At Your Pleasure (39 page)

“Yes,” he whispered. “So I do.”

Aching, she closed her eyes and yielded to his kiss. She welcomed it; she hoped it would concuss her, wipe away awareness of aught but them, here, in this moment. If only the world consisted of the meeting of their mouths, and his gentle grasp of her face, and the beauty between them, subtleties of love made into a communion of the flesh.

Long minutes later, as they lay entwined, he spoke in her ear. “I promise you,” he murmured. “I will make this right.”

The smile that turned her lips felt infinitely sad; she was glad for the darkness that veiled it from him.

Here was the first promise he had ever spoken to her that she knew, immediately, he would not be able to keep.

22

N
ora stepped out of the sedan chair, then put extra coins into the hands of the chairmen. Red and breathless and cross, they hefted the poles over their shoulders, then turned and trotted down the cobblestone lane, past inclining trees with gold and scarlet leaves. Overhead, the sky glowered a livid, cloudless blue.

She stood watching their departure for a long minute, breathing deeply of the biting wind that swept the square. Here, in the verdant quarters of London, the air smelled of sweet decay and wood smoke. What a sharp contrast it made to the stench of the tangled streets where she had stood not half an hour ago. In the oldest part of the city, the breeze was acrid with piss and shit and rotting vegetables, and the breeze lapped against one’s face like the breath of a feral dog.

Her lungs were clearing. But her ears would not. The sound of screams still rang in them.
Hang him!
they had cried.
Split his gullet!
Entrails to the dogs!

On a hard breath she made herself mount the stairs.

In the echoing marble-floored entry hall, the butler was waiting. Pike divested her of her cloak and informed her that his lordship was still at the Court of St. James’s. Nora thought she detected, in the slight emphasis Pike gave his words, a conspiratorial note—a subtle offer of friendship. Pike had no idea where she had gone today, but he must know, as all London did, of her brother’s predicament. The servants would have discussed it amongst themselves: her ladyship’s letters to all and sundry, entreating them to use their influence on her brother’s behalf; and his lordship’s gentle insistence that she wasted her time in beseeching strangers to intercede.

She wondered if the servants took her part in it. They must find it strange that her husband, a favorite of the court, did not use his own influence. But last night he had agreed to do so. He had agreed to speak to the king for her. His majesty’s recommendation of clemency, if Adrian could win it, might sway Parliament to be merciful.

She made her way through pocket doors that opened into a salon of tasteful beauty, paneled in gold and cream, with vaulted ceilings and large Italian oils of mythological scenes. A tight-woven silk rug demarcated the sitting area by the bay window, where she took her seat to await her husband’s return from St. James’s.

A footman appeared with paper, quill, ink, and lap desk. The house was coming to know her routines. But while she took up the quill dutifully, her hand soon fell still, allowing ink to puddle into a blot mid-sentence.
My lady, if you be so kind as to find pity in your heart . . .

Pity. What a weak commodity on which to build her strategy! Adrian was right: London had found her a mockery once, and in these desperate, imploring letters, it would find fresh cause for derision.

She laid down the quill and gazed out the window. The blank faces of the houses across the square looked untouchable by violence, their windows shining boldly, as though nothing could break them.

“String him up by the gibbets!”

Before today, she had never seen a mob.

Adrian had told her how it would go when David was brought into London. As soon as word had come that Barstow and Lord John had “recovered” her fugitive brother and intended to deliver him to the Tower, Adrian had warned her of the reception her brother might expect.

Of course, he had not dreamed that she would countermand his edict and slip out to witness it for herself.

She had needed to witness it. She could not let her brother endure it alone. Ten minutes after Adrian had left to answer the king’s summons, she had stepped from the house and flagged a sedan chair on the high street. For a small fee, the chaplain at St. Magnus had permitted her access to the tower that overlooked the area.

For two hours she had perched by the small window, watching the narrow lane through which David must pass. Low-hanging street signs had rocked uneasily in the wind, the gilt on their facings striking sparks that speared the eye like daggers. Below these signs, and out the windows above them, and even atop the roofs, the waiting crowds had gathered.

Long before her brother’s appearance had come the noise. It swelled from the distance like the sound of the ocean breaking against rocks, or the rumbling of great wheels. When the procession had finally appeared, the people below had joined their voices to it, and she had recognized, at last, the bone-breaking howl of the mob.

Her brother had ridden in shackles amidst a circle of masked soldiers. He had not looked up, even when children had dashed into the road to dangle his effigy in his face. Had they fashioned these effigies with their own small hands? Had they knotted the nooses that strangled the dolls’ necks? Who were the mothers that permitted such games?

He had not looked up at them. He had not looked up as rotten fruit rained down on him. He had not flinched at the curses or the clods of dirt. As she had watched him, her horror had been overlaid by something fiercer . . . something akin to pride.

She had berated him for his reckless treatment of Hodderby, but in that narrow lane, he showed the part of himself she could never despise. In his honor, he reminded her what it was to be a Colville.

And how the crowd had loathed him for it! How they had howled when he denied them their fun! That gut-curdling din had killed the last of her hopes. After the disturbances in the north, London was furious for recompense. Only her brother’s blood would satisfy it.

David had passed onward, out of sight, half of the crowd trailing him, the rest dispersing sluggishly, discontentedly, having hoped for a better show.

She had stayed in the bell tower for a very long time, waiting for her nausea to subside and her heart to slow.

But now, when she put a hand over her breast in the luxurious quiet of this gilded room, her heart yet raced. Could a heart wear out from grief? Could it beat itself to death, like a bird snared in a trap?

“He reached the Tower safely.”

The quiet remark startled her; her fingers curled into a fist. She swallowed past the lump in her throat and turned to behold her husband.

Full dress became him. His long, curling wig highlighted the stark angularity of the bones in his face. The powder emphasized the full line of his lips and lent an impossible vividness to his green eyes.

He held himself differently in the maroon brocade suit, more languidly, the height of his heels shifting his balance, putting him taller than nature designed any man. There was great skill to cutting an elegant figure in such heavy embroidered costumes, to maneuvering gracefully in a full-skirted coat. Adrian had mastered it. He came toward her in long, easy strides, his skirts swinging, the brawn of his calves flexing beneath dark silk stockings.

A short distance away, he stopped, perhaps alerted by her lack of greeting to the mood that troubled her. He studied her for a long moment, and she held his gaze, hoping, unfairly, that he might divine the truth and spare her the need to speak it. She would not keep secrets from him any longer, but if she tried to say now what she had seen this morning, she feared she would weep . . . or scream.

It was not his fault.

It was not his fault
.

But oh, God, it would be so easy to blame him for it! His actions had set in motion the course that led her brother to London today.

Her own actions at Manston House had ended her brother’s hope of escape.

She would never regret it. She would have made the same choice again and again. But it would haunt her. It haunted even this vast and fathomless love that overwhelmed her when she gazed on her husband.

Mayhap her face did speak for her, for Adrian took a long breath before he asked, “Are you well, love?”

His concern undid her. She rose, drawn across the silk carpet toward him. How to answer him? Was she well? Would
they
be well? This love was a miracle, but she was no saint; perhaps she was inadequate to its grace. Could their love have a happy destiny, when its second life had been authored by the events that ensured her brother’s death?

Very carefully she touched the gold braid that trimmed Adrian’s coat. The warmth it carried from his body made her acutely aware of the chill deep within her. For so long, in their separation, she had gazed across rooms at him, watching from the corner of her eye or beneath her lashes, and the sight of him, turned out so splendidly, golden as an angel, had sawed like a knife in her heart.

Now she could touch him, for he was hers—could touch every part of him, even roughly if she liked, these gold-plated buttons, this intricate Valenciennes lace that
spilled from his upturned cuffs. He had stripped off his gloves before coming to find her. His wrist was warm and hard, lightly dusted with hair. She laid her fingers atop his knuckles.

When his hand turned in hers, closing in a hard grip, she knew the answer he must give of what had happened at court. “He says he cannot interfere in these matters,” he said evenly. “Parliament must be allowed to proceed as it sees fit.”

“Ah.” She swallowed hard, but his grip seemed to squeeze her next words from her. “I went to see him. I watched him be brought into the city.”

The signet ring on his fingers pressed hard into her bones, an accidental pain that somehow satisfied. It matched the ache inside her. So much happiness to be had from his touch—and so much grief to countermand it. She felt physically torn, as though her soul were breaking.

“Shall we prosper?” she whispered. “After he is . . . dead?”

“Nora,” he murmured, the word less sound than breath, but she heard in it so many things: a chiding scold; loving affection; and, hardest to bear . . . compassion. He had no hope to offer in regard to her brother.

She closed her eyes as he drew her against him, satin and lace rustling between them. He smelled of court, of musk and cloves and sweat, for it was always crushed in the state rooms, sweltering from the press of ambitious bodies.

Had there only been a levee, she would have gone with him. But the German king was not sociable, and his
next levee was not scheduled until December. One could not impose oneself on a king—particularly one said to hate public displays. Yet if David still lived in December, she would make her own tearful plea for clemency, and be damned who saw her, or what they thought; she would fall to her knees and beg the German . . .

Adrian’s lips touched her temple. She turned her cheek into his throat. A light dusting of powder fell across her temple.

“That was rash of you,” he said softly, “and dangerous, to go alone into the city. Had you told me you needed to see the procession, I would have taken you.”

These kind words sharpened the ache in her. Did she deserve such kindness from him? She grieved for a man who had tried to kill him.

On a hitching breath, she schooled her mind to his concerns. “Did the king say aught of Barstow’s deeds?” Ugly rumors were circulating—a broadsheet that spread foul lies, no doubt of Barstow and Lord John’s devising. It made the same claims they had asked her to support, and new ones besides: Adrian had conspired with her brother; David’s escape from his custody had been no accident; Adrian, too, thus belonged in the Tower.

“There is no worry on that account.”

“But all the talk—”

Adrian set her away from him slightly, to show her the dark edge of his smile. “Lord John persuaded his father into a poor gamble. He supposed their friends would approve an attempt to see me laid low. No doubt they would have, in other times. But with the public mood so
vicious . . .” His smile faded. “No one wishes to enlist in a bargain that might spare your brother a traitor’s end. Not even if it ensures my downfall.”

“Of course.” To her own ears, her voice sounded scraped raw. She tried to smile. “That is fortunate for you. For us, I mean.”

He gathered up her hands again. “Will you be all right tonight?”

She grimaced. He had committed them to some private assembly before they had learned that her brother would enter the city today. “I fear not,” she said. She had yet to make a social appearance, but she remembered well what compassion awaited her in court circles. “I would not be fit company—”

“I think you must,” he said gently.

The edict seemed odd and cruel. She pulled her hands free of his. “You expect me to laugh and dance while the town screams for my brother’s head?”