me into this mess!”
His eyes dropped to her waistline, frankly ironical.
“You shock me,” he said politely, seeming not shocked at all.
She felt the blood surge up in her face once more, hotter than before.
“You know perfectly well that’s not what I mean!”
He hid a smile in his sherry cup, eyes crinkling at her.
“My apologies, Miss Fraser. What did you mean, then?”
She took a deep sip of tea to cover her confusion, and felt the comforting heat run down her throat and into her chest.
“I mean,” she said through her teeth, “this particular mess; being put on show like a piece of bloodstock with doubtful lines. Being held up by the scruff of the neck like an orphaned kitten, in hopes somebody will take me in! Being—being left alone here in the first place,” she ended, her voice trembling unexpectedly.
“Why are you alone here?” Lord John asked, quite gently. “I should have thought that your mother might have—”
“She wanted to. I wouldn’t let her. Because she had to—that is, he—oh, it’s all such a fucking mess!” She dropped her head into her hands and stared wretchedly at the tabletop; not crying, but not far from it, either.
“I can see that.” Lord John leaned forward and put his empty glass back on the tray. “It’s very late, my dear, and if you will pardon my observing it, you are in need of rest.” He stood up and laid a hand lightly on her shoulder; oddly, it seemed only friendly, and not condescending, as another man’s might.
“As it seems my journey to Wilmington is unnecessary, I think I will accept your aunt’s kind invitation to remain here for a little. We will speak again, and see whether perhaps there is at least some palliative for your situation.”
59
BLACKMAIL
The commode was magnificent, a beautiful piece of smooth carved walnut that mingled appeal with convenience. Particularly convenient on a rainy, cold night like this. She fumbled sleepily with the lid in the dark, lit by lightning flashes from the window, then sat down, sighing with relief as the pressure on her bladder eased.
Evidently pleased with the additional internal space thus provided, Osbert performed a series of lazy somersaults, making her belly undulate in ghostly waves beneath her white flannel nightgown. She stood up slowly—she did almost everything slowly these days—feeling pleasantly drugged with sleep.
She paused by the rumpled bed, looking out at the stark beauty of the hills and the rain-lashed trees. The glass of the window was icy to the touch, and the clouds rolled down from the mountains, black-bellied and growling with thunder. It wasn’t snowing, but it was a nasty night and no mistake.
And what was it like in the high mountains now? Had they reached a village that would shelter them? Had they found Roger? She shivered involuntarily, though the embers still glowed red in the hearth and the room was warm. She felt the irresistible pull of her bed, promising warmth and, even more, the lure of dreams in which she might escape the chronic nag of fear and guilt.
She turned to the door, though, and pulled her cloak from the peg behind it. The urgency of pregnancy might necessitate her using the commode in her room, but she was resolved that no slave would ever carry a chamber pot for her—not as long as she could walk. She wrapped the cloak tightly around her, took the lidded pewter receptacle from its cabinet, and stepped quietly into the corridor.
It was very late; all the candles had been put out, and the stale smell of dead fires lay in the stairwell, but she could see clearly enough by the flicker of the lightning as she made her way downstairs. The kitchen door was unbolted, a piece of carelessness for which she blessed the cook; no need to make noise struggling one-handed with the heavy bolt.
Freezing rain struck her face and whooshed up beneath the hem of her nightgown, making her gasp. Once past the first shock of cold, though, she enjoyed it; the violence of it was exhilarating, the wind strong enough to lift her cloak in billowing surges that made her feel light on her feet for the first time in months.
She swept in a flurry to the necessary house, rinsed out the pot in the drench of rain that poured from its gutters, then stood in the paved yard, letting the fresh wind sweep into her face and slash her cheeks with rain. She wasn’t sure if this was expiation or exultation—a need to share the discomfort her parents might be facing, or some more pagan rite—a need to lose herself by joining in the ferocity of the elements. Either or both, it didn’t matter; she stepped deliberately under the spout of the gutter, letting the water pound against her scalp and soak her hair and shoulders.
Gasping and shaking water from her hair like a dog, she stepped back—and stopped, her eye caught by a sudden flash of light. Not lightning; a steady beam that shone for a moment, then vanished.
A door in the slave quarters opened for a moment, then closed. Was someone coming? Someone was; she could hear footsteps on the gravel, and took another step back into the shadows—the last thing she wanted was to explain what she was doing out here.
The lightning showed him clearly as he passed, and she felt a jar of recognition. Lord John Grey, hurrying shirt sleeved and bareheaded, his fair hair unbound and blowing in the wind, evidently oblivious to the cold and rain. He passed without seeing her, and vanished under the overhang of the kitchen porch.
Realizing that she was in danger of being locked out, she ran after him, awkward but still fast. He was just closing the door when she hit it with her shoulder. She burst into the kitchen and stood dripping, Lord John goggling at her in disbelief.
“Nice night for a walk,” she said, half breathless. “Isn’t it?” She wiped back her wet hair, and with a cordial nod slipped past him, out, and up the stairs, her bare feet leaving wet half-moon prints on the dark, polished wood. She listened, but heard no steps behind her as she reached her room.
She left cloak and gown spread out before the fire to dry, and having toweled her hair and face, climbed naked into bed. She was shivering, but the feel of the cotton sheets on her bare skin was wonderful. She stretched, wiggling her toes, then rolled on her side, curling tightly around her center of gravity, letting the constant heat from within tendril outward, gradually reaching her skin, forming a small cocoon of warmth around her.
She replayed the scene on the footpath once more in memory, and very gradually, the shadowy thoughts that had been rattling around in her mind for days fell together into a rational shape.
Lord John treated her always with attention and respect—often with amusement or admiration—but there was something missing. She had not been able to identify it—for some time had not even been aware of it—but now she knew what it was, without doubt.
She was accustomed, as are most striking women, to the open admiration of men, and this she had from Lord John as well. But below such admiration was usually a deeper awareness, more subtle than glance or gesture, a vibration like the distant chime of a bell, a visceral acknowledgment of herself as female. She had thought she felt it from Lord John when they met—but it had been gone on subsequent meetings, and she had concluded that she had mistaken it at first.
She should have guessed before, she thought; she’d encountered that inner indifference once before, in the roommate of a casual boyfriend. But then, Lord John hid it very well; she might never have guessed, were it not for that chance encounter in the yard. No, he didn’t chime for her. But when he came out of the servants’ quarters, he had been ringing like a firebell.
She wondered briefly if her father knew, but dismissed the possibility. After his experiences in Wentworth Prison, he couldn’t possibly hold a man with that preference in such warm regard as she knew he felt for Lord John.
She rolled onto her back. The polished cotton of the sheet slid across the bare skin of breasts and thighs, caressing. She half noticed the feeling, and as her nipple hardened she raised a hand to cup her breast in reflex, felt Roger’s large warm hand in memory, and a sudden surge of wanting. Then in memory she felt the s
udden grasp of rougher hands, pinching and mauling, and wanting changed at once to sickened fury. She flipped onto her stomach, arms crossed beneath her breasts and face buried in her pillow, legs clenched and teeth gritted in futile defense.
The baby was a large, uncomfortable lump; impossible to lie that way now. With a small half-spoken curse, she rolled over and jerked out of bed, out from under the betraying, seductive sheets.
She walked naked through the half-lit room, and stood again by the window, looking out at the pounding rain. Her hair hung damp down her back, and cold was coming through the glass, pebbling the white flesh of arms and thighs and belly. She made no move either to cover herself or to go back to bed, but only stood there, one hand on the gently squirming bulge, looking out.
It would be too late soon. She had known when they left that it was already too late—so had her mother. Neither of them had wanted to admit it to the other, though; they had both pretended that Roger would come back in time, that he and she would sail to Hispaniola, and find their way back through the stones—together.
She laid her other hand against the glass; at once, a mist of condensation sprang up, outlining her fingers. It was early March; maybe three months left, maybe less. It would take a week, maybe two, to travel to the coast. No ship would risk the treacherous Outer Banks in March, though. Early April, at the soonest, before a journey could be undertaken. How long to the West Indies? Two weeks, three?
The end of April, then. And a few days to make their way inland, find the cave; it would be slow, fighting through the jungle, more than eight months pregnant. And dangerous, though that didn’t matter much, considering.
That would be if Roger were here now. But he wasn’t. He might never come, though that was a possibility she fought hard against envisioning. If she didn’t think about all the ways he could die, then he wouldn’t die; it was one article of her stubborn faith; the others were that he wasn’t dead yet, and that her mother would come back before the child was born. As to her father—rage boiled up again, as it did whenever she thought of him—him or Bonnet—so she tried to think of either of them as little as possible.
She prayed, of course, as hard as she could, but she wasn’t constituted for praying and waiting; she was made for action. If only she could have gone with them, to find Roger!
She hadn’t had a choice about that, though. Her jaw tightened, and her hand splayed flat against her belly. She hadn’t had a choice about a lot of things. But she had made one choice—to keep her child—and now she’d have to live with the consequences of it.
She was beginning to shiver. Abruptly she turned away from the storm, and went to the fire. A small tongue of flame played along the blackened back of a red-crackled log, the heart of the embers glowing gold and white.
She sank down on the hearth rug, closing her eyes as the heat of the fire sent waves of comfort over her cold skin, caressing as the stroke of a hand. This time she kept all thought of Bonnet at bay, refusing him entrance to her mind, concentrating fiercely instead on the few precious memories she had of Roger.
…put your hand on my heart. Tell me if it stops…She could hear him, half breathless, half choked between laughter and passion.
How the hell do you know that? The rough feel of curly hairs under her palms, the smooth hard curves of his shoulders, the throb of the pulse in the side of his throat when she’d pulled him down to her and put her mouth on him, wanting in her urgency to bite him, to taste him, to breathe the salt and dust of his skin.
The dark and secret places of him, that she knew only by feel, recalled as soft weight, rolling and vulnerable in her palm, a complexity of curve and depth that yielded reluctantly to her probing fingertips (Oh, God, don’t stop, but careful, aye? Oh!), the strange wrinkled silk that grew taut and smooth, filled her hand rising, silent and incredible as the stalk of a night-blooming flower that opens as you watch.
His gentleness as he touched her (Christ, I wish I could see your face, to know how it is for you, am I doing well by ye. Is it good, just here? Tell me, Bree, talk to me…), as she explored him, and then the moment when she had pushed him too far, her mouth on his nipple. She felt again the sudden amazing surge of power in him, as he lost all sense of restraint and seized her, lifting her as though she weighed nothing, rolled her back against the straw and took her, half hesitating as he remembered her freshly riven flesh, then answering the demand of her nails in his back to come to her fiercely, forcing her past the fear of impalement, into acceptance, and welcome, and finally into a frenzy that matched his own, rupturing the last membrane of reticence between them, joining them forever in a flood of sweat and musk and blood and semen.
She moaned out loud, shuddered and lay still, too weak even to move her hand away. Her heart was thumping, very slowly. Her belly was tight as a drum, the last of the spasms slowly relaxing its grip on her swollen womb. One half of her body blazed with heat, the other was cool and dark.
After a moment she rolled onto her hands and knees, and crawled away from the fire. She hauled herself onto the bed like a wounded beast, and lay half stunned, ignoring the currents of heat and cold that played over her.
At last she stirred, pulled a single quilt over her, and lay staring at the wall, hands crossed in protection above her baby. Yes, it was too late. Sensation and yearning must be put aside, along with love and anger. She must resist the mindless pull of both body and emotion. There were decisions to be made.
* * *
It took three days to convince herself of the virtue of her plan, to overcome her own scruples, and, at last, to find a suitable time and place in which to catch him alone. But she was thorough and she was patient; she had all the time in the world—nearly three months of it.
On Tuesday, her opportunity came at last. Jocasta was closeted in her study with Duncan Innes and the account books, Ulysses—with a brief, inscrutable look at the closed door of the study—had gone to the kitchen to superintend the preparations for yet another lavish dinner in his Lordship’s honor, and she had gotten rid of Phaedre by sending her on horseback to Barra Meadows to fetch a book Jenny Ban Campbell had promised her.
With a fresh blue camlet gown that matched her eyes, and a heart beating in her chest like a trip-hammer, she set out to stalk her victim. She found him in the library, reading the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius by the French windows, the morning sun streaming over his shoulder making his smooth fair hair gleam like buttered toffee.
He looked up from his book when she came in—a hippopotamus could have made a more graceful entrance, she thought crossly, catching her skirt on the corner of a bric-a-brac table in her nervousness—then graciously laid it aside, springing to his feet to bow over her hand.
“No, I don’t want to sit down, thank you.” She shook her head at the seat he was offering her. “I wondered—that is, I thought I’d go for a walk. Would you like to come with me?”
There was frost on the lower panes of the French door, a stiff breeze whining past the house, and soft chairs, brandy, and blazing fire within. But Lord John was a gentleman.
“There is nothing I should like better,” he gallantly assured her, and abandoned Marcus Aurelius without a backward glance.
It was a bright day, but very cold. Muffled in thick cloaks, they turned into the kitchen garden, where the high walls gave them some shelter from the wind. They exchanged small, breathless comments on the brightness of the day, assured each other that they were not cold at all, and came through a small archway into the brick-walled herbary. Brianna glanced around them; they were quite alone, and she would be able to see anyone coming along the walk. Best not waste time, then.
“I have a proposal to make to you,” she said.
“I am sure any notion of yours must necessarily be delightful, my dear,” he said, smiling slightly.
“Well, I don’t know about that,” she said, and took a deep breath. “But here goes. I want you to marry me.”
He kept smiling, evidently waiting for t
he punch line.
“I mean it,” she said.
The smile didn’t altogether go away, but it altered. She wasn’t sure whether he was dismayed at her gaucherie or just trying not to laugh, but she suspected the latter.
“I don’t want any of your money,” she assured him. “I’ll sign a paper saying so. And you don’t need to live with me, either, though it’s probably a good idea for me to go to Virginia with you, at least for a little while. As for what I could do for you…” She hesitated, knowing that hers was the weaker side of the bargain. “I’m strong, but that doesn’t mean much to you, since you have servants. I’m a good manager, though—I can keep accounts, and I think I know how to run a farm. I do know how to build things. I could manage your property in Virginia while you were in England. And…you have a young son, don’t you? I’ll look after him; I’d be a good mother to him.”
Lord John had stopped dead in the path during this speech. Now he leaned slowly back against the brick wall, casting his eyes up in a silent prayer for understanding.
“Dear God in heaven,” he said. “That I should live to hear an offer like that!” Then he lowered his head and gave her a direct and piercing look.
“Are you out of your mind?”
“No,” she said, with an attempt at keeping her own composure. “It’s a perfectly reasonable suggestion.”
“I have heard,” he said, rather cautiously, with an eye to her belly, “that women in an expectant condition are somewhat…excitable, in consequence of their state. I confess, though, that my experience is distressingly limited with respect to…that is—perhaps I should send for Dr. Fentiman?”
She drew herself up to her full height, put a hand on the wall and leaned toward him, deliberately looking down on him, menacing him with her size.
“No, you should not,” she said, in measured tones. “Listen to me, Lord John. I’m not crazy, I’m not frivolous, and I don’t mean it to be an inconvenience to you in any way—but I’m dead serious.”
The cold had reddened his fair skin, and there was a drop of moisture glistening on the tip of his nose. He wiped it on a fold of his cloak, eyeing her with something between interest and horror. At least he’d stopped laughing.
She felt mildly sick, but she’d have to do it. She’d hoped it could be avoided, but there seemed no other way.
“If you don’t agree to marry me,” she said, “I’ll expose you.”
“You’ll do what?” His usual mask of urbanity had disappeared, leaving puzzlement and the beginnings of wariness in its stead.
She was wearing woolen mittens, but her fingers felt frozen. So did everything else, except the warm lump of her slumbering child.
“I know what you were doing—the other night, at the slave quarters. I’ll tell everyone; my aunt, Mr. Campbell, the sheriff. I’ll write letters,” she said, her lips feeling numb even as she uttered the ridiculous threat. “To the Governor, and the Governor of Virginia. They put p-pederasts in the pillory here; Mr. Campbell told me so.”
A frown drew his brows together; they were so fair that they scarcely showed against his skin when he stood in strong light. They reminded her of Lizzie’s.
“Stop looming over me, if you please.”
He took hold of her wrist and pulled it down with a force that surprised her. He was small but much stronger than she had supposed, and for the first time, she was slightly afraid of what she was doing.
He took her firmly by the elbow and propelled her into motion, away from the house. The thought struck her that perhaps he meant to take her down to the river, out of sight, and try to drown her. She thought it unlikely, but still resisted the direction of his urging, and turned back into the square-laid paths of the kitchen garden instead.
He made no demur, but went with her, though it meant walking head-on into the wind. He didn’t speak until they had turned once more, and reached a sheltered corner by the onion bed.
“I am halfway tempted to submit to your outrageous proposal,” he said at last, the corner of his mouth twitching—whether with fury or amusement, she couldn’t tell.
“It would certainly please your aunt. It would outrage your mother. And it would teach you to play with fire, I do assure you.” She caught a gleam in his eye that gave her a sudden surge of doubt about her conclusions as to his preferences. She drew back from him a bit.
“Oh. I hadn’t thought of that—that you might…men and women both, I mean.”
“I was married,” he pointed out, with some sarcasm.
“Yes, but I thought that was probably the same kind of thing I’m suggesting now—just a formal arrangement, I mean. That’s what made me think of it in the first place, once I realized that you—” She broke off with an impatient gesture. “Are you telling me that you do like to go to bed with women?”
He raised one eyebrow.
“Would that make a substantial difference to your plans?”
“Well…” she said uncertainly. “Yes. Yes, it would. If I’d known that, I wouldn’t have suggested it.”
“ ‘Suggested,’ she says,” he muttered. “Public denunciation? The pillory? Suggested?”
The blood burned so hotly in her cheeks, she was surprised not to see the cold air turn to steam around her face.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I wouldn’t have done it. You have to believe me, I really wouldn’t have said a word to anybody. It’s only when you laughed, I thought—anyway, it doesn’t matter. If you did want to sleep with me, I couldn’t marry you—it wouldn’t be right.”
He closed his eyes very tight and held them squinched shut for a minute. Then he opened one light blue eye and looked at her.
“Why not?” he asked.
“Because of Roger,” she said, and was infuriated to hear her voice break on the name. Still more infuriated to feel a hot tear escape to run down her cheek.
“Damn it!” she said. “Damn it to hell! I wasn’t even going to think about him!”
She swiped the tear angrily away, and clenched her teeth.
“Maybe you’re right,” she said. “Maybe it is being pregnant. I cry all the time, over nothing.”
“I rather doubt it is nothing,” he said dryly.
She took a deep breath, the cold air hollowing her chest. There was one last card to play, then.
“If you do like women…I couldn’t—I mean, I don’t want to sleep with you regularly. And I wouldn’t mind your sleeping with anybody else—male or female—”