed before the fire, the heat of it rising.
Her new gown was likely ruined, but she did not care. She would keep it always, but she would never wear it again.
Her stolen season was over.
Twenty-four
Arabella slept late the next morning, and when she woke, Pembroke was gone. She found a note on the bolster beside her head, saying that he had gone for a ride on Triton before heading to the village green for rehearsal. It said that he loved her.
She pressed the thick paper between her fingers, folding it carefully before slipping it into her traveling case.
The morning sun fell on the bed through the open curtains. A breeze came in from the park, carrying the scent of wisteria and roses as Arabella dressed in the blue worsted traveling gown. She had never worn clothes that she had bought with money of her own. She found the sense of freedom it gave her was almost intoxicating. Independence had its price, but it had its blessings, too.
She did not allow herself to think but took her satchel and her bag of guineas and walked downstairs. She met Codington in the hallway.
“There is a gig waiting to take you to the village, Your Grace.” Codington’s blue eyes rested on her bags. “It can take you no farther.”
“I need borrow it only so far as that. Thank you, Codington.”
“You are leaving him again,” he said. This time she heard the accusation in his voice.
“I am hunted by a man he cannot stop. I will not have him killed by a madman because of me.”
Codington did not seem impressed by her reasons, and they sounded weak in her own ears as she climbed into the gig, bundling her bags with her. Then she forced herself to remember Hawthorne’s touch on her body and his knife in the dark. She would not bring him down on Pembroke, if she hadn’t already.
She shut her mind down long enough to slip into the mail coach. It was empty save for herself and one old woman on her way to Bath. Arabella kept one bag beneath her feet and her guineas on her lap. She did not look out at Pembroke village as they passed through it, but she could hear the voices of the actors as they prepared for that day’s work. She would miss the play. For some reason, this small sorrow was the thing that brought tears to her eyes.
They had not made it two miles before she heard a commotion on the seat above and felt the horses drawn to a stop. The old woman in the seat across from her woke then, blinking blearily at the light coming in from the leather tied across the window. Arabella pulled the leather flap aside to see what the matter was, only to find Pembroke outside the coach, staring back at her.
“Arabella, you are wasting these good people’s time. Get out.”
“I will not.”
“My fiancée,” Pembroke was saying to the man on the seat. “She’s gotten cold feet. Women are a trial on the earth.”
“Amen to that, my lord.” The coachman spat for emphasis.
“I will not marry you.”
Pembroke ignored her, opening the door. He took her bag of guineas first, and when she squawked in protest, he took her satchel, too.
“My Lord Pembroke!”
He did not answer her but tossed her bags into his phaeton.
“Hawthorne is coming,” she said. “I must be gone.”
“The duke, ma’am? He’s spent the last night in Pembroke village, or so the gossip says.” The coachman doffed his cap to her, accepting the gold Pembroke
offered him.
“Good luck with that one, my lord. You’ll need it.”
The horses picked up their pace again, and Arabella was left standing
in their dust with Pembroke beside her. She had never sworn an oath in her life, but she was tempted to in that moment.
“He’s already there, Arabella. You can’t use Hawthorne as your excuse. He’s here and we’ll face him together.”
“He’s a madman.”
“So am I.”
“He’s a killer.”
“I can claim that, too.”
“In war, Raymond. But Hawthorne brought a knife into my bed. He will not let me go, and if you stand in his way, he will put that knife in you.”
“He can try. He’ll fail. God knows, all of the Usurper’s armies couldn’t kill me. I doubt one madman can.”
Arabella was shaking. She gripped one gloved hand in the other, but she could not make them stop. Pembroke’s touch was gentle as he took hold of her upper arms. He slid his own gloved hands down her arms as if to warm them. She felt her hands shaking even as he held them in his grip.
“I swear, Arabella, no harm will come to you as long as I draw breath.”
“And when you don’t?”
“Anthony will care for you.”
She laughed, tears rising in her eyes. “I am not afraid for myself, Raymond. I am afraid for you.”
“I think you’re afraid of me,” he said.
She froze, even her hands going still. He did not let go of them but looked down at her, his erstwhile lock of hair falling across his forehead and into his eyes.
“I think you fear me more than any man. More than your father. More than Hawthorne. I think you fear me because I am the only man with the power to hurt you. I’m the man who loves you.”
Arabella tried to pull her hands away, but he would not let her go.
“Hear me out. You fear me because I can hurt you. Arabella, I tell you that you will not escape me by running away. The thought of me will haunt your days and all your nights until you drown yourself in a bottle. But a bottle won’t soothe you. There is no place far enough away that the thought of me will not haunt you, no battlefield on earth can take the memory of me from you.”
Christy English - [Shakespeare in Love 02] Page 21
