Company Of Rogues: An Unwilling Bride Part 7

"If you value your skin, Miss Armitage, you will leave."

Beth looked at one tightly clenched fist on the cold stone bal.u.s.trade and fled.

If the duke and d.u.c.h.ess, sitting quietly reading, noticed anything untoward in Beth's appearance, they did not show it. When she said she wished to retire after a tiring day, the d.u.c.h.ess rang the bell by her hand. One of the footmen came to escort her back to her rooms while another went to inform Redcliff she was needed.

Beth would have forestalled that if she had known how, but she simply endured the woman's ministrations. Then alone in the dark room she a.s.sessed the bleak situation.

The duke had said he could compel his son, but she had not really understood him. Now her fight for freedom had backfired disastrously. The marquess had not been insensitive to the awkwardness of her position and had been disposed to be kind. She had destroyed that and in a way that would shame her to her dying day.

How could she even face him tomorrow, never mind attempt to undo her work and find a basis for marriage between them?

The d.u.c.h.ess watched the young woman leave the room. Miss Armitage had a great deal of control, but it would seem the time alone with Lucien had not gone well. She waited for her son to reappear so she could better judge what had occurred. Eventually she realized he was not coming.

"William, I worry about this plan of yours," she said softly.

The duke looked up from his book. "They will deal well enough in time."

"Did you look at her when she pa.s.sed through this room, William?" she asked. "That poor girl looked bruised."

The duke stiffened. "You think he struck her?"

"No, of course not. Bruised in spirit. But will you care," she asked angrily, "if he beats her as long as she gives him sons?"

"I have a.s.sured Elizabeth of her welfare," said the duke, gazing at his wife. "I will not have her hurt."

"So what are you going to do if he mistreats her, William?" she challenged. "Forbid the marriage? You can't do that and still achieve your purpose. Or will you bring them together for occasional matings, carefully guarded like a dangerous stallion and a prize mare?"

"Yolande!"

She leapt to her feet and challenged him. "Tell me. What are you going to do?"

He rose too, color on his cheeks. "A fine opinion you have of your son, madam! From knowledge of the father, no doubt."

"His manners have been learned from you, Belcraven. And his cruelty."

"You dare accuse me of cruelty?"

She turned away and ran her hands through her hair.

To the duke she looked like the girl he had married and adored. Her figure was still shapely and in the candlelight her hair looked guinea-gold.

"Yes, cruel," she said softly, still facing away. "I never realized until you proposed this plan just how ruthless you could be. All these years I have thought you suffered," she said, turning to stare at him with tear-filled eyes. "Now I see you were merely obsessed with punishing me."

With that she fled the room. Too fast. Straight on the thought he realized how stupid it was to worry about the servants. Why should they not for once see the family as human beings, not remote demiG.o.ds without emotions or flaws?

Punishing her? She thought he had been punishing her all these years? All these years of anguish and self-denial.

He remembered wanting something sharp to break their crystal prison. Was this what he wanted? To be hated? To see Yolande cry?

Seeking an outlet, the duke's anguish turned to rage and found a focus. It was all Arden's fault. Everything was Arden's fault, and now he could not even manage a simple dynastic marriage with grace.

The duke stalked out onto the terrace to castigate his heir but found the place empty in the cold moonlight. Control slowly returned. The girl had been tired after her journey and nervous in a strange place. If there had been trouble, it had doubtless been over nothing and soon smoothed over.

He returned to the drawing room and extinguished the candles one by one. In the moonlight he saw his wife's book where it had tumbled to the floor, and he picked it up, smoothing the pages. She had looked magnificent in her rage. He remembered those rages when they had been young. He felt remarkably young himself tonight.

Again he clamped control upon himself. Their crystal cage was protection as well as restraint. Like an old lion he did not think he could live without the bars.

The marquess had left the terrace by the steps which led down to the knot garden.

He was marrying a wh.o.r.e. He might as well marry Blanche. Much better, in fact. He liked Blanche, and she had her own impeccable sense of honor. What would the duke say if he told him about Elizabeth Armitage's promiscuity?

He wouldn't care as long as the children were legitimate. No, he wouldn't care as long as they appeared to be legitimate. The marquess only had to give them a name. As long as they were Elizabeth's brats they'd be worthy of the de Vaux inheritance.

He slammed his hand into a tree. It hurt, but he didn't care.

He strode over the rolling parkland, relishing his hate. Who did he hate the most? Elizabeth? No. He despised her, but she was just another puppet like himself. The duke? Oh yes, he could hate the duke, but, legitimate or not, the marquess was a de Vaux with all the pride of the line, and he understood the duke's motives. He, too, wanted his sons to carry on the line.

His mother? Yes, that was the person to hate. Her foolish l.u.s.t had caused all this. But with the thought came such desolation he could have howled.

Fury and activity burnt away some of his pain, and he began to think as he retraced his steps to the house. Elizabeth Armitage was not unintelligent, and he had no evidence she was crazed with l.u.s.t. He'd met women like that and she showed none of their concupiscence. She could probably control herself, and he would make sure she did. It offended him to think she was impure, but he could make sure it was no worse than that.

Seeking some kind of solace, he wandered towards the stables, his boyhood haunt. Every second he could steal away from his tutor had been spent here or out riding. It was dark and quiet, but the familiar pungent smell of horse and hay was there, and soft rustlings as the beasts moved in their sleep. He wandered around for a while.

He was about to leave when he heard a faint whistling. He followed the sound to a dark corner where a figure sat on a bale of hay, staring at the moon and whistling out of tune.

"What are you doing here?" he asked in a quiet voice.

The figure started and turned. The marquess recognized the boy he had found in London. Sparrow.

"Nothin', milord."

The boy was scared, and that seemed ridiculous. What was there between them except good luck? They were both misbegotten brats. He'd seen the boy only once after that night, given him his guinea in shillings, and arranged for him to become a stable boy.

Now he sat beside the lad on the bale. "Don't be afraid. If you want to spend your sleep time staring at the moon, it's no skin off my back. If I know Jarvis, he'll take it out of yours if you're slow in your work tomorrow."

"That he will, milord, but I don't need a lot of sleep mostly, and I like to look at the night and listen. It's different from Lunnon."

"I suppose it is. Do you like it here, then?"

"Yus, I does."

The marquess leaned back and looked at the night sky. "Those three stars over there," he said to the boy, "the ones in a straight line. That's Orion."

"That's what?"

"Orion. It's a name given to those particular stars. He was a mighty Greek hunter, but he chose the wrong prey and went after the Pleiades, so Artemis killed him and now he's three stars."

"Lord love us," murmured the boy. "Furriners are a funny lot and no mistake."

The marquess realized his musings were being taken seriously but only laughed. "Let that be a lesson to you, Sparrow, not to cross Greek women. If you can avoid Greeks altogether, it would be as well."

He was on Sparrow's ground here, though, and the boy caught the reference to card sharps and other thieves. "That's what me old friend Micky Rafferty used to say. 'Just learn to know a Greek when you see one.' You'd have liked Micky," he said wistfully. "He were transported for slumming." Suddenly he recollected who he was talking to. "Beggin' your pardon, milord."

"Oh, don't start that again, Sparrow," said the marquess wearily. "You know, I really can't keep calling you that. Don't you have a real name?"

"It is me real moniker."

"Well, what was your mother called?"

"Babs, milord."

The marquess looked at the boy. Even in the past few weeks his face had filled out, and in his st.u.r.dy clothes he looked quite promising. He deserved a better name than Sparrow.

"I know," he said. "We'll change the bird. How would you like to be called Robin?"

"Dunno. I'm used to Sparra."

"But it's not a name for a young man who's going up in the world, is it? Robin Babson. How's that?"

The boy's eyes seemed to shine like the stars in Orion. "Robin Babson? That'd be me?"

"If you want."

"Yus," said the boy fiercely.

"Good." The marquess rose and yawned. "If you like the country you can stay here."

"Forever?"

"Well, unless you want to go elsewhere when you're trained."

"If-if you don't mind, milord, I'd rather stay with you." The worship in the young voice was unmistakable.

The marquess considered his devotee ruefully. His attention had only been a whimsical kindness, a salve to his own wounded pride, but he couldn't hurt the child. "Work hard while we're here and you can help my groom, Dooley," he said.

"Thanks, milord," said the boy, bouncing up not out of manners but from sheer excitement. "Thanks."

"If you're going to look after my cattle, though, you need your sleep. Go to bed."

"Yus, sir." The boy ran off and then turned. "G'night."

"Good night, Robin," said the marquess softly in the dark.

Chapter 6.

Beth was astonished how easy it was for two people to avoid meeting at Belcraven, especially when one seemed set on it. Beth only encountered the marquess at dinner and for the social interaction which followed. Moreover, after that first occasion, it was never just the family.

There was a resident chaplain at Belcraven, the Reverend Augustus Steep, who also served as the family archivist and historian. A Mrs. Sysonby turned up from time to time. She was a distant connection of the duke's who had found herself impoverished in widowhood. She had been taken in as companion to the d.u.c.h.ess but as the d.u.c.h.ess felt no need of a companion and Mrs. Sysonby was an enthusiastic entomologist, the lady lived independently in her rooms pursuing her hobby, coming and going as she pleased.

The d.u.c.h.ess's emigre aunt and uncle, the Comte and Comtesse de Nouilly, inhabited one whole wing along with a crippled daughter and a handful of faithful servants. Occasionally they, too, without the daughter, appeared for dinner.

Mr. Westall, the duke's secretary, and Mr. Holden, his steward, were ent.i.tled to dine with the family and did so from time to time, though the steward had his own family in a house on the estate, and Mr. Westall ate frequently at the vicarage where the interest, Beth gathered, was the vicar's daughter.

In fact, Beth found Mr. Westall exactly the kind of quiet, studious young man with whom she felt comfortable. She enjoyed his occasional company, but whenever she conversed with him she would look up to see the marquess's eyes on them, hard and suspicious.

Beth wished she could wipe away that suspicion but, even if she found the words, when was there occasion to say them?

During the evenings the marquess did not again attempt to take Beth aside despite hints from the d.u.c.h.ess. During the days, he disappeared. The duke maintained a pack of hounds, though he rarely hunted himself, and the marquess was spending some days chasing foxes. Beth gathered most of the rest was spent riding and angling. Anything that took him out of the house.

When they met, his manner was always impeccably courteous and formidably distant. Beth matched his courtesy as best she could and waited for an opportunity to undo the damage, to convince him of her purity. Two attempts to have him go apart with her having failed, she was driven to desperate measures and wrote him a note, asking to speak with him privately.

When they met that evening before the meal he said coolly, "I received your note, my dear. Is your need so urgent?"

Understanding him, Beth felt her face go red and snapped, "No."

Afterwards she wondered with despair if she should have invited him to her bed. It might be her only chance to speak to him in private and presumably then he would discover she was a virgin, or had been.

As they hardly ever spoke to each other, surely no one could believe this farce of a betrothal. The duke and d.u.c.h.ess, of course, simply smoothed over the surface, though Beth was aware of the d.u.c.h.ess's concern. The Comte and Comtesse de Nouilly were entirely absorbed by their own bitterness. But the upper servants-Mr. Holden, Mr. Westall, and the Reverend Steep-must have surely found the situation very strange. If so, they were careful to give no sign of it.

All the same Beth had reason to be grateful to Napoleon Bonaparte. Without the increasingly bad situation on the Continent certainly even the de Vaux family would sometimes have been short of something to say. Instead, each evening, they plunged with relief into the day's news.

One evening the marquess shocked everyone. "I think it is every man's duty to oppose the Corsican," he said. "I wish to offer my services."

The duke and d.u.c.h.ess both paled. "Impossible," snapped the duke.

"It is perfectly possible," replied the marquess, and Beth knew this was his attempt to escape. Even into death? Or did he think himself invincible?

"You forget, Arden," said the duke, once more calm and controlled, "your wedding is set for a few weeks hence. After that and what is now called the honeymoon, we can discuss this subject again." The words were accompanied by a warning look. Beth knew the duke was reminding his heir of the weapon he held over his head.

For once the marquess broke the pattern of decorum, pushed back his chair, and left the table. The comte and comtesse looked blankly astonished.

"Is something amiss?" the comtesse asked.

"No, Tante," said the d.u.c.h.ess. "It is merely that Arden has finished."

The comtesse sniffed. "The manners of the English youth leave much to be desired." With that she returned to her cake.

For once silence was allowed to take hold of them all. Both the duke and the d.u.c.h.ess were pale. The duke's pallor could well be simple displeasure; the d.u.c.h.ess's was fear.