Devotion (16 page)

Oh, yes, it was safer here, in the gray recesses, but something had disturbed him, had roused the sleeping tiger of frustration and dragged him back, struggling, into the blinding light.

A voice . . . soothing amid the savage cacophony of thoughts in his head.
Music amid the melee.
Often during the last endless days and nights it had disturbed him, conjured images of angels, and he had wondered if he had, at last, died and gone . . . no, not to heaven. There was no room in heaven for the morally corrupt Duke of Salterdon.

Concentrate, idiot. Focus, if you can. There! Somewhere amid the sun that was shining on his face, and the brisk breeze kissing his cheeks—the angel's song, lyrical, rising and falling. God, the light hurt his eyes.

A movement there.
Focus. Ah! At last, the form takes shape. Concentrate.

She moved to a bench beside a tree and closed the book from which she had been reading aloud. Good God, who was she? The shape of her head was magnificent. Her hair—what a rare and beautiful shade it was, silken in texture that rolled in waves over her brow and framed her eyes, which were startlingly
blue and clear and warm as they looked up from her readings to regard him with a sort of wonder-look, as if they saw what no other eyes could see. They were calm eyes and resolute, but with such a depth of passion in them that he felt instinctively the soul that they reflected.

Her nose was perfect, the mouth utterly
temptable
and smiling sadly. All were spiritualized by her clear, perfectly colorless complexion. Yet . . . she was little more then a child, with a child's
guilessness
and innocence.

Damn those eyes for their fear and pity. Damn them.

"What a wondrous day, Your Grace! Mayhap spring is near. The sun is at last warm, the sky perfectly clear. Were
I
able,
I
would carry you myself to yonder lake. Look there, someone is boating—a tenant, perhaps?
Fishing for his supper, no doubt."
Maria left the bench and swept gracefully around the massive elm trunk by which she had been lounging and reading to her master from a book. Sighing, enjoying the warming breeze in her face, she watched the fishermen with dreamy eyes.

"Oh, sir, if you could only see the water, it laps at the keel of the little boat and glitters like ripples of crystal around it
. '
Tis almost as if the boat floats in the sunshine instead of the water. And see the sky, so bright even the hills seem asleep."

Leaning back against the elm, Maria listened to the breeze shift through the empty branches. It toyed with her hair, which she had allowed to fall loose that morning, and blew several long strands across her face.

A squirrel darted down a branch and leapt to the ground, mere feet from Maria; she gasped in delight, and easing to the duke, where he sat in his wheeled chair, eyes fixed on the distant countryside, she put her hands on his broad shoulders and leaned toward his ear,

"We have a visitor," she whispered. "Isn't he grand, sir?
Such a pompous little scamp—nearly as pompous as those dreadful Draymond sisters who continue gnawing their way through your larders.
I think we shall never be rid of them, Your Grace. Not until the driver sees fit to rally and tear himself away from Gertrude. 'Twas love at first sight, I think." She smiled. "Our dear
Gerti
is singing from morn till night these last days. Ah, love. 'Tis amazing what the emotion can do to one's logic."

She pointed to the squirrel. "See how he stares at us, as if we were the intruders. Shall we see just how brave he is?"

Laughing, Maria took a tentative step toward the furry creature, who regarded her with an unblinking perusal and a twitch of its ginger-colored tail.
"How do you do?"
Maria said, slightly bending at the waist.

The squirrel stood straighter, and cocked its head.

Maria smiled, and eased to her hands and knees, her pale hair spilling over her shoulders and trailing over the snow-covered dirt beneath her. "My dear mister squirrel, you look as if you wish to dance. I'm willing, of course, but you'll have to teach me."

With a bob of its head, the squirrel leapt onto the tree trunk and scurried to the lowest limb, where it commenced its loud chattering and stared down at Maria.

"Kindly mister squirrel, I fear I should fail miserably if this particular dance entails my dashing up a tree!"

Laughing, sitting back on her heels and dusting leaves and grass from her hands, Maria watched the squirrel make a startled leap to a higher limb. Only then did she sense a movement behind her, and slowly, she looked around, first spying a pair of highly polished knee boots, her gaze then traveling up, up a man's tall frame clothed in immaculate, splendidly tailored clothes, to a pair of most startling gray eyes, which regarded her with perplexity, if not outright amusement.

She gasped; the eyes she recognized—that noble brow, that lush mane of hair—though shorter, perhaps; even those lips were slightly familiar. Yet,
these
lips were not so grim, but curled in such a droll manner hot color rushed to her cheeks.

"Miss . . . Ashton?" the man said in so refined and mellow a voice Maria was left momentarily speechless.

The stranger offered his hand. "Shall I help you up, or shall I come down there?"

"Oh." Meekly, she accepted his hand and struggled to her feet, stepping on her skirts, which were littered with bits of leaves and grass and dirt. She made a grand show of cleaning herself before stepping away and rewarding the man with an apologetic smile and as dignified a lift of her chin as she could manage, considering the circumstances. "I
am
Miss Ashton," she declared.

"I was afraid of that," he muttered in reply, regarding her person in a most bemused, if not exasperated manner. "You're a child, for
Godsake
. What could she have been thinking?"

"She?"

"The duchess, of course."

"I
hardly think it matters," Maria replied matter of
factly
.
"She
is the duchess, after all. I imagine
she
can and will do just as she pleases . . . and it pleased her, I suppose, to employ me . . . child or not."

The man raised one eyebrow.
"
Touché
,
Miss Ashton. So tell me, how is my brother?"

Her eyes widened. She swiftly looked beyond the intruder, to the duke, who continued to stare off into space. "Lord Basingstoke." she said more quietly, forcing her gaze back to the duke's twin brother. "I should have known immediately, my lord.
My apologies."
She hastened a quick curtsy.

"Nonsense, Miss Ashton. There is little about us that resembles these days." As if bolstering his strength, Basingstoke turned to his brother at last, stood stiffly before the Duke of Salterdon, his hands curled into fists at his sides. His voice was noticeably tighter when he spoke again. "Tell me, Miss Ashton, is there any improvement?"

"None, my lord.
However, I've only been here a week—"

"God created the world in six days, Miss Ashton."

"I'm not God, my lord."

"No,
I
suppose not."

Lord Basingstoke slowly lowered to one knee before his brother. "Where the devil are you, Trey?" he demanded in a rough voice.

Maria hurried to her
charge,
fell to both knees beside Basingstoke. "Kindness, my lord, I beseech you."

"Kindness?
My dear Miss Ashton, Trey Hawthorne, the Duke of Salterdon, never knew a moment's kindness his entire life. No doubt even this is a goddamn ploy to manipulate us somehow.
Kindness?
He doesn't know the meaning of the word."

Basingstoke lowered his eyes.
His face—with its deep- set, smoldering gray eyes, high cheekbones, and strong jaw—drained of color.
He curled his fingers around his brother's free hand. "I want him back, Miss Ashton. Bastard that he is, I want him back. There is part of me inside that's empty—a black void—and it's incredibly cold. Sometimes I think that if he dies . . . he'll take me as well, dragging me down some black well straight to hell."

"Have faith, my lord."

"Faith?"
Basingstoke raised his head, looked directly into her eyes, and for the first time she was struck by the realization of how incredibly magnificent Salterdon had once been—refined, dignified, aristocracy personified. The most beautiful man she had ever
met,
had ever imagined. She felt . . . dumbfounded, mesmerized beyond words.

"My grandmother's heart is breaking," he said. "For the last twenty-five years the duchess's every waking minute has been consumed in raising us to fill satisfactorily our father's prestigious place in society.
To perpetuate the title, and name.
But more than that, she loved us. Regardless of the fools we made of ourselves, and of her, she continued to grasp the hope and dream that we would succeed at life's battles. She watched her husband die, and her son. I think it grossly unfair to watch her grandson die as well. Please, Miss Ashton. You're his—our—last hope. Help us if you can."

Help us if you can.

The words plagued her, as did Basingstoke's face— those searching, desperate gray eyes, not unlike his brother's—the troubled countenance as, having spent several hours at his brother's side, Basingstoke had yet to reach him. What bothered her most, however, was the intense fascination she found in Lord Basingstoke . . . handsome, attractive,
imposing
. All that aristocracy should be . . . everything his brother wasn't.

She learned from Basingstoke that His Grace's favorite respite at Thorn Rose was the extravagant hunting room, a massive chamber of eighteenth-century paneling, royal furniture, bear rugs and stuffed tigers with fierce snarling teeth and glass eyes brought to life by the fire in the pale gray-green
Cippolino
marble hearth. As Maria took her place in the rear of the room (offering the brothers their privacy, yet close enough in case Basingstoke needed her), surrounded by potted ferns and fringed and tasseled curtains, she fiddled with needlework and glanced time and again at the brothers, unable to fathom that once they had been identical.

How could Salterdon, so raw in appearance, have once
reflected
the sophisticated bearing of his distinguished brother? There was a certain feminine beauty to Basingstoke, finely sculpted marble polished by some past master's artistic hand, a visage which beckoned the eye, encouraged the flutter of a woman's appreciation, while Salterdon . . .

Frowning, she focused again on her knitting and purling, biting her lip as she dropped a stitch. A moment passed before she allowed her gaze to lift again— directly into Basingstoke's eyes which regarded her intensely.

"Come join us," he directed and motioned toward a companion chair near the fire. "You look much too cold and lonely there."

Gathering her needles and yarn, she moved to the chair, pausing long enough to adjust the blanket over Salterdon's legs. Settling into the wing-back leather seat, she resisted the urge to raise her cold toes toward the fire.

Basingstoke watched a moment before turning back to his brother. He spoke softly, matter-of-factly, as if this were any normal conversation.