Don't Tempt Me (27 page)

She was all he had left, and she was precious to him.

He raked his hands over her, too, in the same way she touched him. He moved his hands over her skin, over her firm breasts and along the delicate angles of her collarbone. He traced the circle of her waist and the swell of her hips, the fine bones of her wrists and ankles, and she stretched and moved under his touch, the restless tigress tonight.

He caught hold of her hair with one hand and grasped her chin with the other and kissed her hard. She broke away, and made as if to pull away. He pulled her back, and she let her head fall back, and she was laughing, in that way she did, low and beck
oning. He pushed her thighs apart, and thrust into her, and she laughed again, and wrapped her legs about his waist.

We're both a little mad
, she'd said, and perhaps they were.

They joined this night in a maddened way, in a long, ferocious coupling, as though there was no more time left, as though this was the first time and the last time.

That, at least, was what he thought of it later.

Now, though, while he was inside her, there was nothing in his mind, nothing in the world but her and this moment and the heat and pleasure of the lovers' storm they made.

It raged and quieted and raged again. Then she cried out, again and again, words he didn't understand and one he did: his name. Then he let himself spill into her, and he sank down onto her. He lay there, for a moment, feeling her heart beat against his chest. Then he rolled off her and onto his side. He pulled her up against him and buried his face in her neck.

 

She lay there, listening to his breathing quiet.

She was dear to him and he was dear to her, and this was what was most important.

Karim had doted upon her and showered her with jewels, but to him she was only a pretty toy. If she had displeased him, he would have given her away—or even had her killed—without a second thought.

“There was no bond,” she murmured.

“That was English,” he said, “but I couldn't quite
make it out.” His voice was low, sleepy.

“Never mind,” she said. “Sleep.”

“How can I sleep at a time like this?” he said.

She turned her head a little, but she couldn't see him. She felt him lift his head, though. He brushed his cheek against hers.

“I thought I understood what had happened to you,” he said. “But I understood only a part. When you told your story to John Beardsley, I thought I'd heard all there was to hear. But I think it was all I
wanted
to hear. I didn't want to know any more. When you vanished—”

His voice caught, and he paused. “If I'd been there, Zoe, I'd have found you. I wasn't there. I couldn't bear to think of that. And so I made myself stop. I—I don't know what it was, exactly. But I stopped. Thinking. Caring. It was harder than I let on, to carry on, after Gerard died. When you were gone, perhaps I simply lost heart.”

She hadn't realized. All she'd known, when she first saw him after her return, was that he wasn't the same. She hadn't been the only one damaged by her captivity. Her parents had suffered. Her brothers and sisters, too, though perhaps not as deeply, because they were starting families of their own.

“I caused more pain than I knew,” she said. “I told my family I was sorry, but I didn't understand what the trouble was. I didn't understand why Mama had grown so nervous and flighty or why my sisters and brothers were so angry with me. They said I made a disruption, and I thought the disruption was my coming back. But the disruption was my disappear
ing, and the years Papa spent trying to find me, and what happens to a family when they can't know for certain what's become of a loved one.”

“But it wasn't your fault,” he said. “Everyone knows that now. Everyone knows you didn't run away.”

He knew the story itself: the stroll through the Cairo bazaar and the maid who'd sold her—the maid who'd claimed Zoe had run away, and whom everyone had believed, because Zoe was famous for running away.

“As though I were so mad as that,” she said, “to run away in a crowded place, where no one spoke my language. But everyone except Papa would believe I would do such a mad thing, because I was the wild daughter, the rebellious one. I'm daring, Lucien, but even at twelve I had some sense.”

He kissed the nape of her neck. “Not much, but some,” he said.

She smiled.

“I should have got the truth out of that maidservant,” he said, “if only I had been there.”

“Even if you had got it out of her before they killed her, would that have made a difference?” Zoe said. “Once they had me, do you think they'd give me up? Have you any idea how valuable I was?”

“Yes,” he said. “I know how valuable you are.”

“I was a rare, rare creature to them,” she said. “I learned this later—that I was like one of the magical beings in the
Thousand and One Nights
. The slavers had followed us from Greece. They knew they'd get a lot of money for me: White slaves are valuable—and I wasn't merely a Circassian but an English girl. My
coloring was different. Everything about me was different. How many twelve-year-old, blonde, blue-eyed European girls turn up in that part of the world? Especially during that time, when Europe was at war. They knew the pasha would pay a fortune for me, for his sick son. For the magic. The slavers knew Yusri Pasha would believe I would have the power to arouse his favorite son Karim's desires at last, and he would produce sons.”

“And none of this would have happened but for an easily corrupted servant,” Marchmont said.

“They had all the reason in the world to make it happen, one way or another,” Zoe said. “They offered her more money than she could hope to earn in twenty years. If they hadn't got to her, they would have got to someone else in our party. They would have found a way. They were very determined.”

“I should have been there,” he said.

She turned to him then. “You were seventeen years old. What would you have done that Papa didn't do?”

“I would have found you,” he said. “I always found you.”

She turned round fully and rested her head in the hollow of his shoulder. His fingers threaded through her hair. “No,” she said. “They killed the maid to make sure she'd say nothing. If you had found me, they would have killed you without hesitation. For years, I was terrified that you or my father would burst into the palace and be killed. Even when it became obvious that I was useless—that I couldn't cure Karim and he'd never sire sons—even then they wouldn't have given me back. He was his father's favorite, and I was Karim's favorite toy, and they'd
kill anybody who tried to take me away from him. If you'd found me—and they'd killed you, what would I have done, Lucien?”

He said nothing for a time, only kept drawing his fingers through her hair, caressing, soothing.

She lifted her hand and laid it over his heart, and felt its reassuring beat while she lay there, safely snuggled against his big body.

“I worry that you'll be killed in a carriage crash,” he said after a long silence. “I worry that you'll fall ill so suddenly, as my parents did, and die. I worry that you'll fall off your horse and break your neck, the way Gerard did. I worry that you'll die in childbed. I try to push these thoughts from my mind—I used to be so good at not thinking. But since the trouble with the servants began, I've become…” He paused. “Not Aunt Sophronia—not yet, I hope. But I seem to be not altogether rational.”

“All of those things you worry about can happen,” she said. “They can happen to me and they can happen to you—except for the childbed part.” She grinned up at him. “Unless you die of fright when I grow as gigantic as my sisters.”

He moved his head back to look at her. “If you grow as gigantic as they, I shall certainly die of fright.”

She pulled away from him to use her hands to draw a big mound over her belly. “The women of my family tend to become as big as houses,” she said. “Very round houses.”

Though the room was dimly lit, she had no trouble seeing the laughter dance in his eyes.

“You're picturing it,” she said.

He nodded. His lips trembled. Then it burst from
him: a great whoop of laughter.

He rolled away onto his back and laughed and laughed.

She laughed, too.

This was the boy she'd known so long ago, the boy who'd fallen down laughing when she tried to hit him with a cricket bat.

She remembered how, when he'd finally sobered, he'd stood up and marched to her, and plucked her up off the ground as easily as if she'd been a rag doll. He'd carried her, kicking and hitting and calling him names, back to the house and up to the schoolroom and plunked her into a chair.

“Learn something, you stupid girl,” he'd said, and walked out.

And she had learned something: Greek and Latin, because that's what boys learned and she was determined to know what boys knew. She'd learned not only how to do sums but harder kinds of mathematics, like geometry and trigonometry. She did this not because she enjoyed the subjects but because boys learned those things—and she was determined to show
him
. She'd never been the best or most conscientious student. Still she'd learned some things that most girls didn't know: how to hide fear and how to think logically and how to jockey for position and how to be dogged and how to fight when one had to. Such knowledge had helped her survive the harem. It had helped her escape the harem. And it had helped her remove a blight from this great house.

Perhaps, too, what she had learned, in the schoolroom and in the last twelve years, had helped remove a shadow from this man's heart.

When they sobered at last, she sat up and bent over him and kissed him. “If something bad happens,” she said, “we must promise each other to remember all the times like this when we laughed. And until something bad happens, we must enjoy ourselves. We are most fortunate people, Lucien. I am a most fortunate woman, and I mean to enjoy my good fortune as much as I can.”

“I should enjoy it better,” he said, “had we only the normal concerns of life. A deranged servant out to murder my wife is not a normal concern.”

She sat back. “In the harem, there was always somebody wanting to kill somebody,” she said. “I heard it was even more dangerous in Constantinople, in the sultan's palace.”

“That's why I've become deranged and you haven't,” he said. “To me, this is outrageous. To you, it's normal.”

“If he were here,” she said, “trying to poison my food, or creeping into my room with a knife, I would know what to do.”

“You would?” he said.

She nodded.

He thought for a time. Then he climbed out of bed and pulled on his dressing gown.

“Where are you going?” she said.

“To ring for a servant,” he said. “All this talk of poisoning reminds me that we haven't dined. I'm famished.” He crossed the room and pulled the rope. “And you've given me an idea.”

Monday, 11 May

 

Everything goes into the newspapers. In other countries, matters of a public nature may be seen in them; here, in addition, you see perpetually even the concerns of individuals. Does a private gentleman come to town? you hear it in the newspapers; does he build a house, or buy an estate? they give the information; does he entertain his friends? you have all their names next day in type; is the drapery of a lady's drawing-room changed from red damask and gold to white satin and silver? the fact is publicly announced.

 

The observations the American ambassador, Mr. Rush, recorded in his diary about the amaz
ing English press were much the same as those he'd made at dinner on the night he and his wife and a few privileged others had met Lord Lexham's youngest daughter.

And so it was hardly surprising that the amazing English press would report the doings of the Duke and Duchess of Marchmont. Anyone who could read would read in the newspapers that the new duchess had made substantial changes in the household staff and was shortly to embark upon an extensive refurbishment of Marchmont House in St. James's Square.

Anyone who could read would read in the papers that the Duke of Marchmont meant to set out on the following day for Lancashire, on urgent legal business related to one of his properties there.

His Grace's former house steward, Harrison, could read, and did so, while he drank his coffee in the room he'd taken at the Black Horse Inn in Haymarket, immediately after Mary Dunstan's abrupt departure.

“‘Normally, His Grace's agent would act in his place,'” he read aloud as he'd always used to do when he and Mrs. Dunstan breakfasted together. “‘But the matter of these fishing rights has apparently reached a pitch such that his personal attendance is wanted to avert a lawsuit.' Oh, certainly. That's what sends my lord duke out of London at the height of the Season to travel some three hundred miles, to the wilds of Lancashire. Fishing rights, my foot. It's
she
. She's driven him out of his house.”

Had Harrison given his temper time to cool, he
could have spared his master the ignominy of running away from his wife. But Harrison had acted rashly and botched the business. Not only had the Harem Girl failed to die in the carriage smash-up, but she'd escaped with scarcely a scratch.

She'd gone out dancing that same night—at Almack's! She—the Harem Girl—at Almack's!

A proper lady would have taken to her bed for a fortnight. She wasn't a lady. Why were only a handful of servants able to see her for what she was?

“We could have told him she was common,” he said, as though Mary Dunstan were still with him, listening as she always did. “She's made turmoil in his house. His Grace can't abide that. He likes his peace.”

He sighed deeply. “I knew him better than he knew himself, did I not? It was my responsibility to do so. What's he to do without me? Where's he to go for peace and quiet? White's? That's well enough for some, who haven't anything better to do. It won't do for him. To spend all his days and nights there? Out of the question. He'd be bored witless. Where else, then?”

Harrison considered. “Unwise to go back to the dashing widow. The Harem Girl would hunt him down. Vulgar scene bound to ensue. I know her sort. Knew the instant I clapped eyes on her, she was never Lord Lexham's daughter. It was the Princess Caraboo all over again, and she took them all in. Even the Queen. Not that it's so hard to fool a sick old woman.”

He returned to the newspaper. The article went on
to share with readers one of the duke's humorous remarks. According to an unnamed source at White's Club, when asked about his impending journey, his grace had said, “If your wife was redecorating the house, would you hang about?”

Harrison repeated the riposte aloud, and laughed. “Have I not always said the master was the cleverest wit in London? ‘Would you hang about?' Ha, ha. That is good.”

His amusement faded when he remembered that he would not, ever again, be present to hear one of the duke's witticisms. He would not be able to enter the hostelry where the crème de la crème of London's servants gathered, and tell his envious friends what his clever master had said and done lately.

“Where shall I find another like him?” he said. “Where should I find another place like that one? Ireland? France?” He shook his head. “Oh, Mary, Mary. How could we hold our heads up if we sank to that: presiding over one of those hovels they call inns in those savage countries.”

But Mary wasn't there to answer. She'd run away, and the Runners had caught her, as he'd warned her would happen.

Naturally the Runners were looking for him. He knew they'd be doing their sharpest looking along the roads leading out of London. He'd explained to her: He had friends in London, so many friends who owed him and who would make sure he wasn't caught. They wouldn't want to risk his telling all he knew about them. For him, there was no safer place to be than London.

“Oh, Mary, Mary.” He glanced sadly about the empty room. “I was in liquor that day. It frightened you, I know.”

He wasn't the kind to drink to excess. He'd done it because of the horses.

He'd acted too hastily, and he'd paid for it. He'd heard the horse's screams in his head long after he fled King Street. He'd seen the blood even when he closed his eyes. He'd begun drinking and had kept on drinking until he was senseless and couldn't hear or see any of it anymore.

He'd always been so proud of His Grace's cattle: the finest beasts in London. When he'd burst out of Cleveland Yard that day, he'd attacked in a frenzy. When the hot anger dissipated, he'd grieved for them.

She
, he would hurt without a second thought or the smallest regret afterward. She'd destroyed him, utterly. She'd killed his future and made a fool of his master and polluted the house.

Now, when it was too late, the duke had discovered his mistake. Why else would he leave his new bride behind and set out on a lengthy journey at the height of the Season?

Harrison set down the newspaper and refilled his coffee cup. He stirred in a few lumps of sugar and added a generous dollop of cream. Though he'd fallen on hard times and was temporarily inconvenienced, he was far from impoverished. The room might be smaller than what he was used to, yet it was comfortably appointed, and his friends kept him properly provisioned.

This wasn't much solace for a man utterly and irrevocably ruined, who had no future worth having.
Still, so long as he remained in London, it was better to be comfortable than not.

He was exceedingly sorry for Mary. She'd hang for sure. She should have known him better, after all these years, than to take fright over a few drunken ravings. In any case, she could do him no harm and their enemies no good. She didn't know who his friends were. He had helped line the pockets of the high, middling, and low. He had friends among the goldsmiths, linen drapers, and furniture makers. He knew tavern keepers and innkeepers, fishmongers and bakers and vegetable sellers, tea and coffee and spirit merchants, the candle makers and coal merchants and more. There wasn't a trade in London in which he didn't have at least one friend.

Mary didn't know who they were. She'd always preferred not to know. Thus she wouldn't know, any more than the Runners and patrollers and constables and magistrates did, where he was.

He put her out of his thoughts and turned his mind to dealing with the cause of all their troubles.

He turned his mind to the first day he'd met the Harem Girl and the way she'd humiliated him in front of a footman. Keeping that incident at the front of his mind would keep off regrets. The next time, he wouldn't need to stupefy himself with drink. Next time, he'd leave everyone else out of it. He'd do what any good servant must do. He'd remove from Marchmont House what should never have been allowed into the house in the first place.

He couldn't expect thanks for it, but he was used to being taken for granted. A proper servant, in fact, took pride in being taken for granted. And as always,
the good servant must derive his satisfaction from a job well done.

Tuesday, 12 May

The Duke of Marchmont took leave of his wife with a reluctance obvious to onlookers on the other side of the square. He didn't care how obvious it was.

When she followed him out to the traveling chariot, he gave his neighbors the shock of a lifetime by making his horses wait. Instead of springing into the carriage, he held her hand and repeated all the instructions he'd already given—twice—indoors.

“You will not leave the house,” he said. “You will not step into the garden until the footmen have patrolled it first for intruders. And then you must have Jarvis with you at all times. With her umbrella. Promise me.”

“I promise, I promise,” she said.

“While you're here, the servants can keep you safe. Outside of the house, you're vulnerable.”

“I know.”

“I'll be back as soon as I can.”

“I know you will.”

“Perhaps, after all, it would be wiser to take you with me,” he said.

“It'll take me hours to pack, and if I go with you, the journey will take twice as long,” she said. “Men never make a fraction as many stops as women want. This way, you'll be back in a few weeks—perhaps as little as a fortnight. Then we can enjoy the rest of the Season.”

“I can't believe I must leave you alone while I go away to quarrel about fishing rights, of all things, at such a time.”

“They wouldn't send for you if it wasn't necessary.” She stroked the front of his coat. “Please don't fret. I won't be alone. I'll be safer here than anywhere else. And I shouldn't enjoy going out to any sort of entertainment without you, in any event.”

“I worry that you'll be bored, Zoe. When you become bored, terrible things happen.”

“I won't be bored at all. I'm excited about refurbishing the house. I'll have plenty to do, looking at fabric swatches and paint charts and deciding how to arrange the rooms. If I begin to feel dull, I'll send for my sisters to argue with me.”

He gazed down at her for a long while, into her sparkling blue eyes and sunny countenance. “Perhaps you won't miss me very much after all.”

“I shall miss your body very much,” she said. “But while you're gone, I can think of new and different ways to make use of it.”

He wondered what new and different ways she could devise that she hadn't already done. Still, she did seem to have a boundless imagination.

He laughed and grasped her waist and lifted her off the pavement. “I'll keep that notion in mind, to warm me at night in my cold, lonely bed.”

He kissed her, and she wrapped her arms about his neck and gave him a no-holds-barred kiss in return. She didn't care who was watching, either. She never held back. With Zoe it was all or nothing, always.

He set her down again slowly, relishing the feel of her soft body sliding along his. They were scandal
izing the neighbors, no doubt. Ah, well, he was besotted with his wife. What did he care who saw? Let them watch and let them talk about it all they liked.

Friday, shortly after midnight

His prey was bound to go out eventually, but Harrison couldn't wait for eventually. He only waited to make sure the duke didn't suddenly change his mind and return. He listened for rumors and quietly absorbed the information ordinary servants exchanged in their various gathering places.

Half the world had observed the vulgar public farewell in St. James's Square. The other half heard from those who'd seen. It was her doing, of course, hanging on His Grace's neck like a harlot.

But her lures didn't bring him back. The duke had not changed his mind and returned on Tuesday or Wednesday. Thursday having passed as well, the duke would be hundreds of miles away.

The moon, approaching its full, would set in about two hours, but at present its illumination cast shadows in St. James's Square. In the shadows, well away from the streetlamps' narrow circles of light, Harrison patiently waited.

He stood and watched as the hall porter fastened the shutters of Marchmont House. From where he stood, he couldn't hear the man latch the doors, but he knew he'd do so. Shortly thereafter, the porter would trim the lamps in the entrance hall and passages.

Harrison bided his time, knowing the routine of
the house. This night, the servants would all be abed. If the master and mistress had gone out, a few must wait up for them. But the master was away and the mistress had not gone out. The hall porter would soon be dozing in his chair. The others would have taken to their beds for the delicious luxury of a few extra hours of rest. They'd be dead asleep. A fire or explosion might rouse them but not much else.

If he were still the house steward, he'd be prowling the corridors, to make sure the male and female staff were in their proper beds. He'd never tolerated any improprieties of that kind. Pregnant maids were dismissed without a character, and the males responsible paid fines.

But he was no longer in charge of them, and the duke hadn't yet replaced him. There was only Thomas, lately jumped up to butler, and only adequate for that position.

Still, Thomas might be on the prowl, jealous of his new rank and wanting to show off to the new mistress how conscientious he was.

Harrison waited a little longer, watching for any telltale flicker of light.

But he saw none. Only darkness.

And when he slipped in through the servants' entrance, he heard only the familiar silence of a sleeping household.

 

Boy and man, Harrison had lived in Marchmont House for twenty years. He knew every inch of it. As house steward, he'd walked these corridors late at night. He could find his way to any part of the house blindfolded.

Still, the Harem Girl might have had furniture moved about. She'd had the table of the breakfast room moved, hadn't she? She was unlikely to leave anything else alone. Not wanting to risk tripping over an illogically placed chair or table, he carried a small candle, as he always used to do during his nightly inspections.