My Naughty Minette (18 page)

“No. You’re walking about again.” He studied the music on the stand. “I haven’t played this in years. You’ve been riffling through my music in your sleep?”

She squinted by the candle’s light. “Schwang-en-gess-gong...?”

“
Schwanengesang
,” he provided. “It’s German, like Telemann. Do you know what it means?”

“My German is not very good.”

“
Swan Song.
It’s a rather sad concerto.”

Minette stifled a yawn. He ought to carry her up to bed at once, but she felt so warm, and so close. “Swans are rather sad creatures. Or bad creatures, I should say. Very mean and given to violence,” she said in a drowsily indignant tone.

Very mean and given to violence.
August remembered how sternly he’d spanked his wife earlier, only because he’d felt frustrated and cross. He ought to apologize to her. He would, perhaps, tomorrow, when she was not half-asleep. She gazed up at him with a fetching smile. Minette never held a grudge, not like those nasty swans.

“I remember you telling me how unpleasant they were, and how you did not wish them at our wedding,” he said. “Do you know what a swan song is? They say that just before swans die, they produce a lovely song, vocalizing as they never did in life. And so a ‘swan song’ has come to mean any final or grand gesture before...the end.”

He didn’t want to talk about endings and death, not here in the dark, with his father suffering a few floors away. The Marquess of Barrymore would have no swan song. He would die in horrible pain and agony, if the physicians were to be believed.

Minette touched one of the keys, sounding a mournful note. “Well, that rather changes my opinion of swans. Perhaps they are only misunderstood. I mean, how remarkable, to sing a lovely song in the face of death. I wonder what it sounds like.”

August’s throat felt tight. “I don’t know. I don’t know if anyone’s ever heard one.”

“But they must have, if such a legend exists.” She tapped the music. “Telemann wrote this concerto about it. Will you play it for me? I’d like to hear how Telemann imagined the sound.”

August dutifully leafed to the second part of the composition, the melodious swan’s song before the adagio and the swan’s death. He played the piece full out, there in the wee hours of the night, with Minette pressed against his left arm. When he finished, she laid her head against his shoulder and patted his back. “You are an excellent musician.”

“Thank you.”

“You haven’t any problems with Telemann at all, particularly this Schwaner— Schergang—” She took another stab at pronouncing the German title, slaughtering it badly. “Whatever it’s called. Say, do you remember when you gave me that porcelain swan? The one you found in France?”

“Of course I remember.” They had all bought trinkets for Minette on their Grand Tour, since she had been left behind with her auntie and governesses. August had seen the delicate swan in pink and ivory, and gold leaf, and known he must have it for her. He somehow preserved it unbroken until they returned to England. When he handed it over, she had flown into rhapsodies over its gold flecked wings and slanted eyes, and the red lips painted at the end of the beak. It had been a silly thing, but she had been so delighted.

“I’m sure it’s in one of my boxes somewhere. I kept everything you ever gave me.” She sighed against his shoulder. “I thought those keepsakes were all I would ever have of you. But now I have considerably more of you than I ever expected.”

“Yes.” And here he sat, picturing his considerable girth surrounded by her lips. She must have done the same, for her features rearranged into a self-conscious mask.

“Why did you leave so abruptly this afternoon?” she asked. “Did I make you angry? Was I being too...lewd?”

In the dark, with her sad, plaintive questions, he could only tell her the truth. “I left because I was afraid of insulting you. Because I was imagining doing things to you that I didn’t want to do.”

“Why not? Why wouldn’t you want to?”

“Because I fear you wouldn’t like them, or that you wouldn’t understand. I know you want to be a proper wife, an experienced lover like Esme, but Minette...” He took her hand and held it between his. “You’re still so young and sweet. No. Don’t pout. To me, you’re still an innocent. And I am not.”

“Josephine was innocent when she married Warren, and he was a terrible rogue, and they still managed to get along together.”

“Your brother didn’t know Josephine when she was a child. Your brother didn’t bring Josephine a little swan and watch her pirouette around the room in short skirts. Please, I beg you, try to understand. When you’re more mature—”

“How am I to mature when you persist in treating me like a child?”

“I’m trying to show you respect. I’m trying to protect you!” He bit off an oath. His temper was slipping again and she didn’t deserve it. She was the wronged one, the neglected one, the one who walked the halls of his home in the dark like a wraith. He squeezed her hand and let it go. “What are we to do about your night-roving problem? You can’t keep walking about in your sleep. You’ll fall from a balcony or something, and your brother will kill me.”

“I don’t know.” Minette pulled the blanket closer about her. “I don’t know what causes it, or how to control it.”

“What did Warren do to stop you wandering about as a child?”

“He slept beside me so he would know whenever I got up.”

Damn and blast. Of course that was the most reasonable solution, to sleep beside her in bed. She’d be safe and secure, and he could sleep an entire night through without being awakened by servants. That is, if he could fall asleep beside her. Perhaps he could simply lock her in her room, or tie her to the bed...

She shifted beside him, still going on about Warren watching after her, and being such a wonderfully protective brother, and the very pinnacle to sleep beside, since he didn’t snore.

August wondered if he snored.

“I suppose we ought to go to bed before dawn comes,” he said, cutting off her rambling with a sense of beleaguered purpose. “Shall we sleep in my bedroom, or yours?”

She looked up at him in surprise. “You’re going to let me? Aren’t you afraid I’ll disturb your sleep?”

“I doubt it can be any more disturbed than it’s already been. We can sleep in the same bed, but I ask that you lie as still as possible, and not talk as I’m trying to nod off.”

Minette laughed. “Warren had the same rules.”

Blast Warren. Blast Minette and her sleepwalking, and her bright innocence, and her goddamned swans. “My bedroom or yours?” he asked, snuffing the candle with his fingertips. Smoke scented the distance between them.

“Yours,” she said. “So you will feel less annoyed at the inconvenience.”

As he lay beside her later, he felt more annoyed than any man ever on earth. She felt too warm and comfortable as she huddled against his body, and smelled too alluring for him to find any peace. His bed was not his bed with Minette in it, just as his life was not his life, and his mind was not his mind. “You’re driving me mad,” he whispered into the dark.

But for once, she was not chattering or questioning or making excuses for her irritating capers. Her breath came slow and even, her pretty features angelic in repose.

November turned to December, and the house made preparation for holiday callers, although there wasn’t much cheer in the air. August put on a brave face, and provided a shoulder for his mother to cry on, and a body for Minette to sleep beside at night.

She didn’t sleepwalk anymore. No. Instead she slumbered upon his chest, or his shoulder, or nestled her face into the curve of his neck and stayed there all night, barely stirring. He was happy she was able to find restful sleep at last, but he barely slept at all.

To be safe, he left off taking his usual drink or two after dinner. He felt he must be ever sober and on guard, lest he enact another Mary-the-Maidservant interlude, and debauch his wife half drunk, in darkness and sleepy confusion. He feared he would grasp her and press himself inside her with thoughtless, inelegant force, just because she was there and because he was so, so tired, and because he remembered far too well what it had felt like to be within her.

He ought to just take her. He told himself so every night, but when he reached for her, he would be assailed by poignant memories of her as a bright and trusting child. All his life, he had wanted to protect her, not defile her. He feared if he took her, their history would be lost, and he would never again be the object of her naive devotion.

And he wanted that naive devotion. Selfishly, jealously, desperately. He needed her devotion to make it through these dark days before his father’s death. Now that she was here, he understood he could never again send her away. He enjoyed their dinners and he enjoyed their pianoforte lessons, where she made laudable progress. He approved of the way she spoke to the staff and won them to her side. He admired the graceful manner with which she disregarded his mother’s numerous barbs. He enjoyed everything about his wife except that he must sleep beside her at night and shudder with unsatisfied need.

He watched her now from the parlor window with the best view of the garden, where Minette insisted his father take the sunshine on any passably seasonable day. The great Lord Barrymore lay slumped on his wheeled chaise, head to one side, eyes and mouth open, insensate and mute. Blankets and bandages shielded his mottled skin.

The man’s remaining life could be measured in days, not months, and yet Minette insisted on reading to him, and blathering away as if he could hear her. She read books to him, and smiled into his staring, ulcerated eyes. His mother could not bear to be in the same vicinity as her husband, but Minette...

“My lord?”

August turned at the servant’s voice, thinking, what now? But it was only a caller, the esteemed Duke of Arlington looking dapper in a deep plum coat and black breeches. Going to the theater? The opera? To visit some lady of the night? Arlington greeted him with a rakish smile. “How goes it, Augustine?”

August raised a brow. “Where are you off to?”

“Nowhere yet. I’m just back from the club. Warren and Townsend were there, and asked after you.”

“How are they?”

“How are you?” Arlington rejoined firmly. “There is talk that you never leave the house, that you are put upon by your bride, or suffering a terrible illness, or escaped on a trip abroad, or a dozen other hypotheses you really ought to put to rest.”

“It’s nearly the holidays. I’ve been busy.”

Arlington seated himself on a divan and stretched out his tall frame. “I thought you’d say something like that. Anyway, the fellows say hello, and wonder where you are, and Warren said for me to come here and tell you he hopes his sister is well. I imagine he wanted to visit himself but didn’t wish to encounter you. When will the two of you settle your differences?”

August watched Minette reach to smooth a wrinkle in his father’s blanket. “I don’t know,” he said absently. He really didn’t know. Things hadn’t been the same between them since that morning at Townsend’s, and perhaps would never be the same again.

Arlington let out a long, slow sigh. “Are you all right?” When August didn’t answer, his friend came to stand by him at the window. The duke noticed Minette sitting primly with her book, reading to his dying father. “The dear lady. How sweet she is.”

“He can’t hear her. He responds to nothing at all. I don’t know why she bothers.”

“She bothers because she’s got a kind heart.” Arlington caught August’s gaze. “I’m afraid you’re having a hard go of things, and reluctant to ask for help. Is there anything I can do?”

“You can assure Warren that Minette is fine. She is mostly fine.” He looked back out the window, at his wife’s curls peeking out of her bonnet. Now and again she tilted her head as if emphasizing some passage in the book. “She says my father must be in the sun. That he would not want to spend his final days in a dim sick room. She’s reading him poetry, to soothe his soul.”

“She’s being very much like Minette, isn’t she?”

“My God. Arlington.” The words burst out, embarrassingly desperate. “What am I to do with the girl?”

“First of all, you’ve got to stop this nonsense about her being a girl. She’s not a girl. She’s a woman, and you’ve married her.”

“She’s like a sister to m—”

“She’s not your sister,” Arlington interrupted. “You’ve suffered enough guilt and self-denial, don’t you think? And now you’re making her suffer too.” His friend leaned on the sill, as dangerously insightful as ever. “Your father will die soon, and his dark cloud of a legacy will be gone. Don’t brew more storms in its place.”

August pursed his lips. To liken his childhood to a “dark cloud” was rather inadequate to describing life as Barrymore’s only son. His father had been angry. Stern. Violent. “I can’t wait for him to die,” he said.

“I know. And when he is gone, you shall be Barrymore in his place, with a kind and loving wife, and all your children, whom you will never browbeat or abuse.”

August stalked away from the window. Arlington was too direct sometimes, because he’d been a toplofty, wealthy duke for more than half of his thirty-odd years.

“I’m afraid I’m just like my father,” he said when he was safely across the room. “I’m afraid of hurting her.”

“In what way?” Arlington asked. “In what way could you ever hurt Minette, whom you love so dearly?”

“I could easily hurt her. I have, and I could again. You saw the blood the first night I had her.”

“Virgins bleed, August.”

“She’s so fragile. You don’t understand. You’ve never held her.”

“I have. I’ve hugged her and swung her around and rollicked with her the way all of us did before she was grown. She was strong as ever then, and I don’t doubt she’s stronger now. You’re making excuses.” August opened his mouth to speak, but Arlington held up a hand to silence him. “No. I don’t want to hear any more about sex and Minette.”

“You see? It’s not only me.”

“It
is
only you, because she’s your wife, and
you
need to figure things out.” He turned back to gaze out the window. “Look at her. She’s a remarkable woman and she’s all yours. Me, I’ve got to marry some Welsh stranger I’ve never even seen.”