At Your Pleasure Page 10

  Lord John looked to his rings, their splendor muted by the sullen light; then ran a finger beneath his steinkirk to loosen it. His much-lamented headache had not prevented him from dressing up as though for fine company. “I only mean to say—”

  “That you fear the marchioness had some hand in your lengthy slumber.” Adrian had kept the truth of his own experience last night to himself—not to shelter her, but because he’d understood how the boy would react to such tidings. Lord John had not yet learned—and perhaps never would—that the appearance of defeat sometimes served as a very useful weapon.

  “I will question her,” Adrian said. “Gently, as befits a lady.”

  Lord John’s jaw ticked forward. “Gentle won’t serve. She’s a stubborn, deceitful, Pope-loving bitch—”

  “Watch yourself,” Adrian murmured.

  Lord John, meeting his eyes, abruptly sat down.

  “Our concern is for the brother. Unless your focus strays?”

  “No. I didn’t mean—”

  Disrespect, he was going to finish, but Adrian had no interest in listening to him lie through his teeth. “Force persuades a person to speak, but it cannot guarantee his honesty. Quite the reverse: it will extract confessions from innocents and lies from simple sinners, neither of which would be to our purpose.”

  Lord John’s head tipped. Now he looked interested. “What do you mean to do, then?”

  “I mean to persuade her tongue to loosen,” Adrian said with a shrug. “Or rather, to let nature persuade it for me. Torture need not always involve knives.”

  For two days Rivenham kept her locked in her rooms, an armed guard at the door. Grizel was not allowed to remain with her, only to come in the morning to dress her, and later in the day to deliver meals of bread, cold chicken, and cheese.

  Nora put on bright smiles for her maid, who looked pale and drawn. Grizel told her in a whisper how Lord John had railed at Mrs. Fairfax and Hooton; how Rivenham had dismissed half the household; and how Montrose hid in his rooms like a spineless cur when his advice might have guided the rest of the servants.

  Nora told herself she should be comforted by the fact that Rivenham’s men had not lifted a hand to anyone. But then, she knew the reason for it: Rivenham would not waste effort on those who had only been following orders. He would save his punishment for the woman who gave them.

  She should have felt fear but she was numb to it. Her body ached queerly, as though she had suffered a great fall. Part of herself still seemed to languish in the dark of the larder, reeling from the unthinkable tidings he had shared with her.

  For so long she had despaired, and then for so long she had loathed him, for abandoning her to the fate that his own actions had forced on her.

  But he had not abandoned her. He had come back.

  It changed nothing to know that now. But it would have changed so much had she known it before. To have proof that his love had been true; that he had not merely trifled with her; that he had risked as much for her as she had done for him . . .

  The knowledge would have sustained her on so many nights when she had longed for an end.

  Her mind did not know how to compass such knowledge, which rendered her whole history strange to her.

  She stayed by her window in the sitting room and watched the gray, wet days pass.

  When, on the second night, the door to her chambers opened to admit three of Rivenham’s men, her tired mind leapt to the most vile possibility. Each of these men-at-arms stood a head taller than she did. They carried wine and goblets and rush-bottomed chairs, and they ignored her when she ordered them to leave. Seating themselves in her sitting room, they talked and drank as though in a tavern.

  When it became clear they had no intention of leaving, she retreated to her bedroom.

  That was when the real clamor began.

  She lay awake listening to what sounded like pots being knocked together; to deliberate stomps and the heavy fall of fists against the door. At first it frightened her, but after a time she realized they had no intention of entering the inner chamber. Her heart calmed then, her thoughts clearing enough to fathom a guess: she had been braced for violence, but Rivenham’s revenge would be subtler.

  He meant to forbid her sleep.

  “Wake up.” The voice wove into her dreams, the color of exhaustion, darkest blue, a midnight sky without stars . . .

  Choking! She coughed and pushed upright, struggling to breathe.

  Rivenham lifted away the cup, his red-rimmed eyes meeting hers. “You will not sleep until you answer my questions.”

  She wiped water from her face with the back of her sleeve. Three hours ago, or six, or twelve, she would have cursed him in reply. Fifteen hours ago, still alert enough to master herself, she would have held her tongue and given him a glare that bespoke her disdain. But now she could not muster anything so impassioned. Fatigue combined with hunger churned in her stomach. Her heart seemed to beat in fits. She had fallen asleep sitting against the headboard, and her shoulder blades throbbed from the bruising press of carved oak.

  He rose from the stool by her bed. “Collect yourself,” he said quietly, and walked to the pitcher on the washstand. With movements precise, almost mechanical, he refilled the cup. His expression was serene, as though he were at some mundane task, rather than the coordination of torture.

  She rubbed her hands over her eyes. Torture, yes. He had not laid a hand to her, but his unceasing questions—his denial to her of food, though he broke his fast regularly; his ruthless rousing whenever she dozed—were treatments for an enemy. To think that only twenty hours ago—awakened by him at dawn, from a sleep that had overtaken her despite the noise of his men—she had, for a moment, been glad to see him! He had spoken into her ear and for the brief muzzy space of a heartbeat, longing for him had run freely through her, shining like a river beneath a sunlit sky.

  But he no longer cared to discuss the past. He wished only to know the purpose of the men who had paid a midnight visit to Hodderby.

  He set down the pitcher, staring at it for a long moment. “Will you speak?”

  Will you speak?

  Will you speak?

  Will you speak?

  If she heard that question again, it would snap her mind. “No,” she said hoarsely.

  He turned back from the washstand and fixed a steady look on her. His clothing befit a Puritan or penitent, unbroken black save for the white neckcloth at his throat. A leather tie bound his silver-blond hair tightly away from his face. “I am sorry to hear that,” he said. Taking up the cup, he started toward her.

  His smooth advance struck some primal alarm through her. She forced her stiff legs to straighten; with a grunt, she slipped to her feet.

  The floor rocked beneath her.

  She grabbed hold of a bed poster, breathing hard.

  “Sleep would cure you,” he said.

  God above, she had never been so tired. “The devil take you!”

  He stopped just out of arm’s reach. “Perhaps I am already in his service.” He smiled slightly. “I recommend you do not count on God, Lady Towe, when I am in the room.”

  The blasphemy shocked her. What had he become? What monster stood before her? His face seemed to ripple before her eyes.

  His hands closed on her shoulders. Sharply he said, “Sit down.”

  She surrendered to his urging. The bed met her, softer than a cloud, more deeply drugging than any posset. It rose beneath her like a mother’s hand, cradling her. In the night, on a full moon, there was music in the grasses, soft winds that plucked the blades like lute strings. The sky above was velvet, the moon a mirror. Look up, Adrian whispered, see your fair face reflected in the heavens . . .

  “Awake!”

  Fingers bit into her shoulders. Sickness was boiling up in her gut. Her heart thudded like the kicks of a mule.

  With great effort she pried her eyes open.

  “Adrian,” she whispered.

  The stubble on his sharp jaw looked
a shade darker than the hair on his head. That stubble had not been visible when first he had entered. Was that a trick of the oil lamps set about the room? They cast a shivering light. How much time had passed since he’d first roused her?

  “Listen to me,” he said, his words like ice. “Soon I will hand this charge to Lord John. I have given him instructions not to harm you, but you will not want to depend on his obedience.”

  Her face was wet. Why? She wiped droplets of water from her cheek. He upended a cup. She was forgetting things now; her very mind seemed to spin, making truths hard to hold. Objects danced around her. “Go, then,” she said.

  The slurring of her voice dimly surprised her. “Go,” she tried again. A fist seemed preferable to this misery. Fists were simple. One did not need to remain awake to suffer them.

  His grip flexed on her arms. “Who were the men who came? What did they take?”

  She blinked. The coldness of his speech, the ruthless intensity of his focus, made him like a stranger. Perhaps this was not Adrian after all but some demon come to inhabit his body—an automaton whose instructions were issued from hell. The dim light from the nearby lamp could not account for how his green eyes burned. Shadows lay over his face, and his mouth looked chiseled from stone. He looked down at her without kindness or recognition.

  Again he said, “Who were those men?”

  What stupid questions. Spoken often enough, words became nonsense. She looked away. Pitch blackness pressed against the window. Outside the lamp’s radius, the room looked drawn in shades of charcoal. Her skirts of gray silk tabby puddled on the darker flagstones.

  She was on the floor?

  She tried to sit up. His hands aided her. Yes, she was on the floor. The stone bruised her buttocks; her knees ached as though she had fallen onto them. How had it happened? She did not remember leaving the bed.

  “Look at me.”

  She flinched at the crack of this command. He palmed her cheek, sliding his fingers through her hair; only then did she realize that her head had been lolling.

  In one forceful move he yanked her up onto her knees. A pin clattered against stone. Cold hanks of hair slithered down her nape. She swayed in his grip. The pain in her scalp made tears prick her eyes. Oh, to lie down . . . to sleep . . .

  “Speak.” A new hoarseness roughened his voice. “Speak, damn you.”

  She would speak. She must speak. “Don’t touch me.”

  “I will cease to touch you when you answer my question.”

  What sort of man would persist in this odd torment? Why did he not strike her? Strike me, she thought. End this. “You are the devil.”

  “Yes. You have said it before.”

  So she had. And not only tonight, but . . . long ago, too. She remembered the argument. He had begged her to elope with him, as though there were a chaplain or priest in the kingdom who would wed a Catholic to a Protestant. But no, he had not begged . . . he had dared her, eyes laughing, mouth warm on her throat.

  Come sin with me, he’d said, in the eyes of God. Let our firstborn child decide which church has the right of it.

  Her knees gave way. She would have fallen but his fist in her hair tightened.

  “Wake up!”

  The shout in her ear startled a sob from her. Why was he so cruel?

  He pulled her hair, forcing her face upward. His eyes were not laughing now. They were bloodshot. Vividly green amidst a tracery of red.

  Why, he was exhausted, too.

  He was only a man.

  “I remember when I called you the devil.” The words seemed to float from her, drawn by an invisible hand, nothing to do with her lips. “I almost came away with you. So close.”

  “No,” he said after a moment. “You never came near to it. You were no rebel.”

  She felt dim surprise. “But I was.” Had he never understood this? She would have thrown over the world for him. But she had wanted, required, him to risk the same. To ask her father for her hand . . . even if only to be refused.

  That was all she had needed: equal courage from him. For all the passion he had shown her, he had ever been guarded, self-contained, in company. Even her brother had not guessed what transpired between them, and in a strange way she had resented Adrian for it. His ability to pretend she meant nothing to him . . . It had troubled her. She had wanted a wildness from him to match hers.

  But in the end, he had come for her. He had employed courage and boldness for her sake, but only in the end. What if he had dared it sooner?

  She took a breath. “It is good,” she said. “Good that you kept your head so long.”

  A line appeared between his brows. “What do you mean?”

  “If you had announced our love . . . if you had approached my father and been denied by him, if I had run away with you . . . then where would we be now?”

  His face became very still. Like a mask. “We would be man and wife.”

  Here, on her knees, at his mercy, the notion struck her as a joke. “Oh, yes,” she said, her voice torn between laughter and tears. “Man and wife. And dead of poverty.” Their love could not have ended happily. Either way, they had been doomed. “Or alone and friendless, forsaken by everyone.”

  Something moved through his eyes. His hand loosened in her hair. “We are alone anyway, Nora.”

  Her breath stuttered. Yes. So they were. Here, in the hushed silence before dawn, those words felt weighted with profound truth.

  His hand slid free of her. Slowly she eased back to the ground, sitting heavily, the inconstant circle of lamplight spilling over her knees. Now that he was not touching her, the chill air seemed to wrap around her like a shroud.

  Tears stabbed her sore eyes. This great tiredness left no strength to resist them. “Yes,” she said. “Alone.” Cosmo would be much like Towe. Her father and David loved her, but with no true understanding of her. She was alone.

  Lips touched the corner of her eye. Hot and soft. Confusion yielded to amazement, spreading through her from the place his mouth touched. His breath bathed her cheek. Her wits had no strength to interpret this turn.

  But she had no strength to revile it, either. Slowly, so as not to dislodge his mouth, she set her forehead to his shoulder. The darkness there was softer.

  His lips slipped up to her temple. “Don’t cry,” he said, barely more than a breath. “As you said: what is done is done.”

  She drew a shaking breath. “It is not done.” Else, why did the feeling of his lips call out her soul? He was a brute, a hell-bound villain, but his kiss . . . It felt like nothing so much as a benediction.

  He misunderstood her words. “Simply answer my questions and it will be done.” His voice was low now, his breath warm on her ear as she leaned against him, her forehead on his shoulder. “Then you will sleep as long as you like.”

  She took a deep breath. He did not smell like brimstone but like a man, flesh and blood. His shoulder was solid, strapped with muscle. A woman might depend on it for support.

  He had not always been a villain.

  He had come back for her.

  The revelation grew stranger the longer she dwelled on it. This cold man had risked everything for her, once. This man, whom every woman in London admired; she had seen how they fawned on him. Men feared him, if they were wise. She should fear him. She had feared him minutes ago.

  His palm settled between her shoulder blades, a warm and steady pressure, as though to hold her in place. But then his fingertips trailed down her spine, patient and slow, reaching the small of her back, returning again. They hesitated, then repeated their journey.

  They opened on her waist and grasped her lightly, as though she were precious.

  “Make me speak.” The words slipped from her in a whisper. If only he could make her. “I will not betray him otherwise.” And if she did not betray him . . . she must lift her head and move away, for this man could not be hers.

  He made some adjustment that brought their torsos together, then put her face into th
e cradle where his throat met his shoulder. His head bowed, and she felt the soft brush of his hair over her cheek. “Even though he betrays you? To put you in this position showed no love or care for you. No man who loved you would risk you so.”

  There were different kinds of love, then. The one on which David depended was forged of duty and blood. He counted on her as he might count on his own limbs to perform his bidding. “He needs me.” She herself had needed David in the past, and he had not failed her then.

  “Think, for once, of yourself.”

  She could feel the vibrations of his voice through his flesh. She closed her eyes, and—ah, dear God, he did not shake her. It felt blissful to lie against him. The darkness behind her lids swirled in dizzying circles.

  Perhaps they were always meant to meet in darkness. Mayhap it was only daylight, and the world’s watching eyes, that conspired against them.

  His arms closed around her—he was lifting her, pulling her into his lap. This felt now like a dream, and she submitted peacefully as his hand around her ankles lifted her feet onto his long thighs. He sat cross-legged, cradling her as though he still loved her.

  Sanity still lurked somewhere within. It kicked hard against her complacence. She could not trust him.

  “You mean to kill my brother.” She must remind herself of this, cling to this truth rather than to him.

  “No,” he said.

  How simple the denial. She might have accepted it and let him hold her like this until he tired of it. But she had promises to keep. She had a duty. “You will take him to London,” she said into the hot skin of his throat. “Can you guarantee his safety there?”

  His answer did not come immediately. “I mean to prevent a war, Nora.”

  “Noble,” she said. “But not if the cost is David’s life.”

  His grip tightened on her back. “Know you how many lives would be spared by averting this war your brother foments? My own people—so many of them lured by false promises and predictions—they are in no danger from their government; but if they believe they are to be killed for their religion, why shouldn’t they take up arms? And then the lies spread by your brother and his allies will lead them to their deaths, as surely as though those lies had been the truth.”