Elisabeth Fairchild (28 page)

“Are you vivified?” he asked, tracing a line down her abdomen.

She chuckled, considered dreamily the curve of his cheek, the silky fan of his lashes, the blithe curve of his mouth. His eyes were soft, bluer than usual, colored by the light from within.

They shared a contented silence before he murmured. “You once thought it a light, not fluid as Mesmer did--and yet . . .” His fingers waded the pond they had made of her nether parts. “I might argue the point?”

“Mmmm.” She floated, an anchorless boat in a vast sea of contentment. “I’ve no desire to argue at all.” She sighed and stretched the bare length of her limbs against his. “I could spend the rest of my life in this bed, if only you were in it.”

He said nothing, fell still. The light in his eyes dimmed. His lips parted, as if to speak, and she did not want him to speak, for she read the image of his future from the sudden tension of his body. He held her as close as before, touched her as intimately, and yet she felt the distance gather between them.

He had no chance to say a word, no opportunity to confirm the truth she read in a gaze gone wary. She heard, on the stairs, the housekeeper, the jingle of her keys, the whistle of her breath. She was a portly woman, movements measured and deliberate.

With mutual dread their gazes met, pleasure evaporating.

“Go!” she cried.

He leapt from the bed, clothes flying over his head, onto his body, feet stepping into boots at an astonishing rate. Dexterously, he swept up the pile of dirty clothes by the bath in his race to the window. Poised on the sill, he shrugged cloak onto his shoulders, turned briefly to lock eyes with hers, before disappearing, the drainpipe banging once in his hasty decent.

In watching his practiced exit, she realized as never before how frequently he must have fled, from other beds, through other windows, to enact so agile a leave-taking. And in that realization, her heart experienced a pain as new to her as had been the night’s pleasures.

Chapter Thirty-Five

February 1, 1820

The Selwyn Townhouse, Wellclose Square, London

The first words from Martha’s lips as she entered the room after a jingling struggle with the lock, were, “An odd place for that chair. Are you all right, miss?”

Dulcie, who had hastily thrown her nightshift over her head, shoved the chair away from the door as the key turned, and grabbed up her comb, pretended to be absorbed with tangles. Was guilt emblazoned upon her forehead? Was sin to be read in the very disposition of the room?

“I am well, Martha? How are you?”

Martha eyed her as if she grew an extra head. “I am used to seeing you up and about with the rest of us, miss.”

Dulcie habitually rose with the dawn. Her back to the woman, she tugged at a tangle. Her hair was far more tousled than usual.

“My, but this room is--musty.” Martha crossed to the window, threw back the drapes, opened the window, glanced down into the square. “There’s a bit of fresh air,” she said with satisfaction, her gaze strangely attentive as she set the chair back in its customary position.

Had she seen Roger, Dulcie wondered? Did the room in some way suggest the business of the night?

“Is it his leave-taking leaves you melancholy, miss?” Martha bustled to the bed.

Dulcie stared at the woman, cheeks hot. Martha avoided her gaze, busied herself with the bedclothes. “The king, miss. One cannot look out of the window without dour reminder, all the harbor flags at half-mast, the doorways on the square wreathed in black.”

Dulcie blinked, opened her mouth to reply. The clank of Abbey’s bucket cut her short. The upstairs maid greeted her cheerfully. “Morning miss. I’ve come to empty the bath.”

“Good morning,” Dulcie escaped into her dressing room. It was a good morning. Body and spirit still hummed with the pleasures of the night. She leaned against the door, breath coming fast. How close she had come to being caught with a man in her room! She wanted to burst out laughing or crying, she was not sure which. Refraining from either, she allowed her nightgown to slide down over her shoulders, enjoying her own nakedness in a way she had never enjoyed it before. His smell clung to her, his light as well, faintly blue, in the mirror, deepest hued about those parts of her that throbbed with memory of him. Her flesh glowed with borrowed light, thrilled to its full physical potential. Briefly--magically--she believed herself attractive, and womanly.

Lace scratched her breast. With a frown she realized she had thrown the thing on inside out. Had Martha noticed? Had she stupidly given herself away? Through the door she heard the women whispering. Concerned, she eased the door open.

“A tabby has been at this bed,” Martha said.

“Cook’s cat? Up here?” Abby sounded worried as she crossed, bucket sloshing, to the window that opened onto the back garden. “Guardy-loo!” she cried, as with a splash dumped the water.

A suggestive chuckle from Martha. She murmured, “A he-cat of some sort. These linens are all over red hair.”

“No! Really?”

Abby’s shock tore at Dulcie’s pride. Humiliation burned in her breast.

Another sly chuckle. “And damp besides. Did you not give Miss Selwyn enough towels to dry down after her bath?”

Dulcie wanted to dash to the bedside, to strip the tell-tale linens from Martha’s hands.

Shame washed over her with the sound of the bucket being refilled, with the titter that preceded Abby’s final remark. “Dirty puss. Only look at this water!”

With the servant’s whispered words and derisive laughter her perception changed. She was a fallen woman. A virgin disgraced. Now that she had been used, was she to be cast away? The comb slipped from Dulcie’s fingers with a clatter.

No more sly gossip from her bedchamber.

With conflicted emotion Dulcie decided what to wear. She closed her eyes, ran hands along arms, down breasts, along bare buttocks, imagining how she felt to him. His hands had known every inch of her. Was she no more than a temporary diversion to a man such as Roger Ramsay?

She felt changed, forever changed--aware, knowing--educated of body, heart and mind. She was sticky wet between her thighs, as damp as the sheets that brought the servants to sly laughter. No laughing matter, flesh swollen with the night’s exercise. A serious matter, that the heart of her hummed with heat, with passion, with the love and trust that she offered up to him completely. 

Abby knocked upon the door. “Beg pardon, miss. Do you require assistance?”

Her body might revel in the night’s adventure, but Dulcie’s soul suffered deep twinges of guilt, of wrongdoing, of fear.

“No,” she said, voice small. “You may go.”

“Shall I tell your father you are on your way down, miss?”

Dulcie watched her cheeks flush crimson in the mirror. The linens, the bathwater--how stupid not to realize they announced the night’s business as clearly as her tousled hair, swollen mouth, and flushed cheeks. Her face appeared softer than usual, her eyes brighter, more knowing--brimming secrets. Guilt, too. She had not expected such a depth of it. Their lovemaking had felt so perfect, so appropriate, in the doing.

“Miss?” Abby hovered by the door.

Dulcie blinked at her reflection. The dreamlike images she had read on Roger’s body before he fled ghosted through her mind. “Yes,” she said. “On my way down.”

The double meaning of her words made her long to laugh and cry in the same breath.

The wind pinched his cheeks and sought to drive warmth from his body. In buttoning fast his coat, Roger held close her heat, the sweet musky perfume, the memory of a sensory heaven he had long imagined exploring.

Blood racing from the thrill of almost having been caught, he set off briskly for Cato Street, whistling his way across a London wreathed in black, clothed in black, draped in black. His mood withstood the bombardment of ribbons, crepe, and armbands, for over half an hour, but the memory of death wreathed every doorway. Fear of death beckoned from the headlines of every newspaper. His own concerns about the plotted deaths of the members of Parliament crept under his coat, chilling him.

Memory reared its mournful head. His mother’s death had been a cold one.

Dipping his nose into the muffler at his throat, he caught whiff of the odor of Dulcie. She clung to his shirt, to his skin, the headiest of perfumes. The idea of bedding her nightly, of waking next to her every morning for the rest of his days lifted him on the wings of imagination. He daydreamed of his children in her arms, pictured himself quit of this gut wrenching business of intrigue and disguise.

The image wavered. What would he do with himself, with his insights and specialized knowledge? What was he suited for if not to help king and country?

Best allow ideas of himself as husband and father wither and die, like the dried flowers, dark and feathery in the wind, blown from mourning wreaths whose sole purpose, as was his--to remember the king.

Clothed, hair arranged, outwardly the same as every morning, inwardly changed, and exultant in the change, she descended the stairs, heart aflutter, her father still to face. How could one feel wonderful and wicked at the same time--justified and guilty--content and dissatisfied?

A dire urgency, a sense of doom, hung about the breakfast table. It troubled her.

Her father said nothing, did not even look at her as she poured coffee, filled a plate and sat down opposite him. He peered a moment over the edge of the news. “You look worn, my girl. I am told you did not sleep well. Do you leave your window open?”

Her mouth dropped open. Guilt flamed in her cheeks, thrummed in her nether regions.

He stared at her as if he knew the whole. Brows raised he said wisely. “I would not have you take chill, as the King has.”

Relief flooded her as quickly as had guilt. Devil take this subterfuge. “The King is ill?” The words stuck in her throat. Too close to the truth did they tiptoe, too close to deception.

“An inflammation of the lung. Stood too long in yesterday’s damp. The paper says there is fear of pleurisy, that he is “severely indisposed.” Halford and Tierney have bled over a hundred ounces from the poor fellow.”

“So many?” She frowned, felt a twinge in her back. “They will leave him weak.”

“I fear we shall bury two kings within the same month, in addition to the Duke of Kent. Death’s specter plots to overthrow the crown!”

Dulcie thought of the radicals, of the bombs they built with hopes of just such an outcome. Her hand shook in taking up the cup her father offered.

“Do you think it can be the Duke of York who orders so much blood taken from his poor brother?” He chuckled, the whole idea a jest, “A plot to bleed him dry, so that he may take the throne.”

“We are all of us capable of deception.” She stirred a cloud of milk into her tea.

Chapter Thirty-Six

Monday, February 14, 1820

The Selwyn Townhouse, Wellclose Square, London

Black. Everywhere black. Crepe draped hats, cockades, gloves, muffs, tippits and shawls. Dulcie stood at the window, looking out over the square, drawn into a blackness of mood in the misty pall that cloaked this St. Valentine’s Day, the day before the king’s funeral. There was no theatre, no opera, no lighthearted distraction from the contemplation of death, from contemplation of a loved one’s absence and silence. She had not heard from Roger. Today, of all days, she longed for a word, a gesture, a note.

His silence should not have surprised her. Too many years he had disappointed her. And yet, she was surprised. Downhearted. How could he make love to her and then go away, for days on end, without the slightest indication he was as affected as she?

Two weeks she had spent night and day in expectation of his appearance. Fourteen days wasted in searching the faces and colors of those around her, on the street, in crowds, sure she would find him, perhaps in disguise. Fourteen nights flown, lying awake listening for the scratch of the window latch, the slide of the window in its casement.

She saw nothing, heard nothing. Her spirits sagged.

She joined Lydia in listless past times: card games, shopping expeditions. Black ribbons must be purchased, black mits, lace, shoes, hats. She accepted invitations from Captain Stapleton to visit the library where no book interested her, to walk the nearby docks where she could think of no place a ship might take her but into Roger’s arms. Stapleton drove her and Lydia about town, invited her to walk in the parks, spent many an evening at her father’s table. All the while she desired nothing more than another man’s arm to lean upon, another voice in her ear.

Today the Captain brought flowers, a colorful nosegay of hothouse pinks and cheerful yellow daffodils. He blessed her with a crate of hothouse fruit, completely decadent so early in the season, the colors of summer in oranges, pineapple and melon. A thoughtful man, a persistent suitor, the Captain.

Stapleton entertained her with talk of the latest royal to-do in walking from Hyde Park by way of Upper Grosvenor, and thence along North Audley to Oxford Street.

“Our new king insists that his wife should be omitted from the Liturgy at his father’s funeral. He will not have her name mentioned.”

She dared not mention his name, the name that filled her thoughts. Roger Ramsay. “Rogering” Ramsay. And she had been rogered.

“A pity to see a Queen scorned, even a poor queen,” she said quietly.

Was she a lover scorned that Roger distanced himself so completely?

Stapleton went on. “So unhappy is he with her company, he means to approach the House with a bill of separation. He will not have her to wife now he is to be king.”

“How can two people so disgrace one another?”

His brows rose, surprised.

Her voice rose along with her ire. “Their reported infidelities are quite shocking. Why would two people marry with so little in common, with so little respect for one another?”

He shrugged. “Indeed, I should hate to be so weakly linked.”