Flowers From The Storm (63 page)

Maddy held herself aloof. She was not disappointed. Her days alone in bed, protected by her injury from his lures and temptations, had given her time to meditate on her weakness. She had erased all that part of herself, the part that turned to color and idle mirth and to him.

Jervaulx picked up one of the fashion dolls, turning it over in his hand. Suddenly he reached for a pair of scissors and began snipping at the trim, ignoring the modiste’s faint “oh.” The ruffles fell away until the gown that was left seemed as simple as Plain Dress, except for the wide, low scoop of neckline. The original design had had a broad trim of lace to border it; Jervaulx cut that away in the center, leaving only a sort of lace shawl over the full sleeves. He laid the drab scrap of cloth on the doll and handed it to the couturiere.

She examined it for a moment, looking up at Maddy with narrowed eyes. Then she pursed her lips and lifted her brows. “If it is what you wish,” she said.

Jervaulx only nodded, and left Maddy to be measured.

That had been when her arm was still completely immobile, and an awkward, painful process it was.

Now that her injury allowed more freedom of motion, Jervaulx had informed her at breakfast, the modiste required another fitting.

Maddy reluctantly presented herself at the appointed time. The bland fabric that he’d chosen had extinguished her one pleasure in the gown—all it was now was a concrete reminder of his uncontrollable intemperance and the approaching trial of the ball.

The assistant helped her out of her day dress, as her arm was still far too sore to be very useful. With a mutter of disapproval, the modiste unbuttoned Maddy’s corset and chemise. “It is too high to the neck—it will show.” Before Maddy realized what the woman was about, she had stripped the undergarments down to Maddy’s waist.

Maddy sucked in her breath and crossed her arms over her breasts—and of all moments, Jervaulx chose that one to walk into the room.

He glanced at her, meeting Maddy’s horrified gaze without a flicker of reaction. While they tied the bustle, he sat down in a chair, relaxed, like a detached connoisseur in watching women dress.

The gown came down over her head. She hadn’t expected it; she’d been caught up in her mortification at his entry and the pain the quick movement to cover herself had caused. Maddy made a little whimper as the assistant caught her hand, trying to bring up the sleeves.

“Careful!” Jervaulx said sharply, and the modiste and assistant murmured profuse apologies. They began to work with more gentleness, allowing Maddy to adjust her arm in stages to get it through the sleeve.

This required that she stand quite exposed before Jervaulx, and he didn’t have the decency to avert his eyes for an instant. By the time the gown was adjusted, she felt hot all over with embarrassment.

The assistant held the gown together in the back, pinning it very tight, since she had no corset. “Your arm down, madame, if you please to try it,” the modiste requested.

Maddy opened her elbow in increments, biting her lower lip. Jervaulx bent his head a little, resting his mouth on the back of his hand, looking down for the first time.

“Ah.” The modiste stood back. She had a slight, acerbic curl to her mouth. “I see what you are about, Your Grace.”

Jervaulx lifted his eyes. He looked at Maddy from hem to head, a slow appraisal that brought blood brimming to her cheeks.

He nodded.

The assistant hustled to carry the cheval glass around in front of Maddy, and she saw herself for the first time.

She was shocked. The drab scrap of fabric, the fine, stiff, scratchy material that poked and abraded her bare skin—in the glass it shimmered with color like a faint prism, metallic threads interwoven with silk to make a silver tissue that caught the light and held it, transparent flame.

The plain cut of the dress, with no frills, only the half-shawl of Venetian lace, drew the eye instantly to the neckline that dropped off her shoulders and swept low across her breasts, voluptuous and yet stark.

The sleeves echoed her simple dresses, stopping just above her elbows, but full and glittering, radiating light.

It was blasphemous, a deliberate transformation of Plain Dress into sparkling provocative luxury.

“I cannot wear this!” she exclaimed.

“Madame,” the modiste said quietly, “it is magnificent.”

Maddy looked at Jervaulx. “I cannot. Thou must know!”

He smiled, saying nothing—that maddening perceptive smile, as if he knew her better than she knew herself.

“I cannot!”

The modiste bent to shake out a fold of the skirt. “If it does not please madame, then I will take it back.

I think of a half dozen clients now who will—”

“Not back,” Jervaulx said. “She wears it.” He reached beneath his coat and brought out a box of a sort that was becoming all too familiar to Maddy.

“Oh, no,” she said, eying the jeweler’s case. “I don’t want it. I don’t want these ornaments. Canst thou not understand that?”

Jervaulx stood. He opened the case, and Maddy gave a moan of dismay. The modiste and her assistant were not so ungenerous; they inhaled in unfeigned wonder at the sight of the flashing tiara with three stones the size of wren’s eggs, holding all the color Maddy had secretly wished for: a green blaze of emeralds framed by curling vines of amethysts, pearls and diamonds.

Maddy had begun to learn something about money and what it might buy—and this, she knew instantly, was no casual gift of a pearl chain, or even an orangerie. This was something that would ransom princes and adorn queens, the size of the stones alone a declaration of sovereignty.

She stepped back as he lifted it to place it in her hair. “Where didst thou come by this?”

She had a hope that it was a family piece, some ducal heirloom that he meant his duchess to wear on her debut, but he only said, “Bought. Think I… stole it?”

“Jervaulx!” she cried. “More? When thou art—”

A warning in his sideways glance stopped her. She gave another whimper as he slid the silver comb beneath her coiled braids. “Why, why, why?” she moaned. “Thou must know I despise such things.

Where is thy sense?”

“A small purchase,” he said.

“Small! Oh, thou art infamous! When thou ought to be paying—”

He put his forefinger against her lips, smoothing them in a sensual touch. She jerked her face away. She couldn’t let him touch her, couldn’t give in to the rush of love and yearning, the sensation he aroused so instantly.

He lowered his lashes, withdrawing. “Perhaps you don’t like.” His voice had taken on an undertone of cold mocking command. “But you will… show grace… to His Majesty.”

She stood motionless. “To—whom?”

He moved back and sat down in the chair, stretching out his legs. He observed her with a critical eye, then turned to the modiste. “Your opinion?”

The woman surveyed Maddy with professional acumen. “Unusual, Your Grace.” She nodded slowly.

“Memorable.”

“The king?” Maddy asked in a small voice. “Dost thou speak of the king?”

He held out his hand, and the modiste hurried forward to take the tiara from Maddy’s hair and convey it to him reverently. The jewels disappeared again into the box. The duke went to the chamber door.

“Jervaulx,” Maddy said tremulously. “Dost thou mean to say—the king is coming to thy ball?”

He looked back at her and shrugged. “Perhaps,” he said.

The door closed behind him. “
Quelle chance
!” The modiste clapped her hands together. “Oh, madame,” she breathed. “It is the
coup de main
. His Majesty comes to your debut!”

From Christian’s single planted hint, the talk spread. He did not risk any further appearances in public; he let Durham and Fane act his point-guard, bringing back reports of what was said by whom.

God only knew if he’d cut his own throat by making this final stake. It had taken all the cash he could lay hands on— exhausted his liquid income, drained dry his account at Hoare’s, provoked another visit from Mr. Manning and friends that had been barred at the door by Calvin and a set of footmen carefully selected for their formidable size and robust constitutions.

Poor old King George had been discreetly peddling the tiara, a bauble once given by Bonaparte to the Empress Marie-Louise, at the outrageous price of fifty thousand pounds for years. There’s been no takers: His Majesty’s royal whim wasn’t trustworthy enough in political matters to make it worth the cost—but Christian had paid it, reckoning that with the completion of the Brighton pavilion giving way to a princely passion for creating Gothic glories at Windsor, an infusion of hard cash, instead of another tiresome creditor, would be powerfully welcome to the king.

Acceptances for the ball had already been copious enough, but the prospect—the great question—of His Majesty’s appearance had the effect of stirring a hornet’s nest. Ridiculous the king might be, fat and gouty, ever more secluded, a target of easy scorn—but let it chance that the monarch might condescend to attend a social gathering, Christian thought dryly, and the old beguiling perfume of royalty turned out to be more than a fading whiff.

It was power. If he managed to anoint himself with that influential cachet, then his brothers-in-law would find themselves members of the wrong club entirely. To publicly insist in the courts that His Majesty chose to honor idiots and madmen with his friendship was to go beyond the pale. Against the king’s indulgence, pushing forward a hearing into Christian’s reason became a gaffe of grandiose proportions.

George could stop them with a word, if he cared to utter it.

The betting book was open at White’s, and Durham claimed that he’d witnessed a debate at Brooks’s of three hours’ duration: Jervaulx’s stubbornly progressive politics, anathema to the King, versus the still-amazing fact that back in “20, Christian had gone dead against his party and public opinion, supporting George’s attempt to rid himself of his sordid queen when even the Tory peers had slunk away. As it happened, Christian had taken that particular position on a bet that he could do it and still walk into Whitehall without being pelted with rotten eggs—which he’d lost—but nobody beyond he and Fane and Durham were privy to that.

And half in spite of himself, Christian had always liked George. It required a private acquaintance to see the sincerity, the good heart and clever humor beneath the self-indulgence, the man inside the sad shell he’d become. He’d a child’s temper and a talent for extravagance, no restraint and no judgment, but he’d transformed the face of London with his elegant taste, and dispensed old-age pensions to such diverse personages as Coleridge the poet and Phoebe Hessel the woman soldier; he kept his ministers poring through the criminal lists to find condemned prisoners who had no other advocate in order to consider their cases for mercy himself; he donated his library—after the Emperor of Russia had offered him a hundred thousand pounds for it—to the nation.

George had his moments. Christian just hoped to the devil he was going to be one of them.

Even with Calvin and the new secretary to do the footwork, he was nearly spent by the end of each day with the effort of the preparations, tired and angry and lonely when he faced the dressing room and single bed. He and Maddy didn’t speak at all now. He couldn’t put a moment to when it had happened; a slow barrier of silence had just seemed to grow between them as her arm healed and the ball drew closer.

Durham and Fane made breakfast conversation, and at midday Christian took a tray in the library with his work.

Dinner was agony, alone at the table with her. He fell to solving mathematical equations in his head, to give him something to do besides watch her pick at her food like a caged and unhappy bird.

He was losing her. She was deliberately going away. Her body was here, but his Maddygirl, who laughed at foolish jokes, who looked up at him beneath sultry lashes—she was disappearing before his eyes, transforming into this ghastly severe gray ghost-creature.

He never touched her. He never tried. At first it had been because he’d not wanted to hurt her again, but as she’d healed the stiffness had grown in her. She moved away when he came near.

She paralyzed him into a frozen courtesy. He would not be a savage. Instead he worked, and tried to savor the transitory moments of autonomy, and longed for just an hour of no words, no future, nothing but her body and his own in raw and primitive communion.

By the morning of the ball, Durham reported that word the king was dropsical had sent the odds at Brooks’s to seventy-to-one. Christian tried not to think about it. He wasn’t certain Maddy was going to hold up on him. She looked almost ill at breakfast, picking at her food while Christian and the secretary went over details.

“Gown?” he asked her. “Here and fits?”

“Yes,” she said, staring at her buttered eggs as if they spelled out D-O-O-M in large letters.

“Gloves?”

“Yes, I have the gloves.”

He tilted his head. “Your arm… hurts?”

She stirred the eggs with a broad knife. “No. It’s all right.”

Maddy
, he wanted to plead,
don’t do this to me. I need you now
.