Flowers From The Storm (40 page)

“I told thee,” she said, holding her arms close, pressing back. “I told thee before. It is impossible.” Her voice was shaking. Shivers ran down her limbs, and she pulled them tighter yet.

“
Church
.” He let go of her so suddenly that she took a step to catch herself. “Church… say… husband I…
wife
. I… say… I thee wed. Love, honor, cherish, death. Say.” He rose from the bed. “
Lie
?”

She wet her lips.

“
Forgot
?” His mouth made a scornful curve. He turned away. “ ”
Jervaulx
… received… Lord… a charge.
Love
. Husband I… thy wife.“” At the window, he leaned his forearm on the side of the deep, uncurtained recess. Gray light shone on him from the half-open shutter. “
I
… remember.”

“Thou wouldst have done violence. Thou wouldst have shot at those men. I was afraid…”
For thee

—but she did not say it. “I was afraid of violence.”

He smiled bitterly. “False word, Maddygirl? All…
lies
?”

If she turned her head, she could see her hair unbraided, spreading free over her shoulder in a fan of his making. “I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t know! How can it be God’s will, for me to marry thee?”

He stood at the window, lace and gilt and extravagant comeliness, the light falling on his dark hair and lashes, as sensual as his kisses, as his hands on her skin. “
Done
. Why… not…
will
?”

A simple question—and there was nothing simple in him. Or in her, anymore. “I don’t know,” she whispered again.

“
Done
.” He leaned one hand on the headboard. “Marry.
Wife
!” He pushed away and went to the door.

Before he opened it, he looked back at her. It was a command, that look, and a challenge. He dared her to deny it.

“Jervaulx,” she said slowly, “answer me this. In the church—if I had stood between thee and the other men… wouldst thou have shot?”

“Between,” he repeated, tilting his head intently.

“My body… myself… between thee and the others.”

His face changed, grew watchful.

“If I had stepped between,” she asked again, “would I have stopped thee from killing?”

He kept a long silence. And then, clipped, he said, “Yes.”

Her heart sank. There had been another way. She had done the wrong thing after all. “Even if—it meant thou hadst gone back to Blythedale Hall?”

“Yes.”

She had erred. She should have practiced a submissive nonresistance instead of taking authority into her own hands. She had only substituted one evil for another.

He came to her across the room and pulled her chin up between his fingers. “Maddygirl,” he said.

“Never… stand between.
Never
!”

She pulled her face away. “I cannot promise thee.”

“You answer… me,” he said. “Stand between—don’t kill… let…
take
, Maddygirl?” He caught her again, held her painfully hard. “That place? God’s… will?”

No.

That answer was clear, so suddenly clear—her inner voice speaking sure.

The turmoil of doubt inside her relaxed. She
had
done right. There had been two choices, two inevitable outcomes: to marry and keep him free, or to forbid strife only—and let him be seized and chained.

She had done what God wished, then: married him—and therefore it must be a true marriage.

“I would not let them take thee, Jervaulx, if I could stop it,” she said. “That is the Truth.”

His hold eased. She could have told him more. She could have told him that now she was certain that the words in the church were words in the Light, and therefore she would live in their commitment.

She didn’t. But she remembered the thing she had said in the steeplehouse better than he.
With no rulebut love between us
, she had avowed. And Jervaulx, she thought, even after Blythedale Hall, recognized no rule but his own.

Perhaps there was a reason that God asked this of her. It had been a great commitment, to be made in an instant. But she would wait to explain, because Jervaulx was a duke, and a child of the world, and not yet ready to understand.

Late in the day, as the carriage lumbered up over the top of a steep grade in the Welsh foothills and started down the other side, she came upon the first full consequence of the course she had taken.

“
There
,” Jervaulx said.

Maddy had already seen it from out the carriage window. It burst upon the mind: floating on the ridge across the valley—a white circuit of towers, a dazzling and disorganized necklace strung of stone, half-tangible, huge and yet weightless, cloud drift and shadow and turrets melded into a daydream, a pale and glowing vision of fantastical chivalry.

It was wild and translucent, like a vanishing reverie that somehow did not disappear but became more substantial as they drew closer. The white walls glittered, hundreds of windows in the upper towers catching the late sun as the carriage descended into the valley below.

Durham grinned at Maddy from the forward seat. Colonel Fane stretched out his legs as far as he politely could and asked, “When’s supper?”

Jervaulx exclaimed, “
Home
,” in a voice that resonated with love and satisfaction.

Maddy looked at the castle. It was beautiful. Against the sky and the hills, it was a proclamation. It declared power, announced wealth, blazed luxury—not in a shout, but in a song.

There was a reason God had asked this of her, she repeated to herself.

She had done the right thing.

She was terrified.

Christian leaned his head against the carved back of a chair that had been given by Queen Elizabeth to his great-grandfather eight times removed. It was something of a throne itself, though made for a shorter man, with an unlucky projection in the claw of the phoenix crest that always poked Christian in the left ear if he was not careful.

The footman took away his plate. He watched the firelight gleam through his wineglass while Fane rambled on about horses—a clumsy topic with a lady present, Christian thought, which reminded him that he was host and responsible to do something about it. For three and a half centuries, the earls and dukes of Jervaulx had presided over the table in the Great Chamber. It was four floors up over the gatehouse, a hundred and fifty feet above the base of the cliff that dropped away below, with a bank of windows that commanded the border for twenty miles in both directions.

He could remember all that, but he could not depend on his own tongue to say something civilized.

Maddygirl, seated at the foot of the long table, had her eyes lowered. She looked strangely small and meek. He decided that he had to do something about the overly masculine conversation.

“Tired…
day
… Maddygirl?” he asked, interrupting Fane mid-sentence, because he couldn’t time his words to a pause but had to take them when they came.

She looked up. “Little,” she said, barely audible in the large room.

“Course is,” said another voice. Christian remembered Durham on his right and glanced that way. He’d known Durham was there; it was just that he sometimes forgot it if he didn’t keep looking. “Long fatigue journey, on top wedding,” Durham added. “Won’t dawdle port.”

“Port,” Christian said, “
drawn
room.”

“Excellent notion,” Fane agreed, nodding sagely. “Port in the drawing room ladies.” He cleared his throat. “Retire early.”

All three of them looked at Maddy, expecting her to rise. She looked back, absurdly small in her chair that matched Christian’s, with the phoenix wings poised above her head.

Durham figured it out before Christian did. “Duchess, fellows can’t get up til give word,” he said kindly.

She stood, and the rest of them followed suit. She still appeared hesitant. Christian went down the table and took her arm. He escorted her into the adjacent drawing room, where the shutters had been closed and the drapes let down to hold the heat from the big stone fireplace. The dogs leaped up from their rug before the fire, tails wagging in welcome. With a sharp syllable, Christian made them sit. Maddy appeared to be more concerned with the tips of her toes than with the rich tapestries of bacchanals and war that decorated all the inner walls. She took the chair he offered without the usual compliments on their fineness.

She seemed, in fact, entirely disinterested in her new home. Christian was accustomed to giving the history of the place to house guests; he had his short, medium, and comprehensive discourses on the topic, depending on whether it was merely after-dinner small talk, or a full-scale tour. He was to be spared either, it appeared, which he found rather vexing, even knowing he would have made a hash of the business.

“Fane myself off town morning,” Durham said, backing up to the fire.

Maddygirl showed the first sign of life that she’d shown since their arrival, turning to Durham. “Thou take letter me?”

“Certainly. If you wish.”

“Please. To my father.”

“Father?” Durham hesitated. He met Christian’s eyes.

“Thou’lt have to read him,” she said apologetically. “If be so good.”

Durham had a helpless expression. He fidgeted. “Course—must understand may be short trip”

“Write,” Christian interrupted. He went to the table and found pens and paper; spread them out on the writing desk and carried a candle to it. “Maddygirl write. Durham calling… Timms.” He gave Durham a meaningful look. “Ask… Timm comes here.”

The pleasure and relief in her face gratified him. “Oh— can come here?”

“Your…
home
. Come… live… do you want?”

A pink flush rose into her cheeks. “Father—live here?”

“Yes.”

She dropped her eyes.

“
Want
?” Christian asked again.

She lifted them. “Yes! Want him me. Only—so strange. Here? I can’t—become accustomed.”

Christian picked up the pen. “Write,” he said.

She gathered her skirt and took the place he’d created. He stood beside her for a moment, and then walked away. He wanted to write to her father himself, but was afraid he couldn’t do it. Not now. It had been mortifying enough to sign his name to the parish register—he wasn’t certain yet that he’d spelled all of it right. He’d kept losing part of it in his hurry. In private he would write, when he could take time and make the sons-of-bitches letters come out straight.

The door from the Great Chamber opened and the steward appeared with coffee and port. Christian motioned for him to serve Maddy at the writing table. He would not speak to the staff unless he had to do it. So far it had been surprisingly easy—Jervaulx ran like clockwork: from the moment the carriage had swept beneath the gatehouse, the mechanism had gone into motion. The party had been met in the hall by the steward and housekeeper—Christian had only to present Maddy on his arm with four words that he’d been practicing under his breath from Gloucester to the border.
The Duchess of Jervaulx
.

He had a feeling that he’d forgot the little words, but he’d got out the important ones with a suitable authority. The head servants had instantly responded with proper courtesies and their names. Now Calvin Elder acknowledged Christian’s silent nod with immediate compliance, pouring Maddy’s coffee and placing it next to her on the table. Christian reckoned he could rely on the fact that a substantial breakfast would be laid at the usual time in the morning, and rooms had been made ready for Durham and Fane.

A thought struck him. As Calvin Elder withdrew to the door, having left the port, Christian followed him into the Great Chamber. He held the door closed behind him.

“Tonight… bedchamber,” he said. “My… duchess…
chamber
!” That wasn’t right. Christian felt heat in his face. Not his duchess; he’d meant his chamber. She’d sleep there. After an excruciatingly long moment, he got out, “The bed.” Christ! Coarse idiot. “The room… duchess. She is…”Another interminable pause. “
Mine
.” Worse and worse. He gave it up, glaring at the steward.

Calvin Elder put his hands behind his back and bowed. “As you say, Your Grace.”

Furiously embarrassed, Christian retreated to the drawing room. Fane helped himself to the port, while Durham still rocked on his heels by the fire.

“Anything else want town for you, Shev?” Durham asked, accepting a glass from Fane.

Christian took a breath. It tried him, wearied him, to batter at the wall of his weakness, but he had to keep going.

“
Tell
.” He groped for a way to say it. “Aunt Vest. Maddy… I thee wed.”